The Beresfords

by Christina Dudley

  by March 14

  * * * * *

  The card stood on my dresser, propped against the mirror by a small stuffed koala bear I’d named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Huffer, for short. Tucked away in the drawer beneath was the packet of correspondence my cousin sent me in the last two years: postcards of the Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, a kangaroo, Ayers Rock, the Chapel at Moore College. Among the postcards lay many letters, soft and worn from frequent reading. Because of the letters I knew he did his thesis on Bonhoeffer; I knew which carrel of the library caught the longest afternoon sunlight; I knew his favorite dishes in the dining commons and the ones to be avoided; I knew and held my breath when he was given the honor of preaching at student chapel; I knew when his divorce became final.

  And because of the letters I wrote back, Jonathan knew when I graduated high school (Huffer came then as my gift); he knew when Tom walked easily again and when he ran; he knew when I enrolled at Ohlone, taking two classes and working at the savings and loan half-time; he knew when Julie and Steve finally showed their faces, to be received more warmly than they expected. Some things I didn’t mention, but I imagine Uncle Paul and Aunt Marie caught him up when they visited. With his older son recovered and his younger son halfway around the world, Uncle Paul agreed at last to a sabbatical, and he and my aunt spent three months in Australia and New Zealand, including three weeks in Sydney with Jonathan. In between tourist attractions and campus tours and meeting Jonathan’s friends and professors, I pictured Uncle Paul taking him aside. Telling him that Eric and Rachel had broken up shortly after Jonathan left the country, and she and the child now occupied a spacious condo in San Francisco, courtesy of her ex-husband’s earnings. What Eric was up to after that, no one knew. He and his sister drifted from our lives. I pictured Jonathan asking about Tom and Marcy’s engagement and hearing his father’s quiet satisfaction. These two unions, Julie and Steve’s and Tom and Marcy’s, though so unpromising at the outset, might surprise us by working and lasting. I wondered if Uncle Paul mentioned that I was dating—one of the new interns at church named Todd. A nice enough young man. If he did say anything to Jonathan, I have no doubt he added (as he had to me) that I was too young to be considering anything seriously—I was only twenty-one. I had my college courses and job to think about.

  Funny. You would think my uncle had never sung any other tune.

  Jonathan’s flight was scheduled to come in at some god-awful hour. So when his taxi pulled up to the house around eight o’clock and he knocked softly, no one paid the least attention. Uncle Paul and Aunt Marie weren’t even home, having run out to buy last-minute things for the graduation reception.

  “Hold still, Frannie,” ordered Marcy, through the pins clamped in her mouth. “Stop pulling it up.”

  “The neckline is too low!” I whined, tugging at the ice-blue bridesmaid dress again. “Can’t we take that extra material from the waist and add it to the bodice?”

  “I’m not having a frumpy maid of honor. No way.” She pricked me with one of the pins and laughed when I squealed. “What d’you think, Tom? Doesn’t Frannie look nice?”

  “Frannie looks stunning,” declared Tom, throwing an arm around me. “Easily the best looking cousin I have.”

  “I should hope so,” said Marcy. “She’s the only cousin you have.”

  “That’s why I’m marrying you. For all your cousins.” He grinned at me. “A man’s got to have family, Frannie. Otherwise—Jon!”

  Marcy and I spun to find Jonathan in the foyer as Tom leapt past me to greet him. The brothers gripped each other hard, pulling away only so they could look each other up and down.

  “Man alive, Jon—you’re so tan. You look awesome—healthy again—like Crocodile Dundee. Reverend Crocodile Dundee.”

  “Tom—I’m nothing compared to you! I can’t believe it. You’d never know you were in an accident. You’re moving great and you’re—whuff!—strong as an ox!” —This, as Tom grabbed him in another bone-crushing hug.

  “It’s the woman cure. I swear by it. Paola and Frannie and Marcy’ve been waiting on me hand and foot. It’s been awesome. I highly recommend you get in a wreck yourself.”

  “No kidding,” said Jonathan. He shook Marcy’s extended hand before pulling her into a hug. “Congratulations to you two. Thanks for putting up with this brother of mine, Marcy. He’s a lucky guy.”

