Cobwebs (17 page)

“DION!” It was the biggest yell that had ever come out of her mouth, and it stopped him half a block away.

“What?” She could see his mouth move to let out the word, though she couldn’t hear his voice.

She said my name,
thought Dion.

Her heart danced along inside her as she made herself walk to him at a normal pace. “Get back up there,” she said, grabbing his arm, so thin and hard inside his clothes. He let her lead him back to the dome. Even below the level of the rooftops of the brownstones and the tall trees, she knew they were the highest things in the world. The sun beamed down and warmed their heads.

“My mother is afraid of the city,” she told Dion. “She doesn’t go out.”

Even Annette didn’t know this. Teachers at school didn’t know. People who had known Nancy since kindergarten didn’t know. Dion hadn’t. He said, “I’ve never seen her even once.”

“Yeah well, you’d scare her to death, Ghost Boy, that bald head, sitting up here like—”

He sat up, held himself proudly.

“Quasimodo,” she finished.

He hunched his back a little, to make her laugh.

“But I wouldn’t want to lose her,” she said.

“My mother’s not afraid of the city,” said Dion, his eyes full. “She thinks she can save the whole world.”

“How?”
Like my father?

“She’s a counselor. Rose Browning, M.S.W., that’s her professional name. She helped people with their problems.” He dropped his face into his palms.

Nancy trembled. She didn’t want to crowd him, and she wanted to stay. She gave him her V8 juice out of her pack and waited while he cried. He stopped at last, and rubbed his nose on his coat sleeve, and sipped the V8. “Eight vegetables,” he said.

“It’s good for you,” said Nancy.

“You know what I like?” Dion asked.

“Grape juice?”

He shook his head. “Cream soda.”

They both laughed.

“You know,” Nancy began. She curled the toes of her shoes under one of the bars of the dome. “I’m afraid of heights.”

“That’s just natural,” he said.

“Well,
you’re
not, if you walk on that rail by the BQE.”

“Yes I am.”

“You’re like a spider,” she said. Shivers ran up and down her spine at her own daring.

“A spider,” Dion said, nodding.

“My mother says—” She stopped herself.

“Your mother likes heights?”

She shook her head. “She says that fear of heights is fear that you’ll throw yourself off.”

Dion’s body jolted. “How do you know these things, Nancy?”

“My father,” she said, practically stammering.

“Your father! What does he know about—”

“About heights? He’s a roofer. I told you.”

Dion studied her face a minute. “About my mother,” he said.

She waited. He’d opened the door. Now she’d hear the story. Instead, he asked a question. “What do you mean, a ‘roofer’?”

Duh
is what Annette would say. “A guy who does roofs.”

He nodded several times. “My mother was on the roof. And I don’t think she was afraid she’d throw herself off. I think she was afraid it wasn’t high enough to kill her.” He said it casually, in a tone of voice that
reminded her of those cute baggy-pants boys Annette and Shamiqua and the other homeroom girls liked, the ones Nancy hated, who could say any cold thing as if it didn’t matter. “She’d hit the ground,” Dion went on, “but it wouldn’t kill her.” His voice cracked at the end.

Nancy’s fingers wrapped around the bars, gripping so hard her bones showed.

“No. Dad came up and found her and got her back from the edge.” Dion stood up, right on top of the dome, and wavered there, more like Dracula than Quasimodo. Nancy grabbed his big, cold hand and said, “Sit down.”

He sat, and didn’t let go of her hand, looking at her with his beautiful sad eyes. “He told her she couldn’t go back to work till she was rested. But Ma can’t rest. Now she—” He drew a finger sharply across the inside of his arm, like a knife.

“Self-destructive,” Nancy said, like some psychologist herself.

Dion’s finger crossed one thigh, then the other.

Nancy nodded. “Then she’s no better?”

“Not until your grandparents—”

“Then she’ll be all right—”

“No worse,” he said. “No more cuts. But they can’t heal.”

“What kind of cuts don’t heal?”

“Come on, you’re not
that
stupid,” he said awfully.

Nancy pulled her hand away, pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. She remembered what Grandpa had said about his mother’s problems. A Rose that pricked herself?

Dion threw off his cap, rubbed his head with both hands. “I’m sorry! Sorry!” he said. “She won’t
let
them heal.”

