Before You Know Kindness Part 2

"Oh, that's cute."

Actually, John thought, it was more painful than cute: The baby was trying to move his skull the way he himself had a moment earlier when he'd been shaking his head, and he was surprised at the amount of strength in that small hand and arm. The kid couldn't roll over yet, but his motor skills for exactly this maneuver had been perfected with weeks of practice on a stuffed animal the size of a b.u.t.ternut squash that he and Sara had christened Drool Monkey.

"What's in the paper?" he asked.

"d.i.c.kie Ames was busted last night. It was another DUI-"

"Oh, Jesus, he didn't hurt anyone, did he?"

"No. But he took out a fire hydrant. And because it was the zillionth time-"

"It was not the zillionth time," John corrected her. Sally was an excellent secretary, but she was twenty-three and her tendency to speak with adolescent hyperbole sometimes annoyed him. "It was, I believe, the third."

"Well, he blew a mighty impressive point-one. And, oh by the way, he was driving with a suspended license: He wasn't due to get it back until the week after next."

John wasn't defending d.i.c.kie Ames, but he needed the man to be a credible witness in a misdemeanor a.s.sault in a bar. Ames was a drinking and deer-hunting pal of Andre Nadeau and was supposed to explain to the judge at a bail review on Monday that Nadeau was acting in self-defense when he'd broken a heavy gla.s.s beer mug against the side of Cameron Gerrity's face in a fight-which, John believed, was exactly the truth. It was was self-defense. Gerrity may have been the one to wind up with the thirty-four st.i.tches in his cheek and a nose that would look forever like a boxer's, but John was quite confident that Nadeau had been provoked. Ames saw it all and he said so. Besides, there were extenuating circ.u.mstances John hoped the judge would consider. Nadeau was a single dad. John had seen him with his boys, and although Nadeau may have had a problem with drinking (yes, like his pal, d.i.c.kie Ames) he certainly didn't have one with aggression. He had no history of pummeling people in bars. He had no history of pummeling people anywhere. self-defense. Gerrity may have been the one to wind up with the thirty-four st.i.tches in his cheek and a nose that would look forever like a boxer's, but John was quite confident that Nadeau had been provoked. Ames saw it all and he said so. Besides, there were extenuating circ.u.mstances John hoped the judge would consider. Nadeau was a single dad. John had seen him with his boys, and although Nadeau may have had a problem with drinking (yes, like his pal, d.i.c.kie Ames) he certainly didn't have one with aggression. He had no history of pummeling people in bars. He had no history of pummeling people anywhere.

If given the chance, d.i.c.kie Ames was also going to tell the judge what a fine father Nadeau was to those two boys and that whenever he had been together with the family at deer camp, the man was loving, gentle, and preternaturally responsible-especially when it came to teaching a couple of junior high school kids not to kill themselves with the family a.r.s.enal the grown men used to kill deer and moose and bears and any other mammals they happened to stumble across in the woods. John liked Nadeau-and not simply in the protective, fatherly way he liked all the pathetic drinkers and substance abusers and petty thieves who wound up at the office of the public defender. He liked Nadeau because the guy was raising his boys pretty much on his own since his wife had left him. The man had offered to take him deer hunting at his family's camp this November-help him track and kill a 250-pounder, perhaps-and John had readily agreed. Nadeau liked him, too, and respected what he did as a lawyer: He wouldn't mind that John was a complete moron in the woods and was still learning to hold a rifle and hunt. Nadeau had even told him about a friend of his in Ess.e.x Junction, a gunsmith, who would be able to remove the bullet-cartridge, to be precise-that seemed to be stuck in the chamber of John's rifle. It had been there since last November, since the last day of John's first hunting season. Periodically he'd tried to extract it since then, retrieving the gun from the locked cabinet in the guest bedroom and cycling the bolt over and over, but the bullet had never popped out. His older friend, the justice Howard Mansfield, had suggested he simply shove a ramrod down the barrel and force the live round from the chamber, but there was no way in the world John was going to try that little maneuver. That was exactly how newcomers to the sport-especially newcomer flatlanders-blew off their fingers or hands. He'd considered simply driving to the edge of the forest and discharging the weapon into the sky, but he feared that perhaps whatever was causing the bullet to lodge in the chamber would prevent it from leaving the barrel as well. The thing just might explode in his face. He understood he'd have to deal with the bullet before hunting season, but since he only used the rifle during those two weeks in November he hadn't seriously focused on the problem until Nadeau suggested his buddy, the gunsmith.

