A Fair Maiden

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And he would say, stroking her cheek, that melting-love look in his icy blue eyes, But what a beautiful smile, Katya! My beautiful girl.

  PART II

  14

  This building will now be evacuated. This building will now be evacuated. At once...

  She was eleven years old. She was in sixth grade at Vineland Middle School South. She was in her third-period class, which was social studies, when with no warning a harried voice was broadcast over the speaker system and you could see that the announcement was a surprise and a shock to Mrs. Wilnik, who was their teacher. And so stunned, somber Mrs. Wilnik, trying to remain calm, lifted her quavering voice and instructed the class to stand at their desks, row by row, in an orderly fashion, and to leave the room single-file, as in a fire drill, and walk —walk, not run—to the stairs and down the stairs and outside. Remember: walk, not run. And Katya was frightened, and Katya was excited, on her feet and buoyed along with the others, into the hall, so strangely crowded, like the inside of a tunnel or a sewer, to the stairs, which creaked beneath the combined weight of their many anxious feet, and plunging down the stairs single-file in an unnatural hush interrupted by the repeated amplified instructions in that harried deafening adult voice. Katya was quick as an eel—she was always quick, pushy, and cunning in such confused circumstances. She pushed forward to walk with a friend, the girls clutching at each other's chill hands in a thrill of panic—A bomb? Think it's a bomb?—for always at such times you want something to happen and the fear is—what? This was not a routine fire drill; there was no clanging alarm, and adult faces were grim, strained. They don't know any more than we do came the realization, and it was not a realization to give comfort. In this season of public school disturbances across the country, there had been shootings, bomb threats, and bombs, and in Paramus, New Jersey, earlier in the month there'd been a bomb threat and an actual bomb discovered in a student locker, which had failed to detonate. And so the older guys were nerved-up, sniggering and nudging one another in the ribs, running their hands over girls who squirmed from them, slapped at them like Katya amid the downward plunge on the stairs, through the opened doors, and outside onto the pavement...

  Now they were outside, Katya and her classmates, being instructed, Move away from the school building, move away from the school building, do not reenter the school building, move into the parking lot, away from the school building and into the parking lot in an orderly fashion, but now they were running, pushing and colliding with one another, reassembling, breathless, exhilarated to see that Vineland volunteer firemen had arrived and were entering the school in bulky protective uniforms that gave them the exotic look of space travelers. There were Vineland police officers as well. There was Mr. Meer, the principal, speaking loudly, straining his voice to be heard over the din, ashen-faced and shaken as no one had ever seen him. Nothing is so frightening and nothing is so comical as adults in authority who are ashen-faced, visibly shaking. Teachers were speaking sharply, but no one was paying much attention now that they were outdoors. As soon as you are outdoors, as soon as the sky opens above you, the authority of adults shrinks. The authority of adults is revealed as puny, contemptible. It is possible to laugh at a man like Mr. Meer, who indoors, in the confinement of walls, ceiling, and floor, commands such authority, now forced to cup his hands to his mouth and shout to get attention. And not a tall man, it was revealed, not nearly so tall as the firemen in their exotic uniforms or the Vineland police officers. You may go home, Mr. Meer was telling them. Classes are canceled for the remainder of the day. Do not reenter the school building, but in an orderly fashion you may leave the school property...Was there a bomb threat? A bomb? It was being said that someone had called saying there was a bomb in the school wired to explode at noon. It was 11:48 A.M.

