Best Kept Secret

“What?” said Francie nervously.

  “Is that the way you think Papa Luther felt about you? That he disapproved of you?”

  “Yes,” said Francie. “Sure. Dad and Uncle Peter, too. Papa Luther disapproved of us, so he never accepted us. Me and Matthew because we’re Jewish, and Uncle Peter because he has Down syndrome. Even Fred, his own son! He might just as well have come out and said, ‘I think I’m better than all of you.’ ”

  Dana stared across the lawn at the cars lining the road and beyond at the houses of Barnegat Point, the businesses at the west end of the main street, the roof of the high school. She turned back to Francie and blinked. Then she said quietly, “If you don’t want to go inside, you don’t have to. I would understand, and I don’t care what anybody else thinks. There isn’t time to find someone to run you back to the cottage now, but you could take the umbrella and go to the coffee shop. We could pick you up later. Do you want to skip the funeral?”

  Francie shook her head. “No. It’s okay. Papa Luther was still my great-grandfather. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.” She smiled.

  “Francie, my love, you are far more mature than I’ll ever be,” said Dana, and at last, they entered the church.

  * * *

  By the time the funeral for Luther Nichols, father of Abby, Rose, Fred, Miles, and the late Adele; husband of Helen and also of the late Nell; owner and founder of Nichols Furniture; resident of Barnegat Point since 1932 — by the time his funeral had come to an end with one final wheezy note from the organ, the sun had come out.

  Francie emerged from the church into a bright, chilly afternoon that glistened in the morning’s raindrops. She squinted her eyes.

  “Dana!” Peter exclaimed, hurrying from Abby’s side. “Now we go back to the cottage? Now we go to the beach?”

  “No, honey,” Dana replied. “Sorry. It’s too cold for the beach, and anyway, we have to go to Helen’s for a while.”

  Francie watched her uncle’s face fall. “We have to go to Helen’s?” he repeated.

  Dana nodded. “There’s a reception. We have to pay our respects to her. We have to show her that we love her and support her. She feels very sad right now.”

  Peter scowled. “I already said I’m sorry.”

  “I know you did, but we have to go anyway.”

  Peter was still complaining when Aunt Julia squeezed her car into a spot on Haddon Road across from Helen’s house and Francie climbed out of the backseat, where she’d been sitting with her cousin Finn crammed onto her lap.

  “How long do we have to stay?” muttered Peter as they approached the house. “I hate this place.”

  Dana took his hand but didn’t reply.

  Francie said nothing until they’d been ushered inside by a maid who, Francie felt, was probably older than Luther had been. Then she took a look around at the crowd of black-frocked guests and whispered to Peter, “It’s like a flock of crows landed in here.”

  Peter laughed.

  Francie felt a hand at the small of her back and turned around. “Julia’s going to take us back to the cottage in two hours,” Dana told her. “Can you last for two hours?”

  “Sure.” Francie was privately pleased to be in the company of her mother’s family. So many cousins and aunts and uncles. She was happy to be surrounded by them. Helen and, possibly, Miles were the only ones in the house who cared the least bit about whether anyone was Jewish or had Down syndrome, and Francie steered clear of the two of them. She had organized several of the youngest cousins into a quiet game of telephone, when, from across the room, she heard Grandma Abby say, “Do you want to spend tonight with Dad and me, Peter? Before you go back to New Jersey?”

  Peter, who had been sitting restlessly in a chair near the front door, leaped to his feet. “Yes! Yes, that would be great! Dana! Mom said I can spend the night with her.”

  Dana looked sharply at her mother. “You said what?” she exclaimed.

  The game of telephone ground to a halt and Francie rose to her feet.

  “I asked him if he wanted to spend tonight with Orrin and me before you leave,” said Abby.

  Dana let out a loud sigh. “It would have been nice if we’d talked about this earlier. Now someone will have to go back to the cottage and collect his things. And Julia will have to pick him up at your place tomorrow before she picks up Francie and me. She’ll have to get up at the crack of dawn.”

