“I would have gone!” I cried, eager to throw my lot in with his. “I begged Tom to let me go along.”
Jonathan gave a short laugh, no more taken in, I think, than my uncle, who said, “Judging from the size of the knife you waved at me last night, Frannie, I think you had entirely different reasons for wanting to go.”
We were all silent for a minute after this. From the kitchen we could hear Aunt Marie running water and opening the cabinets. Uncle Paul drank gallons of coffee, but my aunt began each day with a cup of Lady Grey. I remember wondering when the last time was she had to make it herself.
“Will we stay up here for the weekend or go home today?” Jonathan asked the question in everyone’s mind.
“We’ll stay,” said my uncle. “Even if they discharge your aunt today, I think we may as well stay. I had no idea you all wanted to see the races so much. Your mother and I would like to do something you kids enjoy.”
I could see his kindness only made Jonathan feel worse. As for the rest of my cousins, I suspect they would rather have gone home, since their delight at the prospect of the races was dimmed by their father’s presence and the loss of Eric and Caroline Grant.
We did not know it then, but that confused, awkward morning with the Grants would be our last time all together for some months. After so long an absence, my uncle now wanted only to be quiet at home with his family around him. If he could have this, he was willing to forgive and forget—or at least to forgive and not harp upon. “I’ve missed half the summer with you boys, and Rachel will be gone in another month,” he explained. “I won’t miss a minute more.” Kicking off this bonding season amid the clamor of the drag boat races was unfortunate (as was coming home to find his daughter had put his sister in the hospital), but he was willing to work with it.
Under the new regime Tom stifled—he took to sneaking out nights again—but my other cousins bore it, albeit with varying levels of resentment. Julie had the least to lose by the change; I think she might even have welcomed the break from Eric Grant’s turbulent presence. Certainly she was content not to fight with Rachel anymore. Without him to pit them against each other, the sisters regained peace—peace, in the “absence of conflict” sense. Rachel pined, but in a Rachel fashion. No one accused her of being sick or listless or pale. She spent extra time on her grooming, rather. She clung once more to Greg Perkins with a determined set to her jaw that bewildered him. She talked up her boyfriend’s merits to her father (especially if Julie were not around), leaving Uncle Paul no alternative but to find him “a solid young man.” She never, never mentioned either of the Grants and feigned elaborate indifference if someone else brought them up. Eric Grant was to be punished for the ease with which he forgot her, even if he never knew it. She would punish him by erasing him.
It was Jonathan who regretted the loss of the Grants most openly. Had he not gone against his own principles in Lake Tahoe, he might have attempted to coax his father into expanding the family circle to admit them, but as it was, he kept his unhappiness to himself. Or nearly.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it, Frannie,” he began one afternoon, maybe a week after we returned from the cabin. “I mean, I understand Dad wanting us close to him. He’s been gone, and this is the last time the family will be together until Thanksgiving or Christmas. But I think he’d like Caro—like—the Grants if he had a chance to get to know them. He met them under the worst possible circumstances.”
“Mm.”
“I worry that he’ll lump them together in his mind with Steve and Dave,” my cousin continued, “when they’re not like them at all.”
“Mm.”
“Stop for a second—” he spread his hand across the paper where I was doodling. “Are you listening, Frannie? Don’t you kind of miss her—miss them—too? We spent so much time together.”
I turned my face so he wouldn’t read it. “They were…lively. But quiet—quiet can be kind of nice for a change.”
“Sure it can.” He didn’t sound at all convinced.
After a pause, he pushed my paper back at me. I couldn’t doodle—not with his eyes on me, even when I knew he didn’t see me, really. Instead I traced the plump bird I’d drawn, going back and forth over the arc of its wing, back and forth until my pen punched through the paper.
“I was thinking,” Jonathan said at last, “of inviting her to church sometime. If she’d go. There couldn’t be any objection to that.”
There couldn’t.
Or at least, no objection that could be voiced aloud. The birds and flowers blurred before me, but I kept my mouth shut.
