The Best Kind of People (15 page)

“Values Council? How did these types of organizations gain credibility?”

Clara nodded her head. “Totally. Thank god you got out of this town, Andrew.”

A megaphone outside yelled, “Can we speak to the son? Is Andrew Woodbury there? Just a few questions and we’ll leave you alone.”

“No, they won’t,” said Clara, continuing to tear up a head of slightly wilting lettuce. “Don’t speak to the press at all. They will spin you all to hell, as evidence.” She held up the paper and read, “‘Wife Joan Woodbury is a nurse at the Avalon Hills trauma centre and is a respected member of the community. But how could a wife of over twenty years not know her husband’s predilections?’”

“Stop reading, Clara,” Joan said.

“I think the only way to deal with this is to look at it as a problem we need to solve,” Andrew said.

“It’s not like we’re capable of being objective,” said Clara.

“But you can hear the facts, or what appear to be the facts, and have an instinct. And I understand that all human beings are capable of exercising bad judgement, of behaving immorally. Dad is not exempt from that reality, but I’m too astonished by this. It’s
too
odd.”

Joan leaned against the kitchen cabinets, her chest filling with what felt like sparks of hope. If Andrew, someone with a complicated understanding of criminology and the law, in addition to loving and knowing his father, could feel this, then maybe she wasn’t deluded. His stance fuelled her intense leanings towards denial, already ripe for expansion. She and Andrew would fight this.

“What did the bank say?” Andrew asked.

“He’ll have to stay in jail until the trial. We’re broke,” she said. “Basically, we’re fucking broke, and I have no idea why.”

Andrew ran his hand under his chin for a moment. “I have the money. I’ll get him out. I just have to call my broker.”

Joan shook her head. “No, Andrew. That money is for your future, and I won’t allow it.”

“He could be in for a long time. I can’t let him stay there.”

“How long could it be? He’s innocent.”

Clara, holding a glass of red wine, went outside. Andrew joined her and they watched the sun sink behind the mountains across the lake. Joan sat at the kitchen table making lists of things to get done, anchored by tasks, her jaw clenching and toes tapping against the floor.

MONDAY EVENING

TEN

A
NDREW HALF-HEARTEDLY SCOOPED
the winged insects and various detritus floating atop the pool with a long net, banging the metal pole against the grass to empty it. Clara watched, holding a glass of wine, taken from a bottle in the off-limits cellar in the basement.

“I don’t know how to help your mom, kid,” Clara said to Andrew, who paused mid-skim to look at her and then kept at it. “Joan is usually the one conspiring to help
me
out.” She laughed. “I’m not sure what anyone can do for her that will make any difference.”

“When Jared’s dad died, he said the most appreciated thing was when friends would offer to do things like laundry or cooking, things that you lose the ability to care about in the face of grief,” Andrew said, putting the skimming tool on the grass and joining her at the edge of the pool. He took off his shoes and socks, and dipped both feet in.

“I can’t imagine Joan letting anyone else do the laundry.” Clara laughed. “She’d re-fold everything.”

Andrew laughed and took a long sip.

They could hear the slow lap of the waves against shoreline below them. They watched in silence as a fat raccoon climbed the oak tree and sat chewing on a stalk of broccoli retrieved from the Henshaws’ trash next door.

“What are you planning to do about work?” Clara asked.

“I took a few weeks’ leave. You can’t really be there half-time. I took a medical leave, actually. Stress.”

“No kidding. Will Jared be joining you?”

“He wants to come down this weekend to help out.”

The raccoon climbed down the tree and ambled towards them on the grass, climbing up the steps of the patio.

“Hey, little fella …” Clara called, raising her glass in a cheers. She turned back to Andrew. “You’ve got balls. Might be nice to have someone around who isn’t losing their shit all the time.”

Andrew shrugged.

Clara’s BlackBerry rang, and she answered an email before setting it down on the end table between them. “You know what I think we need to do, Andrew?”

“What?”

“Dance it off!” She sat up straight and stretched out her arms. “I usually go to yoga every morning, and I haven’t moved a muscle since we got here.” She got up and twirled around like a little girl, scaring the raccoon back onto the grass at the base of the tree. He turned and looked at them again, got up on his haunches.

Andrew laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Why not?”

