A Fair Maiden

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Katya asked what a fossil flower was, and Mr. Kidder said that they were glass replicas of "long-extinct flowers" he'd become interested in as a young man. He got to his feet and came to stand beside Katya—close beside her. "Some of these will look familiar to you—they resemble flowers living today. These orchids, for instance. And this is an early ancestor of rose pogonia." The glass flowers were displayed in clusters, in vases; they were scattered through the room, and there were more than Katya had originally thought. She asked Mr. Kidder how glass could be sculpted—wouldn't it break? And Mr. Kidder smiled at her as if she'd said something clever. "Not in its molten state, Katya. Before we are sculpted, we are pliable raw material." She'd asked a stupid question, Katya understood. Of course, she knew that glass was "molten"—liquid.

  In her embarrassment she pretended to be examining a bizarrely shaped flower with fat, sawtoothed petals, very sharp to the touch, and winced when she saw that she'd actually cut herself, a fine, near-invisible wound like a paper cut, which she managed to hide from Mr. Kidder. She was noticing that many of the fossil flowers, beautiful at a short distance, were finely cracked and covered in a thin film of dust. Not what you'd call dirty, not grimy, but not clean either. Such fragile things weren't practical. Living with them at close quarters, day after day, you couldn't keep them up; finally you'd resent them. Not even Mr. Kidder's housekeeper, Mrs. Bee, could keep his fossil flowers clean.

  Mr. Kidder seemed just to have made this discovery, too. He'd wet his forefinger and was wiping at petals, frowning. "Beautiful useless things! I've ruined my life with them, who knows why. I was married once—in fact, I was married twice—to beauties. Beauty is my folly, and why? Freud said, 'Beauty has no discernible use. Yet without it, life would be unbearable.'"

  Katya sucked surreptitiously at her finger, where the thin cut oozed a thin sliver of blood. Mr. Kidder took no notice. Mr. Kidder was brooding over the glass flowers and had spoken with unexpected feeling, almost bitterly. Katya didn't want their comical/ dignified host to be suddenly serious, or sad. She said, to cheer the old man up, "Mr. Kidder, there isn't a thing in those stores on Ocean Avenue anything like these flowers. If I could make anything so beautiful ever in my life, I'd be so happy. I would never be unhappy or depressed again."

  Mr. Kidder was smiling at her indulgently, with bemused eyes. "You, Katya, depressed, unhappy—my dear, that's hard to believe."

  Katya laughed and shrugged. She was a hired girl; she said such things on order. Much of her life was this sort of semiskilled playing to other people, usually older people, with the hope of making them like her; making them feel that she was valuable to them; wresting some of their power from them, if but fleetingly. It was like provoking a boy or a man to want you. That could be risky, as Katya well knew. Katya thought, He will give me one of the fossil flowers—that will be my reward.

  But Mr. Kidder seemed preoccupied and did not offer Katya one of the fossil flowers. She was disappointed, and she was hurt. Suddenly she wanted to be gone from 17 Proxmire Street.

  The baby had wakened from his light doze and began to fret. No doubt his diaper was soaked. Katya must get him home quickly and change his diaper. "Goodbye, Mr. Kidder! Thank you for having us for tea-time."

  "Katya, dear! Wait." Mr. Kidder roused himself to protest as Katya gathered up Tricia and adjusted the baby in his stroller. "I have something for you." But then he couldn't seem to find it, opening drawers, rummaging about on a shelf, sucking at his lips in old-man agitation. And then a tinsel-wrapped package was thrust into Katya's hands: a pink box from Prim Rose Lane Lingerie & Nightwear. Katya opened the package and saw inside not the little-girl white muslin nightgown but the sexy red lace camisole and matching red lace panties.

  Katya's cheeks smarted as if she'd been slapped. Quickly she hid the red silk inside the tissue paper and shut the box up.

  "I can't take this, Mr. Kidder. Thank you, but no."

  She held out the box to him. She was upset, and she was angry. Mr. Kidder professed surprise and refused to take the box from her. "Don't be silly, Katya. Why can't you take this? It's really very attractive and very finely made and there is nothing wrong with accepting it from me. You know, you don't need to tell anyone about it."

