Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

Nevertheless, she had rounded up a few books and DVDs and found her a jazzy sweater and scarf. Last year the child had been elevated (emancipated, Catherine knew, in Charlotte’s opinion) from the Brearley elementary school jumper to the middle school skirt-which allowed for some fashion autonomy and accessorization-and so she also had purchased a couple of blouses that matched the uniform garment. The family hadn’t had a party. They hadn’t even had a cake. But she had managed to wrap the presents and offer them to Charlotte over éclairs she’d picked up at their favorite bakery on Columbus. And so while they hadn’t done anything particularly special, neither had they (as Spencer put it) ignored their daughter’s birthday.

“You know what I mean,” Spencer said. “We didn’t do as much as we usually do.”

“Fair enough. What did you have in mind?”

“Well, I guess that’s the problem. I can’t decide what we should do. I called Ticketmaster, and there’s nothing available for any of the shows she wants to see until the end of November. So I think the theater is out-at least if we want to do something soon. What else do you think she might like?”

“Were you thinking with just the two of us or with her friends, too?” she murmured. She was so focused on making dinner that she answered a question with a question to stall for time: This way she could redirect her thoughts for the moment on what their daughter might enjoy. She wasn’t sure she had ever come across a vegetable as slimy as okra. It was leaving an oily residue on her fingertips that reminded her a bit of beef jerky.

“Either, I guess,” he said. “Tell me: If she could have one thing in the world right now, what do you think it would be?”

“Breasts.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am, too. She wants to be older than she is. Actually-” She put the knife down and turned toward him, the scraggly start of his beard once more nonplussing her. “Actually, that’s not quite true. She wants to be small and young-looking until the school play is behind her so she’s a convincing Mary Lennox. Then, between the final performance and the cast party, she wants to mature completely into a well-endowed Brearley senior. That is what our no-longer-little girl wants.” She was reminded of the arguments she and Charlotte had had when the child had been in the third grade and had started to demand that she be allowed to have her ears pierced. Somehow she and Spencer had managed to hold firm against her increasingly desperate entreaties until the day before she started fifth grade. They might have caved in even sooner that summer, but Charlotte had been in New Hampshire with her grandmother and Willow for two weeks, which had given them a much needed respite from her pleas and her howls.

“Do you think she wants a party?” he continued.

“You mean something here in the apartment?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She hasn’t wanted something like that since… since Connecticut.”

“She had that sleepover here three years ago. That was a real hit.”

She barely remembered that night, because she always associated those weeks with her daughter’s newly pierced ears. When she recalled it now she realized that it had been a pretty terrific evening: Charlotte had had three of her best friends spend the night, and they had watched movies until two or two thirty in the morning, and then all four girls had brought their sleeping bags into her and Spencer’s bedroom because… because Spencer had actually been out of town the night of the party. Yes, he’d been around the night of Charlotte’s actual birthday, but the evening when she had her sleepover he’d been at a conference in San Diego. Catherine knew she had been furious with him before he had left and then self-righteous when he’d returned, because the party had been a ripping success. Two of Charlotte’s friends had piled onto her and Spencer’s bed with her, and Charlotte and another girl had curled up in their sleeping bags on the plush carpet between the bed and the walk-in closet. They’d had waffles for breakfast, and she had made them with real milk and butter she’d bought the moment Spencer had left for the airport, for no other reason than the fact he was leaving again and she was mad.

She kept her voice even now, almost light, but she felt she had to remind Spencer of the small detail that he had been on the other side of the continent the night of that sleepover party. “You’re right, it was a hit. I’m glad you heard such good things about it when you got home.”

“Oh, we’re not going to kick that old dog, are we?”

“No,” she said, and she was indeed resolved to let the issue disappear. She’d made her point. But the memory alone had made her testy. Or maybe it was the contents of the bowl before her that suddenly she found annoying: the zucchini and tofu and okra. She would douse the blocks of tofu with enough soy sauce and sesame oil to make them tolerable, but it would take more than Chinese seasonings to make zucchini edible. She loathed zucchini and was only putting it in the stir-fry because Spencer liked it.

“So, what do you think? A sleepover, but maybe this time we go to someplace like Planet Hollywood first?”

“Spencer, they have nothing vegan on the menu, remember? Or almost nothing: I think you had a salad the time we went there, and you left seething.”

“I did, didn’t I? I’d forgotten.”

“Yes, you did. It just wouldn’t be much fun for either you or Charlotte, because there isn’t enough on the menu. Besides, I think she’s outgrowing places like that.”

“You think so? She’s only thirteen, you know. Barely.”

Only thirteen. She shuddered. She knew what thirteen-year-old girls were capable of. “My sense is you either have to be eight so you can appreciate the pop rock and the video screens or twenty-one so you can get hammered in the bar,” she said. “In between, the place is hell.”

She turned back to the wok on the stove and tossed in a capful of oil. She had no intention of lighting the burner until her daughter had returned, but she was about to set the table and she wanted everything ready in the kitchen. She took a breath, and suddenly something in the zucchini-its seeds, its translucence, its profound and impertinent greenness-caused her whole body to tense.

“Do you think anyone else in this whole apartment building is eating tofu and okra and zucchini tonight?” she asked, pouring brown rice into a measuring cup. She was careful to focus on the lines on the glass so she didn’t have to look either at him or the small torpedo-shaped grains. The truth was she preferred white rice to brown. She didn’t know anyone other than Spencer and his FERAL friends who actually liked brown rice.

“Excuse me?”

“All this vegetable nonsense. Do you really think anyone in this whole big building is eating what we are tonight?”

She heard him rustling uncomfortably in his chair. “I guess. I believe the Youngs are vegetarians. And the Rosners. I mean the Rosners have never served meat when we’ve been to their apartment for dinner parties. And I can’t believe they’d deny their other guests salmon or steak just because I’m present.”

“I can.”

“Really?”

She grabbed a handful of silver from the drawer by the sink and then three place mats from the cabinet above it. “Absolutely. Sometimes it’s just easier to go along with your… your beliefs… than to listen to your lectures.” She inhaled deeply through her nose, unsure why she was taking a perfectly innocuous conversation about what they should do for their daughter’s belated birthday and twisting it into something angry-especially since Spencer seemed to have no stomach at the moment for a fight. She didn’t cry often, but she felt the desire to howl now.