Caroline turned to him then. “Tell Tom, Eric,” she demanded, “about your last dinner with our father. What he said to you about me going to law school.”
“That it was a good thing one of us finally scraped together some ambition,” her brother supplied instantly, adopting a gruff, jocular tone. “And didn’t he just get done paying our college tuition after shelling out God-knows-how-many thousands to our mother in alimony? And what was I planning on doing with myself—living off my sister’s earnings? That’s what happens when you’ve been raised by a woman who never lifted a finger to support herself.”
“Which was completely unfair to my mother,” laughed Caroline, leaning toward Marcy. “She lifted a finger all right, and married her second husband the day the alimony dried up.”
Marcy let out a blaring laugh. “You guys kill me. That is so funny.”
I saw a glance pass between my uncle Paul and his sister Terri, and Uncle Paul made a slicing motion with his finger at Paola that meant cut them off.
“Know what’s even funnier?” said Tom, even then looking behind him at the sideboard for the open bottle of Chardonnay. “I knew you didn’t have any ambition, Grant, but I never would’ve guessed Jon and Caroline would be the ones choosing the high life. Can you picture them in a few years? Caroline the bigshot divorce lawyer and Jon jetting around the world for Core-Pro?”
“What did you picture for us?” Caroline teased. Jonathan’s jaw was set.
“Oh, you know.” Tom waved expansively, forcing Aunt Terri to duck. “I saw you in some cozy little parsonage. Jon hunched over a desk writing sermons while you tended your brood.”
“My brood!” she punched him in mock-anger while Marcy hooted, “Sermons?! For real you write sermons, Jon?”
“What—what—what do you do now?” I accosted Eric Grant loudly. Only my wish to spare Jonathan discomfort made me leap in, but it worked. Every head at the table swiveled my direction.
If Eric Grant was startled by my sudden interest, he didn’t show it. “I just joined a product design firm in Cupertino. Which, you can imagine, I was happy to tell my father. Caroline won’t have to support this young man.” He cast smiles up and down the table.
“A what kind of firm?” said Marcy.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” said Eric Grant. “We design products for other companies. Like a combination of studio art and engineering.”
“Do you also manufacture the products?” asked Uncle Paul from his end of the table.
“No, sir. Only prototypes. Companies hire us as consultants. They tell us the problem and we imagine the most elegant solution. It’s an emerging field. Think about the Macintosh computers, Mr. Beresford. No one imagined a graphical user interface could be anything more than a fad or a toy when the first Mac came out, but they’ve gained quite the following now.”
“Don’t tell Dad about Macs,” bellowed Tom. “The man thinks in DOS.”
“You designed the Mac?” Marcy said, all admiration. “You must be really smart.”
“No—that was an example. My first project is actually a fire extinguisher.”
“Oh,” said Marcy, extinguished.
“Well, congratulations on that,” Uncle Paul said. “It sounds like a great opportunity. New jobs can be hard to come by in this little economic downturn.” His eye fell on Tom, who had recently quit Core-Pro and not yet found other employment.
My cousin felt it, even through the alcohol. “Maybe Frannie can get me a job at her savings and loan.”
“Oh my gosh, really?” Marcy’s wonderment swallowed me next. “Aren’t those all going under?”
I cleared my throat. “Not Globe Savings. It’s—managed very conservatively. It’s still a family-run business, even.”
“Frannie’s doing very well for herself there,” declared Uncle Paul. “Not bad for a teenager.”
Tom pushed away his plate. “Oh, give it a rest, Dad. Unless Frannie wants a family argument for her birthday.”
“Speaking of family,” Jonathan rejoined, “didn’t you call Rachel today, Aunt Terri? How’s she feeling? And was Julie there yet?”
My aunt’s long-windedness came as a relief to more than me, I suspected, and I settled back into my chair to focus on my drumstick and biscuit.
“Will you be graduating this year?” Eric Grant addressed me again. He apparently had no interest in the rundown on Rachel.
