Before You Know Kindness Part 17

They were alone at the moment, and suddenly she wanted them to be beyond this conversation about age before another teacher strolled in. As one certainly would. She wished she hadn't asked him his age now in the first place, because it made her feel disloyal to Spencer. Sometimes she thought the only subject she should talk about was her husband: his disability, his pain, his attempts to regain a semblance of control over his life.

But it was hard. Often she wanted to talk about anything but his injury, especially if she was around people who knew about the way FERAL was going to make the lawsuit a cause celebre. She never wanted to think about that, much less discuss it. It made her feel at once like a bad mother and a bad sister.

And so with an almost guilty quiver to her voice-guilty both because she hadn't been speaking of Spencer sooner and because she was speaking of him now largely out of obligation-she brought up her husband. The transition was awkward, clunky. She guessed it was obvious to Eric that she was changing the subject because she didn't want to flirt with him at the moment.

"Spencer tried going back to work today," she said. "He didn't make it." And then she started describing for this tan younger man with a teacher's playful smile the a.s.sortment of tools that Spencer had lined up on his bureau last night, and the hope that an item as small as a dressing stick or a b.u.t.ton hook would give him these days.

"G.o.d," Eric said simply when she was done. "What can I do?"

"Nothing."

"Surely there's something. Can I bring you guys dinner tomorrow night?"

"We don't need dinner."

"But you have to eat."

"And you can cook? You?"

"Come on: Couldn't you cook when you were twenty-nine?"

"I had been married for six years when I was twenty-nine."

"Wow. You really did get married young."

"Yes. I did," she admitted, and then-concerned that her voice had lacked the angry defensiveness she had once felt whenever someone even hinted that she and Spencer may have married too young-she said quickly, "I was very fortunate. Some people have to wait half a lifetime to find a soul mate."

He nodded. "And some people never do."

"Indeed."

They both were quiet for a moment, and then Eric continued, "So: dinner. How about I bring it by tomorrow night around seven?"

"People have been bringing us meals for the last couple of weeks. Neighbors in the building, our friends, people from FERAL. Since we got back from New Hamps.h.i.+re, I don't think I've made dinner more than four or five times. Seriously: You don't have to do this."

"Ah, but I get get to. There's a difference. Okay? Is anyone bringing you dinner tomorrow night?" to. There's a difference. Okay? Is anyone bringing you dinner tomorrow night?"

"Not that I know of."

"Good. Then I will. I won't stay, but I'll drop off a small feast-no animals, of course. Is dairy all right?"

"Not if you want Spencer to eat."

"Very well, no cream sauces."

"And no soup."

"No soup?"

She shook her head. "It wouldn't be pretty. Spencer has a very long way to go with his left hand."

CATHERINE WAS ACTUALLY PLANNING to play tennis this afternoon for the first time since the accident. She and her friend Angie Merullo were going to meet in the park and play an hour of singles. But once Catherine had heard that Spencer hadn't made it to work she had called Angie and canceled and gone straight home after school. Charlotte would be a couple of hours behind her, because she had an information meeting about the autumn musical. to play tennis this afternoon for the first time since the accident. She and her friend Angie Merullo were going to meet in the park and play an hour of singles. But once Catherine had heard that Spencer hadn't made it to work she had called Angie and canceled and gone straight home after school. Charlotte would be a couple of hours behind her, because she had an information meeting about the autumn musical.

She got to the apartment soon after four and found Spencer sitting up in bed with Emma the cat on his legs. The cat glanced up at her when she entered the bedroom, then gazed back at Spencer. Whenever anyone in their house was ill, it was Emma who would seem most desirous of providing solace and comfort and warmth. She liked to sleep on the sick.

Spencer was wearing tennis shorts and what she presumed was the beige short-sleeved sport s.h.i.+rt he'd put on first thing in the morning, but then she remembered he'd thrown up in the cab and must have changed as soon as he'd returned home. The New York Times New York Times was a wad of crinkled papers on the floor by the bed. Before the accident, Spencer read the newspaper with meticulous care, and even on those days when she would read the paper after him she always found it looking as if it were fresh from the newsstand. No more. It was simply too difficult for him to fold the paper with only one hand. was a wad of crinkled papers on the floor by the bed. Before the accident, Spencer read the newspaper with meticulous care, and even on those days when she would read the paper after him she always found it looking as if it were fresh from the newsstand. No more. It was simply too difficult for him to fold the paper with only one hand.

"Hi, sweetheart," she murmured, and she sat gently on the bed beside him.

