Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“Yup.”

“And we’re doing something with you and Charlotte to celebrate the girls’ birthdays, right? A brunch or a dinner or something?”

“Mother wants us to do brunch on Sunday. Someplace elegant that would give the girls a chance to get dressed up and consume vast numbers of Shirley Temples.”

“Charlotte will want a mimosa.”

“She might. But even she has seemed oddly composed the last week.”

“Maybe it’s that play.”

She squirted gel into the dishwasher and pushed the door shut. “Maybe,” she agreed.

“And Spencer’s definitely not coming?”

“To the brunch? Nope-though he did apologize.”

“Well, I’m glad Charlotte’s feeling better.”

“I didn’t say she’s feeling better. I said she’s composed. It’s pretty clear she’s still shaken.”

“Willow’s a wreck. Well, maybe not a wreck. But she’s very stressed by the idea of a deposition at some point in the coming months.”

She stood up straight. “Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Charlotte is, too. Or she was. She seems fine now. But she had one final meltdown before she became the great, unflappable thespian. It was last week when we were having breakfast with Paige Sutherland. The deposition came up, and Charlotte got all weird about lie detector tests.”

“Lie detector tests?”

“That’s right. She said she would refuse to take one. And then she stormed off to the ladies’ room.”

“Well, the idea of a deposition must be very scary for them. Lord knows I’m dreading mine. Alas, that’s one more part of this nightmare for which I can take credit.”

“Beat yourself up. There isn’t enough pain going around at the moment.”

“You know,” he said, “if only Spencer would talk to me. It would make such a difference.”

“What exactly would you say to him?”

“I honestly don’t know. But the idea of us simply returning to speaking terms would be huge. We wouldn’t have to discuss the lawsuit. We could talk about, I don’t know, all the other things we have in common.”

“Like hunting?”

“Like raising daughters. Like playing tennis.”

“The two of us don’t even talk about tennis anymore, and it used to be something we were pretty passionate about. Even during the finals at Flushing Meadows this month-remember how Spencer and I always got tickets when we were younger?-I don’t think we said one single word about tennis.”

“I wish I could talk to him about this press conference. That’s the main thing. I understand the lawsuit. Really, I do. It’s FERAL’s involvement and the media frenzy he wants to create that I find so disturbing. It’s the way my daughter and my niece are being dragged into this in such a public fashion.”

“And you, too.”

“Yes, obviously. Me, too. But if we were talking, there would still be hope. There-”

“John, you couldn’t stop this train even if Spencer would hear you out. It’s way beyond the station. He thinks his lawsuit against the gun company is a way of showing Charlotte this wasn’t her fault.”

“Maybe I should drop by the apartment when you’re all at the Cloisters. What do you think? Spencer and I could talk this out-maybe even get to the point where he’d be willing to join us on Sunday for brunch.”

“He won’t even be here, he’ll be working at FERAL. He’s still learning to use his new left-handed keyboard and mouse, but at least he has such things at the office. His voice input software hasn’t arrived yet-”

“He will need that now, won’t he?”

“Well, it will help.”

“God, this is awful.”

“Please, stop it. Okay? Yes, it’s awful.” While she paused, she heard Charlotte drawing out the first syllable in the word garden as if she were holding a musical note, and softening the r almost to the point of nonexistence. Her mind was flashing back now to that breakfast last week with Paige Sutherland. She couldn’t imagine there was some important detail about that horrible night in New Hampshire that she didn’t know. What had occurred was pretty clear: Her brother had left his loaded rifle in the trunk of his Volvo, and her daughter had thought her husband was a deer and accidentally shot him. It was only complicated if you were a lawyer. Why then had Charlotte freaked out about a lie detector test? Why was Willow, in John’s words, a wreck about the idea of the deposition?

Was it possible there was something she had missed? Something all the grown-ups had missed? Certainly she had asked Charlotte again when they’d had breakfast with Paige. And Charlotte had insisted there was nothing more to the story than what they already knew.

Actually, that wasn’t quite accurate. Charlotte had retreated angrily to the ladies’ room at the very suggestion something more had occurred that night. And so she decided that when Lee Strasberg was done with their daughter-or, perhaps, before Charlotte went to bed-she and her daughter would have a chat.

“Tell me,” her brother was asking her, “how would Spencer react if I just showed up at his office on Saturday afternoon?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to go there. You probably wouldn’t get past the guard in the lobby, anyway.”

“Why don’t I just see how I’m feeling that day-and whether I’ve managed to marshal some arguments that might make a difference to him? Play it by ear?”

She sighed. “Sure. Why not?”

In the living room Spencer and Charlotte continued to work, and Catherine wondered how she had wound up an outsider.

BY TEN O’CLOCK Spencer was sound asleep. The combination of an extra sleeping pill, the pain in what remained of his shoulder, and the ceaseless exertion of trying to learn to exist with one functioning arm had exhausted him. And so Catherine left their bedroom and knocked on Charlotte’s door. She hoped the child was finishing her homework and was about to go to bed herself. She wasn’t. She was on the computer sending instant messages to her friends. Catherine looked at the communications on the screen and realized that Charlotte wasn’t chatting with her usual pals, but instead with the kids-teenagers, actually-who were in the upcoming musical with her.

“Who are you talking to?” she asked, hoping to elicit some specifics.

Without turning around Charlotte mumbled, “People in the show.”

“That’s what I figured.” She pointed at one of the responses and monikers on the screen. “Let me guess: Dudester 1035 is a boy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he lives at 1035…”

“Ten thirty-five Fifth. He goes to Buckley.”

“Does Dudester have a name?”

“Archibald.”

“Archibald?”

“Oh, sorry, that’s his name in the play,” she said, typing a response as she spoke. “His real name is Sawyer.”

“How old is Sawyer?”

“I don’t know. A little older than me.”

Catherine had a pretty good idea that “a little older than me” meant fifteen at least. Maybe sixteen. She hoped that no fifteen- or sixteen-year-old Buckley boy was chasing after her waif of a daughter-a daughter who seemed especially tiny right now in a pair of bright red pajamas that were sprinkled lavishly with ivory moons and yellow stars. Regardless, ten o’clock was late for instant messages when you were in the eighth grade and so she asked Charlotte to log off and join her. She sat down on her daughter’s bed and waited there, aimlessly stroking a teddy bear that three or four years ago had meant so much to her child, and which even now Charlotte couldn’t quite part with.

When the girl joined her, sitting down by the footboard with her legs crossed at the knees, she said, “I still haven’t done my history reading for tonight. But I think I’ll only need fifteen or twenty minutes. Is that okay?”