Before You Know Kindness (31 page)

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 answered 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.

After a long, awkward moment, Catherine said quietly, “I can’t believe she would fear for even a split second that I would think such a thing. I just can’t believe it.” Then she took a breath to compose herself and followed after her daughter.

Paige nodded in agreement as a courtesy, but the truth was that the notion had come to her before, and now, she knew, it was going to remain lodged in her mind whenever the subject of that night in New Hampshire came up. Thank God the kid never would have to take a lie detector test. Who the hell knew what the child really had done—and why? Certainly, Paige understood, she didn’t.

And, as a lawyer, she was glad.

Twenty-two

T
he next day, Saturday, Spencer sat alone in a living room chair late in the afternoon and cataloged all the precise ways he and his wife would never make love again, all the small ways he needed both arms—and both hands—when they had sex. It was a sort of negative Kama Sutra, a litany of sexual impossibilities. Some of the losses were pretty basic: Unless he became real proficient at the one-handed push-up, he was never going to be atop Catherine in any manner that wasn’t pathetically smothering—and certainly not in the variant of the old-fashioned missionary position that Catherine preferred, her legs on his shoulders, her ankles behind his head. Other losses were more idiosyncratic to the two of them, the sorts of physical eccentricities any couple with a long history together discover about one another, many of which demanded that he have the use of two hands and plenty of functioning fingers.

And in addition to all the things he no longer could do, there was the reality that whenever he moved his body back and forth with anything that resembled an energetic motion, his arm was going to sway accordingly. Now that was sure to be an aphrodisiac for Catherine: her husband’s increasingly thin and stunted arm banging against her hip, her side, or the back of her leg as he moved inside her.

He and Catherine hadn’t made love since the accident. Of course, they hadn’t made love a whole lot in the months before the accident, either. They’d never talked about it, but something was happening—or, to be precise, not happening—even before his brother-in-law had left a loaded rifle in the trunk of his car. He had gotten a reminder of it the other night in their bed when he brought up the press conference.

He was pulled from his unpleasant little musings when he heard the metallic thud of their copper-core soup pot being dropped onto the burner on the stove. At the moment, Catherine and Charlotte were preparing dinner and setting the table while he sipped a gin and tonic. So far the gin wasn’t doing a whole lot to help buttress the work of the Advil and the Percocet. He still hurt like hell. At least the combination of alcohol and drugs hadn’t sent him spiraling down into a coma, though he did wonder whether a painless coma might actually represent a small improvement over his current circumstances.

The glass was cold from the ice, and he held it gently against the back of his right hand. His arm was still swathed in the sling and cradled tightly against his chest. He didn’t feel a thing, even when he pressed the glass very hard against his knuckles. He didn’t expect he would feel anything, but still the absolute nothingness fascinated him, especially since at the other end of his arm, the sensation—none of it good—was pretty near ceaseless.

He knew he looked a bit scruffy—no, that wasn’t right; he looked exceedingly scruffy—and he considered trying to shave before dinner. It had been days. He gazed at the russet brick wall of the apartment building across the street and the cement skirts of the windows, his mind on the logistics of shaving with his left hand with that electric razor he loathed, and quickly gave up on the idea. He’d never get an electric razor through the scrub pine growing now on his cheeks and chin.

A moment later he heard the phone ringing in the kitchen, and then Charlotte was scooting through the living room with the cordless phone pressed against her ear. She waved at him, and he thought she had mouthed the name “Willow” as she continued past, apparently taking the phone with her to her bedroom at the very end of their apartment’s thin corridor.

WILLOW WAS HAPPY
to hear that her cousin had gotten the part she wanted in the play, but it wasn’t why she had phoned her. As soon as she could she brought up the depositions that loomed before them.

“And that’s why you’re calling?” Charlotte was asking her now, and Willow could hear the disbelief in her cousin’s voice. “They’re still months away!”

“Charlotte, I don’t want to lie.”

“Look, if you’re so worried about getting caught, do what I did: I simply told them I wouldn’t take a lie detector test. I said it was my constitutional right. And Paige—she’s my dad’s lawyer—she said I wouldn’t have to.”

Willow was sitting outside on the front steps of their home in Vermont, savoring the early autumn chill in the air. It wasn’t quite seven, but already the sun was behind the mountains to the west, offering only a strip of red against an otherwise colorless dusk sky. She’d brought the phone out here so her parents wouldn’t overhear her conversation.

“I’m not worried about getting caught. I’m worried about having to lie in the first place. We’re going to have to take oaths, you know.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying we should tell them everything.”

“No way. Why would you want to get Gwen in trouble?”

“Charlotte—”

“Look, they probably won’t even ask us the sorts of questions where we’d have to lie. What are they going to do, say, ‘Willow, were you smoking marijuana the night your cousin found a loaded rifle in the trunk of your dad’s car?’ I don’t think so. They have no idea we did that.”

