Nancy and Nick

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I wondered what Nick was thinking and what he thought of the space between us.

  “If I get accepted at William and Mary,” said Nick, “I wouldn’t be all that far from you.”

  “No, you could come over weekends if you felt like it.”

  “That’s a nice idea.”

  He turned left onto a paved road. The sun glared in our eyes.

  “Eight generations apart,” said Nick. “That’s a pretty thin relationship.”

  I wanted to suggest another possible relationship, but somehow we had gotten awkward again and I lacked the words.

  Nick swung onto yet another dirt road and went up a slight hill.

  The sun was setting in front of us, beyond the road and the wide fields. The sky was streaked with golden pinks and two jet trails sliced mistily through the colors. It was beautiful.

  Nick stopped the car right in the middle of the road and unsnapped his seat belt. He looked at me for a minute. I said, “Are we lost?”

  “No.”

  I unsnapped my seat belt. I had been right about Nick’s cheeks. They were raspy.

  “The thing is,” said Nick between kisses, “you make me nervous.”

  “Likewise,” I said.

  “I make you nervous? You always seem perfectly calm to me.”

  “It’s strictly a front. I can tell when you’re nervous by your voice. You’d have to take my pulse to tell when I’m nervous.”

  “What a good idea.”

  The sun had almost disappeared. The road was apparently never used. Nobody passed us. It got darker and darker. When he paused (“Intermission,” said Nick, grinning.) I looked at my watch. “Nick, we’ve been here for ages.”

  “Did you have something else you wanted to do?”

  But I couldn’t think of anything else.

  The following morning we left for the airport at nine-thirty, because, as Nick said, “If I’m not there on time, she’ll freak out completely.”

  Nick’s father said, “Drive carefully,” in the tone of voice that indicates it wouldn’t bother him if you drove carefully in the wrong direction.

  “Are you sure your mother won’t be upset to have me there, too?” I asked Nick. “Maybe she’d rather have a reunion with you on a one-to-one basis.”

  “Mom isn’t kissy-huggy like all the relatives you’ve been meeting. That’s kind of a Southern phenomenon. She’ll look me over and sort of nod approvingly and kind of lean her cheek my direction so I can press my cheek against hers. Then she’ll tell me I look quite decent with my hair this way and who is my charming companion? She’s very Bostonian.”

  “I thought she lived in Pennsylvania.”

  “She does. That’s just an adjective Dad used to use for her. She’s rather formal and proper and she detests everything Southern. She’ll die at the pig-pickin’. Nothing, but nothing, would make her use her fingers to scrape a meal out of a roasted pig.”

  “I’m not too keen on the idea myself,” I admitted.

  “Really? Terrific. Mom will approve of you right away. Be sure to tell her you eat only with a fork.”

  We drove through some heavy traffic then and I didn’t talk to him, knowing how I hate it when somebody babbles in my ear while I have to be thinking about tractor-trailers trying to merge into my lane when I’m still in it.

  “Actually,” said Nick, “I’m sort of worried about your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nick, my mother is always a complete and total model of good behavior. What can possibly worry you about her? You’re the one who figured her for a buffer, remember.”

  “Yes, but that was before I realized how much my father likes her. Mom is going to see that right away.”

  I was struck dumb. I stared at Nick, to see if he thought that was some sort of joke, but he looked perfectly serious. Even worried.

  “Dad asked me,” said Nick very casually—too casually, “to ask you if your mother has said anything about him to you.”

  My jaw practically broke my collarbone, falling. “You mean your father likes my mother enough to want inside information about her attitude toward him?”

  “You got it.” Nick pulled into the airport parking lot and took a parking ticket from the little entry robot. The orange arm lifted and we drove under it. Nick found a space far from the pedestrian exit. “Mom approves of exercise,” he explained. “If I park right next to the walkway, she’ll think it’s because I’ve gotten slovenly and lazy.”

  I said, “My head is still reeling about your father liking my mother.”

  “He’s shy. He’s afraid to ask her for a date, so he asked her to a reunion instead.”

  I wanted to ask if this sort of problem ran in the family—asking people to reunions instead of on dates—but I couldn’t quite nerve myself up to say it. We sat there. Nick turned off the engine (he’d borrowed a relative’s Cadillac so his mother wouldn’t have to ride in the jeep or his father’s beat-up antique-hauling old van), and with the air conditioning off we were in a beautifully upholstered furnace.

  Nick said, “Actually, Nancy, I… I … kind of identify with how my father feels.”

  Breathing became hard again, and not just because the car was so hot and stuffy.

  “Mother thinks he’s very nice,” I said. “I know she loved having him come up and work on the antiques with her. They had a good time over that. She … she said he was like a teddy bear.”

  “A teddy bear!” said Nick, insulted.

  “You know, huggable. Short and plump and squeezy.”

  Nick chuckled helplessly. “I don’t think that’s the description of himself that Dad was looking for. Short, plump, and squeezy. I can kind of see how it applies, though.”

  “What’s your mother like?”

  “Tall and elegant and untouchable. I think that was one of their problems.”