I didn’t say a word.
Part II
1985 - 1989
Chapter 17
I was in three weddings before I graduated high school.
The first one, amazingly, was Rachel’s. Greg Perkins didn’t last out fall semester in college, and when the Oakland A’s renewed their offer of a minor-league contract and invited him to spring training, he jumped at the chance to drop Intro to Sports Physiology and pick up a bat. “He might be dumb,” Julie sniffed, “but he’s smart enough to figure out he was gonna be spending a lot of time in the counselor’s office trying to stay off academic probation.”
Uncle Paul could hardly get his mind around it when Greg and Rachel came to ask his blessing. “I never imagined any of my children would not graduate from college. Rachel, you’re so young. Have you thought about what you’d be giving up?”
Her eyes flashed and I saw the line of her jaw through her soft cheek. “I want it more than anything, Daddy! College will always be there. Maybe not four-year college, but something. This is the chance of a lifetime for Greg, and I want to be there for the ride. And have babies. I want a family very soon.”
“Soon? I didn’t know you felt so strongly. I didn’t know—well—this is hard to say, but you children seem to have grown up all at once. I’ve only gotten used to the idea of you graduating high school and now you’re wanting to get married?”
“Mom didn’t graduate from college,” said Rachel.
Aunt Marie looked up from her book to consider this. “I did finish my freshman year,” she recalled.
“Yes, you did,” Rachel agreed hastily. “But you never got an A.A. or anything. And you’ve never regretted it—marrying Dad—have you? Not that I wouldn’t get my degree at some point. Who knows? I mean, who knows where life will lead?” She gave a high laugh and crossed her arms over her stomach. Greg leaned over her, but I saw her flinch when he squeezed her shoulder.
“I just don’t see the rush,” her father persisted. “Why not wait until the end of the school year—”
“Who knows where Greg’ll be then!” Rachel interrupted. “He might make the team at spring training or be sent who-knows-where or whatever! It’s too unsettled. I want to be married way before he leaves for Phoenix.”
“Sir, I know this is really sudden,” said Greg, “but Rachel’s happiness would always be my first priority.”
Uncle Paul gave him a long look, taking in the honest, earnest, well-meaning face. No, the boy wasn’t brilliant, but he was solid. And talented. His future held more promise at this point than Tom’s, say. “You want this too?” Uncle Paul probed. “This rushed timeline?”
Greg cleared his throat and sat forward, his color coming and going. “I love your daughter, sir. To have her by my side as I take this next step would be—it would be a great blessing.”
“And if baseball doesn’t work out?”
“I hope that wouldn’t be the case, but I’ve also thought about coaching, teaching.”
Julie raised her eyebrows at me. With her other siblings gone, she was thrown back on me to share family developments.
“Think about it, Dad. That’s one less kid you have to put through college!” Rachel sounded almost playful now. It was so unlike the way she usually spoke to him that I couldn’t suppress a squirm. “And Greg and I don’t want a big extravaganza, so there’s another savings.”
N
ot for the first time since the summer did Uncle Paul look weary and regretful. He was going to give in, we all felt it, but I imagined he wished otherwise. If he thought Rachel would listen, he might have continued to preach patience, but the blessing she sought was no more than lip service. He passed a hand over his forehead and sank down beside Aunt Marie on the couch. “I wonder what your mother would say.”
“My mother?” Rachel wondered. In her rehearsals leading up to this conversation, she must not have anticipated this. “You mean that person I haven’t seen since I was five? The one who never called or wrote or asked me to live with her, like other divorced moms? The one who moved to Boston and had three new kids? I doubt she even remembers I exist. Jeez—even Frannie hears from her mother more than I have, and her mom isn’t even normal. I couldn’t be less interested in what my so-called mother has to say.”
My uncle lay his head back and shut his eyes for a moment. Aunt Marie patted his arm. “Tom, then,” he said. “Tom would be sorry to miss the wedding, if you honestly can’t wait till Christmas.” My oldest cousin was in Florence, having stopped out of Santa Clara at the eleventh hour because Eric Grant thought it would be a riot to do a quarter abroad.
