A Fair Maiden

  The first time he'd given her forty dollars. The second time fifty-five. The third time sixty-five dollars. So much money, for so little effort! This money no one knows about. This money that is my secret. No taxes, and no deductions. Mrs. Engelhardt won't know. Momma won't know. All mine.

  17

  IN HER SWIMSUIT with a loose T-shirt over it and the wind whipping her hair, she was running—trying to run—on the beach at the yacht club in the wake of Tricia Engelhardt's waddling trot as the frothy, foamy, lead-colored surf washed up onto the beach, tickling and teasing the little girl's feet. Katya felt her bare feet begin to sink in the sand, soft dry sand that slowed her like a nightmare dream in which you run—try to run—but can't, cry for help—try to call for help—but can't. That day, humid-hot even at the shore, Katya felt rivulets of sweat trickling down her sides. She was reliving Marcus Kidder's embrace. Oh God, she'd embraced Mr. Kidder without knowing what she'd done and a moment later stepped away, breathless and frightened, subtly revulsed and eager to escape him as he assured her, Katya dear! I will pay you, of course.

  Underfoot, the fine white sand of the private beach was strewn with small broken shells, as if someone had deliberately tossed them there for another person to cut her bare feet on; overhead were shrieking herring gulls; on a desolate stretch of beach Katya suddenly saw her own body, naked, the swimsuit and the T-shirt torn from her, Katya Spivak's arms and legs outstretched in the coarse sand and her glassy eyes open to the sky as the hungry herring gulls swooped down...

  There came a man's impatient voice: "Katya! For Christ's sake, watch where Tricia is headed, will you?"

  Rudely wakened from her trance. Oh God, where was she? She'd allowed little Tricia Engelhardt to trot along the beach yards ahead of her—there was giggling little Tricia, about to stumble into a sinkhole. Katya screamed, "Tricia! Come here!" and managed to catch up with the child and swoop her into her arms just in time.

  It was Mr. Engelhardt who'd shouted at Katya, from a boardwalk through dune grasses, above the beach. Katya hadn't known that Tricia's father was anywhere close by. And there he stood, glowering at her, in swim trunks, an unbuttoned shirt, with a white yachting cap on his wiry graying hair. When Katya had first come to live in the Engelhardts' house, Mr. Engelhardt had gazed at her with a faint fond smile, and when his wife wasn't close by, he'd flirted openly with her. From time to time he'd tipped her—"No need for Lorraine to know, Katya. Just between you and me." Now Max Engelhardt's eyes moved on Katya crudely and without a trace of affection, and his tone was close to taunting: "Where the hell is your mind, Katya? On your boyfriend?"

  Katya was shocked. Katya swallowed hard. Katya shielded her eyes against the sun. Katya was determined not to show this man the rage she felt toward him in that instant.

  Saying, in a hurt voice, that she had no boyfriend...

  "Good. And whoever he is, don't bring him into our house, ever."

  18

  "MRS. BEE! Here is my young artiste-friend Katya, visiting from Vineland, New Jersey."

  Artiste-friend was Mr. Kidder's way of teasing. But Katya was made to feel flattered, too.

  It was a warm, gusty August afternoon. Tea-time on the terrace behind Mr. Kidder's beautiful old shingleboard house. Mrs. Bee had prepared the meal, and Mrs. Bee served the meal. Mrs. Bee was a woman in her mid- or late fifties, in a grim dull gray housekeeper's uniform with white collar and cuffs, like something in a cartoon, exactly as Katya had imagined her: stout, short, puffy-faced, fussy and frowning and in love with gentlemanly Mr. Kidder, her longtime employer. For you never knew—certainly blushing Mrs. Bee never knew—if Mr. Kidder was kidding or serious, and if what he said about her—"busiest and best Mrs. Bee in all of Jersey"—was meant to be flattering or subtly mocking. It was clear to Katya that Mrs. Bee resented her: this blond young girl in such casual clothes, tank top, cutoffs, sandals, no one Mrs. Bee had ever seen before, yet an artiste-friend of Mr. Kidder's. Stiffly Mrs. Bee smiled as she served Katya and Mr. Kidder chilled cucumber soup, lobster and avocado salad, fresh-baked sourdough bread, casting a sidelong glance at Katya from narrowed pebble-colored eyes. Don't think that I am impressed with you, like Mr. Kidder. I am not.

