Red Leaves

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stay put. Have Betty call me as soon as you go into labor. I’ll come to the hospital.’

‘And hold my hand?’

Kristina nodded. ‘And hold your hand,’ she said softly.

Evelyn blew her a kiss and disappeared from the window.

* * *

Usually, Kristina drove home down Route 120 and made a left onto East Wheelock and a right onto College Street to get to Tuck Mall, but today she went a little farther west in Lebanon and made a right onto Route 10. It was a nicer road during the day, and in the summers she regularly took Route 10. She liked the view from the road. Tonight it was dark, though, and she didn’t know what had made her drive down to Route 10, except maybe she was thinking about Evelyn and adopted babies, and her mind, distracted from being in ten different places at once, hadn’t thought quick enough to make a right onto Route 120. Kristina made her way on Route 10 at thirty miles an hour down the winding two-lane road as she thought of Joshua and Samuel. And subsequently Albert and Canada. Albert was right. Canada would be wonderful. Like Edinburgh.

The three months they had spent at Edinburgh in the spring of 1991 had been the happiest months of her life.

They had no money, the dorms were old and cold, and they got no studying done. Kristina lost fifteen pounds in Scotland, eating soup mostly and spaghetti. They saved their pennies to go out to the pubs on Friday nights. Kristina remembered the cobblestone streets, the Tudor houses, the churches, the first she’d been to on a regular basis, and the Mull of Kintyre. They went there for New Year’s Eve, staying in a tiny bed-and-breakfast, got drunk on bitter and ale with the locals, and then spent New Year’s Day by the stark Irish Sea. She remembered the mountains, she remembered the lakes, the dandelions and daffodils coming to bloom. She remembered herself and him at Edinburgh. She remembered most of all how she had felt then - no hopelessness, no despair, no shame. Just the two of them, freed by their anonymity.

Until one day, as a lark, they stopped by a street fortuneteller and gave her two quid to read Kristina’s palm. Kristina went behind the dirty paisley curtain, and the hunched woman grabbed her hands and turned them over. Kristina tried to pull her hands away, but it was no use. The hag was strong. The old woman’s heavy Gaelic brogue Kristina barely understood, but the contorted expression of horror on her face was etched into Kristina’s mind. The expression of horror she understood well. She’d seen that expression before. The old witch wouldn’t let go of Kristina’s hands; she kept mumbling, then yelling; she became frenzied. Finally Albert stepped inside and pried their hands apart. As they hurried away down the street, Kristina could still hear the old woman holler shrilly after them. The fortune-teller was the only thing that had marred their one-hundred-and-thirty-day idyll.

The wind was howling outside, and it was very cold. Route 10 had no streetlights, only oaks and maples and plenty of American mountain ash, whose leaves were so delicate and pretty and yellow in autumn. Now, three nights before Thanksgiving, the trees were mere silhouettes on the side of the road.

Kristina drove with her mind in Edinburgh. In the moments before the curve near the reservoir, she was thinking about going to Scotland to live. Deeper in her subconscious, she was thinking of Thayer dining hall and whether they would have macaroni and cheese tonight as they always did on Mondays or whether they would go on some unspecified and certainly unjustified holiday schedule when they only served hamburgers and heroes.

The radio’s country station was playing ‘We Just Disagree.’

And do you think That we’ve grown up differently? Haven’t been the same Since you lost your feel for me…

As she went around the bend in the road, she saw an oncoming car, and because it was dark, and she judged the narrowness of road conservatively, Kristina instinctively turned the wheel to the right. But the lights were rushing headlong toward her. The other car still seemed perilously close. She turned the wheel a little more and heard the noise of her right tires hitting gravel. The Mustang bobbled, and the wheel became unsteady in her hands. To compensate, Kristina quickly turned the wheel to the left.

She overcompensated.

The car jerked, and she panicked and slammed on the brakes. The Mustang swerved, the brakes locked, and the car reeled sideways on the narrow road - directly into the headlights of the oncoming car.

Kristina heard the insistent and unremitting noise of the horn and the screeching of the other car’s brakes. The instant the Mustang was bathed with light, there was a loud crash and Kristina was thrown against the driver’s side window. She heard glass breaking.

