We drove the few hundred yards to his house, which was not historical or plantation at all, but brick split-level. “Will this bother your mother?” I said. “Having us drop in like this?”
“Mom and Dad are divorced. She didn’t like being overwhelmed by Nearings. She says it was like being married to a clan instead of a man. She lives in Pennsylvania. I spend Christmas and all of July with her. Aunt Catherine lives with us.”
He sounded very matter-of-fact about it, but then, I sound very matter-of-fact about my father being dead all these years. I parked the car and we got out. Nick rolled up his window and went around and rolled up mine and said, “Got your keys?” and when I said I did, he locked the doors.
I must have looked surprised because he said, “A rash of robberies lately. Way out here in the boondocks. Doesn’t seem very neighborly, does it? We have to be pretty careful.”
We went up to the porch and he took my elbow and said, “The lower step is rickety. I have to replace it and I keep forgetting. Careful.”
I felt like Cinderella at the ball. My elbow actually felt special. Good grief, girl, I told myself, get a grip on yourself.
I walked in to face Aunt Catherine’s Brunswick stew. I hate Brunswick stew. Obviously, though, a new cousin just invited by her new aunt for a home-prepared meal does not say “Yuck!” when handed a plate.
“I hate Brunswick stew,” said Nick. “If you want to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with me, Nancy, I’ll make you one, too.”
Which is how Nick and I ended up in the kitchen talking while Mother and the new Nearings sat in the dining room working their way through genealogy and antiques.
Four
“I,” SAID NICK, “AM a peanut butter freak. Likewise a jam connoisseur. In peanut butter, I am featuring crunchy, smooth, old-fashioned stir-from-the-bottom, and Aunt Catherine’s homemade blender peanut butter from Uncle Norbert’s own peanuts. In jam I am offering Aunt Catherine’s own grape, red plum, hot pepper, and plain old strawberry.”
“Did you say hot pepper jam?”
“Actually it’s jelly. It’s peculiar. Usually you eat it with cream cheese on a cracker, I don’t know why.”
“What’s it taste like? Spicy?”
“No. Sort of tangy and strange. Sometimes I like it and mostly I don’t. Hot pepper jelly is a local specialty. I feel sure there was an Ency Nearing recipe for it in that cookbook.”
“No doubt. Could I try a speck of hot pepper jelly and cream cheese on a cracker, but really have Aunt Catherine’s homemade blender peanut butter from Uncle Norbert’s own peanuts with plain old strawberry jam?”
“A girl of sense. Certainly. Will you have this sandwich on white or Aunt Catherine’s own health loaf?”
“Aunt Catherine seems to do a lot of cooking.”
“What she mostly does,” said Nick, grinning again, “is eating.”
I decided on her health bread, and it was a very tasty choice. Nick sliced off pieces so thick I could hardly fit my mouth around the sandwich. I felt like Heidi on the mountain or something, eating my cottage-made goodies. The trouble with the kind of chewing I had to do was that I felt very conspicuous opening my mouth as wide as a whale’s jaws to fit it in. Nick seemed to be able to eat very neatly. My whole end of the table was a mess of crumbs and jam.
Nick furthermore was able to talk neatly, courteously, and very articulately with his mouth full. When I have a mouth full of peanut butter and jelly I can hardly even move my tongue. So he would deliver these long involved treatises with strings of adjectives and phrases and I would go “urhgoomph” and try to swallow.
And all the time I thought how marvelously cute he was. I really did like his eyebrows best. When he grinned his eyebrows would lift first, like a signal, and then the grin would zip around his face. “Do you cook, too,” I said, “or are you chiefly a sandwich-maker?”
“I have to clean up. Sometimes I have very mixed feelings when Aunt Catherine goes on a baking binge. The results are terrific but I hate to walk in here and see seven muffin tins and eleven cookie sheets and flour all over the floor and butter in the sink. I hate scouring pans.”
“My own personal life desire,” I said, “is to be able to eat all my meals out.”
