A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page A

"Of course I remember dear Tricia. And you are Tricia's nanny, and you are obviously the creator of this card for Marcus Cullen Kidder, which he will prize forever."
    Now Katya understood that Mr. Kidder was joking: the wistful old-man yearning, the maudlin words, were meant to be funny.
    Katya laughed, to indicate she got the joke. "Oh, sure. "
    She drew her fingertips along the piano keyboard, provoking a blurred discordant sound. Above the keyboard was the name Rameau in gilt letters. "Wish I could play piano. I'd have liked that," she said, in a glib, flat voice that suggested insincerity, though in fact she was sincere, or meant to be at that moment. And Mr. Kidder said, almost too eagerly, "But it isn't too late, Katya, surely..." Among Katya's many relatives scattered through south Jersey she could think of no one at all musical except one or two boy cousins who played, or tried to play, amplified guitar.
    Katya examined music books stacked on Mr. Kidder's piano, most of them looking well-worn: Collected Piano Pieces of Ravel, Chopin: Ballads, Schubert: Lieder, Collected Piano Music of George Gershwin, Spellbound Concerto by Miklós Róozsa, In the Still of the Night: Love Songs of Cole Porter, Harold Arlen: A Treasure ... Against the music stand were sheets of paper which Mr. Kidder had been annotating, in pencil. "Mr. Kidder, are you writing music?—your own music?" Katya asked, intrigued. "Composing music?" In her nasal Jersey accent the question sounded faintly jeering.
    Stiffly Mr. Kidder said no. He was not.
    He took the annotated sheets from the piano, stacked them together, and laid them on a shelf. He seemed offended, embarrassed. Katya could not see how she'd insulted him. With girlish naivete, she said, "Play something for me, Mr. Kidder? Like what you were playing just now?"
    "I told you no, Katya."
    No, Katya. She felt rebuked as a child.
    A flush had come into Mr. Kidder's face, a flush of annoyance. His eyes were not so tender now. So quickly an adult can turn—an adult man especially. Katya knew; Katya had had certain experiences. You can be on easy terms with such a man, you can see that he likes you, then by mistake you say the wrong word or make the wrong assumption and something shuts down in his face. Like an iron grating over a pawnshop window on a rundown street in Atlantic City. That abrupt.
    Mr. Kidder relented. "In fact, I've been trying to compose lieder, Katya. But my efforts aren't yet worthy of being heard by anyone, including you."
    Katya smiled, perplexed. Lieder?
    "It's German—songs. Usually love songs."
    Love songs! Katya smiled foolishly and could not think of a reply. Mr. Kidder was asking what sort of music she liked, and Katya tried to think: Radiohead? Guns N' Roses? Nine Inch Nails? Pearl Jam? Nirvana? Evasively she said, "Nothing special, Mr. Kidder. Nothing you'd like, I guess."
    Katya turned her attention to the many framed photographs on the grass green walls, which she'd assumed might depict members of Mr. Kidder's family: except these were glossy glamour photos of women who looked as if they were in show business, heavily made up, hair styled in the exaggerated fashions of long-ago times. Katya saw that each of the photos was inscribed To Marcus Kidder with love: from Carol Channing, Sandy Duncan, Bernadette Peters, Angela Lansbury, Lauren Bacall, Tammy Grimes. Katya asked if these glamorous women were friends of Mr. Kidder's and Mr. Kidder said, "No, dear. No longer."
    A pertly pretty red-haired woman smiled at the viewer over her bare shoulder above the gaily scrawled inscription For dearest Marcus with much much love & kisses, Gwen April 1957 .
    "That's Gwen Verdon," Mr. Kidder said. "She was the toast of Broadway in the 1950 s and beyond, but you have not heard of her, Katya, I'm sure."
    Katya mumbled an inaudible reply. So remote in time, April 1957 ; it made her feel lightheaded.
    Mr. Kidder said, "For a while I was a Broadway investor. I'd studied at Juilliard,