Cobwebs Page 7

  “You okay?” A whispered call came from above.

  Oy. What woke Dad up?

  “Come on, girl!” His voice was echoey, encouraging, hoarse (with sleep?). She didn’t let herself think how high up he was, how far she had to climb back up to reach him. She forced herself to think as a spider might, focusing on what was precisely in front of her: Wall. Steps. Railing. The dark damp spring night air. So what if I’m not a natural. So what if I’ve got no spinnerets and no talent, either. I can still find some ability to work with. Focus. One stitch at a time. One step at a time. She couldn’t have been any less steady if she were climbing a steel knitting needle.

  She made it.

  She squinted around in the dark: nobody. She found Ned inside, lying in bed. She lifted the edge of the netting, found his eyes closed. Faker.

  “Dad?”

  “Hmm?” he murmured. And then, “It’s a lovely evening for some fresh air.”

  “Go to sleep,” she told him. She climbed into her hammock and passed out from exhaustion.

  Nancy woke early the next morning, steadied the hammock by lying still and reorienting herself to the idea that no part of her—nothing she was directly connected to—was connected to the floor. Revelation! The hammock was the ideal place to knit a sweater of many colored stripes. She dropped each ball of yarn on the floor and threaded its end up through a loop in the hammock’s netting. Each time she started a new stripe, she simply picked up a new end. Beneath her, the balls rolled around the floor freely and didn’t get tangled.

  Dad came through the roof door. “It’s a lovely morning for some fresh air,” Nancy said, and watched him. He didn’t seem to react to her words. Had he really been awake when she came in last night, or just sleep talking? And if it wasn’t Dad talking to me last night, who was it?

  “What are you doing?” Ned asked, his voice still sleepy.

  Nancy held up the sweater.

  “What’s wrong with the black one?”

  “It’s finished, remember? I was wearing it last night.”

  “Oh.” Ned leaned closer and kissed her on the cheek. “You’ll be so bright in that,” he said.

  “Don’t start with me. Granny thinks I’m too dark in the black one.”

  “Even a spider makes use of camouflage, little egg.”

  Some spiders do. Not me. Nancy felt cranky. She wanted to be bold, get noticed, be one of those garish bright spiders that stood out fiercely on their webs, even if the purpose was only to make themselves unappetizing to birds. “I want to look big and colorful and scare people,” she said.

  Ned laughed. “Scare who?”

  “People.” The man whose house she’d been to last night. That boy on the dome. Whoever was outside last night.

  Ned tossed the hair out of his eyes and looked at her inquisitively, but she kept her thoughts to herself. “What are you doing today?” he asked. He was pulling on his hobnailed boots, ready for a roofing job. It was Saturday. Nancy had that gold yarn to buy. She’d promised to see Annette. And she had some questions she wanted to try asking her grandparents.

  “Home,” she said. “Mama.”

  “Is she sleeping?” Ned asked, tying a boot. His hair dangled, hiding his face. Nancy knew the trick.

  “Yes.” She couldn’t lie. Rachel snored when she wasn’t with Ned, lay on her stomach spread-eagle on the bed, heavy blankets kicked to the floor, pillow over her head, out like a light, deeply secure.

  “Ah.” Ned looked into Nancy’s eyes, his face pure calm, except for one cheek twitch. Only one. Nancy knew that in fall Rachel had insomnia, walked the floor, plucked at the strings on her loom, ached for Ned. In spring it seemed to Nancy that fall would never come. But this year she sensed some different ache in Rachel, for something else, not Ned.

  14

  Boy on the Promenade railing. Blue eyes. No hair.

  “Hey girl, where’s your daddy?”

  Nancy pulled her sweater sleeves down over her hands, clutched them there, felt her palms sweat.

  “Girl, know what you got?”

  Annette shuddered. Her gleaming hair shook. But he wasn’t talking to her. “Keep walking!” she said in Nancy’s ear.

  “Wait,” said Nancy.

  “Got hair like a nest!”

  Nancy whirled at the corner of Pierrepont. “I do not!” she screeched.