I wiped my mouth with my cloth napkin. The thing I looked forward to the very, very most about graduating was never having to explain again why I was so old for my year. In this case, however, I supposed he was just making conversation and I could skip it. “Probably not till fall semester next year.”
He made mocking tsk-tsk sounds. “Don’t tell me you failed a couple classes.”
“I started late.”
“Let me guess—you got mono and had to miss a couple months of your freshman year. The perils of adolescent love. Happens to the best of us.”
I doubted there had ever been a high school freshman less in danger of catching the “kissing disease” than me and had a sneaking suspicion he knew that. “I’ve never had mono. I meant I started kindergarten late.”
“Ah! Alles klar.” Whatever that meant. “You know, don’t you, Frannie, that if you graduate mid-year, you’ll miss your prom.”
Why didn’t he talk to somebody else?
Aunt Marie was my unexpected rescuer. “Both Rachel and Julie were prom queens.”
“I bet they were,” said Eric Grant promptly, angling to include her. “And well-deserved. But something tells me Frannie here would rather not have the privilege.”
“Frannie doesn’t like to be looked at,” agreed Aunt Marie in her mild way. So much for rescuing me. “She would never do church choir like the girls.”
“Or join in any reindeer games,” Eric Grant added.
I stared at my plate until Paola cleared it. Then I stared at the tablecloth.
“If I might have everyone’s attention,” said Uncle Paul, tapping his glass with a fork. “I know she will not appreciate this, but it isn’t every day a young lady celebrates her eighteenth birthday—”
“Speech! Speech!” cried Marcy until—I suspect—Tom kicked her under the table. Then she scowled at him and clapped her mouth shut.
My uncle raised questioning eyebrows at me, but I swiftly shook my head. No, I did not want to make a speech. “She will never be the loudest member of this family,” he continued, (“That would be Tom,” Caroline said under her breath) “nor the flashiest,” (“Tom again.”) “but she has always been one of the steadiest. Modest, quiet, helpful. All that her aunt and I could wish. Please join me in wishing her the happiest of birthdays.”
“Here, here,” Jonathan seconded, raising his glass at me to the general chorus of Happy Birthday!
It was not the praise any eighteen-year-old dreamed of receiving, but I could not recall my uncle ever making such a public declaration in years past, and I knew he meant it kindly. Apart from twisting the napkin in my lap, I mustered as steady, modest, quiet, and helpful a smile as I could and waited for it all to be over.
Chapter 21
But I was saying. I made a private vow to love Caroline and not hate her anymore.
When she gave me the usual side hug before she and Jonathan left my birthday party, I clutched at her arm and burst out with, “Do you think we could hang out sometime?”
Those Grants. Nothing ever caught them off guard. Caroline appeared not the least bit surprised to have her young cousin-in-law reach out to her for the first time in three-and-a-half years of acquaintanceship/relatedness. Not that she had ever reached out to me either in that time, but she had always been friendly and chatty. It was just those qualities that always made me apprehensive—was she making fun of me for my adoration of her husband? Patronizing me? Pitying me?
“That’d be fun,” Caroline answered. “What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I know you’re probably really
busy.”
“Not as busy as you might think, now that my law school application is in. You don’t have a car, do you? How about if I pick you up this Friday after my symphony rehearsal? We could catch a movie—something that starts around 7:30.”
“Okay.” Jonathan’s eyes met mine as he helped Caroline into her coat and he gave me a smile. He knew what my effort cost me.
Eric Grant was the last to leave. After Tom and Marcy settled their brief argument over who ought to drive and slammed out the door, I found him still chatting with Uncle Paul. “You know better than anyone, sir,” he was saying, “that unless a product can be easily manufactured, it can never be affordable enough for the general public.”
Uncle Paul nodded solemnly. “Certainly I would be interested in seeing your prototype. Why don’t you join us again for dinner sometime later this week and we’ll have a look?”
