The Beresfords

The Beresfords

Published by
BellaVita
Press

Bellevue, Washington 98004

www.bellavitapress.com

Copyright
©
2012 by Christina Dudley. All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Cover design: Kathy Campbell,
www.gorhamprinting.com

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Print ISBN 978-0-9830721-2-6

For my mother

“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking
some one
to devour.”
(1 Peter 5:8)

“…Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)

I was fourteen when Satan devoured my cousin.

He disguised himself as a nineteen-year-old college co-ed named Caroline Grant.
And he
made the devouring process so pleasant that it took Jonathan a long
, long
time to feel the teeth behind the smile.

I exaggerate, of course. A little. But I saw things then in the stark shades of adolescence, right and wrong, black and white. Jonathan was the Hero of my unfolding life, and if Caroline Grant was the one to topple him from his pedestal, she must therefore be the Villain.

To be fair, I guess if I weren’t so Jonathan-focused, I would have to admit Caroline Grant was no worse than her brother Eric, and that, between the two Grants, Satan succeeded in taking down all my cousins and very nearly me. Did that make her brother Beelzebub?

It was not Jonathan, but Tom who opened the door to it all. Tom was the oldest of the four cousins I grew up with. Jonathan was a year behind him, and then came the girls Rachel and Julie. I was younger even than Julie, so when I came to live with the Beresfords years before, I did not disrupt the family hierarchy. If anything, my age reinforced my low position. Made me even more invisible.

But I was saying: it was Tom who brought the Grants into our lives on a June afternoon that looked like any other. Rachel and Julie and I were out back in the pool, along with Rachel’s boyfriend Greg. Julie floated in the lounge chair, Ray-Bans on, radio turned up just enough to make Rachel and Greg think they had some privacy. Those two were nestled in the corner at the four-foot end, cooing at each other, Rachel trying discreetly to tug her one-piece lower because she wasn’t allowed to wear a two-piece. “It’s a tough decision,” Greg was saying, “but my parents want me to go to college. They say
education’ll
last me forever, no matter what happens. I
dunno
. The coach was cool. He said he liked my game sense. He said I’m the most natural he’s seen in a long time. If I can just keep my
g.p.a
. up, it’s a done deal.”

Julie let out a snort, her opinions on Greg’s intellectual prowess being public knowledge when he wasn’t around. Rachel ignored her. “That’s amazing, Greg. Not every guy gets to choose between a minor-league contract and a top university. And it’s not like you won’t get even better in college. The scouts will keep their eye on you.” Greg Perkins was her trophy boyfriend, the biggest catch at the high school since Tom graduated. Star athlete, flashy car, money, looks. Julie said Greg was the kind of guy who spent the rest of his life remembering how great high school was, but Rachel said she was just jealous.

Had I been a different sort of person, Julie might have enlisted me in ridiculing her sister’s boyfriend, but despite being nearest in age, she and I had never been close, and when I picture myself then I can hardly blame her. There I was, skinny as a string bean, flat as a washboard, pale as an albino, quiet as a shadow. Julie on the other hand, two years my senior, had come into her Beresford beauty. Like her brothers and sister, she was now tall, athletic, confident.

I was picking leaves and sticks and Band-Aids out of the pool filter, calculating how much longer Jonathan would be, driving home from Westmont. If he’d packed up and gotten on the road by ten—ten-thirty, even—it’d be another couple hours. Three hours, max. Where would he be right now? Past Coalinga? When the last piece of detritus was extracted, I slid the cover back on and looked up. And saw a strange girl by the steps.

She was small but curvy in her fuchsia bikini, with dramatic dark eyes and hair that stood out against her olive skin. At a time when every teenage girl was getting spiral perms for maximum volume, enviable natural curls crowned her head. I thought of my own lank locks, lanker still for being wet, and gathered my too-long legs to my chest to hide my ungainliness. She was watching the sisters’ interaction, the hint of a smile curving her mouth. Just as her gaze wandered to me, the sliding glass door opened. “Hey, Caroline, that’s where you got to,” called Tom. “Found her, Eric.”

Out came my boisterous oldest cousin,
a six-pack in each hand and a bag of
Cheetos
crushed under one arm. Behind him was a shorter guy, trim and dark, carrying a bucket of ice.

Thus here, in the space of a minute, were two red flags:

(1)
  
The bikini. We were a churchgoing, conservative family, at least as regarded outer appearances. Which meant, as I mentioned, that one-piece swimsuits were the rule. I could tell by Rachel’s and Julie’s expressions that the Beresford side of them thought this “Caroline” might as well strut around naked, while the girl side of them was consumed with envy.

(2)
  
The beer.

a.
      
Tom was only twenty and thus under the legal age for drinking in California.

b.
     
If Tom was only twenty, then we, his younger family members, were absolutely positively under the legal drinking age, as was the guest in our home Greg.

c.
      