  Another surprisingly beautiful smile came out of that gray-blue uglyish face. “I know about your father,” he called teasingly.

  “Oh, why did you answer?” moaned Annette softly, walking on. Nancy just stood there; she let Annette leave her behind.

  “Up high a lot, isn’t he?” the boy asked.

  She wasn’t sure what that meant. “He works on roofs.”

  He laughed. “I’m pretty good on a roof myself.”

  Nancy’s heart thumped. Had it been him? Are you the Angel? “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Dion,” he said. “Remember that.”

  “Dion what?”

  “My mother’s going to wonder where I am,” Annette said. She was back, Nancy was sorry to note. Sorry? About Annette? She pulled herself together. She turned away, went after Annette.

  “Hey girl!”

  Nancy kept going. Can’t catch me.

  “Didn’t say what kind of nest, did I?”

  “Nancy,” hissed Annette. “How does he know ‘your daddy’?”

  Nancy glanced sidelong at Annette, who was just being a good friend, just trying to protect her. “He was on the dome in the playground when Dad and I went by last night.”

  The boy sat on the rail behind them, swinging his feet. The space between them yawned. Annette pulled her to the corner and kept demanding in her ear, “Is he following you? Stalking you?”

  Nancy pulled away. She would call the boy’s bluff. “My girlfriend thinks you’re the Angel of Brooklyn,” she called across the space.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.” She took three steps toward him. Annette hugged her elbows, still back at the corner.

  He said nothing. The girls waited. He didn’t ask her name. He stared at his feet, which made her stare at hers. Her polka-dot Docs, his feet in soft gray boots.

  With a thud of his boots, he dropped from the rail and in an instant stood before her. She froze. He reached toward her. She shrank back. But all he did was gently touch the back of her hand with one finger. “Just tell me one thing, Nancy,” he said.

  “What?” He did know her name.

  “What does your grandfather do when he goes on his house calls? How does he heal the wounds?”

  She yanked her hand away, dashed to Annette, and hauled her away from the Promenade, enduring a barrage of Annette’s street talk scolding of both of them until she reached some kind of personal limit and barked, “Shut up, Annette!”

  Next time, she told herself, she wouldn’t let him know she knew anything, would act like she didn’t even remember his name. What do you mean, next time, bird-brain? she shouted at herself inside her head.

  “Well, if he saw your father, I hope your father saw him,” Annette said. Nancy could see that Annette thought it would be a good idea if her father had seen the ghost boy. “That boy is just nasty,” said Annette, trying on a homeroom word.

  Nancy started to imagine what touching Dion’s head would feel like. He had stubble, but stubble—the way it sounded, rough and trouble and bumpy like pebbles—was not how it would feel. She didn’t know why she so wanted to smooth his head. She could tell it would be silken, tiny fronds of hair woven into a soft carpet that would have been invisible if it weren’t so dark.

  “What sort of a person would cut off all his hair?” she asked Annette. “Even his eyebrows. As some kind of disguise?”

  Annette shook her head.

  Nancy went on, “They could be looking for some kind of hair—dark hair—and wouldn’t guess he’d be bald.”

  “Why would anyone be looking for him?” Annette said.

  Nancy said, “If they
were, would he be hanging out in all these public places?”

  “He’s creepy,” Annette said.

  No, he’s not, thought Nancy. She didn’t say it aloud. What Annette didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. But what the boy knew could hurt Nancy. His name is Dion, and he knows my name. But what does he know about my grandfather? And why had he asked her about him so that Annette wouldn’t hear?

  Again Nancy felt the touch of his finger on the back of her hand. Why was Annette so disgusted by him? She looked over at Annette, walking along, and linked her arm through her friend’s. A distance of a different kind still gaped between them.

  She asked Annette, “Do you hate being an only child?”

  “Why?” asked Annette, confused.

  Nancy said forcefully, “It’s like I’m the only one.”

  “Only one where? There’s plenty of people in your family.”

  “I’m the only kid. It’s like I’m the only kid in the universe.”

  “I’m here,” said Annette.

  “I am the only one of me!” She knew she sounded insane.