The Mustang swirled around twice and flew backward down the embankment. Kristina’s life came to a standstill. She had just enough time to think, ohno, ohno, ohno, I’m going to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die! and then the car turned over once in midair, and came down with a thump to stand on its tires, a few feet from the water.

Kristina opened her eyes and closed them again, opened them and closed them. She could see nothing at first, it was so dark. She thought, am I dead? Open-eyed, yet unable to see, just dead. No feeling anywhere. Nothing moved. Dead. But something gave away life. Something. She couldn’t figure it out at first, something real-life, familiar, unotherworldly.

She heard the radio.

So let’s leave it alone, Cause we can’t see eye to eye There’s no good guy There’s no bad guy There’s only you and me And we just disagree...

She reached over to turn the damn radio off and thought, I don’t think they play easy-listening music in the afterlife.

She felt no pain. On the other hand, that was good. Who wanted to feel pain? On the other hand, dead people felt no pain.

There was a rustling of leaves, branches, the sound of feet shuffling down the slope, hurrying. Somebody at her driver’s side window. A man, with terror in his eyes and a bloody nose, mouthing, are you all right? Are you all right?

Kristina tried to roll down the broken window, but it was jammed. Actually, she couldn’t get a grip on the handle. Her hand was not obeying her. The fingers were not closing.

She tried to nod, but that didn’t work either. I’m all right, she tried to reply, but couldn’t hear herself. She just wanted to get out of the car. Wait here, she heard the man say. Wait here, I’m going to go and get help. Just you wait, he said.

She leaned back in her seat. Well, I’m not going anywhere, she thought. Where would I go? And then she thought: home. I wouldn’t mind going home.

But where was home?

My room. My messy room with my little bed and my desk and my dog lying on the bed smelling up all the blankets with his dog smell and dog hair. It’s the only home I have, and I want to be back there right now.

She reached down and tried to pry the seat belt off herself. Was the car still running? She couldn’t hear very well. The seat belt had locked, and was digging into Kristina’s rib cage and right hip. What possessed me to put one on tonight? she thought. Well, doesn’t God protect the wicked and the damned?

She clicked open the seat belt and moved her right hand across her body to the door, which would not open. And the window would not roll down. The headlights of the Mustang weren’t on, though she was sure they had been on. What had happened?

And then she felt cold. She wondered if it was because she was dead, and getting colder by the second. But no, her right hand was moving, and her legs were moving sluggishly. The passenger window was broken.

She slowly moved over to the passenger seat and tried to open that door. It was jammed. So she got up with her knees on the seat and tried to climb out through the broken window. Climbing out was not easy. She couldn’t lift her left arm to prop herself up. Finally she nearly fell out with a thump down to the ground. She fell on her good arm, but not her good side. She was still feeling no pain.

Shit, Kristina thought. Hope I’ll be okay for Saturday’s game. Hate to sit out the first league game of the season.

It was very dark. She tried to orient herself. Where’s the lake? Okay, it’s in front of me, because behind me is the hill, so if the lake is in front of me, that means it’s on the left side of the road, which would be west, and that means Hanover is just a few miles north as the crow flies.

First she had to get up the brutal hill. She couldn’t see. She groped around, lost her footing, and fell - on her left side. A sharp rocket of fire exploded in her arm, and she fainted.

She came to some time later. It was still dark, still no sign of police or an ambulance, still eerily quiet.

All she wanted to do was get back up on the highway and start walking home. Maybe someone would pick her up. She didn’t want the man to come back with help. Help invariably meant an ambulance, which - from everything Kristina knew about ambulances - would probably take her to the hospital.

Kristina hated hospitals. She had been in one only twice in her entire life, and once was when she had been born.

She certainly didn’t plan to be taken to a hospital tonight by a well-meaning stranger just because of a locked seat belt and sore ribs.

So she got up off the ground and tried again, groping at something to hold on to while with one good hand she dragged her body up the hill.

Two cars went by. She heard them slow down - probably to see the car that had hit hers - and then speed on ahead. But the few seconds gave her enough light to see that the highway was only another ten feet up, and there were some shrubs she could hold on to.