  What had been strange to Katya was how uninterested Mr. Kidder had been in talking about his children's books. Funny Bunny, Elgar the Flying Elephant, The Little Leopard Who Changed His Spots, Duncan Skunk's First Day at School, which Tricia had loved, and Katya had loved also, wishing she'd had books like these when she'd been a little girl. But when Katya asked Mr. Kidder whether it was so, as the librarian had said, that he'd stopped writing and illustrating children's books, he'd stiffened and just shrugged; when Katya asked him why he'd stopped, when the books were so wonderful, he'd said coolly, "Children grow up and are gone. And so with adults." What this meant, Katya couldn't guess. She felt rebuffed, hurt. And Mr. Kidder relented, saying, "Katya, I'd done what I could in that vein. Each book was a replica of the preceding book, in an altered form. 'What I have done, I would not do again.'" Speaking wistfully, but in a way to suggest that the topic was closed.

  Katya and Mr. Kidder were sitting side by side at the white wrought-iron table, looking toward the ocean, beyond a swelling of dunes, rippled dune grass. Katya could not stare hard enough at the rough, rolling waves of the Atlantic Ocean, froth like spittle, seabirds riding the crests of waves bobbing like white corks. How like vast sprawling nude figures, the sand dunes behind Mr. Kidder's property. Katya was thinking how strange it was that the ocean's waves never stop: Where do waves come from? And why? Something to do with the moon, she thought. Gravitational pull. She felt Mr. Kidder's fingers lightly on her bare forearm and tried not to be startled.

  "To you, dear Katya! To your portrait, soon to be executed."

  Sly Mr. Kidder had waited for Mrs. Bee to depart before lifting his glass of white wine in a toast, clicking it smartly against Katya's glass, which was in fact an elegant crystal wineglass like Mr. Kidder's, though filled with sparkling water and a twist of lime. Katya smiled her most dazzling smile, and drank.

  Wanting to laugh at the prune-faced old bitch Mrs. Bee. What right had the woman to dislike Katya Spivak?

  "Are you happy, Katya? I am."

  "Yes, Mr. Kidder. I am."

  The mouth speaks what the ear is to hear. What shrewd Old World wisdom, laced with cynicism. It had to have been one of Katya's Spivak grandparents who'd spoken in this way.

  The mouth speaks to the ear: what I say is solely to manipulate whoever it is I am saying it to.

  She would tell the old man what he wanted to hear. Why not?

  Any man, any age. Max Engelhardt as well. Whatever they want to hear, the female instinct is to tell them.

  So long as I am paid.

  After the meal on the terrace they were to go inside to Mr. Kidder's studio, but today, as Mr. Kidder carefully explained, Katya was to "lie in repose" on the sofa, not sit in the chair. "The portraitist has enough preliminary sketches of the subject's head and shoulders," Mr. Kidder said. "Now the challenge is much greater—the subject's body."

  Katya giggled nervously. "The subject—that's me, I guess?"

  "Indeed yes, dear. You."

  Inside Mr. Kidder's studio, Katya felt that something was different: but what? Must be the way the sofa had been repositioned. And the model's straight-backed stool was missing.

  It was then that Mr. Kidder asked, as if he'd just thought of it, if Katya had a boyfriend. Pronouncing boyfriend in a bemused but neutral voice to suggest that Marcus Kidder wasn't a prurient old man hoping to pry into the sex life of a sixteen-year-old high school girl but only a friend, a concerned friend, with an interest in her private life.

  Katya laughed. She felt blood rush into her face.

  "D'you mean, Mr. Kidder, am I still a virgin? Or do I have sex with guys?" In Katya's flat south Jersey accent, the query was as jarring as a nudge in the ribs.

  Mr. Kidder stared at her. Mr. Kidder began to cough. So taken by surprise, for
a moment he couldn't speak.

  Then, recovering, he leaned close to Katya to say, in a lowered voice, as if fearing Mrs. Bee might overhear: "But—have you been in love, Katya? Are you in love now? That should have been my question."

  Reckless, Katya said, "Mr. Kidder, I don't know."

  And then Katya was astounded. For there was Marcus Kidder instructing her: "Change into this, Katya. Just for tonight."

  Holding out to her the red silk lingerie: lacy camisole with narrow straps, shimmery lace-trimmed panties. That Mr. Kidder had removed the lingerie from the Prim Rose Lane gift box and handed it to her so casually made the gesture all the more intimate, and insulting.

  That damned old gift that Katya had hoped Mr. Kidder had forgotten.

  Seeing Katya's look of shock, indignation, hurt, Mr. Kidder said, "It's the vivid color that makes this garment so alluring to the painter's eye. The silk texture, and the lace ... Against your skin, Katya, the effect will be striking."

  Katya pushed Mr. Kidder's hand away. Her face throbbed with heat. No! She would not.

  Mr. Kidder smiled. Yes! He wanted this.

