Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

Afraid that her father was thirsty but was unwilling to be a bother, she loped over to the blanket and knelt beside him, and there she popped the top of his can of soda and held it to him like an offering. The goblet of wine at communion. That gold chalice she had just seen inside the Cloisters. Drink, she said to him in her mind. Drink, drink.

On Monday morning, while he and Charlotte were taking Tanya for a walk before breakfast, he told her. The plan he and Catherine had agreed on the night before was that he would break the news to their daughter and then leave early for work so she and Charlotte could discuss Mom and Dad’s immediate plans before heading across town to Brearley. They’d considered telling her together, but it was clear to them both that they’d end up squabbling if they tried to work as a tag team on this one. He guessed he could have been more eloquent (or, perhaps, more assertive) in his defense when he and Catherine had argued, though in hindsight it really hadn’t been much of an argument. They hadn’t discussed her ultimatum at all since she had presented it to him at the Cloisters. He’d thought about it, he’d thought about it all the time. But mostly it had just exhausted him. He felt simultaneously defensive, convinced that she didn’t appreciate how hard he’d been trying lately, and disappointed in himself that it had taken him so long to understand that his self-absorption was gnawing away at their marriage. His life, it was clear, was now completely unraveling.

“What have you decided?” she’d asked simply when they both were in bed Sunday night.

“About?”

“Please. The press conference.”

“It really has come down to that, hasn’t it? Just that one… thing?” He was too tired to say more. He’d spent most of Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday numbed by the realization that his wife wanted to leave him. He felt sorry for himself (I am crippled and in pain and my wife is leaving me), but it had been so obvious in hindsight that his marriage was trending this way that he wasn’t surprised. Just fatigued.

“That one thing is a gauge of where we are-and where we’re going.”

“It will be fine, you know. The press conference. You can trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re bringing needless attention and ridicule down on our daughter and on my brother. That’s what you’re doing.”

“No, I-”

“Yes, Spencer. That’s all there is to it.”

Maybe if she’d said something less adamant he would have been less stubborn. Maybe if she hadn’t interrupted him he would have said something else. Who knew? Certainly he didn’t. “Well, I can’t cancel it,” he told her in response. “Not now. It’s far too late for that.”

“You can cancel it. Absolutely you can. But you won’t.”

“Catherine-”

“No. I told you how I feel,” she’d said, and she had actually climbed out of bed that moment, something she rarely did once she was settled under the sheets, and pulled out her suitcase from the back of the walk-in closet.

“You’re going to pack now?” he’d murmured.

“I’m going to get a few things ready, yes. Enough to tide me over for a few days across town. Tomorrow I’ll need to help Charlotte gather her things, and so I might not be able to focus on my needs.”

“Your needs,” he had repeated, but that was as close as he’d come to saying something hostile.

Now he watched his daughter hold Tanya back as they started east down Eighty-fifth Street, the road still in shadow and quiet since it wasn’t quite 7 a.m. The air was chilly, and he was wearing his windbreaker in his usual fashion: His left arm was through the sleeve, but the right side of the jacket was clipped to his shirt as if it were an opera cape. He himself, of course, hadn’t done the careful work with the safety pin: Charlotte had. He’d tried and failed.

“Your mother and I made a decision about something last night,” he said once they were well beyond their building’s front awning. He noticed she no longer wore the scarves that had been a crucial part of her accessorization last year. Instead, this fall she seemed to be wearing the most simple and conservative headbands she owned. He guessed this was another element in her transformation into Mary Lennox. A part of him liked this new child a lot, but he also worried that she was taking it all a bit too seriously. Then, precisely because he himself was taking her accomplishment so seriously-and the opportunity it had presented him to be with her-he wondered how he would be able to run her lines with her daily. She was doing well, but the kid seemed to be on stage practically every minute of the musical: They still had a ways to go.

“About what?”

“Well, we disagree about the press conference this week, and she thinks it would be best if we spent a little time apart-”

“You’re separating?” She stopped so suddenly that the leash went tight as a clothesline and poor Tanya was yanked to a halt.

“I don’t know if I’d say that exactly. Your mother simply thinks it would be best while we iron things out if you two moved across town to your grandmother’s. But I really don’t know if I’d call it a separation, and there’s no reason to think all this could ever end in divorce,” he said, not happy with his obvious lies but convinced it was better to ease his daughter into this-break the bad news a little at a time over the course of weeks-than drop it all like a fireplace andiron on her foot.

“You two…” she said, looking at him with eyes that had grown thin with rage. Tanya squatted and peed, half on and half off the sidewalk.

“Us two…”

“You two are so selfish! Do you ever think of anyone but yourselves?”

He restrained his initial instinct to remind her that she couldn’t speak to either of her parents that way and responded instead in his most measured tone, “Your mother has recommended we do this precisely because she is thinking of you. She’s worried that I am going to lose control of this press conference tomorrow, and you’ll be embarrassed.”

“So she thinks the solution is to move me to Grandmother’s? Well, I’m not going.”

She turned and allowed the dog to pull her quickly down the street. He scampered to catch up, and once he was beside her tried to decide whether he should simply allow her to vent or tell her firmly why this was the best thing for her. The problem was that he himself didn’t believe this was the best thing for her. And, speaking selfishly (Good Lord, is she right?), he did want her with him. They were having more fun together this month than they’d ever had when he was healthy.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she continued. “First of all, you can’t live in the apartment alone. Who would feed the cats? Who would feed you? You’d all starve to death. I mean, you can’t even open a can of Pepsi on your own. You couldn’t even put on your windbreaker without my help.”

“Oh, I’d get by,” he said, though he honestly wasn’t sure that he would.

“No, you wouldn’t. You still need people-a lot. And that’s only one of the reasons why this idea is so dumb. We both know that bringing Tanya across town wouldn’t be fair to Grandmother’s dog. Not at his age. And it probably wouldn’t be fair to Tanya, either. She’s just starting to get used to our apartment.”

She was looking straight ahead, but he thought he detected a slight quiver in her voice.

“And then there’s me. I don’t want to go there, period. It’s not that I don’t love Grandmother, because obviously I do. I mean, I stay with her part of every summer, don’t I?”

“Your mother and I thought you liked going to New Hampshire!”