A Fair Maiden (19 page)

Beyond this Katya didn't allow herself to think.

Beyond this her thoughts dissolved in remorse, regret.

For all of Bayhead Harbor was shocked by the news: the "home invasion" on Proxmire Street, the "attempted robbery," the "brutal, senseless beating" of the prominent Bayhead Harbor summer resident Marcus Kidder. In local newspapers, on local TV, repeatedly it was reported how Mr. Kidder, sixty-eight years old, living by himself in one of the "oldest oceanside" houses on "historic" Proxmire Street, seemed to have been "taken by surprise" in his home in the late evening; seemed to have struggled with his assailant or assailants before being "savagely" beaten and left bleeding and unconscious on the floor of his studio. By ambulance the injured man had been driven to the nearest intensive-care facility, at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia, fifty miles away; there, he had not yet regained consciousness and was listed "in critical condition." Katya dreaded hearing that Marcus Kidder had died. Yet Katya dreaded hearing that Marcus Kidder had regained consciousness. Numbly thinking,
He will give them my name. That is what I deserve.

In the Engelhardts' household, these dreamlike days, her head racked with pain and her eyes, behind dark-tinted glasses, brimming with moisture, Katya waited. For here was a throw of the dice, utterly out of her control.

"Kat-cha? Why're you sad? Kat-cha, don't cry." Anxiously Tricia Engelhardt snuggled into Katya's arms as Katya became distracted in the midst of reading to the little girl from one of her picture books. Katya wiped at her eyes and gave Tricia a quick kiss. "Kat-cha isn't sad or crying, Kat-cha is just thinking how she will miss you, and little Kevin, after Labor Day."

Tricia crinkled her nose and shook her head vigorously. No, no! It was bad to think of "after Labor Day," when Tricia would be starting preschool, back in Saddle River.

Katya had to wonder what, after Labor Day, would be Katya Spivak's life.

If Marcus Kidder died, Katya would be an accomplice to a murder.
Felony homicide,
it was.

Yet she could not go to police, she could not confess her part in the crime. She dared not provide police with Roy Mraz's name; she was terrified of what he might do to her, or to her family in Vineland.

A wildness came over her. Katya wanted to go to Mr. Kidder, to see him in his hospital bed. To beg forgiveness!

She did love him, she thought. Yet she had betrayed him.

Such remorse would be her secret. As over her bruised face Katya wore makeup for several days following Roy's attack. On the morning after the beating she'd wakened stiff and throbbing with pain, had had to drag herself from her bed in the nanny's quarters, where she'd fallen without removing her clothes, hurriedly showered and washed her hair and brushed her hair and arranged it to fall partly over her face to hide her swollen and discolored right eye. She wore dark-tinted glasses, and white cord slacks to hide her lacerated knees. Her hand shook as she applied flesh-colored makeup as thick as putty, which gave her an eerily composed, masklike look. Walking, she made an effort to resist wincing and limping. When sharp-eyed Mrs. Engelhardt saw and asked Katya what had happened, Katya said with an embarrassed laugh that she'd walked into the bathroom door in her room, in the dark—"It must have been a dream—I thought I was at home. But it doesn't hurt at all, really." So convincingly Katya spoke, Mrs. Engelhardt seemed to believe her, or to wish to believe her. "If you'd like to see a doctor, Katya, I can drive you," Mrs. Engelhardt said. "And I'll pay for it, dear. That's a nasty cut on your mouth."

Katya was deeply moved that Lorraine Engelhardt spoke so kindly to her. In these waning days of August, when Labor Day loomed near.

"You are sure, Katya, aren't you, that no one has hurt you? A boy, or a..." Mrs. Engelhardt's voice faltered; Katya had never seen the woman so distressed. Blood rushed into Katya's face as she realized,
She thinks I'm pregnant. She's anxious that the father might be her husband. That's my secret!

Katya assured Mrs. Engelhardt that there was nothing to reveal.

As in a fairy tale, endings can come abruptly. And unexpectedly.

For on the morning following this exchange, Katya heard on the Engelhardts' kitchen TV, as she was feeding stewed apricots to the baby in his highchair, that Marcus Kidder had not only regained consciousness the previous day in the Philadelphia hospital, after five days in a coma, but he'd been able to describe his assailants to Bayhead Harbor police: the men who'd broken into his home to beat and rob him had been two Caucasian males in their mid-twenties, strangers he was certain he had never seen before but believed he could identify if he ever saw them again.

Two Caucasian males. Strangers!

There was Marcus Kidder on TV in closeup, in film footage of some years ago, being honored at a local gathering. Through the roaring in her ears Katya could barely make out the newscaster's words. How youthful Mr. Kidder was looking, graciously shaking hands with a female librarian who was presenting him with a plaque of some kind; how tall he was, how dignified his posture, how beautiful his head of snowy white hair ... Katya stared, entranced, a spoonful of baby food in her hand, until the husky Engelhardt baby began to rock dangerously in his highchair and flail his little fists in hunger.

