The Beresfords (2 page)

“She said that?” I asked, forgetting myself.

Rachel and Julie had forgotten me, too. Julie scowled and went on like I hadn’t spoken: “Oh my gosh.
Chantelle
. Yeah—she was such an idiot. Caroline probably wouldn’t do that. You can tell she has healthy self-esteem. But did you think she was serious about all the girls liking her brother? I mean, I didn’t think he was that cute or anything.”

“Oh, no,” said Rachel quickly. “He was too short—barely taller than me.”

“And he didn’t play any sports but some tennis,” Greg added in a mulish voice. Like a spectator at an Eric Grant tennis match, he had done nothing but look on for the past couple hours. The rapid back-and-forth of the conversation left him struggling a beat behind, throwing his two cents’ in after the others moved on. After a few unsuccessful tugs on Rachel’s arm to tear her away, he gave up and spent the time punching a beach ball straight up in the air, counting how many consecutive hits he could get before it touched down.

“He had nice eyes,” Julie said, in her best, let’s-be-fair tone. “Eric Grant.”

“I guess,” said Rachel. “But I still don’t think he’s cute.”

“Smart, though. And pretty funny.”

“Yeah. But not cute.”

“Not that it matters,” persisted Julie. “It’s his sister Caroline who I really like.”

“Uh-huh. Me too.”

“Let’s invite her to come swimming again.”

“Definitely.”

“I suppose that means we have to invite Eric, since they’re twins and all, but it seems weird to invite a college boy over.”

Rachel tossed her head. “For you, maybe, since you’re only going to be a junior. But I’ve graduated now. It’s not so weird for me.”

“You’re graduated, but you haven’t gone to college yet,” said Julie irritably. “But, still—you totally could invite Eric Grant all you wanted, and he wouldn’t think it was weird, you know, because you already have a boyfriend.”

Rachel’s mouth clapped shut. She didn’t answer.

They left it at that and fell into thoughtful silence, Rachel only rousing herself when Greg had to leave for baseball practice.

And so Satan got his toehold.

By the time Jonathan pulled up I had relocated from the backyard to the front lawn. I was showered and wearing Rachel’s turquoise hand-me-down
Izod
shirt and Julia’s old
Jordache
jeans, cut off modestly mid-thigh. My flyaway white-blonde hair was braided into submission, but as time passed without him appearing, I unbraided it to drag anxious fingers through its length. More time passed; I braided it again.

Across the street and two doors down I saw my aunt Terri emerge, and, much as I hated to take my eyes off the road, I darted behind the oak tree closest to the front porch and waited until she disappeared into our house. Most likely she was looking for me, intent on giving me some chore, and when she didn’t find me she was sure to give my aunt Marie an earful about it. But Aunt Marie could bear it better than I at this point.

If only he would come!

Finally, finally, I saw his battered Civic hatchback take the corner. Uncle Paul had given each of his sons a lump of money upon graduating high school. Tom bought a flashy new Mazda RX-7 and blew through the rest going on a road trip with friends, but Jonathan got the cheapest used car he could find and put the balance in the bank. “Seminary can be expensive, Frannie,” he explained. “Dad and Mom are paying for college, but I can’t expect them to cover graduate school. Especially when I want to study something that will never lead to any money.” I was the only one who knew Jonathan wanted to be a pastor. That he had felt “called” since he was my age and went on the youth retreat.

With one glance toward the front door and living room window—no Aunt Terri, thank God—I ran out to meet him.

“Frannie!” He waved one tanned arm out the rolled-down window. “How’s my favorite cousin?”

Fine—more than fine—now that he was home. I took a good, long look at him. I hadn’t seen him since Christmastime, because everyone at Westmont spent Spring Break on mission trips to Mexico. He seemed older now, more filled-out. The little highlights in his wavy brown hair and his tan made his eyes look bluer. Maybe he studied for finals outside in the Southern California sunshine.

