Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

And despite the ruination brought about by the deer, Spencer had seemed happy enough this morning when he’d made the girls all those waffles. (She had been relieved to see that for all her daughter’s neuroses and burgeoning adolescent angst, it was highly unlikely the kid was ever going to have an eating disorder. She’d wolfed down three of her dad’s waffles before leaving for the club.) On the other hand, those waffles had annoyed her. The last thing her mother needed this morning was more commotion in the kitchen. Sara, of course, would probably remind her that her anger had nothing to do with the way Spencer’s cooking had added to the Saturday morning confusion; rather, her sister-in-law would speculate-gently-that perhaps she was jealous because the waffles had allowed Spencer to further endear himself to the girls. There she was trying to appease her mother and organize the children, while her husband was (uncharacteristically) the anarchist who was reaping the children’s approval.

She tossed the ball high over her head, and with the loudest, most atavistic grunt yet sent the orb in a clothesline-straight stripe into the far court. “UNNHH!”

No, she decided firmly, as the ball bounced against the chain-link fence in the corner, whatever pebble was wedged inside her soul right now had nothing at all to do with either those waffles or the deer in the garden. It was something else: her frustration with Spencer throughout the spring and summer, perhaps, or the way they hadn’t found time for each other while Charlotte had been here in the country. That’s what it was.

Maybe this afternoon they would have some time alone together to talk and she would tell him. Something’s wrong between us, she heard herself murmuring to the man in her head. We can’t go on as we are. They’d go for a long walk like they did when they were younger, when they were in college, and she would tell him, We’ve grown apart. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. We’ve grown apart. If not today, then maybe tomorrow. Maybe she’d tell him on Sunday.

Or, perhaps, the week after next. When they were home in Manhattan.

And maybe she needed to begin with something softer in any case: Something is troubling you. Something is troubling us. We need counseling. Counseling was a reasonable step, wasn’t it? They had almost seventeen years of marriage and a daughter who would turn thirteen in a month.

Maybe they’d simply married too young. Certainly everyone had said so at the time. They’d married a mere seven months after finishing college, convinced there was no reason to wait because they’d been dating since they were freshmen. And less than four years after that she’d gotten pregnant, and she had been thrilled because she loved children-it was why she became a teacher-and he was thrilled because he seemed to love everything. Monkeys. Cats. Babies.

But they never did have another child, did they? They talked about it. And they thought they would. They assumed they would, especially when they were planning their brief, failed foray into Connecticut. But that experiment had left them all miserable, and so they’d moved back to the city and, somehow, the idea of another child was left behind in the suburbs. The timing, they told themselves, just hadn’t been right.

Same with the dog that Charlotte had wanted. It just didn’t seem to make sense to get one-at least not to Spencer-once they returned to Manhattan. He worried that the apartment wasn’t big enough for the kind of dog their young daughter desired (one, naturally enough, like Grandmother’s), and, besides, they already had a pair of cats.

“You have one hell of a serve.”

She turned and wiped her brow. There on the grass stood a young man in sneakers and baggy khaki shorts-one of the lifeguards, she believed-with a tennis racket and a can of balls in his hand. Something was sparkling on his left earlobe, and she couldn’t tell from this distance whether it was a stud or a legitimate rock of some sort.

“It’s not what it was fifteen years ago,” she said.

“It looks mighty fine to me.” She had the sense that he was making a leap from her serve to… to her.

“Trust me: It isn’t what it once was. Nothing is.”

“Can I join you? I was looking for a game.”

She gazed at the nearly empty basket at her feet. She’d planned on heading back to the pool soon, and diving into the water and splashing around with her daughter and her niece. Moreover, if this young man was a lifeguard, then the old guard on the courts to her left-the conservative codgers who disapproved of her grunts-would be miffed that she was playing tennis with him on a Saturday morning. He was, in their opinion… the help.

That, of course, was reason enough to play with him in her mind. Not unlike her own daughter, she took great satisfaction from the torments she inflicted on the older generation. Besides, he was awfully cute.

“You don’t honestly think you can keep up with me, do you?” she asked, raising a single eyebrow.

He smiled. “I think I can try.”

There didn’t seem to be anybody else waiting, and so she nodded. “Okay. A couple games,” she agreed. “What’s your name?”

“Gary. Gary Winslow. My grandfather is-”

“Your grandfather is Kelsey Winslow, of course,” she said, and she understood instantly why this lifeguard was so comfortable wandering around the courts right now looking for a game. Gary was working here for the summer, yes, but he was also a member. His parents had died in the attack on the World Trade Center, when the two of them had had the misfortune of being on one of the early-morning planes out of Boston that were plunged into the towers like missiles. Gary’s father was an anesthesiologist and he was on his way to a symposium in San Francisco. Gary’s mother was accompanying him for no other reason than the fact that the conference was in northern California and she’d never been there. Ever since then Gary and his sister (whose name, at the moment, escaped Catherine) had been raised by Kelsey and Irene Winslow.

“And you’re Nan Seton’s daughter, right?” he said, vaguely mimicking the sudden recognition that had marked her own voice. “Charlotte McCullough’s mom?”

“I am.”

“Charlotte’s a terrific kid. Wants to be nineteen, but she’s a sweet girl. Good little swimmer, too. I keep a close eye on her, of course-on both her and her cousin. But I can assure you: She’s a real water rat.”

Catherine found herself nodding, and two unattractive thoughts simultaneously filled her head: The first was incredulity that anyone would ever refer to Charlotte McCullough as “a sweet girl”; the second was the realization that before she had understood that Gary was a Winslow-no, before she had understood that he was that orphan Winslow-she had seen him only as a cheeky young lifeguard with very nice arms, more hair than her husband, and an apparent interest in her despite the fact she was the mother of one of the girls he was watching that summer. He was, she guessed, not quite half her age. She was acting like Mrs. Robinson, for God’s sake! Usually the men with whom she flirted at least had finished college.

Still, he had been the one to approach her, hadn’t he? What the hell?

A sweet girl.

That orphan.

Mrs. Robinson.

Quickly she grabbed a ball, hurled it into the air, and then slammed it as hard as she could into the far court. The ball passed so close to the white ridge along the crest of the net that the plastic fluttered just the tiniest bit, and in her head she heard the echo of her grunt: Unnhh!

“Let’s go,” she said to Gary, and the young man smiled and jogged to the other side of the court.

YOU CAN’T SHOOT a buck out of season, and you can’t shoot a doe ever. Not in Vermont, not here.