“But that’s fascinating!” caroled the man with the pipe. “But how terribly exciting! How utterly intriguing!”
I was willing to bet a tankful of gas it wasn’t that interesting.
The man left Mother and came right over to me, took both my hands in his, and squeezed them. “Another N. C. Nearing,” he said affectionately, as if we had known each other for years. And he kissed me.
I was really quite startled. I suppose if I had a father and uncles and big brothers I’d be used to that kind of kissing, but I wasn’t and I jumped a foot when he did it. And then I couldn’t think of anything to say—my usual verbal speed. I think very well; it’s talking that’s hard. I gave him a big uncertain smile, the kind that always makes me think of the Miss America contest when the three semifinalists have to keep on beaming, knowing that two of them are about to lose. Mother jumped into the silence. “But we don’t really know if we are related to these Nearings,” she said. “It was just the cookbook that gave me the idea.”
“But you must be, my dear, must be. How completely intriguing. We must find out who your husband was. Let me see now. When was Robert Nearing born? What was his full name? How did you meet? What did he look like?”
Mother launched into this like a ship on her first voyage. She left out nothing, although really there was little to tell because we knew so little of Father. Mother thickened the narrative with little tales of my childhood. Mother likes to embellish her stories. I call it plain old lying, but Mother gets very hurt and insists that’s the way it really happened, even though she never told that version before. You would not believe the tales she told this man. I kept telling myself it was all right, we would never meet him again; but the chances were that we might very well meet him again, if we really were related. And he would tell all these embarrassing stories to these other Nearings. Even before they met me they’d be laughing at me. I could visualize a big gaggle of unknown relatives bursting into laughter, saying with amusement, “So this is Nancy,” and then hugging me while they repeated the silly stories. I’d never need to buy blusher because my cheeks would be permanently red.
Mother began on the tale of how I used to try to sell her lingerie to the neighbors when I was about four and wanted to buy myself a trip to the moon with the astronauts.
The antique shop owner was laughing heartily and kept looking at me fondly. I had very mixed feelings about the whole episode.
“Robert Nearing,” he said reflectively. “Unfortunately the Nearings have always tended to have enormous families. Litters, almost. I’m sure there were a number of Robert Nearings. It’s not going to be easy to track him down. But it’s essential, isn’t it? Think of having a sixteen-year-old N. C. Nearing drop in! It really tickles me, Mrs. Nearing, it really does. You see, I happen to have a seventeen-year-old N. C. Nearing myself!”
He did not pronounce N. C. slowly, like two separate letters with periods. He said it fast and run together: Ency, so you could hear how they got Nancy from it. Ency, I thought. My name was really meant to be Ency, not Nancy. I wondered if this seventeen-year-old N. C. Nearing would be a boy or a girl. I wondered, really, which would be nicer: a girl cousin one year older, to swap stories with, try on make-up with, tell things to; or a boy cousin with whom I could be just as tongue-tied as I am with all other boys.
Of course, it hardly mattered. One hundred and seventy miles is a little far for developing close ties with people who may or may not be related.
“And so your name is Nearing, too?” said my mother excitedly.
“Yes, indeed. Dave Nearing. I’m not an Ency. My older brother was the Ency in our generation.”
“You mean they named boys N. C., too?” said Mother.
“Sure. Just as many male Encys as female Encys. Place is strewn with ’em.”
I really preferred Nancy. Ency sounded peculiar. Half-baked. Rustic.
“But the boys couldn’t have been Nelle Catherine,” objected Mother.
“Nope. The boys’ names have varied quite a bit. They just kept the initials the same. Read somewhere that crooks using aliases do that too. Get kind of a kick out of that. Anyway, some of the boys have been Nathan Clarence and Norbert Claud and Nelson Cecil.”
Norbert Claud, I thought. Now that is cruel, that is truly cruel. I hope the poor thing gets called Ency instead. For him, Ency would definitely be a step up.
“You have some lovely things here,” my mother said, looking around the shop.