“And you had to cut yourself, too.”

“My hair. It’s not the same. I don’t want to go home, not until I find an answer for my ma.”

She lifted her hand to the back of his head, and let her fingers run lightly from the crown to the nape of his neck.
Velvet.
She’d been right. She didn’t have to ask what kind of answer he wanted for his mother. He wanted to find the Angel of Brooklyn. And if it wasn’t him, himself, then … “Last weekend the Angel of Brooklyn was in the paper three times,” she said.

He didn’t comment.

“Did you see the papers? Well, my father was on a job all week in Corona.” Corona was in Queens.

“What were the weapons?”

“You mean what were the crimes?”

“No, I mean, what did the Angel of Brooklyn throw down?”

“A pebble, and a clothespin.”

“A clothespin!” Dion grinned. “You said three.”

“The other time he just yelled.”

Dion, smiling, looked at her sidelong. “I shot the pebble,” he said. “And my father went and reported it as the Angel.”

She thought he’d laugh himself right off the dome. She couldn’t let him see how incensed she was.

He laughed as hard as he’d cried. “I had this idea that maybe I’d attract the Angel. You know,
draw
him to me. He’d want to know who was stealing his thunder.”

Nancy bet the Angel
did
want to know that, all right. She wondered if the Angel knew there were two thunder-stealers.

“He didn’t show up, though,” Dion said. “Maybe he was somewhere else, huh, not Brooklyn?
He wouldn’t be the Angel of Brooklyn then, would he?
She thought it, but didn’t say it. She asked, “What would you have done if he had shown up?” She thought she knew. He’d take
him to his father, that’s what, hold him for ransom until they got all the stories out of him. It would be the story of the century for New York—except that it would be all wrong, about angels, for pete’s sake, not spiders!—and Niko Papadopolis, Nick Pappas, Nestor Paprika, and Nobody in Particular would win the Pulitzer Prize all together.

Dion said, “I want to talk to him, that’s all. I want to know what it’s like.”

It was only what Nancy wanted herself, but she’d have been an idiot to believe him. Too much was at stake for her and her family. If word got out, everyone would want to know too much about them. Look how they were already being threatened, Grandpa Joke first of all. Wasn’t Nancy in danger of exposing them to more trouble? And now she’d gone and told Dion about Mama.

A spider had to choose its shelter or get backed into a corner. Nancy pulled away from Dion, jumped from the dome. A train was rattling into the station, and she ran to get on it.

G
randpa Joke, wearing his nice jacket and his outdoor shoes, must have been waiting for Nancy to come through the front door. “Got an errand,” he said, rushing past her on the stairs. “Granny’s sleeping. Your mama’s—” He waved his hand toward downstairs and shrugged.

“Still weaving like a nut?”

“It’s all this light,” Grandpa said. The longer the days grew, the longer Rachel worked. She was using every minute, working intently. Nancy thought it might be the money that Rachel was thinking of. Ned was working long hours, too. And there had to be a reason Grandpa went back to OTB.

In the doorway Grandpa paused, stood with his hand on the foot of the traveling saint, and called up the stairs: “Nancy!”

“What?” she said.

“Say ‘yes,’ not ‘what,’” he said.

She said nothing.

He pressed the palm of his hand against the statue as though in exasperation. He said, “Don’t pick up the phone.”

“How—”

“Saints preserve us,” he said, and closed the door between them.

When the phone rang, she picked it up.

“Dr. Greene, please,” said the familiar, quiet, formal voice.

“Whom should I say is calling?” Her grandfather had taught her how to behave on the phone.

“Niko,” the man said.

“Niko Papadopolis? The same as Nick Pappas? And Nestor Paprika?”

“So you think you know everything, girl?”

“Pretty much,” she said.

He said nothing for a moment, then, “Tell him I called.”

She went downstairs and told Mama to listen for Granny. Without waiting for an answer, with just a pat on the feet of the saint, she hit the sidewalk.

Nancy found Grandpa Joke in Curley’s diner next to the OTB parlor, in the second to last booth. His eyes were closed, as though he were asleep or trying to calm himself. She slid across the blue vinyl seat. “Grandpa?”

“Shh, Nancy!” He sounded dark and tired.

“Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s beautiful out. We could go walk across the bridge.”