Hurry up, hurry up, she kept telling herself. Hurry up, Krissy, hurry up, Rocky, pull yourself up. She slipped on the hard ground every couple of seconds. Like a football team after a penalty, moving ten yards back after winning the territory, she kept slipping.

She felt a rock with her knee. Oh, that hurt. I felt pain! That’s so great. She grabbed on, pulled herself up, felt in front of her for something else to hold on to; there were a few pebbles, but little else. Where are those damn shrubs? As she struggled up the hill, she whispered haltingly, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear the very stories prate of my whereabout… Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear the very stones prate of my whereabout… Hear not my steps…

Kristina heard other cars coming, thank God, and here was some more light. Not far to go at all, we’re almost there. But there was nothing to clutch now, and in desperation, she started to claw at the ground with her hand. Her left arm was immobile. She felt her nails bending back and breaking, but she didn’t care. What was important was getting back up. With her new black boots she kicked into the ground like a rock climber.

Finally, Kristina climbed up onto the two-foot-wide shoulder, and rested for a moment to catch her breath. She felt fluid dripping from her head. Kristina told herself it was sweat.

The man had said he was going to get help, but how he would do this was a mystery to Kristina, since his car was smashed and off the road. She didn’t give it any more thought than that. She was glad he hadn’t come back. In a childish gesture, she wiped the dirt off her knees.

Then she began to walk to Hanover. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster, she eventually broke into a slow jog on the shoulder of Route 10, just to get farther away from the Mustang, the reservoir, her new purse, and the man who had gone to get help.

When she got up to Hinman, she realized she had left her keys in the ignition and had to shiver near the doorway until someone came out and let her in.

Aristotle wasn’t in her room. The bed had not been made from this morning. The desk had all kinds of stuff on it, and the computer was covered with dirty glasses, Post-it notes, and scattered papers. Her clothes were all over the floor.

She was home.

Locking the door, Kristina sat down on the bed and slowly examined her hands. They were dirty and bloody from clawing at the ground. Most of the nails were broken. The nail polish was chipped. She stared at them and then tried to get the dirt off the index fingernail, until she asked herself what she was doing and stopped.

She had left all of her identification in the car. Great, just great, she thought. The police were sure to have a bunch of questions for her. Miss, could we give you back the stuff that belongs to you, please? You forgot it all in your inexplicable hurry to get away from the scene of the accident. Why were you in such a hurry? Is there something you should be telling us? Were you drinking?

And then Kristina remembered Spencer O’Malley and wondered if maybe he would come to investigate her. She smiled lightly to herself. That wouldn’t be half bad.

Drinking. Now that wasn’t a terrible idea. Her mouth felt wet already at the thought of the old Southern Comfort. Reaching over to her night table, Kristina opened the top drawer and took out a nearly empty bottle. There wasn’t enough to comfort her. She got up, went to her closet, and reached up to get an unopened bottle from the top shelf. Then she sat back down on the bed, opened the cap with one hand, opened her mouth, tilted the bottle, and poured forth enough liquor to comfort herself and forget about her car and about her three friends who at this time were certainly waiting for her to come and celebrate her twenty-first birthday with them.

The pint bottle was a third empty when she was done. She hated seeing the bottle emptying, but when she was finished she felt immeasurably better. The shock of the accident was wearing off, and she was beginning to throb and ache.

Slowly and uncertainly, she sat on the bed, bent over, and started to unlace her boots. The arduous procedure would have taken her five or six minutes under the best

of circumstances. Tonight, under the haze of alcohol and the distant blur of pain, it took her three times as long. She thought she might even have nodded off in that position, hunched over her boots, as if she were about to throw up.