  I was stumbling all over those dumb words again. Talking madly away about our mothers and his father when what I wanted to do was talk about us. “And you think your mother is going to be bothered by this? After being divorced all these years?”

  “My mother is easily bothered.”

  “Oh, Nick! You look so nervous. I’m sure everything will go all right. I’ll be sure and eat neatly and act properly and I’ll even chaperone my mother when your father’s around. How’s that?”

  We got out of the car laughing and walked up to the terminal holding hands.

  “It’s peculiar to think of my father as having a crush on someone,” said Nick. “You think of adults as finished with that kind of thing.”

  “Mother and I talk about how I feel about boys,” I admitted, “but she’s never said how she feels about men. The subject has never come up. I guess it never occurred to me that she had feelings.”

  “My father says you can still feel adolescent when you’re forty-seven.”

  We stood on the electric door openers and huge glass walls parted for us. Why couldn’t I say, “How interesting! Your father loves my mother and I love you. Now how do you feel, Nick?” Instead I had to say, “Look at the board. Her flight’s on time. Fifteen minutes to wait.”

  “Let’s go up on the observation deck till it lands.”

  We dropped our dimes in the turnstile and ran up the stairs to the deck. It was very windy and very hot and there were about twenty other people up there. We sat on the back bench.

  “I can’t stay with you this afternoon because I have to go straight to Nearing River House to get dressed for the battle,” said Nick.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll stick with your mother, maybe, if we hit it off. Your mother and I are only going to the battle to look at you anyway.”

  Nick picked up my hand, which I had placed in an easily accessible position, and held it. I held his tighter and we ended up in a squeezing contest. “Actually,” said Nick, “if I get accepted at William and Mary, you’d be close enough to come stay with me weekends, instead of me going to stay with you. Would you l
ike to do that?”

  Words. Honestly. Would I like that? As if I might reply, Nah, forget it, I have better things to do. “Yes,” I said, “I’d like that.”

  We kissed each other and not one of the other observers on the deck observed it, either.

  When Nick’s mother’s plane came in and the passengers began getting off I recognized her right away. The only one who didn’t look rumpled from the heat. The one who was, indeed, tall, slim, elegant, and as handsome as Nick. She greeted him just the way he’d said she would. Coolly. Not at all as if it had been eight months since they’d seen each other. I stood back a little, waiting, trying to look like the sort of girl who would only use a fork.

  Nick was looking at her with affection and I realized for the first time that one reason he was nervous was that he really wanted her to have a good time. He was just as worried about his mother as he was about his father. That’s nice, I thought, I like that.

  “And who is your charming companion, Nicholas?” she said, extending her hand to me. She was actually wearing gloves in that ninety-five-degree sunshine. I took her hand and smiled.

  “This is Nancy Nearing,” said Nick.

  “Another Nearing? Another cousin?” Her eyebrows lifted. They weren’t cute like Nick’s, but very disapproving. I was with her there. I didn’t want to be referred to as a cousin either.

  Nick shepherded us toward the luggage turntable. He looked at me and I looked at him and we gave each other little half smiles. Nick said, “No, Mom, she’s my girlfriend.”

  My half smile spread quite a lot, and so did Nick’s.

  “How nice,” said his mother warmly, handing Nick her luggage tickets. “Brown leather, dear, with red straps. Three of them. Nancy, I’m delighted to meet Nick’s girlfriend. How good of you to come along.”

  While Nick retrieved the bags we stood to one side and talked about the day’s plan and which parts of it both of us planned to go to. My mouth curved in a wide grin I thought might stay there permanently. Because nobody could be happier to hear that Nicholas Nearing had a girlfriend than I was!

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

  Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

  Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

  Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

  Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

  Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning The Face on the Milk Carton, about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in Whatever Happened to Janie? (1993), The Voice on the Radio (1996), and What Janie Found (2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book, Janie Face to Face, will be released in 2013.

  Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the Mayflower.

  The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

  Cooney at age three.

  Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.

  Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison and Jean Craighead George’s Vison, the Mink. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.

  Cooney’s report card from sixth grade in 1959. “Mr. Albert and I are still friends over fifty years later,” she says.

  Cooney in middle school: “I went through some lumpy stages!”

  In 1964, Cooney received the Flora Mai Holly Memorial Award for Excellence in the Study of American Literature from the National League of American Pen Women. “I always meant to write to them, and tell them that I kept going!” Cooney says. “I love the phrase ‘pen woman.’ I’m proud to be one.”

  Cooney at age nineteen, just after graduating from high school. (Photo courtesy of Warren Kay Vantine Studio of Boston.)

  Cooney with Ann Reit, her book editor at Scholastic. Many of the books Cooney wrote with Reit were by assignment. “Ann decided what books she wanted (for example, ‘entry-level horror, no bloodshed, three-book series,’ which became Fog, Snow, and Fire) and I wrote them. I loved writing by assignment; it was such a challenge and delight to create a book when I had never given the subject a single thought.”

  Cooney with her late agent Marilyn Marlow, who worked with her on all of the titles that are now available as ebooks from Open Road.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1982 by Caroline B. Cooney

  Cover design by Angela Goddard

  978-1-4804-5173-5

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  THE COONEY CLASSIC ROMANCES

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