Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“They’re worried. Upset.”

“I guess they were all here today.”

“They were. Catherine-my wife-just left. I’m supposed to be… resting now.”

“I should go, then. You should rest. I just wanted to check in.”

“Stay. Please. Today’s the first day I’ve really been able to talk.”

“Okay, then.”

“And I don’t want to nap. I don’t know which drugs do it, but my dreams are filled with… lobsters. Really big… lobsters. They’re nightmares. Complete and utter nightmares.”

“Do you not like lobsters?”

“I like them fine,” he said quietly.

“I love them. There used to be this restaurant on the road to the notch in Franconia. It’s closed now, but it was called the Steer by the Shore, and they had this baked stuffed lobster. You would have killed for it. They said the lobsters were one and a quarter pounds, but they always seemed bigger to me. Delicious. And the stuffing was this buttery, crackery-I know that’s not a word, but you get my drift, it was kind of like a Ritz-paste. It just melted in your mouth. The lobster, too. My husband and I used to go there at least two or three times during the summer, and we always ordered the baked stuffed lobster.”

She began to fear she was talking too much. The color was receding from Spencer’s face, visibly plummeting like the water line in the bathtub once the drain has been opened.

“You probably don’t have much of an appetite yet. I shouldn’t talk so much about food.”

“It was Ritz,” he muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“The stuffing. That was the secret ingredient. Ritz crackers. Whole stuffing was nothing but Ritz crackers and margarine. And it wasn’t even very good margarine. It was the supermarket brand. One time I tried to spice it up with celery salt. The chef saw me, and I thought he was going to have a stroke. Made me throw”-there was that wince again, his nose crinkling up toward his eyes, and his forehead a series of furrows in a newly planted vegetable garden-“the whole batch away and start again.”

“You used to work there?”

“Yeah. I did,” he said. “You know, I never told anyone that.”

“You never told anyone that you used to work at the Steer by the Shore?”

“No. About the Ritz. I never told anyone that the secret ingredient in the stuffing was Ritz. It was all so important to them. The chef. The owners.”

“It was good!”

He grunted, a lone rumble of disgust from deep in his throat. “It was appalling. The stuffing, the lobsters…”

“You said you like lobsters!”

“I did. I didn’t say I liked to eat them.”

“What? You’re a vegetarian?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Fish, too?”

“Anything with a parent.”

“I guess you don’t eat whatever venison your brother-in-law brings home in the fall. Personally, I don’t like venison. You’re not missing anything.”

“I agree. And as for my brother-in-law…” He sighed. “I am hoping this appalling interest of his is just… a phase. Temporary insanity.”

“Yeah, I guess I heard somewhere that he hasn’t been hunting very long,” she told him. She wanted to ask him how his daughter had gotten his brother-in-law’s gun in the first place or what she thought she was doing when she pulled the trigger on Saturday night. But then that part of her that was a mother-though both of her sons were grown men now in their twenties-and a teacher wanted to know something she decided was infinitely more important: She wanted to know how the child was feeling four days after the accident.

“So,” she said, drawing the vowel out into a rope as she tried to figure out how to begin, “what’s your daughter’s name?”

“Charlotte.”

“Charlotte McCullough. That sounds very regal.”

“Charlotte is many things… but regal is not among them.”

“She’s playful?”

“She’s… she wants to be a teenager.”

“How old is she?”

“Twelve. About to turn thirteen.”

“Then she’s there. Is she badly shaken by what she did?”

“She didn’t do anything!” he answered, and Missy noticed the way he almost hissed out the pronoun in his desire to make it clear that his daughter was not responsible for what had occurred.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I was only wondering how she was doing.”

“It’s my brother-in-law who should be shaken. It’s John Seton who has to live with this.”

She nodded because she didn’t want this intense man in the bed to get any more upset than he already was. But she didn’t completely agree with him. Although she was confident that Spencer’s brother-in-law felt enormous responsibility for what had occurred, she was also quite sure that his daughter was going to struggle with the fact she had nearly killed her father for a very long time. Probably forever.

“You see a lot of gun accidents?” he asked her suddenly.

“A few.”

“I’m suing the gun company.” He said this as if he were informing her that he had just changed the oil in his car or eaten a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. She was relieved that it was a manufacturer he was suing and not, as she had feared when she first arrived, his brother-in-law. “Maybe you should talk to my lawyer,” he added.

Reflexively, as if he were pointing a gun at her, she threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m happy to tell the lawyers what I saw on Saturday night. But I’m not your expert witness on guns or bullets or accidents. Okay?”

“Just a thought.”

She lowered her arms and tried to smile. “Really, I don’t believe you should be thinking about lawsuits and money right now. I think you should be putting all your energy into getting better.”

“I’m not suing for the money. I’m suing because it’s a great… opportunity to bring attention to the plight of hunted animals. Deer, especially. But moose and birds, too. Perhaps even elephants.”

She considered telling him that in her opinion things might be worse if people didn’t hunt. In places like northern New Hampshire the herd would grow too large for the browse. She didn’t say anything, however, because she hadn’t come here to argue.

“I’ll bet you hunt,” he continued, his tone slightly accusing.

“No.”

“But your husband does.”

“No, he doesn’t, either,” she answered, though this was a lie. She couldn’t believe that on Saturday night this guy was spewing so much blood into the clay soil of Sugar Hill that she had knelt in a puddle when she had arrived at his side-an oozy bit of bog that actually made a sucking sound as she lifted her knee the first time-and now he was proselytizing against hunting. He really was feisty.

“Ah, but you eat meat. You told me you eat lobster. You-”

“Look, I have two sons. One is a vegetarian, one isn’t. It isn’t a big deal to me, it isn’t a big deal to anyone. These days, lots of people are-”

“You ever think about what you’re eating when you eat a lobster? When you eat any animal?”

In the past these spontaneous visits had been pleasant for both her and the patient. That’s why she did it. The man or woman in the bed went on and on about how grateful they were to be alive, and she was able to go home with an image in her mind of a person on the mend. Not this character. He actually wanted to lecture her. And so she looked at her watch and expressed surprise at the time. She heard herself telling him how glad she was to see him alive and how she was sure that he would dazzle them all with his recovery. She spoke quickly so he couldn’t get a word in, and then she backed out of his room, waving as she retreated, until she was safely in the hallway.

As she raced down the long series of corridors that led to the elevators, she thought of Spencer McCullough’s twelve-year-old daughter once again. She decided if this guy were her father, she might have shot him, too. Anything to shut him up.