Nancy and Nick (3 page)

He was also tall, muscular, and had started—or ought to start—shaving. All I could think of was that his cheek was probably raspy-feeling. I had this terrible fear that when I moved past him into the parlor, I would actually touch his cheek to see if it was. “Notice the large double-shouldered Flemish bond chimneys,” he said.

“Cute, huh?” my mother whispered.

“The chimneys?” I whispered back.

“Nancy, you are truly peculiar. The
boy.”

“Oh yes. Yes, he’s okay.” It’s odd. Usually when Mother and I agree on something we admit it right away and grin. Now I couldn’t bring myself to admit how terrific I thought this boy was. It was like Mother hunting for a find—when you do find it you don’t admit it, in case the seller realizes you want it and charges you more.

I was actually standing there feeling nervous. As if saying how neat he was would jinx something. And the funny thing is, I hate it when a girl judges a boy just on his looks. If it were Holly falling in love at first sight I’d really be on her about it. I’d lecture her on personality and conversation and depth and manners and habits and how you couldn’t possibly fall in love with somebody when all you’ve done is look at him and the only words he’s uttered are out of a history text privately printed by a local historian. I thought, he’s perfect. I wonder what his name is.

“The wing chair by the fireplace,” he said, “is a most interesting example of—”

I didn’t think it was particularly interesting. Surely there were ten hundred more interesting things for someone like that to consider than wing chairs by the fireplace. Me, for example.

I wondered why he was leading tours of the Nearing River House. Perhaps his mother was president of the Historical Society and blackmailed him into it. Perhaps he was paid immensely well and was saving up to go to college. Or, conceivably, he might
like
giving tours of ancient bedrooms and showing the afternoon bridge club ladies how little Mary Elise Nearing in 1841 left the “Q” out of her sampler. I wanted to ask him, “What’s a nice boy like you doing leading historic home tours?”

On the way downstairs again to tour the interesting buildings on the grounds my mother muttered, “I’ve been studying his hair, Nan. It’s real.”

“Did you think it was a wig?”

“For a tour like this it could have been. Sort of to match the breeches.”

“I like his hair.”

“The hair is fine. I would just prefer hair that long to be on a girl.” Clearly Mother felt if she were in charge such things would not go on.

His hair was much longer than mine. It would be odd to date a boy with hair longer than your own. A terrible fear began rising in me and I grabbed Mother’s arm. “Mother,” I hissed, “don’t you dare say anything to him about not liking his hair.”

“Nancy, if people don’t tell him their viewpoints, how will he know?”

“I’m sure he’s not interested in your viewpoint.”

“Nancy, he’s been giving me his viewpoint for the last half hour and I intend to give him mine.”

“Oh, God,” I said prayerfully. But it is my experience that even God does not like to interfere with Mother when she decides to offer her viewpoint. I thought I couldn’t stand it if she said anything to him. Our tour group consisted of the bridge ladies, who were giggling and gossiping with each other, and Mother and me. There was no way I could pretend not to be with Mother. And I could not stand it if she spoke to this boy. “Mother,” I said firmly, “if you say anything about his long hair I will not drive you home.”

Mother gaped at me. I felt quite proud of having spoken up.

The boy said, “That’s okay. Somebody tells me at least once a day that I ought to get my hair cut.” He was grinning at me.

I nearly died. The blush was back worse than before. After all that,
I
was the one to make the comment about his hair! I’d been so intense about reprimanding Mother I had raised my voice instead of whispering. All the bridge group was frowning at me with pursy little lips of disapproval. But they were obviously interested.

One of them said, “You really should cut your hair, you know. That phase has passed. Nobody wears it long like that now.”

The boy grinned. Easily. Not a trace of a blush. “I do,” he said, with complete courtesy. “Now if you would like something to drink, there’s a vending machine in the barn, and bathrooms, and a pay phone. The Historical Society does not charge for the tour and would be glad to accept all donations which you may place in the wooden chest beside the barn door. Thank you for coming and I hope you enjoyed the tour.”

He wound down his speech, sounding like an airline hostess demonstrating rescue equipment. Bored. Practiced.

Another bridge lady said to him, “If I make a donation, would you use it at the barbershop?”

