The Louisianans

When I was a boy, there was this family we saw every summer for a long weekend. From Friday morning to Sunday afternoon we’d welcome each other with open arms and chocolate chip cookies and stories from the past year.

This lasted for a number of years, and then one day our alternating visitations just stopped. Without warning, it seemed.

I haven’t seen them since I was a teenager. I’m twenty-six now. So, naturally, it would make sense that I’d rarely think about them. Maybe I’d mention them in passing at a dinner party or after finding old photos. Though that should be the extent of my sentiments, I think about them quite often.

Sometimes I’ll be washing the dishes, staring out the window at this cemetery, and they’ll pop into my head, the four of them. Other times I’ll be walking to the train station and there they are, right alongside me.

There’s a story my father told me last summer after I expressed my slight melancholia about the Louisianans:

It was the summer of 2000. My twin sister and I were two; our younger sister hadn’t been born yet. My father had just finished mowing, donning his usual laboring uniform: these blue shorts with bleached spots and tennis shoes. The Louisianans hadn’t been due for quite some time, or so my father thought. (This is another thing about my father: time revolves around him.) He was in the middle of weeding when the weed eater malfunctioned. A cord slipped out, the engine lost power, a mishap on my father’s part, I don’t know. He, who takes after his mother in this way, started spewing inventive profanity combinations. Then the side gate opened. And there they were, the four of them, standing in lawn trimmings, overnight bags in hand.

Being two, of course I don’t remember seeing them that summer, but I know they were there. I know they slept either upstairs or downstairs. I know my mother made cookies for them. Although I don’t remember those things, this is what I do remember:

One summer, years later, it had been our turn to host. It was late Friday morning. My mother was arranging chocolate chip cookies onto a plate. I was standing in the front room, debating whether to or not to hide and scare them when they arrived. As a kid (and as an adult, I guess), when I became excited, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Do I run? Hide? Shriek? All three?

I grew impatient, so I just stood by the window and waited for their car to round the corner. When it did, I couldn’t stop smiling. My mother opened the garage door. The Louisianans walked into the house and found my mother on standby with a steaming plate of cookies. The father grabbed one and shoved it into his mouth. “This is awesome,” he said.

The next morning I awoke early and climbed down from the top bunk and saw that the boy was still sleeping. Slumbering into the kitchen, I joined the adults and listened as my mother fed me snippets of their conversations. Hours later, the girls awoke and we all went swimming.

I missed the boy, so I went back into my room only to see that he was still sleeping. I complained to my mother, who then complained to his mother, who then shook him awake. I don’t think he was very happy about it, and I don’t think he knew it was my fault. The next day we played hide-and-seek while the adults watched Borat at three in the afternoon.

Another summer, in Louisiana, I started an argument that the Louisianans used to have a sidewalk in the front of their house (turns out that a year is enough time to conjure fictional neighborhood infrastructures). They said in all the years they’ve lived in that house, there has never been a sidewalk. I tried to suggest that maybe there were city plans to build one. They laughed and shook their heads.  

Sometime that weekend we went to the public pool, and on the way I noticed that there were in fact no sidewalks. Just long strips of grass broken up by driveways. At the pool the Louisianans talked about alligators and how they saw one of them walking across their neighbors’ yards some months ago. I spent the remainder of our midday swim scanning the woods.

That night, some of the Louisianans’ friends visited and brought their daughter, who happened to be my age. I have long forgotten her name and face, but I remember being like a puppy, following her everywhere she went. The girls became annoyed and told me to scram, so I retreated into the boy’s bedroom where we played Hulk on the GameCube and where we made a trade that I would regret years later: his Hulk for my Super Smash Bros Melee. (I did buy another copy eleven years later when I was twenty-two.)

That same night I taught a dance to the adults, which I had learned from my cousin, that can only be best described as an extension of Michael Jackson’s crotch grab. And that same night, the boy and I had gotten pantsed by the girls; we obviously couldn’t retaliate. And I think they stole our shorts, too, actually.

After an unfortunate multiple-year hiatus, we returned to Louisiana to their new house (this one came with a sidewalk). En route, my father had gotten lost and my mother’s head was on a swivel, which was a common occurrence on our family road trips. It was quite entertaining to watch. We made it eventually, though (mostly because of my mother, of course).

After welcoming us into the house, the men gravitated towards one of the brick pillars residing in the front room. One of them tapped it with a closed fist, the universal male affirmation that the pillar was in fact intact. Then the Louisianans took us on a tour.

Laundry room, guest room, parents’ bedroom, garage, backyard, and then upstairs to the two bedrooms—the boy’s and the girl’s—and media room, which had a balcony and to which they pointed out, “No climbing onto the roof.” I looked at the boy and he mouthed: Don’t worry. We will. (For some reason we never did, and I wish we had.)

That weekend was different. We were older. Conversations became nuanced. It wasn’t all about toys and video games and being pantsed anymore. We watched The Road instead of playing hide-and-seek.

We learned that the boy had picked up tennis and, according to his parents, was pretty good, so the boys visited the tennis courts while the girls gossiped on the back porch.

At one point during a match, the tennis ball hit the net and dropped to the ground. My father ran across the court and picked it up and ran off while everyone laughed. Later I asked him what that was about and why it was so funny. He then explained to me the role of a ball boy. I still didn’t find it funny. Years later, though, I finally did.

And that was our last summer together. In the following years I’d ask my mother if we’d ever see them again. She’d smile and say, “It’s hard now. Everyone’s all grown up.” With each inquiry came a different variation. My father, though, delivered a more optimistic response: “I have a feeling we will.”