“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.
Chapter 8
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.”
My face heated with mixed pleasure and dismay at this left-handed compliment. I had watched every one of Tracy Caulkins’ races during last year’s Olympics. Dismay won out when Jonathan said, “Well, Frannie never can get the timing down on breaststroke, but otherwise she isn’t bad. Or she won’t be, once she grows into all her limbs.” Grew into my limbs! I knew I was gawky and I knew everyone knew I was gawky, but it made me feel like a downright sideshow of gangliness to hear Jonathan say it. Did even he think I was so awkward?
“And I can brag about Frannie,” he went on (if that was bragging, you could just shoot me right there), “because I’m the one who taught her to swim.”
Caroline Grant turned a wondering face to him. “You did?”
“I did. At our cabin. The summer after she came to us. She was—what—six? Nearly seven?”
I remembered the day well.
We pulled up at the cabin, and the first thing my cousins did after the four-hour drive was pile over me to get out of the station wagon and take off for the creek, racing each other and hollering. Only Jonathan paused and turned back to where I was still belted in the way back, the air of the open door chilling my face and neck where sweat had made my hair stick.
“You coming, Frannie?”
I looked to my aunt Marie, fanning herself as she swung her legs out of the car. “That drive gets longer every time,” she sighed.
The tailgate swung open and Aunt Terri peered in at me. “What are you doing just sitting there, Frannie? Look at all this stuff that needs carried in, and there you sit with the cooler on your lap. You’re going to make the ice melt.”
Tom was the one who stuck me with it as we pulled out of the driveway hours before. He needed more leg room, he said, and all us girls had short legs, so one cooler wouldn’t make a difference. But Rachel wouldn’t have it by her feet, and neither would Julie, who already felt oppressed by the mountain of sleeping bags. Which left my lap.
Guiltily I tore the Igloo from my sweaty legs and tried to spring up, banging my head on the wagon roof. I didn’t have to look at Aunt Terri to know she was rolling her eyes, a lecture on clumsiness building like thunderheads on the horizon. But then I heard Jonathan again: “C’mon, Frannie. I’ll show you the Waterhole.” Before my aunt’s storm could break over me, I dashed to catch up with my cousin.
The Waterhole was exactly that: a bend in the green, cool creek where water piled up behind rocks. No bigger than a Doughboy pool, but murky and opaque in the shade of the trees. Tom appeared from nowhere, jumping from an overhanging limb and curling in a cannonball. “Bombs away!” The resulting splash spattered the rest of us, and Rachel and Julie leapt in to climb their older brother’s shoulders and dunk him again when he surfaced.
Jonathan laughed and started peeling off his shirt. Soon all my cousins were treading water, shrieking and splashing. Tom would gulp mouthfuls of the green water and spit it in a stream at his sisters. “Ooh!” protested Rachel, “You’re sucking up amoebas!” I didn’t know what amoebas were then, but I didn’t ask. Then Tom and Jonathan skimmed their arms over the surface, tossing up walls of drops. The girls kicked at them and fought back. When Rachel and Julie and Tom ganged up on Jonathan, driving him toward the shore, he laughed up at me. “What are you waiting for? Help me, Frannie! I’m your favorite cousin!”
He was. I had to help him. Without even kicking off my shoes, I floundered in. The creekbed was a mixture of loose silt and slippery rocks across which I skated and lurched before a sudden increase in depth had me stepping off my mossy rock into nothingness. No foothold anywhere. The Waterhole swallowed me as I sank, my hair fanning across the surface like flotsam from a shipwreck. The cold water made me gasp and swallow a lungful of it. My wheeling feet kicked something—someone—my hands grasped hair—and then a hand clutched my upper arm and hauled me out.
“What were you doing, Frannie?” I heard Jonathan say accusingly over my undignified coughs and water belches when I lay on the bank again.
“Kicking me, that’s what,” said Julie.
“And that was my hair you pulled,” put in Rachel.
“Were you putting on a show,” persisted Jonathan, “or do you really not know how to swim?”
“Not know how to swim?” the girls echoed, incredulous. This was that period when much time was spent cataloguing my deficiencies. But worse than having my cousins think me ignorant was having Jonathan think I was playing for attention. Pretending to drown to make them notice me. No way—better the shame than the misunderstanding. I confessed my lapse.
