Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“And scoop her poop? And-”

“I can walk her, Mom. And I already feed the cats most of the time. I can feed her, too.”

“It’s not a big deal, Catherine. Really. I didn’t bring her home to start a fight. I brought her home because Charlotte has always wanted a dog. I don’t want to make your life any harder than… than I’ve already made it. Okay?”

She wandered over to the dog and knelt beside it, so that she and her daughter were surrounding it. The dog turned her deep eyes toward her and then licked her, too. “I just wish you had talked to me first,” she murmured.

“Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise,” he said.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. She presumed she was angry because she didn’t like surprises and because she was indeed fearful about the additional work the dog would demand. Perhaps she was even jealous of the way Spencer had ingratiated his way into their daughter’s heart with one dramatic, unexpected gesture. But she wasn’t really that worried about the cats. They’d be fine, she guessed.

“How did you bring her home? You must have had help,” she said.

“Randy Mitchell.”

“And your hand? What did you do to your hand?”

Charlotte looked up from Tanya and noticed the bandages and the blood on her father’s pants. “Dad, what happened?”

“I cut myself in the cab. On an open ashtray. It’s not a big deal.”

“Is that how you ruined your pants?”

“More or less.”

She looked at her husband’s scruffy beard and his pot holders for ears and the way his eyebrows were raised with bemusement. “I’d get you a drink,” he said to her, “but it would be warm. I still haven’t mastered the ice tray.” She saw that his glass had no ice cubes in it. A few days before she had watched him whacking the tray upside down against a kitchen counter, and the ice cubes had indeed slipped out… and then slid like lemmings off the counter and onto the floor. She climbed back to her feet and smiled down at her daughter. Then she kissed her husband and went to retrieve the groceries from the front hall. She wanted to get the perishables into the refrigerator. Once that was done, she would get herself a gin and tonic, too, and some ice for his.

WITH PATRICK SOUND ASLEEP and Willow ensconced in Nan’s bedroom, channel-surfing through the seemingly endless array of television stations they didn’t have in Vermont, John and Sara took a walk. It was considerably warmer than in Vermont this time of night, and they walked down Lexington as far as Seventy-ninth Street and then back north to Nan’s via Park. They needed only sweaters, and John guessed they would have been comfortable in simply their long-sleeved shirts. He hadn’t yet told Sara his idea, because he was still playing out the design of it in his mind: If he did x, what would likely be y? And what would happen after that? He sensed in any event that it was all just a fantasy.

His plan, still only half-formed, was that he would threaten to show up at the press conference on Tuesday, if FERAL went ahead with the event. He would say all of the things about conservation and the understory and the plight of the northern deer herd without a rifle season that would never be addressed in a media show orchestrated by FERAL. The reporters would be all too happy to talk to him since he was, after all, the idiot who had left a loaded rifle in the trunk of his car-a rifle that had shot Spencer McCullough. They didn’t have to know that the very thought of holding a gun these days made him nauseous. As he’d told his daughter at dinner, this press conference was about propaganda.

His goal was to convince his brother-in-law that he would be such a disruptive influence that it would not be in the organization’s best interest to forge ahead. The problem, of course, was that if he told Spencer his plan beforehand, FERAL could do any number of things. They could tell him they were postponing the press conference indefinitely and then conduct it when he was back in Vermont. Or they could go ahead and hold it as planned but be prepared to refute anything he had to say. He knew they had amassed small mountains of statistics, and with enough numbers you could convince anybody of anything.

More important, he did not want to undermine Spencer’s lawsuit. The man was crippled, for God’s sake: The last thing he wanted to do was decrease the likelihood of an impressive settlement package. He owed Spencer that. That alone should preclude him from going on the offensive.

Sara took his hand and squeezed his fingers. “What’s on your mind?” she asked him.

“A lot of things, I guess. The press conference, mostly. I’m somewhat less enamored with the idea of being the sacrificial lamb in this nightmare than I was a few weeks ago.”

“Meaning?”

“No one told our niece to start shooting my rifle into the night. In fact, our own daughter specifically told her not to.”

She released his hand, and he turned to her. She was staring straight up the avenue as they walked, her arms folded across her chest, nodding ever so slightly. It was, he could see in profile, her therapist’s nod, and he couldn’t help smiling to himself. “And what are you proposing to do with these feelings?” she asked. “Anything?”

“I’m torn.”

“Go ahead.”

“I was wondering if I should go to the press conference. Or, to be specific, I was wondering what would happen if I told Spencer this weekend that I would show up at the press conference if he goes ahead with it.”

“And the point would be?”

“Talk him out of having it. Convince him that I would cause such chaos with my presence that it wouldn’t be worth it to FERAL or to his lawsuit.”

“And you would do this… why? So you’re not humiliated?”

“So Charlotte and I both are not humiliated. I’ve spent the last few weeks worrying about this. I’ve worried about how I will look to Willow. To you. To our friends. I’ve worried about how Charlotte will deal with the notoriety that will surround her. At dinner tonight it dawned on me that perhaps I don’t have to take this lying down. I thought I had to because I owed it to Spencer. But I’m less sure of that now.”

“And you believe you could scare Spencer out of having the press conference by telling him you’ll show up?”

Her voice was thoughtful and soft: questioning his idea, certainly, but offering at least the courtesy that she thought his plan had a small kernel of potential. Hearing it verbalized by someone else, however, made it clear to him how completely absurd the notion was. Spencer wasn’t going to cancel the press conference simply because his brother-in-law had announced he was going to be present. And Spencer’s associates would actually revel in the reality that he was there. They could make the public pillory that was about to become his life even more uncomfortable, even more unpleasant.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t make sense when the idea is spoken aloud, does it?” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder and pulling her to him as they walked.

She shrugged lightly. She’d made her point.

Nevertheless, he vowed that he would talk to Spencer this weekend. Face to face. And though he didn’t believe he could persuade his brother-in-law to abandon the idea of the press conference, perhaps he could convince him to be kind. Perhaps he could remind him that once, not all that long ago, they had been friends.

CATHERINE PHONED her mother and told her about the dog, and then John got on the phone and she told him. When John asked to speak with Spencer, she pleaded his case to her husband, but he refused to pick up the receiver.

And so an hour and a half later, having avoided her husband since hanging up the telephone, after kissing her daughter good night and petting her daughter’s dog-the animal was on the carpet in Charlotte’s room as the girl tapped away on her computer, sending instant messages to the Dudesters and Dreamdates and Lexicon-Domos who were her friends-she climbed into bed beside Spencer. She was still as miffed as she’d been when she’d informed her brother that her husband had no intention of removing even a single brick from the Berlin Wall he had built between them. He was thumbing through color layouts of the pages from the upcoming FERAL holiday catalog, pressing blank Post-it notes onto some of the corners with his left hand. Both of their cats were curled on the chaise lounge by the window, but Emma’s eyes were open and they were wary: She was watching the door for any sign of the dog.