  “Aww,” said Marcy. “Good to see you again, Jon.” She’d always been rather awed by Jonathan, and a Master’s in Theology from exotic Australia didn’t help matters. Blushing, she tried to patch over her self-consciousness by turning the spotlight on me. “And here’s Frannie. We were just saying how beautiful Frannie looks in her bridesmaid dress. She thinks the neckline’s too low, but I think it’s perfect. What do you think?”

  If Jonathan had actually followed Marcy’s suggestion and taken a gander at my décolletage, he would have found it as suddenly scarlet as the rest of me. Thankfully we were equally embarrassed and barely made eye contact.

  “Frannie,” he murmured. At the same moment I blurted, “Welcome back.” And that was our reunion.

  That night I crept out my window onto the roof, the blanket I wrapped myself in dragging on the cool tiles. It was chilly outside but I wanted the cold air to clear my head so I could think.

  What did I feel for him, all those years, and what did I feel for him now?

  It made only too much sense that my childhood adoration metamorphosed into a full-fledged crush when I hit adolescence. There was nothing to prevent it. He was older, handsome, kind to me—one of the few people who paid me any attention or listened to me or cared for my opinion. How could I be blamed, then, for thinking he was perfect? I was not aware Jonathan had any weaknesses until he met Caroline and she brought them all to the fore. Until she revealed that Jonathan was as vulnerable as the next man to a pretty face and determined flirtation. I sat by, unable because of my age and self-doubt to open his eyes to the dangers she posed. I watched him make excuses for her; I saw him begin to compromise his own convictions, ones he had defended with ease when Tammy challenged them. And if Caroline convinced him she was meeting him halfway, it was only because he could no longer measure with any degree of accuracy. I held my tongue. And when he married her, the opportunity was past.

  There followed the years of guilt and wrestling. I could not strangle my feelings into silence overnight, but I did my best. It was mortifying to admit I loved someone who was married, even if I had loved him since I was six, and the shame of it burned me. I avoided him. Them. Thinking if I pretended it was not there it would eventually be true. Only to have everything blow up in my face on my eighteenth birthday—almost the very first time I talked to him alone. Our fight still made me cringe. But, as Jonathan himself had said, it brought about good things. He went back to God, and I tried with all sincerity of heart and effort to love Caroline.

  And I did learn to love her. As much as oil could love water. My first reaction, when I heard she left Jonathan, was dismay—not joy, as it might have been when I was sixteen. Dismay for him and hurt for myself, that she had kept herself so secret from me. That our lack of intimacy stemmed not only from incompatibility, but from a deliberate choice on her part.

  Those Grants. They were unfathomable. I chased the sister and the brother chased me, and in the end no one could say what they wanted after all.

  But Jonathan.

  Here I was, twenty-one years old and with a boyfriend for the first time in my life, and I hadn’t spared Todd one thought all evening. Please, Lord, I prayed, can I just be done with Jonathan? I mean, just stop being weird about him? Here Tom and I are, finally like brother and sister, and I never would’ve thought we could be. That’s you at work. Can you do a miracle in my heart with Jonathan? Can you purge my heart of everything that isn’t right with him? Can we be brother and sister, too?

  I sighed. How many times had I prayed this prayer? If I was sick of saying it, shouldn’t God be sick of hearing it? Th
e Unjust Judge granted the Persistent Widow’s petition just to get her off his back—where was I going wrong?

  And why, why, why, did Jonathan have to be so strange tonight, adding to my worries? He hardly spoke to me, and if I ever caught his eye, he looked away like he’d seen something embarrassing. Oh, God. I clapped my hands to my face even though it was dark and there was no one but God himself to see me. It’s because he knows. He knows I have inappropriate feelings for him, and he’s freaked out. Repulsed. Horrified. Doesn’t know how to respond. How to love me like he used to without making me think he loves me. Oh, God. Being away for two years and then coming back—it opened his eyes.

