Shaking his head, Jim said, unsmiling, ‘Miller Lites, and only two. No, I mean you’ve been drinking a lot.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ Kristina said slowly.
‘Yes, it is,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘I watched you go up the stairs. You were like on a high wire with a pole in your hand. Immobile. Too bad it’s not snowing. Otherwise you’d be out there on that bridge, wouldn’t you?’
She smiled. ‘Want me to go on that bridge, Jimbo?’
Shrugging, he said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Kristina thought that once it had mattered. ‘I used to scare you so much when I used to do that,’ she said ruefully.
‘Yeah, well…’ He trailed off. ‘Besides, you don’t want to go up there. You need two arms for balance.’
‘I’ll show you,’ she said. ‘I’ll be the one-armed circus artist, balancing myself on the wire -’
‘Yeah, and I’ll be the one picking up what’s left of your body off Tuck Drive below.’
Will you be that man? Kristina wondered to herself. Will you really be the man who will pick up my broken body off the concrete?
‘I’ve never fallen yet,’ Kristina said. That time last February didn’t count.
‘Krissy, statistically, the odds are against you,’ said Jim, slowly, quietly. He doesn’t want to be in this conversation at all, thought Kristina.
‘Jimbo, it’s not statistics. It’s guts. No guts, no glory.’
‘I see. What about the bullfighters? They have plenty of guts. And the bulls every once in a while show us plenty of their guts.’
Kristina smirked.
‘I mean, aren’t you scared to do it?’
‘I’ve told you, of course I am.’
‘Oh yeah. That’s the point, isn’t it? To be scared shitless.’
‘No, the point is to be scared shitless and still do it.’
He paused. ‘Yeah, but naked? Why do you have to do it naked?’
Smiling, she said, ‘It’s the exhibitionist streak in me. In my freshman year, I saw a couple of guys at Epsilon House after one party take off their clothes and run screaming down Tuck Drive to the river and jump in. I just thought it was the funniest thing.’
‘Krissy,’ said Jim, ‘somehow I don’t think those guys should be your role models.’
Tilting her head to one side and biting her lip to keep her aching body in check, Kristina said quietly, ‘Jimbo, why are you asking me about this now? I didn’t think it bothered you.’
He shook his head. ‘Who said it bothered me? I don’t care. I was just curious.’
‘I’m not gonna go,’ she told him. ‘I have to be really drunk. Otherwise I’m not steady enough. And it has to be snowing.’
‘Why?’
‘Seems safer somehow,’ she replied. ‘If I fall and there is snow underneath.’
Jim snorted. She hated when he did that. It was so derisive. ‘Krissy, all it takes is the wind, and down you’ll go to the concrete, snow or no snow.’
Nodding, she said, ‘That’s why I only do that when there’s snow on the ground. There’s no concrete then. Just soft downy snow of angels. Clouds of snow. I imagine,’ she said, fighting for her words, ‘falling into that snow below and bouncing up, bouncing on a trampoline of cloud snow. I imagine being… really happy.’
‘You’re not happy, Kristina?’
She stared at the ceiling. ‘Not really,’ she admitted.
He was quiet. ‘Not happy in general, or… not happy with us?’
Not answering his question, she said, ‘Are you happy with us?’
‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘Not at all.’
Kristina nodded, then said carefully, ‘Want to talk about it?’
Breathing heavily, Jim said, ‘No. I’m tired. Look,’ he said, getting up. ‘I think maybe I won’t stay after all. We’ll talk another time.’
‘You don’t want to stay over?’ she said. ‘But it’s my birthday -’
‘Yeah, well.’ He looked at her accusingly. ‘I wanted to stay over Saturday night.’
‘I told you I was at Red Leaves.’
‘Yes, you told me, you told me.’ He took his coat and petted Aristotle. ‘Bye.’ Kristina was unsure if he was talking to her or the dog.
‘We’ll, uhhh…’ said Kristina, maneuvering herself out of the chair. ‘We’ll talk another time. Sure thing, Jimbo.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She sighed. ‘Jim, you never want to talk about us.’