It was the wrong thing to say.
Her wayward mother forgotten, Rachel stiffened and her voice became brittle. “Oh, you know Tom, Dad. If he’s scaring around Europe with Eric Grant, who knows when they’ll—when he’ll turn up again. There’s no guarantee he’d even be home by Christmas.”
She was right. Tom’s quarter abroad stretched into two, and he didn’t return until February, after the newlyweds had already left for Phoenix. In lieu of attending the wedding, he sent a card. The enclosed photo featured Tom in bride-drag, clowning with Eric Grant before some Florentine church altar. Rachel threw it in the trash and not even Aunt Terri fished it out.
Despite saying she didn’t want an “extravaganza,” Rachel’s wedding was as over-the-top as time permitted: 150 guests, a live band, videographer, open bar at the country club. Most of her high school friends were away at college, but she managed to scare up the three nearest ones to be her bridesmaids, along with Julie and me. Aunt Terri wept loudly enough to make up for Aunt Marie’s serene silence and then found comfort in criticizing the florist’s offerings. Uncle Paul’s calm was harder-won than his wife’s. He choked up once during the toast and once during the father-bride dance before regaining control. Then he pressed a dry kiss to Rachel’s forehead and returned her to her groom.
My first pair of high heels made my feet throb, so when Jonathan finally left Caroline Grant’s side to take me for a spin around the dance floor, I was barefoot. It was a swing dance, which neither of us knew how to do, but we made up moves.
“Who would’ve thought it?” he grinned down at me after we botched a turn. “Just this summer I guessed they’d be one of those couples that broke up by Thanksgiving.”
“Like you and Tammy.” I clutched his hands.
That made him laugh. “Like me and Tammy. Guess there’s a lot I still have to learn about women.” His gaze flicked to Caroline Grant, who was chatting up Uncle Paul. She looked absolutely gorgeous in a one-shouldered, red-lace-over-satin gown. Feeling Jonathan’s eyes on her, she smiled sidelong and blew him a kiss. I stumbled over Jonathan’s foot.
“Ow! Whoa! Thank God you’re not wearing those lethal heels Rachel picked out for you bridesmaids. Deadly.”
“No one’s asked me to dance except you, Jonathan.”
He raised his hand and tried to twirl me under. “What do you mean? I distinctly saw you get up with Greg’s cousin.”
“He had to ask me. It was the wedding party dance. And he’s only fifteen, so he doesn’t count.”
“Listen to yourself: ‘fifteen doesn’t count,’” he teased. “I happen to know one fifteen-year-old who’s a big deal. Did you get the book I sent for your birthday, Frannie?” A gorgeous leather scrapbook with stitched birds and flowers and my name in the corner, embossed in gold.
I nodded, swallowing a sudden lump in my throat and almost running into him again. “I loved it. It was wonderful—perfect. I’m almost afraid to paste anything in it! I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me and—”
“You’re welcome. But this outpouring of gratitude shouldn’t be for me alone. Caroline was the one who spotted it and said, ‘That has Frannie written all over it.’”
“Oh! I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, she was down for the weekend and decided it was high time I found out what was in all those little shops in town. I was just going to make you a mix tape for the big day, so you’re lucky.”
On the contrary, my heart sunk a few notches lower. Weekends together? Where did she stay? In his apartment? And my joy in the album evaporated when I pictured Caroline Grant choosing it. “I would have liked the tape, too, Jonathan, because you made it.”
He shook his head, smiling. “I know, Frannie. But verily, verily, I say unto you, her taste is better than mine. And by the way, Caroline said she liked your hair this way and that she’s never seen you look better. But—here—the song’s ending and thank God because I’ve run out of directions to spin you. Let’s go join her so she can praise you to your face.”
The second and third weddings took place when I was a sophomore.
Tammy took me to Christmas tea at a fancy hotel in San Francisco. Her parents had moved to the City after Tammy’s little brother went to college, so I hadn’t seen much of her in recent years. I was flattered she remembered me enough to call out of the blue.