  Katya insisted, No! She didn't want this. Stammering, "I—I never wear ... underwear like that! Things like that are just to laugh at."

  "No one will laugh, Katya. I can promise you that."

  With a show of politeness, Marcus Kidder listened to Katya's protests as he went about the studio drawing blinds at the lattice windows, for much of the sky was still light from the waning evening sun, which seemed to expand at the horizon, an eerie luminous red. Next Mr. Kidder prepared the sofa for Katya to lie on, taking away the gaily colored pillows and replacing them with a black velvet cloth. Katya protested: No! Damn it, she was not going to wear that ridiculous underwear, clenching and unclenching her fists like an excited child. But Mr. Kidder took her fists and gently and forcibly opened them and placed the red silk lingerie in her hands firmly.

  "Yes. You will change into this, Katya. No one will laugh."

  So forcibly Mr. Kidder spoke, as one might speak to a recalcitrant child. Katya snatched the lingerie from him and stomped into the bathroom adjoining the studio to change.

  "Damn him! I hate him."

  How she resented this—resented him. Forcing her to do what she didn't want to do, because he wanted her to do it; addressing her in that voice of bemused superiority in which he addressed Mrs. Bee, which allowed for no contradiction. And so sullen, sulky Katya Spivak shed her clothes and put on the silk lingerie, dreading to see her reflection in the mirror.

  When she returned to the studio, Mr. Kidder was busying himself at his easel and seemed to take no notice of her. Blushing fiercely, Katya arranged herself on the sofa, stiffly, trying not to glance down at her body in the scanty camisole and panties, which exposed so much of her small fleshy breasts, her belly, and her thighs. If she kept her knees pressed tightly together, she could hide from the artist's sharp eye the smudged little black spade tattoo on the inside of her left thigh, which Roy Mraz joked was his claim; she couldn't bear for Mr. Kidder to see it and to make a fuss over it, as he was sure to do.

  "Beautiful Katya! Don't be self-conscious, dear. Beauty isn't a possession exclusively of the subject, but exists objectively in the world."

  Katya muttered, "Bullshit."

  But if she'd hoped to shock Marcus Kidder, she was disappointed: the artist just laughed.

  A memory came to her, then. Her mother wore lingerie like this. Of course! Katya had forgotten.

  Red silk, black silk, flesh-colored see-through bras, half-slips, camisoles and panties, wispy thongs, discovered one afternoon by Katya and her sister Lisle when Katya was eleven and Lisle was fifteen, in their mother's bedroom bureau drawer. Momma's boyfriend Artie gave her this, Lisle said, holding a shortie black lace nightgown against her front, preening and smirking in the bureau mirror. She'd be mad as hell if she knew we found it.

  Katya had examined a wispy black thong with a look of perplexed disgust. Was this some sort of panty? Who'd want to wear something so silly?

  Lisle snatched the thong from Katya and tossed it back into the drawer. Sagely Lisle said, You don't wear stuff like this. It's for some guy to see on you, and get turned on by it, and take it off you, and then he ... you know—gets off on it. On you.

  Gets off on it. On you. Katya smiled at her sister's crude words, which were so succinct. Even if a guy loved you, or claimed he did, this was the transaction, essentially.

  "You can make believe I'm a dead body lying here," Katya said suddenly, "like something in the morgue." These words came out without her knowing what she meant to say, nor what she meant by saying it; but she liked it that Marcus Kidder paused as he was repositioning a floor lamp with a blindingly strong bulb and said, frowning, "Katya, really! That's a morbid, childish thing to say. It's beauty that is our goal."

  Beauty! Katya wanted to mutter Bullshit again but did not dare.

  Strange to Katya now, posing for Marcus Kidder on the sexy black velvet cloth, in her sexy red silk lingerie that so resembled the lingerie her mother had hidden in her bureau drawer, that as minutes passed, she began to feel almost relaxed, hypnotized. Like being a dead body on a slab in the morgue. For Mr. Kidder behaved as if what he was doing was the most natural thing in the world. Katya smelled the pungent odor of acrylic paints, which was a sharp but pleasurable odor, and was soothed by the scratching sound of the artist's brush against the canvas. Only when Mr. Kidder abruptly laid down his brush and came to the sofa to smooth out the velvet cloth, or to reposition Katya's limbs, or to fan out Katya's hair across the back of the sofa behind her head, did Katya become tense, thinking, Now he will touch me! He will lay his hands on me, but in fact Mr. Kidder was matter-of-fact and professional, adjusting even Katya's head as if she were a mannequin. He did not even speak to her except to murmur, "Like this! Yes."