‘Nothing to talk about, Krissy.’
‘Oh, no?’
She thought back to a few hours ago, to turning over in her car and landing on the hard ground that had no snow. Where was that soft snow to cushion her, to envelop her, to protect her from her fate?
‘Jim, do you love me?’ asked Kristina, coming closer to him.
Hesitating, he said, ‘Of course. Do you love me?’
Not answering him, Kristina lightly touched the side of his face and said, ‘I don’t think you’re being honest with me, Jimbo. I don’t think you love me.’
He hesitated again, sneering at her, blowing out heartily. ‘Come on. You mean anymore?’
‘I mean ever.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Am I? Am I being ridiculous, Jim?’
‘Yes.’
But she noticed he conspicuously didn’t comfort her, didn’t hug her, didn’t make any attempt to show her she was wrong.
‘Let me ask you something, Jim. Do you love Conni?’
He laughed uncomfortably. ‘What kind of question is that? I did once.’
‘Still.’
‘Once,’ he said firmly.
‘She was the love of your life, wasn’t she?’
Jim paused. ‘I was very smitten once, yes.’
‘"Very smitten once,"’ she repeated.
‘At that time, yes,’ he said.
‘Ahh, give me a break.’ She lifted up her arm in supplication. ‘Be honest with me, Jim. Just once.’
‘Is that what you want?’ he said harshly, his straight face contorting for a moment. ‘You want honesty? Is that mutual honesty, Krissy?’
Taken aback, she composed herself long enough to reply, ‘Yes. Mutual honesty. What do you want to know?’
He stared at her for an awkward moment, and then disdainfully said, ‘Give me a break. Just forget it. I’m gonna go.’
She raised her voice. ‘What do you want to know, Jimbo?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said mildly. Her mouth was beginning to lose all feeling.
He left.
Kristina collapsed on her bed and tried to lift her arms, only half succeeding. As always they had left their argument unfinished. He usually left in the middle. She didn’t pursue him, he went back to his room, or she to hers, and the next day they got together and talked about political science or the next article for the Review or what to have for breakfast, or Conni and Albert, and went on as if he hadn’t left in the middle of telling her he’d never loved her. And she let him leave in the middle.
Lying on her back, Kristina had the sensation that she was flying. Flying through the dark New Hampshire skies, flying toward the hills of Vermont. Flying toward Fahrenbrae, over Fahrenbrae, over them, running after Aristotle. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be flying over them anymore. She just wanted to feel her Albert close by. Wanted to see his lovely face, touch his ponytail, press her lips against his dear homemade tattoos.
CHAPTER THREE
Tuesday
There were bad dreams and there was pain. When she awoke she was sweating, and the fingers on her left hand felt numb. That did not worry her. What worried her was the tears streaming down her face, running from her eyes to her ears into her matted hair. Tears! That’s what woke her. She felt herself crying, and when she opened her eyes, she couldn’t stop. She hurt all over.
Slowly getting out of bed, Kristina went to sit in Albert’s lounge chair. The st
reetlights shined their cold yellow light on the dirty white curtains. She wiped her face. What’s wrong with me? she thought. It’s just another stupid Thanksgiving weekend.
When she was a little girl, Kristina never cried. There was never any reason to. She hadn’t cried, but she had many fears: A dark and quiet house without her mother; her aunt’s car accident; hurricanes; dying.
In her teenage years, Kristina learned to control the fear with some success.
She wiped her face. She thought about coming so close to dying. She was flashing through the accident, through the car and the reservoir, through clawing her way up, away from death. Touching her broken fingernails, Kristina shuddered. Is this what woke me up? Was I flashing through dying?
Had she died, what would have happened to her money now that she and Howard were divorced? She would have died without so much as a scribble. Who would take the dog? Who’d get the contents of her dorm room and safety-deposit box at the bank? And everything else?
She rubbed her eyes till they hurt. In the dark it struck her - there was unfinished business in the room, in Hinman Hall, in Dartmouth.
