“This,” said Nick emphatically, “is my cousin.” He did not introduce us. We strode on past them toward the foyer of the auditorium.
There must have been seventy-five people milling around in there who were related to Nick and another two hundred who were not but who knew him. Shouting, gossiping, teasing, alternately admiring the artwork on the foyer walls and telling Nick they had thought he’d never start dating—it was a nightmare for both of us. My cheeks were so red I felt as if I were made up like a clown with red spots for cheeks. “Nick, a girlfriend at last. Introduce us.” “Say, you got a cute one when you finally got one.” “What’s the matter, Nick, townies not good enough for you? Have to go out of the state to get a girl?”
And each time Nick would glue on his tight little smile (such an embarrassing contrast to his beautiful easy grin) and say, “No, this is just another cousin. Nancy Nearing. Robert’s daughter. They live up in Virginia. Visiting for a day.” There were even a few people who claimed the world was not big enough for another Nancy Nearing and several who exclaimed, “Robert’s daughter! And how is Robert these days?” and then I’d have to explain that the Robert they were thinking of was not my father. Nick dragged me through the crush and finally we reached the auditorium, where Nick fell into a seat as if he’d been on his feet for several years.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to start all that for you. Life is bad enough with all their remarks about your hair, I’m sure. Now you have to deny all this girlfriend stuff. I’m really sorry.”
He slumped way down in his seat. “Aw, it’s not your fault. Actually, I feel stupid about it. It’s just that everybody I know has partied and gone out for years and for some reason I’m not allowed to be quietly alone, they have to kid me about it all the time. Endlessly. I just don’t … I haven’t … I mean, I don’t—”
“Date,” I said.
“Right.”
“Well, neither do I,” I said, hoping to help him relax about it.
He was completely astonished. “You don’t?”
“No.”
“Really? Why not?”
There was only one answer to that. “I don’t get asked.” It sort of amused me that he couldn’t understand why he got plagued over not dating. There was no doubt in my mind he’d be the number one choice of every girl in the high school. “Why don’t you date?” I said.
“I hate asking,” he said. “No, that’s not quite right. I never have asked anyone out. What I hate is thinking about what it would be like to ask a girl out.”
“But if you can talk so easily to me,” I protested, “it should be no problem at all to call up some girl or meet her after class or something and talk to her, too.”
He waved that off. “That’s different. You’re not a regular girl, you’re a cousin. I never have trouble talking with relatives. But I don’t want to ask my cousins out, you know, that way I’d never get away from family. And besides, everybody would know everything. The girl cousin would tell her other girl cousins about every kiss and every sentence and they’d tell their mothers and pretty soon the entire Nearing clan would be right on top of it. When I date it’s going to be private. Actually, I’m waiting for college.”
Oh brother, I thought, so much for my fantasies. Time to shelve each one of them. I found myself actually patting his hand in sympathy, and he was right; it really was very easy to get along with someone who wasn’t “a regular boy,” but a cousin. No stiffness between us at all.
“I know exactly why your father left and never came back, Nancy,” he told me half seriously.
“Why?”
“He was drowning in relatives. The way I see it, he had been thinking for years of leaving never to return. And then one day he hiccupped in church, or some such thing, and after the service fifty-five relatives said, ‘Oh, that was Robert hiccupping, I’d know his hiccup anywhere.’ So Robert decided to go where he could hiccup in peace.”
The image of my unknown father gratefully leaving the state in order to sit alone and hiccup was impossible. Nick and I began giggling. To prove to me how overrun he was by family, he took the program and began pointing out relatives in the cast, orchestra, chorus; doing lighting, costumes, advertising, and so forth. I realized he didn’t actually know his precise relationship to most of these kids, just that he was related by blood at some point in some way. “Heck, who knows?” he said of one senior girl. “She could be an aunt for all I know. She’s a Nearing somehow. You’ll know her because she’s the only Chinese princess with curly red hair.”
Two boys sat behind us and ruined everything by making wisecracks. “What you Nearings need is a Lord High Executioner of your own,” said one of them. “There are too darn many of you around.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Nick.
And then, to my relief, the curtain went up on The Mikado.
Gilbert and Sullivan, of course, is just plain fun. The leads and chorus had really good diction, so we could understand all the silly lines. The best lead by far was Ency Nearing, the Lord High Executioner. He was very tall and thin and kind of wavy, as if he had not yet made up his mind about anything in life, including his personality.
“I have a little list,” he sang, “they’d none of them be missed. All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs, they’d none of them be missed.”
Nick sang in my ear, “All people who make snide remarks about my ponytail, they’d none of them be missed.”
The woman in front of us turned around furiously and said, “Sssssshhh.”
“You’d none of you be missed,” Nick breathed at her.
I stepped on his sneaker again and he stepped back on mine and we kept this up all during the next chorus.
And the very first thing the boys behind us said when intermission came was, “Uh huh. Trying to pass her off as a cousin, Nick.” “We saw you guys. You can’t fool us.”
“Cousin,” I said firmly. “Strictly cousin. I gather you two aren’t also related to me?”
Loudly they thanked God that they were not related to Nicholas Nearing.