  “Thank God.”

  Nancy wanted Dion to be there in the empty space that yawned around her. She pulled Annette closer. “Come on, ’Nette. Let’s go home and knit.”

  “Knit! Why would you, when you can just buy a sweater?”

  “Why would you write a poem, when there’s Walt Whitman?”

  Annette said,

  “There once was a Nancy who knitted.

  But nothing she knitted ever fitted …”

  “Woe is me!” said Nancy. “You know, I knit my hair into it sometimes by accident.” It was fun to gross Annette out.

  “Eeeesh!” Annette danced along on her toes, her arms bent, squeamish.

  “Never mind,” Nancy told her. “Is that it?”

  “I didn’t finish yet. Something about ‘half-witted.’ Promise me you won’t knit me anything, especially with your hair in it.”

  Like a nest, thought Nancy. “Not till you have a baby, ’Nette. With, let’s see … Twinkie Boy?”

  Annette sighed. “He’s so sweet. If only I knew who he was.”

  “How about that boy Jimmy in basketball who won’t get out of your face?”

  Annette warmed to the subject. “Like glue, stuck on me.”

  “Or Velcro,” Nancy suggested.

  “Jimmy Velcro!” they squawked. Lord, thought Nancy, I helped come up with one of those dumb nicknames. Jimmy hadn’t asked Annette out, though Shamiqua still said he was going to.

  In Nancy’s head she heard the ghost boy’s voice. Hair like a nest. What kind of nest? He was pushing her. For what? Echoing, hoarse, fading away. She thought of her dad, flat in his bed last night, and an idea came to her all of a sudden, a bolt from the blue. Oh, come on, Nancy. Don’t be a dumb bug. How would that boy get on Dad’s roof?

  Annette’s mother said it was too cold to sit out on the balcony, where Nancy might at least watch for another glimpse of the boy from the Promenade. Dion. She hung around near the living-room window.

  “Nancy, how’s your mother?” Mrs. Li asked from her desk. “I was disappointed not to see her at Sophomore Night last week.”

  “Dad went,” Nancy said. And thanks for bringing it up.

  “Yes, I know, but I’d just love to see your mother.”

  Mrs. Li and Rachel had gone to the same school as girls, but they hadn’t been friends. It made Nancy uncomfortable, which was nothing compared to what it would have been if Mrs. Li found out that Rachel never went out anymore.

  “Come here, Nancy,” Annette called from the bathroom. “I’m all set up.”

  “Set up for what?”

  “Your pedicure.”

  Annette had laid out a towel and set up scissors, a file, some bottles of oddly tinted liquids, and a few thingers of nail polish in different colors. “Your choice,” she said grandly.

  My choice is to run out of here screaming. Nancy pointed to the green polish.

  “Oh, to match your eyes?”

  “How long will it take to dry?” She wanted to leave, leave, leave, be alone, keep her socks on, go back to the Promenade and look for the boy.

  “You on a schedule?” asked Annette sarcastically.

  Nancy sat on the edge of the toilet seat.

  “Naked feet, please,” Annette said.

  Nancy was wearing jeans, and that was good, because on a school day she’d have had to take off her tights, and she was chilly enough already. But that didn’t stop Annette taking a good look up her leg and letting out a yelp. “Listen,” Annette said. “Is there anybody in this day and age who can truthfully get away with not shaving her legs?”

  “I can. I do.”

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard the discussion and didn’t know the tools. They’d been the subject of debate all week in school: Nair vs. Neet vs. Gillette Foamy vs. Shamiqua whose mother took her to have her legs waxed (expensive!) vs. Khadija whose mother made a paste of sugar water to pull off the hair (barbaric!) vs. (silent, completely silent) Nancy whose mother had asked her not to shave her legs.

  “Why won’t you?” Annette must have realized that Nancy hadn’t said a word in those homeroom conversations.

  “Sheep shave,” said Nancy. “That’s what my mother says.”

  Annette’s mother appeared in the doorway, and Nancy knew she must have heard. One more strike against Rachel. “That’s a nice color for toenails,” Mrs. Li said, and went away. Annette plopped Nancy’s foot into a basin for soaking. “You have pretty legs, you know,” said Annette.