“Thank you, sir. I could have something to show you by Thursday, if that’s convenient.” He glanced at me as he said this but I was unhooking my aunt’s purse from the coat rack.
“Well, that was a nice dinner,” Aunt Terri declared. “Hand me my scarf there, Roger. I’m glad you didn’t put on a big production, Paul. It wouldn’t have sat right without Rachel and Julie here. And, Frannie, I hope you’ve thanked your uncle for all he’s done for you,” she admonished me. “Not just for tonight, I mean, but all these years. You’ve been a very fortunate girl. You could hardly hope to repay him if you lived to be a hundred!”
“Now, Terri,” interposed my uncle, seeing my reddening face, “Frannie’s always been the best of girls and grateful. There’s no need to go rubbing her nose in it constantly.”
“And why shouldn’t she be grateful?” sputtered Aunt Terri. “‘In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.’”
“Thank you again, Uncle Paul, Aunt Marie.” I gave each of them a hug. Aunt Marie kissed my cheek and Uncle Roger managed to pat my arm before his indignant wife herded him away.
“Good night, Frannie,” called Eric Grant as I went upstairs. I had merely nodded my farewell to him. “Hope this is the start of a banner year.”
My impending date with Caroline Beresford cast a pall over my week. When I wasn’t studying for my math unit test or working, I fretted over the newspaper movie listings. We had only two theaters nearby, unlike the many she and Jonathan enjoyed in their Mountain View location. The first showed new releases and the second, the sticky-floored Dollar Cinema, ran movies that had been out for months already. After some backing-and-forthing, I settled on Steel Magnolias. A girl movie, opening that weekend. That way she wouldn’t have already seen it and Jonathan wouldn’t be sorry to miss it.
But before Friday came Thursday.
Thursday, when I came straight home after tutorial, my head spinning with equations as I peddled through the gathering dusk. Thursday, when I bombed my Algebra II review test and foresaw a long night of torturous problem sets.
“Paola, do you think I could just take a tray up to my room?” I nearly wailed at her when I found her in the kitchen.
“You stressed out again, Frannie, with the homework?”
“With the test tomorrow. I should have been born a hundred years ago—then I would only need to learn arithmetic and none of these polynomials and factorization and stuff.”
She spooned chicken filling down the center of another tortilla and rolled it up. “Maybe Tom can help you tonight.”
“You mean because he’s always so helpful?” I made a face and Paola laughed. “Is he really coming over again? That’s—what—twice already this week! If you weren’t such a good cook I don’t think we’d see him nearly so often.” She stopped me from stealing my second “taste” of enchilada filling and handed me an apple, which I bit into with a sigh. “Tom’s no teacher. He always laughed at me and told me he couldn’t understand why I didn’t understand.” That, and he would push me away after a minute with an exasperated, “God almighty, Frannie. Go ask Jon.”
“Mr. Eric Grant, then, maybe,” Paola suggested inexorably.
I froze in my chewing. Oh….right. I’d forgotten Eric Grant was coming. All the more reason to eat in my room. But Paola nudged me. “You finish the apple and go set the table. Take your mind off worrying.”
He found me on the floor in the living room, surrounded by the browned apple core and an open algebra textbook and problem sets covered in Mr. Krutter’s red ink. He had come in so silently I wasn’t aware of him until I reached for another assignment and saw shoes. White loafers, no socks. Honestly, would Miami Vice never go off the air?
“No, no,” Eric Grant said as I reached for my scattered papers, “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“I didn’t know it was so late already. If it’s almost dinner, my uncle will be home soon, and I’ll need to straighten up.”
“It’s not so late. Only five-thirty. I’m early.”
“Oh.” Still, I could hardly study with him looking over my shoulder, and my heavily-corrected math assignments were an embarrassment.
He picked one of them up. “Factorization. Good stuff.” I snatched it back, cringing at my own rudeness, but he only said lightly, “Big test tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“I did all right at math.”
“It’s not my best subject,” I mumbled.
