I stared down at the crumbled scone on my plate. “I guess she’s the same as she ever was. She’ll go to church with him occasionally, but mostly she just jokes about how she’s predestined for destruction. I didn’t know she knew those words, but Jonathan said she took a Bible-as-Literature course at Santa Clara. I don’t know, really. She’s always kidding, so it’s hard to tell.”
“Mm-hm. What does the Vessel of Wrath think about Jonathan going to seminary?”
“Vessel of Wrath?”
Tammy bit back her impatience. “Sorry—joke in poor taste. Paul calls those predestined for destruction ‘vessels of wrath.’ Romans. Who cares—what does Caroline Grant think of Jonathan going to seminary?”
I knew what a vessel of wrath was. I was stalling. But there was no help for it. My cousin would face Tammy’s judgment eventually. “Jonathan’s putting it on hold for a couple years.”
I had asked him flat out in a moment when everyone wasn’t around to hear. His face, I remembered, was cheerful. “I always said it would be expensive, didn’t I, Frannie? And if I’m taking on a wife that means I have to be even more careful about money. So it’s a couple years of slaving away at Core-Pro before I can go.”
“But Caroline wants you to go eventually, doesn’t she?” I asked, hardly above a croak. “She knows—she’s always known since she met you—how this was your dream.”
He gave a short sigh. Maybe it was more of a rueful chuckle. “She knows.”
When he addressed me again, after staring off into space a minute or two, his tone was deliberately hearty. “It’ll be great for Caroline to have you as a sister, Frannie. Or almost sister. You’ve always been my biggest believer.”
The double meaning of his words must not have struck him. And I, of course, pointed nothing out.
I thought Tammy would bluster about no-time-like-the-present or exhort-one-another-while-it-is-called-today but she didn’t. In fact, she didn’t look at all disturbed by my news. Had I been wrong to worry, then, that “later” for seminary might become “never”? Or maybe I was the only one who still clung to the dream of him being a pastor. Not Jonathan. Not Tammy. Just me. I pushed the scone crumbs to the far side of the plate.
“What’s he going to do instead?” she asked, as if he were deciding what to have for dinner.
“Work at Core-Pro, to save money.”
She said nothing, forcing me to speak again. To defend him. “He’ll go in a couple years. Hardly anyone goes to seminary straight out of college!” I was too loud. The ladies at the next table glanced over. “And being in ministry doesn’t mean you have to have a degree in it,” I added in a lower voice. “You can serve God in whatever walk of life.”
“Sure you can,” Tammy soothed.
“Jonathan can serve God even working at Core-Pro. Being a pastor isn’t the only way.” I was talking in circles now.
“I didn’t say it was, Frannie. ‘Priesthood of all believers’ and such.”
“That’s exactly what he said.”
“I’m just sorry to hear it, is all.” Tammy was mellowing. A few years ago she would have been blood-and-thunder about it, but maybe she lost interest when he disappointed her that summer. “After all, ‘way leads on to way.ʼ Who knows if he’ll ever—I saw it coming, but I’m still sorry to hear it,” she said again. “I think—yes—at this point more for your sake than for his.”
“My sake? It’s none of my business,” I choked. “I’m okay.”
“I hope so. I know so. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Frannie, since…” She watched me gulp down another swallow of tea. “You’re not a kid anymore. You’re a sophomore in high school, soon the last bird in the Beresford nest. I know that gangly girl who idolized her cousin—she’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“So there isn’t any need, of course, for me to say anything ridiculous like, ‘Jonathan’s engaged to be married, and it wouldn’t be right for you to have feelings for him.’”
Something was grabbing me hard around the ribs and squeezing. I nearly dropped my teacup back onto its saucer. “No! No! How embarrassing. That was all a long time ago. I mean, I still—he’s still my favorite cousin—but I wouldn’t—I don’t—”
“Good.” She pressed my unsteady hand. “I figured as much.” Did she believe me, or did she just not want to think anyone capable of such pathetic devotion?