  Katya was running with the others, away from the school building. She'd left her backpack beneath her desk in Mrs. Wilnik's classroom. And in her locker she'd left her raincoat. Though it was no longer raining; the sky was clear and the sun shone weirdly hot and overbright, as in one of those dreams in which everything is overbright and charged with a mysterious meaning. Katya left her friends milling about sharing cigarettes by the dumpster behind the 7-Eleven store, where often after school they gathered. She ran six, seven blocks to the Cumberland County Medical Clinic, where her mother supervised the cafeteria. For two years her mother had been working for the clinic, and in all that time she'd remained sober. Thinking, Momma will be surprised to see me this time of day! Thinking, So she won't worry about me if she hears about the bomb. But the food workers in the cafeteria told her that Essie Spivak wasn't working there any longer. Katya said yes, yes she was working there! She was the supervisor. Except now came a man with a shiny bald head and face and a sour smile who identified himself as the cafeteria supervisor, with the news, astonishing to Katya, that Essie Spivak hadn't been working at the clinic since March. But where was she? Katya asked, frightened, and the man said, with that pleased sour smile, he had no idea, but she wasn't here. Katya could not believe this. Her mother had been working at the Cumberland clinic for at least two years; often she told Katya and Lisle she felt good about herself, this was a good time in her life right now. Usually Katya's mother came home from work at about 7 P.M., sometimes later, five days a week; weekends, she sometimes worked a half-day. Or so Katya had believed. Her mother had not told anyone in the family that she'd quit the clinic or been fired, Katya was sure. Unless it was known and Katya had been shielded from the news: but why? Katya asked the sour-smiling man why her mother wasn't working there any longer, and the sour-smiling man said, shrugging, "Ask her. She's your mother, isn't she?"

  Dazed and shaken, Katya ran home. Ran through the house shouting, "Mom! Momma! Where are you!" though knowing that no one was there. Tracey had married the previous winter and moved away, and Katya's brothers, Dewayne and Ralph, had moved out. Only Lisle, who was a junior at Vineland High, remained at home, but she was often gone. In the kitchen in the refrigerator Katya found a Molson ale. Two ales she drank from the cans within forty minutes, sprawled on the sofa staring at MTV, and then she dozed off. She woke confused and frightened: it was dark in the living room, dark outside; there were voices in the kitchen. Katya's mother had been driven home by her man friend Artie, who'd been introduced to Katya and Lisle as a coworker of Essie's at the Cumberland clinic. Now Katya had to wonder who Artie was. Stumbling to her feet as her mother switched on the overhead light: "There was a bomb threat at school, but it didn't go off. I mean, the bomb didn't go off. They sent us home early." Katya spoke strangely; words seemed to tumble from her mouth. Her lips felt numb, rubbery. She was laughing at the expression of alarm, concern on her mother's face: "A bomb? Jesus."

  Essie Spivak was in her early or mid-forties, and her skin was slightly coarse and her eyebrows too severely plucked, yet she was an attractive woman. She had dyed her graying hair dark cranberry red, which gave her an exotic, glamorous look. You'd expect her lipstick to be dark maroon, but it was a pale frosted pink-bronze that, thickly layered on her mouth, looked like an extra skin. She wore shoes with clattery heels and black designer jeans with glitter studs, a peach-colored designer blouse with a V neckline that exposed the tops of her creamy, shapely breasts. Her hips and belly were full, shapely. Her inch-long fingernails gleamed pink-bronze like her mouth and were filed with stylish blunt edges. She was smoking; she shifted her burning cigarette to her left hand and came to hug Katya with a sob of concern. "Jesus! Sweetie! A bomb! Thank God you're in one piece..." Stiffly Katya stood, feeling her mother's strong arms, her mother's breasts, which felt like balloons filled with warm water. It had been a long time since Katya's mother had hugged her. Katya's eyes filled with tears. These were involuntary tears; these were tears of outrage. Badly Katya wanted to push her mother away with her sharp elbows. Wanted to stab those balloon-breasts with her elbows. Yet badly Katya wanted to burrow into her mother's arms and cry, You are a liar, you don't love me or any of us. In the kitche
n, someone was opening and shutting the refrigerator door. Must've been Momma's man friend, Artie, which might mean that Artie would be staying for supper with them or it might mean that Katya's mother was going out again, with Artie. And Katya could go with them, maybe. Katya shut her eyes, which were leaking tears, thinking, Don't ask.

  15

  "AND YOU DIDN'T ask her? Where she'd been all that time she'd led you to believe she was at work?"

  "No. I never did."