“I could help you, if you want. If any of these problems don’t make sense. No, really—” he shook off my automatic refusal, “it’s no big deal. I kind of miss school. I’ve thought that maybe when my work schedule allows, I might volunteer as a tutor.” My expression must have screamed skepticism because he laughed. “I may surprise you yet, Frannie. Here, do a good deed and let me practice on you. You wouldn’t want those future kids to suffer from my inexperience.”
Unable to think of a way to put him off, I swallowed my feeble protests and gave in.
Eric Grant was no Jonathan—he lacked my cousin’s inventiveness in attacking concepts from multiple angles—but he was no Tom, either, and he worked doggedly with me long after Tom would have called me an idiot and given up. When Uncle Paul showed up an hour later, a pleasing tableau met his eye: his wife reading on the sofa with her feet tucked under her while Eric Grant and I sat on either side of the coffee table, him grinning and me exclaiming, “I get it! Oh! That makes sense now. I think I can do the next one by myself.”
“Eric has been helping Frannie with her homework,” Aunt Marie said as Uncle Paul leaned down to kiss her forehead. “So nice that he came early.”
“There was less traffic than I thought,” Eric Grant explained, jumping to his feet to shake my uncle’s hand.
Uncle Paul beamed at me as I scribbled equations on my scratch paper and said, “If this is the result, young man, feel free to come as often and as early as you like.”
“Thank you, sir. You know, I’m glad to hear you say that because I actually might be around more. My lease is up end of the year, and I was talking to Tom today about the possibility of moving in with him.”
I didn’t have to see my aunt and uncle exchange glances to know they welcomed this news. Not only would such an eventuality make it easier for Tom to make rent on his own, but it would forestall Marcy moving in with him. For my part, I couldn’t greet the idea with equal enthusiasm. While Eric Grant was no Steve and Dave (who had fallen out with Tom some years ago over money borrowed supposedly from Tom, but effectively from Uncle Paul), he had his own checkered history with my cousin, and I doubted throwing the two of them together would bring out the best in either. Not to mention his treatment of Rachel and Julie. If Eric Grant became a fixture in our house we might never see the girls again, especially Rachel. It all seemed a high price to pay for some math tutoring.
Eric Grant’s good behavior continued through dinner, which we ate in the nook, since there were only five of us. He and Tom joked about interior decorating and living habits; he and my uncle talked fire extinguishers and prices of steel and hoses and manufactur
ing techniques and whether the next big country for offshore manufacturing would be Mexico or India. After fifteen minutes of this, Tom yawned openly and accused his friend of becoming a stuffed shirt and a bore, but Eric Grant didn’t rise to the bait. He did, however, change the subject. “I don’t want to monopolize the conversation. Say, Frannie, what else are you taking at school besides algebra?”
“The usual subjects,” I murmured.
“Tell Eric about your special Senior Research Project,” prompted Uncle Paul.
“That sounds serious,” joked Eric Grant. “And aren’t you still technically a junior?”
“Dad had to swing a deal with the school counselors if he ever wanted to see Frannie graduate,” drawled Tom. “Kidding, kidding,” he added, when his father’s eyebrows drew together.
“It’s true, though,” I admitted. “I do better at independent study and projects, so they’re letting me do a Senior Research Project instead of taking chemistry and physics. Mine will be about substance abuse and—and addiction.” As I feared, Eric Grant’s eyes cut over to Tom, and I added hastily, “I don’t know if you know, but when I was younger, my mother struggled with drug addiction.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Eric Grant.
Not as sorry as I was to bring it up. I wanted to scowl at Tom, too. Why did we all have to tiptoe around his thing with alcohol? “It’s all right. That’s how I came to live here with my cousins.”
“If it isn’t too personal a question—you say your mother ‘struggled.’ Is she not addicted anymore?”
I hoped Uncle Paul would answer for me, but when he didn’t, I said, “She got serious about getting clean when I was around twelve.”
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