Before You Know Kindness

by Chris Bohjalian

  "You're right," she said simply. "You're absolutely right. And as for the press conference, I couldn't tell you whether a surgeon should be there or not--especially since, in my opinion, there shouldn't even be a press conference."

  He seemed to think about this, but he didn't say anything. She considered simply turning out the light without another word, but she couldn't bring herself to be that antagonistic. Not with him like . . . this. And so she leaned over and kissed him once more, a sisterly peck on the forehead. Then she curled up in a ball under the sheet, reached for the knob on the bedside lamp, and murmured a distant good night.

  NAN MOVED CAREFULLY up the trail in the woods, watching for tree roots and rocks with every step. She'd been careful to park her car at the edge of the lot at the trailhead so that it was visible from the road, but this little hike had been such a spontaneous decision that she hadn't even told Marguerite she was going. No one in the world knew she was here. She'd driven to North Conway first thing in the morning to buy bed linens at the outlet mall--some of her sheets had been in need of replacement for a very long time, and the ones in which Spencer had slept (and sweated and oozed) in his convalescence were beyond salvation--and on the way home she had surprised herself by pulling into the parking lot at the base of Artists' Bluff, a little peak across the street from Echo Lake. Why not? she had asked herself. It wasn't quite noon, she had sneakers in the trunk of her car, and it felt like sixty or sixty-five degrees outside. Other than the short nature walks around Sugar Hill on which she had taken her granddaughters, she hadn't gone on a single hike this summer and already it was the second week in September.

  It was only now, however, when she'd been walking alone in the woods for half an hour and begun to feel a bit winded that she began to question whether this agreeable little hike was wise. She worried suddenly (and uncharacteristically) that she might trip and break an ankle or, worse, her hip. She might be stranded here for hours. Perhaps even overnight.

  No, not overnight. There had been another car in the parking lot, and so there had to be somebody else somewhere along the trail. Still, it would not be pleasant to sit for hours in the woods with a broken bone, and she was glad she had parked her automobile where people could see it.

  She pushed aside a branch and continued upward. The end of the trail, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes farther, was a bluff with a panoramic vista of Cannon Mountain, Echo Lake, and, looming to the east, Mount Lafayette.

  She wondered if this modest ramble had been inspired in some fashion because on the way home she had driven past the cliff on which the Old Man of the Mountain had once resided. Never had she supposed she would outlive him. Never. But she had. For only the second time since he had slid down the crag to his death--and the first since the days immediately after his collapse--she had actually pulled into the viewing area off the interstate to gaze up at the spot where ledges of red granite had once formed the face of one very tough hombre.

  Tough even by her standards. The Old Man of the Mountain had never been a gentle grandfather. In Nan's mind, he had always been the sort of character who, with a bit of bombast and a cantankerous hiss, really would have insisted that he would live free or die. Maybe that was why she liked him. In the last years of his life, of course, he'd been a little long in the tooth. Everybody knew it. He'd been forced by his mere flesh and blood caretakers--young pups a tiny fraction his age--to don steel cables and turnbuckles. To smooth epoxy on his visage like face cream.

  But she still hadn't ever expected that she would live to see him gone.

  It pained Nan to admit it, but she was scared of dying. She had absolutely no confidence that anything awaited her once the old ticker broke down. And though some people, such as Walter Durnip, were fortunate enough to glissade away in their sleep--none of the pain or mess or dreadful inconvenience that came with a long illness--most were not. Most people went slowly, their vigor sapped from them bit by bit in small, degrading increments.

  For all she knew, a year from now an impulsive jaunt such as this to the top of Artists' Bluff would be impossible. For all she knew, a year from now she would be dead.

  When the Old Man had first crumbled, she had scoffed at the sentimental outpouring she had witnessed. The memorial service, the obituaries. The hundreds of e-mails of condolence that in the days after his demise people sent to the Web site for the state's Division of Parks and Recreation. At the time, it had struck her as more than a little ridiculous.

  It seemed less absurd to her now, and she guessed this had something to do with the way her own family was ailing. Aging. Separating. She understood that some pieces of earth transcended mere rock and vista and were capable of summoning a particular place in time. A precise memory, an echo of a season in one's life. She knew that the view that awaited her at the end of this walk would conjure for her a picnic from thirty years ago, when she and Richard and their two young children had eaten egg-salad sandwiches on boulders on the summit. She would recall the August afternoon when from this peak they had seen a mother black bear and her cub saunter contentedly across a ski trail on Cannon. She would see clearly those bears in her mind, watch them amble once more across the lush green trace in the side of the mountain opposite them.

  Apparently, all that remained of the Old Man was a part of his right ear. If she had brought binoculars, she might have been able to see it. Then again, maybe not. Besides, a bit of ear is not very interesting.

  She was glad that her granddaughters had seen the Old Man over the years, but it grieved her that Patrick had been born too late. She didn't, she decided, mourn the Old Man so much as she mourned the memories he evoked.