“I don’t know. I like it both ways. I’d like to alternate meals, I think. Aunt Catherine’s cooking for supper, breakfast at McDonald’s, Aunt Catherine’s sandwiches, supper at the Steak House, and so on.”
“You’d still have to do an awful lot of cleaning up.”
“I know. Haven’t ever figured out a way around housework. And believe me, I’ve tried. My cousin Roy’s wife says a clean house is a sign of a misspent life.”
“She should visit us. She’d definitely feel we’d spent ours well.”
“Antiques do gather dust, don’t they?”
“You must look forward to going to Pennsylvania, Nick. No more kitchen chores there, huh?”
“Heck, no, it’s worse there. My mom is convinced I’m going to grow up to be a complete male chauvinist pig. She thinks one day I’ll get so sick of dishes and laundry I’ll get married just in order to find somebody else to do the dishes and laundry.”
“I’m sure it’s tempting. I’d get married in a second if I thought my husband would do all the dishes and laundry.”
We laughed.
“Anyway,” said Nick, “Mom feels the only way to endure housekeeping is to share it. And since she does it all year except Christmas and July, she figures my share is around the clock when I do visit. The only thing I know for sure about Pennsylvania is the price of linoleum shiner.”
How typical, I thought, how annoying, that my only conversation with a marvelous boy is the exact same conversation I’d have with my mother: dishes, kitchen, laundry, and chores.
Nick finished eating first, cleared the table, and slid the dishes into a plastic pan full of soapy water. He put away the jam and peanut butter, mopped up my mess, and went in to clear off the grown-ups’ table.
We talked and talked and talked while doing the dishes. I even told Nick why I’d gotten upset when he burst out laughing in the store, that I was thinking about my father’s laugh and what it was like and how I’d never heard it.
“I guess it’s good for me to hear you talk like that,” said Nick. “I get so sick of family, family, family. I shouldn’t take them for granted, I suppose.”
“I don’t see how you can take family for granted when your parents are divorced.” As soon as I said that I was horrified at myself. It was an awfully personal remark to make to somebody I barely knew. And a little rude, too.
Nick just smiled a little. “I guess you’re right, I don’t really take it for granted. My visits to Mom always include an exchange where she lectures me about sharing. Sharing chores, sharing cooking, sharing thoughts, and so forth. And I always ask her how come she doesn’t come back home and share a little bit with Dad and me. And then she loses her temper and stomps off.”
“What do you do when you visit her? Take lots of neat trips? Sit around talking? Or what?”
“We used to go camping a lot. Mom loves camping and hiking. But she has a pretty demanding job now and she only takes a week’s vacation, so we camp that week and the rest of July I just hang around. I’m not going to go up this year, actually. I haven’t told her that yet. I’m not looking forward to that phone call, I can tell you.”
“How come you’re not going?”
“Well, this sounds terrible, and I guess maybe it is terrible, but I have better things to do. I have two jobs lined up for summer.” He grinned at me. “Both of them beat antique house tours by a mile.”
“Tell me.” I hadn’t been able to find a job yet that Mother would let me take. The only one available was nights at a twenty-four-hour Quik-Stop store, and Mother was convinced it would be robbed while I was alone there.
“I’m going to be working from seven A.M. till three P.M. at the hospital as a janitor in the emergency ward and Thursday, Frid
ay, and Saturday nights I’m at the roller rink fitting roller skates.”
I laughed. “I love skating. Do you?”
“I can’t do it,” he admitted. “I’ve never managed to do anything like that. I can’t skate or ski, or even skateboard. I have a rotten sense of balance. But for this job it doesn’t matter. I just get out the skates and help the little kids lace them up and so forth. It pays pretty well and I really need the money. I’ll never get to college if I don’t get my act together and start saving.”
We talked about college and jobs and life and families and once I said something that Nick agreed with so much he actually lifted his Coke and clicked it against mine to toast me.
There is a word I came upon in my reading of paperback historical romances, although I have never heard anyone actually use the word out loud. Besotted. It feels very Middle Ages, and the idea of it is that everybody is hanging around in the castle hall drinking too much at the same time they’re falling in love—so they feel as if they’re almost too much in love!
