Before You Know Kindness Part 15

She nodded because she didn't want this intense man in the bed to get any more upset than he already was. But she didn't completely agree with him. Although she was confident that Spencer's brother-in-law felt enormous responsibility for what had occurred, she was also quite sure that his daughter was going to struggle with the fact she had nearly killed her father for a very long time. Probably forever.

"You see a lot of gun accidents?" he asked her suddenly.

"A few."

"I'm suing the gun company." He said this as if he were informing her that he had just changed the oil in his car or eaten a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. She was relieved that it was a manufacturer he was suing and not, as she had feared when she first arrived, his brother-in-law. "Maybe you should talk to my lawyer," he added.

Reflexively, as if he were pointing a gun at her, she threw her hands up in the air. "Oh, I don't think so. I'm happy to tell the lawyers what I saw on Sat.u.r.day night. But I'm not your expert witness on guns or bullets or accidents. Okay?"

"Just a thought."

She lowered her arms and tried to smile. "Really, I don't believe you should be thinking about lawsuits and money right now. I think you should be putting all your energy into getting better."

"I'm not suing for the money. I'm suing because it's a great...opportunity to bring attention to the plight of hunted animals. Deer, especially. But moose and birds, too. Perhaps even elephants."

She considered telling him that in her opinion things might be worse if people didn't hunt. In places like northern New Hamps.h.i.+re the herd would grow too large for the browse. She didn't say anything, however, because she hadn't come here to argue.

"I'll bet you hunt," he continued, his tone slightly accusing.

"No."

"But your husband does."

"No, he doesn't, either," she answered, though this was a lie. She couldn't believe that on Sat.u.r.day night this guy was spewing so much blood into the clay soil of Sugar Hill that she had knelt in a puddle when she had arrived at his side-an oozy bit of bog that actually made a sucking sound as she lifted her knee the first time-and now he was proselytizing against hunting. He really was feisty.

"Ah, but you eat meat. You told me you eat lobster. You-"

"Look, I have two sons. One is a vegetarian, one isn't. It isn't a big deal to me, it isn't a big deal to anyone. These days, lots of people are-"

"You ever think about what you're eating when you eat a lobster? When you eat any animal?"

In the past these spontaneous visits had been pleasant for both her and the patient. That's why she did it. The man or woman in the bed went on and on about how grateful they were to be alive, and she was able to go home with an image in her mind of a person on the mend. Not this character. He actually wanted to lecture her. And so she looked at her watch and expressed surprise at the time. She heard herself telling him how glad she was to see him alive and how she was sure that he would dazzle them all with his recovery. She spoke quickly so he couldn't get a word in, and then she backed out of his room, waving as she retreated, until she was safely in the hallway.

As she raced down the long series of corridors that led to the elevators, she thought of Spencer McCullough's twelve-year-old daughter once again. She decided if this guy were her father, she might have shot him, too. Anything to shut him up.

HOURS LATER, as Spencer was lying alone in bed, he kept thinking back on something the EMT had asked about Charlotte, and the way she had phrased the question: as Spencer was lying alone in bed, he kept thinking back on something the EMT had asked about Charlotte, and the way she had phrased the question: Is she badly shaken by what she did? Is she badly shaken by what she did? It was dark now and it was raining outside, and he thought of his daughter and his niece in the room with the twin beds they shared here in the country and he wondered what they were talking about tonight. He imagined their light was still on, and in his mind he saw them in their summer nightgowns and he heard the rain drumming against the slate roof. He pictured them alone, just the two of them. In all likelihood, their grandmother was already safely ensconced in her turret for the night, John and Sara were focused on baby Patrick, and he guessed that Catherine either was soaking in the tub or curled up in bed with a book. It was dark now and it was raining outside, and he thought of his daughter and his niece in the room with the twin beds they shared here in the country and he wondered what they were talking about tonight. He imagined their light was still on, and in his mind he saw them in their summer nightgowns and he heard the rain drumming against the slate roof. He pictured them alone, just the two of them. In all likelihood, their grandmother was already safely ensconced in her turret for the night, John and Sara were focused on baby Patrick, and he guessed that Catherine either was soaking in the tub or curled up in bed with a book.