Despite the happiness flooding me, it bothered me to be called cousin. Why not just Frannie? And when he sprang out of the car and swooped me up in a big hug, I felt my pulse race and my stomach go all wobbly.

Was this what Rachel felt when she was with Greg? I doubted it. Was this what she and Julie felt, having met that Grant person? But I didn’t want to think about the Grants now, not with my best friend here. Not just best friend—Jonathan, the best person I knew in the whole world.

I had that one little moment with him at his homecoming, before Rachel and Julie and Aunt Terri came out to welcome him and he went in amid the hubbub to greet his stepmother. And then there were twenty-four hours before he met Caroline Grant.

Hungry Caroline Grant, disguised as an angel of light.

My Beresford cousins weren’t really my cousins. Not by blood, anyhow. When I first found this out, it was a blow. It also meant my aunt Terri wasn’t a blood relation either, but that didn’t come close to making up for it.

“My brother’s family took you in out of the goodness of their hearts,” said Aunt Terri. This phrase would be the refrain of my childhood and adolescence. The goodness of their hearts. The Beresfords took me in out of the Goodness of Their Hearts.

My aunt Marie
was
blood. Unlike my mother, who ran away from home when she was sixteen with Rob Carmen (who was no good, and whose name she could never say without a curse and a spit), Aunt Marie was the good girl who stayed home and went to Christian college and got married before she graduated to Paul Beresford. Wealthy Paul Beresford, wild child son of the college president. He was fifteen years older and already had four kids from his previous marriage. Some women would have been daunted by an antagonistic ex-wife and all those children—Julie was only an infant!—but Aunt Marie’s temperament didn’t allow her to get worked up about anything. That, and Paul Beresford always had enough money for full-time help, housekeepers and nannies, sitters and tutors and drivers. My future cousins realized soon enough that their new stepmother had zero ambition to parent them. She was fond of them, certainly, but not enough to bother with their upbringing. That was left to her husband’s older sister, their aunt Terri.

Aunt Terri and Uncle Roger (whom few ever heard speak) had no children of their own. When her brother’s first marriage fell apart, Aunt Terri seized her opportunity to fill the gap. She oversaw the children’s schooling, liaised between the warring exes to set up the visitation schedule, drove Tom and Jonathan to baseball practice and the girls to ballet. For a time she even tried to light a fire under Aunt Marie—get her to do PTA or start a neighborhood book club or serve on the Women’s Ministries Committee at church. But there, an unstoppable force met an immovable object, and the immovable object won. So Aunt Terri joined the PTA herself; Aunt Terri moved two doors down and started the book club; Aunt Terri headed the church committee.

And Aunt Terri decided something must be done about me.

For the first several years Uncle Paul and Aunt Marie were married, she didn’t know I existed. She knew Aunt Marie had an estranged sister who was in and out of trouble, but that was it until one Christmas. The presents were unwrapped, paper and ribbons and tissue and tinsel lay everywhere, Tom stole Jonathan’s new Nerf football and was
beaning
his sisters with it, Uncle Paul was poking the fire and grumbling about who shut the blasted damper when that just filled the room with smoke, and Aunt Marie was plopped on the sectional with a glass of wine, two tears running down her cheeks.

“Good Lord, Marie, have you got a cold?” Terri demanded. “Didn’t you take those supplements I recommended? I haven’t been sick a day since I started them. I keep trying to get Roger to double up the dose because he has the weakest immune system a man can have without being actually dead. Always catching every least little bug—”

“I took the supplements,” said Marie in her mild voice. “It’s my sister. Her neighbor tells me she’s in jail again, and the child went to a foster home.”

“What—
jail
?
Child?
What on earth are you talking about, Marie?”

“My sister went to jail again, and the child was placed in a foster home.”

“I heard you the first time! I just don’t have the faintest idea what you mean. What child, Marie?”

“Beverly’s daughter Francine. I think she calls her Frannie. She’s six, maybe.”

“Your sister has a
child
? Your drug-addicted runaway sister who’s always getting arrested? You never mentioned—I—but who’s the father? And where is
he
in all this?”