“Might be better to go for a hike or something. We’re in
Avalon Hills.
The only thing around here are square dance classes — could be kind of kitschy?”

“I seem to remember you were a secret regular at that club in Woodbridge, no? A little house mix of Gloria Gaynor? Come on!”

LATER THAT EVENING,
they parked Joan’s car in the dimly lit lot outside Icons! bar, where Andrew hadn’t been in over a decade. Icons! was a purple cement block on the edge of a strip mall on Highway 2, just outside Woodbridge, and was the least iconic place Andrew could imagine. No sign or advertisements announced it was a gay bar, or any kind of bar at all. Inside it smelled just as he remembered: beer, settled-in sweat, and cologne. It sounded the same too: low, pulsing house music, ten years outdated, on a tinny system. There was a bar along one side of the cavernous main room; the walls, floor, and ceiling were painted black, except for one length of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Tacky all-season Christmas lights were strung under the bar and around a small
DJ
booth. There was a disco ball that had seen better days, but it continued to move in an endless optimistic twirl.

BEING AT A
gay bar with Clara was nostalgic in and of itself. When Andrew was young, Clara was his stepping stone to the gay world. She was a staple on the 1990s New York City party scene. She used to joke that she hardly knew any straight men, a scandalous thing to say in front of Andrew’s grandparents at Thanksgiving dinner. She would breeze into family gatherings hours late wearing bright purplish lipstick and gaudy, shining scarves, and she never wore practical footwear. Even as a toddler he was drawn to her every movement. Joan used to joke that he learned to walk one day when Clara was visiting, for the express purpose of following her around the house. She would sit on the dock in heeled sandals with an oversized sun hat while everyone else was in flip-flops and cut-off shorts. “I don’t need my own kid, you’ll be my little minion forever, won’t you, Andrew?” she’d say, happy to sit at one of his many tea parties, taking tiny sips of water from his carefully presented cups.

WHEN
A
NDREW WAS
twelve or thirteen, Clara started giving him mixed tapes and
CD
s of music that his parents would never have introduced him to — the Bronski Beat, Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys — coded musical messages he was still too young to recognize. Then she began bringing soundtracks to Broadway musicals and old-school punk music, with little messages on the covers like “Listen to the lyrics — there’s some revolution in there!” with a luminescent lipstick kiss and “Love, your old auntie!” scrawled at the bottom of the track listing. In a town that loved the Spin Doctors and whatever happened to be on the radio, Clara was Andrew’s window to culture beyond the borders of Avalon Hills.

While George and Joan were nonchalant about his sexual orientation, vaguely uninterested almost, Clara actively encouraged him to “let the freak flag fly” — her words — as soon as he was old enough to come to the city by himself. She would take him to edgy art gallery openings, plays, and restaurants, dressing him all in black and putting gel in his hair. They’d eat ice cream in the park and watch boys and she’d introduce him to her friends, who seemed to always be elegant gay men, and their female best friends. The men would fawn over him like he was a bunny, and that admiration made him able to go back to Avalon Hills for another few months and survive it all. By the time he was sixteen, she was sneaking him into clubs with her and they would dance until dawn, something they didn’t confide to Joan.

One of Andrew’s most cherished memories was of the summer he was fifteen years old. It was a particularly difficult year, and Clara insisted that he come to visit one day earlier than his family for their annual New York City trip. When he arrived at the train station, she was waiting with an ugly plastic rainbow necklace that she insisted on putting around his neck despite his protestations, and they got on the subway and then emerged out onto the street, where she screamed, “Surprise! It’s your first Pride parade!” He still had defensive bruises on his hands from fighting off Kenny and Bruce Shea in the latest locker room incident, and when Clara spun him around to look at the crowd of people celebrating what those guys had beat him up for, he actually started to cry like a confused, feral child. “Oh, baby,” Clara said, giving him a hug. “This weekend, I’m going to make you forget that terrible little town you live in.”

He met a group of boys his age in the parade and Clara handed him her apartment key and a clump of bills, and made him write “I will not take any pills and I will always use a condom” on a piece of paper and sign it before she let him go. He laughed because the idea of needing a condom seemed insane to him. He ended up dancing outside until the sun came up, and making out with another shy, geeky kid named Brian from Long Island, who came back and slept on Clara’s couch. It remained one of his most tender memories of adolescence, alongside the times he spent with Stuart.