He sighed now so loudly at the reality that d.i.c.kie Ames had spent the night behind bars that Patrick turned his little boy eyes on his father's face. At least, John told himself, he wasn't d.i.c.kie Ames's lawyer, and he took some comfort in this.

"Anything else I should know about?" he asked Sally. "Sara and I were about to leave."

"I don't think so."

"Well, thank you."

"I guess you didn't need to know about d.i.c.kie Ames. I guess it could have waited."

"No, you were right to call. I appreciate it."

"Tell you what: For the rest of today I'll only call you if I have good news."

"You have the number at my mother's house, right? The cell phone never works over there."

"I do."

He thanked her once again, pulled his nose from between Patrick's viselike fingers, and then continued on his way to the bathroom on the first floor of the house. After he had changed his son's diaper, he decided, he would toss the gun bag with his Adirondack rifle into the trunk of the car. On Monday they would be driving through Ess.e.x Junction on their way home from his mother's, and he could drop the weapon off with that gunsmith.

JOHN'S WIFE, SARA, hadn't spoken to Catherine and Spencer since Memorial Day Weekend, when they had all met at the Seton summer home to plant the vegetable garden, the cutting garden, and the beds and beds of berries: strawberries in a western field, blueberries along the house's southern foundation, and raspberries to the east. John and his sister, Catherine, seemed to speak weekly, however, and the two siblings spoke at least that often with their mother. hadn't spoken to Catherine and Spencer since Memorial Day Weekend, when they had all met at the Seton summer home to plant the vegetable garden, the cutting garden, and the beds and beds of berries: strawberries in a western field, blueberries along the house's southern foundation, and raspberries to the east. John and his sister, Catherine, seemed to speak weekly, however, and the two siblings spoke at least that often with their mother.

At first Sara had taken it as a compliment that she was allowed to call the family matriarch Nan while Spencer, Catherine's husband, had to call her Mrs. Seton. It was almost comic: Spencer had known the woman since he was eighteen, and still he was required to address her with Victorian courtesy and old-money solemnity. He and her husband each received Valentine's cards from Nan in February, and even after all these years the one to Spencer was signed "Sincerely, Mrs. Seton." It was only after she and John had been married for a couple of years that it dawned on Sara why she might be allowed to refer to her mother-in-law as Nan and Spencer was not: Perhaps it made Nan feel younger-as if the two of them were girlfriends-if they called each other by their first names.

As she and John and their baby drove now to New Hampshire, Sara decided that although she wasn't dreading the weekend before her, she wasn't looking forward to it, either. She was beginning to feel that her own house was getting back into some kind of order for the first time since before Patrick was born and she would have enjoyed a weekend at home. Moreover, the child was cutting a tooth-though he was sleeping right now in his infant car seat in the back-and poor John was exhausted. Could barely keep his eyes open at the dinner table last night and had spent most of the morning lying on the floor with the baby.

She was also troubled by the sheer amount she had felt compelled to pack. They'd be in New Hampshire a whopping sixty-eight to seventy hours, but between the excessive athleticism her mother-in-law cheerfully inflicted on the family (she had to remember tennis rackets and golf clubs and bathing suits, though she wanted to play neither golf nor tennis nor swim in that frigid alpine slush that Nan called a lake or that club pool that reeked of chlorine) and the accrual of health and beauty aids-sunscreens and powders and shampoos and lotions and teething gel and ointment and hair glitter and, alas, even lipstick for Willow because Nan had them all going to the club on Sat.u.r.day night for a soiree of some sort and Willow had said on the phone that Charlotte would be wearing lipstick and so she wanted to wear some now, too-it felt to her as if she were packing for a monthlong expedition into a lost world without drugstores and shopping malls.