With a visible effort, Tammy shook the unpleasant topic off. “So, as long as it’s not the 18 or the 25 of June, you’re mine. And if it doesn’t work, we’re still going to have to get together because I’ve told Brian all about you whenever we talk about getting youth more involved…”
June was a blur. Tammy and Brian’s wedding on the 11, a week of festivities leading up to Julie’s graduation on the 18, and another week of festivities culminating in Jonathan’s wedding on the 25. I lit candles, stood by the guest book, snapped pictures, wrote down Julie’s gifts so she could send thank-you notes, harvested Aunt Terri’s roses (she was not going to see sorry specimens at Jonathan’s wedding like we had to put up with at Rachel’s, thank heaven, and there was a reason more people got married in June than early December!), and went for final fittings of the deep purple sheaths with Madonna-style corset boning Caroline Grant chose for her attendants. Caroline Grant would have looked lovely in a sleeveless sheath, but I had nightmares about the bodice and my inadequate bosom parting company, and the rich purple fabric against my hopelessly pale skin and hair made me look like a walking bruise.
Not that Jonathan noticed. He had eyes only for his bride, and I suppose she for him. It was a good thing, I told myself, because then no one would notice his young cousin—the mopey one dabbing at her eyes and hauling up on her corset.
I was in the youth room. The ceremony over, I fled as far as I could from the reception in the fellowship hall. Here it smelled like decades of junior-high and high-school games and lock-ins—a comforting, if rather gym-socksy odor. Making straight for the corner stacked three high with bean bags, I pulled one off the top and dragged it behind the bins of sports equipment. If anyone popped his head in, I didn’t want to explain myself.
Curling up as much as my long limbs and tight skirt would allow, I gave myself a pep talk. “Jonathan is a married man,” I said for the hundredth time that day. “And not married to you. Cultivate sisterly feelings!” As with the previous ninety-nine times, it did no good. The tears would come, and they would wash down my face, taking my mascara with them. I had given up fighting them and was indulging in a good cry when I heard the voices in the hallway.
“You said you wanted to talk.”
“I said it and I meant it. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you.”
I caught my breath in horror, my woes drying up faster than a gambler’s savings account.
Not again.
Those two were not going to put me in this position again. What were they even doing together?
Before I could recover from my paralysis, Eric Grant said, “Where are you taking me? What is this place?”
Rachel replied frostily, “It’s the youth room. The rest of the building is probably locked up. Who cares? Just say what you wanted to say.”
“Ouch!” he replied in a mock-injured tone. I heard footsteps at the threshold, and for a second I was afraid they would discover me, but then I heard the groan and clank of two folding chairs being set up.
Briefly I debated springing from my hiding place and announcing my presence, shipwrecked face or no, but before I could decide, I heard a ringing slap. “How dare you?” cried Rachel.
Eric Grant gave a soft laugh. “Wow. Friendly. Just a little brotherly affection, Rach. We are related now, you know. I don’t see the reason for the cold shoulder.”
“And I don’t see any reason to be pawing me,” she retorted. “Keep your hands to yourself. You have no sense of—I don’t know—right or wrong. And whatever our relation now, there’s no need for personal conversation either.”
“Sit do
wn, Rachel. Relax. I’ll behave. Control myself, despite your…undiminished allure.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious. Look”—he abandoned the flirting tone for a conversational one—“how’ve you been these past couple years? Are you enjoying minor-league groupie life?”
Her indrawn breath revealed her irritation, but she answered him cautiously. “It has its ups and downs. But we actually think Greg’ll get the call-up any day now. Or, if not now, when the rosters expand in September.”
“His major league debut!” Eric Grant whistled. “You chose wisely, Mrs. Perkins. What a husband.”
There went the unspoken truce. “I wasn’t aware I had a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.”
“I didn’t,” she snapped. “You vanished. After seducing me.”
“Oh, come on—‘seducing you.’ You were eighteen, and I think anything we did was by mutual consent.”
