Red Leaves Read online

  ‘I thought you did not like going with Jim anymore.’

  God, what a good memory he has! Kristina thought.

  ‘Well…’ she drew out. ‘I just don’t think his family likes me, that’s all.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t think they like my hair,’ she said. The last time I was there, they were… they couldn’t stop thinking, I could tell, they all wanted to ask me, they were just dying to ask me, just why oh why was a nice girl like me not spending Thanksgiving with her own family?

  Kristina had asked Jim to prime them ahead of time on the status of her illustrious fallen-apart family. She knew that well-mannered Mrs Shaw was still dying to ask, dying to say something. Her unspoken questions lingered in the air until they got stale and rotten, and Kristina never went back with Jim after the sophomore year.

  ‘You should go with Jim. I am sure he would like you to.’

  ‘I’m sure he would,’ she said, wanting to explain how hard it was for her to spend Thanksgiving with Jim and his well-traveled, well-spoken parents enveloping her with a suffocating blanket of concern and affection.

  Kristina contemplated going down to Cold Spring Harbor with Conni and Albert. But since the beginning of the year, Kristina and Conni had not been getting along. Tension between them was thick, and it hung in the air in the same unpleasant way Jim’s parents’ questions hung in the air.

  When they became roommates in their freshman year, in Mass Row, sharing a two-room double with a bathroom and a sitting room, every night was poker or blackjack night, every night was a sleepless night, because they couldn’t stop talking. Kristina and Conni took some of the same prerequisite courses together, they ate at Thayer and Collis Café together, and went to the Hop to watch movies together. They studied together in the library, and her first Christmas at Dartmouth Kristina went with Conni to Cold Spring Harbor, where for three weeks she almost had a good time. Constance Sarah Tobias had a fine family. Conni’s older brother, Douglas, was a hoot, and her parents were distant enough not to bother Kristina.

  Being together became a little tougher after the problem between Jim and Albert. Soon, though, things went back to normal. Or so Kristina thought. Normal was relentless studying and term papers, lectures and study halls, Sanborn and Baker and Feldberg libraries. Normal was baked ziti at Thayer and club sandwiches at Collis, and Hopkins Center movies and frat parties on Saturday night and Sunday-morning hangovers and two-on-twos. Kristina thought they were all getting along fine, but she hadn’t read Constance right.

  Kristina tried hard to forget the incident last winter on the bridge, and she forgave Conni her momentary lapse of reason.

  Kristina suspected it was when she and Albert went to Edinburgh, Scotland, on an exchange program in the sophomore spring semester that things changed permanently among the four inseparable friends. But what do you do about old friendships? What do you do about your college friends? Even after Edinburgh they all had continued to study together and eat together and go to parties together. We’re like family, Kristina thought, feeling suddenly very cold. No matter how tough things get, we can’t break it off with one another.

  Howard paid the check and they got outside. Instead of putting his gray wool coat on himself, he put it on Kristina. She squeezed it around herself, wishing she wouldn’t have to give it back. It was warm, and it smelled like Howard, some serious cologne he always wore. Yves Saint Laurent?

  ‘Kristina, I want to tell you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  They stood at the head of the stairs to Peter Christian’s for a few moments; Krishna’s mind was reeling.

  ‘There is no more money, Kristina.’

  She relaxed. ‘I know.’

  ‘You know? What do you plan to do?’

  Kristina had lots of plans. As of tomorrow. Today she was dead broke. She was thinking of borrowing a few dollars from Howard to buy Albert a birthday present, but her conscience didn’t let her.

  ‘I’ll get by. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Listen,’ Howard said, struggling with himself. ‘If you need a little, I’ve -’

  ‘Howard!’ Kristina squeezed his forearm. ‘Please. I don’t need anything. Really.’

  ‘You’re still working at Red Leaves?’

  ‘Yes. There’s enough money.’

  They walked a few feet to the Co-op, and Howard bought himself a sweat-shirt that said, ‘Ten Reasons I’m Proud My Daughter Goes to Dartmouth.’ Reason Number Ten was ‘Because her SAT scores were too high to get into Harvard.’

