Cobwebs (12 page)

Nancy settled into the lovely feeling of being alone when you know someone will be home soon. The rooftops were the colors that boy Dion was: a wash of pale blues and grays and Brooklyn brick, russet, rose, and brown. The sky looked blue and warm and made her sleepy and comfortable. From so high, she could see it all—Dad’s tiny tomato and marigold plants in the garden patch, the peonies he was trying to start, some roses that were nothing but thorn sticks. For a vague moment just before she fell asleep, she imagined Dion crossing the roofs, his shirts and jacket flapping like wings.

Afterward she thought she should have known. On Tuesday Nancy called
The New York Times
from the pay
phone in the front hall at school and asked for Nick Pappas. They gave her another phone number. She braced herself for a voice barking “Pappas,” like in movies about newsrooms, but instead heard a quiet “Hello.” This made three: the speaker phone, the dark doorway, and now the phone at her ear. It was him all right. Niko Papadopolis, and Nick Pappas, and probably the other N.P.s as well.

“Oh,” she said, flustered, then said the words she’d rehearsed. “I’m doing a report on criminal investigation for school. I saw your byline on a crime article in the
Times
—”

“Your name?”

She said the first name of the first girl she spotted down the hall and the last name of the second. “Jessica. Hyde.”

“And what is it you want to know, Miss Hyde?”

“How you get your stories.”

He laughed, a huffing sort of sarcastic chuckle. She felt embarrassed, patronized. The way some people talked to kids …

“I mean, where does the information come from? The police records?”

“Yes,” he said in a way that could have meant yes or could have meant not exactly. “And from other sources.”

“What other sources?”

“Uh, Miss Hyde, I’m not sure this is—”

“Like people on the street?”

He paused. “At times.”

Was that all he was going to say? “Well, how do the
police
find out a crime is happening?”

“Miss—”

“I mean, everyone can’t dial nine-one-one, can they?”

His voice grew stern. “Surely you realize that a journalist reporting a crime is working after the fact.”

“What I want to know is, who tells the police?”

“Whoever happens to be in the vicinity to witness a crime in progress,” he said. “Now, if there’s anything else you need to know, may I suggest you call—”

Before he could brush her off and never take a call from her again, she said, “Just one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“As a reporter, say you want to know all about someone, what do you do?”

He cleared his throat. She guessed this was more
the kind of question he expected from a student. “Start with the basics,” he said. “Who, what, where, when, and why. Who he is, what he’s done, where he works … Just keep asking questions. It’ll lead to the truth.”

“Thank you,” Nancy said, hung up the phone, and went to math class. She already knew the where, she realized. She even partly knew the why. But who …
Start with the basics.

T
hat afternoon Nancy made three cups of tea. She made the first cup, the sky blue one with the big brown cat on it, in the basement kitchen, then took it to Rachel where she sat weaving in the greenhouse.

“Hot tea,” she announced. “Here’s a sandwich, too. Mama—”

Rachel was at the loom, still in her nightgown, clogs in the corner, morning tea cold and congealed in a cup on the floor. She had that look on her face that Nancy hated, that I’m Creating So Don’t Get in the Way look. “Angel,” she said softly to her daughter.

It startled Nancy off-course. Instead of what she was going to say, she asked, “What does it mean, Mama, all your weaving?”

Rachel ran her hand over Nancy’s curls, then the same hand coasted over the weaving held tight across the beater. “It’s how I make sense of the world,” Rachel said. “The pattern.”

“It’s not only weaving that makes patterns,” Nancy said. “It’s webs! They’re everywhere at school. Longitude and latitude, trigonometry, music staffs. Even the notes look like spiders. The greenhouse,”—she pointed to the spines of metal that formed its frame, like the structure of Dad’s penthouse—“the playground dome by the subway. And this kid on top of it who uses it for
his
web.”

“Uses the dome?”

She dared to tell. “Yes. The one by the subway. The one made out of triangles.”

“Is he trying to catch someone?” Rachel asked, trying to follow this curious line of thinking.

It was clear that what Rachel said was so.

Rachel thought Nancy’s silence meant she didn’t understand the question. “Trap you,” she explained.
“
‘Step into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly.”

“No!
I’m
the spider.” Dion was the fly, wasn’t he?