Mr. Nearing beamed. I looked around, but I didn’t see anything lovely. All I saw was a lot of junk. They began fondling a hand-carved wooden lemon squeezer and rhapsodizing over an old tobacco tin. Mother told Mr. Nearing all about how she got started in kitchen antiques and he told her all about how he got started running a shop. When he brought out a poster advertisement from the 1930s for packaged grits, Mother crooned with joy.
I took one look at the price and said, “Remember, we have to put gas in the tank to go home.”
Mother was quite annoyed with me. I saw that already she was not classifying Mr. Nearing as just another antique shop owner and she didn’t want him to know we had financial problems. Usually it’s good to establish that because it opens the door for a little gentle dickering. Furthermore, if she did buy it at that price we really would run out of gas on some isolated road fifty miles from home. How much more loving can a daughter get?
“Hi, Dad,” said a voice.
The voice sounded familiar even with as short a speech as that. It had a taped bored sound. I held my breath. Into the shop came my handsome tour guide, now wearing blue jeans, an oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sneakers—and the same ponytail.
The thought that my afternoon’s fantasy might actually be coming true was more frightening than anything else. I don’t know why it is that when I wish for something I’m actually upset if it comes true. It was very possible that this marvelous guy was my very own cousin, and all I felt was tension. I wondered if this Ency were Norbert Claud.
“My son,” said Mr. Nearing. “Ency Nearing. Don’t mind his ponytail. He’s not a hippie, just sort of sloppy. Ency, say hey to these nice ladies.”
The boy grinned his same old nice grin. “Already did say hello, Dad. They were just on the tour. I told them to come shop here.”
“You recommended somebody else’s store first,” said my mother accusingly. “And this is your father’s store!”
Oh no! She was going to get him in trouble before I even knew him. I cringed.
Mr. Nearing laughed. “That store’s mine, too. I keep my classy stuff down there and my browsing junk up here. Here’s where I do my refinishing. My sister-in-law runs the downtown store.”
I was planning some pretty interesting conversation. It’s always the first sentence I have trouble with. Everything after that seems to fall in place, but it’s getting the first line out, without stumbling on it, that I can’t manage.
“They tell you they’re Nearings, too?” said Mr. Nearing. “This pretty young lady is another Ency Nearing.”
How peculiar it sounded! Ency.
“No kidding,” he said. He sounded as if Ency Nearings grew on every street corner and meeting another one, even one like me, was not any more interesting than the wing chair by the fireplace at the historic house.
“I pronounce it Nancy, actually,” I said nervously. I rather hoped he would reveal his real name so I’d know if he were Norbert Claud.
“Glad to meet you, Nancy.” When he nodded at me his ponytail quivered. He was so cute! I couldn’t stand his voice, though. It still sounded rehearsed and recorded.
My mother said (I should have known she would), “Your voice sounds as if it has retreads.”
His father shouted with laughter. “He always sounds like that after the Saturday tours. That’s his cool, casual, competent, tour-guide voice. It’ll wear off by tomorrow.”
The boy flushed scarlet and gave me the puckered smile I give people when my mother embarrasses me. Our nam
es hadn’t given me any sense of kinship, but the blush did.
“Well, don’t just stand there, son,” said Mr. Nearing. “Start cleaning up the place.”
Cleaning up? I thought. It would take a Mack truck to carry off the junk in this place.
The boy—I really couldn’t call him Ency; he didn’t have an Ency bone in his body—found a broom and began sweeping toward the front door. This basically had the effect of raising a lot of dust and making my mother cough. Mr. Nearing watched proudly.
“It makes him feel better about my hair,” said the boy to me. “If I work I’m not a complete slouch, but a contributing member of a family with a strong work ethic.”
I laughed. His voice had broken, saying that, the way boys’ voices do when they’re changing.
“Do you work?” he said to me.
“Sort of. I’m my mother’s chauffeur. We drive all over Virginia and North Carolina antiquing.”
“I don’t even want to hear about it. I’ve spent my life in the back seat of a car between a broken chest and an antique doll without arms.”
“Antique dolls?” said mother eagerly. “Broken chests?”