  He said he liked that reason best.

  ‘But Howard,’ Kristina said, ‘I’m not your daughter.’

  ‘That is okay. It is not meant to be accurate. It is meant to be funny. Besides, you know, sometimes I wish you were.’

  She looked at him, surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘So I could take care of you all the time. So that I would never have to say to you, there is no more money,’ he said, sounding bitter and upset.

  ‘Howard, please,’ Kristina said quietly. ‘Please.’

  ‘Listen, do you want me to walk you back to your room?’

  Smiling, Kristina said, ‘No, thank you.’

  She walked him to his car, a rented Pontiac Bonneville.

  ‘How is your car?’ Howard asked her.

  ‘Oh, you know. Beat-up. Old. I hate that car. The antifreeze is leaking out of the heating core on the passenger side, and it smells awful. The whole car smells like antifreeze. Plus it’s loud. I think the muffler may be going.’

  ‘What do you care about the passenger side? You drive.’

  Kristina was going to say that sometimes she sat on the passenger side, sometimes, when there were mountains and trees, and sunlight. She sat on the passenger side on the way to Fahrenbrae, to the vacation houses nestled high in the Vermont hills.

  ‘You need money to get it fixed?’

  It was amazing that with all the money he gave her, she could be so constantly broke. It was hard to imagine that a girl getting twenty thousand dollars a year from Howard could be poor - what an insult to really poor people out there! - but still, after the tuition, and the room and board, and the books, and gas for her lousy car, there was not five hundred dollars left. That’s the way her father had wanted it: no money left for extras. But five hundred dollars into ten months of school didn’t amount to much. About $1.66 a day. Enough for a candy bar and a newspaper. If she saved up and didn’t have a candy bar, she could go to the movies once every couple of weeks. If she was really careful, she could buy a small bag of popcorn.

  Kristina reached out, touching Howard’s face softly. Hugging him hard and tight, she whispered, ‘I don’t want any money from you.’

  He hugged her back. ‘Because you know, even without your father’s money, I’ve got some of my own.’ He didn’t look at her when he said that, and Kristina noticed, but she guilelessly said, ‘I’m sure, Howard. You’ve always taken very good care of yourself. I certainly don’t have to worry about you.’

  He pulled away. ‘You need a ride back? You look cold.’

  She shook her head. ‘Thanks. I have basketball practice. Then Jim and I are studying Aristotle for a quiz on aesthetics tomorrow. And I have to write an article on the death penalty for the Review before Thanksgiving. You know, same old, same old.’

  ‘Death penalty, huh? Does New Hampshire even have a death penalty?’

  ‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘You have to kidnap and kill a police officer while trying to rob a bank to get money to buy crack to sell to little kids, but there’s a death penalty.’

  ‘How many people are put to death each year?’

  ‘What, by criminals?’

  Howard laughed lightly. ‘Funny. No, by the state.’

  She thought for a moment and pretended to count. ‘All in all, including the ones who were going to be put to death the previous year, and all the years before, let’s see… one… three… twenty-seve
n - none.’

  He laughed. ‘And what position are you going to take on this today? As I remember, you used to be against.’

  ‘That was then. I wasn’t allowed to have another opinion in that damn school you sent me to.’ Kristina smiled. ‘I don’t know what my opinion is yet. I haven’t started writing. I usually get a position somewhere in the middle of the article and then spend the last half defending my new opinion.’

  ‘You do not think killers deserve to die?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I think I’m reading too much Nietzsche. He’s screwing up my common sense -’

  ‘What common sense?’ said Howard.

  Kristina poked him in the ribs. ‘If they don’t deserve to die, then what do they actually deserve? Because they do deserve something, don’t you think? What do they get in Hong Kong?’

  ‘Death.’

