Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“I’m happy,” she said, and she pulled from deep within herself a smile for her father’s benefit. “I really don’t want anything more for my birthday. But…”

“Yes?”

“Thank you, Father. Thank you for the thought.”

“So Catherine really doesn’t know about this?” “Nope,” Spencer said. “She doesn’t. I considered telling her, but then I thought I might as well surprise her, too.”

“Well, I think it’s sweet. Maybe a little crazy-the not telling your wife part. Actually, that’s a lot crazy. But it’s certainly a lovely gift for Charlotte. You’re a good dad.”

He smiled at Randy Mitchell, the former Granola Girl who had become his most senior assistant, as they walked down Fifty-ninth Street to the Humane Society of New York’s animal adoption center. The shelter was a no-kill facility, which meant they only euthanized animals that were terminally ill. He had asked Randy to join him because she had a dog, a mutt she insisted was part springer spaniel and-based on the way its tail stood up like a dust mitt and folds of skin hung like drapes between its fore and hind legs-part flying squirrel. Spencer had met the dog, and the creature was among the most unattractive animals he’d ever seen outside the Discovery Channel. But she was playful and happy, and Randy adored her.

Spencer was particularly appreciative that he had Randy’s help this afternoon because it was Thursday evening, a mere five days before the press conference, and Randy had better things to do than help her boss pick out a shelter dog. He imagined he would have come here alone before the accident.

Then he guessed he wouldn’t have come here at all. He would have been unwilling to get a dog before the accident. He’d always told his daughter that he believed it was cruel to keep one in a New York City apartment, but the truth was that until now he simply hadn’t been willing to have his life complicated by the attention a dog needed-especially one that lived in an apartment.

The animal was going to be a belated birthday present for Charlotte: three weeks belated, in fact, and if for that reason alone quite a surprise. The humane society didn’t allow same-day adoptions, and so Spencer’s plan today was to fill out the forms and choose the dog. Then on Monday he and Randy would return after work for the animal. At that point he’d really need his assistant, because he was quite sure that he was incapable of bringing a dog-and all of its accoutrements-back across town to his family’s apartment with one hand.

“I’m not a good dad,” he said. “But I’m trying.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s a beautiful day, I bet you’ve got a pocketful of Percocet, and you’re about to bring another companion animal into your family’s life. Give yourself a break.”

Randy’s FERAL-speak caused him to cringe slightly-even he viewed dogs and cats as pets rather than as companion animals-but it was a lovely day, he agreed. And his shoulder actually felt a little better this morning. He was not for one moment oblivious to the pain, but today, at least, it was tolerable: a steady ache that was considerably more pronounced than the feeling of a pebble lodged inside one’s shoe but no more debilitating. According to Nick, his physical therapist, the pain probably would never, ever disappear completely, but eventually it would diminish to the point it was at now-and that would be without the gloriously buffering power of the small candy jar of painkillers he was consuming daily. Moreover, he’d gone to a barber this morning and had the whiskers on his face trimmed and shaped into something that resembled a beard. He looked less like an over-the-hill grunge rocker and more like a tweedy English professor. The beard still had a distance to go, but already he liked the air it gave him, and the way the facial hair seemed to shrink his ears to something like a normal size. Granted, his forehead seemed to stretch now into Quebec. But the ears? Almost average. For the first time since the accident, the world didn’t seem quite so exhausting.

THE DOG THAT HE CHOSE was a two-year-old combination of collie and something more petite, with dark eyes and fur that felt like satin against the fingers on his left hand. She weighed just over forty pounds. Her name was Tanya, and she’d wound up at the shelter when her owner had lost his job and a pet-especially a not insubstantial one with an appetite that could only be called impressive-suddenly seemed an unacceptable luxury. Moreover, she’d had emergency surgery the day after she arrived at the humane society, because she’d swallowed a small rubber ball and it had lodged in her intestines. Tanya was a quiet animal who, according to the young woman from the shelter who was assisting them, had always done well in an apartment.

The decision had only been difficult for Spencer for the simple reason that there had been so many needy dogs present, and every single one of them seemed to be barking desperately for his attention. The animals in their pens were so loud that he and Randy and Heather Conn, their guide at the shelter, had to shout to be heard over the din. And while Spencer considered any number of the smaller dogs there-the mutts who seemed to be largely terrier, spaniel, or beagle-simply because they would be easier for him to manage with only one arm, he was drawn to this serene miniversion of Lassie. He decided that Tanya would have been perfect if she were ten or fifteen pounds lighter, both because of his disability and because of the finite space in their apartment. Still, his mother-in-law’s dog lived in an apartment, and that animal seemed quite content.

He had a vision now in his mind of Tanya running through the lupine in Sugar Hill with Nan’s golden retriever, but then he remembered that dog hadn’t run anywhere since the last presidential administration. Still, he saw Tanya racing off the porch and onto the badminton court, jumping into the air after one of the badminton birdies. He saw the dog lounging with her nose on Charlotte’s lap as the girl sat on the carpet before the fireplace in the New Hampshire living room. He saw her walking at his side as he strolled out toward those apple trees, the ones that bordered the… vegetable garden.

Oh, there would be no vegetable garden. Never again. He knew that.

But the dog might walk between his daughter and him as they strolled down his mother-in-law’s driveway late in the afternoon, the sun still high because it was only the last week in July.

As he walked the dog up First Avenue, he felt shivers of pain in his right shoulder every time Tanya pulled against her leash and yanked his left arm. The sensation rippled across his upper back and became transformed from a simple awareness of a tug to the feeling of a knife slicing through skin. It was sharp and it stung. Still, he had endured far worse over the last month and a half. Far worse. The dog sniffed everything in sight on the street, from the garbage cans to the sewer grates to the stations on which hung the antiquated pay phones.

Heather and Randy were walking a few paces behind him, chatting. He wondered if perhaps he should bring the animal home tomorrow-Friday-instead of on Monday. The advantage was that Charlotte didn’t have school on Saturday and Sunday, and so she would have more time to bond with the pet. They all would. Moreover, Monday might be chaos for him because of the press conference on Tuesday, and it was certainly possible that his day would get away from him and he wouldn’t even be able to make it to the humane society to pick the animal up.

On the other hand, Willow was arriving this weekend and surely Charlotte would want to see her. And Sara and Willow and ol’ Francis Macomber wanted to take Charlotte and Catherine to the Cloisters on Saturday.