Carolyn gave me a wind chime, a delicate thing, bought at Rock’s Variety Store down on Sixth Street, held together with nearly invisible strands of wire. When I lifted it out of the box, it made a sweet sound, ephemeral and gone again the minute I closed my palm around the hollow tubes.

The light from the Christmas tree in my living room made her face glow pink. She was 14 years old, with freckles across her nose, and soft, curly hair. I envied her curls, but she disliked them – hated them, she said. Carolyn at that age hated or loved everything.

“It’s not a Christmas present,” she said. “This is to say I’m sorry.  For hating you before I even knew you.”

****

After my mother re-married, she wanted to buy a house, and in the summer of 1960 her realtor called to say he had a great deal, a house on the south side of 17^th Avenue at Second Street. It was no palace, just two bedrooms and one bath, but a good location, and the payments might be lower than rent at the Villas. My mother jumped on it.

A few days after we moved in, we were out back hanging laundry, cheerful work, full of the scent of new-mown grass, sunshine, and big, big sky. The breeze off the water a block away whipped the clothes about, making an engaging sound, crisp, musical, almost like a wind chime.

Our next-door neighbors came out to take the sheets off their line, and my mother wanted to say hello. As we covered the short distance between our clothes lines, I recognized Mrs. Williams. Uh oh. Please God, don’t let the Danforth Elementary School teacher who thought I was writing on the wall be my next-door neighbor. And please let her forget she thought I lied when I said I wasn’t.

There was a girl with Mrs. Williams, but the sheets danced around us, bringing the girl in and out of view, and only when Mrs. Williams plucked the last sheet off the line did I see the girl clearly. I couldn’t think of her name, but she went to Blocker, and she was in the band. She resided at the front of the clarinet section with the real musicians. I sat in the back, battling with Raymond over third from last chair. She played the clarinet better than me, but so would Bucky Beaver, if he tried, in spite of his protruding teeth.

“I’m sure you know Carolyn from school,” said Mrs. Williams.

Carolyn clapped her hands with delight (yes, she did) at the happy news I was her new neighbor. I knew it was an act, but my attention was on Mrs. Williams, who at any moment would call me a liar and string me up with the clothes line.

That didn’t happen, but back in the house, I was a nervous wreck. Sooner or later Mrs. Williams would reveal my criminal past to Carolyn, my mother, everyone on 17^th Avenue and beyond. My mother didn’t notice my dismay, but remarked on how nice it was to have a neighbor who liked me so much.

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.

“Well. We’ll all go to the beach.”

That was the Butterfly’s standard and surprisingly effective solution to all social problems among friends and relatives. Who could be up-tight at the beach?

Carolyn and I encountered each other hanging out clothes, bringing in the morning paper. The ice melted a little, and one day my family was heading to the beach. My mother insisted we invite the Williams girls, and after that, Carolyn and I began seeing each other on purpose. Still, we seemed an unlikely pair to become best friends.

There were small but symbolic differences, such as Carolyn needed glasses and wore them, and I needed glasses, but my mother said the specs spoiled my looks, so Carolyn saw where she was going, and I floated around in a Monet painting. Carolyn was grounded and conventional. I was a dreamer, a free spirit, inclined to do as I pleased within reason. My mother was a Butterfly, and there’s much to be said for that flighty species. Carolyn’s mother was a teacher, an educated woman, a hard-worker, independent and ahead of her time. Carolyn lived on 17^th Avenue as long as she could remember. I lived everywhere and nowhere. Even in Texas City, this was my fifth address.

On a deeper level we had some important things in common. We were both children of divorce, abandoned by our fathers, leaving us with low self-esteem and a driving desire to please our mothers. We were neither inclined to rebellion. To me it seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing, and to Carolyn it was simply unthinkable. Finally, we were both bright, and we got each other. She made me pay attention; I made her laugh.

So we did become best friends, and we liked to sit on the swings at the park on 16^th Avenue, and plan all kind of things. We would spend the night at the new Holiday Inn. We would go to Houston. We would live in Paris. We anticipated high school, just around the ninth grade corner, and we decided to write a book about high school popularity. We would call it “How to be Popular in High School.”

We spent hours on this project, taking notes, making outlines, until we got into a philosophical dust-up. We agreed you had to be good-looking to be popular, but it stopped there. I insisted popularity hinged on being just like everyone else – the right clothes, clubs, boyfriends, hair-dos. Carolyn said, no, that wasn’t right. You had to be so unique people would flock to your originality. We scrapped the project due to creative differences, but we understood that whatever magic it took, we didn’t have it. Not only that, being popular started to seem less important than having a best friend.