She had come to Dartmouth to right her life. It was ironic that three years later nothing had changed. Where had she gone wrong?
Dartmouth was such a beautiful college. A picturesque, serious, tiny place, in the middle of the mountains on the banks of the Connecticut River, the natural border between New Hampshire and Vermont.
The idea of Dartmouth had appealed to Kristina when she was a high school senior and trying to find a way out of an impossible life. She would go to Dartmouth, study hard, get a good job, find a nice man, get married, have children.
Kristina had thought that by acting normal, doing normal things, having a normal boyfriend, her life would take a different course. A normal course.
So she came to Dartmouth, she studied hard, she helped out at Red Leaves, she had played basketball, she met a nice man.
Jim and Kristina had really tried. Even after Scotland, even after the three months she spent barely thinking of Jim, they had tried to get back on track. She had thought she wanted a life with him. He wasn’t a bum, a brash, ponytailed, tattooed performance clown with no future.
Kristina had chosen James Allbright Shaw. He was her guy.
But Jim didn’t love her. She hadn’t anticipated that.
College. You’d think it would be easy to fake love with so many things in common, with courses and studying and partying and sitting around Thayer three times a day. College was the great suppressor, the warm blanket that covered them all and made them safe. How could you not fall in love in college? Most of the girls and guys she had known in the last three years had fallen in love. Most of them more than once. She knew a girl who had gone through seven boyfriends her freshman fall semester, and was now back with boyfriend number one.
Anybody could fall in love in a tiny cold town in the middle of the hills. Four thousand students, two dozen parties a weekend, study halls full of Ivy Leaguers, football on Saturdays, winter carnival; everyone read the Dartmouth, everyone protested something, everyone shopped at the Co-op and ate at EBA. The differences between guys were muted. Everybody was a liberal arts major. Everybody came from a nurturing family, everybody placed a value on education and hard work and the future. There were no differences other than the ones between the sexes. And the college handbook tried to suppress even those.
Today it was Jim, yesterday it could’ve been Barry, who had asked her to go to Cape Cod two years ago, tomorrow it could be that nice-looking young detective who had watched her strap up her boots and bought her coffee. Spencer Patrick O’Malley.
Yet Kristina sat here in the virtual dark, with a swelling in her head and Southern Comfort in her blood, wearing only her bra and panties, and tears ran down her cheeks into her mouth.
Jim didn’t love her. Even Dartmouth College couldn’t hide it.
It was all wrong between them. He stroked her neck and gave her great back rubs. But Jim never looked at her the way Spencer O’Malley looked at her. He never looked at her the way Kristina had once seen him looking at Conni. Kristina was not arrogant about her beauty - it sometimes left her cold, and she would understand if it left a guy cold too. But it shouldn’t be leaving her boyfriend cold. Albert was never left cold by Kristina, but she tried to tell herself this wasn’t about Albert. Kristina didn’t want to reproduce the feeling she had with Albert - she wanted to be rid of the destructive, obsessive, fierce longing forever - it wasn’t love, it was insanity. She wanted sane love.
Outside it got lighter.
Getting up from the chair, Kristina went to her nightstand. The Southern Comfort bottle was bone-dry. She wondered where her gift bottle was. She had forgotten to bring it up.
She walked circles around her room and then sat down on the bed. Right your life, rang in her head. Right your life.
That’s what I’m terrified of, Kristina thought, wiping her wet face. Not just death, no. I’m terrified of the future.
Kristina remembered last winter carnival when she and Jim built that huge snowman in the middle of the common. It took them two hours, and Jim was well frozen by the end of the day, but wouldn’t leave until they found the hat and coals; he even ran to Collis and got half a carrot. Kristina had been surprised Collis had anything as fresh as a carrot. Jim had loved her a little then, despite Edinburgh.
Kristina would’ve liked to hear Jim say he didn’t love her. I don’t love you, Kristina. I could’ve saved you with my love. Lifted you out of the dark morass you’re in and made you happy - and free. I could have freed you with my love -could’ve taken you and made you forget the mad man, the dark man. But I don’t love you, so you’re not saved, not at all. Play basketball, hide behind the game. Write Review articles. Take care of Evelyn. But you’re not saved.
