Because Tammy’s folks have kept her under a rock her whole life! my unruly brain protested. And had he forgotten my mother’s example? I’d known what stoned was since I knew my name. Out loud I only said, “But remember, Jonathan—I started school late. I might be in sixth grade, but I’m already twelve-and-a-half.”
“That’s right. Twelve-and-a-half. My mistake. Then maybe it’s all right for me to consult you. Do you think I should tell Dad that bringing Tom home might not solve the problem—that Tom might need more help than that?”
My eyes widened. “Help like what? You mean you might squeal on Tom?”
“Well, if you put it like that…I guess, yes. Squeal on him. For his own good. Sometimes people who can’t stop drinking or doing other things need extra encouragement.” He read the question forming on my lips. “He could go to a place that specializes in treating things like this.”
“Like the Betty Ford Clinic?” I’d read an article about it to Aunt Marie while she got a massage. I could picture Tom there among the palm trees and movie stars, with his Beresford good looks. All the Beresford children were well-proportioned with clear skin and quirkless features, but he and Rachel were perhaps the best-looking of the four. To others, I mean. In my eyes, Jonathan carried the prize. Kindness lent his blue eyes greater warmth; humor softened the lines of his mouth and jaw; gentleness added grace to his strength. My own physical development might have stalled, but not my emotional—in the previous months, my childish adoration of my cousin had become something more. Now, those rare times he was near me, I felt my heart speed, my stomach clench. I loved even to hear him spoken of and would draw my innocent Aunt Marie into reminiscences of him. To my more suspicious Aunt Terri I was careful to praise and discuss all my cousins, that a percentage of the conversation would naturally include Jonathan. (This was more difficult, as Rachel was always her favorite, followed by Tom.) And to speak to him alone—! I’m sure Jonathan mistook my flushed cheeks and croaking voice for concern over Tom. I hope he did.
“Along those lines,” said Jonathan, “though not that place in particular.”
“Oh,” I said. He waited. He really did want my opinion. “Maybe this scare will be enough, and he’ll be smarter. Maybe he won’t get into too much trouble because his friends are still off at college. You know—Steve and Dave.”
“I thought of that. Though I suspect Steves and Daves can be found anywhere.”
“Besides,” I continued, “even if you had said something to Uncle Paul before Tom went to college I think he still would’ve let Tom go, and Tom might have done this anyhow.”
“Yes.” He’d thought of that, too.
“Tom does look thinner and weaker. He probably doesn’t even feel like sneaking out and getting drunk.”
Jonathan laughed at that. “I don’t think that part of it will last long. And with Aunt Terri hovering over him like she does, he’ll probably make a speedy recovery. But it sounds like you think we should wait and see, Frannie.”
I did and told him so.
“Well, I trust your judgment,” he said, giving my lank hair an affectionate tug and adding teasingly, “especially when it tallies with mine. We’ll wait. Give Tom the benefit of the doubt.” I was so thrilled by his compliment to my judgment that I couldn’t reply. He stayed a few more minutes, asking how school was going and reading over the theme I was working on, but then, too soon, he disappeared back down the ladder.
I often wondered how things might have played out if I made a different recommendation that day. If Jonathan had gone to Uncle Paul and convinced him to check Tom into a clinic. Then Tom might have entered Santa Clara a quarter later and never had that Music Appreciation class with Eric Grant, the only class they ever had together. If Tom and Eric never met, then Eric and Caroline would never have come over that summer day. Eric would never have met Rachel and Julie. And Eric’s sister Caroline—
But Jonathan would be the first to say this line of thinking is fruitless. That we are who we are because our stories are our stories, complete with mysteries and mistakes and detours. Without those, we would not become who we become.
But I already loved Jonathan, I want to say, before he became who he became. Before Caroline.
Tom did not go to a clinic that fall. He did transfer to Santa Clara University in the spring. He did meet Eric Grant in Music Appreciation. And the Grants entered our lives.