  She stepped gingerly over a sprain-causing crevice in a stone and wiped the sweat away from her brow with the sleeve of her sweater. Then she stopped and took her sweater off and tied it girlishly around her neck. She was seventy years old, and she was alone. She was tired. Very, very tired. She had raised her children and most of the time she thought she had raised them well. She was proud that one was a public defender and one was a teacher. Oh, there were certainly moments when they disappointed her or when she questioned their abilities as parents: She recalled her feelings that awful last night in July. Usually, however, she looked upon them with quiet satisfaction.

  But she was nonetheless left wondering: Was this all there was to her life?

  She considered whether she would live to see John and Spencer--the McCulloughs and the Setons, her children--reconcile. She doubted it. She seriously doubted it.

  She stood absolutely still in the path, because she was experiencing an emotion so alien to her that it took her a long moment to understand what it was. When she figured it out, she only half-believed it: dread. Nan Seton knew from many things, but dread had never been among them. It was almost incapacitating. She had the unmistakable feeling that she was dying and a fear that it was not going to be pretty.

  She couldn't possibly stand still, not for a moment more. She considered turning around and returning to the car, but nearly seven decades' worth of persistence and intractability made that impossible, too. And so she did the only thing she could, the only thing she had ever done with her life. She continued forward. She remained on task.

  But the anxiety was with her the rest of the day.

  PAIGE WATCHED CHARLOTTE slather blueberry preserves on her scone and then she noticed Catherine glance at her sideways, and so she smiled. She knew Catherine despised her, but she really didn't care. Spencer liked her and Keenan liked her, and that was all that mattered right now. Hell, it really didn't matter if even they liked her. Besides, it was natural for Catherine to feel conflicted: Though her brother wasn't a defendant, he might wind up looking pretty foolish.

  The three of them were sitting in an elegant little restaurant with great waterfalls of ferns and white linen napkins not far from Brearley that was open for breakfast, because she wanted to discuss with Charlotte--with Charlotte and Catherine, actually--the reality that after the press confere
nce, there might be eager beaver reporters who would want to get the girl in their sights. And she wanted to prevent that. She guessed that Catherine would be her ally on this one, and she was glad: She needed the woman to take on the role of mother lioness. If she were a reporter and the child's parents consistently refused an interview--which Spencer and Catherine had been instructed to do--she might consider making an end-around and try meeting the girl at school for a comment or two. Fortunately, both mother and daughter were at Brearley, so even that would be difficult if Catherine had her guard up.

  Outside it was raining, and the showers had broken the heat wave. It was the tenth, and Paige thought the gray skies and mist might actually make tomorrow's anniversary easier for New Yorkers to bear: There weren't the cloudless, cerulean blue skies everyone associated with the attacks or the image of silver planes hurtling unfettered through the air just above the long, polygonal lines of skyscrapers. She could overhear the diners at the other tables discussing the anniversary--playing the game of one-upmanship that colored so many conversations, the contestants each trying to find personal connections to the tragedy that all too often were as tenuous as they were insulting to the people who'd suffered real loss--and she was glad the three of them were focused largely on FERAL's plans and where this child fit in. She felt almost admirable.

  "So, suppose some guy shows up after play practice? I have one of the leads in the show we're doing. Can you believe it? Eighth grade, and I have one of the two or three best parts. It's The Secret Garden, and I'm Mary Lennox--the little British girl who is so very contrary."

  Paige smiled, at once appreciating the irony that Charlotte was already typecast as a little bitch and that the kid was going to play a girl saved, in part, by a garden.

  "Anyway," the child continued, "suppose there's a reporter waiting for me outside the auditorium. What am I supposed to do, give him a judo chop?"

  "Go find a grown-up. And don't say a word."

  The girl took a healthy bite of her scone, chewed it, and then said, "Be rude?"

  "As rude as you like."

  "No, sweetheart," her mother said. "You don't need to be rude. Ever. You can simply tell the reporter that you have nothing to say, and ask to be excused."

  "Now, Catherine--"

  "Now, Paige. First of all, she doesn't need to be rude. She can leave graciously. Second, given what my husband does for a living, the last thing he would want would be for his daughter to alienate a reporter."

  She started to reach across the tablecloth to touch Catherine's arm, but she had a sense the gesture would be unappreciated right now.

  "What are you so worried about? What do you think they would ask me?" Charlotte said.

  There was a silver pot of coffee between her and Catherine, and so she refilled her cup. "They might ask you about the accident, they might ask you about your father. They might ask you about being a vegetarian."

  "And why don't you want me to talk about that? It's not like I have any secrets, you know."

  "Of course you don't."

  "Then why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?"

  "I want you to save it for the lawyers."

  The child paused with her scone in the air and surveyed it for a moment. Then: "Someday I want restaurants to have butter it's okay for me to eat. I don't like my scones with just jam."