Our most intimate conversations took place in the Green Bean, Carolyn’s family car, a green ’57 or ’58 Chevy, parked in her driveway. It was our “den,” a private place where we could talk about things with no possibility of being over-heard.

She hated it when people couldn’t remember her name; she felt invisible. It hurt my feelings when people disliked me without knowing me. When I said this she looked like she might even cry.

“This is terrible,” she said. “But I have to tell you. I almost died when I found out you were my neighbor. I hated you.”

“I knew that. Look at your face in the mirror. You couldn’t fool a blind man, not about anything that matters. But why did you hate me?”

“Terry.”

“Terry? Like a towel?”

She laughed. “Terry in the band. I had a crush on him, and everyone said he had a crush on you.”

Ah, junior high love. If Terry had a crush on me, I didn’t know it, any more than Andy knew I had a crush on him, and he had a crush on Liz, who liked Robert, who liked Carolyn, who liked Terry, who (maybe) liked me.

Then I made my confession. When we met at the clothes line, I hadn’t remembered her name. “So we’re even. You hated me without knowing me, and I made you invisible.”

We had a good laugh and a long debate about whether it was better to be hated or invisible.

Carolyn felt her visibility problems would vanish when she could drive the Green Bean instead of just sit in it, since the main point of driving in Texas City was to be seen. Texas City was over-run with child-drivers, some barely able to see over the steering wheel. Carolyn took drivers education, which enabled her to become a licensed driver when she was 14 or 15 years old. She did become more visible, but not in a good way.

Carolyn probably begged for days until we were finally allowed to go out in the Bean. We went wild! We ate French fries and Tiny Burgers (20 cents apiece) at the Terrace Drive-in. I dared her to “drag” the Terrace, which was considered unladylike, but she did it, twice, then pronounced me a bad influence as we roared off down Palmer Highway toward the high school. At a stop light, we pulled up beside some boys we knew, and the boys revved the engine. Carolyn revved back, the light changed, and we zoomed off, reaching 35 miles an hour in under a mile. The boys were long gone.

We weren’t bound for anywhere in particular, so we circled back and headed down Sixth Street. The same boys pulled up again. There was smiling and revving, but this time we turned to the right and headed home. We had to be back at a certain time, so we took off for home and landed in a shit storm.

Mrs. Williams stood on the porch with her arms folded across her chest as we pulled in. This was trouble, so I high-tailed it over to my house, praying it had nothing to do with me. In 20 minutes the phone rang, and my mother appeared at my bedroom door.

“Edith wants to see you. What did you two do?”

I didn’t know. I knew Mrs. Williams was upset, but we went to the Terrace and road around. That was all, I said.

I trudged next door to my execution. As it turned out, two or three people called Mrs. Williams while we were gone to report that Carolyn and her side-kick (me) were careening all over town, madly chasing after a car full of boys.

This was Texas City. Someone was always calling someone’s mother about something, but I honestly didn’t know what the matter was this time. Mrs. Williams had interrogated Carolyn, and I was next.

She took me into the bathroom, the only private place in a house with four other occupants, closed the door and demanded an accounting of our afternoon. I didn’t leave anything out, even about the boys. We hadn’t raced, and we hadn’t chased anyone. I even had the good sense not to say what I was thinking: As the toilet is my witness, I swear I’m telling the truth.

My story lined up with Carolyn’s, so it was clear our misbehavior had been exaggerated by the town gossips. We got off with a mild scolding, but at least I knew she had forgotten the lying pig-tailed fifth-grader that used to be me. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have believed my story.

When the two of us compared notes later, we laughed, but we agreed. Telling the truth was the right thing to do, but we sure could have dug our hole deeper if we had lied. What a valuable lesson that was.

Still, Carolyn was the best teller of white lies I ever knew, and quick about it, too. In September of 10^th grade (or thereabouts) the two of us joined Junior Achievement and went door to door selling our product, “Gard-Its.” Who wouldn’t want a bag of foam rubber coat-hanger covers, all different colors, and for only one dollar?

We knocked on a door, and the worst happened. The door opened and there stood Gail, Miss Popular at Texas City High. If that wasn’t bad enough, behind her lurked her boyfriend, Diron-the-Football-Player, best known for standing in the hall at TCHS and barking. Carolyn and I were speechless. And horrified.

“Uh. We’re from Junior Achievement,” I muttered.

As Diron hulked, Gail was perfectly pleasant. “Really? Where do you go to school?”