She thought she might be overthinking this because she was a therapist, but the problem with Nan-and with John and Catherine and, yes, Spencer when they were all together-was that they could never just...be. They didn't sit still well as a family. When she and John had been younger they'd smoked a little dope, and sometimes she longed to buy a bag of the most mellow stuff she could find and bring it with her to Sugar Hill. Sedate the whole bunch of them so they'd all sit on that wraparound porch and just stare at the beauty of the lupine. Maybe open the windows, point the speakers outside, and listen to music on that antique record player Nan kept in the living room. Play some of those old Sammy Davis Jr. and Mel Torme alb.u.ms that her daughter had presumed were oddly flat Frisbees when she'd been a first-grader.

Her daughter. Now, that was the part of the weekend that excited her. Though she spoke with Willow on the phone at least every other night, she hadn't seen her in just about two weeks now-twelve days to be precise-and she missed almost every aspect of having the girl in her life on a daily basis. She missed reading to the child in bed in the evenings or having the child read to her; she missed the way Willow moved slowly through the house with the grace of a ballet dancer, sometimes seeming to barely touch the stairs when she glided down them on her bare feet; she missed the way the girl managed somehow to eat cereal without making a sound-the spoon never touched the sides of the bowl, and Willow seemed to loathe the insectival sound of a slurp as much as any grown-up-and she missed the way Willow could calm Patrick with an almost paranormal gentleness. When the baby was in nuclear meltdown and neither breast milk nor rocking would silence the child's earsplitting siren of a shriek, somehow Willow knew precisely how to hold him or tickle him or rub him to bring both parents and newborn back from the brink. She also changed diapers, which certainly made things easier when Sara was trying to get something that resembled dinner on the table.

Willow was not a perfect child, of course, and Sara did not for a moment delude herself into believing that she was. She gave up quickly on math problems, it was easier to pull the witchgra.s.s from the front garden than it was to convince her to clean her room or put her dirty clothes in the hamper, and she spent more time in front of a mirror than Sara thought any ten-year-old should. But she was sweet and sensitive and Sara loved her madly-so much more, she feared on occasion, than she would ever learn to love her baby boy with his tendency to pee straight into the air like a geyser.

"Did we remember the nightlight?" John was asking her now.

"Darn it, we didn't," she said. She honestly didn't know how much Patrick needed the nightlight, but his parents sure did. It was bad enough to be awake at one or two in the morning, but it was h.e.l.l when you slammed your shin into the crib, or nearly poked out an eye on one of the airplane wings in the mobile that dangled just beyond the lad's reach.

"Well, we can pick one up in Littleton."

"That means getting off the highway," she said, an issue in her mind only because getting off the highway would slow them down and thereby decrease their chances of getting to the club in time for lunch.

"Maybe I can get one this afternoon, then," John said. "I'll be happy to pick one up while Patrick's napping. I'll want to get a new can of tennis b.a.l.l.s, anyway. You know the ones Mother has are going to be so old they'll bounce like rocks."

She nodded and glanced back at Patrick, resisting the urge to squeeze his toes in his socks. Then she closed her eyes, flexed her own toes once against the straps of her sandals, and started to make an inventory in her mind of everything she had packed and John had wedged into the backseat and the trunk of the Volvo. She was asleep before she had even finished with the items in the diaper bag resting now beside the baby behind her.

Four

Willow Seton curled her legs up against her chest, and wrapped her thin arms around her thin knees. She was sitting on the coralline cement that surrounded the club's swimming pool, and she could feel the pebbly stone surface through the blue Lycra of her Speedo tank suit. It was late morning, and with the exception of the two cousins, the lifeguard, and a pair of older women in pastel tennis skirts chatting near the diving board, the pool area was empty. Overhead there were a few dolloplike scoops of c.u.mulus clouds, phosph.o.r.escent in the high summer sky, and when they pa.s.sed between the sun and the earth Willow would pull her body into an even tighter ball.