He worried that over the past couple of days he hadn't told Charlotte-really made the point crystal clear-that she hadn't done anything wrong. How could she have known there was a bullet in the gun? She was twelve, and while he had been absolutely sincere when he told the EMT that Charlotte wanted nothing more in the world than to be sixteen or seventeen, the reality was that in so many ways she was still a child. She had no idea the rifle was loaded, she had no idea her father was out walking at the edge of the garden. On some level, he decided, he was probably suing the gun company precisely because he wanted to make clear to the world that this travesty was not his daughter's fault.

He made a mental note that in the morning when Charlotte came for a visit, the very first thing he was going to do was explain this to her. Maybe he'd ask everyone else to leave so he could have a moment alone with her. Then he would make absolutely certain that she knew she was blameless.

Well, not completely blameless. Twelve might still make her a child, but even twelve-year-olds should know not to play with guns. But then, she'd never seen a rifle before! None of their friends in Manhattan had guns lying around the house-at least that they knew of.

He imagined Charlotte and Willow were sitting together on the twin bed against the wall right now, the one that was Willow's, and he saw the girls playing gin rummy with one of his mother-in-law's shoe box full of bridge decks, the rain cooling the night so the windows were open only an inch. As they played they were talking about...

He realized he couldn't begin to conceive what they were talking about, and this lapse troubled him. He told himself it was the painkillers he was taking, but he knew this was different. Deeper. He couldn't concoct a conversation for them in his mind because he didn't know how badly his daughter was hurting. That EMT might have been onto something.

He felt a small freshet of fear ripple through him: He was scared. There was nothing he loved more in the world than his wife and his daughter, and alone in this bed he had to admit he was probably losing his wife. Had been for months. These days, they could fight over what to pack, where to eat, which vegetables they'd plant in the garden. Whether they should even have a garden.

Well, in this case Catherine had been right. No good had come from the garden, that was for sure. Next year they'd let the lupine return to the patch of earth they had tried to make their own. Allow all traces of the vegetables to disappear. It was ridiculous to believe they-he, this was all his idea-could maintain a garden when he and Catherine lived in Manhattan and John and Sara lived two hours to the west in Vermont.

He hoped he wouldn't lose his daughter now, too, especially since the accident really wasn't her fault. He thought of the little girl who once raced for hours at a time amidst the stuffed animals on the first floor of the old FAO Schwarz, that preschooler entranced by the cotton- and poly-stuffed snakes and chimpanzees and giraffes. He couldn't lose the girl who, when she was seven, was capable of belting out "A Lot of Livin' to Do" in a children's cabaret as if she were Ann-Margret, or the child who on occasion could be so wondrously giving that at nine she'd taken a booth at the church rummage sale and sold all her old puzzles and Barbies and books and raised $273 for FERAL's special fund for abused circus animals. Yes, right now she was going through a rough period. Right now she was subjecting everyone around her to her preadolescent angst...but this was the same child who would run into his and Catherine's room when she was in the second grade for one last good-night kiss or who would lean against him for hours as they sat on the beach in Florida and watched seagulls and talked.

Spencer decided he hadn't been very nice to that EMT. He wasn't proud of his behavior, and he wondered why he had been so testy and sanctimonious with her. All she did was save his life. Was it because of his injury? The fact that he would, in all likelihood, be disabled? Or was it more basic than that: Was he cranky simply because last night he had slept poorly again-woken twice by the lobsters in his dreams-and now he was tired?

He had asked for and been given a different kind of sleeping pill tonight, but he was still wary about what sorts of dreams might await him when he dozed off. Last night there had been a couple of doozies, including one in which his hands were bound with belt-wide rubber bands, and he was trapped on his side in a crate in a walk-in refrigerator. He woke up in a sweat as he was being grabbed by a giant human hand to be either cleavered or dropped into a pot of boiling water. It was only a dream, but it had still been a pretty hideous experience.

No doubt tonight he'd start dreaming of deer. Inadvertently Catherine had put the idea into his head when she'd been commiserating with him this afternoon, trying to cheer him up. Trying to elicit a smile from him, she'd suggested that tonight he'd probably start dreaming of Bambi: The fawn would emerge from the garden, beet greens and kohlrabi on the young buck's breath.

Well, deer were beautiful animals: graceful, athletic, and lithe. They were completely unlike lobsters, which Spencer believed were among the most vile-looking creatures on the planet. What in the name of G.o.d had the first person to eat one been thinking? He decided he was mistaken when he had told Melissa Fearon that he liked lobsters. He didn't. He tried to appreciate all animals, and most of the time he did. But not lobsters. He couldn't appreciate a lobster.