  Her answer was unexpected. Her answer was perverse. Mr. Kidder regarded her with sympathetic eyes. He'd been listening to her so attentively, as Katya spoke in a flat, bemused voice, relating this story she'd never told anyone else, even her sister Lisle; she was in danger of bursting into tears. And she did not want to burst into tears, not here. Not in Mr. Kidder's studio, as Mr. Kidder was sketching her portrait. Yet when someone is kind to you, you are most vulnerable. And there was such shame here, such petty shame. Katya knew that a man like Marcus Kidder had to pity her. Katya Spivak from Vineland, New Jersey, who was a hired girl here in Bayhead Harbor, a nanny living with the rich Engelhardts. She said, "I didn't ask my mother because I knew that she would have slapped my face, for 'spying' on her. And then she would know that I knew, but I would never know the truth anyway, because she wouldn't have told me."

  It was Sunday afternoon, one of Katya's half-days off. She'd come to Mr. Kidder's studio to pose for him, at his request. And now Katya was crying, as she'd vowed not to. Hiding her warm flushed face in her hands. For she did not want Marcus Kidder, who believed that she was beautiful, to see that in fact she was ugly.

  "Why, Katya. Please don't cry, dear." Laying down his pastel chalks, quickly stepping from the easel to come to her where she sat in her stiff pose, now hiding her face from him. He said, "You may have been deceived by your mother, Katya, but I'm sure that she had her reasons for deceiving you. She didn't want to worry you, maybe. I'm sure that she cares for you very much. And please know that Marcus Kidder cares for you, too." It was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to Katya, and so gently uttered. It was not a statement that made a claim upon her, just a statement of fact. And Mr. Kidder embraced her, as you'd embrace a weeping child, to give comfort. And Katya held herself rigid at first, not wanting to be touched by the white-haired old man, for there was the faint fragrant smell of his cologne, and a drier smell of his skin, or his hair, that she did not like; a smell of his breath, a very slight smell, as of something dry and chalky, like the inside of a skull, which is desiccated and mere bone. Yet she was lightheaded, dazed, for no one had held her like this in a long time, no one had spoken so tenderly to her in a long time; and so Katya ceased resisting, slid her arms around Mr. Kidder, and hugged his lean body in return, hiding her warm weeping face in the crook of his neck.

  "Dear Katya! No one will hurt you again."

  16

  "EYES HERE, KATYA! Your beautiful eyes."

  It was early August. Following an overnight squall, the Jersey coast was littered with seaweed, sea kelp, rotting fish, and hundreds—thousands?—of jellyfish washed ashore half-alive, transparent tendrils quivering with venom. In Mr. Kidder's studio, Katya posed for the artist, seated in a straight-backed stool facing him at the easel a few feet away. It was then Mr. Kidder would tell her in the calmest, most matter-of-fact voice that he was a perfectionist in his art, if not in his life; he sought Katya's "perfect likeness," for it was a likeness he'd glimpsed many years ago, before he had seen Katya on Ocean Avenue.

  Katya laughed uneasily. Was Mr. Kidder joking? Or was Mr. Kidder serious? He'd seated her so that she faced a sliver of light that seemed to pierce her very brain. She couldn't see the expression on Mr. Kidder's face.

  Soul mates. At once you know. Born at the wrong times. One so old, the other so young...

  What would her Vineland friends think of this? Katya wondered. Wanting to laugh—how they'd have reacted. Some old guy hitting on Katya, disgusting old granddaddy, should be ashamed of himself.

  And then, maybe Katya loved him. Maybe.

  For Marcus Kidder was so kind to her! Giving her so much money and never even asking if her mother had called her to thank her. (No. Essie Spivak had not called. Hadn't even acknowledged receiving the check, let alone expressed any curiosity about it. Their mother was "taking long weekends" in Atlantic City, Katya learned from her sister Lisle. At which casinos, and with whom: don't ask.)

  How distant Katya felt from her family. The Spivaks were scattered like sea creatures washed ashore in the wake of a terrible storm, dazed and quivering with life, and some of this was a stinging, venomous life but the only life they knew. Katya thought, I am not one of them! Not in Mr. Kidder's house.

  He would love her as her family could not, he seemed to promise. He would love her enough for two.

  "Damn! Goddamn."

  Sometimes he surprised her, losing his temper. While he was sketching Katya in pastel chalks, a sudden misstroke of the chalk and Mr. Kidder cursed, tore the paper in two, flung the chalk down so that it shattered on the floor.

  Katya cringed, hoping he wasn't angry at her. Accustomed to men, boys and men, turning mean suddenly, blaming who's nearby.

