Before You Know Kindness (37 page)

“I have a couple memories of her. Once we went looking for seashells together, right? I was three, maybe. It was a windy day and the waves seemed humongous—but I’m sure they weren’t.”

“No. They weren’t.”

“And didn’t she finger-paint with me one time? On newspapers on a glass table?”

“She did.”

“But maybe I just remember that because you or Mom told me about it.”

“Maybe.”

“So, why do you think she never tried to become an actress?”

“Oh, I don’t know if she had the talent. Or the discipline. Or the desire. I’m not sure she ever figured out precisely what she wanted.”

“That’s so sad.”

“She had her moments. She adored you,” he murmured softly. Then, almost abruptly, as if waking up from a trance, he said, “Now, your mother and I have been thinking about your birthday. I know it was a couple of weeks ago, but we didn’t do a whole lot and that was wrong. A birthday is still a birthday.”

“It was fine, really. I didn’t mind that we didn’t have a party,” she said, once more trying to sound like Mary Lennox. She decided she was unhappy with the way she had just rolled the
r
in
really
(too Scottish, she thought) but immensely satisfied with the crisp way she had enunciated
party
. “Besides, I already have what I want.” There: A girl such as Mary Lennox would most assuredly have said
have
instead of
got
.

“This part?”

“Yes, Father,” she replied.
Father
. Now that was a nice British touch. She had never called her dad
Father
before, and she liked how it sounded.

“Would you like a party now? I know it’s late, but we could still have one.”

Next Tuesday was that press conference. That meant, she presumed, that her father would be crazed this coming weekend. Almost certainly he would not be around. “Well, anything we do should wait until after the press conference. So if we have a party or go someplace special—and I’m not saying we should—I’d understand if we did it the following weekend. Or even next month. Okay?”

“Sweetheart, the press conference is a completely separate event from your birthday. And I think it’s under control. At this point, it doesn’t look like I’ll have to do a whole lot more than show up. And so I think I can manage both—a party and my responsibilities at the office,” he said, and as he spoke he accidentally knocked the ceramic bowl of pretzels onto the floor with his good arm.

The floor was carpeted and so the dish survived its plummet intact, but the pretzels scattered everywhere like small toasted Pick-up Sticks. She watched her father reflexively lean over to start gathering them up, and she glimpsed the wince he was able neither to conceal nor control. And so instantly she knelt down and started sweeping them up with her hands, telling her dad to stay put, that she could do this.

Much to her surprise, he did. “Fair enough,” he said with a sigh, and he fell back gingerly against the cushions.

When she had recovered the pretzels she returned to her spot on the couch, wondering if he would say something about his clumsiness or his helplessness or his simple inability to pick pretzels up off the floor. She wondered if he would be angry. Quickly she put the cap back on the yellow highlighter they’d been using to mark the script, because she knew how difficult it would be for him with one hand.

“So: Your birthday,” he continued instead, as if nothing had happened. “What would make you happy?”

The short answer was easy: Her father to have a functioning right arm once again. To go back in time to July. To no longer live with the constant, only barely suppressed awareness of what she had done.

This wasn’t an option, however, it wasn’t anything her father could give her. It wasn’t anything her father was even contemplating with the question. And so she thought for a moment, wondering exactly what she did want. And she had the sense as she sat in the living room and learned her lines with her . . . 
father
 . . . a father who was at once strangely placid and uncharacteristically present . . . that right now she was indeed (and she heard Mary Lennox using precisely these words)
about as content as a girl could be, given her current circumstances
.

“I’m happy,” she said, and she pulled from deep within herself a smile for her father’s benefit. “I really don’t want anything more for my birthday. But . . .”

“Yes?”

“Thank you, Father. Thank you for the thought.”

Twenty-seven

“S
o Catherine really doesn’t know about this?”  “Nope,” Spencer said. “She doesn’t. I considered telling her, but then I thought I might as well surprise her, too.”