The woman in front of us said, “Your manners, I see, Nicholas, have not improved.”
Nick stood up instantly. “Mrs. Dixon, my cousin, Nancy Nearing. Nance, Mrs. Dixon, she’s an English teacher.”
“Another Nearing!” said Mrs. Dixon. “Honestly, Nicholas. Why don’t you people contribute now and then to zero population growth?”
“We do,” said Nick. “Neither Nancy nor I am a parent.”
Mrs. Dixon laughed. I blushed again. Mrs. Dixon’s friend said, “Really, Nick, when are you going to cut that awful hair?”
“When I go to college,” said Nick, who, I was beginning to gather, looked on college as the rainbow in a life of rain.
“Oh my, is that a promise, Nick?” “How wonderful. Maybe we can get you early acceptance.” “Would you like to skip your senior year in high school?” All this from the boys behind us.
“He needs that senior year,” sniffed Mrs. Dixon. “His maturation level is not what it ought to be.”
I could not imagine having so many people so actively interested in what I was doing. Aside from my mother, the mothers of two or three very close friends, a few teachers, and one or two neighbors, I could think of nobody who really noticed much about me, let alone expressed concern, opinions, and advice.
Eventually, all these adults and teens drifted into the foyer for drinks, bathroom, cigarettes, and gossip. We stayed quietly in our seats, by unspoken agreement not wanting to subject ourselves to that again. “Whew!” I said.
“And you wonder why I’d like to leave Nearing River?”
“No, I guess I don’t wonder anymore. You must detest some of these relatives. They nag and interfere and poke fun. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“I guess because I’m heading into the downhill stretch. One more month of school, then summer, then my senior year, and then I’ll be gone, Nancy.” He said it dr
eamily.
“Never to return?” I asked him.
“Oh no, I like my family better than that. Or most of them. I just want them in smaller doses.”
Just at that moment, an aunt to whom I’d been introduced in the lobby appeared beside us. She smiled wickedly. “As we would like to see you in smaller doses, Nick.”
He made a face at her.
“I’m just kidding, honey,” she said, “you know that. Now I’ve been thinking all through The Mikado that I really can’t remember who Robert is. Now exactly whose parents are Robert’s?”
And by the time we had explained that once more, intermission was over.
After the show we got surrounded by Nick’s high school friends demanding that he bring his girlfriend down to Shoney’s for strawberry pie along with everybody else. “My cousin,” Nick kept explaining, “she’s just a cousin. I’m showing her around.”
His tone of voice added, Father’s orders.
“Nope, can’t go to Shoney’s,” he said several times. I wondered what Shoney’s was. Obviously everybody went there. “Nancy’s got to get back home, she’s got a long drive ahead of her. See you guys Monday,” he said.
I didn’t mind as much as I’d expected. We were friends, at least, and Nick had admitted he could talk to me more easily than with any other girl. Regular girl. What an awful description.
The girl cousins to whom I was introduced—three of them within a few years of my age—actually hugged me in a welcoming greeting that made me sort of ache to be really and truly a part of the Nearing clan instead of a mere passerby. “I hope we see you again,” said one of them, and she seemed to mean it. I wondered if Nick would say it. Probably not. One thing he definitely didn’t want to see again was another N. C. Nearing.
We drove home talking nonstop about the pros and cons of a huge devoted family. “It’s so confining,” said Nick. “I don’t want to be the latest in a string of N. C. Nearings. There are so many of us I’d be indistinguishable if it weren’t for my ponytail.”
The closest I could come to understanding that was that once in a Brownie troop there had been three girls named Nancy.
“Around here,” said Nick, “it’s like a tidal wave of Nearings.”
“But most of them weren’t even named Nearing, Nick.”
“Well, no, of course not. All the women have other names. We have generations of Stewarts, Hineses, Lawsons, Harringtons, Channings—and they’re all Nearings.”
And then we were back at his house and our companionship was over.
In the kitchen the three adults were having, of all things, hot chocolate, sitting at the table exchanging stories.
“We didn’t find your father,” said Mother. “We examined every Robert on these pages and none of them matched up.”
“But they’d have to,” said Nick. “What about being named Nelle Catherine and called Nancy? That’s no coincidence.”
“No, almost certainly not,” agreed his father. “But you see, the usual technique in genealogy is to work backward from the person who interests you. In other words, take Robert Nearing, move through his parents and grandparents and so forth until you bump into common relatives. Since we don’t know his parents we have to start at the other direction which is hardly ever very successful. In spite of all the Nearings you swim in, son, the majority of them have always moved away. That’s what settled America.”
“Yeah,” said Nick. “The very progeny of the Nearing clan moving westward.” He made himself into a wave undulating across the house.
“It isn’t funny, Ency,” said his aunt. I loathed hearing him called that. I wondered if he did, too, but I couldn’t see his expression. “Anyway, Nancy,” she said, “there are generations and generations of cousinly kin about whom we know nothing and probably never will.”
“My theory is,” said Mother, “that he may actually have been an orphan. His parents died young or something, and he really didn’t have any family but he vaguely remembered their stories. He used the name Nelle Catherine to tie his daughter to a past he really knew nothing of.”
