The Beresfords (27 page)

Eric Grant’s good behavior continued through dinner, which we ate in the nook, since there were only five of us. He and Tom joked about interior decorating and living habits; he and my uncle talked fire extinguishers and prices of steel and hoses and manufacturing techniques and whether the next big country for offshore manufacturing would be Mexico or India. After fifteen minutes of this, Tom yawned openly and accused his friend of becoming a stuffed shirt and a bore, but Eric Grant didn’t rise to the bait. He did, however, change the subject. “I don’t want to monopolize the conversation. Say, Frannie, what else are you taking at school besides algebra?”

“The usual subjects,” I murmured.

“Tell Eric about your special Senior Research Project,” prompted Uncle Paul.

“That sounds serious,” joked Eric Grant. “And aren’t you still technically a junior?”

“Dad had to swing a deal with the school counselors if he ever wanted to see Frannie graduate,” drawled Tom. “Kidding, kidding,” he added, when his father’s eyebrows drew together.

“It’s true, though,” I admitted. “I do better at independent study and projects, so they’re letting me do a Senior Research Project instead of taking chemistry and physics. Mine will be about substance abuse and—and addiction.” As I feared, Eric Grant’s eyes cut over to Tom, and I added hastily, “I don’t know if you know, but when I was younger, my mother struggled with drug addiction.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Eric Grant.

Not as sorry as I was to bring it up. I wanted to scowl at Tom, too. Why did we all have to tiptoe around his thing with alcohol? “It’s all right. That’s how I came to live here with my cousins.”

“If it isn’t too personal a question—you say your mother ‘struggled.’ Is she not addicted anymore?”

I hoped Uncle Paul would answer for me, but when he didn’t, I said, “She got serious about getting clean when I was around twelve.”

“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 s
old
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.

“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 spirit 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.”