The Beresfords (21 page)

She was right. Tom’s quarter abroad stretched into two, and he didn’t return until February, after the newlyweds had already left for Phoenix. In lieu of attending the wedding, he sent a card. The enclosed photo featured Tom in bride-drag, clowning with Eric Grant before some Florentine church altar. Rachel threw it in the trash and not even Aunt Terri fished it out.

Despite saying she didn’t want an “extravaganza,” Rachel’s wedding was as over-the-top as time permitted: 150 guests, a live band, videographer, open bar at the country club. Most of her high school friends were away at college, but she managed to scare up the three nearest ones to be her bridesmaids, along with Julie and me. Aunt Terri wept loudly enough to make up for Aunt Marie’s serene silence and then found comfort in criticizing the florist’s offerings. Uncle Paul’s calm was harder-won than his wife’s. He choked up once during the toast and once during the father-bride dance before regaining control. Then he pressed a dry kiss to Rachel’s forehead and returned her to her groom.

My first pair of high heels made my feet throb, so when Jonathan finally left Caroline Grant’s side to take me for a spin around the dance floor, I was barefoot. It was a swing dance, which neither of us knew how to do, but we made up moves.

“Who would’ve thought it?” he grinned down at me after we botched a turn. “Just this summer I guessed they’d be one of those couples that broke up by Thanksgiving.”

“Like you and Tammy.” I clutched his hands.

That made him laugh. “Like me and Tammy. Guess there’s a lot I still have to learn about women.” His gaze flicked to Caroline Grant, who was chatting up Uncle Paul. She looked absolutely gorgeous in a one-shouldered, red-lace-over-satin gown. Feeling Jonathan’s eyes on her, she smiled sidelong and blew him a kiss. I stumbled over Jonathan’s foot.

“
Ow
! Whoa! Thank God you’re not wearing those lethal heels Rachel picked out for you bridesmaids. Deadly.”

“No one’s asked me to dance except you, Jonathan.”

He raised his hand and tried to twirl me under. “What do you mean? I distinctly saw you get up with Greg’s cousin.”

“He
had
to ask me. It was the wedding party dance. And he’s only fifteen, so he doesn’t count.”

“Listen to yourself: ‘fifteen doesn’t count,’” he teased. “I happen to know one fifteen-year-old who’s a big deal. Did you get the book I sent for your birthday, Frannie?” A gorgeous leather scrapbook with stitched birds and flowers and my name in the corner, embossed in gold.

I nodded, swallowing a sudden lump in my throat and almost running into him again. “I loved it. It was wonderful—perfect. I’m almost afraid to paste anything in it! I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me and—”

“You’re welcome. But this outpouring of gratitude shouldn’t be for me alone. Caroline was the one who spotted it and said, ‘That has Frannie written all over it.’”

“Oh! I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, she was down for the weekend and decided it was high time I found out what was in all those little shops in town. I was just going to make you a mix tape for the big day, so you’re lucky.”

On the contrary, my heart sunk a few notches lower. Weekends together? Where did she stay? In his apartment? And my joy in the album evaporated when I pictured Caroline Grant choosing it. “I would have liked the tape, too, Jonathan, because you made it.”

He shook his head, smiling. “I know, Frannie. But verily, verily, I say unto you, her taste is better than mine. And by the way, Caroline said she liked your hair this way and that she’s never seen you look better. But—here—the song’s ending and thank God because I’ve run out of directions to spin you. Let’s go join her so she can praise you to your face.”

The second and third weddings took place when I was a sophomore.

Tammy took me to Christmas tea at a fancy hotel in San Francisco. Her parents had moved to the City after Tammy’s little brother went to college, so I hadn’t seen much of her in recent years. I was flattered she remembered me enough to call out of the blue.

“Look at you!” she screeched after hugging me outside the BART station. “What happened to you?”

My hand flew to the zit that materialized on my forehead that morning, and I tugged on my bangs to hide it better. “Julie said I shouldn’t pop it.”