He stared into the blackness out the window, watching the designs the raindrops made on the gla.s.s. He would have to get the address of that EMT from someone at the hospital so he could write her a note. He wanted to apologize for being short with her, as well as, yes, to thank her for saving his life. He would be unable to write the note himself, of course. At least in the foreseeable future. He guessed eventually he would learn to write legibly with his left hand, but that day was almost unimaginable to him at the moment. He could barely lift his left arm right now because of the way any upper-body movement at all sent tectonic shudders of pain across his right side. But he would thank her. Somehow. And he would do more than write a note, because sixty or eighty dictated words were insufficient when someone has brought you back from the dead.

He told himself he shouldn't lose sight of that. It was certainly a temptation to read more into this second chance than was most certainly there-to see it as an opportunity to make resolutions and vows, promises that he knew in his heart he would never keep for more than a week or a month-but the undeniable reality was that he very nearly had died. Bought the farm. Augured in. If the bullet had been a few inches higher, he would have been all but decapitated. A few inches in another direction, and his heart would have become a ragout. Either way, he would have been dead before his body landed back in the snow peas. As troubling as his future looked to him tonight-the considerable handicap that loomed before him, his daughter's almost crippling remorse, the damage he had inflicted on his marriage before this accident had even occurred-the truth was that he was alive. Just about four days ago there was no reason to believe that he would be.

And so while he wasn't about to see more of a spiritual second chance here than was probably warranted, neither would he forget that he still had a future. It might not be the future he once had imagined. But when the sun rose in the morning over the mountains just east of his mother-in-law's house in Sugar Hill, he would still be around. Tomorrow-and the day after tomorrow and the day after that-he would try to be less careless with his time.

IN THE HOUSE IN SUGAR HILL, Sara stood above the crib in which Patrick was sleeping and watched the small blanket rise almost imperceptibly off his chest with each inhalation. She wondered if he was going to have her husband's elegant, patrician slide of a nose. People said they saw as much of her in the baby as they did John, but she knew they were just being polite. Right now the child looked like nothing more than a John Seton clone. She closed the window completely and for a moment gazed out into the garden. The rain had resumed a few minutes ago, soon after her husband had left for a walk. She didn't think John had brought an umbrella with him. She thought she saw something move in the dark and the mist, guessed it was probably the deer, and decided to go outside to turn on the floodlights by the garage. Scare the creatures away: frighten the h.e.l.l out of the animals that, inadvertently, had brought so much pain on her family. Sara stood above the crib in which Patrick was sleeping and watched the small blanket rise almost imperceptibly off his chest with each inhalation. She wondered if he was going to have her husband's elegant, patrician slide of a nose. People said they saw as much of her in the baby as they did John, but she knew they were just being polite. Right now the child looked like nothing more than a John Seton clone. She closed the window completely and for a moment gazed out into the garden. The rain had resumed a few minutes ago, soon after her husband had left for a walk. She didn't think John had brought an umbrella with him. She thought she saw something move in the dark and the mist, guessed it was probably the deer, and decided to go outside to turn on the floodlights by the garage. Scare the creatures away: frighten the h.e.l.l out of the animals that, inadvertently, had brought so much pain on her family.

At the top of the stairs she could hear the murmurs of Willow's and Charlotte's small voices, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. She'd kissed them good night and turned out their lights perhaps fifteen minutes ago. She hoped they were talking about something silly-not the accident or poor Spencer's injuries. As she pa.s.sed the kitchen, she saw Nan glancing at the catalogs and the bills and the solicitations (did no one write letters anymore?) that somehow had managed to ama.s.s in the few days her mother-in-law had been shuttling her brood back and forth between the hospital in Hanover and the Contour Club.

The house was linked to the garage by a path made of slate, and the slabs tonight were cold and slippery and wet. Sara's feet were bare, and despite the rain she walked slowly. It wasn't simply that she didn't want to fall: Suddenly she wanted to catch the deer in the floodlights and watch them freeze before fleeing. The light switch was just inside the side door to the garage-what Willow had referred to as the people door when she'd been younger, her means of differentiating it from the ma.s.sive overhead doors for the vehicles, which even now she had to struggle to lift.

Sara found the switch with her fingers, and turned toward the garden before flipping the lights on. She wanted to be sure she had the patch of badly mauled vegetables fixed in her gaze.

