Cobwebs Read online

  She didn’t want to tell Grandpa Joke, who pressed his elbow against his side, caressing her arm. “Honey,” he said, “this night is going to just get longer.”

  “Oh, Grandpa,” Nancy said. “If only Niko hadn’t kept us.”

  Grandpa shook his head. “Niko didn’t realize you can’t change what’s going to happen. We can’t any of us change what’s going to happen.”

  “Niko—” Her voice rose angrily, tears falling at last.

  Grandpa touched his finger to her lips. “Niko wanted miracles,” he said.

  An image of Grandpa’s hands came to her. An image of a church. Dion’s hands. The Emergency Entrance sign. A bridge, a web, a connection. The strand connecting Granny and her was stronger than most. “He wanted to trade Granny’s life for hers!”

  “Granny did what she desired,” Grandpa Joke said.

  “Maybe Granny could have been saved—”

  “You can’t put up that wall, Nancy. Niko—he’s one of the family. He and Rose and those kids.”

  “What family?” She stopped again, leaned on the cold concrete wall. “We don’t have any Greek cousins!”

  Grandpa said, “They’re from a distant branch of the family.” He picked up her hand, saw the bright scrapes on her knees from Niko’s roof. He ran fingernails across her palm, and laid the silken tendrils he raked up gently over her scrapes.

  “The boy knew we were the same kind,” he said. “He’s a connector, like you. You knew, too, in your way.”

  “Knew what?” She rubbed her knees. There was a smooth substance there, drying up.

  “About being a spider,” said Grandpa.

  “All of us? Even you?”

  “Who do you think got us all into this mess?”

  “You’re the original connector,” she said.

  Smiles in the midst of tears.

  “What will happen to Dion and Mina now?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “We’ll help them. Their father’s kind of crazy, Grandpa.”

  “Not really, Nancy. We’ll forgive him. And they’ll help us, too.” He turned his head away, tried to hide his tears.

  “How can they help us?”

  “Nancy,” he said, looking at her closely. “When we left, Rose wasn’t dead. Maybe she’ll live. She’s young, strong—”

  “Mama was there,” she told him, clasping his hand.

  “Rachel?” Oh, the hope and gladness in his eyes.

  “Yes!” She didn’t have to tell him how Rachel had known they needed her, or why she’d come: because it finally became evident that Nancy wasn’t going to be able to take her mother’s place in the healing world. Grandpa clutched her hand five times harder, hauled her full-speed down the hallway.

  “Tina!” he called. “I’m right here!” He pushed through a curtain into a tiny cubicle. “Can you hear me?” he said, louder.

  Nancy stood back. Granny was like a shadow in the dimness of the nighttime hospital, a shadow becoming part of the darkness itself. “Joke?” her weak voice said.

  “I’m here!” Grandpa Joke was holding her hand, and crying.

  Like the day Rachel was born and every day since. He’s always been here for me.

  What did it mean that she had Granny’s memories? Her life was passing before her eyes. Before Nancy’s eyes. Don’t forget a single thing, she told herself. Or so Granny told her. It would all seem different tomorrow, in the light. All the cobwebs would be covered in morning dew, every drop reflecting the ground and sky. Nancy pushed through the curtain and went all the way in. The cubicle was barely wider than the bed. Grandpa backed out to give them room.

  “Listen, Granny! Mama went to help Rose. She was there! I saw her shoes. All the way to Cobble Hill, Granny. Isn’t that impressive? Granny, listen.” Green shoes, she thought at Granny. Green eyes. Mama’s hands on the loom, on the silk, on a hurt place.

  Granny said, “Your Grandpa Joke was adorable when he was younger. Absolutely adorable like that boy Dion.” It was hard to imagine pigeon-toed old knock-kneed baldy-headed Grandpa Joke being adorable. Like Dion.

  Nancy thought, It’s more than trusting him or feeling sorry for him. She realized: I love him.

  “I love him,” said Granny. “Josie, will you tell them for me?”

  Nancy took Granny’s hand, held on hard. “Josie’s not here right now, Gran. But soon. I’m Nancy.” Know me. Know me!

