That Old Cape Magic

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 oneof 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 acouple 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.
    “Excellent!” Kelsey said when Laura told her about all this. “Now he’s yours, which is only fair. I dated him. This is the least you can do.”
    And so the two began a correspondence. Every couple weeks Laura would receive a newsy e-mail and wait a few days before writing back, not wanting to give him the wrong impression, though in fact she did enjoy hearing about his family, his classes, his part-time jobs. Gradually she learned to read between the lines, factoring in Sunny’s modesty (he wasn’t doing “okay” in his classes, but brilliantly), his optimism (his father’s condition wasn’t likely to “improve soon,” but rather would continue its decline), his stoicism (he was friendly with several of his professors, meaning he had no other friends). His classes had many attractive and intelligent girls, he admitted, but most were spoken for and, besides, his mother was determined that when the time came he should marry a Korean girl and bring her to this country. For this precise purpose she’d