I was pretty sure I was well on the road to being besotted.
From the dining room came my mother’s triumphant “Ah ha!” followed quickly by Aunt Catherine’s “Well, I swan!” and Mr. Nearing’s “Eureka!”
“Gold?” said Nick. “Silver?”
“No,” called his father. “The missing Robert Nearing.”
I rushed into the dining room to see what they had discovered. Spread out on the table—reaching from the end where the place mats and napkins were stacked to the opposite rim where the three people hovered—were genealogy tables written in tiny pinched letters on hand-drawn lines. Obviously, with as many children as all those Nearings had chosen to have, mass-produced genealogy charts allowing for two offspring were not very useful. I squinted at the tables. Way off at one side was a Robert Nearing, squished between one N. C. Nearing, one Rosemary Nearing m. Cal Stewart, one Lucy Nearing m. Ben Ransom (Rosemary and Lucy both had five children), and two more brothers whose names I could not make out. “So who is he?” I said.
“Well, my grandfather David Nearing’s sister Lucy married her fourth cousin Peter Nearing, and their son Matthew married his second cousin Catherine Nearing who had a son by a first marriage that Matthew adopted, and he—” Mr. Nearing’s face fell. “Oh no. I’ve got my sheets mixed up.” He realigned two of his pages. “There we go.” Everybody scrunched down to stare. It would have been easier if Aunt Catherine had not taken up so much more than her fair share of the space. “Now,” said Nick’s father. “This Robert’s father is Hartwell Nearing, the third son of Glory Fairchild and Evan Nearing, who is not Matthew’s adopted son after all, but—”
“No,” said Aunt Catherine, “you’re wrong. I remember Hartwell’s boys. Robert was my age and he was killed in Korea.”
“Nonsense. That was Marcus,” said Mr. Nearing.
“Call Glory,” said Aunt Catherine, “it’s her grandson.”
“You’re right,” he said, changing sides immediately. “Glory hasn’t got any missing grandsons. Do I have my sheets in the right order?”
Nick said, “Well, Nancy, it’s been nice meeting you. Enjoyed talking and all. I’ve got to run if I’m going to get to the play in time. See you.”
His father was muttering to himself. “Great-great-grandfather Marcus had seven sons, and the truth is that my great-uncle Lawson went to live in Washington state and we’ve completely lost track of him. He could have had scads of offspring.”
I said, “Thank you for making me a sandwich, Nick” and he said, “No problem,” and went off with his ponytail swinging, pounding up the half-stairs to the bedroom end of the split-level.
I went into the living room. Mr. Nearing’s specialty was Carolina country furniture. Everything was very old, dark, marred, and rather crudely made. It had a certain utilitarian beauty, although I myself want a house, someday, furnished in all upholstered things with lots of chrome and glass and wall-to-wall carpet. On the hardwood floors of this living room were a dozen or more rag rugs, scattered awkwardly, even treacherously, and all of them looked a little too old to be walked on. I chose a rocker and sat down gingerly, but the chair creaked so ominously I lifted myself out of it without exerting any more pressure on it. I went back into the kitchen, where the chairs were sturdy thick things from the Sears catalog.
I sighed. The adults’ conversation in the dining room was almost intolerable. The drive back home to Virginia seemed impossibly long, something I could never undertake. I began twirling a spoon Nick had forgotten to put away.
I decided to prod Mother along. Mr. Nearing and Aunt Catherine came into the kitchen to use the phone as I went back to the dining table. He began a complex conversation with somebody about the Ransom Nearing branch of the family. Aunt Catherine interrupted to say she remembered Connie’s baby perfectly and that he had gone to live in Colorado where he married somebody or other. My mother said, “Oh, Nancy, this is so exciting. Do you realize we may actually find some family for you? My, my, look at this bunch over here. Eleven children, and each one of them married, and the smallest family anyone had was six children, and all but three of them survived to have children, and that’s still two generations before Bob’s!”