Marie shrugged. “I don’t know if Bev knows who he is. Or if the father would want the child if she did. Poor thing.”

Terri was dumbfounded. She sank onto the couch beside her sister-in-law, not bothering to sweep aside the mountain of crumpled paper and garment boxes. “Does Paul know about this?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What does he plan to do?”

“Do?”

“Do. What does Paul plan to do about it?”

“Nothing, I guess. There’s nothing we can do about Bev being in jail. She makes her own choices. It’s probably the safest place for her now.”

“I don’t mean Bev. No one can help her till she decides to help herself. She’s in God’s hands. I mean the child. What will we do about the child?”

Marie only stared at her until Terri gave up and transferred her attack to Paul. “Paul, what is this about you having a niece in foster care!”

“Awful, isn’t it? Beverly’s made a hot mess of her life, and that poor kid is the casualty.”

“If the mother is in and out of jail, it’s just a matter of time until the child is permanently taken from her! Do you think we need to step in? Imagine Tom and Jonathan and Rachel and Julie having a cousin—their only cousin—in foster care.”

“They aren’t actually related, technically,” Paul pointed out. “More like
stepcousins
.”

“That may be, but this
stepcousin
is all your children have. Paul—there are so many bad stories about foster care. Girls being—well—some of those homes are not ideal. This child is six! I think—yes—maybe God put us in her life for such a time as this!
We need to do something, Paul.”

“
‘
We’ need to do something?” repeated Paul.

“Yes,” said his sister emphatically.

“
‘
We’ meaning ‘me.’”

This gave her pause. “Well—yes,
you
. Roger and I are no relation, after all. No court is going to give the child to
us
. And it would be odd for her to live two doors down from her real aunt’s family. Think how unpleasant it would be to live in a quiet old fuddy-duddy home like Roger’s and mine. Almost as bad as foster care! You have this enormous house and all her
cousins to play with. Or almost cousins. Besides, I am devoted to your children. Beverly’s child would fall to my responsibility whether she lived in my house or yours. You could convert the play room into a bedroom for the three girls—how fun for them to be together. Like a slumber party every night.”

Uncle Paul cleared his throat. Once. Twice.

Aunt Terri went in for the kill. “She’s younger even than Rachel and Julie, Paul. Think what a positive influence they could have on her. You wouldn’t just be saving a life, you would be giving the world a gift—one fewer drug addict, one more functional citizen. Yes. The three girls could share the play room—it’s so enormous—or Frannie could just have Julie’s bedroom. It’s the smaller one.”

As it turned out, however, Rachel and Julie had no intention of giving up either the play room or their separate bedrooms to share with an unknown “cousin,” so before I came Uncle Paul had to do some remodeling. A room was carved out from the loft in the garage, and if it was a little drafty in winter or a little noisy year-round from the automatic door going up and down, I didn’t notice, awestruck as I was by the size of the Beresfords’ home. A sprawling, hacienda-style ranch house,
stuccoed
tan with a red tile roof, it boasted five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a playroom, den, sun porch, and four-car garage, all set on a half acre of bowling-green lawn studded with oaks and bay trees. The swimming pool and hot tub came later, when Tom hit high school, but it was already more than enough to overwhelm the average child, much less one like me who had only known a succession of studio apartments next door to strip malls. I, who had been awed by the grandeur of the foster home from which I was plucked, the sagging half of a duplex on a busy street. No, I had no objection to the size or furnishings of my garage bedroom. My mother and I could have fit in it twice over. What bothered me was the distance from everyone else. To get to the main house or the closest of the seven bathrooms, I had to go outside and down a wooden staircase to the side door, in daylight or darkness, clear skies or rain. I never voiced my misgivings, conscious as I was from the outset of the Goodness of the Beresfords’ Hearts, but when I was about seven and had been with them for some months, Jonathan found me in the laundry room one morning, stuffing my sheets in the washer, my shoulders shaking.