The Beresfords (11 page)

“I’ll bet she did,” Tammy snorted.

“The timing is the hard part.” Sorrowfully, I remembered Jonathan’s critique of my own woeful breaststroke timing. “If you don’t do your pull and your kick at the right times, you sink like a stone between strokes.”

Tammy wasn’t interested in talking technique. She whipped her head around to nail me with her blue eyes. “Look—do you
like
her, Frannie? Do you trust her?”

“What?”

“She’s not saved, is she?”

“I—I don’t think so. She makes fun of church.”

“Look,” Tammy said again, “this might not make sense to you now, but I’ve seen girls like her before.”

“Unsaved girls?”

She exhaled in annoyance, which wasn’t at all fair because I was trying my
hardest
to follow this conversation. If Tammy would just come out and say she was horribly jealous of Caroline Grant because Caroline was so pretty and Jonathan seemed to like her, I could have followed that just fine and completely agreed with her. But these circles lost me.

“Of course I’m not talking about unsaved girls, Frannie. Unsaved girls are everywhere—‘the fields are white for harvest’ and all that. I’m talking about certain girls like Caroline Grant. They—they try to catch boys like Jonathan for a challenge. They want to see if they can corrupt the good boys.” She saw the question in my eyes and added, “They want to test their power. To see if they can make the good boys go bad.”

“Oh!”

Make Jonathan like Tom? How I would hate that! Or, worse, like Eric Grant?

“Oh, no!” I breathed. “What should we do, Tammy? Besides pray, I mean.” Tammy always suggested prayer first, and under the circumstances, I wanted her to have at least one more idea.

Before she could answer, the kids began spilling out of the church building, and Tammy sprung up to retrieve the ice cream from the kitchen freezer. The next half-hour was spent scooping and serving, wiping up spills, cleaning hands and faces before the parents picked up. Then there was the clean-up itself, but as I dumped used bowls and empty half-gallon containers of Neapolitan, as I picked up plastic spoons from every place to which they scattered, including under the bushes, as I dabbed cold water on my apron to get out the chocolate stains, I kept one anxious eye on Tammy. I didn’t want to go home without finishing our conversation.

I needn’t have worried.

“I’m right, aren’t I? She likes him.” she asked, when nearly all the kids had been picked up except the
Robertsons
, whose mother was never on time. Tammy and I sat in the shade again while the sugar-high Drew and Christopher and Jeff chased each other around.

I felt kind of sick. Like I was the one who ate too much Neapolitan. It was one thing to suspect something between Jonathan and Caroline Grant, and another to be told it was highly likely. I could only say, “I think she liked Tom better at first.”

“Uh-huh. Jeff—put the stick down. It’s too pointy.”

I hugged my knees. “The first time she came over she would look at Tom and try to talk to him, but I guess she wasn’t his type because he didn’t pay her much attention.”

She shook this observation off. “You do this, Frannie. If there’s something uncomfortable to talk about, you try to avoid it. Not talking about it doesn’t make something go away. It has to be faced head-on, okay? We’re not discussing Tom here. I don’t care about Tom. No girl with half a brain is going to prefer Tom once she gets to know Jonathan.”

“Tom’s had lots of girlfriends.”

Tammy merely raised an eyebrow. I knew what that meant. No girl with
half a brain
, Frannie.

My shoulders slumped. She was right. Whatever there was between my cousin and Caroline Grant, hoping it wouldn’t be there wouldn’t make it go away. And it would be a relief to share my feelings, even with someone as biased as Tammy. At least I could be certain the idea displeased her as much as me. I felt the words bubbling up, as if I’d been sitting on top of a geyser, thinking that could contain it.

