Before You Know Kindness (38 page)

“I feel so bad for him.”

“And for my daughter.”

Dominique nodded. “Yes. And for your daughter.”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“We are, aren’t we?” She smiled.

“Spencer and my son aren’t speaking. And it’s making everything difficult. This weekend my son and his family are visiting the city, and I want to do something special for my granddaughters’ birthdays. Unfortunately, whatever I do, it won’t involve Spencer. He won’t go because John will be present.”

Dominique pasted on her face what she hoped was a thoughtful expression: one that was interested and winning and sympathetic. Inside, however, she was feeling peevish. She wanted to resume her run. Besides, it was this woman’s son whose indefensible enthusiasm for hunting had left one of her most senior staff members permanently disabled. “And you’re telling me this . . . why?” she said finally.

“Because Spencer is doing this for you. For FERAL.”

“He’s not talking to John for FERAL? Or he’s suing the gun manufacturer for FERAL? Forgive me, but which?”

“Both.”

She inhaled. She wanted to correct this woman, to explain to her in no uncertain terms that Spencer was suing Adirondack, first, because the long-term costs of his disability would be enormous and, second, because he saw no reason why so many animals should be hunted and killed with weapons capable of inflicting precisely as much pain as he himself had been enduring since the middle of the summer. Nevertheless, she would be patient. She had to. She hadn’t a choice. She was a public figure, and, besides, Spencer was very good at what he did.

And so she said simply, “And you want me to do something.”

The woman’s jaw fell slack, and for the briefest of seconds she actually saw the gold fillings residing in the teeth in the lower half of her mouth. Clearly the responses Spencer’s mother had anticipated had not included what she had heard as an offer to help. It wasn’t, of course, in Dominique’s mind. It was merely a confirmation of what Nan Seton was asking; but if this other person had heard more than she meant and it would allow her to disengage from this unwanted conversation quickly, so be it.

“Yes, I do,” Nan answered. “You’re his boss. I don’t see how his refusal to talk to my son is benefiting anyone. I don’t see how this press conference next week will help. It seems to me, all any of this is doing is tearing my family apart.”

“I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have to be that way. But I’m sure you’ve seen how much pain Spencer has been in since your granddaughter shot him. Right?”

Nan seemed to flinch on either the word
granddaughter
or
shot;
Dominique couldn’t tell which.

“Imagine, then: Spencer was shot with a gun and a bullet designed to inflict exactly that sort of agony on a deer.”

“The deer die quickly,” Nan said.

“Some do. But that doesn’t make it right. And some run for hours before they die. Or days. The truth is, an awful lot of deer die slowly of their wounds or of starvation because they are unable to browse. And every minute of it they are enduring what your son-in-law is experiencing now.”

“None of that justifies the turmoil my family is experiencing.”

“Reasonable people could debate that. Look at your sweet companion animal here. Why is it acceptable to inflict such pain on a deer but not on this fine creature? Why is a dog more deserving of our protection than a deer?”

“I don’t want to be theoretical. I’m speaking as a mother. As the head of a family. None of this justifies Spencer not speaking to John.”

“Spencer’s angry. Can you blame him?”

“John is very sorry.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“Look, I’m very concerned about this!”

Dominique scratched the dog once again behind his ears. Her patience, she realized, was at an end. “I’ll talk to Spencer,” she said simply.

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. That’s the right thing to do, you know.”

She nodded, wished this old woman a pleasant evening, and slipped her headphones back over her ears. It was semantics, but she told herself as she started to jog that she had never said to Nan Seton precisely
what
she would say to Spencer. She guessed she wouldn’t tell him anything that he didn’t already know. His mother-in-law wanted the two boys to play nicely in the sandbox. And that, she understood, was no more likely than FERAL deciding not to hold a press conference on Spencer McCullough’s behalf.

