In Alabama
It’s funny that I can look back and remember the phone book and the pizza and the making fun of the Alabama boys, but I don’t have a clear memory of when Kim’s family drove down the driveway, turned left onto Horseshoe and then made another left onto the main road. Did I even watch the sad procession? It seems like something I should remember, her final wave, our one last conversation and maybe even a hug that morning. Unless I was at school, fidgeting in my desk, staring at the clock, only able to imagine the moving van, waiting for the clock’s hands to turn to the numbers of when Kim said they’d be leaving, picturing her dad and Nathan in the white van and the girls with Kyle in the mini-van, Shelly probably crying, and Kim acting disinterested, as though her parents’ decisions didn’t really affect her, probably reading a magazine, or pretending to. That was the beginning of her pre-teen attitude with them. It hardened fast.
I can see it all without having seen it at all because I knew the Carsons better than they needed to be known. I could have slipped into the role of any family member and played their part.
Things got better and worse for Kim that day, and our stories are mostly separate from then on. I didn’t expect that then. A mermaid sister couldn’t just swim away like that. Then again, it’s a big ocean with some very strange currents.
Kim finished out her seventh grade year in Alabama and sent me regular letters plump full of new names and events. There were girls at her new church, boys across the lake in her neighborhood, boys and girls in her classes. She wanted to start track in the eighth grade and maybe she’d join school choir or church choir or both. Now sure, the very first letter she wrote me she’d written in the van on the way up to Alabama and all it talked about was how much she already missed me, how mean her parents were, how stupid Alabama was going to be, appropriate stuff like that. The next letter was about the house; she liked it enough but it wasn’t nearly so “perfect” as her parents made it seem; the pool was smaller and she said her room was an ugly shade of peach they hadn’t yet repainted. But by letters three and four the new names and new activities came pouring out.
My dad was able to use his frequent flier miles to book me a flight so a few weeks into summer I flew up for a visit. Mrs. Carson and Kim and Shelly came to the airport, which was almost an hour drive from their house. Mrs. Carson said she was so happy their “other daughter” had finally come up to visit, and I thought this weird, not really like her to say that. Maybe she’d already taken on some of that southern hospitality.
I don’t think Kim took a breath the whole ride home. All she could talk about was who I had to meet and all we’d be doing. She was especially excited because her youth group was having a pool party the next night and then I could meet Chad, Kim’s crush. Chad was going to be in ninth grade so next year they wouldn’t be at the same school. “I gotta catch him now!” Kim said which didn’t seem like a very Kim thing to say.
We pulled up the driveway and Rascal ran to the van and stood barking at the door until we got it open. She started licking my hands when I went to pet her -- a good welcome. Nathan and another boy opened the front door.
“He’s one of our neighbors across the lake. His brother is my age, but they’re real spoiled. I don’t like ‘em too much but it’s fun playing their video games, and they have their own canoe and a paddle boat that we get to use whenever we want,” Kim told me.
We put my stuff in Kim’s room, and she was right, it was way too peachy, made worse by the fact that Kim had a pink bedspread. Her mom made us grilled-cheese sandwiches, and then we went swimming. I was glad we went swimming before meeting people or anything like that because I liked it just us being us. I wanted to meet her friends and go on the paddleboat, but most important was seeing what had stayed the same in spite of all that had changed.
Comments