“She likes him,” I admitted. “She plays with her hair and laughs a lot and looks at him out of the tops of her eyes. Two times Tom was going somewhere with Eric Grant, and she was going to go, but then when she found out Jonathan wasn’t, she came up with some excuse to stay behind. And she’s been super nice to Aunt Marie and Aunt Terri. She ignored Paola at first until she saw that Jonathan was nice to her, and then
she
started being all nice to her. And you know how Jonathan is so good at conversation and he’ll ask you questions about yourself—well she just eats it up and goes on and on about herself. Like when she talked nonstop about her harp and why she loves her harp and her big dreams about playing her harp for the San Francisco Symphony, so of course Jonathan says he would like to hear her play the dumb thing, and he went to one of her recitals and came back talking about his new appreciation for it and what a ‘sensitive’ touch she had! She—I—oh, Tammy, I can’t
stand
her—I wish she would—”

Midway through my torrent, Tammy’s mouth fell open, and by the time I ran out of breath and sputtered to a halt, she was gaping at me.

I felt my stomach clutch up.

Tammy was bowled over. But I could see it was not my revelations about Caroline Grant that astonished her—it was what my revelations revealed about me. I felt color flooding my face and hoped it wouldn’t show under my sunburn.

“Frannie…” she said, as she pulled her thoughts together. “Frannie—you’ve been giving this a lot of attention.”

“He’s—Jonathan’s—my favorite cousin,” I said weakly. “My big brother.”

The eyebrow again. “No, Frannie. With language like that…”

For a minute we sat in silence, Tammy pondering while I dissolved in mortification like a slug in salt.

“Frannie,” she said finally, still sounding like her mind was elsewhere, “you shouldn’t hate her, you know.”

I didn’t answer. Of course I shouldn’t. But I did.

“But you already know that, don’t you,” Tammy continued. She scratched a mosquito bite on her calf. “What concerns me more, Frannie, is that—it sounds like you think of him as more than a brother. It sounds like you
li
—”

But then, glory hallelujah, little Jeff Robertson poked his brother Christopher in the face with the sharp stick, gashing his cheek and causing the blood to well up. Tammy sprang to her feet. “Jeff! Jeff Robertson! I told you to put down that stick, and now look what you’ve done!”

“He made me! He made me
do’d
it!” Jeff protested, bursting into tears. Christopher was screaming more from shock and drama than pain, and the two of them together made quite a racket. The oldest Robertson boy plunked himself on the curb to wait out the crisis. Tammy sent me for a washcloth and Band-Aid, and I returned a minute later from the supply room to find Mrs. Robertson’s car pulled up and all three boys shouting and accusing each other. Apparently, as the mother of three young boys, this was not Mrs. Robertson’s first encounter with the red badge of courage, and she brushed away Tammy’s apologies with apologies of her own. “I’m so sorry I’m late. My mother-in-law—the traffic—I hope the boys weren’t too much trouble—
shh
! Jeff, Chris! Just hold the washcloth to it and press hard—I don’t care who started it—stop crying, Christopher, it’s just a little blood—didn’t I say no pointy things?—No one’s blaming you, Drew, so I don’t know what you’re yelling about—calm down, everyone—calm down—no, I really appreciate what a great week you and the other staff have put on—the boys have really enjoyed it—I’m coming, Chris—stop pulling on me!—can’t you see me talking to this person here?—Did you boys say thank-you to your counselor?—Yes, thank you again and sorry again that I was late—coming! Stop that, Jeff—Boys!—
Boys!
”

Four car doors slammed and off went the
Robertsons
, Christopher getting shotgun because of his injury and Jeff cranking his window down so his stuffed dog could wave good-bye to us. In the meantime I had sidled over to my bicycle and flipped the kickstand up with my foot.

Tammy put a hand on my shoulder.

“I’d better go,” I said.

She was frowning and looked sorry for me. “Never mind all that stuff I said earlier about Jonathan. He’s an adult. He can look out for himself. Just pray he makes good decisions, okay?”

Good decisions like marrying
Tammy
?

I nodded.

“And you, Frannie—” she hesitated. Forced a smile that became real after a moment. “I understand why you’re confused. You’re an intense kid. Without many other—people—in your
life to care for, who care about you at the same level. It’s easy to mistake kindness for—” Another hesitation. And then, in a hearty voice, “I’m telling you—the junior high group is the place to be this summer. Invite Tanya and Minh. You know, Nelson doesn’t look so bad, now that he got his headgear off.”