  "I don't want it. I don't wear things like this. I don't—want it." She was laughing, this was so absurd. An old man like Marcus Kidder, giving such lingerie to her. She fumbled for Tricia's hand and roused the little girl from Funny Bunny's Birthday Party, pushed the stroller toward the front door as Mr. Kidder accompanied her, apologizing. Yet you couldn't know if Mr. Kidder was truly apologetic or if he was teasing; if he was genuinely sorry he'd embarrassed and upset her or if he was laughing at her.

  "Dear Katya! I never meant whatever it is you seem to think that I meant. And you can return the gift to the store—the receipt is inside."

  Mr. Kidder followed Katya outside. At the privet-hedge entrance he extended his hand to her, gravely, but Katya would not take it. Both she and Mr. Kidder were breathing quickly. A hot flush had come into Katya's face. She was determined never to see Marcus Kidder again, never to return to this house. Above, the sky was layered in clouds thin as steam, obscuring the sun. The pale sickle moon had vanished. Katya was sure that she hadn't been in Mr. Kidder's house for even an hour, yet it felt much later.

  Mr. Kidder continued to apologize, yet there appeared to be merriment in his eyes, not repentance. You could see that Marcus Kidder was a terrible tease; you could not trust Marcus Kidder. His behavior made little girls like Tricia laugh in delight as if they were being tickled. Tricia adored funny Mr. Kidder and shook hands goodbye, but Katya refused to shake his hand, Katya was grievously wounded in her soul. To her he said, "Come back another time, dear. When you are not so agitated. When you can come alone. And can stay longer. Your present will be awaiting you."

  How furious you were, my darling! Yet you knew I did not mean to hurt you. And you knew, as I certainly did, that you'd be back.

  3

  "FUCK YOU, OLD MAN. You don't know me."

  She was a blunt girl. She was a crude girl. She was an angry girl. For all the Spivaks were angry, and she was a Spivak. Yet she was a girl easily embarrassed, shamed. Many times a day she felt, like the fleeting shadows of clouds passing the sun, the kick in the gut Shame! shame!, all the while her mouth fixed in that faint half-smile: Yes, I am a nice girl, I am a friendly and helpful girl, tell me what to do, give me instructions and I will do it.

  Minimum-wage jobs part-time, after school, and summers she'd been working since the age of thirteen, knowing she couldn't expect her parents to help pay for her college expenses even at the community college. Hospital bills, credit card debts—she'd ceased hearing. Her father's gambling debts: these had to be repaid. Or maybe the interest on the loans. Which was why she'd become a very capable girl. Not skinny, not weak like girls she saw here in Bayhead Harbor, rich girls she despised. Except if one of them, visiting the Engelhardts with her parents, smiled at Katya, asked where Katya was from, Katya's heart melted every time. For she was a girl who admired, adored, yearned to love many people. Though she hated many people! In school, since grade school, the friends she'd yearned for took little interest in her: she was a Spivak, and the Spivaks had acquired a certain reputation in Cumberland County, New Jersey. She was not a beautiful girl. She was a girl for boys to have sex with, except she would not have sex with them, which angered them. She was a shy girl; she distrusted her body. She did not see herself in a mirror and think, That is me, but she would think, Is that me?, staring in doubt, distrust. Nor did she trust her teachers when they praised her, encouraged her. You had to suspect that you were being pitied, if you were a Spivak. You had to suspect something. They want to make you hopeful, and then they will laugh at you. This was the sort of advice her mother might have given her. And her father, a different kind of advice: Roll the dice, see what happens. Why the hell not? There was logic here. Katya could appreciate the logic here. Still, she knew that
her mother was right. She was not a girl likely to go to college except at the community college, and maybe not even there. She knew she had to prepare herself.

