The Beresfords

by Christina Dudley

“Good for her.” There was another pause. Tom reached for the bowl of Spanish rice and dumped a scoop on his plate. Eric Grant studied me. “Did you ever consider living with your mom again after she got her act together?”

  “It didn’t happen overnight,” Aunt Marie spoke up. “And by then we couldn’t do without Frannie.”

  A rush of affection for her swamped my throat and I groped for my water glass. “I don’t think it was an option, though, really,” I added when I was recovered. “My mother married a year or two later. I have a half-brother and half-sister now.”

  “Wow! Have you ever met them?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve only seen pictures and said hi to them if they answered the phone.”

  “Don’t you want to meet them? Aren’t you curious?”

  “Maybe someday.” I could hardly tell him that, whatever my feelings, my mother had never extended an invitation. I was replaced. I was the reminder of that Time in Her Life which she would probably rather forget. “But I hope maybe she’ll let me interview her at some point for my project.”

  He asked me another question or two, which I answered in the minimum possible words, but I didn’t mind them as much as I would have only a few days earlier. I could not forget how he had treated Rachel and Julie, even so recently as Jonathan and Caroline’s wedding, but there was no sign of that careless, callous young man now. He was muted. Polite. Thoughtful. And his patient help with my algebra problems might be the difference between me passing or failing my unit test. I could not be otherwise than grateful.

  Still, when I went upstairs to finish my homework, no pangs at saying good-bye assaulted me. I was, on balance, still more relieved than regretful.

  “Steel Magnolias is sold out? Are you positive?” I demanded, my face falling.

  The boy in the ticket booth shrugged. “Opening weekend,” his voice crackled through the speaker in the window. “What d’you expect? You could see Halloween 5. Plenty of room left in that theater.”

  Caroline laughed as she tugged on my arm. “Do we look like Halloween 5 material? C’mon, Frannie, we can go get ice cream instead.”

  The thought of sitting across a table from her and making conversation for an hour daunted me. Yes, I intended to develop a friendship with her, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it wouldn’t have been built in a millennium with such mismatched materials as Caroline and me.

  “There’s another theater,” I volunteered. “It shows movies that have been out forever, but When Harry Met Sally is playing now.”

  “I love that movie! I swear it must be out on video already. Jonathan and I saw that way back in July.”

  “I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Then by all means!” She hopped in her CRX and leaned over to unlock my door, her dark eyes mischievous. “Some parts of it might shock you, though, Frannie. But I guess you’re eighteen now, in the letter of the law, if not in spirit.”

  Caroline was referring, of course, to the scene in the restaurant where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm—a scene she herself all but howled through, even though the two of us were almost the only people in the theater. I wondered as I stared straight ahead if she laughed that hard when she saw it with Jonathan, or if he found the scene anywhere near as funny.

  “So? Did you like it?” Caroline asked as she drove me home.

  “Yes. I was glad they ended up together.”

  “Of course they ended up together, silly. It’s a romantic comedy. Generic considerations, you know. If it were Halloween 5 he would have taken a chainsaw to her.”

  “But it took them so long to figure out they belonged together that I was worried they might never.”

  “Alas, poor innocent.”

  “Did you and—did you and Jonathan know right away you belonged together?” I fiddled with my wallet zipper as I asked, but I still caught her impatient movement.

  “Who knows? I suppose we both took a little convincing. I was—I don’t know—not his usual type, and he certainly wasn’t mine. I didn’t want to get married so young, either, but when you meet a guy like your cousin—”

  She trailed off with another shrug. When you meet a guy like Jonathan—what? I wondered. You forget all about yourself and your original plans because you want him on any terms? Or did she mean something like Rachel had expressed—that she would have been fine living together, but Jonathan insisted on marriage as a context?

  “Who wants to talk about old married couples after they’ve seen a romantic comedy?” Caroline teased. “It’s much more fun to talk about the thrill of the chase. Tell me, Frannie, do you like anyone?”