“You took advantage of me. What did I know then? Nothing! I knew nothing about guys like you. Don’t you get it? I thought I was pregnant!” Rachel screeched. “You took off when my father came back from China, and what could I do?”
He didn’t answer right away, and I wondered if Eric Grant’s mouth was hanging open like my own.
“I panicked,” she continued. “I had to—to convince Greg to sleep with me, just in case. I knew he would do the right thing if I really was in trouble. Unlike you.”
“But you weren’t pregnant, clearly,” Eric Grant said when he recovered. He had some kind of obstruction in his throat. “Were you? I mean, you didn’t—do something about it?”
“If you mean did I get an abortion, the answer is no!” She sounded indignant. “Not that you would’ve cared if I did. But I wasn’t—pregnant. No thanks to you.”
“Then why’d you marry him? Not that he isn’t a treasure, of course. And why so fast?”
“I love him,” declared Rachel. Her companion must have looked doubtful because after another pause she added, “I do. Though I might have waited longer if Greg didn’t insist. You wouldn’t understand—you’re such a heathen. After Greg and I—started sleeping together—his conscience ate him up. He said I was already his wife in God’s eyes; we might as well make it official.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! And you went for that? I never took you for the religious type. Jonny Boy, yes, and your little sainted cousin Frannie, but not you.”
“Of course I am,” Rachel huffed. “I have my values.”
“Well, it’s never too late for self-discovery, I guess. Good for you. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Stop it.” Her voice was muffled. By what, I didn’t know—her hands? his mouth?
One of the folding chairs fell back with a crash. “I said stop it, Eric! Stay away from me. I’m warning you. I don’t care how related we are. The past is the past. Go find someone else to hound.”
A long silence followed. I pictured him waiting to see if she would relent. But at last the solid click of his loafers indicated his retreat. An even longer silence fell, where I hardly dared to breathe for fear Rachel would hear it. Surely my galloping heart was the loudest thing in the room. But the surging of her own blood must have drowned it out. She made one sound: a sigh. Then the tap of her heels followed his, slower, more thoughtful.
Who knew how much more time elapsed. If not for fear Aunt Terri might send out a search party and expose my hiding place, I might never have moved again. It had been a day of horrors start to finish. But surely the worst was over—Jonathan was married and Eric Grant’s overtures rejected (no matter how reluctantly).
Struggling up from the beanbag’s clutches, I smoothed my dress and prepared once more to face the world.
Chapter 18
“God, what did you do to your hair?”
Annette’s bulging eyes fixed on me as I slid my cash tray into the drawer.
“I got it done.”
“No kidding! How much did you cut off?”
“Twelve inches.” It barely brushed my shoulders now.
“No way. And a perm. Wow.” She keyed in her security code without even turning her head and then drummed her long red fingernails on the enormous black printer separating our stations. “What does your strict uncle have to say about this?”
“It was Uncle Paul who said I could. For my eighteenth birthday.”
He called me into his den one afternoon when I got home from school. This in itself didn’t alarm me because, for the past year, Uncle Paul had been cutting back on his work hours as he transitioned to a consulting role. That and, with all my cousins gone, my aunt and uncle relied more and more on me for company.
“How was your day, Frannie? Did the math test go all right?”
“I think so. Better than my chemistry test. That one was awful. If it weren’t for Mrs. Obscott tutoring me, I don’t think I would even pass chemistry—but she’s a tutor, not a miracle worker.”
He patted the chair opposite him. “As long as you do your best, Frannie. And you always do your best.”
Letting my backpack slide to the floor, I sat down and tucked my hands under my thighs. I had never in my life been in trouble with my uncle—even that one summer when all my cousins were in trouble with my uncle—but it was hard to shake the feeling that, if he knew my innermost thoughts, he would find enough to disapprove of.
“I wish I did better at school,” I said.
“Academics aren’t for everyone.”
No, but they certainly seemed to suit my cousins just fine. Even Tom sailed through Santa Clara without breaking a sweat, except when his absences and forgotten projects piled up to the point where he had to knuckle down. But my ongoing lameness at school never seemed to trouble Uncle Paul. Maybe he was relieved to be spared the expense of putting me through college.
