Red Leaves. Paullina Simons

Kristina said, ‘No, thank you.’

      She walked him to his car, a rented Pontiac Bonneville.

      ‘How is your car?’ Howard asked her.

      ‘Oh, you know. Beat-up. Old. I hate that car. The antifreeze is leaking out of the heating core on the passenger side, and it smells awful. The whole car smells like antifreeze. Plus it’s loud. I think the muffler may be going.’

      ‘What do you care about the passenger side? You drive.’

      Kristina was going to say that sometimes she sat on the passenger side, sometimes, when there were mountains and trees, and sunlight. She sat on the passenger side on the way to Fahrenbrae, to the vacation houses nestled high in the Vermont hills.

      ‘You need money to get it fixed?’

      It was amazing that with all the money he gave her, she could be so constantly broke. It was hard to imagine that a girl getting twenty thousand dollars a year from Howard could be poor - what an insult to really poor people out there! - but still, after the tuition, and the room and board, and the books, and gas for her lousy car, there was not five hundred dollars left. That’s the way her father had wanted it: no money left for extras. But five hundred dollars into ten months of school didn’t amount to much. About $1.66 a day. Enough for a candy bar and a newspaper. If she saved up and didn’t have a candy bar, she could go to the movies once every couple of weeks. If she was really careful, she could buy a small bag of popcorn.

      Kristina reached out, touching Howard’s face softly. Hugging him hard and tight, she whispered, ‘I don’t want any money from you.’

      He hugged her back. ‘Because you know, even without your father’s money, I’ve got some of my own.’ He didn’t look at her when he said that, and Kristina noticed, but she guilelessly said, ‘I’m sure, Howard. You’ve always taken very good care of yourself. I certainly don’t have to worry about you.’

      He pulled away. ‘You need a ride back? You look cold.’

      She shook her head. ‘Thanks. I have basketball practice. Then Jim and I are studying Aristotle for a quiz on aesthetics tomorrow. And I have to write an article on the death penalty for the Review before Thanksgiving. You know, same old, same old.’

      ‘Death penalty, huh? Does New Hampshire even have a death penalty?’

      ‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘You have to kidnap and kill a police officer while trying to rob a bank to get money to buy crack to sell to little kids, but there’s a death penalty.’

      ‘How many people are put to death each year?’

      ‘What, by criminals?’

      Howard laughed lightly. ‘Funny. No, by the state.’

      She thought for a moment and pretended to count. ‘All in all, including the ones who were going to be put to death the previous year, and all the years before, let’s see… one… three… twenty-seven - none.’

      He laughed. ‘And what position are you going to take on this today? As I remember, you used to be against.’

      ‘That was then. I wasn’t allowed to have another opinion in that damn school you sent me to.’ Kristina smiled. ‘I don’t know what my opinion is yet. I haven’t started writing. I usually get a position somewhere in the middle of the article and then spend the last half defending my new opinion.’

      ‘You do not think killers deserve to die?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I think I’m reading too much Nietzsche. He’s screwing up my common sense -’

      ‘What common sense?’ said Howard.

      Kristina poked him in the ribs. ‘If they don’t deserve to die, then what do they actually deserve? Because they do deserve something, don’t you think? What do they get in Hong Kong?’

      ‘Death.’

      Kristina wasn’t sure about death. God was part of that somehow. There was a God out there between all her courses on eastern religion and modern religious thought, and morality and religion, between all those lofty words strung together, there was a God, and she didn’t know what He was telling her. She spent most of her life dulling His presence from her existence. What did Mahatma Gandhi say was one of the seven greatest evils? ‘Pleasure without conscience.’ Dulling Gandhi’s existence too, though his credo hung on the cork-board near her desk as an insolent reminder. What would have Gandhi thought about the death penalty? In general? And specifically - for the man who killed him? Gandhi would have forgiven him, Kristina was sure. Just as Pope John Paul forgave his Bulgarian would-be assassin, Gandhi would have forgiven his killer. But then it was Gandhi who wrote that the seventh greatest evil was ‘politics without principle.’ Gandhi was nothing if not principled.

      ‘Would John Lennon forgive Mark David Chapman?’ said Howard.

      Kristina smiled. ‘Well, you’re really a popular culture whiz, aren’t you? I don’t think John Lennon would’ve,’ she added. ‘He had too much to live for.’

      ‘So that is how you determine forgiveness. You think it is easier to forgive your killer when your life is empty?’

      ‘Much,’ said Kristina. But the Pope’s life hadn’t been empty, no, not at all. Still, the Pope didn’t have a five-year-old Sean Lennon.

      Howard stood shifting from foot to foot. ‘You’re cold,’ Kristina said, unwrapping his coat from herself. ‘Here.’

      He took his coat but did not put it on. They both stood and shivered.

      ‘You know,’ Howard said uncertainly, ‘you’re welcome to come to New York for Thanksgiving. We could go see David and Shaun Cassidy in Blood Brothers.’

      So he had asked her. Waited till the last minute, but asked her anyway. Kristina felt bad. She rubbed his suit sleeve again.

      ‘It’s all right, Howard,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s only a silly holiday.’

      ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I do not like the thought of you alone and unhappy on the silly holidays.’

      ‘I won’t be alone, okay?’ she said, smiling. ‘And I won’t be unhappy. Okay?’

      Kristina wanted Howard to hug her again, but he didn’t. He never reached out for her first. He carried himself with such politeness, Kristina wondered if underneath his soft, mild respect there wasn’t a bit of distaste. Almost as if in Howard’s religion it was a sin to touch Kristina Kim.

      ‘Am I going to see you again?’ he asked.

      ‘I hope so, Howard. I really hope so.’ She again felt his reserve.

      ‘Okay, then. Happy birthday.’

      Kristina pumped her fist in the air. Her long fingers felt better clenched. Felt warmer. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m an adult now.’

      ‘You have been an adult all the time I have known you,’ said Howard.

      ‘Yes, but before you,’ Kristina said, ‘I was a child.’

      ‘Must have been a long time ago,’ he said sadly.

      Kristina felt sad herself hearing him say that. ‘Not so long ago, Howard.’ Her nose was running, and she breathed heavily out of her mouth.

      Howard was quiet for a moment and then hugged her. ‘Good-bye, Kristina,’ he said quietly.

      The words stuck in her throat. ‘Good-bye, Howard,’ she said, patting his coat. She didn’t want him to see tears in her eyes.

      When he got into his car, Kristina turned away.

      After he was gone, she stood motionless on the sidewalk, squinting into the sun. I miss him already, she thought. I must call him and wish him a merry Christmas in a few weeks.

      She