  Since thirteen, she'd been preparing. She wasn't beautiful like these Bayhead Harbor girls, but it was surprising how men sometimes looked at her. More it was older men rather than guys her age, for some reason. For she was uneasy in her body. That fleshy lower lip, a sullen-sulky look on her face, which she wasn't aware of until her mother pointed it out. That look of Katya's—makes you want to slap it off her face. And that mouth of Katya's. She was mortified by such revelations. She was mortified by her body. Tits, boobs, ass, were ugly words that were mortifying to her, shameful. In sixth grade this had begun, hearing such words. And it would continue for the rest of her life, she believed. A female is her body. A guy can be lots of things, not just his body. She did not like guys to touch her. She did not like guys to kiss her and force their tongues in her mouth; this was disgusting to her. Why this was exciting and arousing to other girls, she could not imagine. A guy's tongue in her mouth made her want to gag, vomit. And worse than that in her mouth, she could not bear to consider. Though when she'd been high, and drunk, partying with her friends, those times she'd wakened dazed and sickish and not knowing where she was, possibly such things had been done to her. She'd forgotten. These were bad habits for a girl Katya's age, but no habit is so bad it can't be forgotten, erased. There were guys—older guys—she'd yearned for so frankly you could see it in her face. She'd hoped they would love her, but that was silly. Not enough for Katya Spivak that these guys wanted her sexually; any guy might want her sexually. Badly she wanted them to love her: Katya Spivak. To tell her that she was special to them, not just any girl. Badly she wanted her cousin Roy Mraz to love her and to respect her.

  Roy Mraz was Katya's "distant" cousin, and possibly they were not blood relations, for the woman known as Roy's mother was in fact Roy's stepmother, and it was this stepmother to whom Katya's mother, Essie, was related. Stay away from those people, Katya's mother warned. Roy was twenty-two. Lately he'd returned to Vineland from eighteen months in Glassboro. In Glassboro he'd acquired "tats": tattoos. He'd acquired bad habits, of which Katya did not want to think. And he did not care for her; Katya was too young for him and not sexy or good-looking enough. The hell with him. Why should I feel bad about him! She was in Bayhead Harbor for July and August, and she could have wept, she was so grateful. Almost she'd cried when the rich lady from Saddle River called, saying, Katya? If you're still free...

  The Engelhardts demanded a good deal from their live-in nanny and from their live-in housekeeper, this was true, but they were paying Katya more than she'd ever been paid in Vineland. And she was in Bayhead Harbor, on the Jersey shore, and not in Vineland, which was steamy hot in the summer. And there was the split-level on the channel, and Mr. Engelhardt's thirty-foot Chris-Craft powerboat she'd described to her mother and sisters on the phone, and there were the Engelhardt children—Tricia, baby Kevin. Her mother had warned, Don't get attached to kids—that's a mistake. Meaning the kids of people you worked for. Katya was not likely to make that mistake. Still, the baby's moist, sudden smile, that shine in his eyes when he saw her—those took Katya's breath away. Better when they were being bratty. Spoiled, demanding. Better when Mrs. Engelhardt spoke sharply to her with that knife-blade frown between her penciled eyebrows: Katya! Come here, please. Katya! Do this again, please. Yet here was the nanny's secret: she'd been invited to the home of Marcus Kidder, who was one of the really rich residents of Bayhead Harbor, with a mansion-sized house on the Atlantic Ocean, and the Engelhardts had not. Sneeringly Marcus Kidder had spoken of "mayflies." You could see, it was bred into Mr. Kidder to look down upon others who were his social inferiors, and this looking-down-upon-others was pleasing to Katya, as revenge.

  To a man like Marcus Kidder, the difference between the Engelhardts and the Spivaks wasn't that great, Katya thought. We are all inferior to him, you can see. Katya liked this. If a wealthy man is your friend, you can see his point of view.

  What was disturbing about Marcus Kidder, Katya thought, was that he could see into her heart. Did she dare to lie to Mr. Kidder? Would he laugh at her if she tried? (As children are laughed at when they clumsily lie, for lying is a skill you have to learn!) Katya liked to think that she'd become a skilled and accomplished and at times seductive liar, but she couldn't convince herself that Marcus Kidder would believe her if she tried to lie to him, and so: did Katya dare to return to him? To that house?

  Dear Katya! You know, you don't need to tell anyone. Somehow he'd known that it was the red lace lingerie Katya had been looking at in the store window, and not the demure white nightgown. Don't need to tell anyone was what men said, wanting to share a sex secret with a teenager.

  There'd been adult men in Katya Spivak's life. Older men whose ages Katya could only guess at. One of the mechanics in her uncle Fritzie's garage had smiled at Katya, drawing his tongue slowly across his fat lower lip, had said certain words to her that were near-inaudible and frightening; and Katya had never told anyone, of course. And there was Artie, one of Katya's mother's friends, who'd offered Katya a ride home from school one day when Katya was twelve years old, and something in his face, something in his jovial, drunk-sounding voice—Hey, Katya, c'mon, climb in, don't be shy, sweetheart—warned her: No.