“Ha! You kill me, Frannie. I’m not talking about your pimple—I mean you look great! It’s not that you’re taller—you’ve been tall since you were twelve—but you’re filling out. Growing into yourself. Not looking so coltish anymore.”

“I have big news,” she announced when we sat with our squat teapot and tray of bite-sized goodies between us. “Can you guess?”

“You got accepted to nursing school?”

“Yes, and..?”

“And…then you’re going to be a missionary nurse?”

“Eventually. You’re on a roll, Frannie. And...?”

It wasn’t like it took a genius. These were the life goals Tammy trumpeted as long as I’d known her. The only other one I knew of, though, couldn’t possibly be part of her surprise. “You’re getting married?”

She slapped the table triumphantly, making the teacups rattle. “Bingo!”

“You are? For real? Do I know him?” I asked tentatively.

“Not a bit. His name is Brian and he’s an intern at my parents’ new church.” She rearranged the pots of jam and clotted cream and hummed tunelessly, at odds with the harpist’s rendition of
The First Noel
. “We met last year when I worked there.”

“That’s wonderful, Tammy! I’m happy for you!” I really was. At least one of us should get over Jonathan. Maybe there was hope for me, too. “Does he know he eventually has to go to med school and Guatemala?”

“Uh-huh. He’s studying for the MCATs as we speak. You’d like him. You
will
like him, when you meet him. I’m hoping I can convince you to be our Candle-Lighter-slash-Guestbook-Girl. I know it’s not a dress position, but between my college roommates and his two sisters—”

“I would love to!” I exclaimed, dismayed that she thought I would resent not being part of the bridal party. “I would be honored.”

“
Yay
!” She made little excited fists. “June—we’re still nailing it down.”

“June.” I cleared my throat. “Julie graduates on the 18
th
.”

Tammy whistled. “Wow. Already? Where’s she going to school, then?”

“Boston College.”

“So far away?”

“Yeah. Uncle Paul wasn’t happy about it, but lately Julie’s been trying to build a relationship with her mom who’s out in Boston. I think—” I hesitated—“I think she wants to get
as far away as she can. Uncle Paul got really strict after that one summer. You know. I don’t mind because there’s nowhere I want to go. But Julie—”

“But Julie,” said Tammy. She popped a chocolate in her mouth and rolled it around. “Well, don’t worry about June 18
th
anyhow, Frannie. It’ll probably be later in the month.”

I had wanted to avoid this.

“Oh—Tammy—maybe I spoke too soon. I’m in another wedding in late June. But if yours isn’t Saturday the 25
th
, I can be there.”

“Well, aren’t you in demand?” she teased. “Not just graduations but also weddings. Your friends are too young to get married, so who—don’t tell me Tom!”

“No, no, not Tom.” Though I lunged for the topic like a shipwreck victim for a spar. “He’s—I don’t think he wants to get married anytime soon. He’s…living with a girl named Samantha.”

Tammy sucked in her breath. “Ooh. Your poor family. But then that means—Rachel is already married—”

“It’s Jonathan,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Jonathan and Caroline Grant.” I felt the heat rise to my cheeks, but it was anger, not embarrassment. They’d been engaged for four months now—how long would it be before I could talk about it without going all red and feeling like I might throw up?

The waitress slouched over to check the temperature of our teapot. She was skinny with straggly hair and thick black eyeliner. Not exactly Merry
Olde
England. “Everything okay here?” Hardly, but Tammy and I both nodded vigorously to get rid of her.

“June 25
th
, huh? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. They’ve been together a few years now, and since he’s graduating…Did he accomplish his mission?”

“What mission?”

“You know—he told himself it was all about bringing her into the fold. Telling her about Christ or whatever.”

I stared down at the crumbled scone on my plate. “I guess she’s the same as she ever was. She’ll go to church with him occasionally, but mostly she just jokes about how she’s predestined for destruction. I didn’t know she knew those words, but Jonathan said she took a Bible-as-Literature course at Santa Clara. I don’t know, really. She’s always kidding, so it’s hard to tell.”

