Red Leaves

‘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?’