Now if it had been me getting that kind of ribbing—smiles along with it, yet basically rude and barbed—I’d have died long since. The boy merely grinned again and said, “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t. It would go to the restoration of the chestnut fences which have begun rotting in several places and need repair badly.”

“Who does the repair work? You?” said my mother.

“Yes, ma’am. I also mow the lawns and weed the gardens and pick up the trash.”

If I’d ever heard a line, that was one, but Mother and the bridge ladies were consoled by the thought of his doing all that hard work for such a good cause. They left him alone and went into the barn for vending machine sodas, bathrooms, and donations. The boy and I were left alone. I tried to think of something to say to him. For instance: What is your name? Do you love me too? How are we going to get together when you live one hundred and seventy miles away?

But I couldn’t think of anything I could really say out loud. I wanted to say that I liked his hair, and also his costume and his grin, and the way he parried their remarks. But by the time I’d decided to frame a question about his clothes he had turned and walked away.

So that was that. Fall in love with your tour guide and off he goes to lead another tour. You’re nothing but a face in the crowd.

I sighed.

Mother waylaid him. “Young man,” she said.

In a very nice way he raised his eyebrows to answer her. I thought every inch of him was cute. Especially his eyebrows. What would I say to Holly? He has the cutest eyebrows, Holly. When will I ever meet anybody again with eyebrows that cute?

And yet I couldn’t bring myself to ask about the Nearings. Much as I wanted his attention I really didn’t want it. I wasn’t close enough to stop Mother’s questions. I braced myself for a long and embarrassing flow of family history. “Where is a good antique shop?” said Mother, and for once I blessed her one-track mind.

“There’s one in downtown Nearing River,” he began.

“You mean there’s an uptown?” said Mother incredulously.

He laughed. “No. There’s downtown and there’s country.”

“We went to the one downtown. Is there another?”

“Yes, ma’am. About two miles up the road. Nearing’s Antiques and Junk.”

Mother practically salivated. Not only antiques, but also junk. And some Nearings who might be alive to tell her about other Nearings, such as my father and the Nelle Catherines before me.

“Thank you,” she said, but he had already gone up on the porch to lead the next tour. I looked at him for a bit but he was not thinking of me. He was trying to keep a woman from breaking off stems from the English box to plant in her own garden.

The best adjective to apply to my crush on him was “short.” The only forty-five-minute love affair on record. No, it hadn’t been an affair. Affairs take two. I had been thrilled by his eyebrows but he hadn’t even seen mine.

I slid behind the wheel and told Mother I didn’t care
whose
antique shop it was, I had to have lunch first.

I
T IS MUCH EASIER
to face another antique shop when you are full of french fries, a triple burger, and a chocolate shake.

I was positively enthusiastic when I pulled our poor old car up in front of Nearing’s Antiques and Junk. (Our car practically qualifies as both.) “Thank heaven,” said Mother, “they didn’t spell it
junque.
I like them better already.”

We hopped out. I didn’t roll up the windows or lock the doors; it was already hot, although it was just May, and I didn’t want to get back into a cooker. I stick to the seat, and then I’m afraid to get out of the car in case I look damp around the edges.

We went in to begin poking around.

It was Mother’s kind of shop. Rickety little chairs with piles of mismatched crockery on them. Sagging old photographs and odd Victorian portraits all over the walls. Torn rag rugs and pieces of quilt draped on the tops of bureaus that lacked one drawer or all knobs. A cash register as ornate as a bride’s embroidery. A headboard desperately in need of refinishing and a rocker minus the cane seat. A proprietor who is middle-aged, smiling, smoking a pipe, and eager to talk antiques with other true antique hunters.

He and Mother were buddies in about sixty seconds and I could see it was going to be a long visit. It was one of the times when Mother was right that I should have a little hobby. Cross-stitch or crochet or needlepoint would be a useful sort of thing to do when Mother gets into an antique huddle. I looked for a chair that didn’t have junk stacked on it, but there were none. I leaned against the least cluttered wall in the room and patiently waited. As I say, a girl fortified by french fries and so forth can be much more patient than a girl who has had nothing since breakfast.

“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.