In the instant of illumination she spied not deer, however, nor a dog or racc.o.o.ns or even a black bear. She saw instead John, his hair plastered so flat on his head by the rain that it looked as if he had just emerged from the pool at the club. He wasn't wearing a s.h.i.+rt, and before she saw he was still clad in his khaki shorts she thought he was naked. He had a pair of metal tomato cages in one hand and the cherry tomato plants that moments earlier had been growing inside them-easily three feet high now-in the other, their stalks and roots dangling in the air like the spindly legs of unimaginably giant insects. On the ground beside him she observed that he had upended the other tomato cages as well, and ripped those plants from the ground, too. She wasn't sure, but it looked as if he had yanked up the corn plants the family had meticulously replanted on Friday and Sat.u.r.day, and savaged the peas, the string beans, the beets, the pumpkins, and the squash. It appeared as if he had ripped up everything the deer hadn't already nibbled to death in the garden.

She couldn't tell if he could see her-if he could determine exactly who it was who had just turned on the lights-both because she was in the dark and because at some point he had taken off his eyegla.s.ses (perhaps, she worried, when he had ripped off his s.h.i.+rt). He looked unsteady on his feet, but he squinted and stared in her general direction.

"Mother? Sara? Who's there?" he cried, and it was indeed a sob that he was offering up through the wind and the rain and the night.

She tried to answer but her voice caught in her throat. She tried one more time but was struck dumb by the sight of her husband and the half-mad waste he had inflicted on the vegetables and-now she glimpsed the edge of the cutting garden, partly illuminated by the floodlights-the flowers the family had planted Memorial Day Weekend. She was incapable of offering anything but a desperately sad little whimper.

"Sara?"

She wiped the rain from her eyes and nodded though he couldn't see her, and then she ran to him across the driveway and soggy carpet of lawn.

Part III

Eat What You Kill

Eighteen

On a Tuesday in early September, a full five weeks and three days since he'd taken a .30-caliber bullet in his shoulder, Spencer began the time-consuming ordeal of getting ready for work. Catherine and Charlotte both wanted to help him, as they had in different ways throughout the entire month of August and those still-balmy days of September. They had each felt a particular desire to a.s.sist him this morning since today he would be returning to the FERAL offices for the first time since before their disastrous family vacation in New Hamps.h.i.+re. But Spencer made it clear that this Tuesday he wanted to be completely on his own. He wanted to be a free agent: Capable. Confident. Independent. He understood that this image lacked a certain fidelity to his actual circ.u.mstances, since Charlotte had been tying his sneakers for him for most of the last month and slathering his plaque-fighting gel on his toothbrush. Likewise, it had been Catherine who had been pulling up his socks and his pants (it was almost impossible, he had discovered, to get a pair of slacks on without his right hand, because the fabric along the waistband kept bunching up just below his right hip), and opening the small prescription bottles with the Allegra he depended upon this time of the year for his allergy and the Percocet he needed these days like air. But it was an image toward which, he told himself, he could aspire.

Spencer knew his independence would not be a pretty sight and would take mind-numbing amounts of time, and so he'd told Dominique on the phone the previous Friday not to expect him until midmorning. And because he wanted no witnesses to the embarra.s.sing struggles that loomed before him, he was still in bed when his wife and his daughter ventured into the bedroom one last time to kiss him good-bye before leaving for their separate cla.s.srooms at the Brearley School across town. They asked-for, he guessed, the hundredth time that morning-what they could do for him.

"I'm really okay," he said, feigning a self-a.s.surance he didn't feel. He was, after all, about to try to conquer Everest. "Go, go, go-I'll be fine!"

He wasn't at all sure this was the truth. Still, he reminded himself that today might not be quite like his other days of pathetic incompetence, his right arm and hand completely useless, his left hand mesmerizing him with its weakness and palsylike lack of dexterity. This morning he was going to christen the tools that his physical therapist, a square-shouldered young man with hands that were at once muscular and soft named Nick Trigiani, had brought him over the weekend. Between grueling reps to build up the muscles on his left arm and hand and to prevent the ones on his right from atrophying completely, the two of them had pored over the catalogs Nick had brought with him from his office at Roosevelt Hospital, each one filled with myriad wonders to help the sick and the lame survive in the modern world. Spencer managed to run up a thousand-plus-dollar tab with items that cost between five and fifty dollars apiece, uncaring whether his insurance would cover the cost of a single one. These were things he had to have, and now they were here, unpacked and ready to use.

