Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“You’re mad at me because I won’t talk to John,” he said when she was settled in on her side of the bed.

She considered ignoring him, but then decided against it. She’d ignored him for the last ninety minutes and it hadn’t proven particularly satisfying. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I can’t. I simply can’t.”

“That’s apparent.”

“Would you like to discuss it?”

“What’s there to discuss? We’ve been over this ground so many times…” Her voice broke, and she was surprised.

He put the pages down on his nightstand and turned to her, contemplating her for a long moment. He knew she wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. “Where’s Tanya?” he asked finally.

“With Charlotte.”

“We had a nice walk tonight,” he said.

“I’m happy for you.”

“But you’re not happy for yourself? Are you really that angry with me for getting our daughter a pet?”

“I’m angry…”

“Yes?”

“I’m angry at you for a lot of reasons.”

“I know.”

“And…” She paused, wondering whether to continue. Finally: “I just don’t know how I can go on this way. How we can go on this way.”

“I know that, too.”

“Do you care?”

“Of course I care. And I’m trying, Catherine, really I am. Haven’t I seemed less cranky? Less a pain in the ass? Tell me honestly.”

“Oh, you have. But…”

“Talk to me. Please.”

She thought of the different sources of her annoyance, the springs that were feeding her resentment-including, she had to admit, his sudden placidity and tolerance when it came to her eating meat, behavior that seemed more punishing and hurtful on some level than if he had chastised her, because it was as if he’d simply concluded that she (like her mother and her brother) was beyond redemption. She decided as well that she could rail at him for not talking to her brother, for getting a dog without consulting her, even for the last year of neglect. Hadn’t he himself just alluded to this issue? But when she considered what really was troubling her most at the moment, she concluded it was the sheer inconsistency-the utter irrationality-of his behavior toward their daughter these days. On the one hand, he had become Jim Anderson from Father Knows Best; on the other, he was going ahead with that hateful press conference next week. That was the issue, and it had been driven home to her this evening by his unwillingness, once again, to speak with John. “Okay,” she said, trying to remain as calm as he was, “one minute you’re getting Charlotte this sweet dog and the next you’re planning to embarrass her at the press conference. I just don’t see how you can do that.”

“Charlotte won’t be embarrassed. And I hope John won’t be-at least not too dramatically. Paige doesn’t think much of him, but eventually she’ll need him as an ally against Adirondack. She’ll be careful. And even if John is a little uncomfortable, well, the fact is he was the one who left a loaded rifle sitting around in the trunk of his car.”

“Charlotte will be embarrassed. How can she not be? I know she was crying with Dr. Warwick today.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”

He brought his left fingers to his mouth in a tight fist and blew onto them. These days they sometimes grew cold. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said softly. “For the rest of her life she does have to deal with this. And though I know it’s not her fault, we both know she feels guilty.”

“And the press conference will make her feel even worse!”

“See, that’s where we disagree. I won’t let that happen. I know what I’m going to say. I know what Paige and Dominique are going to say.”

“Her name will be splattered all over the newspapers and on the TV news for shooting her father! How can that not make her feel horrible?”

“Her name won’t ever be mentioned at the-”

“You’re kidding yourself! You’re being ridiculous! You should have heard Paige warning her about the media at breakfast last week.”

He gazed at his fingers and then did something he hadn’t done in a very long time. Slowly, as if the digits extending out from the gauze and the tape were breakable twigs of glass, he moved them toward the side of her neck, and then-as if her neck, too, were a fragile wisp of porcelain sculpture-he stroked her. He petted her. He ran his hand gently along the skin as if he were touching it for the first time, his eyes focused on her neck and then on her face. Her eyes.

“It’ll be fine,” he whispered, his voice so soft she barely heard him. “It’ll be fine.”

“How?” she asked. She felt the pulse in her neck beneath his fingers. She considered pulling away: She was almost too angry to be touched. But it had been a very long time since he had touched her like this, and she couldn’t bring herself to move.

“I just know it will be. I am trying…”

“Yes?”

“I am trying to treat people like animals. I am trying not to be angry.”

“I’ve noticed. Sometimes, I have, anyway.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Tanya. I thought you’d like the surprise, too.”

She nodded, and she felt the soft skin of his thumb on the side of her jaw.

“And I am sorry about… oh, there’s lots I am sorry about, Catherine. Lots. There is so much I wish I could do over. And so these days I’m trying. Really, I am. I’m trying.”

Now she did reach for his hand, and she pulled it before her face and stared at the dots of blood that had soaked through the bandages there. He was trying, she had to agree; she didn’t know quite what that meant, but she guessed that trying was better than not trying…

“Please, then,” she said, “for me and for Charlotte, will you talk to John? You don’t want the next time you see him to be in court, if it comes to that, or at my mother’s funeral.”

She heard the thump of one of the cats bounding onto the foot of the bed, and she looked up and saw that Emma had leapt from the chaise to the mattress and was walking now across the bedspread. The animal waited by Spencer’s legs, and then hopped over them and into her lap, where she started to knead at the cotton of her nightgown.

“I guess I’m not all that popular,” he said.

She realized that because she had been holding Spencer’s left hand, he’d been unable to pet or massage or hold Emma-to show the animal that her presence was welcome.

“Emma just wants a little physical reassurance,” she told him. “It’s what we all want, I guess.”

“Could you help me change into my pajamas? Is now a good time?”

“Of course. It’s fine.”

“Thank you.”

“And will you talk to John? Will you at least consider the idea?”

He exhaled a long breath and sounded tired. “Yeah, I will,” he said finally.

“Yeah, you’ll consider it?”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to him. I’ll…”

She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing, and she was afraid that she might have misunderstood him. She brought his fingers to her mouth and kissed them. She kissed each one, and when she was through she heard him murmuring something about how he might join them all at the Cloisters in the morning, and maybe he and John would go for a walk. He didn’t know, he’d play it by ear. But he would definitely go with them to the Cloisters.

When the two girls had been younger, they would run into each other’s arms when they were reunited in New York or New Hampshire and hug each other like lovers, their bodies colliding in a minor ecstasy. They would wrap their arms around each other’s backs and there had even been a time-he guessed it had been when Charlotte was seven or eight-when his niece would actually lift his daughter into the air and spin her beloved younger cousin around as if they were in a perfume commercial. Even now, however, one girl thirteen and the other on the cusp of eleven, ages when they could be self-conscious about everything, they still scampered playfully toward each other like baby colts. Charlotte no longer lifted Willow off her feet and their embraces weren’t as long as in years past, but whatever the ties were-blood, history, friendship-they still were solid. The girls held each other, and Charlotte patted her shorter cousin on the back.