Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

New England was different, though, and she found it tough sledding in her new high school. The cliques were long established, and since Laura wasn’t the type to crash them, she spent most of her free time babysitting and wishing she had a best friend again, even a needy one. Kelsey visited for two weeks that summer, and after that first year’s separation both girls seemed profoundly happy together. Kelsey had a boyfriend now, Robbie, but he was from her mother’s church and he thought he might become a minister, so in some respects it was a lot like not having a boyfriend. She told Laura she was thinking she’d break up with him as soon as she got back to L.A., though then again maybe she’d wait until she had someone to replace him. The following summer, when she visited again, Kelsey was still with Robbie, who now was pretty sure, at least when they were necking in the backseat of his parents’ car, that he didn’t have a vocation after all. It wasn’t until junior year that Laura got a boyfriend, the son of one of Griffin ’s colleagues, and this ended her isolation, because being a couple allowed them access into the same social circles where they’d been unwelcome as singles.

That was also the year of college applications, and Kelsey frequently called to ask what schools Laura had visited the weekend before, which had impressed her the most, how she was leaning. She wanted desperately to apply back East herself, but her parents said she had to stay in California, in the state university system. Private schools were out of the question. Which they would have been for Laura but for the generous tuition-reimbursement program offered by Griffin ’s college.

By the fall of her senior year Laura had settled on Skidmore College. Jonathan, her boyfriend, applied there as well, though not early admission as Laura had and expected him to. His parents wanted him to keep his options open, he explained, but she was worried there might be more to it, that maybe those options weren’t just academic. Worse, what if that wasn’t really his parents’ idea but his own? Griffin didn’t say anything, though he feared she might be right. Jonathan’s father struck him as a careerist who was using his present position as a stepping stone to a better one at a research university. He’d even asked him for a letter of recommendation earlier that year, stressing the necessity for secrecy. If Griffin was right-and he was reasonably confident of his ability to recognize academic snobbery and ambition when he saw it-then the apple hadn’t fallen very far from the tree. Laura was deeply in love with Jonathan, though, and while he undoubtedly cared for her, she was afraid that maybe he wasn’t quite as much in love with her as she with him. The harder she tried to find out, the more elusive and distant he became. When she got the good news about Skidmore, he was happy for her, but she thought maybe he was also relieved to know that her decision had been made, that she wouldn’t be able to wait and see where he was going. When he applied to eight schools and got in everywhere except Skidmore, Laura tearfully confessed to her mother that she suspected he’d withdrawn his application there. “You should give Kelsey a call,” Joy had suggested, hoping to cheer her up. “See how things are shaping up for her.”

Laura said she would but never did. She’d told Kelsey too much about Jonathan and didn’t want to confess the extent of her broken heart. In fact, they didn’t talk until late that spring, when her friend called with exciting news. She hadn’t called earlier, she explained, because she was waiting to hear what kind of financial package her favorite school would offer, but she’d just learned today that she, too, would be enrolling at Skidmore. The other reason she hadn’t called was that she’d been down in the dumps since Christmas, when she’d spent the holidays wondering whether to break up with Robbie, only to have him break up with her. All that backseat groping had caused him to backslide into the church. He’d confessed to his pastor that he was pretty sure he and Kelsey would have sex soon (she told Laura his optimistic anxiety on that score was entirely unwarranted), and the pastor had said that breaking up was definitely the right thing to do. So for now she was dating a boy who was really more of a friend, someone there was no danger of getting serious about. Laura knew him, actually. Did she remember Sunny Kim? Probably not, but he remembered Laura and was always asking about her.

Of course Laura did remember both Sunny and his family. Mr. Kim was an engineer who’d thrived since arriving in America. Mrs. Kim didn’t work outside the home and in fact seldom left it. Griffin remembered Sunny, the oldest of their half-dozen children, as a well-mannered boy, prematurely adult and serious. He wasn’t allowed to play sports or join clubs. When school let out Mrs. Kim was always there at the curb with a wagonful of well-behaved little Kims, the two youngest still strapped into car seats. Years before, Joy and Kelsey’s mother had invited Mrs. Kim to join their car pool, since the three families lived within a few blocks of one another. But she’d declined, saying in fractured but earnest English that transportation was her duty and her husband wouldn’t approve of her sharing it. She wasn’t unfriendly, though, and seemed, if not tempted by their offer, at least grateful for it. Determined to raise their children as Koreans, the Kims apparently feared all American influences, as if Southern California culture itself were rooted in decadence and corruption, which-admit it-didn’t exactly make them fools. That Sunny also wasn’t allowed to ask girls out made Laura guiltily glad, because she knew he had a crush on her.

It was interesting that later, when they finally relaxed a bit and let Sunny date, he chose (or was it his mother?) the daughter of one of the women who’d been kind to Mrs. Kim so long ago. Laura suspected that the real reason he dated Kelsey was that he knew she and Laura were still friends. Sometimes they’d talk for a good half hour on the phone and then, just before hanging up, Kelsey would say, as if in afterthought, “Oh, Sunny says hi,” and Laura would realize that he’d been there all along, waiting patiently to be acknowledged, for his name to be introduced into the record, anxious not to be completely forgotten. When Kelsey headed east to join Laura at Skidmore, Sunny enrolled at Stanford, where he’d earned a full scholarship. “Do you think Sunny’s gay?” Kelsey inquired idly one day, as if this happy possibility had just occurred to her. They’d dated throughout senior year, and Sunny, though always attentive and eager to please, had never even tried to kiss her. She hadn’t wanted him to, exactly, but still. Now, at Stanford, he apparently wasn’t dating.

“No,” Laura told her, “Sunny’s not gay.”

What he was, at Stanford, was poor. He had the scholarship, sure, but he also worked two part-time jobs. His father, a stereotypical Asian workaholic, had fallen ill that summer and had to have an operation. Afterward, he’d gone back to his job too soon and gotten sick again, a pattern that was to recur during Sunny’s college years. “Is it okay if I give Sunny your e-mail address?” Kelsey asked one day during their spring semester. He’d been writing her every week, long e-mail letters that made her feel guilty about the brief ones she sent in return, so guilty that she’d solved the problem by responding only to every second or third letter, and it would be good to have someone to share the burden. “Besides,” she told Laura, “he keeps asking about you.”

Laura said that of course it was okay, but for some reason Sunny didn’t write. Probably, she decided, he was just as shy as he’d been in middle school, always standing awkwardly off on the periphery of things, never willing to put himself forward. So after a couple weeks she wrote him instead, asking how he was, how his classes were going, whether there was a girl in his life yet. By evening he’d responded-good, fine and no. But he was very happy to hear from her. Yes, Kelsey had given him her address, though he hadn’t been sure she’d remember him after so many years. Still, since she’d been so kind, would she mind if he wrote her occasionally and promised not to do it too often? He knew how busy she must be, and of course she wouldn’t be under any obligation to reply.