Chapter 5
“There’s a letter from your father,” said Aunt Marie at the dinner table, Jonathan’s first night home from Westmont. She blinked at Aunt Terri, who was handing more fried chicken across the counter to Rachel. “Have you seen it, Terri? It was blue and on that thin air-mail paper.”
“What did Dad say?” asked Jonathan, grabbing another piece. “Will he be home at all this summer?”
“I didn’t look at it yet,” his mother replied. “It’s too hard to read on that paper because it bleeds through. I was saving it for Frannie to read to me.”
“Who knew when Frannie would get to it,” Aunt Terri said, just as I was opening my mouth to respond, “so I opened it myself. Apparently there are all sorts of issues to be sorted out—real headaches for him. Infrastructure problems. He said half the time there are power brown-outs and then some quality control things. And he has to deal with all this while he’s under the weather. It might be forever before he can come home. Maybe spring.”
“Poor Dad!” Jonathan exclaimed. “What’s wrong with him? Should we call him, Mom?”
“Whatever it was, it all happened at least a week ago,” she said. “Air mail from China is not very fast.”
“Some stomach bug,” said Aunt Terri. “Half the time he doesn’t know what’s he’s being fed, but whatever it is, it doesn’t always agree with him.”
“We should call him, Mom,” Jonathan insisted.
“The time difference is so confusing, and he’s working so hard. He’s never in his hotel room. Why don’t you just write him back, Jonathan? Tell him we hope he feels better soon.”
Jonathan looked as if he might pursue the subject further, but when Aunt Terri dumped another scoop of mashed potatoes on his plate and launched into a discussion of how overpriced international phone calls were, he gave up. Uncle Paul would have to wait another week to ten days for any cheerleading from home.
“Tammy’s been calling,” volunteered Julie. Rachel elbowed her.
Jonathan turned a faint scarlet. To my unspeakable relief, he and Tammy had broken up at Thanksgiving, their first visit back from college. They had dated for fifteen months—in high-school years, the equivalent of ten years of marriage. Jonathan never told me why, but I didn’t need him to. Ever since I met her, Tammy was a girl with a mission. Literally. She wanted to become a missionary nurse in Central America like her grandmother and marry a missionary doctor like her grandfather. End of story. For a time I thought Jonathan would abandon his own dreams to fulfill Tammy’s, chucking the planned history major for Biology and seminary for med school, but his lukewarmness on the whole idea must have gone past the ignorable threshold because they called it off. What did she want now?
“What did she want?” Jonathan asked.
Julie shrugged. “You to call. Whenever you got back. I told her when we expected you, so you can’t dodge her.”
“I wouldn’t try to dodge her.”
“I would,” said Tom. “Saint Tammy was way too zealous for me. I thought for sure I’d been doing something wrong whenever she looked at me.”
Jonathan’s eyes flicked over to me and his mouth twitched. Yes. If Tammy ever predicted Tom was up to something unsavory, it wasn’t like she was Nostradamus.
“I’ll invite her over,” said Jonathan.
I took this as a good sign—if he had been dying to get back together with her, he would surely have gone out to see her alone. Better that Tammy come where I could observe her and see if she still liked Jonathan. Or, worse, if he still liked her.
“Jon!” Tammy called out, wrappi
ng her arms around him and squeezing really hard. “It’s so good to see you again. Have you read The Seduction of Christianity yet? I just did finally, after finals, and I’m dying to talk about it with someone.”
“That sounds like a religious book I could actually get into,” said Tom from the doorway before Jonathan could get his breath back to answer.
Tammy released Jonathan and gave Tom a punch in the arm that he pretended to find painful. “I bet you could. That’s why I’m still praying for you.” Over his groan she grabbed me in a hug, too. “How’s my favorite Frannie? Glad to be done with seventh grade?”
If Jesus compared the Holy Spirit to wind, Tammy was a tornado. Certainly she made Tom and Rachel and Julie run for cover, and soon it was just her and Jonathan in the living room, hashing out whether Positive Thinking was the sign of apostasy. I perched on the arm of the couch, hoping neither one would mind me being there.