She found herself scrutinizing Charlotte as her cousin draped her body languidly in the water atop three long, Styrofoam floating noodles: a hot pink one in the hollow behind her knees, a banana yellow one beneath the small of her back, and a red one that looked like a long piece of licorice behind her neck. She was wearing the black string bikini that drove their grandmother crazy. But their grandmother was taking a golf lesson right now and so Charlotte had raced directly into the ladies' cabana and changed from her tennis clothes into the bathing suit. Now she had the pool to herself, and she was acting as if she were completely unaware that her cousin and the lifeguard were watching her.

At least Willow presumed Charlotte thought the lifeguard was watching her: Charlotte seemed to believe that teenage boys always were watching her. In this case, however, Willow honestly didn't believe that Gary was aware of her cousin as anything more than a girl who swam well enough that it was unlikely she would find a way to drown herself on his watch. The fact was, Charlotte was twelve, a child like herself. Sure, she'd turn thirteen in the last week in August, a month before Willow would reach eleven, but Charlotte hadn't even started eighth grade yet. Gary, both cousins knew, had graduated from high school that June.

Still, Charlotte was a beautiful girl, and for the past two weeks she had managed to convince their grandmother that she was wearing sunblock when in reality she wasn't: Though this might mean she'd have to battle all kinds of skin cancers in that never-never land of adulthood, right now her skin was bronzed to the point of exoticism, and she was going to show off every single inch that she could.

By comparison, Willow felt like a jar of old craft paste: pale white because she had been wearing the requisite sunscreen, tired, and common. Even her bathing suit looked unattractive: The bottom had started to pill from all the hours she'd spent sitting on the cement around the pool. Until this week, it hadn't even crossed her mind that a Speedo could pill. She'd wanted to buy a new suit before her parents brought her here for the month, but because of baby Patrick there hadn't been time to go to the mall.

"I think I should pierce my belly b.u.t.ton," Charlotte said abruptly, and though Willow was aware that the remark technically was directed at her, she knew her cousin had only broached the idea to get a reaction out of Gary. "I think I should get a silver ring. Don't you?"

"No."

"You don't think I'd look good with one?"

"I think your mom and dad would kill you."

"They wouldn't know. It's not like I walk around in a halter at home."

"Well, it's not like you do at school, either. So why do it?"

"It would be cool."

"You couldn't wear that bathing suit," Willow said, and for a moment it seemed that Charlotte was pondering this, but then the girl glanced out of the corners of her eyes at Gary-Gary with the peeling skin on his nose and the tawny young man's hair on his chest, Gary with the sungla.s.ses and the whistle and the small stud of his own sparkling right now in his left ear-and she realized that Charlotte was thrilled that she had alluded to how scanty her bathing suit was in front of the lifeguard.

"That would be too bad, wouldn't it?" Charlotte said. "Maybe I'll wait till the end of the summer. When we go home. I'll bet this town doesn't even have a place that does body art."

"No," Gary said from the top of the chair, the sound of his voice-and the reality that he was actually listening to their conversation-catching them both by surprise. "There isn't a place in Franconia or Sugar Hill. But you could always try Yankee Art up in Littleton. The guy there also does tattoos."

"Yeah, Charlotte, why don't you get a tattoo? A belly-b.u.t.ton ring and a tattoo. That'll make your mom and dad real happy."

"Of course," Gary continued, "you'll need to wait at least five or six years. I'm pretty sure it's against the law to tattoo a seventh-grader." He was smiling when he said it, and Willow wished she could see his eyes behind the mirrored lenses of his sungla.s.ses.

"Eighth," Charlotte said, almost spitting the syllable up at him. "I'll be in eighth grade in September."

The lifeguard just nodded, and Willow could tell he was struggling not to laugh. Then she saw him look up at something behind her, and when she turned she saw her mom and dad and Patrick-the baby in a Snugli on her father's chest, his small pink hands the only visible flesh-wandering toward them across the gra.s.s between the main entrance and the clubhouse with its picture-window views of Mount Lafayette. They were early, she realized, because Grandmother had said they probably wouldn't arrive until midafternoon. Then her mom was opening the gate in the chain-link fence that surrounded the pool, and-forgetting completely for the moment that her cousin Charlotte was annoyed by enthusiasm in any form-Willow was on her feet and running across the cement deck toward them because the truth was that she missed her parents, even if they hadn't found the time to buy her a new bathing suit, and she was very glad they were here.