  "How elusive you are, Katya! A gossamer soul, like a butterfly's wings."

  These pastel sketches were preliminary to paintings, Mr. Kidder told her. It was his intention to paint a sequence of oil portraits of her that would be "autonomous" artworks he'd envisioned long ago, before he'd actually seen her on Ocean Avenue.

  "Before, even, you were born. I know this."

  Marcus Kidder spoke quietly, forcefully. As his deft fingers moved, wielding chalk.

  Skeptically, Katya asked how he knew this.

  "Because, Katya, when I saw you there with those children, it was as if I remembered you. Except you'd been dressed differently that other time. Your hair had been loose, curlier. But it was you, Katya. You recognized me, too."

  Katya tried to think: could this be so? A stranger, an older man with the most beautiful head of white hair, close beside her saying, And what would you choose, if you had your wish?

  Mr. Kidder smiled at her from behind the easel. "Think back, dear! We both felt that we'd already met, in another lifetime perhaps. Somewhere."

  Katya thought, No! never. This had to be a joke. Like Funny Bunny, who said such silly things, such far-fetched things, and expected you to believe them; and you had to love him, because he made you laugh.

  Katya objected: if Mr. Kidder was going to tear up the sketches of her, why couldn't she have them? No one had ever drawn her likeness before—it didn't have to be perfect ... But Mr. Kidder said, "No. When I achieve what I see, I will show you, and I will provide you with a copy. But it would pain me, Katya, for you to see anything less than perfection."

  These other girls you've drawn, were they perfect? Katya wanted to ask but knew that Mr. Kidder would be offended by so personal a question.

  And who was Naomi? And how did Naomi die?

  No one had ever asked Katya Spivak what she planned to do with her life, but Marcus Kidder asked.

  As Katya posed for him, so Katya spoke to him, shyly at first, for it seemed to her strange that Marcus Kidder should actually be interested in Katya Spivak's future; and then more openly, since he seemed sincere. So wonderfully sincere! Katya confided in the artist as she'd never confided in anyone: that she wanted to leave Vineland after high school, if she could; wanted to attend a good university, like Rutgers in New Brunswick, not the local community college. Mr. Kidder asked Katya what she'd like to study and Katya told him maybe psychology, linguistics—she'd seen a TV documentary about a team of psychologists who worked with chimpanzees, experimenting to determine if chimps could use language as human beings did. And more recently, since Funny Bunny, Katya was thinking she might study art and children's literature and become a children's book author/illustrator like Marcus Kidder...

  "Really! But not 'like Marcus Kidder,' dear—there was only one of him."

&n
bsp; Was this a rebuke? Was Mr. Kidder laughing at her? Yet next time Katya went to the studio, Mr. Kidder had a present for her: an artist's sketchpad and a box of colored pencils.

  "Begin by sketching what you see. And don't get discouraged."

  "Eyes here, Katya! That's my girl."

  By the end of the forty-minute session Katya felt lightheaded. Her brain was fatigued as if she'd been high on ecstasy, sleepless through a night. Eyes aching from the effort of keeping them open and widened in the childlike way Mr. Kidder insisted on. He is sucking my life from me, came the warning thought, but too fleeting for Katya to grasp.

  At the end of each session Mr. Kidder insisted upon walking Katya to the front gate. Speaking quietly to her as they made their way along the flagstone path in the semidark, his hand on her elbow gently guiding her, who needed no guiding, thanking her for her patience, and asking when she could come back again. At the front gate it was Mr. Kidder's custom to remove from his pocket, as if he'd only just thought of it, a clip of neatly folded bills, which he pressed into Katya's hand, provoking Katya to murmur, embarrassed, "Mr. Kidder, no—you don't have to pay me," though of course Katya expected to be paid, and was excited by the prospect of being paid; and Mr. Kidder laughed at her as you might laugh at a small child caught in a small lie. "Katya, of course I have to—you are precious to me, you know."

  Truly she was embarrassed. Taking money like this, from Marcus Kidder. She shut her fingers over the bills without seeming to see what they were, or to acknowledge them, and kept her fingers shut tight until she was several blocks from 17 Proxmire Street, when she opened her hand and counted the money.