  “That’s why I wear tights,” said Nancy. “Sheep shave,” she said again.

  “Goats don’t!” retorted Annette. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Baa,” said Nancy. “Following along. Doing what everyone else does.”

  “So?” It was Annette’s turn to be defensive.

  “We don’t shave in my family,” Nancy said. “It’s politics.”

  “What politics? The Hairy Leg Party?”

  “It’s against nature,” Nancy quoted Rachel.

  “If you wear tights, your mom’ll never know.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” said Nancy tightly. She put in her other foot to soak, and Annette began trimming her toenails.

  Annette whispered, “I would shave whether my mother liked it or not.”

  Nancy answered, “I can shave my pits if I want.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Well, it’s what she said.”

  “She’s lucky you’re such a good girl,” Annette said slyly.

  15

  Nearly noon, and Mama’s house was only now waking up. Grandpa Joke was making waffles in the dining room, the only place where the plug was in the right place for the waffle iron. “Sustenance,” he said.

  “It’s just food,” Nancy said. She felt stubborn.

  “Want some?”

  “I guess so.”

  “First go and help your granny, baby.”

  Granny was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking like everything hurt, in the flannel pajamas that she’d bought because they had no buttons.

  “You okay?” Nancy brought the wheelchair close to the bed.

  Granny Tina made the big effort to stand up and get in the chair. “Another day,” she said.

  Nancy’s heart ached. “Plenty more,” she said.

  “I don’t know how many more there are going to be, Nancy love,” Granny said slowly.

  Nancy felt hurried. “Granny? What would you do if you wanted to know all about someone?”

  “You don’t need to know all about someone,” Granny Tina said. The words sounded slurred and angry.

  “But I do,” Nancy protested. There’s this boy with no eyebrows from Alta, Utah … She pushed the wheelchair, but Granny already had it moving herself, and fought her. The door wasn’t open far enough to let the wheelchair through, so Nancy reached to open it, but Granny had already rolled up to it. Was there going to be
a tug-of-war?

  Then Granny backed up, Nancy opened the door, and Granny reached for her hands. Her brown-black eyes seemed flat, not sparkling like Coca-Cola the way they usually did. “If you want to know all about someone, learn what he does.” Then she said to herself, “Not ‘do.’ Does.” She fluttered her fingers toward her head a little.

  Rachel came into the kitchen to start the coffee. Granny looked up at her and said, “I’m going a little crazy, Rachel.”

  Rachel smiled nervously, but said, buttery-smooth, “That makes two of us, Mother. How about you, Nancy?”

  “Yeah, me three.”

  Grandpa Joke listened to Granny closely, and watched her face and Mama’s. Rachel’s eyes were tired, too. Sometimes after warping, she wove all night. The air felt zingy with tension. Nancy was grateful that no one asked where she’d been or what she’d been up to or whether there was anything new with her.

  Later she holed up with Mama in the greenhouse, her Docs tossed in the corner with Mama’s green clogs, doing her homework under the loom, knowing Rachel was too busy (too obsessed) to talk, knowing that she liked Nancy being there. “Mama,” she asked, “what would you do if you wanted to know all about someone?”

  Rachel ran her hand across her loom. “Find out what he loves,” she said.

  “Enough to fight for,” said Grandpa’s voice from the greenhouse doorway. The afternoon had warmed up enough that Rachel had the doors open, so they hadn’t heard him coming on one of his rare trips out there. “Nancy, who are you trying to find out about?”

  Oh, there’s a direct question from someone who won’t answer any. Nancy shook her head, wouldn’t answer.

  “Pop, is something wrong?” Rachel asked.

  “Your mother,” he said in a voice grown old. “Rachel, do you think you could give her a back rub?”

  In an instant the slow-moving Mamba was moving quickly out the door and up the stairs.

  “It’s not an emergency, Nancy,” Grandpa said, seeing her face. “She just needs Rachel’s hands, that’s all.”

  “Why, what’s she got that you haven’t got?”