He turned to her and sighed, but otherwise he didn't say a word. His hair, she realized suddenly, had started going gray at the temples. There they were: white threads from a sewing box. Had this happened only this morning, or had it been changing throughout the summer and somehow she hadn't noticed? He looked exhausted, and she wondered if he'd been doing his exercises. Nick wasn't scheduled to be here today, but perhaps Spencer had called him and the therapist had had a free hour. Perhaps Spencer had done his reps on his own.

"You were doing your range-of-motions, weren't you?" she said.

"No."

"Nick wasn't here?"

"It's not his day."

"I know. I just thought..."

"I'm too tired. And right now my shoulder hurts too much."

She stroked his leg, because even now she was afraid to touch his back or his neck. She feared she would jostle him and cause him yet more pain.

"I saw you bought some of that cheddar-flavored soy cheese," he said quietly. "Thank you. Around one thirty, I tried to grill some in a sandwich."

"Good for you!"

He shook his head and said-his voice the sort of fatalistic monotone she wasn't sure she'd ever heard from him-"Oh, it wasn't good." With his eyes he motioned down toward his right hand, still slung against his chest in its sling. The skin there was mottled with a series of deep red welts and watery blisters, and she saw that a line of the tawny fur along all four of his fingers was shriveled and black.

"Oh, G.o.d, Spencer," she said, "let me get some lotion for that! Have you called the doctor?"

"It's not that bad. In fact, I don't feel a thing...obviously."

"What happened?"

"I was leaning over the stove and I didn't realize that my hand was resting along the edge of the frying pan. I only looked down when I smelled something burning. The hair had already curled up, and the skin may actually have been smoldering. I don't know. It looked pretty nasty. I put cold water on it. At least I think it was cold. Who knows?"

"I think there's some medicated lotion in the bathroom. It may be as old as Charlotte, but-"

"It doesn't hurt."

"No, but we need to get something on it so it heals," she said, and she carefully rose from the bed. "Some lotion or something. Let's call the doctor."

He breathed in deeply through his nose. "No, let's not."

"You've already called him?" she asked, a litany of names forming in her mind as she verbalized the question. Did she mean Dr. Tasker, the orthopedic and trauma surgeon they'd been referred to at Roosevelt, or Dr. Leeds, the cosmetic surgeon at Lenox Hill? Or did she mean Spencer's primary care physician, Dr. Ives, the guy he'd been seeing for his physical exams and minor aches and pains ever since they'd moved back to Manhattan from Connecticut? She realized she wasn't sure whom she had meant.

"No, I didn't call anyone. And, please, let's not bother. Okay? It's a burn. It happens."

"It just..."

"Yes?"

"It just looks so painful," she murmured.

He took his index finger on his left hand and rubbed at the raw skin and the scorched follicles of hair. "Well, we both know that's no longer an issue," he said, and then she watched him do something he had begun to do with increasing frequency. He stopped touching the burn and brought his left hand before his face, no more than six or seven inches away, and he spread wide his fingers, palm toward him. And then he seemed to run his eyes over each finger, occasionally flexing one individually or curling all of them together as if they were petals on a flower that was closing for the night. Sometimes she wasn't sure he was even conscious that he had developed this tic, and she'd considered asking him over the weekend why he did it. But she thought she understood. He was, pure and simple, amazed at the dexterity that he-most of us, she knew-always had taken for granted. He might not have anywhere near the control with his left hand that he once had with his right, but it was still an astonis.h.i.+ng bit of machinery.

"Where's Charlotte?" he asked, as he bent his left index finger toward him again and again, as if he were plunking a piano key.

"At school. Audition information meeting for The Secret Garden The Secret Garden." Her eyes were beginning to cross as she tried to look into his face through the cobweb of his fingers.

"Have you ever noticed how limited the ring finger is in comparison to the index finger?" he asked. "I'm not even sure it's as helpful as the pinky."

She looked down again at his burn. Some of the blisters looked particularly nasty: They could become infected and Spencer might never know until it was too late-though too late for what she wasn't sure. Still, she nodded and then carefully rose from the bed. She decided she would go to the kitchen and call Dr. Ives, Spencer's regular physician, and ask him what he thought Spencer should do.

Twenty

John and Sara and Willow had breakfast in silence-most of their meals were silent these days, unless Patrick was awake and felt the need to contribute. When they were finished, John stood, grabbed his attache off the floor by the coatrack, and walked Willow to the end of their driveway. The bus stop was about fifty yards farther down the road. He kissed his daughter once on her forehead and then climbed into the Volvo (the one that would always hold for him his memories of an Adirondack rifle in the trunk), and turned the silver key in the ignition. He hadn't spoken to Spencer since he and his family had left his mother's house in Sugar Hill a month ago, and he guessed it might be years before they'd speak again. He glanced in the rearview mirror before starting to back the car from the driveway, and paused for a moment when he saw how bereaved and haggard the eyes were that gazed back at him from the gla.s.s.

