Before You Know Kindness

by Chris Bohjalian

  She wandered to the edge of the lupine and thought of her family in New York City. She believed she was standing just about where Spencer had been when Charlotte had shot him, and she wrapped her cardigan more tightly around her chest. According to Catherine, he was doing about as well as could be expected, though Nan had been careful not to press for details: The last thing she wanted to know were the grisly particulars of either his injury or his treatment.

  She gazed at the clay soil and wondered if ever again it would grow more than lupine and weeds. She rather doubted they would have a vegetable garden here next summer. She presumed that Catherine and Spencer and Charlotte would return for their summer vacation, if only because this house was a part of Catherine's cultural legacy, her childhood. And--at least until he was shot--certainly Spencer had loved the place, too. But she guessed there would be no energetic descent on this house over Memorial Day Weekend, with the McCulloughs and the Setons arriving en masse with their trowels and their spades and their big green boxes of Miracle-Gro.

  The foreboding she had experienced the other day on her hike in the woods had since grown more pronounced. She was becoming more certain all the time that the next time everyone in that younger generation would be together here in the country would be at her funeral: a little ceremony amid the astilbe, the daisies, and the phlox, the mourners expressly forbidden from sharing their memories or singing any hymns. She understood that Spencer was still refusing to speak with John, and she wished she had the matriarchal clout of either her late mother or late mother-in-law. Forty years ago, young adults still listened to their mothers and mothers-in-law. Lord knows, she sure did. Neither of those strong-willed women from a more simple era would have tolerated this sort of nonsense: A raised eyebrow or spoken dagger from either of them, and Spencer and John would have been back at the Thanksgiving table together, their egos curbed and their tails between their legs. They might not have liked each other, but they would have tolerated each other. They would have been civil.

  And that was what counted. Civility.

  She sighed and stared at the mountains, their peaks hidden today by a heavy layer of leaden white clouds. She imagined it might be sleeting right now atop Lafayette, and perhaps the first snow was falling on Washington. She tried not to be morbid and was only rarely, but she couldn't push from her mind the vision of snow falling on a tombstone in the Sugar Hill cemetery. There was her name carved into the marble beside Richard's. She reminded herself that she still felt no pain, was enduring just a constant shortness of breath. Was weary. Constantly weary. Her heart? Perhaps. She guessed she would schedule an appointment with her doctor when she was back in Manhattan, but she had the fatalistic confidence that she was at the beginning of the end.

  Suddenly, at the edge of the woods at the base of the hill, the far perimeter of the sweeping tangles of old lupine, she sensed something move. At first she wasn't sure what she had seen because she'd barely glimpsed it from the corner of her eye. She lowered her gaze from the clouds shielding Lafayette and remained perfectly still. She squinted, wishing she had her eyeglasses looped around her neck as she usually did, and grew annoyed with herself for leaving them by the sink after washing her face before coming outside. Nevertheless, she could see that the animals were deer, even if she couldn't make out the details of their markings. There were three of them, none with antlers impressive enough that she could distinguish the branches this far away. One of the creatures, it was clear, was watching her, standing guard while the other two ate.

  "Go away!" she screamed unexpectedly, surprising herself. When she was alone she barely made a sound. She never spoke aloud--she certainly wasn't the sort who would talk to herself--but here she was . . . screaming.

  "Go away! Shoo!" She stamped her foot, though she knew it caused no tremor they could feel at this distance.

  Still, her voice was enough: Almost as one the animals bolted into the wall of pines, their white tails as prominent for one brief second as the flags on the greens at the Contour Club golf course. Then they were gone.

  She turned toward the house and started in, steaming. Hadn't they done enough? Really, hadn't they brought enough ruin on her family? She was fearful that she would never again see her two granddaughters together in the pool at the Contour Club or in the gloriously crisp waters of Echo Lake. She was afraid that she would never again witness John mixing gin and tonics at the end of the day for Sara and Catherine and Spencer or see the four grown-ups battling together on the tennis court. And while her son and her granddaughter certainly had their parts to play in this travesty--and, perhaps, even Spencer himself, with his dogged opinions about everything--the deer were far from blameless. They had the whole world in which they might browse, the miles and miles of forest that sloped slowly up into the White Mountains. Why in the name of heaven did they have to have her family's Swiss chard and kohlrabi, too?

  Oh, how she missed the summer, and those long and wondrous days in July when she had no greater challenges before her than getting Charlotte into a decent swimsuit or figuring out what she could serve her difficult eaters for dinner.

  Chapter Twenty-Four.

  "I want to do something special for Charlotte," Spencer said. "We completely ignored her birthday two and a half weeks ago." He was sitting in one of the ladder-back chairs in the kitchen that surrounded a round cherry table about the size of a manhole cover. Catherine was cubing a great block of tofu and putting the squares into a bowl with scallions, zucchini, and okra. Their daughter was rehearsing at Brearley.