  Never tell Momma her man friend had been looking at Katya in that way.

  And now, had Marcus Kidder looked at Katya in that way? Difficult to know, for Marcus Kidder was wholly unlike any of the Vineland men, of any age. But the red lace lingerie! Katya was not a girl to wear such lingerie and be stared at like one of those exotic dancers on billboards above the Garden State Parkway advertising Atlantic City casinos, and Katya was not a girl to be laughed at as guys like Roy Mraz would laugh at her. Roy Mraz had sucked Katya's lower lip into his mouth (in play? rough play?) and Katya had panicked, for what if Roy had chewed off her lip like a rat, what if crazy Roy, high on crystal meth, had swallowed Katya's lip? He'd enticed Katya into sniffing up into her nostrils and so up into her brain the bitter white chemical-smelling powder, and what she'd inhaled had been fiery and awful and her vision had become blotched and watery and (possibly) she'd blacked out and fallen a long, long distance and so (possibly) certain things were done to her by Roy Mraz which Katya could not think of clearly, still less comprehend, as if she were trying to recall scenes of a TV movie of long ago seen late at night in exhaustion and confused circumstances. Snorting—"snorting ice"—it was something you did, or, somehow, something that was done to you as in appalled fascination you watched yourself at a distance of about ten feet, a limp raggedy-doll figure with a slack, smeared mouth and glazed eyes. This was Katya's secret! Katya's secret, and yet somehow (how?) there came her mother, rushing at her to slap Katya's face and scream, What did I tell you! What the hell did I tell you! Stay away from the Mrazes! All that side of the family! So Essie Spivak spoke in fear and loathing of her own relatives, for she knew them, Essie said, as few others did, from the inside out.

  In Bayhead Harbor, none of that mattered. Spivak, Mraz—these south Jersey/Pine Barrens names meant nothing. Waking early before dawn in this new bed, Katya's first thought was, No one knows me here, which should have been a consolation but in fact left her feeling adrift, bereft. Homesick?

  It was seagulls that woke her so early. Piercing cries confused her dreams. Cries of hunger that sounded like cries of pain, rage. As in Vineland often she was wakened by crows at the landfill nearby, where raw garbage was dumped. A crow is weirdly human, Katya thought. You can hear crows laughing with one another, rowdy and jeering like drunken men. At the dead end of County Line Road, where the Cumberland County landfill sprawled across several acres, you could see swarms of crows, red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, descending from the sky, flapping their fake-looking wings like oversized bats. Katya's brothers, Dewayne and Ralph, shot their .22-caliber rifles at these garbage birds, as they called them, poppin
g them out of the sky. In the landfill Katya had tramped eagerly after her long-legged brothers, searching for treasure when she'd been a little girl.

  Katya, here! Somethin for you.

  A big baby doll with wide-open glass eyes, a rosebud mouth.

  Propped atop a mound of refuse. Before Katya could run to it, the baby doll's rubber head burst and disappeared into nothingness when the rifles discharged.

  Hey, Katya, don't cry. That wasn't no clean baby doll, that was a damn dirty ol' doll some nigger girl cast out.

  Now Katya was in Bayhead Harbor, and here treasure was everywhere. In the glittering store windows of Ocean Avenue, in the gleaming luxury vehicles cruising the shaded streets, glimpsed through openings in privet hedges. You could see it at a distance, you could admire and envy it, and yet you dared not touch it; such treasure is forbidden to you.

  4

  HERE WAS A SURPRISE: Mr. Kidder was not only an artist but a writer. Of children's books, at least.

  Only after they'd returned from their tea-time at Mr. Kidder's house and Katya had found time to sit down with Tricia and read Funny Bunny's Birthday Party to her did she discover that Mr. Kidder had given Tricia his own book: that is, Marcus Cullen Kidder was both the author and the illustrator.

  Katya was embarrassed. She hadn't so much as glanced at the name on the colorful book cover when she'd taken it from Tricia. It was like Mr. Kidder—modesty and vanity so mixed, you could not distinguish one from the other—not to have hinted that the book was his. Katya turned to the title page, where in a flowing script in purple ink Mr. Kidder had inscribed the book To Tricia, in the fervent hope that she will never change. Mr. Kidder's signature was such a flourish of the pen you'd have had to know that the scrawled name was Marcus Cullen Kidder to decipher it.