The Beresfords (39 page)

“Yes, Pastor Tim. I will.”

I started that very night, in bed with my Bible and a flashlight. And I realized, when I re-read the entire psalm, that Pastor Tim’s wonderful benediction, which so lifted the burden from my shaking shoulders, was taken from the psalm itself. They were David’s own words. His own prayers.

And now they were mine.

I didn’t have a chance to go back and report on my progress to Pastor Tim because four days later Jonathan himself showed up on the Dawes’ doorstep.

I had the Slip
ʼ
n
Slide set up for Robbie and Jamie in the backyard, which wasn’t really a backyard because the fence separating it from the front yard had fallen down in places or rotted through. Robbie was cruising along in his Batman underwear, trying to spin as he slid, while I picked prickles out of a screaming Jamie’s forearms.

“
Shhhh
…it’s okay.”

“They’re
blee
-e-e-e-
eding
!”

“They’ll stop in a minute.
There. That was the last one. Do you want to sit with me until you feel better?
Shhh
….Stop hollering in my ear, Jamie. At least point the other way.” But she didn’t, so I ripped my thighs off the plastic chair to move myself.

He was standing at the corner of the house, one hand on the peeling siding, a bemused look on his face. His hair was shorter. Browner, from being inside all summer. And I wasn’t the only one who lost weight. My cousin appeared almost gaunt.

For a second neither one of us said anything. My first thought—after I absorbed the bizarre fact that Jonathan really truly was in Loveland, Colorado, not ten feet from me—was that Tom was dead. What else would break the Beresford silence and bring Jonathan out to me? I pictured him arguing with his father and Aunt Terri that
someone
needed to tell me, and not over the phone.

Jamie’s shrieking broke off abruptly and Robbie scrambled to his feet from the end of the slide. “Who are you?”

My cousin advanced toward us, palms up. A year ago—a few months ago—I would have run to hug him, but now I sat frozen, my fingers curled under the plastic seat rim.

“I’m
Frannie’s
cousin Jonathan. I’ve come out from California to see her.” And to me he added, “I did knock, but nobody answered so I followed the sounds back here.”

“Oh,” said Jamie.

“Do you wanna Slip
ʼ
n
Slide?” was Robbie’s next question.

“Thanks. Maybe later. If you don’t mind I’ll just sit here with Frannie and watch.”

Robbie went right back at it, and Jamie, not to be outdone, forgot her wounds and yelled, “My turn! Watch me, Jonathan! Get out of the way, Robbie—you been hogging it!”

I don’t think I took two breaths since he appeared, and when he pulled up the chair next to me he murmured, “I thought I looked bad. You look like you’re going to faint.”

“It’s about Tom, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here.”

He let his breath out slowly. “It’s about a lot of things.”

Spots formed in my vision. I shut my eyes. “He’s dead.”

“Dead!” exclaimed Jonathan. “No—God, no. Didn’t Aunt Terri tell you they never thought his injuries would be fatal?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that. I can see she left that bit out.”

“Thank God.” As relief flooded me I could begin to spare thought for the details. “What happened, Jonathan? Aunt Terri didn’t tell me that either. Just that he got in a wreck.”

“He’d had a few drinks.” Jonathan answered the question I didn’t ask. “He was on his way home from a party and went off the road into a tree. Thank God Marcy wasn’t in the car and that he didn’t hit someone else—if he did he would probably be looking at prison time after he got out of the hospital. The doctor told me his blood alcohol level was about as close to the legal limit as you could get, and that, combined with fatigue, did him in.”

“Does Uncle Paul know?”

“He knows,” said Jonathan grimly. “Dad said it was a good thing Tom wasn’t going to prison because that meant he could go to rehab instead, and that if the state didn’t revoke his license,
he
would.”

“Oh! What does Tom say to that?”

“Not much. He’s still in pain from his back and his jaw. Plus he’s kind of confused. His short-term memory’s pretty much come back, but it’s like parts of his long-term memory just got erased! The last couple years, in fact. When Marcy showed up, he didn’t know who she was.”