“Robert Nearing,” murmured Mr. Nearing reflectively. “And he’d have been about my age. I can’t place him. However, I had thirty-two first cousins. If he were a second, third, or fourth cousin, or over in the once-removed or twice-removed category, I could have lost track. Two decades have passed since he had any contact with any family he may have had.”
Oddly enough, I couldn’t seem to concentrate on their conversation. I said to the boy, “Do you like giving historic house tours?” I decided to gather all my courage and risk being really honest with whatever his name was (let it not be Norbert Claud, please). “Personally, I think when you’ve seen one eighteenth-century plantation house, you’ve seen them all.”
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “And believe me, I’ve seen them all. I’m surprised I’ve never seen you before, since we’ve obviously spent our formative years in the same places.”
I knew without doubt that if I had ever seen him before, I’d remember. “So your name is … is …” I couldn’t quite manage Ency.
“Nick,” he said. “Only my parents call me Ency. I can’t wait till I leave for college and nobody knows about this N. C. Nearing jazz.”
“Nick,” I said, and I wanted to hug him I was so relieved. I was afraid I really would hug him, so I sort of tucked my hands around myself instead. I could not have told Holly that I was in love with a guy named Norbert Claud who had cute eyebrows.
“Yeah. Nicholas Charles Nearing. What did you get stuck with? Nelle Catherine?”
“Yes.”
“I never minded that so much. Good thing. I have about six relatives named that.”
“My goodness. How do you keep them all straight?”
“Different names and titles, basically.”
“Titles?”
“Like aunt and cousin. I have an aunt Nancy, an aunt Nella, a great-aunt Cathy, a cousin Nelle C., a cousin Ency Stewart, a cousin Catherine, and a grandmother Ency.”
I could not imagine a family of such vast proportions. Mr. Nearing had thirty-two first cousins. I didn’t think I even knew thirty-two people well enough to be invited to birthday parties, let alone consider them family. “And those are your relatives,” I said, bemused.
Nick listened to my mother and his father talking about who Robert Nearing was. His father said, “Might be your relatives, too, Nancy. Mind the shop, Nick old boy. Mrs. Nearing and I are going out back to study my genealogy tables. We have to pin down this husband of hers. Anybody that would name his daughter Ency is a cousin of mine.”
“Do they all live around here?” I asked Nick as the door shut behind our parents.
“Who?”
“All these hordes of Nearings.”
“I’d say about half and half.”
“Half what?”
“About half stay in the area, in this county, or in commuting distance, depending where they can get jobs, you know, and they love it. The other half flee at age eighteen, to return annually in August for reunions.”
“I gather you see yourself in the fleeing half.”
“I’ve fantasized all my life about leaving Nearing River.”
I could think of a fine town up in Virginia I could offer him, but it seemed a bit premature in our relationship to mention that. “My father must have felt that way,” I said. “He never told Mother anything about his family or background.”
“Maybe he had a shady past he had to escape.”
“Mother would love it. She would think it was very romantic.”
“Probably depend on how shady it was,” said Nick. “Some shades are not romantic!”
A customer came in. Or at least, I thought it was a customer. It was a large bosomy woman who sort of rolled when she walked. There didn’t seem to be room for her in the little aisles between the Nearing junk. “Hello, darling,” she said. “How was school?”
“It’s Saturday, Aunt Catherine. I had tours.”
“Oh, yes. I do lose track of time when I work weekends. How were the tours?”
“They don’t change much, Aunt Catherine. Same chimneys, same dentil molding, same wing chair.”
“I knew you didn’t really think that wing chair was interesting,” I said.
He grinned. It made my heart spring to see that grin. This is ridiculous, I thought. Once there was this girl named Nancy who fell in love with her brand-new umpteenth cousin Nick, but they never saw each other again because they lived one hundred and seventy miles apart.
And it was a long hundred and seventy miles. I knew, having driven it. You didn’t just happen by or saunter in at that distance. And I had to drive it again. I looked at my watch. It was four o’clock. We really had to get started. On the other hand, once we got started, I’d never see Nick Nearing again.