  Granny Tina’s voice grew soft and tired. “I know, Nancy.” And then, “Do you know, sweet lamb, my whole life has been one great long beautiful time?”

  Nancy laid her head down near Granny’s knee. Granny’s hand moved gently to her head. “Such curls, like Ned’s head. My beautiful girl. Such curls.” Her hand rested on Nancy’s head and Nancy stayed there, unmoving, not daring to cry, thinking: the stores in their neighborhood, the birds in the backyard, the slides in the playground, Granny teaching her to climb them.

  At last Grandpa put his hand on Nancy’s shoulder, raised her up, walked her away.

  “I’m leaving,” she told him, and, distracted, he nodded, slipped inside the curtain.

  Down the tiled hallway. Ned’s head. Beautiful girl. Such curls. Such curls. They were the last words she would hear her Granny Tina say.

  45

  The Subway was still the fastest way to go, if it was going directly where you wanted to go. The F train was worth the five-block dash Nancy had to make to get there. She tore down the steps, feeling the rumbling that told her the train had come to her as though called. She rushed through the cars, violently hauling the heavy doors open until she reached the car that she figured would stop in front of the exit at Seventh Avenue.

  It was so early, so empty. It might have been dangerous, but Nancy thought only about where she was going. Even Dion wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her now.

  The sky was light when the train pulled out of the tunnel to cross the canal. The city lights had stopped twinkling and now merely glowed. When the train reached her station she sprang through the doors, bounded through the turnstiles and up the steps. She charged along the hard hill of the subway station.

  The buildings of Park Slope were shades of brown like an old-fashioned photograph, colorless because it was still so dark. There was a light in the window of the Uprising Bakery.

  She split the street with speed. Nothing seemed fast enough. She wondered if she was going her very fastest, after all. She rubbed her fingers together as she walked, felt a stickiness that was more than it was yesterday. The way a sticky chew of bubble gum went slick and smooth in her mouth—that was how her silk felt now. Trust it enough to take to the roofs? Not yet. There was more she needed to know first.

  At last her feet found Ned’s building, his gate and stoop and lock and the stairway inside. She wanted to collapse on the top step, but somehow turned her key and burst through the door.

  Mama’s green clogs were there on the mat. She was here where Nancy had prayed she’d be. She was here, in Dad’s arms, in his lap, in his chair.

  They each freed an arm for her. Face first into her mother’s soft skirt, four arms around her, four legs beneath her, silken hair and braids of dreadlocks against her cheeks.

  And if Mama was here …

  “Were you—did you—?”

  “Rose will be all right, Nancy,” Ned said.

  A wave of feeling nearly made Nancy float with its power, from Dion, from Mina, from their mother. From her mother. Pride. Relief. Joy. But a different feeling mixed fast with it, jolted her to the ground.

  “Granny’s dying,” she gasped.

  Gently, oh, so gently, Ned said, “It’s over, little egg.”

  And sadly, so sadly, Rachel said, “Nancy, she died.”

  Nancy jumped up and stood with her hands clenched in fists. “I wanted to—but I didn’t—I tried! But I couldn’t—”

  Rachel took her hand, uncurled it. “You couldn’t,” she said. “It was too late.”

  “I was too late!�
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  “No,” said Ned. “You couldn’t save her any more than Niko or Dion could save Rose.”

  “Or Grandpa,” she whispered.

  “I couldn’t have, either, Nancy,” her mother said. “This was what Granny wanted.”

  “Granny wanted you to save Rose.” Nancy drew her hand away.

  “And she did,” Ned said. “Mama did. Your granny was there first. But she couldn’t do enough. It was your mama who saved Rose. She did.”

  Rachel got up, came and took Nancy’s hand again. “It was time for Granny to go,” she said. “So she let go of her energy. To Rose and you and me.”

  “Rachel, tell her what the man said.”

  “What man?”

  “Rose’s husband.”

  “Niko?” Nancy yanked her hand away again.

  Ned reached for it instead of Rachel. “He was on the rooftop, wasn’t he, coming after you?”

  Nancy nodded, swallowed.

  “What do you think stopped him?”