Tom had picked his first college in Colorado specifically for that state’s drinking age of eighteen and how long he imagined it could hold out against the National Minimum Age Drinking Act.

d.
     
Tom was later removed from said first college by Uncle Paul because he’d been doing too much partying.

e.
      
Uncle Paul was now in China, bringing a new manufacturing facility on line, and therefore not home to keep an eye on Tom.

“Everyone, this is Eric Grant and his sister Caroline,” announced Tom, nestling the beer in the ice Eric set down. “Grants, meet my little sisters Rachel”—pointing—“and Julie, my cousin Frannie, and Rachel’s squeeze Jake.”

“Greg.”

“Greg, I meant.”

Eric waved and Caroline said, “Thank you for letting us invade your pool party.”

“The more the merrier,” said Julie. She lowered her sunglasses a fraction and looked over them like Tom Cruise in the
Risky Business
poster. “Are you guys in college, too?”

“
Too
?” echoed Tom. “I wasn’t aware you were in college, Julie.”

She glared at him. “I meant in college with Tom here.”

“We are,” answered Eric smoothly. He sat on the lip of the pool and swung his legs in. “I met your brother in Music Appreciation class where we learned the fine points of opera and the finer points of the Easy A.” Leaning over, he spun the radio volume up on Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and sang along, jerking his chin to the beat.

“Eric is hopeless,” said Caroline, dropping gracefully down beside him. “My mother despairs of his tin ear.”

“I’ll have the last laugh, though. I’ll be employable, while you’ll be lucky if you get your own subway tunnel to perform in.” Eric raised his eyebrows at the girls in mock horror. “Caroline is a Music major—vocals and
harp
, if you can believe it. I told her she should at least pick an instrument that orchestras need more than one of.”

“Oh, I have my career plan fully mapped out.”

“Let me guess, Care—you’re going to steal a page from Mom’s book and build a comfortable life off alimony checks.”

“If I can ever find the right man to divorce.” She gave Tom a sidewise glance, but he was popping open his first beer. “At least that plan would show initiative,” Caroline laughed. “I think your ambition is to be a kept man.”

We’d never heard conversation like this before, and you could see us all draw nearer, like neighboring stars being sucked into a black hole. Even Rachel abandoned her boyfriend in the corner to float over.

“I think the harp is gorgeous,” Rachel volunteered. “I would love to hear you play. I sing myself—Julie and I both do,” she amended, when she heard another of Julie’s snorts. The sisters were frequent soloists in the senior youth choir at church and the high school’s glee club.

“Don’t you hate how older brothers always cut you down?” said Julie, right next to Caroline. “Tom is forever giving us a hard time.” While this was absolutely true of Tom, I thought it not true at all of Jonathan, her other older brother.

Caroline gave Tom another playful look, but this time he was tossing
Cheetos
up and catching them in his mouth. “I can’t say if that’s how older brothers behave, but it’s certainly true of my
younger
brother.”

“Younger by seven minutes!” objected Eric.

“All the same. Younger is younger. Grant me my seven minutes of superior wisdom.”

Eric shook his head, throwing Rachel and Julie a rueful look that both begged their sympathy and made them laugh. “We younger ones have to stick together. Only you two can
imagine what my life has been like. But for me it’s been worse because I always had Caroline in my grade—usually in my class! I couldn’t even go off to college without her there.”

“You keep him out of trouble, I hope,” said Rachel to Caroline.

“No, no—that’s beyond my seven minutes of experience and wisdom! Eric does exactly whatever he pleases, like taking up with your brother here.”

“What do you mean?” protested Tom. “Grant was the one copying off of
my
notes.”

“For all the good it did me,” Eric said. “They’d be like, ‘Mozart’s
Marriage of Figaro
exemplifies…’ And I’d say, ‘Exemplifies what?’ And Tom would say, ‘Man, I don’t know—that’s where I fell asleep.’”

“You were the one throwing the parties,” said Tom. “It’s not my fault I fell asleep in class. At least I got my ass
there
, man.”

“Your ass, Beresford, but you left your brain back at the dorm.”

The raillery continued, and if anyone noticed that a fourteen-year-old just out of the seventh grade (long story) was sitting there hearing all these inappropriate things, it didn’t slow them down any. Tom and Eric talked more
keggers
and highs and hangovers, pranks (streaking naked across campus) and missed classes and near-misses; Caroline pretended to chide them, but it was clear she witnessed plenty of these adventures live and in person. When the beer was finally gone and Tom and the Grants took themselves off somewhere, the curtain closed on the show and Rachel and Julie put their heads together for a detailed analysis.

“She’s so cute and funny,” Rachel said. “And small like a little doll.”

“I hope Tom doesn’t date her and then break up with her because it’d be fun to have her around,” Julie agreed.

“Even if he did, she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who would go all dopey over Tom. Not like that one who kept coming around his senior year, remember? Crying and saying she might kill herself?”