A Fair Maiden (14 page)

Katya said yes, if Mrs. Engelhardt could use her. If there was room for her on the yacht. Katya spoke humbly, as one requesting a special favor, even though she understood—and her employer understood—that her presence on the yacht trip with visiting friends of the Engelhardts who'd brought along two small children would be invaluable.

Yet canny Lorraine Engelhardt didn't say,
Katya! You're a lifesaver
but, with a measured smile, "We can't pay you for overtime, though. Just regular time. If you understand that."

Eagerly Katya nodded. She understood!

And so Katya accompanied the Engelhardts and their friends on a windblown excursion south along the Jersey coast to Cape May, where they visited relatives; and Katya was enormously helpful, taking care of the restless children and the adults both, serving drinks, mopping up spills, in every way the sweet-smiling hired girl who knew her place; and the Engelhardts were grateful for her presence and seemed to like her again, as they'd seemed to like her before Marcus Kidder. For Katya wanted to be liked, there was this weakness in her: desperately she wanted to be liked, even by people she resented. For these were rich people, the Engelhardts and their flashy friends, and you never knew, as Essie Spivak said, when a person with money might spend some on you.

Katya's mother meant men. That was the attraction of Atlantic City. A taste for gambling meant gambling of all kinds.

But no. It was foolish of Katya to imagine that the Engelhardts from Saddle River would do anything for her. What a futile wish!

Katya knew that she was expendable to these people. They were consumers, users—they used people up and discarded them. No matter if Tricia adored her nanny; Katya Spivak was just a girl hired for the summer who wouldn't be rehired next year. For Mrs. Engelhardt had hired Katya only because other girls had turned her down, girls who'd wanted to be paid more than the minimum wage.

Girls who knew that Lorraine Engelhardt was a mean-spirited woman, and cheap. (The sheets on the nanny's bed and the towels in the nanny's lavatory were frayed and thin from numerous launderings. Even the light-bulb wattage in the nanny's quarters was low.) And Max Engelhardt after a few drinks had a way of looking at you with a slovenly, damp smile, his eyes crawling over you like ants.
Could give you a good time, baby. You know that, eh!

Max Engelhardt steering the noisy Chris-Craft bouncing and bucking through the choppy waves off the Jersey shore, and Katya had to take him his drink in a plastic cup and stand beside him listening to him talk boastfully as a chilly wind whipped at her hair and made her eyes water, and in her loneliness Katya was thinking of Marcus Kidder prying open her fingers, pressing bills into her hand (for he would always pay her, he had promised); Marcus Kidder saying he adored her and would "ennoble" her; painting her portrait, which would be seen and admired by strangers; kissing Katya's mouth so warmly, gently, as Katya had never been kissed before, and how strange and wonderful it was, how she'd begun kissing Marcus Kidder in return, and had lifted her arms to embrace him.

On the floor of the yacht at her feet Katya later discovered a pair of dice that had fallen out of a board game called Casino. Katya shook the dice in her hand, thinking,
If it comes up six or more, I will see Mr. Kidder again. If not, I will not.

Tossing the dice, and up came nine.

23

"W
HY, KATYA
! You've come."

It had been arranged: Mr. Kidder's driver would pick Katya up a half-block from the Engelhardts' house, to take her in the long black Lincoln Town Car to the rear of the beautiful old shingleboard house at
17
Proxmire Street. And at the rear of the house, beneath a shadowy wisteria arbor, there stood Marcus Kidder, leaning on his cane, awaiting her.

It was late, past
11 P.M.
Finally the Engelhardts' house had darkened; and at
17
Proxmire, Mr. Kidder's house, seen from the street, appeared to be darkened.

Nervously Katya greeted her elderly friend. Her elderly lover, she had to think of him. Though in the half-light, smiling so warmly at her, and so very tall and straight-backed, Mr. Kidder could have been mistaken for a much younger man.

They greeted each other by clasping hands. Mr. Kidder brushed his lips against Katya's cheek and embraced her, causing Katya to stagger off-balance, nervously laughing, resisting the instinct to lift her elbows against him. She smelled a familiar sweetly sour odor on his breath.
He's been drinking,
Katya thought.
He's afraid of me.