“Poor Marcy!” Imagine the boyfriend you lived with not even recognizing you! “Did he still…like her?”

“I think she grew on him when she offered to spike his milkshake with rum.” Jonathan rolled his eyes. “His jaw is fractured,” he explained. “They’ve wired it shut. He can only do food through a straw.”

“Poor, poor,
stupid
Tom! And stupid Marcy, offering him alcohol! Didn’t she learn anything? Oh, Jonathan—I wish I could be there. Everyone must be so exhausted and stressed out. Look at you. But I’m glad you took the trouble to come and see me. Be sure to tell Uncle Paul that if I can—help—in any way—”

To my dismay, Jonathan sagged forward, covering his face with his hands. “I have other news, Frannie. It gets worse.”

Worse? My mind ran through a dozen worst-case scenarios that didn’t involve Tom’s death. Was he paralyzed? From the waist down? The neck down? But then how would he have back pain? Plucking at Jonathan’s shirt I realized his shoulders had begun to shake, and my alarm grew. It was bad. It was really bad, if Jonathan was—crying.

For a second time I tore my thighs off the plastic chair, rocketing to my feet. “Robbie—Jamie—time to dry off and go inside. You can watch TV.”

“It’s hot inside!” protested Robbie.

“Then turn on the fan and have a Push-Up. Mom bought a new box.”

“Can we have a Coke after our Push-Up?” pressed Jamie, sensing weakness.

“Yes. Fine. Just go. Go on.”

From their gleeful exchanged glances, I suspected they took my urgent desire to get rid of them as
carte blanche
where the junk food was concerned, but I didn’t care. I marched over and shut the hose off, waiting for the sliding glass door to shut behind my siblings. Then I stole back
to my chair, my hand pausing over Jonathan. For the shortest fraction of a second I let it fall on his arm, and he seized it instantly in his own.

“Jonathan, what’s the matter? You’re scaring me. Is—is Tom paralyzed or something?”

He took a deep, unsteady breath and swallowed hard, still hanging on to my hand, gripping it so hard my bones protested, but I said nothing. “Frannie—it’s not Tom. I mean—it is—but—it’s that everyone’s gone crazy!” His blue eyes, anguished, met mine. After another moment, my fear and incomprehension must have registered because he apologized, made an effort to control himself. His hold slackened. I felt the blood resume flowing but I left my hand where it was.

“Tell me everything,” I said. “Please—I’ll listen. Just say it all.”

In answer he squeezed my hand again. We sat for some time—I don’t know how long. I remember thinking Robbie and Jamie were awfully quiet inside and were probably doing heaven-only-knew what, in which case Mom was going to light into me for not keeping an eye on them, but the Dawes’ house could have burned to the ground before I moved.

At last Jonathan spoke.

“Caroline left me.”

I nodded. “I know. She’s in New York with Eric. It must be hard to have her gone at such a time.”

“No. She’s back from New York. But not with me. She moved out.”

This made absolutely no sense. She what? I followed his gaze to the end of the Slip
ʼ
n
Slide, as if that might clarify things. It didn’t. I saw only that the plastic mat was wrinkled and needed smoothing out.

“She didn’t just go to New York to keep Eric company and get in some sightseeing,” Jonathan went on heavily. “She met someone there. One of the Hastings students she’s gotten to know over the last several months. His name is Rob Newman.”

“I met him!” I squeaked. “At your place. Caroline said he would be governor one day.”

I regretted my tactlessness instantly when I saw Jonathan wince. “Yes, him. I see you remember. Apparently he makes quite the impression on women.”

Realizations were catching up to my kneejerk reaction. Caroline met
Rob Newman
in New York? That “friend” she referred to was actually her—was actually the guy she was running around with, behind Jonathan’s back? For how long? When I saw him that one time, was that the beginning of it all? No wonder she never mentioned his name in her letter! Careful, careful, like her brother. She knew I had met him. But in her eagerness she couldn’t resist the temptation to write about him, however obliquely. Maybe she even smiled as she did it and thought,
Poor adoring Frannie. This will be a blow when it comes
.