“Mm-hm. What does the Vessel of Wrath think about Jonathan going to seminary?”

“Vessel of Wrath?”

Tammy bit back her impatience. “Sorry—joke in poor taste. Paul calls those predestined for destruction ‘vessels of wrath.’
Romans
. Who cares—what does Caroline Grant think of Jonathan going to seminary?”

I knew what a vessel of wrath was. I was stalling. But there was no help for it. My cousin would face Tammy’s judgment eventually. “Jonathan’s putting it on hold for a couple years.”

I had asked him flat out in a moment when everyone wasn’t around to hear. His face, I remembered, was cheerful. “I always said it would be expensive, didn’t I, Frannie? And if I’m
taking on a wife that means I have to be even more careful about money. So it’s a couple years of slaving away at Core-Pro before I can go.”

“But Caroline wants you to go eventually, doesn’t she?” I asked, hardly above a croak. “She knows—she’s always known since she met you—how this was your dream.”

He gave a short sigh. Maybe it was more of a rueful chuckle. “She knows.”

When he addressed me again, after staring off into space a minute or two, his tone was deliberately hearty. “It’ll be great for Caroline to have you as a sister, Frannie. Or almost sister. You’ve always been my biggest believer.”

The double meaning of his words must not have struck him. And I, of course, pointed nothing out.

I thought Tammy would bluster about no-time-like-the-present or exhort-one-another-while-it-is-called-today but she didn’t. In fact, she didn’t look at all disturbed by my news. Had I been wrong to worry, then, that “later” for seminary might become “never”? Or maybe I was the only one who still clung to the dream of him being a pastor. Not Jonathan. Not Tammy. Just me. I pushed the scone crumbs to the far side of the plate.

“What’s he going to do instead?” she asked, as if he were deciding what to have for dinner.

“Work at Core-Pro, to save money.”

She said nothing, forcing me to speak again. To defend him. “He’ll go in a couple years. Hardly anyone goes to seminary straight out of college!” I was too loud. The ladies at the next table glanced over.  “And being in ministry doesn’t mean you have to have a degree in it,” I added in a lower voice. “You can serve God in whatever walk of life.”

“Sure you can,” Tammy soothed.

“Jonathan can serve God even working at Core-Pro. Being a pastor isn’t the only way.” I was talking in circles now.

“I didn’t say it was, Frannie. ‘Priesthood of all believers’ and such.”

“That’s exactly what he said.”

“I’m just sorry to hear it, is all.” Tammy was mellowing. A few years ago she would have been blood-and-thunder about it, but maybe she lost interest when he disappointed her that summer. “After all,
‘
way leads on to
way.
ʼ
Who knows if he’ll ever—I saw it coming, but I’m still sorry to hear it,” she said again. “I think—yes—at this point more for your sake than for his.”

“My sake? It’s none of my business,” I choked. “I’m okay.”

“I hope so. I know so. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Frannie, since…” She watched me gulp down another swallow of tea. “You’re not a kid anymore. You’re a sophomore in high school, soon the last bird in the Beresford nest. I know that gangly girl who idolized her cousin—she’s gone.”

“Yes.”

“So there isn’t any need, of course, for me to say anything ridiculous like, ‘Jonathan’s engaged to be married, and it wouldn’t be right for you to have feelings for him.’”

Something was grabbing me hard around the ribs and squeezing. I nearly dropped my teacup back onto its saucer. “No! No! How embarrassing. That was all a long time ago. I mean, I still—he’s still my favorite cousin—but I wouldn’t—I don’t—”

“Good.” She pressed my unsteady hand. “I figured as much.” Did she believe me, or did she just not want to think anyone capable of such pathetic devotion?

With a visible effort, Tammy shook the unpleasant topic off. “So, as long as it’s not the 18
th
or the 25
th
of June, you’re mine. And if it doesn’t work, we’re still going to have to get together because I’ve told Brian all about you whenever we talk about getting youth more involved…”