The Beresfords (15 page)

“Why can’t we talk about it now?” demanded Rachel. “I don’t know what you mean ‘creates other problems.’ Dad might hate Steve and Dave, but that doesn’t apply to his own family!”

“I already invited Steve and Dave,” Tom interjected, looking sorry he’d mentioned it. “And the Grants can come, but I don’t want to have to babysit you and Julie.”

“Then Julie can stay home,” Rachel agreed promptly. “I’m eighteen. You don’t have to babysit me.”

“By ‘other problems,’” Jonathan began again in a louder voice, “I mean that Dad wouldn’t go for it, even if it was just our family and the Grants—not without him there. You know how he feels about mixed sleeping arrangements.”

Both Rachel and Tom were silenced for a moment. They did indeed know. Even in college both Tom and Jonathan lived on all-guy floors in their dormitories at Uncle Paul’s insistence. Not that it ultimately made a difference in Tom’s case, I imagined, or that it was necessary in Jonathan’s.

Rachel recovered first. “Couldn’t you just be our chaperone, Jonathan? Please? God knows you’re as uptight as Dad.”

He laughed. “What—because you all listen to me so well? No way. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”

“You mean you wouldn’t come?” Caroline asked.

“You mean you’d tell Dad?” Rachel said at the same time.

Jonathan held up his hands. “Like you said,
Rach
—you’re eighteen. You and Tom make your own choices. But I won’t cover for you.”

“But when Dad calls on Sunday mornings now, he always wants to talk to everyone—I don’t know why,” Rachel complained. “Couldn’t you just say Tom and I were asleep? I don’t think Tom’s talked to him even once this summer!”

“Hey, I need my beauty rest,” said Tom. He nudged his brother. “It wouldn’t be a lie. Chances are I would be asleep, just up in Tahoe.”

“I’m not gonna cover for you, and I’m not gonna lie,” Jonathan repeated.

“And you’re not gonna come,” said Caroline.

“And I’m not gonna come.”

She made an apologetic face at Tom. “In that case, I’ve got to say the thought of spending a beer-soaked weekend with Steve and Dave and thousands of other drunken drag boat fans—it’s really tempting, but I think I’m also going to pass.”

“Oh!” cried Rachel. “You have to come. I can’t be the only girl.”

“You won’t,” said Tom flatly. “Because you’re not coming. Especially if the Grants don’t come. Are you sure you won’t, Caroline?” he coaxed.

She looked surprised to be thus appealed to, and I hardly blamed her, given his usual indifference to her. Maybe he thought Eric would be more likely to go if his sister went. Or maybe he did like having her around after all. “Oh—I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t even met your father. I wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.”

Jonathan beamed at her, but his admiration faded the next instant when she continued, “It’s too bad he feels the way he does, though. So old-fashioned! Do you think, Tom, that he would be less disapproving about a family-only trip? I mean, you Beresfords and us Grants.”

Tom frowned and then gave a shrug. “Probably. I mean, he isn’t the world’s biggest fan of Steve and Dave. But still—like Jon pointed out—the whole mixed sleeping arrangements thing—pretty much he would veto the entire thing if he found out.”

“What about if we brought a chaperone?” Caroline suggested next. “Your mom, for instance. Then Jonathan and Rachel might come along.”

Rachel leapt at it. “Yes! Yes! Mom could come, and then it would be fine. There are three bedrooms. She could have the little one, and then the guys could bunk in the big front bedroom and the girls in the back.”

“I’m not bunking with Grant,” Tom said. “He snores. And if Greg comes, that’s four of us in there. I would take the pull-out in the living room. But it’s not a bad idea—if Mom came, it’d all be legit. Dad couldn’t object.”

“I’m not sure he shares your faith in Mom’s chaperoning skills,” said Jonathan.

“Would you come if your mom came?” Caroline asked him. “If you went I would feel comfortable going.”

He hesitated. There was another splash behind us as Greg went in again. I wouldn’t have you think I was sitting there that whole time with nothing to do, but I took care of the line and my duties as hastily and quietly as possible, so I wouldn’t miss the conversation. When Caroline put the question to Jonathan again, I was in the process of gathering an armload of baseballs. In my hurry, one squirted out of my grasp and hit the ground, rolling over to my cousin’s foot. He leaned down to retrieve it and return it to me, gazing at me thoughtfully.

