Red Leaves

‘Never had any of those things,’ Kristina said. He was nagging at her, playing mother, but it was all right. ‘Always been healthy as an ox.’

They waited to talk properly until after they ordered. Kristina wanted to order a salad with the delicious spicy mustard dressing, but it was her first meal of the day - the saltine crackers notwithstanding - and she didn’t want to be having mustard and vinegar for breakfast. She ordered carrot cake instead.

She tried to will herself to be less nervous. But she was wired. Last night she hadn’t had much sleep. And this beautiful morning, she had been up at seven. The bare-treed Vermont hills had sparkled in the sunlight, but now there was only anxiety as she thought about an upset Jim and the patient Howard - solid and polite, looking out at her from his black-rimmed glasses, with his gentle, unsmiling eyes.

‘How’ve you been?’ she asked, trying to calm down.

‘Good, Kristina, things are quite good. Busy.’

‘Well, busy is good,’ she said. He didn’t reply. ‘Isn’t it? Busy, it’s very good. You must be so… pleased… that you’re, you know, busy.’ She knew she was rambling. God! ‘Many interesting cases?’

He considered her for a moment. ‘How interesting can corporate law be? So let’s see these papers, Kristina.’

Kristina nervously took the manila envelope out of her backpack. Passing it to him, she said, ‘Everything looks okay.’

Howard paused before opening it. ‘Is everything okay? I am not so sure.’

Kristina chose to misunderstand him. ‘No, really. Everything is letter-perfect.’

With a glance through the documents, Howard laid them aside. ‘We never got a chance to speak about this. Has something happened?’

Something had happened. Kristina’s grandmother had died. But Howard didn’t know that. Nor would he.

‘I just think it’s for the best, that’s all,’ Kristina said, playing with her fork. She tasted the cream cheese icing of the carrot cake. It was good, but she just wasn’t hungry anymore.

‘Is it really for the best?’

‘Sure. Of course.’

‘Why? Why all of a sudden did you want a divorce?’

He was wearing a suit, and he looked so nice and familiar a pang of sadness hit her. She thought, does this mean I’m not going to see him again? I’m so used to knowing he’s there.

Shrugging, Kristina put down her fork. The coffee was cold, the cake was cheesy, and her stomach was empty. ‘It wasn’t all of a sudden. I thought it was time.’

‘Why?’

‘Howard, because I’m turning twenty-one, because I want to get on with my life. I mean, what if I want to marry someone?’ She paused. ‘What if you want to marry someone?’

‘Is there someone you want to marry, Kristina?’

‘Not yet. But who knows?’ She smiled. ‘Mr Right might be just around the corner.’

‘Hmm. I thought Jim was your Mr Right.’

Kristina coughed. ‘That’s what I meant. Jim.’ She was glad they were talking. Her hands calmed down. She wasn’t as hot anymore.

Howard leaned forward and, lowering his voice, which was already calm and low, asked, ‘Was this your idea?’

Kristina sat back from the table. They were sitting in the corner behind the stairs; the cellar was dimly lit and gloomy.

‘Howard, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I asked if it was your idea.’

‘I know what you asked. I just don’t know what you mean.’

‘Kristina, it is a yes-or-no question.’

‘You think everything is a yes-or-no question,’ she said, on edge.

‘Pretty much everything is,’ he said easily. ‘Let us try it again. Kristina, was this your idea?’

She felt impelled to answer him. ‘Mine, like how?’

‘Yours, like did you think of this all by yourself, or did someone else suggest we go ahead and get divorced?’

Incapable of answering him, Kristina said, ‘Who else could possibly -’ and then stopped. Howard was looking at her squarely in the face, and since she knew exactly what he meant, she thought it pointless to pretend any further. So she lied. ‘Yes, Howard. It was my idea.’

Howard stared at her impassively, but there was something heartfelt behind the serious brown eyes.

‘Eat your cake,’ Howard finally said in a gentle voice.

‘Who cares about the cake?’ she said sourly.

‘I care about the divorce.’

Kristina sighed deeply. ‘Howard,’ she said, ‘I know. But believe me. Everything’s gonna be okay.’

‘Kristina, I find that impossible to believe.’

‘Why?’

‘Kristina, your father asked me to take care of you.’

‘He didn’t ask you, Howard, he told you.’

‘Wrong. We made a deal.’

‘Yes, and I think you’ve kept your end of the bargain. But one, I’m turning twenty-one tomorrow. And two, Father is dead now. It’s time, Howard.’

‘A deal is a deal. We didn’t stipulate age or his death in our agreement.’

‘Oh, Howard.’ Kristina sighed and then said quietly, ‘Give up.’

‘I cannot,’ he said.

‘Please don’t worry about me. Things are going to be just great, I promise.’ Kristina wanted to believe that.

He looked away from her and, nodding, said, ‘All of a sudden.’

‘Not all of a sudden! Five years. Come on. It’s better this way. I was nothing but a means to an end to you.’

Kristina saw hurt on his face. Her words must have made him feel terrible. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘You know what I mean. You’re a good person, you deserve better.’ She hoped she was saying the right things, but she was restless. She fidgeted with her napkin, then drummed her dirty fork against the wooden table. ‘Come on, you’ve gone above and beyond your deal to take care of me. And if you had these doubts, why didn’t you say something in September when I first told you I was filing?’