  Abby let out a sigh of her own. “May I remind you that Peter is my son?”

  “Well, of course. All I’m saying is that we should have planned this ahead of time. There are other people to consider here. Not just you.”

  “And not just you.”

  “Meaning?” said Dana.

  “The world doesn’t center around Dana Burley.”

  “The world doesn’t center around anyone.”

  “Dana?” said Francie, stepping forward.

  Her mother held up a hand and Francie retreated.

  “Don’t you ever take my feelings into consideration? All I want is a night with my son,” said Abby.

  “What about a night with me? I’m your daughter.”

  “Where was this attitude when you were fourteen and went off to live with Adele?” asked Abby.

  “I don’t know. I was fourteen.”

  “Come on,” said Francie, stepping forward again. “Don’t fight. Please. Not here. Not in front of Peter. And everyone else.” She glanced at the row of children, who were paying close attention to every word.

  But Dana and Abby held their angry gazes until finally, Dana said, “Julia, I’m sorry to make you do this, but Mom has just invited Peter to spend the night with her, so we’ll have to go back to the cottage for his things. Do you mind running me to Lewisport?”

  “What, now?” said Julia.

  “Nice, very nice,” muttered Abby.

  Francie, powerless, slipped out of the house and sat on the porch steps alone.

  “Frances Adele Goldberg.” The voice intoned Francie’s name as if a period followed each word: Frances. Adele. Goldberg.

  Francie, heart pounding, stood at the head of a line of students on the lawn of Princeton High School. The principal, Mrs. Allen, who was poised next to a podium, hand extended and clutching a rolled-up diploma, appeared to Francie to be miles away. She was, in fact, twenty feet away.

  Francie felt frozen. Her blue gown rippled in a warm breeze, and from the corner of her eye, she could glimpse the fluttering tassel on her cap, but her limbs seemed disconnected from her brain and wouldn’t move. Just when she feared her name would have to be called a second time, Harrison Goldman, standing behind her, nudged her shoulder, and Francie stumbled forward. She reached Mrs. Allen, and the vice principal, who was manning the microphone, now added, “With high honors,” and a cheer rose from the crowd of parents and guests seated on the lawn.

  Francie finally relaxed. She held her diploma aloft and, grinning, filed back to her seat, joining the brand-new members of Princeton High School class of 1988. She flopped down next to Carla Glassman.

  “We did it!” said Carla. “It’s over.”

  That was not at all how Francie felt, but she didn’t know Carla well enough to contradict her. High school might have been over, but the rest of her life was just beginning, a sentiment that had been reflected in every speech given that afternoon — by Mrs. Allen, by the class valedictorian, and by the class president.

  The rest of her life.

  The rest of her life.

  Francie was awed by the phrase. What felt like an entire life was already behind her, and yet the rest of it, which she hoped would be much, much longer, still lay ahead.

  “How does it feel to graduate?” Peter had asked her that morning. He had been excited about Francie’s graduation from middle school, but he was fascinated by her graduation from PHS — and the thought that she would soon leave Princeton and go to college.

  “Well,” she’d replied, “it feels … grown-up. It feels like I’ve reached a mil
estone.”

  “You have reached a milestone,” said Dana, who was sitting in the living room with Francie, Peter, and Sadie. “In a couple of months, you’ll be on your own.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

  “Of course you are,” said Dana.

  “I wish I could be on my own,” said Peter.

  Francie had smiled at him. “You need to stay here and keep Dana company while I’m at college. And you have to help her take care of Sadie.”

  “That’s a big job,” said Peter solemnly.

  “If you had to name the top ten highlights of the last four years,” Dana said to Francie, “what would they be?”

  “Mo-om!” Francie rolled her eyes. “That sounds like an essay question on a college application.”

  But Peter had leaned forward in his chair. “What would they be?”

  Francie had let out a breath. She leaned over to pat Sadie, who leaped neatly into her lap, turned around twice, and curled herself into a comma. “The last four years,” Francie had repeated. “Well, graduation, of course, even though it won’t happen for a few more hours. Graduation is certainly a highlight. Do I have to list these in order or can I just name ten things?”