HE WENT STRAIGHT to the courthouse this morning, because his caseload today showed a welfare fraud, a pair of unrelated larcenies (one petty, one grand), an unlawful mischief, and a s.e.xual a.s.sault on a minor. It was almost lunchtime now as he sat in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the building in an eight-by-eight-foot room made almost entirely of cement blocks painted light yellow, listening to a twenty-three-year-old named Brady Simmons tell him across a thin table, "It's a long story, see" (arguably the most common construction any of his clients ever made with five words), before launching into his explanation as to why he had s.e.x with a fifteen-year-old girl. to the courthouse this morning, because his caseload today showed a welfare fraud, a pair of unrelated larcenies (one petty, one grand), an unlawful mischief, and a s.e.xual a.s.sault on a minor. It was almost lunchtime now as he sat in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the building in an eight-by-eight-foot room made almost entirely of cement blocks painted light yellow, listening to a twenty-three-year-old named Brady Simmons tell him across a thin table, "It's a long story, see" (arguably the most common construction any of his clients ever made with five words), before launching into his explanation as to why he had s.e.x with a fifteen-year-old girl.

Abruptly his cell phone started to ring, and he saw by the number that it was his brother-in-law's human attack dog of a lawyer. Paige Sutherland. She had been trying to reach him for days now to update him on her plans for the lawsuit and discuss how she'd want to prep him for the deposition later that autumn. He decided he might as well get it over with-agree, at least, to a date they could meet once the lawsuit was filed-and so he asked Simmons for a minute and rapped on the door for one of the guards to let him out.

"h.e.l.lo, Paige," he said, reaching into the front pocket of his blazer for his Palm as he spoke.

"You're a hard man to reach," she said, and though her voice was sweet he detected the slight edge of chastis.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, you know the drill," he murmured. "A lot of clients who are, well, not as reliable as we might like."

"No, actually I don't know. The sorts of people I represent are extremely reliable."

"Uh-huh."

"Oh, don't take offense."

He ignored her and tried to find a time on his calendar when he could subject himself to the torture of a morning or afternoon discussing his role in this disaster with her.

"I've left a couple messages for you on your voice mail," she went on when he was quiet. "So I guess you know why I'm calling."

"Yes, let's get this over with."

"Get this over with? You make it sound like you're the one being sued! You make it sound like we're not on the same side. You're helping your brother-in-law by doing this. You're helping to make a gun company take responsibility for-"

"Paige, please. My brother-in-law doesn't even speak to me anymore. We haven't said a single word to each other in five weeks. You know that."

"Time heals all wounds-"

"Except Spencer's."

"That was exactly what I was thinking right after I said it! Too funny. Do you have representation yet? Why don't I schedule a meeting through them? Really, we have so much to go over."

"I...haven't finalized my choice for a lawyer yet."

"John, really. What would you do if one of your own clients were behaving this way?"

"My clients always behave this way."

"It will be painless. Trust me."

"I promise you: Reliving that night will be anything but painless. Maybe if you weren't planning on making such a big deal about this in the media, I would-"

"It's what Spencer wants."

"That press conference? It's not what my sister wants. Or what I believe is in the best interests of my niece."

"First of all, it's Spencer's life we're dealing with. He is the one who has to live with this trag-"

"We all have to live with this tragedy!"

"Well, yes, but some of you have two functioning arms to help you cope. Spencer doesn't. And as for young Charlotte, well, Spencer is her father. You're merely her uncle. I believe you should defer to his wishes. Don't you?"

"If Spencer and I could just talk about this."

"Spencer and I don't make a practice of discussing your relations.h.i.+p, but as you yourself just pointed out, it's pretty clear that he's not quite ready to resume communications with you."

He considered briefly asking her to give Spencer a message, but his brother-in-law wasn't listening to his pleas through Catherine-the man's own wife-so there was no reason to believe that Spencer would listen to whatever Paige said on his behalf.

He sighed so loudly on the phone that Paige murmured, "Oh, John, it's not that bad," but he had the distinct sense that she was smiling.

"Where do you want to do this? In New York or Vermont?" he asked.

"I thought we could do it in your neck of the woods. I'm going to be in New Hamps.h.i.+re the last week in September with the surgeons and those EMTs, and I could scoot over to Burlington on that Wednesday-the twenty-ninth. What does your schedule look like that day?"