WILLOW BOUNCED her baby brother on her lap in a wrought-iron chair on the clubhouse deck by the dining room. His eyes reminded her of the pearly blue moonstones on the necklace Grandmother had given her for Christmas seven months ago, and his hair looked a bit like a baby chick's. She had already finished her grilled cheese, but everyone else was still eating-except for Charlotte, who had never gotten to join them because Grandmother had refused to allow her to leave the pool area until she put on a T-shirt and shorts, and so the girl had been left to pout in the ladies' cabana. Had been inside there at least half an hour now. It crossed Willow's mind that it was possible Charlotte had snuck out and was actually watching the older teenagers sunbathe on the gra.s.sy hill just behind the tennis courts-she was probably sunbathing her baby brother on her lap in a wrought-iron chair on the clubhouse deck by the dining room. His eyes reminded her of the pearly blue moonstones on the necklace Grandmother had given her for Christmas seven months ago, and his hair looked a bit like a baby chick's. She had already finished her grilled cheese, but everyone else was still eating-except for Charlotte, who had never gotten to join them because Grandmother had refused to allow her to leave the pool area until she put on a T-shirt and shorts, and so the girl had been left to pout in the ladies' cabana. Had been inside there at least half an hour now. It crossed Willow's mind that it was possible Charlotte had snuck out and was actually watching the older teenagers sunbathe on the gra.s.sy hill just behind the tennis courts-she was probably sunbathing with with those older kids, in fact-but she certainly wasn't going to squeal on her cousin. those older kids, in fact-but she certainly wasn't going to squeal on her cousin.

Her parents and her grandmother were talking about a funeral Grandmother was going to attend tomorrow for Walter Durnip. Willow knew Mr. Durnip largely as a heavyset man who seemed to walk in slow motion back and forth along the first hole of the golf course, but as far as Willow could tell he never played. He wore Bermuda shorts, and he had veins on his legs that looked like the topographic relief map in her cla.s.sroom of the rivers in the Amazon rain forest. Her dad seemed a little sad that Mr. Durnip was dead. Apparently he had known the man his whole life, and the man's daughter had babysat him when he was a little boy.

"Maybe I'll join you, Mother," her father said, referring to the funeral. Both he and her mother were eating tomatoes filled with salmon, and Willow found herself wishing the sheer rosiness of the fish had been hidden better by the mayonnaise and the dill. What was it Charlotte was always saying? It's not meat, it's flesh.

"Oh, don't even think of coming," Grandmother began, shaking her head at her son and groaning. "You're on a weekend vacation. And I just know the funeral is going to be long, and there will be people there who will feel they have the right to talk."

"It's called a eulogy, Mother. Some people actually like to mourn."

"I don't mean the minister. I mean regular people. These days, it seems, anyone who happens to be in the church for a funeral is invited to speak. I was at a funeral last summer-that nice Mrs. Knebel-and easily a dozen people thought they had something worth sharing."

"I gather you thought they were mistaken."

"That church has very poor ventilation. And they had too many hymns. When I die, I want my funeral to last no more than fifteen minutes, and absolutely no one is allowed to speak but you or your sister, and the minister-whoever it is then. And no hymns. Are we clear?"

Her father took a long swallow of his iced tea and said, "We're clear, Mother. Show tunes, yes; hymns, no."

"I'm serious. I want a nice, short funeral-especially if there's sunshine. People should be outdoors."

Patrick burped and then smiled. His eyes were unblinking.

"If you die in the summer, we'll be sure to have the funeral here in New Hampshire and we'll be sure to have it outside," her mother said. "We could have it beside the new cutting garden." The cutting garden was a living roomsized block of perennials they had planted between the spindly apple trees and the garage. It actually had been among the easier tasks they had tackled over Memorial Day Weekend, because most of the flowers-the bridal veil astilbe, the red English daisies, the moss pink, the Canada and the Carolina phlox-were in shin-tall buckets and merely needed to be transplanted into the soil that had been tilled before they arrived.