  “No order,” said Dana. “And they don’t have to be ten good things either. But ten important things.”

  “All right, then. Matthew’s wedding and being a bridesmaid.”

  “I got to be an usher and wear a tux!” exclaimed Peter.

  “You were the best usher there,” said Dana.

  “Number three,” Francie continued, “Matthew and Maura’s baby. Sorry if these things are about Matthew, Dana, but they are important. I have a baby brother now. Let’s see. Okay, number four, well, Adele’s funeral, of course.”

  “Don’t talk about that,” said Peter, so Francie said hastily, “Number five, Curtis.”

  “Woo-woo! Francie has a boyfriend!” Peter hooted.

  Francie refrained from adding that Curtis was her steady boyfriend, the only boy she’d dated for the past year, and the boy she would continue to see over the summer — and after she’d left for Smith College, although she wasn’t sure how that would work, since she would be in Massachusetts and Curtis would be attending the University of Colorado. But Curtis insisted that they could make it work.

  “Six?” prompted Dana.

  “Getting accepted at Smith.”

  “You got accepted everywhere you applied.”

  “I know, but Smith was my first choice.” Francie shifted Sadie in her lap. “Number seven, learning to drive. Number eight, the trip to the Grand Canyon with Kaycee’s family. Number nine, winning the writing award last week.”

  “Your third writing award,” Dana pointed out.

  “Number ten?” said Peter.

  Francie screwed up her face. Then she smiled. “This,” she said.

  “What?” asked Dana and Peter.

  “This moment right now. All of us here together, Sadie in my lap.”

  “We do this all the time,” said Peter, frowning.

  “And I’m really going to miss it after I leave. What am I going to do without you when I’m at Smith?”

  “You’ll find friends,” said her mother. “You won’t believe how fast you’ll find friends. And they’ll become your family.”

  “Maybe I don’t want a new family.”

  “But you won’t lose your old one. As you get older —” Dana started to say.

  Francie and Peter looked at each other and groaned. “Not something else about getting old!” cried Francie.

  “I didn’t say, getting old, I said, getting older. As you get older, you’ll find that you have lots of families. And they’ll all be important to you, but in different ways. You’ll have us, and you’ll have a family of childhood friends, and you’ll have a family of new friends. At Smith, you’ll sit around with these new friends — and by the way, I promise that some of these friends will become your very best friends, friends you’ll keep for the rest of your life, no matter where you live — anyway, you’ll sit with these friends and you’ll talk and laugh and cry and share all sorts of things. It might be hard to imagine now, but let’s have this conversation again in six months. I have a feeling things will look pretty different. Maybe you won’t even want to be sitting here with your old mother.”

  “You mean, my older mother,” said Francie. “And please don’t start crying, Dana, or else I’ll start, and then Uncle Peter will start, and then we’ll spend graduation day having a cry fest.”

  * * *

  When the graduation ceremony was over, when the PHS class of 1988 was mingling noisily with parents and brothers and sisters and friends under a clear sky on a sticky June afternoon, Francie saw Curtis signal to her, and she broke away from Kaycee and Amy. Her oldest friends had been in the audience that afternoon, sitting with Dana, Peter, Matthew, Maura, and eighteen-month-old Jordan. Amy had finished her freshman year at Denison University and was back in Princeton for the summer. Kaycee had graduated from George School two weeks earlier, and Francie had attended the ceremony, cheering for her friend as she received her diploma.

  “Back in a minute,” she said now as Curtis waved to her from the edge of the lawn. She made her way through the crowd to Curtis, who kissed her quickly and said, “What are you doing now?”

  “Going back home. To Dana’s house, I mean. She and Matthew planned a family party, remember?”

  “I know, but skip it,” said Curtis. “Come with me.”

  “Skip it? I can’t. The party is for me. I’ll see you tonight at your house.”

  “There’s going to be a huge crowd, though.”