  I scrambled across the roof and dove into my room again. As I pulled the covers over my head, I thought this must have been how David felt when he wrote, “Let the darkness hide me and let the light around me turn into night.” Psalm 139! I groaned. Everything, everything, reminded me of Jonathan. “Fine,” I grunted. “If I can’t hide from you, Father in heaven, I certainly can hide from Jonathan. And I will. I don’t care how cowardly it is. I’ll hide until you make me better.”

  The first people to arrive at Jonathan’s graduation reception were Aunt Terri and Uncle Roger, with Rachel and little Jimmy in the backseat. An unspoken family truce had been declared when Rachel moved out of Eric Grant’s apartment, and even Uncle Paul didn’t try to convince her to go back to Greg by that point. Rachel was defiant and Uncle Paul reserved, but this gradually thawed into mutual politeness, nursed along by little Jimmy’s winning ways.

  “Uncle Tom!” hollered Jimmy, flying around the neatly-laid banquet tables to have Tom scoop him up and whirl him around.

  “Easy, Tom,” Rachel warned. “He’s going to kick over one of those centerpieces.” She nodded at me. For whatever reasons, our relations remained strained. Maybe she thought I resented her for stealing Eric Grant, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how I would go about explaining that I didn’t want him then, and that I certainly didn’t want him after he’d run off with a married woman.

  “This looks nice,” Aunt Terri sniffed, taking in the golf course green rolling away from the panoramic windows, the sparkling linens, and the buffet set-up. It grieved her to attend a family event in which she did not participate in the planning. “I hope there’ll be enough food.” Unable to find fault with the reception room, she accosted me next. “Well, aren’t you done up, Frannie? I’m sure that’s a new dress, and you hardly needed one, since everyone is here to look at Jonathan, and not at you.”

  “Lay off her, Aunt Terri,” drawled Tom. “If it is new, she bought it with her own money, so what’s it to you?”

  “Oh, Tom,” I said, torn between amusement and reproach as my aunt stormed off in a huff.

  “Oh, what? She never has anything nice to say to you, and I’m sick of it.”

  “She’s always been like that. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “Well, it bothers me.” He let the wiggling Jimmy down to run around and gave a loud wolf whistle when he caught sight of Marcy emerging with Aunt Marie, their arms full of pitchers of ice water.

  The guests began arriving shortly after, including the guest of honor, and I was glad I had begged Uncle Paul to let me work the bar so I wouldn’t have to mingle. I could just open bottles of white and red, fill glasses, slice limes. Better yet, Jonathan hardly ever drank. When he approached to request a Coke, I smiled my hello and then busied myself with the club’s fancy corkscrew.

  It was Rachel who returned multiple times for the Chardonnay, then the Merlot, then the Chardonnay again. And then, after the appetizers had been passed and the guests were seating themselves for dinner, she came for another glass of Merlot. “Come on, Fr-Frannie,” she slurred. “Quit hiding back there. You’re by me.”

  I had never seen her drunk before, and I hoped never to see her that way again because I can hardly recall a more unpleasant dinner. We were on the far end of the family table, buffered from the others by stalwart Uncle Roger on one side and little Jimmy on the other. Rachel waited for the salad to be served and the hum of music and conversation to swell before she leaned in toward me.

  “He never loved me, you know.”

  My heart sunk. I knew who she meant immediately, and I had no desire to hear any wine-induced confessions. “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

  “Not one bit. That’s why I left him.”

  I concentrated on buttering a roll for Jimmy, but Rachel swayed toward me again. “He loved you.”

  “Please, Rachel—”

  “Please, what? Don’t be-besmirch your ears with this? You’ve always been too good for the rest of us. No—no! Don’t move your chair. You’re going to hear this, Miss Goody Two Shoes. When he came out to New York I flirted with him. I admit it. I always thought he’d treated me like crap, making me think he liked me and taking what he wanted. But he was just playing with me. Well, I could play too. So I flirted with him. He didn’t respond at first. Caroline said I should leave him alone because he was in love with you—Frannie! I didn’t believe her, and why should I? She turned out to be no better than she should be, didn’t she? I didn’t care what Caroline said. I threw myself at Eric and—he gave in.” Rachel studied the Merlot in her glass as if it contained tea leaves she could read. Her lovely face was hard. “Weird. He was a mess after that. Had some kind of existential crisis. But he said he felt responsible for me and for his actions—really romantic stuff”—she gave a snort—“so I invited myself to live with him. He said he would marry me when my divorce went through. That that would be the right thing to do. But it didn’t go so well. He got more and more depressed. Started spending all his time at work. He looked at me and Jimmy sometimes like he had no idea how we got there. We started fighting. And then it all came out—that Caroline had told the truth. He had loved you—did love you. That he’d been the biggest fool the world had ever known and you would never love him now—never, never. I had no idea he could look like that or think like that or feel like that. Didn’t know he had it in him. He was still willing to marry me, but, well—what could I do? I mean, I have my pride, too. I took Jimmy and I left. So there you have it, Frannie, my sad, sordid story. Do you feel like you’ll never be clean again?”