I sat on the bottom step of the stairs and pleated my fingers in front of my face and worried about driving home in the dark. Headlights blind me. Roads without white lines terrify me. What if we got lost and drove forever in rural North Carolina?
“Uh, Nancy?” said Nick. “May I get by?”
I jumped up, flustered, and stepped on his sneaker. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you all right, Nick?”
“Sure. Tough toes run in the Nearing family.”
“Nancy,” said his father, “why don’t you go with Nick to this performance? It’s Gilbert and Sullivan. The Mikado. That way your mother and I can fuss over this for another few hours without worrying about how bored you’re getting.”
Nick looked as if his father had hit him. I thought of all the easy grins he’d given all day long. Here he had to spend time in public with me and he couldn’t summon one up. I said quickly, “I’d love that, but we have a four-hour drive ahead of us and we need to get started, don’t we, Mother?”
“I don’t see why. I’m not tired. I’ll drive home, Nancy, you go on with Nick.”
It was obviously fine with everybody but Nick.
His Aunt Catherine said, “Take my jeep, Nick, it’s not filled up with antiques like your father’s van. He forgot to unload it this morning after that auction.”
I said, “No, Nick, that’s okay. I brought a paperback along. I don’t want to impose on you.”
“Impose!” snorted his father. “Nick will have a fine time. Go along, you two.”
Nick hauled out a smile that made me flush almost painfully. It was very much an obedient, doing-my-duty smile. “I think it’ll be a pretty good show, Nancy. And you can meet some more cousins. Another Ency Nearing is the Lord High Executioner and my second cousin Sue Stewart is Yum Yum.”
My mother howled with laughter. “Nancy, what icing on the cake!” she chortled. “Cousins who are Lord High Executioner and Yum Yum. Have a good time, dear.”
“I wanted Nick to be in it,” said his father, “seeing as how he’s the only boy in the high school who already has a ponytail. The ones who are in the Chinamen chorus had to have ’em glued on. But he flunked the audition. Can’t match pitch. Even Gilbert and Sullivan requires that much.”
Nick’s smile was very tight. “Well, cousin,” he said to me, taking my arm, “let’s go. If I hear much more talk about my hair I’ll turn violent, so we’d better hurry.”
We clattered out the back door and hurried to the jeep parked out under some trees. Nick started the engine as if he were starting a war. We drove in complete silence the several miles to the school. All the time I wanted to jump out of the jeep, or apologize to him for being foisted off on him. But I was afraid I would burst into tears because I felt so awful about it, so I didn
’t say anything at all.
Five
WE CAME TO A red light and Nick stopped. The jeep was not particularly comfortable, although it was sort of neat to be sitting in one, with the little plastic zipped-up sides and doors and windows. I said, “It seems odd that your Aunt Catherine drives a jeep.”
“Listen, if she felt like it, Aunt Catherine could drive a herd of cattle.”
I tried to laugh, but Nick almost sounded as if he were yelling at me, so I just looked out the window instead.
We pulled into the high school parking lot. Usually I vault out of a car the instant it stops, but this time I just sat there, trying to tell myself that everything would be okay, that I could get through the evening all right, that I’d be fine no matter how humiliating it was, that it would probably give me more poise—and so forth. By the time I’d finished thinking all that, Nick had walked around and opened my door for me. Obviously it irritated him, that I was treating the evening like a date while for him it was an unwanted chore.
A boy and a girl got out of a Chrysler K car next to us, a lovely, brand-new, sparkling white model, and they both shouted. “Nicholas Nearing on a date! I don’t believe it,” said the boy. “Will wonders never cease.”
The girl was laughing. “About time, Nick. Introduce us.”
Nick said through his teeth, “This is just another cousin of mine. Nancy Nearing, this is Julie Hume and the jerk over there is Ben Earl.”
We barely had time to exchange hellos, because Nick was leaving for the auditorium and I had to trot after him. “Nick!” yelled a pair of boys. They loped over to us, grinning from ear to ear. “Who’s your girlfriend?”
Nancy and Nick Page 4