We went through a long series of exchanges on Aunt Catherine’s fine Brunswick stew, Nick’s excellent peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the pleasure of each other’s company, the surprise of the whole meeting.
There were comments to make on hospitality, antiques, the weather, and driving safely, and then we were all calling, “Goodbye, nice to have met you, thanks again.”
Somehow I was in the driver’s seat after all, and Mother on the passenger side, and Mr. Nearing was slamming the car door and going back into his house and Nick was nowhere to be seen and I was driving away.
And that was that.
Six
“OH, NANNIE,” SAID HOLLY. “And you’ll never see him again. How utterly romantic.”
I choked on a long thread of spaghetti. “Tell me one thing romantic about not seeing him again,” I demanded.
Holly was eating cottage cheese and applesauce. Every morning at eleven I am determined to eat the salad plate but when I get to the cafeteria line I always end up with a loaded tray. Holly put an eighth of a teaspoon of food into her mouth and said, “It’s very bookish, Nan. The heroine shuts herself in her lacy boudoir to weep for the fine figure of a man she’ll never be able to marry.”
Ginger crunched through an apple and said juicily, “However, in books, the reason for never being able to marry is always conquered, with the insane wife dying, or the blackmailer meeting his just end, or the inheritance coming just in time. But this time the reason won’t go away. He’ll always be her cousin and he’ll always be one hundred and seventy miles away.”
“I’m not thinking of marrying him,” I said crossly. “I’d just like to have a boyfriend. And there’s nothing romantic about an absentee boyfriend.”
“Especially when he doesn’t consider you to be a regular girl,” agreed Ginger. “I consider that the remark of a skunk.”
“He wasn’t a skunk.”
“Laura Burns’ boyfriend is at college,” said Holly, partaking of another two calories, “and you think that’s romantic.”
“Yes, but he knows he’s her boyfriend and he writes to her and calls her up and she visits him on weekends. Nick does not know he is, or could be, or ought to want to be, my boyfriend.”
“A tedious situation,” said Ginger. She aimed her apple core at the wastebasket and hit a sophomore boy in the cheek. I speedily removed myself from the table because the sophomore clearly intended to retaliate with a plate of spaghetti. For once I was glad when the cafeteria monitor intervened, hauling poor clumsy Ginger off to the vice principal’s office to explain this aggressive behavior. Holly and I cleared the table, stuck her apple core in the trash, and tagged after her in case character references were in order.
“Write to Nick,” Holly suggested.
“Holly, I haven’t written a letter in my life except in fourth grade when we had to study where to put the inside address and how to phrase a complimentary closing. I’ve never even licked a stamp.”
“That’s impossible. How do you pay your bills? What do you do about Christmas thank you notes to relatives in Seattle? Or letters to your congressman? Dear departed friends who jumped rope with you in fourth grade and are now living in Boston? Jewelry that is absolutely perfect and you can only get it by mail order?”
Holly was finally struck dumb when she grasped the extent of my non-letter writing. She kept shaking her head at me. Considering how few calories she ran her slender body on, I thought it remarkable she had the energy to shake it so often. “Never licked a stamp,” she said. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Sixteen.”
“And you’ve never even done volunteer work where they had mailings?”
“In all my volunteer work they’ve used the phone.”
We sat down on the redwood picnic bench that decorates the hall outside the vice principal’s office. It’s where offenders wait to find out the punishment for their of
fenses. I had never sat there. The looks we got from kids we knew walking by were priceless. It was interesting that nobody stopped to speak to us and ask why we were there. They obviously wanted no conversation with girls who had joined the criminal element.
“Well,” I said defensively, “how many letters have you ever written, Holly?”
She meditated. “Every Christmas I have thank you letters to my cousins in—”
“Skip the thank you notes. Besides them.”
“Hmmm. I write my grandmother Beale every other week. I had a friend named Annie Wood back in elementary and we’ve written every month since she moved to Canada. I got a pen pal through a magazine once. She lived in Australia and her name was Patricia Woolley and we wrote about ten times until Patricia got a better pen pal.”
“A better pen pal!” I exclaimed. “How do you know that’s why she stopped writing?”
“She told me. She wrote, Dear Holly, I have now found a more interesting pen pal who lives in New York City and since I’d rather visit New York someday than Virginia and since I can’t afford postage to both of you, I’m not writing to you anymore. Thanks anyway. Love, Patricia.”
“Now that was low,” I said.
“I didn’t mind. I’m pretty sure she’d already told me everything she knew about Australia. But if you think you’re getting me off the subject, you’re mistaken. You should write to this Nicholas.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“You get straight A’s in English comp. You could write a good letter. I have faith in you.”
“Actually I usually get A-minus.”
“That’s good enough for a letter. Really, Nan, I think you should thank him for taking you to the operetta. For introducing you to all those lovely people who might be your cousins. End up with a witty line about loving his ponytail and for him not to cut it off until you get there to share the big moment with him.”
I could not imagine writing such a thing. Just imagining Nick opening a letter like that, and reading it, made me blush.