Red Leaves

And last year she had seen them again on her bridge, when she tumbled down to what she was sure was certain death. She had survived that too, but lived her life prepared at any moment to meet God, adding up the tally of her life every time it snowed, and she, drunk beyond reason, praying under her breath, walked the ledge on the bridge, her hands outstretched.

She didn’t want to die. However, most of all, she was scared that it wouldn’t be God’s face she would see upon meeting her master. ‘I have only one master on earth,’ she whispered, ‘and I’m trying to exorcise him from my life because he’s no good for me, but he won’t let me, he’s stronger than me, and he won’t let me leave him.’

She opened her eyes and touched the temple that had had the piece of tempered glass wedged in it. I feel pain, she thought. Do dead people feel pain? Do they feel tenderness, anger, regret? Profound regret?

Do they feel love? A love more overwhelming than summer air?

I’m alive, Kristina thought, because I still feel pain. ‘I’m not ready to die,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not done living, I don’t want to die…’

I need a drink. I need another, and another and another. I need to pour it all over my wounds to numb them, to forget them, to not feel pain.

Leaning over she reached for Southern Comfort and then fell back on the bed. With her good hand, Kristina unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle Comfort over her head. Closing her eyes, she poured the liquor over her face. Some of it got into her mouth, and some of it got into her nose. But some of it got on her cut, too. It stung then numbed her bruise, and that’s what she wanted. She poured the rest on her shoulder.

Kristina dragged her aching body from the bed and put on a track suit. The track suit’s biggest advantage was that it wasn’t the same jeans and sweatshirt in which she had faced the darkest unknown. Kristina had always believed one should be well rested and nude - as newborns - to face one’s darkest unknown, and she had been neither.

Her friends were waiting for her downstairs in the Hinman lounge. Albert was reading a textbook and taking notes. Jim was writing. Conni was biting her nails.

‘Hey,’ Kristina said weakly.

They looked up at her.

‘Krissy, what happened to you?’ Conni got up immediately and went to Kristina, peering up into her face. ‘Jim told me you were in an accident. I was so worried.’ But those were only words. Conni didn’t look worried. She looked bitter. She looked as if she was trying to contain anger with a fixed smile.

‘I’m all right,’ Kristina said. ‘Really. I’m fine now.’

‘Accident?’

‘Yeah,’ Kristina said. ‘I crashed the car.’ Kristina figured if she said that often enough, she soon wouldn’t want to cry.

She tried not to show she was unsteady on her feet. She felt herself moving with deliberate slowness toward the cake, as if in a fast-forward search on a cheap VCR, with all the horizontal lines on the screen. And soon maybe someone would say, ‘Geez, this is awful; I want a four-head model.’ And turn her in.

They all stood up, Aristotle barked, somebody lit the candles. Kristina didn’t count them, but it looked like a lot of candles. About twenty-two, she guessed. She noted that no one had baked her a cake. This cake had been bought at the Grand Union on Main Street. Pepperidge Farm German Chocolate Cake. So what if it was her favorite and everyone knew it. Nobody had baked her a cake.

Last September when it was Jim’s birthday, Kristina had knocked herself out to make his favorite lemon meringue pie. The egg whites took an hour and three attempts because she wanted to show Jim she cared.

Kristina stood in front of the lit candles, in front of the kind of cake she bought often for herself, and dimly heard someone say, ‘Make a wish, Kristina.’

She thought of her Mustang, and of Albert pressuring her to go to Canada and about to be three hundred miles away from her for Thanksgiving - about to be three hundred miles from her forever, really - and of Jim, wanting her all to himself and not wanting her at all, and of Howard in New York, and of her mother, lost, a million miles away, and of her dead father, and of herself nearly dead too, without a decent coat.

She thought of the pipe music from Edinburgh, and she closed her eyes, bent over the cake, and blew, thinking, I hope Donald and Patricia Moss let Evelyn keep her babies…

Then she sat down.

Aristotle nudged her in the calf. Kristina sluggishly cut the cake. She gave the first piece to Jim with a labor-camp forced smile. She gave the second piece to Conni without a smile. The third piece she gave to Albert without even looking at him.

Aristotle nudged her in the calf again. She smiled down at him under the table, cleaned the knife off with her thumb and index finger, and put the fingers under Aristotle’s nose to lick.

‘Krissy, aren’t you having any cake?’ Conni asked her.

The alcohol’s magic was wearing off. She wished she had some with her. Pursing her dry lips, she sat silently staring at the cake, feeling Aristotle’s tongue licking her fingers. After he was finished, she gave him some more. The dog liked store-bought German chocolate cake as much as the next Labrador. And Aristotle never got offended that someone hadn’t baked him a cake for his birthday or that he wasn’t going to Canada. Aristotle’s life was very simple. Three walks a day and a comfy bed to shed all over.

Kristina saw a card on the table but didn’t move toward it. Conni pushed the card across the table to Kristina.

‘This is from all of us,’ Conni said, smiling open-mouthed and happy. ‘Go ahead, go ahead, open it.’ Reaching under the table, she pulled out a bottle of Southern Comfort with a red bow taped to the side of it. ‘This is a little something from all of us, too,’ Conni said. ‘We thought you might like it.’

‘Conni’s idea,’ said Albert.

‘Not!’ said Conni in a high-pitched voice, laughing. ‘Yours!’

‘Not!’ said Albert, smiling.

‘Totally yours,’ said Conni again.

Why are they squabbling over whose idea it was? thought Kristina as she stared at the bottle. ‘You guys got me a bottle of liquor?’ she said incredulously.

Albert said, ‘We thought you might like it.’

Shrugging, Kristina opened the card, wishing she hadn’t shrugged. Her left shoulder burned with pain.

‘Wow,’ Kristina said without enthusiasm. Yesterday she would have been grateful for a fifteen-dollar bottle of Southern Comfort that would keep her going through Thanksgiving. If it hadn’t been for Kristina’s turning twenty-one, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she and Albert couldn’t go to Canada, and if it weren’t for the fact that she had almost died, Kristina Kim would have been delighted to get Southern Comfort from her closest friends.

‘No, guys, really,’ she said, staring into three drawn, disappointed faces. ‘Wow. I’m sorry. It’s a great present. I’m just hurting, my body hurts, you know. I had a little to drink a while ago to dull the pain, and it’s made me seem ungrateful, but it’s fantastic, really.’

She leaned over to one side and kissed Conni on the cheek. Then she leaned over to the other side and kissed Jim on the mouth. Albert was sitting across from her at the table, and she wasn’t about to get up, and he did not move either, so she just said, ‘Thanks, Albert,’ and he said, ‘Don’t mention it. It’s our pleasure.’

Conni asked, ‘Krissy, how are you going to play basketball? Look at your arm. What are you going to do? I’d go to the hospital or the infirmary if I were you, really, something, you know? ‘Cause you don’t want to just collapse or something, I mean, I’m just trying to be helpful.’

Kristina waved dismissively with her good arm. ‘This is my dribbling arm. I don’t need the other arm.’

‘You need it to shoot the ball,’ said Albert.

‘I’ll shoot it with one hand,’ said Kristina. ‘UPenn needs a handicap.’

‘You’re not that good,’ said Jim. He had said little.

‘Oh, yes, I am,’ said Kristina, managing a small, genuine smile. She didn’t want to tell them how badly frightened she was about her injuries, about what they might mean for basketball.

Livening up a little, Kristina talked about the Christmas tree going up in the middle of the Dartmouth Green, though Jim was Jewish and didn’t care much about the tree, so they talked about Schindler’s List