  “Rachel.” The toasts were beginning. I blew my nose on my napkin and tried to avoid Jonathan’s gaze down the table. “Rachel, I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like I thought I was too good for you. I didn’t mean to. Sometimes I’m so awkward and shy that I come across that way, and I hate it about myself.”

  “Aah.” She waved my words away, her blue nail polish catching the candlelight like dragonfly wings.

  “I always loved you and Julie,” I persisted, just loud enough for her to hear me. “And I wished we were closer. I still wish it. Don’t shake your head, Rachel! Please don’t be angry at me that Eric Grant said those things. It’s not my fault. I never asked him to—to like me, and I wish, for your sake, that he could have treated you better all along.”

  There was a burst of applause. Uncle Paul sat down and Tom got up, taking the microphone.

  “But you are,” she almost sobbed, “better than me!”

  “No, no! Shhhh…” I clutched her hand under the table. Uncle Roger looked our way.

  Awareness dawned in Rachel’s eyes, and she lowered her voice to a hissing whisper, putting her mouth right next to my ear. “You are better than me—otherwise, why didn’t I recognize what a scumbag he was, all along?”

  Strangely, I found myself wanting to defend him. “I think he was getting better,” I whispered back. One thing I knew: even if Eric Grant didn’t remember God, God remembered Eric. If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself. “Eric Grant might even yet turn out all right. I think you were just too much temptation for him. You’re so pretty and all.”

  She gave me a watery smile. “Listen to you. Are you sure you’re not in love with him? Because if you are, I think even now you would just have to show up at his door and he woul
d fall at your feet.”

  “Shhh…don’t, Rachel. Let’s not talk about Eric Grant anymore. Or Caroline. They’re gone, and we’re still here. Everyone’s starting over. Let’s you and me start over, too, okay?”

  “Okay. I think I need to pee.”

  “Me too. I’ll go with you to the bathroom in just one minute. After Jonathan gives his speech.”

  “Jonathan!” she said, a shade too loudly. “He’s another one who thinks he’s better than the rest of us.”

  I kicked her foot. “That’s not a bit true. And every hard thing you went through with Eric, he went through with Caroline, and then some, so have a little mercy.”

  “God! You got me in the instep! But I guess I should have known. Jonathan never could do any wrong in your eyes. Honestly, you two were made for each other.”

  My face flamed, and I wanted to kick her again. Our new relationship was foundering on its maiden voyage. “Let’s go to the bathroom.”

  “But Jonathan’s speech!”

  “I think I’ve heard everything I need to hear. He’ll have to forgive me. Everyone will.”

  Without waiting to see if she would join me, I fled.

  Chapter 33

  I succeeded in avoiding Jonathan at his graduation reception—the conversation with Rachel supplying more than enough wretchedness for one evening—but I was not so fortunate the next weekend.

  While Uncle Paul and Aunt Marie chatted nearby at the coffee station, I waited on one of the benches in front of the church, glancing toward the breezeway every few minutes to see if Todd was coming. He had whisked me away to brunch last Sunday, but then been on a leaders’ retreat the rest of the week. The two of us had been “hanging out” for several months now. I never pressed him to clarify our status, something he appreciated at first (“Frannie, I love how you’re just so cool with everything—no games, no over-analyzing”), but which even he finally grew impatient with (“I told my mom you were my girlfriend. That was okay, wasn’t it?”).