“Well, I think it’s sweet. Maybe a little crazy—the not telling your wife part. Actually, that’s a lot crazy. But it’s certainly a lovely gift for Charlotte. You’re a good dad.”

He smiled at Randy Mitchell, the former Granola Girl who had become his most senior assistant, as they walked down Fifty-ninth Street to the Humane Society of New York’s animal adoption center. The shelter was a no-kill facility, which meant they only euthanized animals that were terminally ill. He had asked Randy to join him because she had a dog, a mutt she insisted was part springer spaniel and—based on the way its tail stood up like a dust mitt and folds of skin hung like drapes between its fore and hind legs—part flying squirrel. Spencer had met the dog, and the creature was among the most unattractive animals he’d ever seen outside the Discovery Channel. But she was playful and happy, and Randy adored her.

Spencer was particularly appreciative that he had Randy’s help this afternoon because it was Thursday evening, a mere five days before the press conference, and Randy had better things to do than help her boss pick out a shelter dog. He imagined he would have come here alone before the accident.

Then he guessed he wouldn’t have come here at all. He would have been unwilling to get a dog before the accident. He’d always told his daughter that he believed it was cruel to keep one in a New York City apartment, but the truth was that until now he simply hadn’t been willing to have his life complicated by the attention a dog needed—especially one that lived in an apartment.

The animal was going to be a belated birthday present for Charlotte: three weeks belated, in fact, and if for that reason alone quite a surprise. The humane society didn’t allow same-day adoptions, and so Spencer’s plan today was to fill out the forms and choose the dog. Then on Monday he and Randy would return after work for the animal. At that point he’d really need his assistant, because he was quite sure that he was incapable of bringing a dog—and all of its accoutrements—back across town to his family’s apartment with one hand.

“I’m not a good dad,” he said. “But I’m trying.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s a beautiful day, I bet you’ve got a pocketful of Percocet, and you’re about to bring another companion animal into your family’s life. Give yourself a break.”

Randy’s FERAL-speak caused him to cringe slightly—even he viewed dogs and cats as
pets
rather than as
companion animals
—but it was a lovely day, he agreed. And his shoulder actually felt a little better this morning. He was not for one moment oblivious to the pain, but today, at least, it was tolerable: a steady ache that was considerably more pronounced than the feeling of a pebble lodged inside one’s shoe but no more debilitating. According to Nick, his physical therapist, the pain probably would never, ever disappear completely, but eventually it would diminish to the point it was at now—and that would be without the gloriously buffering power of the small candy jar of painkillers he was consuming daily. Moreover, he’d gone to a barber this morning and had the whiskers on his face trimmed and shaped into something that resembled a beard. He looked less like an over-the-hill grunge rocker and more like a tweedy English professor. The beard still had a distance to go, but already he liked the air it gave him, and the way the facial hair seemed to shrink his ears to something like a normal size. Granted, his forehead seemed to stretch now into Quebec. But the ears? Almost average. For the first time since the accident, the world didn’t seem quite so exhausting.

THE DOG THAT HE CHOSE
was a two-year-old combination of collie and something more petite, with dark eyes and fur that felt like satin against the fingers on his left hand. She weighed just over forty pounds. Her name was Tanya, and she’d wound up at the shelter when her owner had lost his job and a pet—especially a not insubstantial one with an appetite that could only be called impressive—suddenly seemed an unacceptable luxury. Moreover, she’d had emergency surgery the day after she arrived at the humane society, because she’d swallowed a small rubber ball and it had lodged in her intestines. Tanya was a quiet animal who, according to the young woman from the shelter who was assisting them, had always done well in an apartment.

The decision had only been difficult for Spencer for the simple reason that there had been so many needy dogs present, and every single one of them seemed to be barking desperately for his attention. The animals in their pens were so loud that he and Randy and Heather Conn, their guide at the shelter, had to shout to be heard over the din. And while Spencer considered any number of the smaller dogs there—the mutts who seemed to be largely terrier, spaniel, or beagle—simply because they would be easier for him to manage with only one arm, he was drawn to this serene miniversion of Lassie. He decided that Tanya would have been perfect if she were ten or fifteen pounds lighter, both because of his disability and because of the finite space in their apartment. Still, his mother-in-law’s dog lived in an apartment, and that animal seemed quite content.