“That’s what I’m saying, Jon,” Tammy said. “This generation is being seduced. It’s not just that the New-Agey self-help and name-it-and-claim-it is the latest fad—all this stuff could be a sign of the End Times! That’s what this book is saying. It makes getting the Word out even more urgent, get it?”
“I don’t know, Tammy. I mean, people always think they’re in the End Times, don’t they?”
“Well, clearly they weren’t, in the past. And assuming time is linear, we’re by definition closer to the End Times than they were…”
Their vigorous debate was evidence neither for nor against continued romantic feelings because Tammy loved stirring up controversy and debate with anyone. Hence her needling of Tom. Jonathan, who always took a gentler approach, used to cringe over her forthrightness (“What is it, Jon? Don’t you bring it up with people? We’re not supposed to be ashamed of the Gospel. What if that person were to die tonight, and you didn’t share the Word?”), but he also relished grappling with weighty issues. I could see he was enjoying himself now, but there was no soft look in his eye, no reaching for her gesticulating hands or half-flirting baiting her.
I exhaled. He was over her.
Tammy I was less sure of. She poked him in the chest and arm to emphasize certain points, swung her hair, said, “Oh, you!” Any other college guy, freshly home for the summer and at loose ends, would probably have responded to her because—well—why not? Not Jonathan. He was friendly and fond and no more. I would have expected no less from him. He wasn’t one to toy with someone for entertainment.
As the evening wound down I began to catch Tammy’s hints that she would like to be alone with her ex. She noted how late I was up but could hardly recommend I go to bed since it was summer and I was fourteen. She asked if Rachel and Julie wouldn’t be wondering where I was, thought it was amazing that Aunt Terri wasn’t busting in to check on me, and so on. Reluctantly, I went upstairs. The girls were watching Sixteen Candles on HBO—it had to be the third time that month.
“Has she left yet?” asked Julie. “The downstairs TV is bigger.”
When I shook my head, Rachel nudged her. “Let’s just go turn the TV on in the living room. She’ll get the hint.”
“No way! First she’ll tell us how we shouldn’t be watching this movie because there’s too much drinking and sex talk in it.”
“Well, that means she saw it, so it’s not like she’s better than us. C’mon, Julie.”
Down they went. My bedroom was stuffy, so I opened the window and leaned out, letting the cool night air prickle the hairs on my forearms. My eyes traced Tom’s old escape route: across the lip of roof, past the playroom to the corner of the house, where, with a modest leap he could make an outstretched branch and drop to the grass. He must have been about my age when he started his daredevil activities. About my age and size.
The metal window frame scraped me as I hoisted myself through, and I whacked my kneecap hard on my chin when my sandal caught on the sill and I had to jerk it free, but I made it out. Even though I didn’t want to go anywhere, it was kind of exciting just to be perched there. And even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong, my heart beat faster. Maybe it was a little bit wrong after all, since I bet Aunt Terri would let me have it if she caught me. I scooched along the roof to where it ended, intersecting another wall at a right angle, and squatted on my haunches. If Aunt Terri came out of her house now and stood on her front step, I would be out of sight.
Below me, the front door open and shut.
“Drive safely,” Jonathan said.
“Wait a second,” came Tammy’s voice, lower. “I just want to say something.”
“Haven’t you been saying something all night?” His voice was teasing.
“Not like that, Jon. I couldn’t say this earlier—not with Frannie there—”
I gulped, my foot slipping on its tile shingle.
Tammy paused. I could picture her cocking her head, but when silence fell again, she went on. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since Thanksgiving, Jon. I mean, it was good to take time off from each other…”
Oh, no! I thought. Oh, no!
“I think it was the right decision,” said Jonathan cautiously.
“To take time off?”
“To break up, Tammy.”
“The right decision at the time, you mean.”