This new revelation sent Tom and Rachel and Julie into another round of contempt-tinged amazement, but it didn’t matter because the anger on Jonathan’s face evaporated. He grinned at me. “Well, if you’re gonna live in this family, you better learn. It’s easy. I’ll teach you. First thing, Frannie, you have to take off your shoes.”
An hour later, hungry and bored by my ineptitude, Tom and the girls headed back to the cabin. I thought Jonathan would want to go too, but he insisted on one more try.
“Stop thrashing.”
“Don’t let go—okay?”
“Have I let go even once today? I won’t let go. Lay back. Chin up. Stomach up.” One hand pressed my resistant forehead back. The other pushed up under the small of my back. “Relax. You’ll see. You’ll float. You don’t weigh a thing.”
“Don’t let go, Jonathan—promise!”
“I won’t let go till you tell me to. Till you’re floating.”
His serene blue eyes met my panicking ones. I drew a hissing breath through my teeth. Taking courage from the solid anchor of his hand beneath me, I raised my chin slowly. Head back. Chin up. Stomach up.
I floated.
“…I’m a lot older than Frannie was,” I heard Caroline, when my mind returned from its far places.
“It doesn’t matter. The principles are the same.”
“No!” Her little fists were clenched. “I’m too embarrassed! I don’t want anyone to see me.”
“No one’s here,” Jonathan persisted. “There’s no one watching.”
I retreated a step from the window. I didn’t want to see any more, hear any more, anyway. Of course she would give in. His kindness was irresistible, even if her resistance were genuine. But I hated it. His kindness, her fakeness—everything! My eyes filled. It was like Caroline Grant was rewriting history. Taking a precious memory and cheapening it. Jonathan taught me to swim not because he was my closest, most special friend who loved me best in the world, but because he was a nice guy. He would teach anyone, even flirty college girls. Especially flirty college girls.
I drew a ragged breath.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But just while no one’s here. It has to be our secret. Promise?”
And the catch of amusement in Jonathan’s voice. “Promise.”
Clapping my hands to my ears, I spun on my heel and fled upstairs.
Chapter 9
I was not a junior high youth group regular. In fact, I had never gone once. Tammy urged me to try it out when I finished sixth grade, but I resisted. “I’m almost older than the eighth graders,” I pointed out. “And I’m definitely taller than them. Besides I’m used to being around much older kids because of my cousins.”
“Those are all the reasons you could provide the junior high group with some leadership, Frannie,” Tammy replied, unswayed. “Plus it would be good for you. You could work on your shyness.” The last thing a shy person wants to do is work on her shyness. I ignored Tammy. Church for me consisted of sitting beside my aunts and uncles during the main service and staying far away from people my own age.
Tammy was more successful in recruiting me to hel
p her occasionally with the little kids, and this summer she signed me up to scoop ice cream on the last day of Vacation Bible School. We set up the table on the patio separating the sanctuary from the church offices.
“This is like old times, isn’t it Frannie? Remember how you were in my group of sixth graders?”
Of course I remembered. By sixth grade, just about every other kid was allowed to drop out of Vacation Bible School, but Aunt Terri insisted I go. So it was me and Nelson Franco in his headgear and Tanya Nguyen and Minh Tranh who didn’t speak much English. “It turned out to be kind of fun,” I said to Tammy. “You were fun, and the other kids were nice.” Actually, Tanya and Minh were the closest thing I had to friends at the junior high. They admitted me to their clique of Vietnamese girls—all daughters of parents who had been doctors and lawyers and scholars in Vietnam, but who were now dry cleaners and restaurant workers in America—but our relationship was a school thing. After school and during vacations they were helping their families. VBS had been allowed because it was free day camp.
Tammy shook rainbow-colored sprinkles into a bowl. “It was fun. And getting to know you gave me the nerve to go over and talk to Jonathan in youth group.” She got a faraway expression, and some of the sprinkles pinged off the table.
“Uh-huh,” was all I said. This was dangerous territory.
“He’s one of a kind, your cousin.”
“Uh-huh.”
“How many spoons do we have?” I showed her and she reached for a second box of plasticware. “In fact, out of all the guys I met at Azusa Pacific, there wasn’t a single one like Jonathan.”
“No?”
She poured the spoons onto the table. “Not one. Jonathan Beresford is a good, good guy.”
I arranged the Hershey’s syrup bottles. First in a line and then in a square.
“He actually thinks about other people,” she went on. “And Jonathan never talks just to hear himself talk or to fill up air space.”
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