“Who’s your girlfriend?” said his aunt. “Really, Nicholas, you have no manners at all. Stand up and introduce me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nick stood up. “This is a possible new cousin, Nancy Nearing. Nancy, my aunt, Mrs. Nearing.”
“Nancy, my dear, what a pleasure. And what is a possible cousin, pray tell?”
I gave her our analysis of the situation and she was very interested. “My, you’re a pretty girl,” she said. “Though I don’t see any Nearing features in you, I must admit. I wish Nick looked as decent.”
“He looks fine to me,” I mumbled, which was the understatement of the century.
“He,” said Mrs. Nearing, with great finality, “has a ponytail.” Obviously the long hair presented quite a problem to the Nearing clan. Nick’s aunt turned her prow toward the back room and went to join the adults at the genealogy tables.
“I sure hope you like your ponytail,” I said. “You have to pay for it daily.”
“Actually,” he confided, “I hate it. It’s a real pain. Everybody else has short hair and the interesting part of having long hair is over. All it is now is hair hanging in my eyes.”
“If you cut it, though,” I said, “you’d spend all next year being congratulated for finally being decent.”
He patted my shoulder. “Exactly. It’s a no-win situation. I feel perfectly decent in a ponytail and now it’s a matter of honor to keep it.”
“How tiring to have to maintain one’s honor with a ponytail,” I said, finding myself laughing helplessly.
Nick shouted with laughter, just like his father. I had this painful awful moment of wondering what my father’s laugh had been like, if he had shouted that huge thick guffaw of pleasure when I was a baby and he played with me. Nick saw my expression change and he was abruptly unsure of himself. I wanted to explain what I was thinking, but just at that moment the three adult Nearings popped out of the back room. Aunt Catherine walked in first, as though her bulk had to be shoveled out before the others could fit. “Sell anything, Ency?” said Nick’s father.
“No, Dad. Nobody came in
.”
“Well, close up shop. We’re going home.”
I stood up and tried to think of something witty to say in farewell. It was complicated by the fact that I was feeling tearful for the father I had never known. It seemed so unfair that these people had a huge family they took for granted while I had none. It was the first time I had ever felt sad about Father. The shouts of laughter, identical in father and son, had done it. “Goodbye,” I said, with great originality. “It’s been nice talking to you.”
“Save the good-byes,” said Mr. Nearing. “We haven’t figured out yet who your father is, Nancy, and I am determined to get to the bottom of this.”
“We’re going to the Nearings’ for dinner,” said Mother, who was absolutely beaming and flushed and excited. A clear overdose of antiquery.
“But Mother,” I said. “It’s such a long drive home and it’ll be after dark and—”
“Nonsense,” said Aunt Catherine. “I made enough Brunswick stew for an army. The house is just back of the store behind that poplar hedge. Delighted to have you. No trouble, no trouble at all. Hope you have a big appetite. I can’t stand people who don’t eat.”
Nick was already bringing the antiques that had been displayed outside back into the shop. Pretty soon the narrow aisles were impassable. We sort of backed out of the store through the genealogy room, which was nothing but a shed with a desk and some books. We walked through the parking area, which was red clay with a few token pebbles on it.
“Nick, you and your new cousin bring her car. Mrs. Nearing is walking back with Aunt Catherine and me.”
Nick said, “Dad, I’m going to the high school musical tonight, remember? I mean, I’m glad to drive the car over, but—”
But he had plans, he meant. Don’t rope me into an evening entertaining some new cousin, Dad, is what he meant. I said hastily, “I’m the chauffeur, remember? You go on to your show.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that, Nancy. The show isn’t till eight, I have loads of time. Dad forgets things and I have to keep nagging. Once they get started talking genealogy they can go on for hours at a time and I’m never excused because they think it’s good for me to be exposed to family ties. Okay. You chauffeur me.” He hopped into Mother’s seat, and it was most odd to have someone other than Mother sitting there. I wouldn’t be half as good a driver if Nick were my passenger. The traffic would be far less interesting.