Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“I’m really sorry if I woke you,” she said, “but I’m glad you’re awake. Guess what?”

He used his left arm to push himself up in the chair, visibly wincing, so he wasn’t slouching like biscuit dough. “Go ahead.”

“I got the part! I’m Mary Lennox!”

“Wow, that’s pretty big news. Congratulations!” He raised his eyebrows as he spoke, taking in the information.

“Yup. Can I use the phone, I’m going to call-”

“Hold on, hold on. Tell me all the details. I want to hear everything.”

“Do you really have time?” she asked, a reflex before she could stop herself. In the past, her father never had time for details. Before the accident, she either would have left this news for him on his voice mail at FERAL or told him at dinner between his own anecdotes about the ponies, dolphins, or lab rats the organization was working that moment to save. She knew he would be happy for her-and yes, proud that she was his daughter. But unless he was in one of his infrequent phases of almost manic parental involvement, the very last thing he would want would be the details. Now, of course, time was less of an issue. He seemed to have plenty of it.

“Yes,” he said with almost dreamlike serenity. “I have time.”

And so she sat on the pouf between the dormant fireplace and her father’s chair and told him all that she could remember about the audition yesterday: The high school boys from another school who were asked to audition for the parts of Archie and Neville, the songs she had been asked to sing, the dancing that was required. The number of girls she had to beat out for the part. She told him in a chirping voice that gathered momentum as she spoke, as she remembered specific details.

When she was done he surprised her yet again by asking what the rehearsal schedule would be and whether he could help her learn her lines.

“Won’t you be back at work next week?” she asked.

“I guess.”

“Then how can you help me?”

“I can fit your school play in. Parents do it all the time. Work. Play. Parenting. They do, don’t they?”

She agreed in her head that they did, and as a courtesy to her ailing father she nodded. But she couldn’t imagine him actually running her lines with her or helping her memorize song lyrics.

“It’s really incredible what you did,” he murmured when she remained silent. “But you know what? I’m not surprised you got the part. I’m not surprised at all. You’ll be stupendous. Absolutely stupendous.”

WILLOW ALREADY KNEW that her birthday this year fell on a Monday, but she checked the calendar in the kitchen again now because she had a feeling it was going to be the day before her parents expected her to talk to that lawyer-or, perhaps, lawyers. She saw she was correct: It was. She would officially be eleven then. Barely eleven years old, she thought, and already she was being (and she hated the very phonetics of this new word) deposed.

Her father came into the kitchen, a couple of rattles he’d found on the floor in the den in his hands. The dinner dishes were in the sink, and she watched him stare at them for a long moment-as if he were actually surprised to find the remnants of their meat loaf and mashed potatoes and spaghetti squash still present. He seemed to do this a lot these days: He would simply stop and stare for a long instant at something as if the object or the panorama (it happened outdoors as frequently as it did inside the house) were new and unfamiliar. Then he tossed the rattles in a wicker basket on a shelf below the cookbooks where he and her mother tended to toss all of the small, nonessential items that belonged to Patrick: Toe puppets. Pacifiers. The flat plastic shells in which they packed wet wipes when they went out.

Her brother was upstairs sleeping and her mother was working behind closed doors in the living room. Whenever she worked in the evening she tended to close the door, because there was a chance she was listening to a tape of a patient. Sometimes she used a headset, but as often as not-even before Patrick was born-the headset disappeared under a couch or deep in a crevice in her shoulder bag.

“A busy schedule, eh?” he murmured when he saw her looking at the calendar.

She sighed and sat down on one of the stools at the L-shaped counter around which they ate breakfast. She was already in her nightshirt, and she could feel the cool wood against the backs of her legs. “My birthday is the day before I have to talk to the lawyer,” she said.

“Oh. I’m sorry, sweetheart. It is going to be a hard month, isn’t it?” She knew he was referring to the litany of bad dates before them. Saturday was the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which was at least part of the reason why her mother was working right now: She had had extra office hours today and would have them again tomorrow. Then the week after next was the FERAL press conference that her parents and, she knew, her aunt dreaded: Even though none of them would be present, it was going to generate the media attention her uncle desired and make them all more public than they liked-especially, of course, her father and Charlotte. Her aunt had warned her father that reporters would try to reach him (and, Willow knew, they would succeed). And then the week after the press conference she and her cousin had to start meeting with lawyers to prepare for their depositions. Her first appointment was on Tuesday in Vermont and Charlotte’s was on Thursday in Manhattan.

She decided she was going to call her cousin over the weekend. She needed to know exactly what Charlotte was going to say and-perhaps of more importance-what she wasn’t. They hadn’t spoken since her own family had left for Vermont the day after Uncle Spencer had returned to Grandmother’s from the hospital, and that had been more than four weeks ago now.

Everything had grown much more complicated the moment her uncle had struggled back into the house in Sugar Hill. He was refusing to talk to her father, which was the reason why her own family had left the next day. The house was big, but not big enough for the two brothers-in-law once they weren’t speaking. She knew the two men hadn’t spoken since then, and she guessed on some level this was why she and Charlotte hadn’t called each other, either. It was awkward now.

“It’s going to be a very bad month,” she agreed.

Though her father had loosened his necktie before dinner, the rope of fabric still hung around his neck. He nodded and sat down on a stool beside her and finally untied the knot completely and pulled the long strip of silk through the collar of his shirt. He wrapped the tie around his hand as if it were a roll of Scotch tape.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

“You sound like Mom.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Really? You seem to want to-and we can talk about it right now, if you like.”

It. She thought about the word, and wondered exactly what he meant. Did he mean the shooting? That was usually what they meant these days when they used the word it. Or was her dad merely referring to her deposition? That was what had led him to sit beside her just now. Or perhaps he meant the whole litany of unpleasant dates that loomed before them in the coming month.

“When do you think you and Uncle Spencer will start speaking again?” She surprised herself by asking this question first. The words just slid from her mouth the moment she parted her lips.

“I’d talk to him now, if he’d talk to me.”

“I know.”

“I hope soon. He can’t be angry with me forever.”

She almost disagreed with her father: Everyone always talked about how stubborn Uncle Spencer could be, and if anyone could decide to be mad at someone forever, it was probably him. She knew her uncle blamed her father for what happened-as would a lot of people once the press conference was behind them. She knew how much her father blamed himself.