Catherine had done the unpacking and unwrapping over the weekend and pulled the items from their cardboard boxes and clear plastic sarcophagi. This work demanded two hands, one of which more times than not was using a pair of scissors or slas.h.i.+ng strapping tape with a kitchen knife. He had done nothing as each device was unveiled other than watch the two family cats paw delightedly through the papers and climb inside the now empty s.h.i.+pping cartons.

In any case, as soon as Spencer heard the front door to their apartment glide shut Tuesday morning, he swung his legs over the side of the mattress and used his one good arm to push himself to his feet. Even getting out of bed had become a ch.o.r.e, because he had three-plus decades of muscle memory using both hands for leverage. Now he had only his left. He still slept with his right arm held to his chest with his shoulder immobilizer, a sling with a strap that wound around his rib cage, and so he knew intellectually that his fingers and his hand would tingle like they had gone to sleep if there had been any functioning nerves remaining. There weren't, and so he felt nothing. His shoulder, of course, was stinging fiercely because it was only a few minutes ago that he had swallowed his first Percocet and his first three Advils of the day-a Percocet and Advil c.o.c.ktail didn't quash completely the hot branding iron he felt every waking moment in what remained of his shoulder, but at least it made the pain bearable-and the pills hadn't kicked in yet.

His plan was to endure the agony that came with removing the sling so he could shower, dry himself as best he could, climb back into the sling and run an electric razor over his face (never before his injury had he even contemplated using an electric razor to try to mow down the stubble that covered his cheeks and his neck like shards of steel wool), and then brush his teeth. If he accomplished this without falling back onto the bed in the torturous pain he had endured in his shoulder only yesterday when he'd forgotten that his arm would flap the moment he first removed it from the sling-he was much better off when he rested it on his lap while he pulled apart the Velcro clasps with the fingers on his left hand-he would get dressed and make breakfast on his own.

AND HE DID INDEED manage to shower (though, as always, he was almost completely incapable of an undertaking as simple as drying his left underarm) and shave and brush his teeth-this last task proving particularly difficult because he had to hold the handle of the brush with his teeth like it was a cigar so he could apply the aquamarine gel with his one functioning hand. When he was done he gave himself license to leave the cap off (he vowed the next toothpaste they bought would have a flip top), because he figured if he held the tube in his teeth the way he'd just held the brush he would send a stream of gel spurting out onto the bathroom counter. Abruptly one of the cats, Emma, appeared on the Formica out of nowhere, saw the cap as a toy and swiped at it with her paw. Much to her apparent amazement she sent it hurtling into the wastepaper basket. Spencer knew that even if bending over weren't an exercise in excruciating torment, he wouldn't have bothered to retrieve it. Toothpaste caps were a luxury that was now beyond him. manage to shower (though, as always, he was almost completely incapable of an undertaking as simple as drying his left underarm) and shave and brush his teeth-this last task proving particularly difficult because he had to hold the handle of the brush with his teeth like it was a cigar so he could apply the aquamarine gel with his one functioning hand. When he was done he gave himself license to leave the cap off (he vowed the next toothpaste they bought would have a flip top), because he figured if he held the tube in his teeth the way he'd just held the brush he would send a stream of gel spurting out onto the bathroom counter. Abruptly one of the cats, Emma, appeared on the Formica out of nowhere, saw the cap as a toy and swiped at it with her paw. Much to her apparent amazement she sent it hurtling into the wastepaper basket. Spencer knew that even if bending over weren't an exercise in excruciating torment, he wouldn't have bothered to retrieve it. Toothpaste caps were a luxury that was now beyond him.

He didn't floss, but he made a mental note to ask Nick about ordering a device that would allow him to floss with one hand. A few times Catherine had tried to floss for him, but not only had the experience been demeaning, it had been physically unpleasant: The amount of blood Spencer spat into the sink when she was through and the way his gums felt like they'd just been worked over with the tip of a box cutter were testimony to the reality that it took genuine skill to floss someone else's teeth, and they should have more respect for the dental hygienists who did it daily.

For a moment before getting dressed he stared at his shoulder in the mirror. He was long past squeamishness at the sight of the injury, and the tissue was actually healing quite nicely. Dr. Palmer, the self-proclaimed "upholstery guy" back in Hanover, had done a wonderful job and the wound-both the chasm where the bullet had entered his shoulder and done its dirty work, and the ravine made by the surgeons when they had climbed inside him to try to return a semblance of order to the shattered bone and twitching muscular slush-itself no longer repulsed him. Certainly it had in the second and third week in August, when he was back in Sugar Hill and that portly home health nurse who always smelled slightly of onion was changing his dressings twice a day. The first couple of times he'd showered with his sling off (Just get the soap and water right in there, don't worry, Palmer had told him), he'd practically vomited in the stall. Palmer had told him), he'd practically vomited in the stall.