  Francie wanted to say, “Whose fault is that?” but she kept her mouth shut.

  “We won’t have any alone time,” Curtis went on.

  Francie frowned. “We have the whole summer. We’ll make plenty of alone time. I promise.”

  “Why do you have to spend so much time with your family?”

  “Because they’re my family.”

  Curtis sighed. “All right. Come early tonight, though, okay?”

  “I’ll try. I’m driving Beth and Dale —”

  “Beth and Dale will be with you? So we can’t even grab a few minutes at the beginning of the party?”

  Francie closed her eyes briefly. She loved Curtis, but he seemed to require an awful lot of her time. And patience. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said vaguely.

  * * *

  Dana and Peter had made a banner that read CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATE! and hung it over the garage doors. Francie burst into tears when they pulled up to the house after the graduation festivities and she saw it for the first time.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Peter. And then, in alarm, he added, “Did we make a spelling mistake?” He turned to study the sign.

  Francie wiped at her tears as she and her mother and Peter climbed out of the car. “No, it’s perfect!” she said. “Thank you. I’m happy, not sad. Really.”

  All afternoon, she kept bursting into tears. She burst into tears when Matthew and Maura arrived for the party and Maura handed Jordan to her. She burst into tears when her parents gave her a box that contained a gold ring with her birthstone embedded in it. She burst into tears when Peter donned his cowboy hat for the party, and later, at the mere sight of Sadie. Finally, Dana said to her, “Pumpkin? Do you need a little time to collect yourself?”

  “I guess so. I think I’ll go to my room for a while before I leave for Curtis’s. Is that okay?”

  “Of course.”

  Francie sat on her bed, Kleenex in hand. She looked around her room and wondered which of her possessions she would take with her to Smith. She thought about Erin Mulligan, who should have been completing her junior year at PHS. She thought about her grandmothers, Grandma Abby and Nonnie, neither of whom had had the chance to go to college. She examined the photos stuck around the edges of her mirror: Francie and Kaycee and Amy, waving sparklers in the dark on a long-ago Fourth of Jul
y evening; Sadie as a puppy, guiltily edging out of the kitchen with a pilfered bagel in her mouth; Adele with a thoroughly bald head; Matthew and Dana, much younger, seated formally on a couch; Jordan when he was two hours old.

  She knew she had a photo of Curtis somewhere but she couldn’t find it.

  Francie sat and thought and finally dried her eyes and rejoined her family.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Dana asked Peter as he hesitated by the Nobles’ car.

  Peter touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Yeah.”

  “It’s just for one day, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll have Sadie for company. I’ll be back in Princeton late tonight and I’ll pick you two up on the way home. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Peter peered inside Dana’s car, which was packed for the trip to Northampton, Massachusetts. “I really can’t come with you?”

  “Sorry, honey. There’s barely enough room for Matthew and Francie and me.”

  “Plus,” said Mr. Noble from inside his own car, “we have a big day planned. You’re going to join us on a Noble family picnic.”

  This, Francie knew, was what Kaycee and George had requested before they went off to their colleges, and they’d planned the picnic to coincide with Peter’s visit — the very first time he’d spend an entire day away from his family.

  “Okay,” said Peter again. Reluctantly, he opened the back door of the Nobles’ car so that Sadie could jump in.

  “Wait!” cried Francie. “What about my good-byes?”

  For a moment, just for a moment, Peter turned his head away, and Francie thought he was going to stomp angrily into the car and leave in silence. Then he turned back to her, opened his arms, and wrapped her in one of his bear hugs.

  “Good-bye, Francie, my niece.”

  “Good-bye, Peter, my favorite uncle. I’ll write to you every week, I promise. And we can talk on the phone, too. And you’re going to visit me on parents’ weekend.”

  “Even though I’m not a parent?” asked Peter, pulling back to look Francie in the eye.

  “Even though you’re not a parent. But I’ll see you long before then. I’ll be home for October break. Now let me say good-bye to Sadie.”