“But we did. And that’s important. We were both stoned. You wouldn’t have shot your dad if you weren’t stoned.”

“Don’t put it that way. It makes me sound dreadful. And I feel lousy enough as it is. Besides . . .”

“Yes?”

“Besides, none of this would have happened if your dad hadn’t left a loaded gun sitting around in the first place.”

“I realize that. He feels terrible, too, you know.”

“Well, so do I.”

“Look, Charlotte, I didn’t call to fight. I called because I’m scared. I’m scared I’m either going to have to lie under oath or I’m going to have to tell the truth—and I don’t know which would be worse.”

“I do. Trust me: Lie.”

“But I don’t want to, this is too important. My dad’s a lawyer and I know about oaths. I know how these things work. And . . .”

“Yes?”

“And it would be wrong. That’s all. It would be wrong.”

“Telling the truth would only make things worse. I know that doesn’t seem possible, but—believe it or not—it is. Things actually could get worse. A lot worse.”

Willow sensed someone was standing behind her in the mudroom just inside the screen door, and when she turned around her mother held up two fingers to signal that dinner was about two minutes away. Her mother was smiling, and Willow thought she had mouthed the sentence, “Say hi to Charlotte for us.”

“Look, I don’t believe this accident would have happened if you hadn’t been a little bit tipsy and a little bit stoned,” she said to her cousin when her mother once more was out of earshot. “And maybe more than a little bit.”

Charlotte sighed, a gust of wind she heard in her ear. “I don’t know about that.”

“What?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“This week I start seeing a psychiatrist—a friend of your mom’s, I guess. And I’m really glad, because sometimes I wonder if I have even the slightest idea of just how screwed up I am. Sometimes I think I’m keeping it together really well, and then when I’m alone I’ll just lose it completely. And while most of the time I’m only mad at myself, there are other times when I’ll find myself mad at my dad, and then I’ll wonder . . .”

“You’ll wonder what?”

“I’ll wonder if I would have taken the gun even if I hadn’t been stoned.”

“You think so?”

“Sometimes, yeah. Maybe I wouldn’t have fired it. Then again, maybe I would have. Sometimes I even wonder if I really thought I was firing at a . . .”

Her cousin’s voice trailed off, and she was about to ask Charlotte to continue when the older girl abruptly resumed speaking, her voice once more rich with its characteristic flippancy.

“Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the shrink. Excuse me, the therapist. It’ll be good for me! It’ll be good for my dad’s lawsuit, it’ll be good for the work he does for FERAL. So, I’m serious about this, my country cousin: You don’t need to get Gwen involved, you don’t need to bring up the teenagers. You don’t need to say anything—not a word—about the marijuana or the beer. Your dad’s gun would still have been in the trunk of your car even if we hadn’t smoked a little dope and had a couple of beers, and I still would have taken it. Okay?”

“I don’t know,” she said, aware they had hit some sort of impasse. “I should go in for dinner.”

“You do that. We’re about to have dinner here, too.”

Before hanging up Charlotte announced that she would be busy memorizing lines and songs and doing the mountains of homework demanded of someone in the eighth grade, but they could still talk next week if the prospect of the deposition continued to frighten her.

At dinner that night Willow’s parents wanted to know all about Charlotte and
The Secret Garden
—and, simply, how the child was bearing up—and she was sorry that despite the length of their phone call, there was very little she could report.

CHARLOTTE HAD TROUBLE
falling asleep that Saturday night, because she was aware that she had made an important connection: Initially she hadn’t wanted Willow to tell anyone about the marijuana and the beer for the simple reasons that she was afraid she would get in even more trouble and because she didn’t want to imperil what she considered her friendship with the older teenager. Now, however, she understood that secrecy mattered for another reason: She feared if it came out that she had been a little bit high, a little bit drunk, it would jeopardize both her father’s lawsuit against the gun company and the way FERAL was using the accident to tell people that hunting was disgusting and guns were unsafe. And after what had happened (oh, hell,
after what she had done
) she owed it to her father not to imperil either the lawsuit or his organization’s antihunting media campaign.

It was the strangest thing: Her father had spent forty-five minutes with her that afternoon helping her start learning her lines. He’d spent another half hour on the Web finding her photos of the original Broadway production of the musical, so she could see what Mary and Martha and Colin and Dickon had looked like on the stage at the St. James Theater. He would never have taken the time to do either before the accident.

He’d even marked the date—the dates, all five performances of the show—on the calendar in the kitchen, and painstakingly typed e-mails with his left hand to his assistants at FERAL and to Dominique informing them that he absolutely could not be booked anywhere on those days.

Outside her open bedroom window she heard the sirens and the garbage trucks and the occasional car alarm that filled the night, and she wondered why this evening they seemed so very loud and intrusive.