In this way Katya Spivak was given to know that Marcus Kidder had forgiven her.

28

I
T WAS TWO EVENINGS
before Katya's departure from Bayhead Harbor, the day before Labor Day, just twelve days following the assault on Marcus Kidder, that Mr. Kidder's driver came for her.

Katya was in Harbor Park with the Engelhardt children. Feeding geese for what would be the final time that summer.

How melancholy Katya was feeling. How heavy-hearted, on the eve of her departure. She would never see the Engelhardts again, she knew; her mother had warned her against becoming attached to strangers' children, and yet it had happened, Katya felt almost a kind of love for three-year-old Tricia, who had nearly learned to read under her tutelage, or at least to read certain of her picture books, and for Tricia's baby brother, who fussed and fretted less in his nanny's arms than he did in his mother's. For Katya knew that children inhabit a heightened present tense: they forget quickly. Within a day or two the baby would have utterly forgotten Katya Spivak, who'd fed, bathed, dressed, and cuddled him all summer; within a few weeks Tricia would have forgotten the girl who'd introduced her to Funny Bunny and his friends and had encouraged her to draw with colored pencils.

With her own colored pencils and sketchpad, Katya was trying to capture a poignant scene in the park: young children, geese with wide flapping wings and outstretched necks, the placid surface of the small lake nearby ... But there was too much commotion and noise; Katya couldn't concentrate. One after another of the sketches Katya tried were disappointing to her; she tore out the pages and crumpled them in her hand. Why had Mr. Kidder encouraged Katya Spivak to think that she had talent?
Without Mr. Kidder, I am nothing.

The most recent news was that Marcus Kidder had returned to Bayhead Harbor. He'd been discharged from the hospital into the care of a private nurse, unless the "private nurse" was only Mrs. Bee. For all Katya knew, Mrs. Bee was in fact a private nurse. Katya would never see Mr. Kidder again, and Katya would never see Roy Mraz again. (A few days after the beating, when she'd been waiting for Bayhead Harbor police to arrest her, Katya had called her sister Lisle to ask about Roy and been told that so far as Lisle knew, Roy Mraz had moved away from Vineland. He'd stopped work at Fritzie's garage, and no one seemed to know where he was, not even the young divorced woman with the two-year-old son whom Roy had been seeing for much of the summer.)

Katya was thinking these thoughts, which made her colored pencils falter against the stiff white paper, as if they'd lost all their magic, when there came to her, quietly from behind, Mr. Kidder's driver, Juan. "Miss, you must come with me. Mr. Kidder is awaiting you now."

Katya, astonished, turned to see the driver. For here the man stood in his dark chauffeur's uniform, white shirt and dark tie, dark visored cap, dark-tinted glasses. Politely he spoke, with the barest hint of a smile.

Katya stammered, "No! I can't. I have the children..."

And politely again Juan spoke, in his soft, lightly accented voice: "Mr. Kidder wishes to see you, miss. You will come with me now, please."

There was another nanny seated on a bench close by, a friendly young Hispanic woman who cared for the children of a neighbor of Mrs. Engelhardt, whom Katya had come to know from the park and the beach. Apologetically Katya asked the woman if she would do Katya a favor and take the Engelhardt children back with her to New Liberty Street, to Mrs. Engelhardt, and the young woman said, surprised, yes, of course she would.

Seeing how Juan stood a few feet away from Katya Spivak in his black chauffeur's uniform, waiting.

In this way Katya was taken back to
17
Proxmire Street.

On this warm, gusty day in late summer, in Bayhead Harbor.

Sand was blown along the roadway, against the tinted windows of the gleaming black Lincoln Town Car, stinging Katya's eyes and making them water though the windows were shut tight. The journey from Harbor Park to
17
Proxmire Street could not have taken more than five minutes, and yet it seemed much longer. Katya was having difficulty making out what passed before her eyes as in a film in which action has been speeded up, or slowed to the point of immobility. It seemed as if Juan was driving fast, for Katya had to clutch at the armrest beside her; she felt her head spin, as it had when she'd given in to Roy Mraz, to smoke crystal meth with him; she felt a dazed sense of detachment from her body, as when, as a young child, she'd sometimes awakened to such a sensation in her bed, opening her eyes, panicked, to see the ceiling spinning above her, and she was unable to move or to call for help. A terrible heart-straining effort was required to summon the strength to call for help—
Mommy! Daddy!
But it was rare that anyone heard.

As through our lives such sensations overcome us. Springing out of nowhere to threaten our souls with extinction but then, as abruptly as they've appeared, they disappear.

Or so we wish to think.

