The Beresfords (9 page)

“Did—what did Pastor Donald say?” I asked, brushing a hand over my face.

Jonathan looked away and stretched out his legs. “He asked what I was interested in, and I said helping out with the youth group. They always need extra sponsors for the activities and trips and stuff.”

“Would Rachel and Julie like you there?”

“I don’t think they would care. Rachel’s graduated, and Julie has her own group of friends. I’d be hanging with the guys, anyway. But Pastor Donald thought I was too young.”

“What do you mean? Wouldn’t that make you perfect because you can still connect with them?”

He grinned. “It was code. He was worried I would try to date the high school girls. We had to have a long talk about boundaries.”

“Do you—want to date the high school girls?” I managed after a moment.

“Frannie, what do you take me for? I want to volunteer, not make passes at teenagers.”

“Oh.”

“Anyhow, I convinced him I wouldn’t be a predator, so he’s good with that. My first assignment is to go to Price Club tomorrow and pick up food for the barbecue.”

“But Uncle Paul said you and Tom would be working for him this summer, especially because he’s gone in China.”

“Yeah…Tom’s the businessman. What Dad meant by that is lots of data-gathering and analysis by me while Tom lunches out with bigwigs. Not that I would want to switch roles! I figure I’ll put in twenty hours a week at Core-Pro and then I’m free to volunteer at church. It’s not like helping big companies outsource their manufacturing gets me up in the morning.” He waved this off. “Enough about all that. That isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.” Running a hand through his hair, he gathered his thoughts.

“How do you like the Grants, Frannie?”

With my mind full of Tammy, and Jonathan not wanting to date teenagers, this question caught me completely off guard. The case for the Imperials tape slipped from my fingers and bounced off the concrete step. “Oh! Oh—I hope I didn’t break it.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry.” He brushed it off and laid it beside me, waiting for me to speak.

“Tom seems to like them a lot,” I said at last. “And the girls think they’re cool. Well—I don’t know how Rachel feels about Eric Grant now, after he—”

“I asked what
you
thought of them, Frannie.”

I knew that. I swallowed. “I think…I think everything’s a joke to them.”

“You mean to Eric.”

“To both of them,” I insisted. “It wasn’t just about pulling off Greg’s shorts. It’s like the rest of the world exists just to amuse them and be made fun of. Not that their jokes
aren’t
funny sometimes, but sometimes they’re just mean.”

“Oh—‘mean’—I’m not sure about ‘mean.’ What Eric did to Greg was mean, yes. He went too far there, but I don’t know if Caroline laughing at it was malicious. You heard what she said—this wasn’t outside their experience.”

“But, Jonathan,” I said, hating to hear him excuse her, “just because you get used to something doesn’t make it right.”

“It doesn’t, Frannie. You’re absolutely right, there. I’m just saying that, given their background and what they’re used to, it’s not surprising if they have a whole different perspective on things. You saw when I brought God up, how Caroline reacted.”

“She didn’t like it. It made her uncomfortable. She changed the subject.”

“Uh-huh. We have our view on things, Frannie. From growing up in this family and going to our church, living in our bubble, in some ways. You can see how alien we look to someone who didn’t grow up in that bubble. Just like she looks a little alien to you.”

She
?
She
? Why not
they
? How did a conversation about the Grants become a conversation about Caroline Grant in particular?

“Laughing at Greg was too bad, I agree,” my cousin continued, “but I think underneath it all she has good instincts. Look at how she tried to patch things up. And how she went over to you to understand you better. I think she really will make her brother apologize to Greg. Remember that bit in Romans about the Gentiles?”

I shook my head. There were lots of bits.

“The part about Gentiles who don’t have the law. Paul talks about when they ‘do by nature what the law requires,’ because they have the law ‘written on their hearts.’”

Oh. That bit.

“That was Caroline,” said Jonathan, “looking for reconciliation, even though she didn’t grow up being taught that.”