“I’ll think about it.” My first urge was to get away from her. “Mistake kindness” for something else? I didn’t think Jonathan liked me back that way! I wasn’t that hopeless. Except for my huge, stupid mouth!

But after I pedaled off the patio into the parking lot, I turned to wave. Tammy was dragging her brown hair back into its banana clip, but she wasn’t looking at me. She had that faraway expression on her face again, and I wondered which of the day’s discoveries most occupied her thoughts.

So consumed was I in tracking the progress of Jonathan and Caroline’s attraction—the growing rapport, the first casual touch, the first inside joke shared—that I didn’t realize my cousin Julie was making observations of her own. Not of Jonathan and Caroline, but of Caroline’s brother Eric Grant. I had ceased to pay attention to the guy, beyond thinking he was full of himself and awfully flirtatious for someone so unattractive, so Julie’s very different thoughts and feelings escaped my notice until she and Rachel got in a big argument one Sunday.

The morning began with a surprise phone call from Uncle Paul in Shanghai. Except for Tom, who was asleep, we were all getting ready for church. It was late at night in China, so the call only lasted long enough for Aunt Marie to express her complete befuddlement over the time difference and for everyone in turn to say their brief hellos. Jonathan talked to him the longest, stretching the cord into the utility room and half-shutting the door. I wondered what he had to share from the last few weeks—did he mention Caroline Grant? Julie was the last to speak to my uncle—barely more than a hello, Dad, and a yes, yes, uh-huh, uh-huh, yes, okay—but instead of hanging up afterward, she surprised me by holding out the handset: “Dad wants to say hi to you, Frannie.”

This unprecedented request took a second to sink in before I lurched up from the breakfast table and took the phone. “Hello, Uncle Paul?”

His voice sounded scratchy and distant. “Hello, Frannie. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you. How are you? Is your stomach feeling better?”

“As long as I don’t eat, it is. Weird food here. Half the time I don’t know what it is, and I don’t ask.” He gave a rumbling laugh. “But thank you for asking. Jonathan tells me you’ve been doing some babysitting and helping at the church.”

There were odd delays in the conversation and a faint echo. I waited for the echo to fade before speaking again. “Yes.”

“Been doing some swimming, too? Getting some good healthy exercise and sunshine?”

I swallowed. Not as much swimming as I did before Caroline Grant’s lessons started. Now, to avoid feeling like an interloper, I would only go out to the pool if Rachel or Julie were there. “Some,” I said, feeling tears behind my eyes.

“Well, keep it up,” said Uncle Paul. “There may be less of me when you see me again, but I hope to see more meat on your bones. Not to mention color in your cheeks.”

“Will you get to come home soon, Uncle Paul?” I fumbled. I was abashed by his concern, not being used to it, and also sorry to realize my well-being interested my distant uncle far more than it did Jonathan. One self-pitying tear escaped, and I dashed it from my cheek, turning my back to my family.

My uncle sighed. “Hard to say. This is a whole new ballgame. It would be a shame to miss the boys being home—but it is what it is. You keep being a good girl, okay, and keep an eye on your aunt Marie.”

“Yes, sir. Oh—Uncle Paul—I see Aunt Terri coming up the walk,” I blurted. “Did you want to say hello to her too?”

“No, no,” he replied hurriedly. “It’s late here—after eleven. I’ll catch her another time. Take care. Good-bye, Frannie.”

“Good—” but he was gone. I hung up, swiping at my face with my sleeve before I went and sat down again, but Rachel saw.

“Frannie, you’re such a hypocrite,” she accused. “Like you’ve missed him one bit!”

“Who’s a hypocrite?” demanded Aunt Terri. She swept into the kitchen, yanked the faded roses from the vase, threw them in the trash, and replaced them with fresh ones.

“Frannie,” said Rachel. “Dad called, and when she talked to him she started crying.”

“Paul called? I hope he’s not trying my house right now. I should have come over a minute earlier so I could catch him. Well, and why shouldn’t Frannie feel sad about her uncle being gone? He’s her benefactor, after all. Everything she has is from him.”