“Look at you!” she screeched after hugging me outside the BART station. “What happened to you?”
My hand flew to the zit that materialized on my forehead that morning, and I tugged on my bangs to hide it better. “Julie said I shouldn’t pop it.”
“Ha! You kill me, Frannie. I’m not talking about your pimple—I mean you look great! It’s not that you’re taller—you’ve been tall since you were twelve—but you’re filling out. Growing into yourself. Not looking so coltish anymore.”
“I have big news,” she announced when we sat with our squat teapot and tray of bite-sized goodies between us. “Can you guess?”
“You got accepted to nursing school?”
“Yes, and..?”
“And…then you’re going to be a missionary nurse?”
“Eventually. You’re on a roll, Frannie. And...?”
It wasn’t like it took a genius. These were the life goals Tammy trumpeted as long as I’d known her. The only other one I knew of, though, couldn’t possibly be part of her surprise. “You’re getting married?”
She slapped the table triumphantly, making the teacups rattle. “Bingo!”
“You are? For real? Do I know him?” I asked tentatively.
“Not a bit. His name is Brian and he’s an intern at my parents’ new church.” She rearranged the pots of jam and clotted cream and hummed tunelessly, at odds with the harpist’s rendition of The First Noel. “We met last year when I worked there.”
“That’s wonderful, Tammy! I’m happy for you!” I really was. At least one of us should get over Jonathan. Maybe there was hope for me, too. “Does he know he eventually has to go to med school and Guatemala?”
“Uh-huh. He’s studying for the MCATs as we speak. You’d like him. You will like him, when you meet him. I’m hoping I can convince you to be our Candle-Lighter-slash-Guestbook-Girl. I know it’s not a dress position, but between my college roommates and his two sisters—”
“I would love to!” I exclaimed, dismayed that she thought I would resent not being part of the bridal party. “I would be honored.”
“Yay!” She made little excited fists. “June—we’re still nailing it down.”
“June.” I cleared my throat. “Julie graduates on the 18.”
Tammy whistled. “Wow. Already? Where’s she going to school, then?”
“Boston College.”
“So far away?”
“Yeah. Uncle Pau
l wasn’t happy about it, but lately Julie’s been trying to build a relationship with her mom who’s out in Boston. I think—” I hesitated—“I think she wants to get as far away as she can. Uncle Paul got really strict after that one summer. You know. I don’t mind because there’s nowhere I want to go. But Julie—”
“But Julie,” said Tammy. She popped a chocolate in her mouth and rolled it around. “Well, don’t worry about June 18 anyhow, Frannie. It’ll probably be later in the month.”
I had wanted to avoid this.
“Oh—Tammy—maybe I spoke too soon. I’m in another wedding in late June. But if yours isn’t Saturday the 25, I can be there.”
“Well, aren’t you in demand?” she teased. “Not just graduations but also weddings. Your friends are too young to get married, so who—don’t tell me Tom!”
“No, no, not Tom.” Though I lunged for the topic like a shipwreck victim for a spar. “He’s—I don’t think he wants to get married anytime soon. He’s…living with a girl named Samantha.”
Tammy sucked in her breath. “Ooh. Your poor family. But then that means—Rachel is already married—”
“It’s Jonathan,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Jonathan and Caroline Grant.” I felt the heat rise to my cheeks, but it was anger, not embarrassment. They’d been engaged for four months now—how long would it be before I could talk about it without going all red and feeling like I might throw up?
The waitress slouched over to check the temperature of our teapot. She was skinny with straggly hair and thick black eyeliner. Not exactly Merry Olde England. “Everything okay here?” Hardly, but Tammy and I both nodded vigorously to get rid of her.
“June 25, huh? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. They’ve been together a few years now, and since he’s graduating…Did he accomplish his mission?”
“What mission?”
“You know—he told himself it was all about bringing her into the fold. Telling her about Christ or whatever.”
The Beresfords Page 15