I stared at my bare feet in their thongs. I did not like to disagree with him. But it seemed to me that, while Caroline may not have laughed in malice, she showed a decided lack of sympathy in trying to shame Greg out of being angry. And she had not been interested in my presence or opinion until Jonathan consulted me, content to take her cue from my other cousins’ indifference. How could I help but feel that her interest in me was really only spurred by
Jonathan’s
interest in me?

“You certainly know what different backgrounds people can come from,” Jonathan began again, when I was silent. “Even if you’ve been with us Beresfords for—what is it now?—eight years?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t have a father. The Grants didn’t either. From what I can tell, their parents divorced pretty early on, and they haven’t seen much of him since. To them he’s just an alimony check that comes every month. Imagine how differently you would look at the world if you grew up all that time with your mother.”

“Yes.” The tiniest patches of hot pink polish clung to my toenails. Julie had painted them at Easter in a fit of camaraderie.

“We probably will see lots of the Grants this summer, just like Caroline said. It’ll be a contest, Frannie, to see who rubs off more on the other—us or them.” He tweaked my ponytail and rose, picking up his box again.

I didn’t move when the door shut behind him. I hunched as if I didn’t even notice him going, my thumbnail chiseling at the bits of nail polish. “It’s not like the Grants are the first friends Tom brought home who didn’t come from our bubble,” I whispered. But I couldn’t say the rest of my thought aloud, even with only the twilight air to hear me.

It’s just that Caroline Grant is the prettiest of them.

The summer days fell into a routine.

After about a week of lazing around, Tom joined Jonathan in going to the Core-Pro offices for at least the late morning until early afternoon. Greg had to work in his dad’s army surplus store, so Rachel agreed to more shifts lifeguarding at the city pool, while Julie helped coach at little kids’ soccer camps. Mrs. Carter, true to her promise, soon had me babysitting piecemeal for four different families, and I became a familiar sight at the nearby savings and loan.

“Back again, Frannie?” Monica the manager greeted me, after I lay my bike down outside and pushed into the heavenly air-conditioned branch. “You are one busy babysitter.”

“I like to deposit the money and checks before I misplace them,” I explained. And before Aunt Terri might catch sight of them.

“I wish I had money rolling in like you do,” Monica teased. She punched some keys on her calculator and pointed with her pencil at one of the tellers. “Annette can take you in the express lane, not that we’re trying to get rid of you fast.”

The curly-haired Monica was always friendly and chatty with me, but Annette was my least favorite teller. She had long, shiny black hair so heavy it seemed to pull her head down until it sat right on her shoulders, like a turtle barely poking from its shell. Her heavily-lined black eyes would cut away from me, unsmiling, as she stamped the bank endorsement on the back of each check like it had done her personal injury. She didn’t look much older than I was, and I wondered if she recognized me (and disliked me) from somewhere.

Today was no different. Slam! Slam! Slam! went the endorsement stamp on the checks. Staring at me, she shoved my passbook in the printer for it to record the deposit then slapped it back on the counter. The line had come out crooked. I bit my lip. It wasn’t a big deal—I was just so proud of my first bank account that I would sometimes take my passbook out to admire the neat, steadily increasing balances. No miser with his bags of gold could have enjoyed counting his loot more than I did seeing the paltry amounts add up. I probably had all of seventy dollars by that point. This time the new balance had printed over the old, making them illegible.

“Thank you, Ms. Price. Have a good day.” Annette droned. She thrust my deposit slip in its docket and then added in a more natural voice, “How old are you, anyway?”

“Fourteen.” It would sound dumb to say fourteen-and-a-half, so I left off the half.

“When you’re sixteen, you should get a job here,” said Annette. “It doesn’t pay much, but it’s more than babysitting. Plus it’s air-conditioned.”

“Oh!” Then she didn’t hate me after all? “I’d like that.”

That was all the
sociableness
she had in her because she slumped on her stool and barked, “I can help who’s next in line!”