  There was something peaceful about this. There was something mesmerizing about this. Though Katya still resented Marcus Kidder for coercing her into doing something she didn't want to do, yet how comforting it felt to give in. How comforting, to be able to please a man of such authority as Marcus Kidder—and how easy. You only have to give in.

  "Mr. Kidder? Remember you said you had a mission for me? Is this it now, modeling, or is it something else?"

  Clumsily Katya spoke, at the wrong time. Should've known that Mr. Kidder didn't want to be interrupted while he was painting her. He said, frowning, "It's premature to speak of that now, Katya. Right now we are embarked upon our quest for the perfect likeness. On a large canvas. Katya Spivak is too new in my life and too young for us to be speaking of such matters just now."

  Katya was chastened. Katya was intrigued. Too young? Did this mean that Marcus Kidder expected to continue to see her beyond the summer? After she left Bayhead Harbor and returned to Vineland? She would return home on the day following Labor Day, and she would begin school at Vineland High the day following that. And Mr. Kidder was scheduled to return to New York City, as far as Katya knew from remarks he'd made.

  There, Marcus Kidder lived on the fifteenth floor of an "old, antiquated, and very expensive" apartment building on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. He'd told Katya that she must come to visit him someday.

  And how would I visit you, so far away in New York City? Katya was doubtful.

  Juan will bring you, of course. Any time I bid him to do so. Any time Katya Spivak agrees.

  Katya had laughed, uneasy. And yet excited, too. The wild thought came to her, He wants to marry me! Or maybe to adopt me.

  Now Mr. Kidder was saying, in a gentle voice, "All in good time, Katya. This mission is not so easily accomplished. 'Happily ever after' is not so easily accomplished. For people like us, born at the wrong times."

  Katya thought of her father suddenly. Promise I'll be back, honey. For your birthday. Yes, Daddy will! Daddy promises. Katya felt her throat constrict; she was in danger of crying. Wiping at her eyes, hoping that Mr. Kidder would not notice. (Of cour
se Mr. Kidder noticed. Mr. Kidder noticed everything.) For the first time it occurred to Katya that her father, Jude Spivak, had not returned to Vineland as he'd promised because something had prevented him from returning, not because he'd forgotten his little daughter, or his family. Maybe he'd joined the army and gone away to fight in what newspapers called the Persian Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, whatever that was, or had been. (Several of Katya's young male relatives had fought there. And older boys she'd known, graduates of Vineland High.) But sometime soon Jude Spivak might be able to return to Vineland, and Katya would see him again. Katya, what has happened to you? Where is my daughter Katya? All growed up...

  The black velvet cloth was chafing Katya's skin. Suddenly she became restless, uneasy. "Mr. Kidder? How much longer? I—I don't feel well."

  Annoyed, Mr. Kidder told her it would be a few minutes longer, please would she resume her position, stop squirming, and would she please lift her head, yes like that, "Eyes here, Katya," and would she smile, and Katya said weakly, "I—I want to leave, I guess. I don't want to be here," and Mr. Kidder said, frowning, "Katya, you know you will be paid. You must model professionally to be paid," and Katya said, sitting up, crossing her arms over her breasts, which were so shamefully exposed in the lacy top, and keeping her legs tightly crossed to hide the ugly little black spade tattoo, "I—I don't w-want money! I want to take off this fucking lingerie—I hate it! I hate this! I don't want your damned money, Mr. Kidder!" for suddenly it seemed to Katya that this was so. All along, this had been so!

  "If you insist, Katya. But you are being very childish."

  Mr. Kidder laid down his paintbrushes, unsmiling. Katya took little notice of him, hurried into the bathroom, where quickly she removed the red silk lingerie and changed back into her own familiar clothes: white cotton bra and cheap nylon undies, tank top just perceptibly discolored by sweat at the neckline, white shorts. She kicked her feet into her sandals. For some reason Katya's heart had begun to beat rapidly. She felt such fury for Marcus Kidder, seeing her shamefaced reflection in the mirror above the sink, that she could not bring herself to peer into her own eyes. What a slut you are! Like your mother, Essie—look at you. The hateful lingerie she'd have liked to tear into pieces but could not, so instead she wadded it into a ball and kicked it into a corner of the whitely gleaming, resplendent bathroom—hardly a bathroom but something like a powder room—where like a wounded creature it seemed to huddle. In a vase on a shelf was a bouquet of bizarrely colored fossil flowers, positioned to reflect in a floor-to-ceiling mirror with a dazzling effect. Katya saw her hand reach out, the hand of a bratty child, to snap the stem of an exquisite large crimson rose, which fell to the white tile floor, shattering.