  Kristina wasn’t sure about death. God was part of that somehow. There was a God out there between all her courses on eastern religion and modern religious thought, and morality and religion, between all those lofty words strung together, there was a God, and she didn’t know what He was telling her. She spent most of her life dulling His presence from her existence. What did Mahatma Gandhi say was one of the seven greatest evils? ‘Pleasure without conscience.’ Dulling Gandhi’s existence too, though his credo hung on the cork-board near her desk as an insolent reminder. What would have Gandhi thought about the death penalty? In general? And specifically - for the man who killed him? Gandhi would have forgiven him, Kristina was sure. Just as Pope John Paul forgave his Bulgarian would-be assassin, Gandhi would have forgiven his killer. But then it was Gandhi who wrote that the seventh greatest evil was ‘politics without principle.’ Gandhi was nothing if not principled.

  ‘Would John Lennon forgive Mark David Chapman?’ said Howard.

  Kristina smiled. ‘Well, you’re really a popular culture whiz, aren’t you? I don’t think John Lennon would’ve,’ she added. ‘He had too much to live for.’

  ‘So that is how you determine forgiveness. You think it is easier to forgive your killer when your life is empty?’

  ‘Much,’ said Kristina. But the Pope’s life hadn’t been empty, no, not at all. Still, the Pope didn’t have a five-year-old Sean Lennon.

  Howard stood shifting from foot to foot. ‘You’re cold,’ Kristina said, unwrapping his coat from herself. ‘Here.’

  He took his coat but did not put it on. They both stood and shivered.

  ‘You know,’ Howard said uncertainly, ‘you’re welcome to come to New York for Thanksgiving. We could go see David and Shaun Cassidy in Blood Brothers.’

  So he had asked her. Waited till the last minute, but asked her anyway. Kristina felt bad. She rubbed his suit sleeve again.

  ‘It’s all right, Howard,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s only a silly holiday.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I do not like the thought of you alone and unhappy on the silly holidays.’

  ‘I won’t be alone, okay?’ she said, smiling. ‘And I won’t be unhappy. Okay?’

  Kristina wanted Howard to hug her again, but he didn’t. He never reached out for her first. He carried himself with such politeness, Kristina wondered if underneath his soft, mild respect there wasn’t a bit of distaste. Almost as if in Howard’s religion it was a sin to touch Kristina Kim.

  ‘Am I going to see you again?’ he asked.

  ‘I hope so, Howard. I really hope so.’ She again felt his reserve.

  ‘Okay, then. Happy birthday.’

  Kristina pumped her fist in the air. Her long fingers felt better clenched. Felt warmer. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m an adult now.’

  ‘You have been an adult all the time I have known you,’ said Howard.

  ‘Yes, but before you,’ Kristina said, ‘I was a child.’

  ‘Must have been a long time ago,’ he said sadly.

  Kristina felt sad herself hearing him say that. ‘Not so long ago, Howard.’ Her nose was running, and she breathed heavily out of her mouth.

  Howard was quiet for a moment and then hugged her. ‘Good-bye, Kristina,’ he said quietly.

  The words stuck in her throat. ‘Good-bye, Howard,’ she said, patting his coat. She didn’t want him to see tears in her eyes.

  When he got into his car, Kristina turned away.

  After he was gone, she stood motionless on the sidewalk, squinting into the sun. I miss him already, she thought. I must call him and wish him a merry Christmas in a few weeks.

  She was pleased with how the lunch went, but mostly she was glad it was over.

  Kristina looked at the Nugget Theatre behind her. The Age of Innocence was playing. She thought briefly of going to see it; she even checked the time, but it had already started and it was a long film. The next show wasn’t until five, and by that time Jim Shaw with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics under his arm would be waiting. Afterward there was Albert’s hazelnut torte. Besides, hadn’t Frankie seen the film and told her it was a movie about cutlery? Hadn’t he said the utensils in that film really shined in starring roles?

  But she still wanted to see it. Daniel Day-Lewis reminded her of Edinburgh, where Kristina had seen My Left Foot.

  She slowly walked to the Dartmouth Review office. As she went up the stairs, her gaze passed the window of the Rare Essentials boutique. She saw a pair of black boots in the window. Nice.

  The death penalty could wait.

  She walked inside. An attractive saleslady came up to her and asked her if she needed help.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Kristina said. ‘I like the boots.’