Anger radiated through me. Caroline cheated on Jonathan? Caroline
left
Jonathan? Cheated on, and left, the very best man in the world? She was a tramp! And a fool. And it was exactly what a person like her would do and she never deserved Jonathan and this just proved it!

My cousin watched the parade of emotions across my face. “You didn’t know then, Frannie? She never—in all those times you hung out—or in her letters—”

I could hardly answer, my breath was coming so fast. “Know? Of course I didn’t know. The—she—how could she?” As fast as the rage came, it yielded to a desire to comfort him. “But Jonathan—you know how impulsive she is—she’ll come back, of course. After she gets this out of her system.”

He looked weary. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if I hope so at this point. There are things—things that were hard. We’d been having some problems.”

“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else an inexperienced eighteen-year-old could say. It didn’t seem my place to ask probing questions, but there was no need. He had been bottling this up for a long time and found relief in speaking.

“You know what I hoped when I married her, Frannie—she’s so light, so joyous. And she loved me. It was enough—more than enough—for a while. We were so happy. At least—I was. And I think she was, too, in the beginning. It took time for the problems to start. You guessed one of them, I’m sure. Caroline didn’t want to go to church. Not just that—I realized spiritual questions never entered her mind. She wasn’t hostile; she just didn’t care. She humored me, when we were dating. That was all. And once we were married, she didn’t want to bother with it anymore. I could do all the ‘worrying and fussing about God for both of us,’ she said. She looked on faith as a silly habit from my childhood that she could tolerate, like I could tolerate the few times a year we saw her father. But we were always doing things—God got crowded out. We had weekends in the City or a late night Saturday night or a brunch to go to with friends on Sunday. I didn’t think about it much, even though, when we got married, the idea always was that, after a few years I’d go to seminary. We stopped talking about it. The few times I actually remembered God and made an effort to be in worship, Caroline refused to come. It was either go without her or don’t go. So I went less and less, just stuffing down my doubts and regrets to be dealt with later.” Grimacing, he released my hand to run his own through his hair. It was hot, but I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of his thoughts to offer him water, even if I dared to go inside and check on Robbie and Jamie.

“It all came to a head when she decided she wanted to go to law school,” Jonathan went on. “She assumed I’d lost interest in seminary, but, even so, she didn’t even tell me she was applying. I found the application in a kitchen drawer, and when I asked her about it, she laughed it off and said she sent for it on a whim, more to see if she could get in, than anything. I took her at her word, but it became pretty obvious pretty fast she was dead serious about it. Frannie—it was like one of those movies where the guy wakes up and doesn’t know where he is, or how he got there. I had to do some serious soul-searching—was I okay giving up my dream so that Caroline could follow hers? It was like the part of me that dreamed that dream had died from neglect. At the very least it was in a coma and on life support. But even though I’d ignored it for a couple years, I wasn’t quite ready to pull the plug, and I sure as hell wasn’t ready for
her
to pull it without even consulting me. We got in some huge fights. I accused her of going back on our agreement. She accused me of being childish—she would never have considered going to law school if she honestly thought I still cherished bizarre notions of becoming a pastor. It was ugly. We had never, ever fought before, to that point in our marriage, and I think it shocked us
both. ‘What kind of pastor would you be?’ she said, ‘dragging along your atheist lawyer wife? And no way am I gonna wear a flower-print dress and teach Sunday school and pretend to be something I’m not. You married me like I am.’ It was bitter, but she was right. When I married her, I knew she didn’t believe. I thought she was more open than she was, but the bottom line was the same. Because I loved her, I took that gamble. And since our marriage, she couldn’t be blamed if she thought I’d come around to her way of thinking. My behavior would convince any reasonable person”—he gave me a rueful smile—“that I’d forgotten all about God, the church, calls, dreams.”