Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“Spencer tried going back to work today,” she said. “He didn’t make it.” And then she started describing for this tan younger man with a teacher’s playful smile the assortment of tools that Spencer had lined up on his bureau last night, and the hope that an item as small as a dressing stick or a button hook would give him these days.

“God,” Eric said simply when she was done. “What can I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Surely there’s something. Can I bring you guys dinner tomorrow night?”

“We don’t need dinner.”

“But you have to eat.”

“And you can cook? You?”

“Come on: Couldn’t you cook when you were twenty-nine?”

“I had been married for six years when I was twenty-nine.”

“Wow. You really did get married young.”

“Yes. I did,” she admitted, and then-concerned that her voice had lacked the angry defensiveness she had once felt whenever someone even hinted that she and Spencer may have married too young-she said quickly, “I was very fortunate. Some people have to wait half a lifetime to find a soul mate.”

He nodded. “And some people never do.”

“Indeed.”

They both were quiet for a moment, and then Eric continued, “So: dinner. How about I bring it by tomorrow night around seven?”

“People have been bringing us meals for the last couple of weeks. Neighbors in the building, our friends, people from FERAL. Since we got back from New Hampshire, I don’t think I’ve made dinner more than four or five times. Seriously: You don’t have to do this.”

“Ah, but I get to. There’s a difference. Okay? Is anyone bringing you dinner tomorrow night?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Good. Then I will. I won’t stay, but I’ll drop off a small feast-no animals, of course. Is dairy all right?”

“Not if you want Spencer to eat.”

“Very well, no cream sauces.”

“And no soup.”

“No soup?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be pretty. Spencer has a very long way to go with his left hand.”

CATHERINE WAS ACTUALLY PLANNING to play tennis this afternoon for the first time since the accident. She and her friend Angie Merullo were going to meet in the park and play an hour of singles. But once Catherine had heard that Spencer hadn’t made it to work she had called Angie and canceled and gone straight home after school. Charlotte would be a couple of hours behind her, because she had an information meeting about the autumn musical.

She got to the apartment soon after four and found Spencer sitting up in bed with Emma the cat on his legs. The cat glanced up at her when she entered the bedroom, then gazed back at Spencer. Whenever anyone in their house was ill, it was Emma who would seem most desirous of providing solace and comfort and warmth. She liked to sleep on the sick.

Spencer was wearing tennis shorts and what she presumed was the beige short-sleeved sport shirt he’d put on first thing in the morning, but then she remembered he’d thrown up in the cab and must have changed as soon as he’d returned home. The New York Times was a wad of crinkled papers on the floor by the bed. Before the accident, Spencer read the newspaper with meticulous care, and even on those days when she would read the paper after him she always found it looking as if it were fresh from the newsstand. No more. It was simply too difficult for him to fold the paper with only one hand.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she murmured, and she sat gently on the bed beside him.

He turned to her and sighed, but otherwise he didn’t say a word. His hair, she realized suddenly, had started going gray at the temples. There they were: white threads from a sewing box. Had this happened only this morning, or had it been changing throughout the summer and somehow she hadn’t noticed? He looked exhausted, and she wondered if he’d been doing his exercises. Nick wasn’t scheduled to be here today, but perhaps Spencer had called him and the therapist had had a free hour. Perhaps Spencer had done his reps on his own.

“You were doing your range-of-motions, weren’t you?” she said.

“No.”

“Nick wasn’t here?”

“It’s not his day.”

“I know. I just thought…”

“I’m too tired. And right now my shoulder hurts too much.”

She stroked his leg, because even now she was afraid to touch his back or his neck. She feared she would jostle him and cause him yet more pain.

“I saw you bought some of that cheddar-flavored soy cheese,” he said quietly. “Thank you. Around one thirty, I tried to grill some in a sandwich.”

“Good for you!”

He shook his head and said-his voice the sort of fatalistic monotone she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard from him-“Oh, it wasn’t good.” With his eyes he motioned down toward his right hand, still slung against his chest in its sling. The skin there was mottled with a series of deep red welts and watery blisters, and she saw that a line of the tawny fur along all four of his fingers was shriveled and black.

“Oh, God, Spencer,” she said, “let me get some lotion for that! Have you called the doctor?”

“It’s not that bad. In fact, I don’t feel a thing… obviously.”

“What happened?”

“I was leaning over the stove and I didn’t realize that my hand was resting along the edge of the frying pan. I only looked down when I smelled something burning. The hair had already curled up, and the skin may actually have been smoldering. I don’t know. It looked pretty nasty. I put cold water on it. At least I think it was cold. Who knows?”

“I think there’s some medicated lotion in the bathroom. It may be as old as Charlotte, but-”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“No, but we need to get something on it so it heals,” she said, and she carefully rose from the bed. “Some lotion or something. Let’s call the doctor.”

He breathed in deeply through his nose. “No, let’s not.”

“You’ve already called him?” she asked, a litany of names forming in her mind as she verbalized the question. Did she mean Dr. Tasker, the orthopedic and trauma surgeon they’d been referred to at Roosevelt, or Dr. Leeds, the cosmetic surgeon at Lenox Hill? Or did she mean Spencer’s primary care physician, Dr. Ives, the guy he’d been seeing for his physical exams and minor aches and pains ever since they’d moved back to Manhattan from Connecticut? She realized she wasn’t sure whom she had meant.

“No, I didn’t call anyone. And, please, let’s not bother. Okay? It’s a burn. It happens.”

“It just…”

“Yes?”

“It just looks so painful,” she murmured.

He took his index finger on his left hand and rubbed at the raw skin and the scorched follicles of hair. “Well, we both know that’s no longer an issue,” he said, and then she watched him do something he had begun to do with increasing frequency. He stopped touching the burn and brought his left hand before his face, no more than six or seven inches away, and he spread wide his fingers, palm toward him. And then he seemed to run his eyes over each finger, occasionally flexing one individually or curling all of them together as if they were petals on a flower that was closing for the night. Sometimes she wasn’t sure he was even conscious that he had developed this tic, and she’d considered asking him over the weekend why he did it. But she thought she understood. He was, pure and simple, amazed at the dexterity that he-most of us, she knew-always had taken for granted. He might not have anywhere near the control with his left hand that he once had with his right, but it was still an astonishing bit of machinery.

“Where’s Charlotte?” he asked, as he bent his left index finger toward him again and again, as if he were plunking a piano key.