Now it was starting to look like the glossy, hairless skin of a burn victim. Though his shoulder would never heal to the point where you couldn't tell it had once suffered a colossal a.s.sault-there would always be scarring-eventually it would appear as if it had endured a trauma no worse than, say, rotator cuff surgery. Maybe rotator cuff surgery with complications that had been manageable. In any case, it wouldn't be grotesque.

What would be grotesque was the subluxation that would occur over the next year or so. It was inevitable. Because there was no bone linking his arm to his torso-and no reason to bother with a metal shoulder because there were no working nerves-it would be largely scar tissue fusing the appendage to his body. As a result, the joint would slowly come apart. It wouldn't be violent like a dislocation; it would be a slow, steady, inexorable separation so that a year from now there would in all likelihood be a two-finger-width indentation-a pothole, one doctor had called it-between his shoulder and the uppermost bone in his perpetually dangling right arm. The very idea left Spencer sickened, and no amount of physical therapy could prevent the subluxation from occurring.

Too bad they couldn't share that hideous deformity with the world at the press conference Paige was planning for the week after next. No, he thought, maybe that wasn't too bad. At some point people would have to see how scarred and disabled he was, but he wasn't prepared to reveal that just yet. Even for deer. Especially for deer.

He realized that he didn't particularly like the animal. Deer and lobsters. He loathed them both, he decided, and for the briefest moment he wondered if he was in the right business. The notion pa.s.sed quickly, however, and he started a litany in his mind of all the animals in the world that were abused and that he did love. He tried telling himself that if he'd been shot because people went monkey hunting in the fall, he'd be downright excited by all of Paige's plans, but he didn't quite believe it.

Still naked (he was no longer capable of cinching a towel around his waist the way he once could), he wandered back into his and Catherine's bedroom and surveyed the tools he had lined up the night before along the top of his bureau. There they were, the Good Grips b.u.t.ton Hook he would use to grasp his s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.tons with the end of a dolphin-nosed wire and pull them through the thin slats in the fabric, and the generic dressing stick with the C hook at the end he would loop through a belt loop to pull his pants over the strangely unconquerable ledge that was his right hip. Gently he fingered the rubber handle on the crowbar-long shoehorn and then gazed down at his brand-new loafers. He hadn't worn loafers since college, but he would be wearing them when he went to the office today. They were black and they were ugly, because he refused to wear the brown calfskin ones his mother-in-law had ordered for him as a get-well gift from Brooks Brothers. He had to admit, the ones Mrs. Seton had sent him were softer than any shoe he'd slipped onto his foot in the last decade and change...but he still wasn't going to wear them.

These were made of something called vegetan suede, and they looked more like a pair of bedroom slippers for some unintentionally comic British fop than shoes for an ostensibly media savvy spokesperson for an organization headquartered in Manhattan. In the past he had always worn leather-free hiking boots or black canvas sneakers and felt rather hip. He sighed: He'd have to find the time when he returned to work to search out a decent pair of pigskin-free Merrells. Then he sat down on the bed, catching his breath before beginning the task-rich, he knew well, with petty humiliations-of getting dressed.

OH, BUT AS DEMEANING and time-consuming (and painful) as it was to stuff his right arm into the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt or use his dressing stick to hoist up his khakis, getting dressed was a picnic compared to making his breakfast. Catherine had left everything out for him on the counter, but he still had to craft his meal by himself. The breakfast he envisioned would demand effort both in the preparation and the consumption. The menu? Bran flakes with soy milk, coffee, and fresh honey wheat bread from the bakery around the corner topped with the homemade blueberry jam that one of his mother-in-law's New Hamps.h.i.+re friends, Marguerite, had given him before he returned to New York. and time-consuming (and painful) as it was to stuff his right arm into the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt or use his dressing stick to hoist up his khakis, getting dressed was a picnic compared to making his breakfast. Catherine had left everything out for him on the counter, but he still had to craft his meal by himself. The breakfast he envisioned would demand effort both in the preparation and the consumption. The menu? Bran flakes with soy milk, coffee, and fresh honey wheat bread from the bakery around the corner topped with the homemade blueberry jam that one of his mother-in-law's New Hamps.h.i.+re friends, Marguerite, had given him before he returned to New York.