It was difficult undressing. She pulled off her sweatshirt with one arm over her head. Her pink tank top came off the same way. The five-button-fly jeans were as hard to remove as the boots. She had to wriggle out of them in the end. The left arm just wasn’t pulling down those jeans. Then the socks. Then the underwear. And when she was naked, Kristina walked unsteadily to her closet and stared at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

Her face was covered with blood that had streamed down her right temple and cheek and neck, clotting and drying below her collarbone. So it wasn’t sweat she had felt dripping off her, she thought. Her black eyes shone blacker than ever, glistening with the warm wet dilation of Southern Comfort. Her knees were skinned, and her left arm hung limply at her side. Kristina looked closer. Her left shoulder was a swollen, maroon-colored mess. God.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit. During her first year, in a rough-and-tumble practice, six weeks before league play began, two girls had knocked into each other, one suffering a dislocated shoulder. The poor kid had to sit out eight weeks, and soon quit basketball altogether. Kristina had been glad not to have been on the receiving end of that one.

She became so frightened, she actually thought of going to the hospital. Anything, dear God, anything. I have to play basketball again.

However, the idea of getting the shoulder looked at terrified her. What if it was bad? She couldn’t deal with thinking about it. She pretended it wasn’t even that painful and tried to be brave. She gritted her teeth and moved her left arm. It’s okay, it’s okay. It won’t be so bad.

Her right rib had the beginning of a large ragged black-and-blue mark that looked like a Rorschach blot.

Kristina moved closer to the mirror; her face was almost touching the cool smooth surface. There was something stuck near her right temple, above the eye. Kristina lifted her hand to touch it. It was a piece of safety glass. It was not a big piece, Kristina thought, trying to comfort herself as she pried the glass from her skin. The empty bloody gash the glass left behind was scarier than having the glass in her head.

Kristina went to have a shower after taking another sip of Southern Comfort. Her hand holding the bottle was steady.

The hot water felt wonderful on her aching body but miserable on her shoulder, so she turned it off. Washing under cold water felt only marginally better. Every once in a while she would try to move her left arm and wince from the pain. But she didn’t feel like screaming, Kristina told herself. It wasn’t that bad.

When she was trying to dry herself, another student, Jill, entered the shower rooms. They nodded to each other, and Kristina continued to pat her body. Jill looked over at Kristina and stared.

‘Hey, what happened to you?’ she said.

‘Nothing, why?’ Kristina said quickly. Rather, she tried to say it quickly, but the words came out dead slow, methodical and precise. It was more like Nooo-thinnnn-ggg. Whyyyyyy? Alcohol always made Kristina walk and talk slow but think she was walking and talking fast.

‘I don’t know,’ Jill said. ‘You look… terrible. You need help or something?’

‘Thanks, but you know, I just gotta get to my room, and I’ll be all right. Really,’ she said, staring into Jill’s disbelieving eyes. ‘Honestly.’

‘What happened to you?’ Jill repeated. ‘Did you get hurt at a game or something?’

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Kristina. ‘That Cornell, they’ll do anything to win.’

Jill smiled thinly, helped Kristina dry her back, and then went and got her a bucket of ice and carried it to Kristina’s door.

* * *

When Kristina opened the door to her room, Aristotle greeted her. Albert was sitting on her bed, looking at her accusingly. Is that really accusingly? she thought, trying to get a better look at his expression. What did I do now?

‘God, what the hell happened to you?’ he said, getting up and walking over to her.

Kristina pondered his question as she put down the ice bucket and threw the towel off her body. Albert was in a bad mood. His tone was inflammatory, not distressed.

She didn’t reply. He’s mad at me. He doesn’t realize I almost died. Kristina decided to tell him.

Albert’s tone softened. ‘What happened, Rock?’ he said, standing up and coming close to her. His fierce-tender way of looking at her usually made her crazy. This time it nearly made her cry.

‘What are you upset about, Albert?’ Kristina asked quietly, putting three ice cubes on her shoulder.

‘Everybody’s been waiting for you for two hours. You said you were coming back at six.’

‘I don’t know if you noticed,’ she said slowly, rubbing the ice over her arm, ‘but I’ve been hurt. My car was totaled.’

‘I didn’t know your car was totaled.’

‘No, how could you?’ said Kristina tearfully.

Kristina sat nude in front of him. He looked at her breasts and then at the big black bruise on her side. The expression in his eyes made her feel better.

‘Look at you,’ he said in a throaty voice, coming closer to her. ‘You look so - what is that?’

She rubbed her side with the ice. That’s nothing, she thought, and said so.