Now it was Howard’s turn to sigh. ‘You came to me and asked for an extra thousand dollars. I felt I had a right to know why you needed it. If you had had the money yourself, would you have even told me, or would I just have been contacted by your attorney?’

‘Howard. I don’t have an attorney. I hired some shyster for a thousand non-contested bucks. He didn’t even know how much the court fees were. First he said a hundred, then three hundred. I mean, the whole thing - that’s why I wanted you to look everything over.’

‘Nothing I can do about it now,’ said Howard, pushing the manila envelope aside. He cleared his throat. ‘It is very important to me that you are all right. That you are safe,’ he said.

‘Howard, I’m all right, I’m safe.’ Smiling, Kristina added, ‘The only time I’m not safe is when the other team tries to foul me on the court.’

‘How often does that happen?’

‘All the time.’

‘Still love playing?’

‘Kidding me? It’s what keeps me going. I scored record points in our exhibition game against Cornell last week.’ She grinned proudly.

‘I still do not know how this happened - you playing basketball.’

Shrugging, Kristina said, ‘How does anything happen? Divine providence. That school you sent me to. It was the only decent sports team they had.’

‘Oh, no,’ Howard said, rubbing his head. ‘Not philosophy again.’

Kristina, her mouth full of carrot cake, told him what the British philosopher Bertrand Russell said once of his lifetime pursuit. ‘As I grew up, I became increasingly interested in philosophy, of which my family profoundly disapproved. Every time the subject came up, they repeated with unfailing regularity, “What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.” After some fifty or sixty repetitions the remark ceased to amuse me.’

Steadying his gaze, almost smiling, Howard said, ‘Have I ceased to amuse you?’

‘Not yet, Howard,’ she said, smiling.

They both fell quiet.

‘Have time for your major?’

‘Two majors. Yeah, I got nothing but time,’ Kristina said. Unlike Jim, who was double-majoring because he was on track for a career and a life, Kristina was double-majoring because she was bored stiff, because she wanted to fill her wandering mind with other people’s meaningful thoughts, so that her own little by little would leave her, would fly and be gone, so that there was not one minute of the day when she had an idle mind or idle hands to do the devil’s handiwork.

‘How is Jim?’

‘Good. He’s the editor of the Dartmouth Review this year.’

‘Ahhh.’ Howard smiled lightly. ‘Does he give you good marks?’

‘No,’ she said, mock-petulantly. ‘He’s tougher on me than on anyone. He says the Review is too much hard work. He’s looking forward to graduating.’

‘What does he want to do after he graduates?’

‘Go to law school.’ She tried to keep the proud edge out of her voice, but failed. ‘He wants to be a Supreme Court Justice.’

Howard seemed utterly unimpressed. ‘That’s nice. What about you?’

‘Me? Grad school.’ That’s all Kristina had been thinking about lately. ‘What else is there to do?’

Howard smiled. ‘I do not know. Get a job?’

‘Howard, please. This is a liberal arts college. What do you think we’re qualified to do? All we are is good readers. We’re not bad on the Mac either, but that’s it.’

‘Eventually, you will have to get a job.’

She snorted. ‘Please. What for? And in what? With my majors, what am I good for?’

‘I do not know,’ Howard said slowly. ‘What do other philosophy and religion majors do?’

‘They teach, of course,’ Kristina responded happily. ‘They teach philosophy and religion.’

Howard smiled. Kristina smiled back. She was going to miss him.

Kristina sensed that Howard wanted to ask her something. His lips pursed and he took on the concentrated look he got whenever he was faced with difficult questions. There were so many difficult questions. Howard usually avoided them, but today he wrestled with himself. In the end, tact won. In the end tact always won. Kristina wanted to surprise Howard just once and answer his unspoken questions, but today there was no point. Grandmother was dead. Howard and she were now officially divorced. And tomorrow was her twenty-first birthday.

‘How is, what is his name… Albert?’

‘He’s fine,’ Kristina said quickly. ‘They’re all fine.’

‘What does he want to do when he graduates?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She shrugged, feigning indifference. ‘Says he wants to be a sportswriter.’

‘A sportswriter?’

‘Yeah, too bad he can’t write.’

‘I see.’

‘Or a fisherman.’ Kristina shook her head.

Howard asked slowly, ‘Can he fish?’

‘I think so,’ said Kristina, trying to sound jovial.

‘He went to an Ivy League school to be a fisherman?’

‘A very good fisherman,’ Kristina said, wanting to change the subject.

Howard was quiet. ‘Are you going to marry Jim?’

She smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t know if he wants to marry me.’

‘Of course he does.’

Kristina shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

Howard was watching her carefully.

‘You worry too much,’ said Kristina.

‘I worry about you,’ he answered.

‘Look at me,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Yes,’ he said, sounding unconvinced. He stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I can’t spend the day with you, Howard,’ Kristina said apologetically.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I am flying out tonight. I have not even booked my room at the Inn. There is a blizzard warning for tomorrow.’

‘What else is new?’ said Kristina.

Putting on his coat, he asked her, ‘Have you got any plans?’

‘For the blizzard? None.’

‘I meant for the holiday.’

‘I know what you meant,’ Kristina said. She smiled. ‘I think I might go down to Delaware with Jim.’ That wasn’t exactly true, but she hadn’t told Jim yet. She needed to stay in Hanover - the Big Green was playing UPenn at home on Saturday - but who the heck wanted to stay at Dartmouth for Thanksgiving? She just didn’t want Howard thinking she had no plans.

‘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-seven - 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.