A Fair Maiden Read Online Free PDF

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