‘God, what happened to your face? And your shoulder? It’s bleeding.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. It’s not bleeding,’ she said, not even wanting to look at it. ‘It’s just… discolored.’ Then, ‘It could be worse, you know.’

‘I don’t see how. How?’

‘I could be dead.’ Should be dead, she thought, and stood up.

‘You’ve been drinking.’

‘Not then.’ Kristina thought he meant she was drinking and driving, but then he didn’t even know what had happened to her.

‘Not then, when?’

‘Just now. I drank a little now. To take the edge off.’

‘The edge off what?’

‘The edge off the pain.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘My car turned over.’

‘God, how?’

‘An oncoming car hit me.’

‘Hit you? Where?’

‘On the side of the Mustang.’

Albert stared at her perplexed. ‘No. I mean, where?’

‘Route Ten.’

‘It swerved into your lane?’

She vaguely remembered the other car’s headlights, being caught in them, trying to avoid them.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I swerved into his.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? I don’t know,’ Kristina said slowly. ‘It seemed like a good idea?’

‘Kristina!’

‘He seemed really close.’

‘I see. So you drove into his lane to get farther away from him?’

She wanted to answer him, but turning her head away from him, she caught their reflection in her full-length mirror. She was standing naked in front of him. He was dressed in black jeans and a black sweater, black-headed, pony-tailed, black-eyed. They stood a foot apart, arguing about semantics. Is this what my life has become? Kristina thought. A bad Marx Brothers movie. Grotesque, ridiculous. Aristotelian theater where the absurd is the norm and the norm does not exist.

Kristina shook her head and moved toward the closet. ‘I gotta get dressed,’ she muttered.

‘You have to get that shoulder checked out. Can’t you move your arm?’

‘I can move it okay,’ she said. ‘I just choose not to.’

He stood solicitously next to her. ‘Maybe it’s fractured.’

She shook her head again. ‘The sockets would be popping out of the skin. It’s swollen. I think it’s just a sprain.’ She was trying her best to minimize it.

‘You don’t know anything. You should get it looked at. Go to the infirmary.’

‘No!’ she said. ‘No doctors. You know how I hate them.’ Kristina didn’t want to tell him how scared she was. Basketball meant nothing to him, but to her it was her whole life. That, and Red Leaves. And him.

Kristina walked over to the bookshelf and sifted through the pile of books until she found a soiled paperback copy of the Family Medical Encyclopedia.

She handed the book to Albert and said, ‘Look up “shoulder.” ‘

He scanned a page. ‘Doesn’t say anything useful.’

‘Now look up “joints."’

After reading for a few moments, Albert said, ‘"Sprain… painfully twisted or wrenched joint… following some kind of violence… “ ‘

‘Perfect,’ said Kristina.

Albert continued, ‘"Violence may dislocate or fracture the ends of the bones that make up a joint."’ He looked up at her. ‘What did I tell you?’

‘Thank you, Dr Maplethorpe,’ she said. ‘Read on.’

‘"X-ray pictures from several angles should be taken to make sure the bones have not been fractured or dislocated."’ He stopped reading. ‘See?’

‘Go on, go on,’ she said impatiently.

‘"Blood may seep out and discolor the skin,"’ he read aloud. ‘"… The synovial membranes are inflamed and reacting by pouring out fluid."’

‘Gee, that all sounds so nice,’ said Kristina, bending down to take more ice. She groaned. Bending down hurt her ribs.

Glancing at her, Albert went on, ‘"The immediate treatment for a sprain is application of cold wet bandages or ice bags to keep down the swelling…” ‘ And louder, he finished, ‘"Medical attention and x-rays should be obtained to make sure a sprain is just a sprain."’

‘Well, I’m not going,’ Kristina said stubbornly. ‘It’s fine. It’ll be much better tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’ll go and get some kind of infrared massager for heat treatment.’

‘Tomorrow you’ve got to go to the police.’

‘I’m not going to the police,’ Kristina said. ‘If the police want me, they’ll come to me.’

‘When they come to you,’ Albert pointed out, ‘they’ll bring handcuffs. Why are you being so stubborn about this?’

‘Who’s being stubborn? I don’t remember you going to the doctor when you broke your toe.’