Spencer sensed that an eight-year-old with two hands easily could make this breakfast-replacing the coffee, of course, with a more appropriate beverage. Apple juice, he decided. h.e.l.l, a reasonably resourceful six-year-old could make this breakfast if the bread were already sliced and the soy milk was in a quart container the kid could lift. Nevertheless, Spencer knew he would need the brand-new kitchen tools for the disabled he and Nick had picked out.

He began with the easy part and actually allowed himself a small smile when he managed to open and pour his cereal without spilling more than a dozen flakes around the outside of the bowl. Then he unscrewed the top of the soy milk, and left the container open on the counter. He understood that the real problem he would face with the cereal would come only when he tried to eat it. Though he was now the proud owner of a Good Grips easy-to-hold spoon that was supposed to make it easier for a right-handed person to eat with his left hand (the shaft was as wide and round as a hammer handle), he'd discovered yesterday that he still dribbled more cereal onto the table and into his lap than he managed to bring to his mouth. His left arm and hand still weren't very strong-despite the hours he'd already spent squeezing his hand exerciser-and their utter lack of coordination continued to fascinate him.

The more difficult part of his breakfast preparation would be slicing the bread, and then spreading that jam with one hand. He would try out his Spreadboard for the first time, a device that resembled a baseball diamond's home plate, with a pair of plastic guards along the apex against which he would place his bread to hold it still while slathering on the preserves and (perhaps) a little Soy-garine.

Even before he did that, of course, he would have to wedge the jar between his knees and then hope he could unscrew the lid with his left hand. Given the reality that these preserves had never been opened, he had a pretty good sense that the lid would be snug. He shook his head: He should have had Catherine open it for him before she and Charlotte had left for school.

Nevertheless, he had cereal in a bowl and a loaf of bread on the cutting board. Even I can slice fresh bread, Even I can slice fresh bread, he thought to himself, he thought to himself, and make my own breakfast. and make my own breakfast.

HE WAS, ALAS, MISTAKEN. In the cab to his office he tried not to focus on the degrading spectacle he would have made if there'd been any witnesses: the bread crushed instead of cut, crumbs on the counter and the floor and (somehow) the dish rack three feet away, soggy clumps of cereal flakes everywhere but in his bowl, the jam jar completely impregnable until finally-half in rage and half in despair-he'd thrown it into the sink, the container banging off the faucet and then (much to his horror) shattering against the white porcelain sides. He honestly wasn't sure whether it was the faucet or the sink that had actually broken the gla.s.s. In the cab to his office he tried not to focus on the degrading spectacle he would have made if there'd been any witnesses: the bread crushed instead of cut, crumbs on the counter and the floor and (somehow) the dish rack three feet away, soggy clumps of cereal flakes everywhere but in his bowl, the jam jar completely impregnable until finally-half in rage and half in despair-he'd thrown it into the sink, the container banging off the faucet and then (much to his horror) shattering against the white porcelain sides. He honestly wasn't sure whether it was the faucet or the sink that had actually broken the gla.s.s.

Finally he just put his left hand into the box of cereal and grabbed a few fistfuls, and then wiped a wad of bread against the Soy-garine that was starting to melt on the counter. He was astonished at how tired his left arm had become in the failed effort and how much his right side had wound up hurting. The pain, exacerbated he knew by anxiety and exhaustion, was a soaring, white hot stinging in his shoulder and upper back, that-unfortunately-was now so p.r.o.nounced that his head was starting to ache, his ears were ringing, and he wanted to put his head down in the cab that very moment and vomit.

He took in deep breaths through his nose and tried to concentrate on the sports radio talk station the cabbie was listening to softly on the radio. G.o.d, was Don Imus already off the air? Was it already after ten? Had it taken him that long to get dressed and make the kitchen look like a chimpanzee had just tried to make breakfast? When the cab braked abruptly before a red traffic light, he conked his head against the insufficiently padded rear of the front seat, and-despite the sling-his right hand swung forward just enough to cause the pain in his shoulder to slide off the charts for a moment. He heard himself cry out "s.h.i.+t!" with such a pathetic shrillness to his voice that he grew embarra.s.sed.