“At the time and—and still for now.” His voice was gentle. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
She, on the other hand, sounded more determined. “I thought I was the one who initiated breaking up, Jon.”
“You did. I’m saying it was the right thing to do. You’re a great person, Tammy. I really like you—”
“But you don’t think you like me that way anymore, is that it?”
“Tammy—”
“You think you like somebody else now?”
“No. It’s not that. But I think we’re headed different directions. You said yourself that we were. We’ve gone over this so many times!”
“But even if I said now that I decided not to be a missionary nurse and I was okay with you not being a doctor, that wouldn’t change your mind?”
“You don’t want to be a nurse anymore?”
“I didn’t say that exactly. I was posing a hypothetical.”
There was a longer pause. “Tammy, it wouldn’t change my mind. We’re friends now. I see you as a friend.”
“Jonathan!” she was breathing harder now. I pictured her hands clenched in fists by her side, the way she looked when she really got going. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I changed my mind?”
Because you still like him, I thought. It’s obvious. Something similar must have crossed my cousin’s mind because he didn’t respond.
“I changed my mind,” Tammy barreled ahead, “because God told me that you’re going to be my husband.”
He did what?! Both feet came out from under me then, and I thumped onto my backside, sending pine needles skittering down the tiles. The game would’ve been up for sure, except, in all the noise below me, no one noticed. There was a muffled exclamation. Something ran into something. Aunt Marie’s watering can fell over with a clunk. Chains creaked. Jonathan must have collapsed into the porch swing. “Tammy, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, a couple weeks ago I was having my quiet time, not even thinking about you. I was praying for Guatemala. I remember. I wanted to look up this one verse but my regular Bible was downstairs, so I just grabbed my New Testament off my bookshelf—you know, the one with the cover that snaps shut?—and I unsnapped it and this picture of us fell out. The one from the prom. When I went to stick it back in, my Bible fell open to the Wedding at Cana, and all of a sudden I just knew. It was like God spelled it out for me: He Will Be Your Husband.”
Jonathan whistled. “I guess I should be relieved your Bible didn’t open to Jael hammering a tent peg through Sisera’s forehead.” His laughing tone sounded forced.
“You think I’m kidding.”
“The wedding at Cana could also mean God wants to release you from your vow to
abstain from alcohol in college.”
“Now you’re being a jerk.”
“Tammy.” Jonathan dropped his attempts to joke. His voice was gentle again. “I’m not saying I doubt you, but I have to say this is news to me. If I’m the one you’re supposed to marry, don’t you think God would’ve mentioned it to me, too?”
“Jon—I’m not making this up—”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you think I’m saying it so you’ll get back together with me.”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you. I believe you think you heard that. I’m just not sure you heard right.”
“Are you so sure I heard wrong?”
“I’m going to say that, in such a huge decision, it at least makes sense that I should be involved. That God wouldn’t tell you about it without also telling me.”
“How do you know he’s not trying to tell you about it?” Tammy insisted. “You’re not even asking the question. You’re not even saying you’ll pray about it.”
“I shouldn’t have to pray about it!” Jonathan protested. “If he knocked you over the head with it, why not me? It’s not a question I’m asking; therefore I shouldn’t have to pray about it.”
“It’s not a question you’re asking, and you don’t even want to ask it. You won’t pray about it because you’re afraid I might be right.”
“Oh, come on, Tammy!”
“Look—it’s not like I was totally thrilled to hear this either. You’re a great guy, but I’d moved on too. But if there’s something in it, I don’t want to miss what God has for me. Just promise me you’ll pray about it. Promise me and I won’t bring it up for a while. We’ll just go on being friends this summer.”
He said nothing.
“What are you afraid of? If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”
“Fine.” He gave an exasperated laugh. “If it’ll shut you up for now, I promise I’ll pray about it. Okay?”
“Deal. I’ll shut up now and leave. See you again, though, later? I’m volunteering in Children’s, so I’ll be busy with VBS this week, but I’ll call you, okay?”
The Beresfords Page 4