  Ned’s eyes held hers, and the corners of his mouth turned up. “He watched how you got to the ground.”

  Nancy let out her breath in a nervous laugh. “Well, that was almost a disaster.”

  “Almost,” Ned agreed. “But what happened, what he saw, is what made him go to Dion.”

  Nancy’s heart thudded. “You mean he’ll have more stories to write?” That man! Was there anything he wouldn’t jump on?

  Ned’s shoulders rose to his ears. “He’s not going to write about his own son,” he said.

  “About you, then?”

  He cut his eyes sideways at her, and wiggled his eyebrows. “Or us?”

  “He’ll be confused then. Nick Paprika, or whoever Nobody he is.”

  “One of us, I’m afraid,” said Rachel.

  “Like hell,” said Ned. “Him and his Angel stories.”

  “Do you think he’ll stop writing them?” Nancy asked.

  “What do you think? Better, what do you feel?”

  “That there are a lot of ways he could go,” she said.

  “Then you are wise,” said her mother.

  Nancy pulled away, went to the window. Or, rather, the window seemed to pull her. She itched to be outside in the air, up high again, wanted the city huge around her. Across the blue-gray-brown rooftops, the sky lifted like a shade to show the faintest edge of sun. The city glowed, and Dion was backlit where he sat on a wall several rooftops away.

  “I’m going out,” she said.

  “Where?” Rachel asked. “Now?”

  “Are you staying here?” Nancy asked her mother. Dad still sat, his arm hung around Rachel’s waist like an old belt that knew by habit just where to rest. He looked up at Rachel’s face.

  Rachel said, “For now.” She would go back to Grandpa.

  “Grandpa could come here—”

  “It isn’t that,” Rachel said. “Nancy, I love you. And Dad knows I love him. But I wouldn’t ask him to live lower than a sidewalk. And I can’t stay here. I have our work to do.”

  “Ours?”

  “Mine and my mother’s. Yours, one day, maybe.”

  “I can go both places. Why do you have to choose?” She was asking both of them, fed up with her fate. She didn’t want to be a bridge between them.

  “You’re a—” from Rachel.

  “You’re different,” interrupted Ned.

  They gave each other a cautious look, and Rachel said, “You’re a different kind of—”

  “Spider?” She faced them, her back to Dion.

  They laughed at her. Her mama laced her white fingers through her dad’s dark ones. “Human,” they said together.

  “I’m going,” Nancy said, feeling the brightest sort of joy beginning inside, a tiny growing glow. Human and spider, both!

  “Grandpa’s all right on his own,” Rachel said, then added, “Where are you going?”

  Can’t they see Dion? Is he so blue against the sky?

  “Grandpa’s not alone,” Nancy said. “He’s with Niko.”

  “However you know that,” said Rachel.

  “However I know.” Grandpa was there, Nancy knew it in her legs, in her knees and anklebones, doing normal medicine to help Rose get better, watching out for Niko, forgiving him in this human and inhuman city the way Ned had watched out for Nancy last night from the rooftop, the way he had dropped in to help. The way Dion had. Now, in her legs, the hair on them and the skin of them, she knew that Dion had moved from the roof behind her and was heading down the lines.

  She was faster—small but wiry—and Dion could not keep up. Warm updrafts from the earth lifted Nancy and bore her toward the rooftops; when she dropped they cushioned her fall.

  It was the saddest morning of her life so far, and it was the happiest. She had already done her crying; now she sailed along almost invisibly, giggling with joy.

  46

  In Nancy’s head she held one last conversation with Granny Tina. Real or imagined? She wasn’t sure.

  “My sweater’s done, Granny.”

  “Good,” Granny Tina said. “Get rid of that black one now. No more hiding in the dark. A pretty face like yours needs color next to it.”

  “I still like the black one. It’s New York chic.”

  “Like a funeral!” Granny shook her old gray head.

  Nancy didn’t have much time. Hurry up and say it. “Granny Tina,” she whispered, “did saving Rose kill you?”

  “It brought your mother back to life,” Granny said. “It’s her time now. And yours.”

  “Tell me the truth,” Nancy said.

