Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” she asked, as Willow moved with the awkward gait of a sleepwalker over to the plush armchair in which she was sitting, and perched herself on the wide armrest.

“A little. But that’s not why I came down.”

“Go ahead.”

“I think I know what I want to do for my birthday.”

“Oh, good. Tell me.”

“Today in art class Ms. Seeley was telling us about the Cloisters-in New York City. Have you ever been there?”

She shook her head. “Believe it or not, I haven’t. I should have by now, I know. Certainly your father has. Probably any number of times.”

“She was showing us slides of the statues and paintings they have there, and the way the light moves in the stone hallways, and all these gold goblets and candlesticks that are works of art themselves. Everything’s from the Middle Ages, you know. I’d like to go there for my birthday.”

She was pleased that Willow wanted to see a museum on her birthday, but she was also realistic enough to understand that her daughter knew well that any trip to Manhattan would include far more than a visit to a museum. There would be dinner at a restaurant sufficiently fancy to allow Willow to wear one of her dresses she loved that were far too elegant for Vermont, perhaps lunch at a more rowdy venue such as the Hard Rock Cafe, shopping at the great palaces of consumption-Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s-and a detour to a downtown boutique (almost certainly Alice Underground) that would have exactly the sorts of hip, inappropriate children’s clothes you couldn’t find in Vermont but every girl wanted on her eleventh birthday.

“We can do that,” she said, and instantly she began to outline the logistics of the trip in her mind. Today was Tuesday, the fourteenth. Willow’s birthday was the twenty-seventh-a Monday. “Your grandmother will be back in the city by your birthday. I think, as a matter of fact, she’s being driven home in a couple of days. This Thursday, maybe. So we could go either the weekend before your birthday-drive down on Friday, the twenty-fourth-or the weekend after. That first weekend in October. We can check with Daddy and see if one of those weekends is better for him than the other.”

“The thing is…”

“Yes?”

“We’d need to go this weekend-if we decide to do this for my birthday.”

“This weekend? Why?”

“Ms. Seeley-she grew up in New York City, you know…”

“Yes, I know,” she said, smiling when her daughter paused in midsentence. Grace Seeley, the school’s art teacher, was a statuesque blond no older than twenty-five or twenty-six with a small blue stone in the side of her nose. She regaled her students in the weekly art class with her tales of art school in Manhattan and the strange and wondrous things people did there that they considered… art. This was Seeley’s second year in Willow’s school, and the girls, especially Willow, adored her.

“She said this is the Saturday that the Cloisters and the park right next to it-Fort something-is having a medieval harvest festival. They do it every year, and it’s only this one Saturday. That’s it. But she said it’s really cool: It feels like you’re living in the Middle Ages, except there are always a few people who forget to turn off their cell phones.”

“So you want to go this weekend?”

“If we can…”

“This is awfully spontaneous. And your father and I are many things, but we’re not exactly spontaneous people.”

“I know.”

She looked at the girl, saw-despite her drowsy eyes-her consuming interest in the idea.

“But you really want to go to this harvest festival, don’t you?”

“I do. I’ve been imagining it all day.”

She, too, had been thinking about Manhattan just before Willow had come downstairs. She didn’t believe this was a sign precisely, but she had the amused suspicion it was something more than a coincidence: an indication, perhaps, of her and her daughter’s connectedness.

Moreover, she recalled that no one had done a whole lot for Charlotte’s birthday at the end of August-she had ordered online a CD of some musical and had the company tape one of those ten- or eleven-word greetings to the wrapped disc-and if they went to Manhattan this weekend, the two girls could do something special together. A sort of joint birthday celebration. Certainly they could invite Charlotte to join them for the day at the Cloisters. She liked that idea. Even if their fathers weren’t speaking-perhaps because their fathers weren’t speaking-it was important to do all that they could to give the girls opportunities to see each other. And while she knew that Spencer didn’t want to see John, it was always possible that with her husband in the city he’d have to. They could all descend on the McCulloughs’ apartment when they picked up Charlotte-assuming she wanted to go with them to the Cloisters-and she couldn’t imagine Spencer hiding in the bedroom. Maybe they’d even get there a little early, so he couldn’t sneak out before they arrived to see his physical therapist or run errands or torment the keepers of some nearby fur vault.

She saw in her mind the awkwardness that would infuse any encounter between the two men, and she sighed. It would be pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. The male stripped of any semblance of social grace. It would be embarrassing for anyone who had the misfortune of witnessing the small spectacle.

Then again, she guessed she was kidding herself if she honestly believed there was any chance at all that Spencer would tolerate her husband’s presence long enough for embarrassment to become a dominant sensation. Her family might visit Manhattan this weekend, but the only McCulloughs they would see would be Catherine and Charlotte.

“Do you think we can go?” Willow was pressing her now.

“Okay, sure, if that’s what you really would like. Maybe we can celebrate your and Charlotte’s birthdays together. I know your aunt Catherine didn’t have a chance this year to do a whole lot for your cousin. We’ll see what your father has on his schedule, just to make sure it’s okay. What do you have at school on Friday afternoons this year? Just gym and library, right?”

Willow nodded.

“Well, then. If it’s okay with your father, we could pick you up at school at lunchtime and then go straight to the city. We could be at your grandmother’s in time for dinner. How does that sound?”

“That sounds great, thank you! Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome. It’ll be fun.” She slipped her small tape recorder and her notes into the attaché on the floor beside her, and rose from her chair. She shook out her leg which had fallen asleep and said, “Now let’s get you back into bed. Do your sheets need to be tucked in again?”

The child nodded, hopped off the armrest with the grace of a gymnast, and then ran up the stairs to her bedroom.

AS WILLOW FELL ASLEEP that night she thought of the slide of what she believed Ms. Seeley had called a reliquary shrine: a gold box with blue enamel, angels in the corners, and a little statue of the Virgin Mary as the knob to open the lid. The box sat on what looked like a dollhouse-sized stage, with a tiny wall of stained glass behind it. She wondered what people stored in such a beautiful box. She’d have to ask someone at the Cloisters on Saturday.

She was looking forward to visiting the place, but the truth was that it wasn’t something she would normally have wanted to do on her birthday. It was simply an excuse to get her parents to take her to New York City sooner rather than later so she could see Charlotte. The idea had first started to form in her mind when Ms. Seeley had mentioned that the harvest festival only lasted a single day, and that day was this coming Saturday. She still didn’t know quite what she would accomplish with her cousin, but she wanted to see her before they faced their depositions. She wasn’t making much headway getting resolution on what she would say-on what they would say-over the phone, and she thought she might make more progress if they spoke face to face. Sometimes she could get her way with Charlotte when they were together. She thought it was possible that her cousin appeased her because she was younger and the older girl wanted to be magnanimous, but Willow didn’t care: She didn’t want to lie at the deposition if there was any way she could avoid it.