Rachel curled up on the loom bench, rubbing her arms and looking up at Nancy. “It’s catch or be caught, baby girl. Chase or be chased. It’s what Granny would tell you to do.”

“Granny!”

“Let him think he’s caught you, but really—”

“Catch him,” said Nancy.

Her mama nodded, her eyes clear as the greenhouse glass.

“Mama?”

Rachel’s shoulders dropped a little. “What?” She may as well have said,
What now?

“Why’d Granny come to New York?”

“She was drawn here,” Rachel said quickly. “Life in West Virginia wasn’t so much for an—” She hesitated. “A creative girl.”

“Like New York was a magnet?”
A magnet for weirdos of any kind.
Spiders were just one kind.

Rachel smiled. “You mean it was a test of her mettle.”

Nancy groaned. “Her metal?”

“Mettle. What’s inside her.”

Nancy got the pun, but pondered the meaning.

“Pay attention to what draws you, Nancy.”

“Mama,” Nancy asked after a long moment, “if I were in danger, would you be able to go out to help me?”

“Are you in danger?” Rachel asked sharply.

Nancy hunched one shoulder up to her ear and shook her head against it. “What if Dad was?” She didn’t meet Rachel’s eyes.

Rachel caught her breath. “Is he?” she asked.

Nancy didn’t reassure her, only stood up and climbed the steps to the other apartment.

Nancy made the second cup of tea in the upstairs kitchen. She used the black cup and saucer, and put a little shot of amaretto in it, the way Grandpa Joke liked it. He hunched over the steaming, almond-fragrant cup, studying the tea and a swirl of cream the color of the grape vines at the edge of his garden.

“You okay, Grandpa?”

“Nancy.” Grandpa Joke took her hand and pulled her to him, hugged her with his arm around her waist, his brown eyes on hers. “We’ve got another house call tonight.”

“Same place?” she asked. Her stomach felt like little holes had been punched out of it.

He nodded. “I’ll need you,” he said.

There was almost a pattern to the way her family was letting her in on or leaving her out of information, each in his or her own way deciding whether or not it was time. Nancy thought it was. Maybe Grandpa Joke—the other not-very-spidery one among them—thought so, too.

“Honey, show Granny Tina your knitting. Take her mind off.”

“Take her mind off
what?
Your patient? Or is it hers?”

He rubbed his face with his hands and waved her away.

Granny Tina had made the mug that Nancy brought her. She had thrown it round on her wheel, baked the clay, glazed it dark red, and fired the glaze to make it shine. It was beautiful, and, like all of her pottery, phenomenally strong.

Nancy flipped the tea bag into the sink, added honey. With one foot she pushed her backpack full of knitting along the polished floor ahead of her, into Granny’s room.

As soon as Granny Tina saw Nancy, she snapped her reading light off, her deep dark eyes bright with expectation.

“Show me what you’re doing, then,” she said. “Still the pattern that isn’t?” She took a sip of tea and leaned back against her pillows to watch Nancy knit. Two more inches of the front piece, and in came Grandpa Joke.

“Tina?” he said softly, his hand on her shoulder. Nancy looked up to see Granny asleep, her tea mug empty. She must have stayed awake long enough to drink it.

“Grandpa?” Nancy asked. “Granny is—” She leaned forward and caught Grandpa Joke’s eye, made a shaky-hand gesture to show him she thought her granny was not quite all right. “How’s the patient?” Nancy went on, hoping to catch Grandpa unaware.

He searched her eyes. He didn’t say it was his patient, not Granny’s. Well, that was something she knew that Dion didn’t. “She’s going to die,” he said.

Nancy asked, “Of what?” She was shocked to have gotten a real answer.

“Failure to heal.”

And another! She hadn’t heard of this before. She
thought back to that first phone call. “But I thought she was a heart patient.”

“Heart? Your granny doesn’t treat heart patients.”

“Because she is one herself?”

“No, because—”

“Anyway, why can’t you make the patient better?” Nancy pressed on daringly. “What are you doing at that house?”

“The self-inflicted wounds are the most difficult to heal,” said Grandpa Joke. “It’s impossible if the patient herself doesn’t want to get better.”

He took the blood-red mug and went out. Nancy stuffed her yarn and needles into her bag. As she stood to leave, Granny opened one eye. “It’s not impossible,” she said.