  “The truth? You know there’s only so much energy in the world. Time to pass it on.” And she added words Nancy knew she’d heard somewhere before: “One blooms when the other fades.”

  It made Nancy cry one more time, knowing just what her Granny had done, what she’d given up. Was Granny crying, too? A little. But already she had that busy sound in her voice, that elsewhere sound. Going behind her cloud—as if that ever took any energy away from the sun!

  “I’m going now,” Granny said. “You wear that nonesuch sweater with its nonpattern. Stay warm.”

  “Don’t go!”

  “Stand out, Nancy. Don’t be afraid. Wear it—”

  “In the fall I’ll wear it. It’s eighty degrees out now.”

  Granny Tina shook her head again. “There’ll never be another fall,” she said, fading away.

  “Not for you,” Nancy said as Granny’s colors went.

  “Not for you, either!” Granny snapped back, just barely there. And as she went, Nancy heard her faint words: “Silly girl! The other kind of fall.”

  How had Granny known this would be when Nancy fell, that very morning, fell for good, fell for real, fell down, down for Dion?

  “I fell for you the first time I saw you,” said Dion.

  “Boy, you think you know so much,” Nancy told him. “You were just looking for a mate.”

  “Yeah? That’s all?”

  “There just aren’t that many spiders in New York.”

  “You’re the only one,” Dion said. She could see in his eyes that he meant it in more than one way.

  She said truthfully, “It wasn’t so instantaneous for me.”

  Maybe not the falling. But the connection, strong as silk, strong as steel. That had been immediate from the first time she had seen him, the skyline behind him.

  Ever after that, every time she saw him, she fell, fell with her eyes wide open, knowing falling for him didn’t mean being down, but both of them being up, up on the rooftops and sometimes strung between. Being angels. Being spiders. Blue sky above, gray-sidewalk-streets below, New York, and them in it. Him with his hair growing in so pretty on his head, her with hers on her legs.

  “You could bleach it, at least,” said Annette. Same as ever, she was always up-and-coming with bright suggestions.

  “Maybe I’ll bleach, maybe I won’t.”

  Annette had broken up with Jimmy Velcro. “Guess he didn�
��t have what it took to stick with you,” Nancy said, hooking her arm through Annette’s, leaning her cheek on Annette’s shoulder, and checking out the pretty city lights.

  “Guess I need a Ghost Boy,” said Annette.

  “Maybe next time try Twinkie Boy.”

  “But I dreamed him! I don’t remember who he is!” They looked out at the city and wondered what was going on behind the windows that were lit so they could see, and the others dark so they couldn’t, or up on the rooftops or down in the streets. It was peaceful now, but you never knew …

  “The Angel’s watching,” said Annette, and Nancy didn’t inform her otherwise. Look at the person beside you now. Do you know where she’s been all day? Every minute? Saving lives? Listening from rooftops? Investigating rumors? Do you know—can you know?—everything she’s been or will be? You can’t know, any more than you can know what a spider’s day is like.

  Dion, though, was still on the roofs. He wouldn’t go home permanently, only when Rose needed him. They all kept their distance, but they had an arrangement now. Rose helped the Mamba, and the Mamba helped the Rose. Niko was still chasing after—and writing about—the Angel of Brooklyn, mixing in even more mystery, so as not to blow anyone’s cover. The Greenes and Karas didn’t hate Niko for what had happened to Granny.

  Nancy didn’t know what made her what she was, made Annette and Dion and Ned and all of them. Nancy hadn’t asked to be a spider. It was simply the way things were. Maybe everyone had powers that other people didn’t know about, the same way everyone had secrets.

  Nancy danced across the roof, up and over the parapet, tossed her dragline to the air, and ran away on her thin striped legs. She felt where she needed to go. She got her message from the wind: to the bridge.

  Across the long rooftops, the houses and churches and train trestle, over the canal to Carroll Gardens, through Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, under trees in the sunrise, along sidewalks. Saints and flowers and cats in windows, stoops and sidewalk chalk drawings, the brown bricks of houses reddening in the angled morning light, people snoring and dreaming inside.