"If you'd like-and you'll need to let us know ahead of time, Nan-we could even rent a little arch made with lattice from one of those rent-anything places," her mother continued, teasing. Sara was wearing sungla.s.ses and holding her hair back in a tie-dyed scarf Willow had made for her at a summer day camp when she'd been seven. She looked a little bit like that First Lady from the early 1960s Willow had seen photographs of-the one who always seemed to be wearing sungla.s.ses and scarves-except that her mother's hair wasn't quite as dark and her mother as a whole wasn't quite as glamorous.

Actually, Willow didn't think her mother was glamorous at all. But she was pretty and she was interesting: The girl did not know the details, but she had the sense from the occasional remarks her parents and her Vermont grandparents had made and from pictures she had seen in old photo alb.u.ms that her mother had been rather wild as a teenager and when she'd been in college. She knew that her mother had once traveled to Cape Cod with a boyfriend on the back of his motorcycle, and that with two of her girlfriends she'd once taken her own father's car and disappeared for a night in Montreal. She had a thin tattoo of what looked to Willow like ivy wrapped around her left ankle, and a rose the size of a tablespoon in the crevice at the very small of her back-a spot no one ever saw these days but Willow, baby Patrick, and John.

"Oh, I have some bad news about the garden. The vegetable garden," her grandmother was saying.

"Yes?" Her father used what Willow recognized as his lawyer's tone when he said the word, drawing the single syllable out a long time and keeping his voice perfectly even.

"Deer. It was attacked by deer last night."

"Attacked by deer," her mother said, emphasizing attacked attacked. Willow knew that her mother disapproved of language with needlessly violent imagery. "You make it sound like it was sh.e.l.led."

"They might as well have sh.e.l.led it. The peas and string beans and beet greens were eaten, and the corn-"

"We can't possibly have corn yet," her father said.

"And the corn plants plants were trampled. Not all of them. But some." were trampled. Not all of them. But some."

"But they didn't eat everything, did they? Not in one visit..."

"No, not everything. But they'll be back."

She watched her father wipe his lips with his napkin, the cotton cloth already discolored with grease from past swipes. "Spencer will try to stop them-humanely, of course. But he'll do something. That garden means an awful lot to him."

"I know it does, and for the life of me I don't understand why. He lives six hours away. If he liked gardening so much, he should have had a garden of his own when he lived in Connecticut. He and Catherine should never have moved back into the city if manure and fresh beets-"

"Endive," her father said. "Endive and kohlrabi...and manure."

"Whatever. If gardening was so important to him, he should have stayed in Long Ridge. Not bought that apartment on Eighty-fifth Street."

"He tried, Mother. Remember how he lost that garden to the deer, too?"

"If he couldn't stop them in Connecticut, how in the world will he stop them here?"

"Maybe he won't," her mother said. "But certainly he'll make the effort. It's not so much about the garden as it is about the house. The property. This place means an awful lot to him, Nan, you know that."

"Sara's right. I know my brother-in-law, and he will launch an absolute crusade to take back the peas."

"Trust me, it's too late for this year," Nan said. "All we can do now is stop posting the land and keep our fingers crossed that the hunters scare the deer away in the autumn."

"Oh, I wouldn't give up yet," her father said. "And you shouldn't, either. In the meantime, Mother, do you want to play some tennis? I have to get limbered up for Catherine."

Willow watched her brother try to wrap his hand under the strap of her bathing suit, but he couldn't quite wedge his fingers between the elastic and her shoulder. Still he struggled, and his small nails were starting to tickle her.

"I'd love to," Grandmother said. "I had a golf lesson this morning, but all we did was stand around with our putters. Boring."

"Honey, do you want to join us?" her father asked her mother. "Willow, you wouldn't mind watching Patrick, would you?"

She thought her parents were taking the news about the garden pretty well, and she felt another surge of that affection she'd experienced when she'd been preparing flower arrangements for their bedroom that morning and when she'd turned around at the pool and seen them approaching.

"Nope," she said, pulling Patrick away from the strap of her Speedo and kissing him once on his nose. The baby gurgled and sighed. She realized, much to her surprise, how happy she was to see him, too.