Paullina Simons - Red Leaves

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.’