THURSDAY NIGHT CATHERINE
phoned her brother. Spencer and Charlotte were in the living room listening to the CD for
The Secret Garden,
playing over and over the cuts in which young Mary Lennox had her solos. Though Catherine was happy to see the two of them spending so much time together, she feared if she had to hear that over-the-top feigned British accent much more—both the one that young actress had used on Broadway and the one her daughter was attempting—she would take the disc and flip it from their apartment window like a flying saucer. She called John while she cleaned up the dinner dishes largely so she could hold the phone against her ear with her shoulder. She hoped that the combination of the conversation, the running water, and the sound that she made when she scrubbed hard, blackened vegetable matter from the bottom of a cast-iron skillet would drown out the Victorian melodrama being reenacted in her living room.

“So, I gather we’ll see you on Saturday,” he was saying to her. Yesterday she and Sara had coordinated the logistics of the Seton family’s visit to Manhattan this weekend, and Sara clearly had briefed her husband on the itinerary.

“Yes, indeed. God, I can’t even remember the last time I went to the Cloisters,” she said. “How old was I? Eleven? Ten? I was definitely younger than Charlotte.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t with you.”

“You sound tense.”

“Gee, I can’t imagine why I might be tense. Can you?”

“You won’t even see Spencer this weekend. He’s going to take advantage of the fact we’ll be at the Cloisters on Saturday to prepare for the press conference. And on Sunday Dominique is speaking at some rally against the cat show at the Garden, and Spencer’s going to join her. ”

“But the point is, I would like to see Spencer. I want this cold war behind us.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“I know.”

“The thing is . . .”

“Yes?”

“The thing is, he seems so happy these days. He really does. Or, at least, serene. He barely flinched when I told him I’ve been a closet carnivore all these years.”

“Better living through drugs. I’m sure it’s the painkillers.”

“Well, clearly they’re helping with his injury—though he’s still hurting a lot. But what I meant is something different. His attitude. Do you know what he’s doing right this second?”

“Tell me.”

“He’s rehearsing with Charlotte. Again. Suddenly he’s become superdad.”

“Spencer never does anything halfway.”

“Marriage, maybe.”

“Excuse me?”

She wasn’t sure why she had said that, and she wished now that she could take it back. She couldn’t, however, not with John, and so she told him—hoping to diminish the significance of her inadvertent disclosure—“I was just grousing.”

“Indeed.”

“It’s been years since I’ve had more than half of Spencer’s attention, because so much has always gone to pigs and monkeys and circus bears. And now that’s he become superdad, I have him even less. He used to . . .”

She was going to say,
He used to worship me. When we were in college, the man had actually worshipped me.
And even though it was true, she couldn’t bring herself to verbalize such an idea to her older brother, especially since college had been so very many years ago now.

“He used to what?” John asked her. “Go ahead.”

The irony, of course, was that seven or eight weeks ago she wasn’t even sure she wanted to remain married to him. Why now was she begrudging him his composure? Here he was crippled and in pain, yet he was striving to be more giving, more tolerant. Why was she still angry with him? Was it all because of that press conference? “We don’t need to discuss this,” she said. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Ah, that’s what I like to see: our family’s wondrous emotional repression in action. Good work, Sis. Mother would be proud.”

“Mother’s back now,” she said. “She got home late this afternoon.” She put the skillet in the drying rack and wiped her hands on the dish towel.

“So I hear. I gather she’s joining us at the Cloisters, too.”

“Yup.”

“And we’re doing something with you and Charlotte to celebrate the girls’ birthdays, right? A brunch or a dinner or something?”

“Mother wants us to do brunch on Sunday. Someplace elegant that would give the girls a chance to get dressed up and consume vast numbers of Shirley Temples.”

“Charlotte will want a mimosa.”

“She might. But even she has seemed oddly composed the last week.”

“Maybe it’s that play.”

She squirted gel into the dishwasher and pushed the door shut. “Maybe,” she agreed.

“And Spencer’s definitely not coming?”

“To the brunch? Nope—though he did apologize.”

“Well, I’m glad Charlotte’s feeling better.”

“I didn’t say she’s feeling better. I said she’s composed. It’s pretty clear she’s still shaken.”

“Willow’s a wreck. Well, maybe not a wreck. But she’s very stressed by the idea of a deposition at some point in the coming months.”

She stood up straight. “Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Charlotte is, too. Or she was. She seems fine now. But she had one final meltdown before she became the great, unflappable thespian. It was last week when we were having breakfast with Paige Sutherland. The deposition came up, and Charlotte got all weird about lie detector tests.”

