Cobwebs Read Online Free PDF Page B

it short, and got Grandpa Joke to keep it in trim. Nancy thought she looked punk. LikeGrandpa Joke, she had brown eyes, but his were slow and warm (and sometimes hot when his anger sparked up). Granny’s were bright and quick, making a liar of her slowing, hunching body.
    Granny used to dart around, up and down the stairs between the apartments, helping Rachel with the loom, throwing pots on her wheel in the garden shed, always simmering tasty recipes on the stove for dinner. Grandpa Joke took Nancy to the playground, but Granny taught her to climb the ladders of the big tall slides. Grandpa Joke walked Nancy back and forth to school, and Granny made sure he took her into stores and introduced her to people.
    Now it was Nancy who darted around the house, Nancy who helped Mama with her loom, Nancy who went to the grocery store with Grandpa Joke and lugged home all the stuff. It was not a pretty sight, Granny Tina stuck inside her body, inside her house, not knowing until she woke in the morning whether it would be a wheelchair day or a walking day. Unlike Rachel, she had not chosen her prison.
    As arthritis had taken the knitting out of her hands, Granny had done her best to put it intoNancy’s, pressing her to knit samples and mittens and boring long scarves until she could do it without thinking. Granny Tina didn’t always approve of the results. For example, the black sweater Nancy was wearing had made Granny almost frantic. She hated the color with every shred of her being, and had told Nancy so the moment she came home with the yarn.
    “We should never have sent you alone!”
    “I
wanted
to go alone.”
    “And look what it’s come to:
black.”
    “What’s wrong with black, Tina?” Ned had asked, sticking up for Nancy.
    “It’ll hide the mistakes,” Nancy said.
    Rachel began shaking her head.
    “Mistakes!” sputtered Granny. “There aren’t going to be any mistakes. I’m not teaching you how to make mistakes.”
    “Well, you’ll have to teach her how to take them out, Mother.”
    “If that isn’t a Rachelish thing to say! If you pay attention to what you’re doing, you won’t make mistakes.”
    “If that isn’t a Tinaish thing to say,” Rachel replied. “Nobody’s perfect.”
    “No, but their weaving should be,” barked Granny. It was unusually harsh for her.
    “You mean
knitting,”
corrected Grandpa Joke, making his first contribution to the conversation.
    “Of course, knitting!” said Granny. “What did you think I was talking about?”
    Nancy didn’t want to learn how to undo mistakes. She would have thrown the whole thing aside. And she knew what else would go on while the knitting lesson did: more tiresome stories about Granny’s childhood on that West Virginia farm. What was the point of hearing the same tired yarns over and over?
    “You haven’t got the point, if you don’t know yet,” said Granny, as if she’d heard Nancy’s thoughts.
    Nancy, turning her key to unlock Mama’s gate, noticed a stray thread on the cuff of her sweater. When she tugged at it, a hole appeared. Drat. She looked up at Granny’s windows, almost expecting to see Granny there.
    The phone rang. Rachel picked it up. “Mother!” she said. It was Granny, calling from her apartment upstairs. “No, nobody called here for Pop.” She lookedat Nancy, and Nancy shook her head, confirming it. Dad had called, to give them the number for his new phone in the penthouse, but no one had called for Grandpa Giacomo—Grandpa Joke.
    “Who do you think it was?” Rachel said into the phone, sounding anxious. “If he’s gotten himself tangled up with some…”
    Knowing Grandpa Joke, Nancy thought, chances were good that he had. She pointed her knitting needles into her work, jammed it into her backpack, and crawled out from under her mother’s loom. Granny’s voice crackled on the other end of the phone.
    “All right.” Rachel glanced at Nancy, and hung up the phone.
    “What?” asked Nancy flatly. As if