Katya was staring at the tall privet hedge that ran beside the street. Taller than she remembered, as Proxmire Street was wider and more desolate than she remembered, for the mansion-sized houses were barely visible from the street and were at a considerable distance from one another. Katya saw that the privet hedge was the boundary of something: beyond the hedge, you were forbidden entry. You were forbidden to trespass. Yet the gleaming black Lincoln Town Car with its powerful, near-silent engine turned into the driveway at
17
Proxmire Street and approached the house effortlessly, as if floating. And how large Mr. Kidder's house was, how stately and beautiful the old, weathered shingleboard and the slate roof and the several chimneys made of aged, softened brick that glowed warmly in the sun; for though the sky had darkened, as bulbous, rain-heavy cumulus clouds were being blown inland, passing close to the tops of the gigantic plane trees, yet there were bright patches of sunshine that moved swiftly across Katya's field of vision as if by design.

The flagstone path, the vivid green of the slightly overgrown grass, thistle weeds like spikes sprouting in the flowerbeds...

"Miss, come with me. Master has been expecting you." There was Mrs. Bee standing on the front stoop of the house in her white nylon uniform, tight-girdled, with a frowning smile and quivering jowls.

Shyly Katya approached Mr. Kidder's housekeeper. It was surprising to her that the older woman so firmly took her hand, for Katya had always thought that Mrs. Bee disliked her.

But where was Mrs. Bee taking her? Not to the rear of the house, to Mr. Kidder's studio, but—to the broad front staircase? Up the stairs? Katya protested weakly, "Mrs. Bee, I can't! I can't go upstairs. I've never gone upstairs in this house..."

Curtly Mrs. Bee said, "Your portrait has been completed, miss. Master is not painting today but will receive you in his quarters upstairs, as you'd agreed."

"Agreed? When did I ... agree?"

"Arrangements have been made. Prenuptial documents have been prepared. You will be protected, miss. Master has promised."

Mrs. Bee led Katya up the staircase and into a room with tall narrow windows overlooking the ocean, at a short distance. So blinding was the sunshine in this room that Katya could barely see the ocean, but she'd begun to hear the
slap-slap-slapping
of the surf that was a comforting sound. Briskly Mrs. Bee instructed Katya to remove her clothes—"You can't possibly present yourself to Master in such clothes"—and handed her a shawl in which to wrap herself. Weakly Katya tried to protest, but Mrs. Bee paid no heed, helping her pull off her T-shirt and unhooking her white cotton brassiere; deftly Mrs. Bee loosened Katya's hair and with a gold-backed brush began to brush it vigorously. Katya was mortified by being naked in Mrs. Bee's presence but took comfort in the fact that the shawl was large enough to wrap herself in completely; it appeared to be the identical white cashmere-and-silk shawl that Mr. Kidder had given her when she'd posed nude for him, which Katya had left carelessly behind. That exquisite shawl, which must have been so expensive!

"Come with me now, miss. Master will find you beautiful enough, I am sure."

It was like Mrs. Bee to frown even as she uttered these unexpectedly kind words. Katya blushed in surprise, and with gratitude. Thinking,
All along, Mrs. Bee hasn't hated me? Is this so?

The housekeeper's hand gripping Katya's was warm but firm.

So spacious and so beautifully furnished was the adjoining room that Katya knew it must be the master bedroom: walls papered in silken ivory with the most minute flecks of gold; a ceiling of elaborately carved white molding; large gilt-framed mirrors; a plush crimson carpet underfoot ... Against the far wall was an elegantly designed four-poster bed with a canopy of gold and white silk and a carved mahogany headboard like an altar-piece, and in this remarkable bed, which was also a kind of hospital bed to be cranked up like a divan, was Marcus Kidder, lying, or sitting propped up against luxuriant goosefeather pillows. "Katya! My darling! Come to me, dear. I have been waiting, you know." Mr. Kidder smiled wanly at Katya, lifting his arms to her. With a pang Katya saw that Mr. Kidder's skin was waxy-pale and that the injuries to his face—bruises, cuts, rashlike scrapes—had not entirely healed; in the crook of his right forearm you could see a butterfly bandage, indicating that he'd been given IV fluids recently; he appeared to be wearing a white hospital gown, of the kind that ties at the nape of the neck. Yet there was Marcus Kidder's beautiful snowy-white hair, looking as if it were utterly natural and not a wig; perhaps in fact this was Mr. Kidder's own hair, which had grown miraculously back in since Katya had last seen him. Mr. Kidder's eyes, which were set in shadowy sockets, were yet kindly and intense, and shone with a rapturous sort of hunger that made Katya's heart quicken. Wrapped in the feather-light shawl, barefoot on the crimson carpet, Katya went forward shyly. There was Mrs. Bee at the tall narrow windows, quietly drawing the blinds. Shadows darted from the corners of the room like swift strokes of a charcoal stick. Mrs. Bee was then lighting candles, several intricately designed candelabra fitted with tall cream-colored candles that burned with unusually high tapering flames that gave off a rich perfumed scent that made Katya's head spin.