Kristina threw on some clothes, slipped out of her room, and made her way downstairs to Jim’s room.
‘Jimmy, wake up,’ she said softly, sitting down on the bed and prodding him with her right hand. ‘I want to talk to you.’
He groaned, turning his back to her. She shook him again. ‘Please. Wake up, Jim.’
He was groggy. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s early. What time is dawn?’
‘Ohhhh,’ he moaned. ‘I have class tomorrow. Please.’
‘No, please,’ Kristina said.
Then Jim sat with his back against the wall. ‘What?’
Wiping her face, Kristina said, ‘Jimbo, I don’t know. I think it’s over between us.’
‘Think?’ he sneered.
‘I’m really sorry, Jim,’ she said, unable to look at him. She stared at her knees instead. ‘I can’t make you happy.’
‘Yes, because you really tried.’
‘I have tried.’
‘You haven’t tried. You’re too busy trying for basketball and Red Leaves House and even the Review -’
‘I’m only on the Review because of you.’
‘Don’t do me any favors,’ he snapped.
‘Listen, you haven’t exactly made me happy either.’
‘Krissy, you’re impossible to make happy.’
‘How would you know?’ she said loudly, standing up and beginning to limp in agitated lines from corner to corner. ‘What have you ever done to try?’
‘I went out with you, didn’t I?’
You pig, thought Kristina. ‘Don’t do me any favors.’
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘It’s a really good idea we don’t see each other anymore. I haven’t been happy in a long time.’
‘Never.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Before I met you.’
Kristina’s heart sank, but she managed to say, ‘Somehow I find that hard to believe.’ Her lips were quivering. She was about to cry. He was about to make her cry, but she wouldn’t let him. She knew he had difficulty talking about personal things. That was his way. So be it.
Jim laughed an awkward laugh. ‘I can’t believe we stuck
it out this long.’
‘Jim, don’t say that. Things weren’t always like this.’
‘Oh no?’
‘No. Only since I realized how you feel about me. Or more precisely, how you don’t feel about me.’
Staring at her coldly, still not moving from his place on the bed, he said, ‘What are you talking about?’
Kristina was still pacing, still aching, her bad arm hanging limply down her side. She became choked up and couldn’t tell him what was on her mind.
‘Forget it, Jimbo. I came here hoping maybe we could talk.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Jim retored contemptuously. ‘You woke me up hoping I’d make you feel better about yourself, just like you always want me to do. Well, I wasn’t about to ignore my work to make you feel better about yourself. I’m not a psych major.’
‘That much is clear,’ Kristina mumbled. ‘God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t want you to make me feel better about myself. You’ve got it all so wrong.’
She wasn’t going to cry in front of him. Not now. She wasn’t. She tried to make her voice as calm as possible when she said, ‘I’m going now.’
‘Bye, Krissy,’ he said, his voice breaking.
When he didn’t make any move to stop her, she left.
Kristina sat down dejected on her bed. Instead of feeling better, she felt much worse. God, she thought. I woke up and was feeling so bad, I couldn’t see in front of me. But now look at the way I feel.
Everything was quiet and blue in the dawn winter light. Aristotle whimpered.
‘Aristotle, I know how you feel, dog,’ Kristina said. ‘I know exactly how you feel,’ she said sadly, lying down on the thin carpet next to him. She kissed the top of his head, and fell asleep after an instant of aching.
Kristina slept through her two morning classes and basketball practice. She hurt too much for basketball. When she woke up on the floor, Aristotle wasn’t there. Someone had taken him out and, as a careless afterthought, thrown a blanket on her. Careless or not, she wanted to know who it was. Albert? Jim? Conni?
She woke up with an awful feeling of heaviness and depression that she couldn’t shake. She couldn’t believe she had been left alone for so long. Usually somebody came into her room and woke her up.