  We were stopped at a light and she turned in her seat to study me.

  “No,” I said, too quickly. “No one.”

  “Really no one, or you don’t want to tell me?”

  “Really no one.”

  “But I bet some boy likes you.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Come on, Frannie. We’re practically sisters-in-law now. Are you telling me no boy has ever said he liked you or asked you to a dance or something? Who’d you go to Homecoming with?”

  “I didn’t go to Homecoming. The light is green.”

  She gunned it, but the third degree wasn’t over. Caroline was only waiting until we pulled into the driveway and wouldn’t be interrupted because she stopped me when I went to open my door. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

  At the look on my face she whooped with laughter. “Frannie, you are too much. I’ve never known such a babe in the woods as you, unless it was my dear husband when I met him. Fine, fine—you haven’t kissed anyone. It’s not that big a deal. And I’m betting you could find some willing guys to experiment on now.”

  Thank God everything was gray in the dim light cast by the street lamp, otherwise she would have seen me turn five shades of crimson. “Thank you for the movie,” I managed.

  She groaned. “Don’t be like that! I’m sorry I embarrassed you, you funny thing. I was just curious. Getting to know you better. I do happen to know one person who thinks you’re pretty cute.”

  I pressed my lips together. Did he?

  “My brother!” she shrieked.

  Oh.

  Caroline gawked at me. “What is up with you? Who did you think I was going to say—your uncle Paul? No, dopey. Eric said he helped you with your math yesterday and that he can’t believe he never noticed you were so pretty.”

  “Stop.”

  “I thought you’d be thrilled. You have no idea how many girls would be, if Eric said that about them.”

  She was wrong there. I had some idea, since two of the girls were my cousins.

  “There’s even this girl he works with who is constantly throwing herself at him. So unprofessional. Not that he pays the least attention, of course. Tell me—don’t you think Eric is charming?”

  “He’s old,” I said.

  “We are twenty-four, thank you very much. Oh, don’t get all excited. I knew you meant too old for you. Not that I agree with you. You are eighteen, after all. A young adult. I dated a college guy when I was fifteen, and my mother freaked out. I thought it was cool, though.”

  All in all, I couldn’t say that first evening Caroline and I spent, with only each other for company, was a success. She alarmed me and I bored her. But it was a good-faith effort. And, for now, that would have to do.

  Chapter 22

  “We’ve never seen him here before, have we, Frannie.” From anyone else it would have been a question, but Aunt Marie lacked the curiosity to push the statement to a question’s heights.

  We were in our usual pew: the third from the front on the lefthand side. Uncle Paul always liked to arrive twenty minutes before service began to ensure no one else sat there, a measure hardly necessary except during Advent. I looked up from my program where I had been reading the announcements. Volunteers needed to stuff church bulletin. — Have a welcoming spirit? Serve as an usher.

  It took me a second to recognize Eric Grant. An usher with a welcoming spiri
t led him to a seat directly across the sanctuary, and he was looking apologetic as he squeezed past a woman whose purse could have stowed a small child.

  “It’s the Grant young man,” said Uncle Paul, when I didn’t answer. There was an inflection in his voice that disturbed me. An awareness. Of what?

  “Yes,” Aunt Marie rejoined. “Eric. He’s never come before. Maybe Jonathan and Caroline are coming today.”

  “They don’t go here, Aunt Marie,” I murmured.

  “Mm. I forgot. Maybe he’s here with Tom, then.”

  Uncle Paul grimaced. I knew both he and I were thinking Tom had likely not set foot in church since he left for college, but neither one of us wanted to point this out to his stepmother. Let her think it was Tom.

  “Hadn’t we better invite him to sit with us, Paul? I suppose he’s family, in a way.” She patted my knee. “Go ask him, Frannie. We can squeeze.”

  “Oh, no, Aunt Marie. He’s all settled.”