“Shush, buggy. I can’t go out today.”

“Yeah, well, you’re out.”

He said nothing.

She leaned closer. “Grandpa Joke, Dad’s been clipping all these newspaper articles, and they’re all by the same person. Nick Papadopolis. And I happen to know that your patient the other night was his wife, Rose Papadopolis.”

“How?” He opened his eyes and looked over her head at the door. “Oh, Nancy baby, don’t you know we’re all connected?”

The waitress said, “What’ll you have, Nancy?”

“Just a V8, please, Annie.” Annie went away again.

“Nancy, my love. This is information you don’t need. It can’t help you to know it.”

Tears filled her eyes at how afraid her grandfather was. “I know you, Grandpa Joke. Don’t you lie to me, no matter what your big secret is.”

His eyes filled up, too. He rummaged in his pocket for his handkerchief. There was a shower of OTB stubs and lottery tickets, his cigarette lighter, and a folded index card that unfolded itself so that Nancy spotted Dad’s handwriting. No handkerchief. As Nancy handed Grandpa her paper napkin, she palmed the card and pulled it toward her, hidden under her hand.

Grandpa Joke waved the napkin away. “You just excuse me, Nancy. I’ll get a tissue from the front.”

She thought she heard him coming back, but instead it was Annie with the V8. She smiled at Annie, made herself take a sip. And Grandpa Joke didn’t come. When she turned, he was gone.

“Where’d he go?” Nancy asked, leaning over the register.

“Hush, Nancy. Go on home,” said Annie. “Go home quick now.”

The sides of the booths were so tall you couldn’t see people if you didn’t walk right up to their booth. Nancy
had just walked past them all without looking into any of them. As she glanced back now, one little dark-haired girl with blue-gray eyes was peeking around the corner of a seat. It was Dion’s sister. The person across from her was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man. Niko Papadopolis.

Nancy took a step toward them, but Annie said, “You’re all set, Nancy. Now go home.” She took Nancy by the shoulder and turned her out the door.

“It’s okay, Annie. You don’t have to push.”

“Your Grandpa’s waiting for you. Now go.”

Grandpa Joke was in the doorway of the OTB, watching for Nancy. “We’re all connected, Grandpa Joke,” she said fiercely. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes. But what
kind
of connections are they, Nancy?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There’s some you want to stay separate from,” he said.

“Why, if I can help?”

“How can you help?” He said it gently, but still it hurt.

“Grandpa, you’re the one who said to show kindness.”

“Stay away from that man,” he told her.

“You don’t.”
What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
He hadn’t said to stay away from the son or the mother or the daughter.

“Listen,” he said. “Listen good. I’m a good doctor, but I don’t have certain talents your grandmother has. The people that need her are very good at finding her.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Some of them are bad. And it’s not all they want, just a little medical help. They draw a different kind of strength from someone like your Granny.”

“Is that what this Niko is doing?”

Grandpa sighed. “What I have observed is that over the last year he has followed some of the patients. Events coincide, and you notice a pattern. He was in the background. Then he was—”

“In the foreground?”

He frowned. “Mostly patients get better and go away. But some of them … I make a judgment. Sometimes it’s best to pay them off. That’s all some of them want. If I can get them to go away and leave us alone for a time, it’s better. But sometimes—more often lately—they come back.”

“Why?”

“We’re easy money, see?”

The light dawned: Nancy saw the pattern in the horse-racing situation. Grandpa’s winnings paid off the
Healer seekers. “But that’s not why Niko Papadopolis keeps coming around, for the money.”

Grandpa bowed his head. “They don’t leave you alone so easy, not if the one that’s sick isn’t getting better.”

“That’s stupid!” Nancy burst out. “Why should it cost so much to go to the hospital?”

Grandpa Joke looked at her as though she were knee-high to a centipede. “It’s not as simple as that,” he said gently. “Don’t you see, it’s spiders that respond best to your Granny’s kind of healing?”

The focus burst open and clear. It was as though Grandpa Joke had stepped on a treadle of Mama’s loom and revealed to Nancy that a fabric she had thought to be striped was, quite suddenly, plaid. A network of random strings fell into place.

“Grandpa,” she said, her voice deep and hoarse, “he’s a reporter. He’s not just looking for healing. He’s looking for stories.”