Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

She had begun to wonder if she would even be in the classroom in September and-if indeed she weren’t-what a September without students would be like. She almost couldn’t imagine, because she’d been teaching in one capacity or another since her very first autumn after college. Over a decade and a half now. The only year she hadn’t been in the classroom in September was the year that Charlotte was born.

And though she knew she hadn’t thought about school a whole lot in the last couple of weeks, July was an exceptional month: It was the one period in the course of the year when she didn’t focus on her students and her lesson plans and the simple presentation of her classroom-what it looked like, what decorated the walls. The truth was, she enjoyed teaching. She liked children: It was why she had gone into teaching in the first place. The only reason Charlotte was an only child was because for a decade now she and Spencer had always concluded, for one reason or another, that the timing was wrong for a second child-a decision that in hindsight probably had more to do with the subterranean fissures in their marriage than the busyness of their lives. Moreover, Catherine knew that she especially liked high school girls-their insights and their angst, the way their desperate insecurities waffled with their profound self-absorption-and she enjoyed the relationships that she had with their parents (and, yes, especially the relationships that she had with their fathers). Though she worried on occasion that she wasn’t doing a very good job with her own daughter, she knew that the older girls in her classes listened to her; likewise, they knew that she listened to them and cared about what they had to say. She was confident that she helped them as much with their self-esteem as she did with Brontë and Austin and Dickens, and in this world that was an undeniably meaningful contribution.

It dawned on her that this coming autumn, however, she might be trapped in the apartment with Spencer. She felt bad that the word trapped had come to her, but there it was, a blinking neon warning light in her mind. Trapped, these days, was precisely how she would feel if she were alone for weeks at a time with her husband. All afternoon Catherine had sensed the way her fear was being compounded by resentment, and now at the bar she felt that bitterness pounding away at the insides of her temples. Yes, she remained grateful that she hadn’t yet told Spencer how tired she was of his fussy correctness, of the way he put anonymous animals before his wife and his daughter. But she also wasn’t sure she could find it within herself to be the crutch and the cheerleader he was going to need in the coming year. This… this mess… was her brother’s fault, and if anyone should become Spencer McCullough’s nursemaid and whipping boy (good Lord, she thought, how did crutch and cheerleader become nursemaid and whipping boy so fast?), it should be John.

“Catherine?”

She turned to Paige Sutherland, the attorney her age who had flown to New Hampshire that morning with Spencer’s friend, Keenan. The woman had honey in her voice and seemed capable of making any subject sound lewd. She was petite and her hair had a tam-o’-shanter wave rising up from the side of her horseshoe-shaped headband. She looked elfin, but Catherine knew the type: She was a barracuda.

“Catherine, you need a drink,” Paige said to her, resting two of her cold-blooded fingers gently on her wrist.

She nodded. A few moments ago when they’d been handed what the young waitress called the café menus, she’d stared at it eagerly. In theory, they weren’t going to eat now because it was four in the afternoon. They were just going to drink. Besides, she couldn’t possibly order a burger in front of these lawyers. Certainly she couldn’t in front of Keenan. She’d known him for years. And so she decided that if she couldn’t have meat then she’d have something powerful to drink and ordered a martini.

“Spencer can be very, very focused. You know that as well as anyone,” Keenan was saying as the waitress smiled and left the table. She realized she, too, needed to… focus… and so she apologized and asked him to repeat what he was explaining. She saw that he had scribbled some notes on a paper cocktail napkin with a fountain pen, and some of the characters looked more like inkblots than letters.

He smiled at her sympathetically. She knew she was going to see that sort of smile a lot in the coming months.

“I was describing secondary gain. You know the concept?”

She shook her head.

“Normally when you get hurt, you try to get better. Right? Real basic notion. Well, that’s not always the case with folks when there’s a lawsuit and they see the chance for some reasonable recompense for all they’ve endured-and perhaps will endure for as long as they live. Sometimes the unconscious seems to take over, and the body doesn’t seem to fully heal until the trial is done or there’s a settlement. It’s as if an important part of the brain knows it’s in the body’s best interest to look a little disabled, a little sickly, until the money’s safely in the bank.”

“Spencer’s a fighter,” Catherine said simply.

“Yes, he is. He is a very determined individual. And I know a lot of trial lawyers who believe the whole idea of secondary gain is a myth. Course, it’s in their best interests to believe that.”

“Spencer will want to get better as quickly as possible. He’ll want to get back whatever movement he can.”

“Catherine, that is certainly what he’s going to believe on a conscious level. I am quite sure of that. Paige and I were merely saying that with some individuals in this situation-perhaps even with Spencer-it’s only when the legal tumult is completely behind them that they regain their health.”

“Spencer wouldn’t even be considering a lawsuit, if you-”

“I think we’re beyond contemplation,” Paige said, and Catherine felt just the tiniest, not unpleasant pressure on her wrist. She looked down and saw Paige’s fingers were still there.

She sighed and tried again. “Spencer wouldn’t be planning to sue the gun company if you hadn’t come up with the idea in the first place.”

“Then he would have sued your brother,” Paige murmured, in the tone of voice that Catherine knew the younger teachers in the school used with the younger students at recess. Marissa, do you really think it’s a good idea to put the hermit crabs inside the printer? No, Brandy, let’s not play fifty-two card pickup with the phonics flash cards.

“I don’t think the word sue had crossed his mind until it crossed yours,” she said, taking back her arm.

“When Spencer is feeling a little better and you can worry a little less about him, you’ll be glad we’re doing this,” Paige said. “After all, it doesn’t sound like it was your brother’s fault any more than it was your daughter’s. The bullet was just stuck in the chamber!”

“You’ve contacted the laboratory, haven’t you?” Keenan asked Paige.

“I have, but they can’t do much until the state police release the gun. Still, one engineer I spoke with there is going to see what they know about the extractor on John Seton’s model-if they’ve come across any problems before with that type of gun.”

“The laboratory?” Catherine asked.

“I-excuse me-we,” Paige said, “hope to learn why your brother was unable to extract the cartridge. We want to know if there was a tiny flaw in the gun.”

The waitress returned with their order and doled out the drinks like party favors. When she was gone, Paige took a sip of wine and then said, “Besides, Catherine, there are financial realities here. A lawsuit makes sense for that reason alone.”

“Obviously we have insurance,” Catherine snapped. “And, if we must talk about such things, my family has”-she paused for just the briefest of seconds while she found the right euphemism-“assets. We have insurance and we have assets.”