  ‘Oh, they’re very nice,’ the saleslady chimed. ‘They’re from Canada.’

  Oh, from Canada, Kristina said, smiling. Then they must be nice. She examined them and then asked to see them in size nine and a half. The lady didn’t have a nine and a half but she had a ten. The boots fit her loosely. Still, they were quite pretty and graceful, with leather shoelaces.

  ‘And they’re waterproof, you know,’ the saleslady said.

  ‘Waterproof? And from Canada, too?’ Kristina said teasingly. ‘What else can a girl want from a black boot? How much?’

  ‘A hundred and eight dollars.’

  She didn’t have a hundred and eight dollars. She had about three bucks in cash.

  Kristina paid for the boots with her American Express card. That gave her six weeks to come up with a hundred and eight dollars. She could do that, she thought, smiling to herself.

  ‘Kristina Kim,’ the saleslady said, ringing the card through. ‘That’s an unusual name.’

  Kristina signed her name on the charge slip. ‘You think so?’

  ‘It’s got a nice ring to it,’ the saleslady said, giving the card back to her. ‘It sounds… I don’t know. Asian?’

  Kristina looked steadily at the saleslady. ‘Do I look Asian to you?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s just that -’

  ‘Have a nice day,’ said Kristina, taking her bag with the black boots and leaving the store. Geez.

  She liked her new boots so much she wanted to wear them right away. Had Howard said there was a snowstorm coming? She hadn’t walked her stone wall this year. Maybe during this snowstorm would be her first time. First time in her new black boots.

  Kristina sat down at the head of the stairs that led to the Review offices housed in the Chamber of Commerce building and started to unlace her Adidas.

  Spencer Patrick O’Malley had just finished his usual Sunday lunch at Molly’s Balloon, the same Sunday lunch he’d been having every Sunday for five years. Spencer was nothing if not a creature of habit. He laid his parka next to him on the chair, and when the waitress came over, she smiled provocatively and said, ‘Hiya, Tracy.’

  ‘Hi, Kelly,’ he said, thinking the girl would get much further with him if she would only call him Spencer.

  ‘The usual today?’

  ‘The usual today will be fine,’ he said.

  The waitress brought h
im a margarita on the rocks with extra salt on the rim, then Molly’s Skins - excellent potato skins - and a side of guacamole with chips and a beef burrito. For dessert he had Key lime pie.

  On his way out, Spencer was delayed after bumping into a seven-year-old girl who suddenly started screaming. It took him a few seconds to notice two of her fingers were stuck in the crack of the door. He helped get her fingers out and brought her inside with his arm around her while the girl continued to cry. The waitress got her some ice for the bruised fingers, and then the girl’s mother came upstairs from the bathroom. Everybody thanked him, and Spencer left, thinking how tough it was with kids. One minute, everything was peachy, the next - you don’t know what’s going on.

  With his hands in his pockets, Spencer strolled down Main Street, debating whether or not to take a walk to Occom Pond a mile away. It was cold and windy, but he was dressed for it. His sheepskin parka, knit cap, and gloves kept him warm, but even with the jacket buttoned up to the last button and his hands in his pockets, and a union suit underneath his jeans and sweater, his face hurt from the cold.

  Occasionally, during the bitter cold winters of New Hampshire, Spencer wished he had driven south on 1-95 when he headed west from his hometown on Long Island to find work elsewhere. It hadn’t mattered to him then where he was going, so why had he chosen to stop in this sleepy little town with white buildings, black shutters, and impossibly cold winters?

  Wondering how long it would take to get frostbite on his face in this weather, Spencer stroked his chin. He was unshaven today, a luxury he allowed himself only on Sundays and only since he’d stopped going to church.

  Spencer was walking up Main past the Chamber of Commerce building when he saw a girl sitting at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t the girl he noticed, for it was too cold to notice anything peripherally with his big hood up. No, it wasn’t the girl. What drew his attention was what the girl was doing. She was barefoot, with not even a pair of socks to keep her soles from touching the cement stairs. She was wearing shorts. Next to her stood a black leather boot; the other black boot was in her hands.