  “He can’t be very comfortable,” she mused. “That woman’s purse is half on his lap. Go on, Frannie. Don’t be shy. Think of all that math he’s helped you with almost every week.”

  Her uncharacteristic insistence left me no choice. Miserably I rose and skulked down one side aisle and up the other so that I would not have to cross in front, in full view of the gathering congregation. By the time I drew near to Eric Grant’s seat, he and the purse woman were watching me.

  “Hello,” I muttered to him. To the woman I nodded and managed a more polite good-morning. “My aunt and uncle wondered if you would like to sit with us.”

  He sprung up before the words left my mouth, smiling readily and giving the purse woman another apologetic look that quite melted away her annoyance at having, once more, to shift her luggage. The opening chords of the prelude spared me having to talk as we made our way back, but I was dismayed to see my aunt and uncle budge up, leaving me and Eric Grant to press into the remaining space. I always sat by my aunt and Eric Grant was going to let me enter the pew first until Aunt Marie nodded at him and tapped the cushion beside her.

  “She must think I’ll misbehave,” he whispered, giving me a wink.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  The service never seemed longer. If I sat normally, my thigh pressed his. So I crossed my legs. When we rose for the anthem, his elbow touched mine as we shared the hymnal. I remembered the very first time I saw him, by the pool that one summer, when his sister made fun of his singing. He didn’t sing now, but I supposed that was because the tunes were unfamiliar, and I, an indifferent singer to begin with, felt my voice altogether stolen away by the awkwardness of the situation.

  When the pastor directed us to the day’s reading, I reached for the pew Bible, only to have Eric Grant pluck it from the rack. He flipped it open and thumbed his way to Ephesians 2:13 while Aunt Marie was still mouthing the “General Electric Power Company” mnemonic to herself.

  “How quick you are,” she praised him. “The epistles are so short I can never find them.”

  “They’re easier to locate than the minor prophets,” was Eric Grant’s astonishing reply. I felt the glance he gave me but kept my head down.

  Communal Bible reading was never my favorite part of the morning. In order to get everyone through the passage in reasonable unison, we had to deliver the verses in slow, short phrases, and I usually found myself more concerned with not getting ahead or falling behind than with understanding the actual meaning. This morning, with such a person beside me, my mouth could hardly form the words. I was paralyzed by self-consciousness.

  Not so Eric Grant. He might not sing, but he could read aloud, and feelingly. From his lips, I heard the passage as I had heard few before:

  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.

  He read, not in the sleepy drone of habit, but as if he had never seen such words before. Maybe he hadn’t. When everyone else closed their Bibles and replaced them in the racks, Eric Grant continued to stare at his, only shutting it when the pastor rose to give the sermon.

  “‘Hostile’ is not a word we use often,” said Pastor Donald, gripping the wooden pulpit with both hands as if he were on a ship at sea. “We do not think of ourselves as hostile people—we may think, on the contrary, that we are peaceable people—and yet the apostle Paul tells us we are at war. With ourselves, with others, with God. We war with ourselves because we cannot be the people we want to be. We war with others because they are not perfect and they hurt and disappoint us. We war with God because we want to go our own way, no matter where it takes us, even to our harm…”

  He was right about me—Pastor Donald. Or, I suppose, the apostle Paul. I was at war. And on all three fronts. Not that I didn’t behave—I did—I was more like a covert operative, which was worse because it was secretive. I could not be the person I wanted to be, deep down.

  With Jonathan I was proper and reserved. I no longer sought him out; I did not play and replay past memories; I did not try to call anymore on that bond we once had. If he noticed he said nothing, did nothing about it. And I left it there.

  With Caroline I was dogged in my duty. We hung out nearly every other week—movies, shopping, running errands. But it was always deliberate and it was always work. We never plunged into confidences or surprised each other with bursts of affection. For two people so dissimilar it was impossible to draw nearer than arm’s length. Did she know, I always wondered, that I used to love her husband? Or that—if the thought slipped past my barriers and wasn’t instantly annihilated by a hammer-blow of guilt—I might just love him still? But I would not go down that road, even in my thoughts. The hammer-blow always came: Jonathan was a married man. Feelings that were understandable, even sweet, at a younger age were unforgiveable at eighteen. I was horrible. Horrible. A sneaky, wretched human being.