“I think I probably would,” he answered at last, to enthusiastic cheers from Rachel and Caroline. “But let’s not forget Frannie. If Mom comes, Frannie could hardly spend the weekend alone.”

Both Rachel and Tom looked less than thrilled. “Frannie?” echoed Rachel. “No, it’ll be too crowded and crazy for her. She can go stay with Aunt Terri.”

My heart sank until Jonathan spoke up for me again. “We could hardly tell Dad it was a family trip if we didn’t bring Frannie. He might even ask why we didn’t have Aunt Terri and Uncle Roger along, too.”

“Fine, fine,” conceded Rachel, “Frannie can come. But she has to share the little bedroom with Mom.”

“God, this sounds horrible,” said Tom. “I’m sorry I ever mentioned it.”

His brother raised an eyebrow. “You wanna cancel, then? Or go back to you and Steve and Dave alone, trying to stay under the radar?”

Tom gave a heavy sigh. “No. Forget it. You win. I’ll tell Steve and Dave that they have to find their own place to stay if they come up. They’ll be pissed, but whatever. The Beresfords are going on a
family
vacation.”

The first hitch in the Tahoe plan came from Tammy.

“Are you crazy? You’re actually going along with one of Tom’s harebrained ideas?” she accused. We were in the church parking lot, where Jonathan was headed in for a youth movie night while Tammy and I were headed out after a day spent with sixth graders at the water slide park. Although I hadn’t seen her since the day she discovered my secret, Tammy did no more than give me one searching look that morning, as she handed me my neon pink visor and list of kids. She might trample around in some areas of life, but she wasn’t cruel. Besides, I thought with a sigh, it wasn’t as if either of us thought my crush on Jonathan would ever lead anywhere.

I shifted my knapsack from one shoulder to the other to avoid Jonathan’s gaze, but he could probably read the top of my head: Yes, it said, I told Tammy about the proposed cabin trip, but what else could I do when she’s forever pumping me for information?

“Believe me,” he said, “the idea has undergone some modifications. It’s a lot less harebrained in its current form.”

“Yeah. Frannie says your mom is coming along as a chaperone. I thought she was kidding.”

Feeling himself at a disadvantage there, Jonathan didn’t have an immediate answer and Tammy plunged on. “You know your dad wouldn’t go for this—no way. With all due respect for Mrs. Beresford, I would not say supervision is your mom’s spiritual gift. I can’t believe you would compromise like this.” Compromise was a bad word in Tammy’s vocabulary. It meant selling out. Giving in to the world and the world’s way of doing things.

Jonathan’s brow darkened. It was worse that I couldn’t even be angry at Tammy for attacking him because I agreed with her. I knew he wasn’t comfortable about the weekend trip, but he wanted to convince himself it was okay. All because that Caroline Grant wanted to go, and he wanted to be with her.

“You think it would have been better if I let Tom go up there with Steve and Dave to trash the place and themselves?”

“Haven’t you learned by now that Tom is going to do what Tom is going to do? You can speak your mind to him, and that’s about it.”

“You think I shouldn’t interfere.”

“I think,” said Tammy, “that you shouldn’t please yourself and call it being helpful.” Her color was high under her suntan and I thought I heard a tremor in her voice. “Would you be so eager to ‘interfere’ if there wasn’t something in it for you?”

“I should go wait in the car,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing you can’t hear of this, Frannie,” said Jonathan, stopping me with his hand. Someone called his name, and he threw a wave to one of the teenagers going inside. “Tammy, look—what do you want me to say? I confess that there’s something in it for me. There is. I should tell you—you should know—Tammy, about Caroline Grant.”

“What about her?” Tammy uttered, her eyes wide. She hadn’t expected him to cave so easily.

He took a deep breath. “I like her. I…like…Caroline Grant.” He got a big stupid grin on his face that he forced down as quickly as he could. “I freely admit that I want to show her our cabin as much as she wants to see it. By making this a family trip that can happen, and in the meantime I can try to prevent Tom from getting into too much trouble, if I’m able. He at least had to revoke his invitation to Steve and Dave.”