"Dear girl! I am so happy to see you..." Mr. Kidder began kissing Katya's hands in an exaggerated way, making wet smacking noises as you might with a child, to make the child shiver and laugh. For always Marcus Kidder had to exert control by such clownish behavior. Katya hoped that his driver, Juan, parking the limousine inside the garage, hadn't noticed.

His arm around Katya's shoulders, Mr. Kidder led Katya into the house. Through a dark maze of a garden where rose thorns pricked her, to the flagstone terrace at the rear of the house, where only a solitary outdoor light was burning, and into Mr. Kidder's studio, with its comforting smell of paints. Katya was startled to feel how familiar this room had come to seem to her, a kind of refuge, a secret place which no one except Mr. Kidder and Katya Spivak knew of. It did not cross her mind to wonder if the other girls and women whose portraits were hanging in shadow, on the wall, had come to feel the same way, in their separate times.

"Welcome back! I haven't been able to paint—I've hardly been able to sleep—since ... last week." Another time Marcus Kidder brushed his warm, dry lips against the side of Katya's face, in a restrained and unthreatening manner. The thought came to Katya,
This man loves me! In this room it happened.

There was magic in this revelation. Katya felt her throat constrict with the need to cry.

Mr. Kidder hadn't turned on the bright studio lights but only smaller lights, from table lamps. Above the fireplace mantel was a mirror reflecting the young blond girl and the older white-haired man as if through a scrim, with no sharp edges. On the mantel a jewel-like old-fashioned clock that Katya hadn't seen before was ticking with comforting authority, flanked by vases of fossil flowers, which gleamed and glittered like winking eyes. And in the background, a fluid dreamlike music of exquisite beauty, like water rippling gently over stones.

Briskly Mr. Kidder rubbed his hands together. In a deadpan voice, he informed Katya that "ever-busy Mrs. Bee" had gone away for several days, leaving him quite alone: "Unless Mrs. Bee is horribly trapped in an attic room of this vast old house, buzzing and hurtling herself against an unyielding pane of glass."

This was funny! Katya had to laugh at the spectacle of Mrs. Bee reduced to bee size, buzzing and hurtling herself against an attic window.

"A drink, Katya? Must have a drink, to celebrate the prodigal model's return."

As if Katya had stayed away a very long time, instead of less than a week.

It had been five days. To one who loves, a lifetime.

It was clear: Mr. Kidder seemed edgier, more excited than usual. His fingers trembled just slightly as he poured wine into two long-stemmed glasses: a nearly full glass for himself, and for Katya a precisely measured one third dark red wine mixed with two thirds sparkling water from a tall green bottle with a French label.

"I can drink wine straight, Mr. Kidder," Katya objected. "I'm not ten years old."

"Indeed you are not, dear Katya. You'd quite prepared me, when first we met, by declaring that you had 'bad habits'—of which in the intervening weeks we have seen little, to my disappointment. Yet for all your charming 'bad habits,' you remain but a minor in the vigilant state of New Jersey."

Nonetheless, Mr. Kidder raised his glass in a toast—"To the 'perfect likeness,' and to her pursuer"—clicked his glass against Katya's glass, and drank. And Katya drank.

What a dark, feral taste this wine had, a surprise to Katya, who'd expected something like the sugary-sweet local wine she'd been given at parties. Even diluted with sparkling water, this drink made her mouth pucker.

Gently Mr. Kidder chided, "Wine is to be sipped, Katya. Not drunk. If you're thirsty, dear, now or while you're posing for your portrait, please drink sparkling water."

So there was to be another modeling session, that night. Katya had assumed this would be so. But not in the ridiculous red silk lingerie tonight!

Since she'd seen him waiting for her beneath the wisteria arbor, like a gentleman lover in an old storybook illustration, Katya had felt a thrill of warmth for Marcus Kidder; such strong affection, maybe she did love him. Yet her Spivak soul stood detached, calculating,
If he paid me one hundred dollars last time, he will pay me more this time...

He'd have found the torn, mangled, wadded red silk lingerie on the floor of the bathroom where Katya had kicked it. He'd have known how Katya had hated posing in such a costume, how she'd abased herself only for him.

"Mr. Kidder—"

"Marcus, please call me. Mr. Kidder is—was—my elderly father, a businessman of such limited imagination and verve, he scarcely deserves
you.
"

"M-Marcus." Katya spoke uncertainly, feeling suddenly shy.