  My inability to feel toward my cousin as I ought separated me from him, a distance complicated by the ribbon of anger running through it. Why did Jonathan not notice that we were estranged? Had he never cared for me as I thought he had, all along? What happened to the better-than-a-brother I grew up with? We war with others because they are not perfect and they hurt and disappoint us.

  As for God, I was certain my unruly heart grieved him. Picturing him, as I was wont to do, as a bearded version of Uncle Paul, I knew exactly how disappointment furrowed his brow, how his mouth pressed into a concerned line. My prayers grew timid. I still prayed often, but now they were dry, surface offerings that stayed clear of my heart’s murky depths. I didn’t “go my own way,” as Pastor Donald put it; I went God’s way—sort of. My outward behavior conformed. It wasn’t war, really, so much as a fragile ceasefire. If I follow you in every other way, Father in heaven, will you please overlook the teeny tiny place where I am hopeless?

  “If you are at a stand-off in your life,” Pastor Donald was saying, when my mind returned from its wanderings, “call on Christ. Remember the words Paul uses in this passage: Christ brings us near; he makes us one with our brothers and with God; he breaks down the wall of hostility; he abolishes the law of rule-keeping; he creates a new man; he makes peace; he reconciles; he ends hostility. Pray these as promises. In fact—yes—we’re going to pray these right now together. Let’s bow our heads. In the quiet of your heart, say with me, ‘Jesus, bring me near. Jesus, break down the walls that separate me from you and from others. Make me new by your righteousness, and not my own. I don’t want war anymore, Jesus, I want peace. By your work on the cross, reconcile me. To myself. To others. To you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.’”

  I raised my head again, swallowing hard against the frog in my throat and wishin
g I could be by myself and not in public sitting beside stupid Eric Grant. I needed to think over what I heard without any curious eyes, but there was still the offertory and communion and the closing song to get through, and then brunch with my aunt and uncle. But at brunch Uncle Paul would read the paper and Aunt Marie would leave me alone, so really it was just a few more minutes till I was rid of my unwanted companion. I folded my hands in my lap and stared straight ahead, prepared to grit it out.

  “Have you eaten? You’d be welcome to join us for brunch.” Uncle Paul leaned across his wife to address Eric Grant after Pastor Donald delivered the benediction.

  We often went to the Irvington Cafe after Sunday service. When all my cousins were still home these were noisy affairs, but they became gradually more and more quiet until only I was left and we ate in near silence. I knew my uncle missed my cousins as much as I did because several times he invited Aunt Terri and Uncle Roger to join us. A few meals with his sister, however, made silence comparatively attractive, and nowadays Uncle Paul disappeared behind the front page after ordering his scrambled eggs and corned beef hash.

  “Would that be all right?” Eric Grant asked. “I would love to. I would really like to talk about the service.” He couldn’t have chanced upon words more likely to please my uncle, and with a sinking heart, I followed the rest of them out of the pew.

  “A new guy,” drawled Jennifer the waitress, giving Eric Grant an appraising look from heavily eye-shadowed lids. “Not one of your boys, Mr. Beresford. This must be The Boyfriend.”

  “Oh, no,” I protested, shaking my head vehemently. “He’s—he’s—”

  “I’m family, of sorts,” he said. I expected him to add something teasing or flirty as he seemed to do with any woman under thirty-five, and when he didn’t, I stole a peek at him. He gave me a slight smile. Not nasty, just reassuring.

  Jennifer led us to our usual booth where Aunt Marie slid in automatically beside Uncle Paul, leaving me next to Eric Grant again. “You need a few minutes?” the waitress asked him. “I already know what everybody else wants.”