  "You can have butter, sweetheart. Butter's not meat, and--"

  "You know Dad doesn't want me to have dairy."

  "And you know your dad and I don't completely agree on that. I want to be sure you get enough calcium."

  Charlotte put the scone down and looked at her nails. This morning they were painted a robin's egg blue that Paige thought looked quite nice with the navy skirt the child had to wear while in the middle school at Brearley.

  "These conversations with lawyers," the girl said. "I've wanted to ask you about that. Will they be in a courtroom?"

  "Maybe down the road. Far down the road. But at this point I just meant in an office. Probably my office. It's all part of the process: your way of helping people to learn how dangerous guns are and how evil deer hunting is."

  "The thing is," the girl began, turning toward her with eyes that were wide and slightly bewildered. "I don't think deer hunting is all that evil. Really. I think Uncle John is a pretty normal guy."

  Paige looked quickly at Catherine, but the girl's mom, it was clear, may actually have agreed with the child. "I wasn't aware you felt that way about hunting, Charlotte. Thank you. You're entitled to your opinions. I'll be sure not to ask you for your thoughts on that subject. And I think we can assume that Adirondack won't either. Mostly the lawyers will want to know exactly what you recall about the night the accident occurred," she said, resorting--as she did always--to the passive when discussing the shooting. She did not believe she had ever used the construction "when you shot your father" or "when your daughter shot you" or even the vaguely innocuous "when Charlotte inadvertently discharged the firearm" around any of the McCulloughs.

  "They'll just ask me what happened?"

  "Uh-huh. They'll want you to reconstruct what occurred that night. Exactly what you did at the country club, exactly what you did when you got home. There will be other questions, of course. Other things will surely come up. General things, like I said. But most of it will be about the night your father was injured."

  The girl's gaze returned to its normal eighth-grade pout. She wiped at her lips with her fingers. "Will there be a lie detector?"

  "A lie detector?"

  "You know, one of those things that tells people if you're lying. It monitors your heartbeat or your sweat or something."

  "I know what a lie detector is. I was only repeating the question because I was surprised you'd even worry about such a thing. There will most certainly not be a lie detector. I can promise you that."

  "Good."

  "You sound relieved," Paige said, her antennae now up.

  "No. But I still wouldn't take one."

  "Any special reason why not?"

  "I just wouldn't," she said. "And I'm pretty sure that's, like, my constitutional right or something."

  Slowly Catherine turned toward her daughter, and she was looking at her with apprehension: as if the child were a stranger on the street whose intentions were suspect. Paige knew that if this girl were her daughter, she would be reacting exactly the same way. It was the way the kid had snapped "Good" a moment ago and then announced that she wouldn't take a lie detector test. Paige began to wonder if she really did know exactly what had gone on that night in New Hampshire. If, for that matter, any of the grown-ups did.

  And maybe that was the problem: These parents--Spencer and Catherine, Sara and John--farmed their daughters out to Charlotte's grandmother for a major chunk of the summer, and maybe that was indicative of their parenting attitudes in general. Paige had no delusions that she would be a better parent than any of these people, but then she also didn't have any expectations that she would have to try . . . at least not in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, she liked to believe that educated people who chose to become parents would not become so absorbed in their own lives that they would grow oblivious to whatever it was their children were thinking. Or doing. Especially if they were going to leave loaded weapons in the trunks of their cars.

  But, of course, they became less mindful over time. It was inevitable. Often people like the Setons and the McCulloughs were particularly impressive when it came to finding interests other than their own children: Their careers--clients and causes, patients and students. Their marriages. Gardens. Guns.

  Nevertheless, Paige decided now there was definitely something curdling in the back of this kid's head that her parents weren't exploring with sufficient resolve, and something had occurred that last night in July that no one knew about except this girl. Perhaps this girl and her cousin.

  "It is my constitutional right . . . right?" Charlotte was asking her.

  "I'm not a constitutional lawyer," she answere
d carefully, not wanting to lie but still hoping to plant a small seed of fear in the child's mind. "Nevertheless, I don't believe the men who framed the Constitution even envisioned such a device as a lie detector machine."

  "Well, I won't take one."

  "Charlotte?" her mother said, a nervous tinniness to her voice. "Did something else happen that night you haven't told us about? Is there something more we need to know?"

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  "Like what? You think I shot Dad on purpose? Is that what you're thinking? Well, I didn't, and I can't believe you'd even accuse me of such a thing!"

  "I didn't accuse you of anything. That idea hadn't even crossed my mind," Catherine said, but Charlotte clearly wasn't listening. The girl pulled her napkin from her lap and heaved it in a messy ball on the tablecloth.

  "Isn't it bad enough that I shot him by accident? Isn't that horrible enough?" she said, barely choking out her second sentence before storming off in the direction of the ladies' room.