"Mar-cus. Best pronounced as a spondee, dear."

Katya had no idea what a spondee was.
Mar-cus:
equal stress on both syllables.

"The music you are hearing, Katya—it's the music of Ravel, transcribed for harp. Do you like it?"

"It's beautiful, Mr. Kidder." Politely Katya spoke, and then amended: "Mar-cus."

"It is indeed beautiful. It is specially chosen for tonight. You might study harp, you know, Katya—and let your hair grow long, glimmering and wavy down your back."

There was a strange excitement between them. A kind of electrical tension, as in the air before a storm. Katya wondered if Mr. Kidder had not expected her to return to him, and if this might be turned to her advantage.

"Will you sit down, Katya? I assume that you've been working much of this day, for Mrs. Mayfly and the children. And what a good little nanny you've been, like Cinderella—who never complained either, though her wicked employer made her sleep in the ashes."

Katya sat, on the sofa. Mr. Kidder sat close beside her, but not unnervingly close. You could see that he was trying not to upset his young-girl visitor; he was determined to remain a gentleman, that she might come to him. Katya had many times imagined that as soon as they were alone together, Mr. Kidder would kiss her, as he'd kissed her five days ago; yet he'd only just brushed his lips against her face, and now just touched the back of her hand as he spoke, and lightly stroked her wrist. His breathing was quickened, urgent. Katya could see that he'd prepared for this evening: his long, lean, clean-shaven jaws seemed to glow, and gave off a sharp wintergreen scent; his very white hair was neatly combed, and seemed to spring back from his forehead with vigor. How bright, alert, and intelligent the vivid blue eyes, and how warmly flushed his skin! In the lamplight Katya could barely discern the network of lines in his face, furrows in his high forehead and strange vertical lines in his cheeks, like rivulets of tears, which imparted an air of sculpted dignity. Mr. Kidder was wearing summer trousers with a sharp crease and a cream-colored dress shirt left unbuttoned at the throat to display a swirl of glinting hairs. In an impassioned voice he was saying, "I've been concerned that I might have lost you, Katya. That I'd said—and done—unforgivable things, and you would not want to see me again. After I'd declared myself so frankly to you—when your lovely portrait is at last emerging out of the chaos of empty canvas..."

Katya felt the impulse to laugh wildly. Such extravagant things Marcus Kidder said to her! Yet she was deeply moved, too, and wanted to assure Mr. Kidder that yes, she'd returned to him, and would model for him again.

Katya sipped her drink. The wine taste seemed to be improving. A fizzing sensation rose into her nostrils, making her want to sneeze.

"This feeling between us, Katya, which sprang into life that morning on Ocean Avenue, and which I'm trying to capture in art—you do feel it, dear, don't you? That we are soul mates, born at awkward times?"

Katya bit her lower lip, murmuring what sounded like "I guess."

"You do mean it, Katya? You're not just saying this to humor me?"

Humor? Katya wasn't sure what this meant. Unless Mr. Kidder was asking if she was lying to placate him. As girls and women do, to placate men.

"Though surely I can love enough for both of us, dear. If you will let me."

They sat stricken in silence. Mr. Kidder was stroking the back of Katya's hand, but he did not otherwise touch her. If he had, if he'd embraced her, Katya was thinking weakly that she could not pull away from him; she would lay her head against his shoulder, press her face against his neck ... She could not resist Marcus Kidder in this moment, for there was no one in all of the world who so valued Katya Spivak as Marcus Kidder did. She thought,
He would forgive me anything, he loves me so.

Impulsively then Katya said, "You never told me who Naomi was, Mr. Kidder." In her flat Jersey voice quickly amending, "Mar-cus."

"Naomi was a very sweet girl of long ago, dear. A lesser Katya—an unrealized and incomplete Katya."

"Was she related to you? Was she ... your daughter?"

"No. She was not."

Though Mr. Kidder had stiffened in displeasure and had ceased stroking Katya's hand, Katya persisted. "Who was she, then? Did you love her?"

"I advise you to forget about Naomi, dear. There are some very minor riddles never to be solved."

"But this Naomi was born closer to the time you were born, Mr. Kidder, than I was, wasn't she? 'Nineteen thirty-nine to nineteen fifty-six.'"

Mr. Kidder stared at Katya, astonished. "But—how do you know that?"