  "We did not completely ignore it," Catherine said, hoping she didn't sound too defensive. They had only been back in the city a couple of days when Charlotte's birthday rolled around, and with Spencer's painful convalescence, the familial strife, and the chaos that greets any family when they return after an unexpectedly long time away--the towering mountains of mail, the canceled appointments that have to be rescheduled--the day itself had been downplayed. Besides, there was that small issue that the girl had nearly killed her father. Granted, it had been an accident. But it still seemed inappropriate to Catherine to make a major production of her birthday this year.

  Nevertheless, she had rounded up a few books and DVDs and found her a jazzy sweater and scarf. Last year the child had been elevated (emancipated, Catherine knew, in Charlotte's opinion) from the Brearley elementary school jumper to the middle school skirt--which allowed for some fashion autonomy and accessorization--and so she also had purchased a couple of blouses that matched the uniform garment. The family hadn't had a party. They hadn't even had a cake. But she had managed to wrap the presents and offer them to Charlotte over eclairs she'd picked up at their favorite bakery on Columbus. And so while they hadn't done anything particularly special, neither had they (as Spencer put it) ignored their daughter's birthday.

  "You know what I mean," Spencer said. "We didn't do as much as we usually do."

  "Fair enough. What did you have in mind?"

  "Well, I guess that's the problem. I can't decide what we should do. I called Ticketmaster, and there's nothing available for any of the shows she wants to see until the end of November. So I think the theater is out--at least if we want to do something soon. What else do you think she might like?"

  "Were you thinking with just the two of us or with her friends, too?" she murmured. She was so focused on making dinner that she answered a question with a question to stall for time: This way she could redirect her thoughts for the moment on what their daughter might enjoy. She wasn't sure she had ever come across a vegetable as slimy as okra. It was leaving an oily residue on her fingertips that reminded her a bit of beef jerky.

  "Either, I guess," he said. "Tell me: If she could have one thing in the world right now, what do you think it would be?"

  "Breasts."

  "I'm serious."

  "I am, too. She wants to be older than she is. Actually--" She put the knife down and turned toward him, the scraggly start of his beard once more nonplussing her. "A
ctually, that's not quite true. She wants to be small and young-looking until the school play is behind her so she's a convincing Mary Lennox. Then, between the final performance and the cast party, she wants to mature completely into a well-endowed Brearley senior. That is what our no-longer-little girl wants." She was reminded of the arguments she and Charlotte had had when the child had been in the third grade and had started to demand that she be allowed to have her ears pierced. Somehow she and Spencer had managed to hold firm against her increasingly desperate entreaties until the day before she started fifth grade. They might have caved in even sooner that summer, but Charlotte had been in New Hampshire with her grandmother and Willow for two weeks, which had given them a much needed respite from her pleas and her howls.

  "Do you think she wants a party?" he continued.

  "You mean something here in the apartment?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "She hasn't wanted something like that since . . . since Connecticut."

  "She had that sleepover here three years ago. That was a real hit."

  She barely remembered that night, because she always associated those weeks with her daughter's newly pierced ears. When she recalled it now she realized that it had been a pretty terrific evening: Charlotte had had three of her best friends spend the night, and they had watched movies until two or two thirty in the morning, and then all four girls had brought their sleeping bags into her and Spencer's bedroom because . . . because Spencer had actually been out of town the night of the party. Yes, he'd been around the night of Charlotte's actual birthday, but the evening when she had her sleepover he'd been at a conference in San Diego. Catherine knew she had been furious with him before he had left and then self-righteous when he'd returned, because the party had been a ripping success. Two of Charlotte's friends had piled onto her and Spencer's bed with her, and Charlotte and another girl had curled up in their sleeping bags on the plush carpet between the bed and the walk-in closet. They'd had waffles for breakfast, and she had made them with real milk and butter she'd bought the moment Spencer had left for the airport, for no other reason than the fact he was leaving again and she was mad.

  She kept her voice even now, almost light, but she felt she had to remind Spencer of the small detail that he had been on the other side of the continent the night of that sleepover party. "You're right, it was a hit. I'm glad you heard such good things about it when you got home."

  "Oh, we're not going to kick that old dog, are we?"

  "No," she said, and she was indeed resolved to let the issue disappear. She'd made her point. But the memory alone had made her testy. Or maybe it was the contents of the bowl before her that suddenly she found annoying: the zucchini and tofu and okra. She would douse the blocks of tofu with enough soy sauce and sesame oil to make them tolerable, but it would take more than Chinese seasonings to make zucchini edible. She loathed zucchini and was only putting it in the stir-fry because Spencer liked it.

  "So, what do you think? A sleepover, but maybe this time we go to someplace like Planet Hollywood first?"

  "Spencer, they have nothing vegan on the menu, remember? Or almost nothing: I think you had a salad the time we went there, and you left seething."

  "I did, didn't I? I'd forgotten."

  "Yes, you did. It just wouldn't be much fun for either you or Charlotte, because there isn't enough on the menu. Besides, I think she's outgrowing places like that."