Nevertheless, when I pedaled home I had a warm feeling in my chest that had nothing to do with the heat. Maybe I had made a friend?

Speaking of friends, Caroline Grant’s proposed reconciliation took place not two days after the Swim Trunks Incident. Eric Grant, with the blandest face imaginable, held out a hand to Greg and said, “What I did to you sucked, and it was bad sportsmanship. I’m sorry.” Rachel must have been working on Greg from her end because he nodded and shook hands. “I probably took it more seriously than you meant it. Next time I’ll wear double trunks.” Eric grinned and whacked him on the back, saying, “Can’t say I’m glad to hear there’ll be a next time—you are one scary opponent across a net!”

From that moment they were on tolerable terms, and the Grants, too, became part of our summer routine. Even though we all had places to be and things to do, not a day passed without seeing them. Usually the gatherings took place at our house, not only because of the Beresford rule about chaperones, but also because the Grants were stifling in some teeny condo with their mother and had no desire to spend time there. There were more afternoons by the pool (the volleyball set stayed in the shed), barbecues, games. The beer made sporadic appearances, but I noticed this happened when Jonathan was expected to be away, and the outlawed beverage was usually accompanied by Tom’s old partners in high school crime, Steve and Dave. They would drop by, throw back a few, and then whisk Tom and the Grants off to do something, to which the girls and I were never invited. I didn’t mind, since I shared Uncle Paul’s opinion that Steve and Dave never did anyone any good, but Rachel and Julie resented being left out.

“I don’t see why we can’t go with them,” Julie complained on one of these occasions. “Tom never invites us, even though Eric and Caroline are
our
friends too, now. It’s so boring without them.”

“It’s probably because of you,” Rachel said. “They think you’re too young, and then they lump me in with you.”

Her sister scowled. “I look the same age as you! Some people even think I’m the older one. I think they don’t want to invite
you,
Rachel, because they figure you’re waiting around to go do something with dumb Greg, and then I have to stick around in case you need a
chaperone
.”

Rachel slapped the chaise cushion. “Like I want you along? Jeez! I can’t wait till I go to college and get away from Dad’s stupid rules! It’s so unfair. Tom never obeyed them—he still doesn’t.”

“Dad and Aunt Terri let him get away with everything,” Julie agreed. “But if either one of us girls even does the littlest least wrong thing, they’re all over us. It’s such a double standard.”

Indignation uniting them again, peace was restored.

To my surprise, Caroline Grant had her own objections to the Steve-and-Dave outings. What they were she never said, but after a couple of them, she began staying back, saying, “Nah. I’ll hang with the girls.” For Rachel and Julie, it wasn’t as good as having both the Grants stay, but it was better than having them both gone.

I suspected Caroline Grant’s choice had something to do with Jonathan’s absence. She wanted to stick around the house, seeing if he turned up. The first couple times he didn’t, and she
took herself off after a while. But one afternoon I came home from babysitting the four rambunctious
Choi
kids to find her strategy, if such it was, had paid off in spades. She and Jonathan were sitting on the ends of adjacent chaises, much as they had that first time, but this time they were alone. No Tom, no Eric, no Steve and Dave, no Rachel and Greg, no Julie. Aunt Marie was home, but she was dozing inside, my uncle’s latest letter fallen from her relaxed hand.

Jonathan and Caroline’s heads were bent together, but their voices carried through the open kitchen window. “…And that’s why I’ve always been more comfortable sitting beside a pool than getting in,” she murmured. “I failed swimming lessons as a kid. I don’t even like to put my face in.”

“That’s nothing to be embarrassed of,” Jonathan said.

“It
is
! How can you say that? Your whole family is so comfortable in the water. I’ve sat here and watched you guys do laps and race each other and dive and do all sorts of tricks. You Beresfords are fish. Even Frannie looks like Tracy
Caulkins
compared to me.”