He had a vision now in his mind of Tanya running through the lupine in Sugar Hill with Nan’s golden retriever, but then he remembered that dog hadn’t run anywhere since the last presidential administration. Still, he saw Tanya racing off the porch and onto the badminton court, jumping into the air after one of the badminton birdies. He saw the dog lounging with her nose on Charlotte’s lap as the girl sat on the carpet before the fireplace in the New Hampshire living room. He saw her walking at his side as he strolled out toward those apple trees, the ones that bordered the . . . vegetable garden.

Oh, there would be no vegetable garden. Never again. He knew that.

But the dog might walk between his daughter and him as they strolled down his mother-in-law’s driveway late in the afternoon, the sun still high because it was only the last week in July.

As he walked the dog up First Avenue, he felt shivers of pain in his right shoulder every time Tanya pulled against her leash and yanked his left arm. The sensation rippled across his upper back and became transformed from a simple awareness of a tug to the feeling of a knife slicing through skin. It was sharp and it stung. Still, he had endured far worse over the last month and a half. Far worse. The dog sniffed everything in sight on the street, from the garbage cans to the sewer grates to the stations on which hung the antiquated pay phones.

Heather and Randy were walking a few paces behind him, chatting. He wondered if perhaps he should bring the animal home tomorrow—Friday—instead of on Monday. The advantage was that Charlotte didn’t have school on Saturday and Sunday, and so she would have more time to bond with the pet. They all would. Moreover, Monday might be chaos for him because of the press conference on Tuesday, and it was certainly possible that his day would get away from him and he wouldn’t even be able to make it to the humane society to pick the animal up.

On the other hand, Willow was arriving this weekend and surely Charlotte would want to see her. And Sara and Willow and ol’ Francis Macomber wanted to take Charlotte and Catherine to the Cloisters on Saturday.

“You have cats, right?” It was Heather talking to him, the woman standing suddenly right beside him. Her eyes were blue and she was staring at him intensely.

“Yes. Two.”

“I believe Tanya’s pretty good with cats. But when we get back, let’s bring her to the playroom on the third floor of the shelter. We can see how she does there with some of the cats we have right now.”

“Okay.”

She pushed her bangs off her face and gazed at his sling. “How are you doing?” she asked. “It looks like she’s giving you a pretty good workout.”

“I’m right-handed.”

“When do you get your arm back?”

“Never.”

“Are you serious?”

“Completely. Nerve damage.”

She nodded thoughtfully and then said, “Your daughter’s thirteen, right?”

“Just turned thirteen, yes.”

“So, tell me: What are you going to do in four or five years when she leaves home? When she goes to college or gets a job?”

“You mean in regard to Tanya?”

“Yup. You said this dog would be a present for her.”

“I guess I’ll be walking her more often, then.”

“I presume you’re married.”

“I am,” he said. Glib responses passed through his head:
For the moment. At present. Trying like hell.
But he squashed them because the last thing he wanted was to give Heather the idea that Tanya might be brought back to the shelter at some point in the next four or five years because his daughter was leaving for college and his marriage had gone belly up. And though he knew it wasn’t necessary, he felt a prickle of defensiveness—that old anger—at the sensitive spot this woman inadvertently had touched, and he continued in a voice that was needlessly sharp, “Really, you don’t need to worry about my commitment to this dog. I’ve devoted my life to trying to stop animal cruelty: The last thing I would ever do is act irresponsibly in regard to this creature or behave in a manner that would in any way make her life difficult.”

“You don’t need to sell me on your devotion to animals,” Heather said. “I was only asking because I like Tanya, and I will do what I can to make sure she has a happy new life.”