“Lie detector tests?”

“That’s right. She said she would refuse to take one. And then she stormed off to the ladies’ room.”

“Well, the idea of a deposition must be very scary for them. Lord knows I’m dreading mine. Alas, that’s one more part of this nightmare for which I can take credit.”

“Beat yourself up. There isn’t enough pain going around at the moment.”

“You know,” he said, “if only Spencer would talk to me. It would make such a difference.”

“What exactly would you say to him?”

“I honestly don’t know. But the idea of us simply returning to speaking terms would be huge. We wouldn’t have to discuss the lawsuit. We could talk about, I don’t know, all the other things we have in common.”

“Like hunting?”

“Like raising daughters. Like playing tennis.”

“The two of us don’t even talk about tennis anymore, and it used to be something we were pretty passionate about. Even during the finals at Flushing Meadows this month—remember how Spencer and I always got tickets when we were younger?—I don’t think we said one single word about tennis.”

“I wish I could talk to him about this press conference. That’s the main thing. I understand the lawsuit. Really, I do. It’s FERAL’s involvement and the media frenzy he wants to create that I find so disturbing. It’s the way my daughter and my niece are being dragged into this in such a public fashion.”

“And you, too.”

“Yes, obviously. Me, too. But if we were talking, there would still be hope. There—”

“John, you couldn’t stop this train even if Spencer would hear you out. It’s way beyond the station. He thinks his lawsuit against the gun company is a way of showing Charlotte this wasn’t her fault.”

“Maybe I should drop by the apartment when you’re all at the Cloisters. What do you think? Spencer and I could talk this out—maybe even get to the point where he’d be willing to join us on Sunday for brunch.”

“He won’t even be here, he’ll be working at FERAL. He’s still learning to use his new left-handed keyboard and mouse, but at least he has such things at the office. His voice input software hasn’t arrived yet—”

“He will need that now, won’t he?”

“Well, it will help.”

“God, this is awful.”

“Please, stop it. Okay? Yes, it’s awful.” While she paused, she heard Charlotte drawing out the first syllable in the word
garden
as if she were holding a musical note, and softening the
r
almost to the point of nonexistence. Her mind was flashing back now to that breakfast last week with Paige Sutherland. She couldn’t imagine there was some important detail about that horrible night in New Hampshire that she didn’t know. What had occurred was pretty clear: Her brother had left his loaded rifle in the trunk of his Volvo, and her daughter had thought her husband was a deer and accidentally shot him. It was only complicated if you were a lawyer. Why then had Charlotte freaked out about a lie detector test? Why was Willow, in John’s words, a wreck about the idea of the deposition?

Was it possible there was something she had missed? Something all the grown-ups had missed? Certainly she had asked Charlotte again when they’d had breakfast with Paige. And Charlotte had insisted there was nothing more to the story than what they already knew.

Actually, that wasn’t quite accurate. Charlotte had retreated angrily to the ladies’ room at the very suggestion something more had occurred that night. And so she decided that when Lee Strasberg was done with their daughter—or, perhaps, before Charlotte went to bed—she and her daughter would have a chat.

“Tell me,” her brother was asking her, “how would Spencer react if I just showed up at his office on Saturday afternoon?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to go there. You probably wouldn’t get past the guard in the lobby, anyway.”

“Why don’t I just see how I’m feeling that day—and whether I’ve managed to marshal some arguments that might make a difference to him? Play it by ear?”

She sighed. “Sure. Why not?”

In the living room Spencer and Charlotte continued to work, and Catherine wondered how she had wound up an outsider.

BY TEN O’CLOCK
Spencer was sound asleep. The combination of an extra sleeping pill, the pain in what remained of his shoulder, and the ceaseless exertion of trying to learn to exist with one functioning arm had exhausted him. And so Catherine left their bedroom and knocked on Charlotte’s door. She hoped the child was finishing her homework and was about to go to bed herself. She wasn’t. She was on the computer sending instant messages to her friends. Catherine looked at the communications on the screen and realized that Charlotte wasn’t chatting with her usual pals, but instead with the kids—teenagers, actually—who were in the upcoming musical with her.