“Your aunt and I are very pleased with you working at the savings and loan,” Uncle Paul went on. “It demonstrates responsibility and attention to detail. We were worried about you after Julia graduated. We thought you might be lonely. You know, Frannie, you may invite your friends over, just as your cousins used to. This is your home, too.”
“Thank you, sir.” After so many years it really was. I could take over every bedroom in the house without a soul noticing.
“Would you like to have some friends over?”
I tried to picture Tanya or Minh or Nelson swimming in the backyard pool or watching TV with me. It just wasn’t what we did. A couple times Minh invited me to help out at her parents’ restaurant and once Nelson asked me to a dance, but that was it. I didn’t go to the dance, either. Oh, yes—and there was the time Annette and I went to see Look Who’s Talking after work one Saturday because her boyfriend ditched her. She never asked me again, and I didn’t think to ask her.
When I didn’t answer, my uncle leaned forward. “I only mention this because your eighteenth birthday is coming up Frannie, and your aunt and I would like to do something special. A party for your friends—”
“Oh, no!” I blurted. “I mean—no, thank you. Thank you very much. I don’t need a party.”
He frowned. “Why not? I don’t think we’ve ever had anything but family dinners for your birthday, and eighteen is a big year.”
“Because…” I cast about for a legitimate reason besides humiliating friendlessness. “…Because I prefer family dinners. Paola makes me fried chicken and a tres leches cake. It’s my favorite.”
“But Frannie, you can always have a family dinner and fried chicken and a tres leches cake. How will that be special? Fine, fine—don’t get stressed out.” He waved away my anxious fidgeting. “You don’t have to have a party. Make it a family dinner and a present, then. I suppose you’d like a car, instead of borrowing your Aunt Terri’s when you need one.”
This outpouring of generosity stunned me. “But I’m not graduating yet,” I said, worried. “You didn’t buy Tom or Jonathan or Rachel or Julie a car until they graduated.” Not that I objected to a car, per se. The
ancient Malibu wheezed and pinged and squealed as if each mile were its last. But I could hear Julie’s cries of it’s not fair! all the way from Boston.
Maybe Uncle Paul heard them too because he abandoned the idea hastily. “Good point. A car can wait, I suppose.” There was a pause in which Aunt Marie’s faint humming carried to our ears from the kitchen. “If it’s only going to be a family dinner, the least the family can do is show up,” my uncle added under his breath. It had been ages since all four of his children were home at once, and I knew he was thinking of his daughters. We hadn’t seen Rachel since last Christmas nor Julie since she returned to Boston for her sophomore year. Jonathan and his wife, on the other hand, joined us faithfully for dinner at least once a month, besides the occasional father-son lunches at Core-Pro. And Tom—well, his parents wouldn’t mind seeing him a little less, to tell the truth. He was forever dropping by with loads of laundry for Paola or to raid the fridge or borrow money, especially if he was between live-in girlfriends.
“A dinner,” Uncle Paul said again, “and what, then? A CD player? Some clothes?”
He really did want to get me something, and I felt a surge of guilt that I didn’t feel more affection for him. Respect, yes. Esteem. A dash of fear for his stiff ways. But I would never confide in him as I used to in Jonathan.
The pastor at our church often said people picture God the Father like the father figures in their own lives, for better or worse, and it was certainly true for me. I envisioned a gruff senior statesman of a God. All business. Everything decent and in order. To such a deity I submitted prayers like progress reports and, as the years passed, without Jonathan to put a kindlier face on such a God, the distance between the Almighty and me widened.
My uncle waited, his solemn eyes fixed on me. He wanted me to want something, so he could have the pleasure of granting it, and I didn’t want to displease him.
“Actually, Uncle Paul,”—I dug my nails into my palms—somehow this was worse than asking for a car—“what I was really thinking about lately—and you can say no if you want—but I thought it might be fun to do something…different…with my hair. Like some of the other girls have. You know.”
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