  "You think so? She's only thirteen, you know. Barely."

  Only thirteen. She shuddered. She knew what thirteen-year-old girls were capable of. "My sense is you either have to be eight so you can appreciate the pop rock and the video screens or twenty-one so you can get hammered in the bar," she said. "In between, the place is hell."

  She turned back to the wok on the stove and tossed in a capful of oil. She had no intention of lighting the burner until her daughter had returned, but she was about to set the table and she wanted everything ready in the kitchen. She took a breath, and suddenly something in the zucchini--its seeds, its translucence, its profound and impertinent greenness--caused her whole body to tense.

  "Do you think anyone else in this whole apartment building is eating tofu and okra and zucchini tonight?" she asked, pouring brown rice into a measuring cup. She was careful to focus on the lines on the glass so she didn't have to look either at him or the small torpedo-shaped grains. The truth was she preferred white rice to brown. She didn't know anyone other than Spencer and his FERAL friends who actually liked brown rice.

  "Excuse me?"

  "All this vegetable nonsense. Do you really think anyone in this whole big building is eating what we are tonight?"

  She heard him rustling uncomfortably in his chair. "I guess. I believe the Youngs are vegetarians. And the Rosners. I mean the Rosners have never served meat when we've been to their apartment for dinner parties. And I can't believe they'd deny their other guests salmon or steak just because I'm present."

  "I can."

  "Really?"

  She grabbed a handful of silver from the drawer by the sink and then three place mats from the cabinet above it. "Absolutely. Sometimes it's just easier to go along with your . . . your beliefs . . . than to listen to your lectures." She inhaled deeply through her nose, unsure why she was taking a perfectly innocuous conversation about what they should do for their daughter's belated birthday and twisting it into something angry--especially since Spencer seemed to have no stomach at the moment for a fight. She didn't cry often, but she felt the desire to howl now.

  "I don't think they're secret meat eaters," he said softly. "I guess it's possible, but the idea of someone hiding meat--"

  "I hide meat!"

  "What?"

  Her eyes were starting to tingle and so she dropped the place mats and the silver on the counter and dabbed at them with her middle fingers. Then she repeated herself: "I hide meat. I have a couple of Slim Jims in my purse right now and a couple more in a shoe box in my closet--the box with my dress heels. Why do you think I scarf down Altoids the way you scarf down Percocet? So you can't smell the meat on my breath!"

  "I didn't know," he said, and he didn't sound angry and he didn't sound hurt. He didn't even sound betrayed. He seemed merely surprised, and this was too much for her since she'd expected something like rage.

  "No, of course you didn't know, because it was just easier to eat my cheeseburgers where no one could see me, or my bologna, or my Slim Jims. It was just easier! But you know what? I'm tired of sneaking around, I'm tired of trying to accommodate you and your vegan pals. I'm tired of this whole vegan nonsense, and that includes eating tofu and zucchini, or sneaking Slim Jims like I'm some closet binge drinker. I'm tired of watching you humiliate my brother and embarrass our daughter by making a public exhibition of your lawsuit! I'm tired of . . . I'm just tired of everything!"

  She stared at him, at the small, scruffy tufts of beard, and at the defenseless alarm on his face. At his wounded arm in its sling. At his limp, forever useless fingers. For a long moment neither of them said a word, and the only sound was the traffic outside the window.

  "How long have you felt this way?" he asked finally.

  "For years," she said.

  "Always, huh?"

  She nodded. "You know what I wish?"

  "No."

  "I wish years ago someone had told you to see a shrink so you could just get over your lobster fixation. Just talked out your . . . your guilt or your whatever, so you could have gotten on with your life instead of becoming this fanatic."

  He seemed to consider this for a moment. Then: "In the hospital--in New Hampshire--I had a similar thought."

  "Really?"

  "Uh-huh. When I was having those dreams about lobsters. Those nightmares. And I wondered if I was starting to lose it."

  "What did you decide?"

  "Well, I will see someone. A therapist. Paige needs me to see someone for the lawsuit. But my sense is that it wouldn't have changed anything if I went to one ten or fifteen years ago.
If it hadn't been the lobsters, you know, it probably would have been something else. I still would have given up meat."

  "But maybe you wouldn't have been so extreme."

  He surprised her. "Maybe," he agreed.

  She heard their front door opening, the hinges groaning with the precise whine she knew well from their years in the apartment, and then the jingle of keys on a FERAL fob--that hand grenade-shaped logo with all the animals on it--and she realized that Charlotte was home. She wasn't sure whether she was relieved or disappointed by her daughter's return: Had she been a few minutes later, who knew where her series of confessions might have progressed. She doubted she would have revealed that as recently as hours before the accident she believed their marriage was in such desperately sad shape that she was wondering seriously if it was winding down. But she hadn't planned to tell him about the Slim Jims, either, so who could say what she might really have said? Perhaps, she thought, she might have dropped a bombshell that big.