Red Leaves

‘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.

Men are good in one way but bad in many, wrote Aristotle. Kristina wondered about that. To her badness had always meant lack or suppression of conscience.

Gently touching Jim on the neck, Kristina kissed the top of his head. ‘Jimbo, I’m sorry.’ And she was sorry for innumerable things. ‘I just don’t feel like studying right now. Come back soon, okay? We’re going to have cake.’

‘Yeah,’ he muttered without looking up.

* * *

They were gathered around the complex torte Conni had made for Albert. The cake had uneven puffs of mocha icing, ground nuts sprinkled over the top, some chocolate chips, and twenty-two candles.

Conni, though dressed up for the occasion, did not seem to want to celebrate. Underneath the perky pink lipstick, her lips were tense, and the blue eye shadow couldn’t hide the hardness around her eyes.

The five of them were looking at the cake as if it were a slaughtered lamb. Aristotle, however, gazed at the cake as if it were the last piece of food on earth.

Frankie Absalom arrived. Usually it was hard to get Frankie out of Epsilon House, but there was little that Frankie wouldn’t do for Albert, his old roommate.

Albert had moved out of the room he’d shared with Jim and in with Frankie during the last semester of the freshman year when Jim and Albert decided it would be best if they didn’t room together anymore. Now Albert had a single a couple of doors down from Kristina, and Frankie was an Epsilon brother.