Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

Nan Seton wanted desperately to glance at her watch, but she knew if she did this nice but dull Martin and Cecilia Dallmally from Scotland would presume she was either tired or bored (or both). Still, like an itch the desire to know whether it was nine or nine fifteen was growing insufferable. Finally, just when she thought she was going to have to pull back the straw-colored linen on her wrist to look at her watch and make some pretext to leave, she felt a small breeze on her neck. When she turned toward the terrace door, she saw Charlotte and Willow approaching. For a brief second they looked a tad unsteady on their feet-Charlotte seemed to be touching every table and chair within arm’s reach as she navigated her way through the crowded clubhouse-but Nan couldn’t imagine why that would be and decided her eyes had played a small trick on her.

“Oh, look,” she said to the Dallmallys, “there are my granddaughters now. Will you excuse me?”

“They’re adorable! You’ll have to introduce us,” Cecilia cooed.

“Oh, sometime, certainly,” she murmured, pulling away from the couple like a sailboat that has at last snared the wind. She put a hand on each of her granddaughters’ shoulders and was pleasantly surprised to find the girls smiling up at her.

“I’ll bet you want us to meet some more people, don’t you, Grandmother?” Charlotte said, her words giddy and playful. Given the rare and uncharacteristic good cheer that filled the child’s voice, her eyes were not as wide as Nan would have expected. But she was so pleased to see Charlotte in such fine spirits that she didn’t think anything of it, and she concluded that if she weren’t already so anxious to get home she actually might have chosen this moment to show off her granddaughters some more.

“I always want you to meet people,” she answered. “And you were both so charming earlier. But we’re through for tonight. It’s late.”

“It sure is,” Willow agreed, nodding, and then she giggled as if she found something funny in the fact it was after nine.

“Let’s find your parents-”

“There’s Mom,” Willow said, the words a chipper little cry, and she pointed at Sara as her mother was lifting Patrick from his canvas chair, the baby’s head swaying on his shoulders as if it were a poorly attached pumpkin on a scarecrow. John was beside her, gathering into his arms the diaper bag with its bottles and lotions and wipes.

Nan nodded and felt a surge of relief at the idea that-almost miraculously-everybody was preparing to go home at exactly the same moment, and that moment was now: Her granddaughters had returned as happy as could be from the bonfire, and her daughter-in-law and her son were collecting little Patrick and his accessories. Any minute now she would spy Catherine and Spencer, and they all would be off.

“I don’t see my mom,” Charlotte said, craning her neck.

“I saw her a few minutes ago,” Nan said. “She was talking to Gary Winslow.”

“Where was Dad?”

“He’s around, too.”

“Was he talking to Gary?”

“I don’t recall who he was talking to, Charlotte. Now, do you have your shoes? Where are your shoes?” She had happened to look down and saw that Charlotte’s feet were bare.

“Oh, yeah. My sneak-sneaks.”

“Your what?”

“My-oh, don’t worry, Grandmother, I know right where they are,” she said, and suddenly she and Willow were almost doubled over in laughter.

“Well, I don’t see what’s funny about misplacing your sneakers. Go get them so we can go home. Shoo, now!”

“They’re… they’re…”

“They’re down by the golf course, I suppose? At the bonfire?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay. Willow, why don’t you go help your parents with Patrick? Tell them Charlotte and I are just getting her sneakers.”

“But call them sneak-sneaks!” Charlotte called after her cousin, and once again the children succumbed to a burst of hilarity at the word.

She took Charlotte’s hand and led the girl through the crowd. Her granddaughter was unusually pliant, and Nan attributed this to the lateness of the hour and the idea that the child had apparently had a nice time with the teenagers. The older children had not let her down: They’d taken good care of her granddaughters.

There were people on the terrace and the soft grass surrounding the practice green, and the tiki torches were sending small plumes of jet black smoke into the sky. Here she could hear the music from the clubroom, something slightly jazzy, as well as the rock music from the bonfire down the hill. As she and Charlotte approached the teenagers she thought she smelled something sweet and herbal and unfamiliar, and she wondered if the teenagers had thrown pinecones or cloves into the blaze to give it this scent.

“They’re over by those cartons,” Charlotte said, as they stood in the shadows at a short distance. “I see them.”

“Are those beer cartons?”

“Oh, no! Soda. They’re the soda cartons.”

She nodded, though she didn’t believe for a minute those cartons had ever held anything but beer. Still, she wasn’t upset: Certainly John and Catherine had snuck a few surreptitious beers when they had been teenagers, and there were worse places for these teens to drink a beer or two than a bonfire no more than 150 yards from their parents. Generally, these were pretty wholesome kids. She watched some of the girls and boys dance, while others sat in the grass in small groups of three and four. She guessed there were twenty or twenty-five teenagers here. None of them seemed to pay Charlotte much attention as she rounded up her sneakers, and Nan was glad: She didn’t want to delay their departure any longer than necessary. She wanted to return to the clubroom with Charlotte, find Catherine and Spencer, and then head home. Tomorrow was Sunday, and she wanted everyone to get plenty of sleep tonight so they could spend a healthy chunk of the next day swimming at Echo Lake, before returning to the club for some late-afternoon tennis. Activity would be especially important if, as discussed, they all went to Gerta’s Edelweiss Garden for dinner.

“Got my sneak-sneaks,” Charlotte cooed, and she held them high in the air, one in each hand, by their laces.

“Come on, then.”

“I’m come-on-ing.”

It took them a tad longer to climb back up the hill than Nan would have liked because Charlotte seemed to be dawdling-one moment she was lifting her legs in slow motion as if they were cranes and staring down at her knees in rapt fascination, and the next she was stopping still in her tracks to gaze at her fingers-but finally she managed to herd her granddaughter back to the terrace. She sighed, but her relief was short-lived because there she saw Catherine and Gary at the very edge of the terrace. They were not exactly alone, but they were not exactly a part of the festivities, either. They were buffered from the rest of the crowd by the massive stone barbecue Gary’s own grandfather had paid to have built after some other club member had used the sand dune on nearby eighteen for a clambake. The barbecue was at least seven feet tall and that many feet wide, the individual stones the size of lamp shades and basketballs. At first Nan couldn’t imagine why Catherine and Gary had felt the need to carry on their conversation behind the barbecue, but then almost instantly she could. She saw Gary’s free hand, the one not holding his glass, reach behind Catherine’s head, brushing her daughter’s ponytail with his fingers and (surely she had not seen this part correctly) stroking briefly the back of her neck. With the reflexes of a mother bear protecting both a cub and a grand-cub, in one smooth motion Nan moved herself between Charlotte and Catherine so the girl couldn’t see her mother and guided the child forward onto the cold slate of the patio. Then she looked back over her shoulder and called out in a voice that she was confident sounded completely normal, “Catherine, Charlotte and I are rounding up Spencer and heading home.” She thought it was important now to remind Catherine that she had both a daughter and a husband and they both were present at the club.