Quickly Randy took the leash from him and gently reeled Tanya in. She knelt on the sidewalk before the animal and nuzzled her. “I think you are going to love every minute of your life with the McCullough family. Yes, I do,” she said, murmuring into the dog’s snout as if it were a microphone. And though she was talking to Tanya, Spencer knew she was speaking largely for Heather’s benefit. He sighed, forced himself to relax. He was very glad she had joined him.

LATER THAT DAY,
farther uptown in Central Park, Nan Seton walked her own dog. Though the sun had set it was still light out, and they were on the path just north of the museum that bordered the reservoir. They were passed by joggers and young people on in-line skates, and sometimes the dog would crane his nose into the air as the exercisers slid by, savoring the aromas that their exertions left in their wake.

She liked walking the dog, despite the fact that she no longer felt well, because it created routine. And Nan cherished routine. Granted, in the country it was nice also just to allow the animal to wander aimlessly into the fields of lupine that surrounded her house. But here in Manhattan? It was reassuring to have a regimen. It would not expunge the despondency that had begun to envelope her in New Hampshire, but it would take her mind off it for long moments at a time. She could focus once more on the small repetitive acts and social rituals that filled out her days in the city, instead of on her fears for her family once she was gone. No one—no thing—was irreplaceable. But some people were more useful than others. And now she had to contend with the reality that whatever was ailing her (and Nan knew it was real, because she was many things but a hypochondriac was not among them) was not merely going to take her: When she was gone, her family would still be estranged.

She had just turned around and started back toward the park’s exit, the dog’s leash in one hand, when she saw that woman whom she believed was her son-in-law’s boss jogging in her direction. Dominique Germaine. She was wearing the sort of tight Lycra bike shorts which in Nan’s opinion bordered on the indecent and a halter top that left little of the woman’s stomach to the imagination. She was wearing a headset as she ran.

Nan didn’t believe the woman would recognize her as Spencer McCullough’s mother-in-law, though they had been introduced two or three times, including one afternoon when Spencer had lectured about George Bernard Shaw and nineteenth-century vegetarianism to a luncheon crowd at the Colony Club. (Nan had felt a twinge of guilt that the club had served salmon that day, but certainly her son-in-law hadn’t expected them to serve something with beans or tofu to a group of already gaseous elderly women.) She hadn’t really thought about what she was going to do—or why—but she called out to the woman as she approached, “Excuse me.”

Dominique stopped and for a moment jogged in place, and Nan could tell that she was trying to decide whether this stranger who was accosting her was a FERAL friend or foe. Clearly she was accustomed to being stopped by unfamiliar people. Then she allowed her legs to stop churning and bent down to pet the dog on the leash.

“This is a beautiful animal,” she murmured, and she nuzzled her face against his. “I am so sorry that I don’t have any Kibble-Soys for you,” she said ruefully to the dog.

“Kibble-Soys?”

“Meat-free dog biscuits.”

Nan resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “My name is Nan Seton. You are Dominique Germaine, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged. Are you a member of FERAL? I do hope so.”

“Well, I give money to your group each year in December. But I don’t know if I am, technically, a member.”

“Certainly you are. Thank you. We—the animals—appreciate whatever you give. Truly.”

“I’m Spencer McCullough’s mother-in-law.”

The woman rose to her feet, and Nan felt an odd and unexpected twinge of pride at her reaction.

“Well. I am so sorry about what happened,” she said. “It is such a tragedy.”

“John Seton is my son.”

“Of course he is,” she said, and instantly returned their conversation to her son-in-law. “It’s so good to have Spencer back. You can’t imagine. We missed him dreadfully this summer. Dreadfully.”

“I haven’t seen him since he was in New Hampshire. I only returned to the city a few hours ago. I may see him this Saturday or Sunday. I hope so.”

“He’s doing so much better this week. Really. So much better. He will, of course, never—”

“I know all the things he will never do again,” she said, surprising herself by cutting the woman off. She knew she could be blunt—on occasion even curt—but rarely would she interrupt someone while that other person was speaking.