But even that embarra.s.sment paled a moment later, when the cab jerked forward with the green light and he was pushed back in his seat. The cattle prod of pain deep inside him simultaneously pressed downward from his shoulder to his back and upward from his neck to his head, and though he brought his left hand to his mouth with impressive rapidity there was no stopping the vomit that was spewing up from his stomach, burning his throat and his mouth and his tongue, and spraying through his fingers like water sent full blast through a partly plugged faucet.

"What the f.u.c.k?" the cabbie was saying, "I can't stop here! What the f.u.c.k are you doing?"

He opened his mouth-the acid on his lips a minor annoyance compared to the spikes of agony everywhere else in his body and the humiliation and disgust he felt when he looked down and saw the vomit on the knees of his slacks and the front of his s.h.i.+rt-and heard himself murmur, "Just turn around please. I want to go home."

Nineteen

Charlotte understood that her father was in excruciating pain most of the time and that he was trying to hide it from her: He didn't want her to feel any worse than she already did. But she knew how much he hurt. She knew he was popping Percocet and Advil like they were M&M's, and she doubted fifteen minutes went by when she herself didn't think in some way about the accident and what she had done. She might recall the blast of the gun-and the feeling that she was flying backward-with a vividness that would cause her to flinch while performing a task as habitual as setting the dinner table or brus.h.i.+ng the cats, or while in the midst of an endeavor that demanded serious concentration: reading through the scene from The Secret Garden The Secret Garden that she was going to use in her audition for Brearley's fall musical or trying to decide exactly which of her blouses were appropriate now that she was in the eighth grade and had a full year's distance from that nightmarish elementary school jumper. She thought her father's tolerance for pain was downright heroic. that she was going to use in her audition for Brearley's fall musical or trying to decide exactly which of her blouses were appropriate now that she was in the eighth grade and had a full year's distance from that nightmarish elementary school jumper. She thought her father's tolerance for pain was downright heroic.

This morning, however, on what they presumed would be his triumphant return to work, she had come across a photo of him in a magazine and for the first time since the accident she had grown angry. Furious. The magazine was four and a half years old, and she was really only skimming it to kill a minute or two while her mother made absolutely certain that Dad didn't need anything before they left together for Brearley. She'd found the periodical wedged upright into the ma.s.s of glossy pulp in the bra.s.s magazine rack in the den, the one that sat beside the fireplace they never used.

In the journal was a photo essay about reading in America, in which dozens of photographers had captured all kinds of people reading in one twenty-four-hour span. Some were authors giving readings at universities or bookstores, and some were cameos of actors or politicians holding in their hands whatever book they happened to be enjoying at the moment. There were a few of small book groups gathered in suburban living rooms to discuss a novel they had just read together. And there in the midst of it was one of Molly the gorilla in her five-thousand-square-foot Woodside, California, pen with-of all people-Spencer McCullough beside her.

Over and over Charlotte read the photo caption: Molly, a thirty-one-year-old female gorilla, and Spencer McCullough, the thirty-three-year-old communications director for the animal rights organization FERAL, savor one of both Molly's and McCullough's favorite children's books, Maurice and the Magic Banana. Maurice and the Magic Banana. Though McCullough read the popular children's book aloud to the western lowland gorilla, Molly is capable of reading about Maurice's adventures with the enchanted fruit on her own. Molly understands well over two thousand words. Though McCullough read the popular children's book aloud to the western lowland gorilla, Molly is capable of reading about Maurice's adventures with the enchanted fruit on her own. Molly understands well over two thousand words."Molly's and my DNA are 97.7 percent identical," says McCullough, an obvious fan of both the very real gorilla and the fictional Maurice. "Should it really be all that surprising that the two of us share a taste in children's literature, as well?"

No one had ever told her about the picture and when she saw it instantly she guessed why: When Maurice had enjoyed his brief stay atop the children's best-seller lists-nudging aside Harry Potter and Violet Baudelaire-her father had refused to read it aloud to her because he said it was completely idiotic and (in some way she didn't understand at the time) vaguely obscene. Certainly he hadn't viewed Maurice and the Magic Banana Maurice and the Magic Banana as "children's literature" when she'd been younger. Here he was, however, reading it aloud quite happily with some gorilla because he could use the opportunity to get some ink for FERAL. To make a point that gorillas were smart and should be respected. as "children's literature" when she'd been younger. Here he was, however, reading it aloud quite happily with some gorilla because he could use the opportunity to get some ink for FERAL. To make a point that gorillas were smart and should be respected.