Until he told his sister, Clara was the only one he’d ever told about Stuart.

ANDREW RECOGNIZED THE
bartender, slicing up limes on the counter, as the New Wave guy who used to work the door when he was young. The room was pretty empty except for two tables of regulars and one lone, elderly leather daddy showing off his moves in the middle of the small dance floor. The only thing that had changed was that the bulletin board in the hallway near the bathrooms didn’t just advertise the health clinic and leather ball anymore, but had brightly coloured posters publicizing a fundraiser for the local college’s
LGBT
club, a gay men’s running club, a drag ball, and a dance-a-thon.

“Well, I forgot what small-town bars are like,” Clara said, looking around at the half-empty room but still having to shout over the music. They clinked their beer glasses and decided they probably wouldn’t stay long.

They danced to a Blondie song, finished their drinks, and had just decided to leave when Stuart and his ball team arrived, a jovial group of men in their thirties and forties wearing red and blue team shirts. They pulled several tables together and were served metal buckets of bottle beers on ice.

“
That’s
Stuart,” he said, grabbing Clara’s arm before nodding in his direction. “I can’t believe there’s an actual gay baseball team. That would have been inconceivable when I lived here!”

“It gets better,” Clara said sarcastically, mocking Dan Savage’s recent anti-homophobia campaign as she eyed the sad, lone dancer and the table of drunk jocks.

Stuart looked up and caught Andrew’s eye. His face didn’t light up the way it used to. Still, Andrew felt obligated to walk over and say hello.

“Hey guys!” Andrew said, to everyone at the table, and then touched Stuart’s shoulder. “Hey, Stu.”

Clara hovered behind, trying to get reception on her cellphone. A few of the older guys smirked at each other when they saw Andrew. Stu pulled a cigarette out of his pack and tapped it on the table, then put it behind his right ear.

“Hey, Andrew,” Stuart said, “I’m surprised to see you here again.”

“I’m here with my aunt Clara. Remember I used to talk about her?” he said, nodding towards Clara, who stood shaking her hips back and forth a few seconds off the beat of “Dancing Queen.” She met Stu’s eye and nodded hello. Stuart didn’t offer them a seat, just pushed his chair back and stood up, tapping his smoke as explanation.

“Can I chat with you outside?”

“Sure,” Andrew said.

They went outside and stood awkwardly around the old Heinz ketchup can where smokers deposited their cigarettes, looking across the parking lot to the highway.

Stuart lit his cigarette and offered Andrew a drag. He declined.

“I know, I should quit. I can barely jog around the track anymore,” Stuart said, shaking his head in shame. Andrew noticed a yellow tinge to the skin under his eyes.

“Listen, I spoke to one of the girls involved in the case, and I think it’s legit, what she’s saying,” Stuart said, looking around in a paranoid way. A car pulled into the parking lot and Stuart walked behind the building, under an awning where they wouldn’t be seen.

Andrew had managed to forget about their predicament for almost an hour, losing himself in nostalgia. He kicked at the gravel. “What did she say?”

“She’s a real nice kid, and fuck, she’s young. She said he paid lots of attention to her, too much really. Asking her if she had a boyfriend all the time.”

“So? He took an interest in her life …”

Stuart looked at Andrew. “Whatever. I just thought you should be warned.”

“Thanks,” Andrew said, watching Stuart take another paranoid scan. “I’m sorry for snapping. It’s happened really quickly, and I’ve been buried in legal documents and I don’t really have perspective, you know. My dad and I, we were starting to get close again. It’s just so fuckin’ weird.”

“Yeah …”

Andrew started back towards the door. Stuart called after him.

“I just want you to know that you really were my true love …”

Andrew turned. Stuart was standing close to him now. He could smell hours of beer on his breath and was slightly revolted, yet at the same time he felt a familiar wave of nostalgic attraction. Stuart leaned in to kiss Andrew, holding his hands at the waist like they were kids at a school dance. The kiss was gentle, and Andrew pulled back before it got sloppy, or before he tried to draw him into a hug. The smell of Stuart’s cologne and cigarettes was enough to make Andrew feel as though he could fall over from the associated emotions.