“What?”

“Well, don’t expect him to tell you
everything.”

“Grandpa?”

Granny nodded slowly, then said, “Do you know how I knew I was in love with him?”

Nancy shrugged one shoulder. She wanted to go out, and no, this was
not
the story she wanted to hear right now. Look what had happened after the last story—
how she’d lost her mind and gone up to that door, met the reporter’s little girl, and met the man himself. Well, she’d met his voice at least, and now they were going again tonight. She hadn’t changed anything last time. Granny had still come home older, weaker, sapped.

“I’ve got homework,” Nancy said firmly.
“Hard
homework.”

“Do you think this is going to be easy?” Granny asked.

“I don’t have time for a story,” Nancy said. “I have to—”

“You sit here,” said Granny. “And take in what I have to say.”

“I—”

“Nancy,” said Granny. She rolled her fists together and trumpeted through them. “Now hear this!”

“Why?” Nancy gripped the arms of the chair. No, she didn’t want to hear any story about anything or anybody! Granny didn’t make it better by being funny.

“He was tall, so tall his legs poked out the gap between his socks and his trousers. Have you ever seen his legs?”

Nancy nodded. Well, of course she’d seen his legs. He was her grandfather, wasn’t he? Then again, had she? Granny threw back her head and laughed. Nancy tucked her foot under her to keep it from getting going of its own accord.

“They’re pale as ghosts, as if they’re scared of daylight. And the longest, finest black hair. And he was so pigeon-toed, even then. Oh, you should have seen him!”

Nancy would have liked to see him now, would have liked to hear him tell her she was wearing out her grandmother, instead of the other way around. And yet she thought she could see him, the way Granny described him. Or had she seen some old picture somewhere? He was as vivid and young before her eyes, in all his pigeon-toed glory, as bristly as Dion on his dome.

“The first time I ever saw him, oh my. He was chasing the bus. His glasses were so heavy they banged on the bridge of his nose, and he ran so comically, his big feet flapping. Fast, though, honey. He caught that bus.”

What if he hadn’t? Then the pattern would have been broken.

“After that I saw him in the OR,” Granny said.

“In surgery?” Nancy asked.

“We all had masks on then, of course. And his hands! Well, they were large and strong and graceful. His stitches were works of art. All his patients healed so quickly.”

“Why did they heal so quickly?”

“He was a good doctor!” Granny retorted immediately. She stared for a moment, then chuckled. “Oh, you know. Especially once I noticed him.” Her voice had gone woozy again.

Granny leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes. “Thought you had some place to go.”

Nancy stood up. Granny didn’t stop her this time. It was fallen-Catholic Grandpa Joke who had told her what
amen
literally meant. She said it now as she fled: “So be it!” She banged the door behind her.

S
hamiqua was at Annette’s, and as soon as Nancy heard her voice, she wished she hadn’t come. But, “Come in, lovey,” Annette’s mother was saying, pushing the door wide and calling for Annette, and in the next instant Annette and Shamiqua came barreling in, shoving each other against the doorway and welcoming Nancy way too enthusiastically.

Jealous!
The evidence that Shamiqua was, in so many ways, what Annette had wanted Nancy to be lately, was all over Annette’s room: essentially, the room looked like they’d bought stock in Cosmetics
Plus and were setting up shop right here. Nails, hair, eyes: all had been done.

The fact that Jimmy Velcro had really asked Annette to some dance, and of course Shamiqua was going with Buddy, had the two of them practically bouncing off the ceiling. Now they were looking at Nancy as though she were a blank canvas and they were inspired artists. Well, Nancy had wanted to get away from the house to someplace where she couldn’t put anyone at risk, couldn’t do anything to cause herself or family trouble. A makeover was innocent enough. Maybe.

“You’ve got such a pretty face,” Shamiqua said generously. “Why don’t you get your hair out of it?” Shamiqua’s hair was done in perfect tiny braids, all pulled into a ponytail as if it were straight hair like Annette’s.

“It’s my trademark,” said Nancy, who had read a few
Seventeen
magazines herself.

“Have you ever been in love?” Shamiqua asked Nancy, not expecting an answer, and she and Annette laughed hysterically at each other as though they’d been asking each other that question since school let out.