The momentum of the argument shifted. Having forced Jonathan to reveal his feelings for Caroline Grant, Tammy seemed at a loss. She dropped her keys and made several unsuccessful attempts to pick them back up until Jonathan finally retrieved them.

“I guess this means you’re not doing a lot of praying,” Tammy said at last in that same strained voice.

He was gentle. “I am about some things. Not so much about others.”

She nodded. “I’ll—I can’t say I think she’s a good match for you, but maybe that sounds like sour grapes. But you know what the apostle Paul says about being unequally yoked.”

The grin returned. Rueful this time. “Tam—I just said I liked her. I didn’t say I was going to marry her.”

She said nothing.

After a moment, Jonathan stretched his hand out and rested it on her shoulder. When Tammy still didn’t respond, he gave it a squeeze and released her. “I know you mean well. You’re great. It’s an honor to call you my friend.” He glanced over at me to give Tammy time to recover. “I’d better get inside now to set up, and it looks like Frannie should go home. Rough day with the sixth graders, Frannie? You look done for.”

If I looked half as sick as I felt, no wonder he was concerned. Clutching my knapsack to my stomach I stared at the asphalt until I heard his footsteps receding. Tammy fumbled with her keys again but managed to unlock the car, and we climbed in without speaking the entire way home.

It was over.

Everything.

My life, I meant.

If Jonathan liked Caroline Grant enough to tell us, what more was there to be said? I already knew she liked him. She couldn’t help it, of course, any more than I could or Tammy could. They would get married. It would be Caroline Grant and Jonathan forever and ever and ever. Oh—not absolutely forever, I reminded myself. Jesus said there was no marriage in heaven. Thank God for that. But heaven never seemed further off. In the meantime it would be Caroline Grant at every Christmas and Thanksgiving and probably that horrible brother of hers, too. Oh, Jonathan! How could he become a pastor with a wife like that? He couldn’t. He would have to put that aside. Do something—what did she say?—“more lucrative,” like running Core Pro. A businessman! A month ago I wouldn’t have been able to think of a career that would interest him less. Better that Tammy got her way and he went to medical school to fulfill her missionary
dreams, than to think of him giving presentations on overhead projectors and calculating the cheapest way to make widgets.

My mind moved fast, I know. It was not that I had never imagined him married to someone else. Certainly I pictured the scenario a million times when he was going out with Tammy. But they were in high school then and Tammy was Tammy—as admirable as she was exasperating. Part of Tammy (the aspiring missionary nurse in her) might have wished Jonathan to be other than who he was, but the rest of her respected him for digging in and not letting her boss him around. If Jonathan had married Tammy, he would have done so on his own terms, without having to surrender who he was, prophecy or no prophecy. So how was it that Caroline Grant swooped in and, without a shot being fired, leveled his defenses?

I was low for days. The children I babysat called me boring. Monica and Annette at the bank found me silent. Aunt Terri dosed me with vitamins and made me help in her garden again, insisting the sunshine and fresh air would perk me up.

My cousins were the only ones not to notice, caught up as they were in planning the weekend at the cabin. Jonathan was given the assignment of informing Uncle Paul, if the occasion arose, while Tom agreed to break the news to Aunt Marie, which he did one night at dinner.

“Go to the cabin?” murmured his mother, wonderingly. “Why would we want to do that without your father?”

“Dad would want us to have a family vacation,” Tom insisted. “Just because he’s stuck in China for the summer doesn’t mean we should skip our time at the cabin.”

“But he always organizes things. Or your Aunt Terri.”

“There’s no room for Aunt Terri,” Tom said quickly, as his sisters looked at each other in dismay. “We’d like to invite the Grants to come, Mom. So that puts you and Frannie in the little bedroom and Rachel and Julie and Caroline in the back and me and Jon and Eric in the front. Don’t worry about the organizing. We’re perfectly capable of packing for the trip without Dad or Aunt Terri’s help. It’s not like we haven’t gone often enough.” (To everyone’s relief, Greg’s coach wouldn’t excuse him from the game next weekend, and he was unable to join us.)