Cobwebs by Karen Romano Young Read Free Book Online Page A

been so quick.
    “What?” she said, staring. Why were they all trying to cover up the fact that Ned had been lying on the phone?
    Rachel pushed the sauce to the back of the stove andsaid, “We’re not going to have time to wait for macaroni tonight. I’ve got that big thing of minestrone in the fridge downstairs. Go get it, will you?”
    Nancy made a lot of noise jogging fast down the stairs, and then, just as quickly, she ran back up without making any. When the phone rang again, Grandpa Joke picked it up. Ned must have hit
Speaker,
which they had so Granny wouldn’t have to cross the room in her wheelchair to have a telephone conversation. On the landing, Nancy held her breath.
    “Tell me you’ll see my wife,” said a man’s quiet, forceful voice. “Or I’ll put it all over the papers what you do.”
    “What do you know about what I do?” There wasn’t any tremor in Grandpa Joke’s voice.
    “What I’ve heard,” said the man. He made it sound like he’d heard plenty; he knew how to do that with his voice.
    Nancy slipped into the kitchen with the pot of soup.
    They all stared at her in horror.
    “I’ll see you tonight,” Grandpa Joke said abruptly, and hung up the phone.
    “Who?” asked Nancy. Everyone was silent.
    “A patient,” said Grandpa Joke.
    “Some old guy, right, Joke?” Ned said.
    Rachel set the pot on the stove, turned on the gas, lit it with a match. Then she set about cutting the bread into thick slices, her back to her family.
    “I’ll go with you,” Nancy said. “As usual?”
    Nobody said anything. They weren’t about to tell her this visit wasn’t usual. They hadn’t ever admitted there was anything unusual about a doctor who still did house calls in these times, about his wife who went along with him. There wasn’t anything unusual, was there, about Granny Tina going in to say hello to the folks? She didn’t get out of the house much anymore, after all, and if Grandpa Joke was willing—with Nancy’s help, of course—to help Granny Tina up some steps, then why shouldn’t she go for a visit?
    The minestrone heated up, and Rachel served it, with bread on the side. But Nancy knew the voice on the phone was the same voice that had come out of the doorbell speaker at the house on the sycamore street where Grandpa Joke had gone after he lost big at OTB. Granny Tina put down her soup spoon and crossed her arms. “Giacomo,” she said. “We have to talk.”
    At this Grandpa Joke looked more defeated than the loss of any amount of money could have made him. “There is nothing to say, Celestine,” he said.
    “She’s not going,” Rachel said. “You can go, but why should Mama? It’s asking too much.”
    “Granny wants to go,” said Nancy, wondering where it was all leading.
    “Nancy!” Rachel began to scold her daughter, then turned to her father instead. “I’ve had it with these house calls,” she complained. “It takes you an hour by the time you’ve driven down there, found the house, seen the patient, had a cup of coffee to be polite.”
    “What would you have us do?” Granny thundered. “Ignore the call? Send her to the emergency room?”
    “Well, what would happen if—”
    Grandpa Joke let out a big sad sigh, almost like crying. “Fact is, it’s taking too much out of her, Rachel.”
    “What is?” asked Nancy.
    Everyone shook their heads at her.
    “It is not,” said Granny.
    “I know,” Rachel answered Grandpa Joke.
    “If you could—” Grandpa leaned on the table, his eyes hard on Rachel.
    Rachel was pleading. “Papa—”
    “See, she won’t,” said Granny shortly.
    “She’s just not going to yet.” Ned’s hand pressed Rachel’s shoulder. Was he comforting her? Or holding her back?
    Nancy went and stood between her grandparents. She laid a hand on Grandpa Joke’s arm. “I’m coming,” she said. “I’m helping with Granny as usual. And if you want to tell me what’s going on, it’s up to you.”
    Silence. Nobody looked at