Paullina Simons - Red Leaves

Sitting on the bed, Kristina shook her head, never taking her eyes off him. Albert had wanted to be a gymnast when he was younger but had grown too fast, gotten at once too broad and too angular. Now he wanted to be a Zen Buddhist. His long, dark hair was slicked back in a ponytail. He had a small gold loop ring in the left ear.

‘Listen,’ Kristina said. ‘I gotta tell you some -’

‘How did it go?’ Albert interrupted her.

For a moment, Kristina didn’t know what he was referring to.

‘Howard,’ he said impatiently. ‘How did it go with Howard?’

‘Good.’ Kristina paused. ‘Everything’s done.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing,’ she said, rubbing her hands together to warm them up.

Albert came closer to her. ‘Was he okay with it?’

‘Yeah, he was okay with it,’ Kristina replied. ‘He did ask me if the divorce was my idea.’

Albert laughed loudly. Kristina for once thought his laugh sounded gaudy. ‘Did you tell him the truth?’ he asked.

‘The truth?’ said Kristina. ‘Exactly what is that?’

‘A conformity to fact or actuality,’ replied Albert.

‘Ahh, of course,’ said Kristina. ‘Well, I told him it was my idea. Is that a conformity to fact?’

‘It’s good enough, Rocky,’ Albert said, smiling and coming closer to the bed. ‘It’s good enough.’

Kristina loved it when he called her by the old familiar nickname, but she put out her arms to stop him from coming too close. She didn’t want to stop him, but it was broad daylight.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have an idea for Thanksgiving. What would you think of -’

He stopped abruptly. Jim Shaw was standing in the doorway.

‘Jimbo,’ Kristina exclaimed weakly. ‘Hey. Ready?’

Albert nodded to Jim, who curtly nodded back.

‘I’m ready,’ said Jim, and then stood motionless and silent at the door.

Tense, Kristina petted Aristotle and then broke the awkward silence, ‘How’s your birthday been so far, Albert?’

‘Good,’ he replied. ‘It’ll get immediately worse once I taste Conni’s cooking.’

‘You call it cooking?’ asked Kristina, trying hard to lighten the mood.

‘At least she’s making you something,’ Jim said in a voice tinged with hostility, and then the three of them just stood there again.

‘Well, I’m sure it’ll be very nice,’ said Albert with an edge to his voice. Kristina was surprised to hear it. Albert never had an edge to his voice.

‘Krissy, let’s go,’ said Jim.

‘Yeah, Krissy,’ Albert said mockingly. ‘Run along now.’

Flustered, Kristina got up off the bed, picked up her books off the floor, and walked toward the two guys.

‘Don’t forget your coat,’ said Albert. ‘It’s freezing out.’

‘Where’s your coat?’ Jim asked, standing with his backpack swinging in his hands.

Kristina looked around her messy room. Though outwardly Kristina maintained that a clean room was a symptom of a diseased mind (for how could she, while studying the world’s greatest thinkers, be bothered with such mundane earthly issues as cleaning?), inwardly she hated untidiness and made a point of spending as little time in the room as possible. Once upon a time she had been the neatest girl in the world, but it had become clear to her even before Dartmouth that an untidy room made it easier to hide stuff from Howard. When everything was in its place, Howard found it.

Every once in a while, though, Kristina compulsively cleaned everything up before throwing it all around again.

She wished today had been a clean day, because today she couldn’t find her coat.

‘Wonder where my coat is.’

‘Sometimes it helps to put coats in the closet when you want to find them again.’

‘Thanks, Jim. Where’s my coat?’

‘You weren’t wearing it this afternoon,’ Jim said. Albert was quiet.

‘I usually don’t wear my winter coat when I play basketball,’ Kristina said. She didn’t mean to snap, but she had just remembered where her coat was.

It wasn’t at Red Leaves House, because Kristina hadn’t spent last night there. She had left her coat up at Fahrenbrae Hilltop Retreat.

It was her only coat. Her mother had bought it for her fifteenth birthday, and six years later, the red cashmere was faded and there were some permanent stains on it. It remained one of her favorite things. Next to whiskers on kittens and hot apple Strudel.

She didn’t look at Albert as she walked past him and said to Jim, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘Kristina, put something -’

‘Come on, Jim,’ she said, raising her voice.

She saw Jim widen his eyes at Albert, who shrugged his shoulders and smiled, folding his hands together in a prayerful Zen salute.

Jim followed her.

‘You should try locking your door once in a while,’ he said. ‘It’s the house rule, you know.’

‘Yeah, and what happens to the dog?’ she asked.

They walked down three flights of stairs and went out the side door closest to the woods and the steep hill. Nearby there was a long path with shallow wood steps that wound down to Tuck Drive far below and then to the Connecticut River. Between the wood steps and Feldberg Library was a fifty-foot-long concrete bridge that led to Feldberg’s service entrance. Three-foot-high walls made of crystalline stone flanked the bridge, which was suspended over a steep wooded gradient and a concrete driveway seventy-five feet below.

‘Hey,’ Jim said, pointing to the bridge. ‘You haven’t walked that thing yet.’

Kristina glanced at it and then at him. They continued to walk away from the bridge. ‘Haven’t been drunk enough,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t been cold enough.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot. You don’t do it unless it’s subfreezing. Otherwise it’s not a challenge, right?’

‘Right,’ she replied, thinking, he is trying to bait me. Why?

‘They’re expecting a snowstorm tomorrow, you know,’ Jim said.

‘Well, maybe I’ll walk it tomorrow then,’ Kristina said mildly.

Jim didn’t reply, and they hurried on to Baker Library.

They studied in the Class of 1902 room. Kristina’s mind was far away from Aristotle, as she recalled earlier Thanksgivings. Soon it would be Wednesday and her friends would be gone. Were the mess halls even open during the holidays? She couldn’t recall her first year. She remembered eating a lot of soup at Lou’s Diner and Portuguese muffins at EBA.

And oranges in her room.

Jim kept reading and occasionally asking Kristina a question or two about the material, but she had just had enough. Let’s go, she wanted to say. Let’s go, let’s get out of here, let’s go back and eat Conni’s creation and sing happy birthday” to Albert.

Kristina stroked Jim’s hand. There was a time you used to like me so much, she thought, or was that just my imagination? You’re very smart, you’ve been all over the world, and you have a bright life ahead of you. But what’s happened to us? We’re getting so bad at this.

She stood up.

‘Jim, let’s go back.’

‘Krissy, I’m not done.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But Conni’s baked a cake. And I gotta walk my dog.’

‘Albert will walk him,’ said Jim.

She closed her books and picked them up off the dark cherry table. ‘I’m going to go. Please come.’

He looked back into Aristotle. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to stay here and finish my work.’

Aristotle wrote that piety required us to honor truth above our friends. Kristina shook her head. Nicomachean Ethics was always hardest on Kristina. And Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. Kristina had fought most of her life against her own categorical imperative. People who didn’t always impressed her. Spencer impressed her.