Oh my God. It was a nightmare. She didn’t even know who we were, didn’t even know we were her classmates! I was one second short of screaming: Texas City High, same as you, you bubble-headed dip squat!

Not in this universe was Carolyn going to hawk coat-hanger covers to Miss Popular and her corn-fed boyfriend, let alone confirm how invisible we were in their cool-world pecking order.

She didn’t miss a beat: “We’re from La Marque. Isn’t this the Jones home? We’re supposed to pick up some old clothes for the Junior Achievement charity drive.”

We escaped with our dignity, and we agreed. This answered the question. It was better to be hated than invisible, if it had to be one or the other.

As further proof of her quick wit – which impressed me – when Carolyn’s high school boyfriend, Walter, became a cadet at Texas A&M, he invited her up for a football weekend. Mrs. William agreed to go as chaperon, but Carolyn was ambivalent about him. She wasn’t ready to break up, but she decided to guarantee her good time by taking me along. Walter had to find me a date, and he did, with a gorgeous cadet who had no personality.

There was a football game, a formal dance in the evening, and after the dance, we had hamburgers at a local dive. On the way to the car the four of us walked down the middle of main street, and around the corner came a herd of cows, running right at us. We scrambled for the safety of the sidewalk.

Carolyn had on one of those hoop-slip things under her dress, and when she turned too quickly, it came untied at the waist and fell to the ground, puddling around her ankles. If it had been me, I would have panicked, tumbled to the pavement in a pile of blue ruffles, and been trampled to death. Not Cool Carolyn. She assessed the situation and didn’t move. I can still picture her standing in the road, stiff as a parking meter, her arms tight to her sides, as the cows ran by on their way home, or wherever they were going at three o’clock in the morning in College Station, Texas.

When it was over, she said, “What should I do now?”

“Pick up your slip,” I answered. But it seemed to me she had the situation under control.

Mix equal parts laughter and tears and you get a bonding agent at any age, but especially in the ridiculous days of junior high. Laugh we did. One day Carolyn’s younger sister Eileen had to be at school early, but it was drizzling, so she persuaded Mrs. Williams to drive her. Mrs. Williams wasn’t dressed yet, but she would be right back, so she threw on her bathrobe and away they went. On the way home the over-worked little Chevy coughed, sputtered, and ran clean out of gas. The dignified Mrs. Williams walked all the way down 17^th Avenue from Sixth Street in her chenille bathrobe and slippers, in a drizzle that had become a downpour. Carolyn ran to my house to report this event. She collapsed in my arms, she was laughing so hard.

We laughed more than we cried, but we did cry, too. Carolyn called me one day, and I couldn’t make out what she was saying, she was sobbing so hard. Alarmed, I ran next door. A friend of hers had been killed in a freak accident. Carolyn loved her friends, all of them, even me, and she was devastated. I held her as she cried.

****

Carolyn went to college, married, had three children, and became somebody within the business community in Houston. She was Young Businesswoman of the Year, which was a high honor. She was a person to respect and admire, probably from the time she was born, but certainly from the minute I knew her when she was only 14 years old.

There’s a big middle of life that’s filled with mating, and children, accomplishment, and aging parents, life events that leave little time for old friends. When that passes, there’s the chance to reconnect, a re-gifting of friendship, and I know it would have happened for Carolyn and me.

In 1987 I was in Houston for a family event, and I drove to Texas City. I stopped by to see Mrs. Williams and ask about Carolyn. She lived in Houston, Mrs. Williams said, but she was sick. I should have known by that good lady’s grim expression that Carolyn was more than just sick.

I got her number and called her. Yes, she was sick, she said, but it was going to be OK. If I had seen her face, I would have known it wasn’t. But there were complications, and I didn’t go see her. There would not be another chance. She died before the year was out.

I don’t have many regrets, but not going to see Carolyn is one of them. She was the person I admired most in high school, and to some degree my moral compass, and I taught her everyone has a free spirit. I helped her find hers.

Over time I’ve lost or broken many things, or given them away, but I’ve kept the wind chime that Carolyn gave me. Her memory comes and goes, fleeting and sweet, like the sound of a wind chime. When a person dies young, there’s the tendency to turn them into saints. Carolyn was never a saint. She was a warm, rich human being. I never think of my girlhood without missing Carolyn, and knowing her when we were young is a gift I’ll keep forever.

NOTE: I’m leaving tomorrow for a week-long vacation in Minnesota, so there won’t be a new post next Tuesday. The next post will be on September 29.

NEXT:  The One Day War.