The Best Kind of People (17 page)

“I don’t know. I’ve always felt so safe here, but …” She handed him her phone and opened it to her text messages. The first one read
pervy bitch, go kill yourself
. They got worse the further down he scrolled.

“Bullying is out of style now, you say?”

“I guess I was wrong.”

“How are they treating the girls who accused him?”

“Most haven’t been back to school, I don’t think.”

“Change your number,” he said. “I can do it for you. You shouldn’t have to read this. Nothing is your fault.”

“I feel weird at home. I don’t feel safe. It feels safer here,” she said.

Andrew nodded, though he was a bit taken aback that he couldn’t protect her from feeling this way at home. They watched as Kevin put the lawn mover into the shed. He stopped and pulled something out of his jeans.

“What’s this guy’s deal? Uncle?”

“Stepdad. Sort of.”

“He’s a bit … young, or just looks it?”

“A bit of both,” Sadie said as Kevin approached them and put a joint to his lips and sparked it.

He held it out to Andrew. “Do you smoke?”

“No, not usually,” he lied, “but all right, seems as good a time as any.”

Andrew took the joint and inhaled. Then he looked at Sadie. “Shit, are you okay with this?” He pointed to the joint and then turned to exhale a long stream of smoke behind him.

“Totally,” she said.

“I’m having a hard time understanding you’re not twelve, and then I do something like smoke drugs in front of you.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

Sadie smiled and reached up to grab the joint. “Oh no, honey. You’re far too smart for this buzz, believe me,” Andrew said, handing it back to Kevin. “Don’t be sharing with her.”

Kevin nodded in agreement and stubbed out the joint in an ashtray.

When no one was looking, Sadie took the roach and slipped it in her pocket for later.

WEDNESDAY

THIRTEEN

ON WEDNESDAY, CLARA
and Andrew went back to the city for the night, promising to return the following day. Joan and Sadie were alone in the house, and did what they hardly ever did on a weekday night: they put on sweatpants and ordered a pizza with pineapple and double cheese from Gino’s. Sadie had been scarce, and it seemed every time she was home there were threatening phone calls, reporters, or local teenagers harassing them from the road. There’d even been a rowboat of photographers at the dock before Clara ran at them with her own camera and a few choice words. Sadie had had to shut down all her social media accounts.

Gino’s was the Woodburys’ usual pizza place.

“What’s your address, ma’am?”

“It’s Joan, you know, at 235 Lakeside.” She pulled a credit card out of her pocketbook and tapped it against the living room end table.

“I’m new here, ma’am. Credit card number and name as it appears on the card?”

She did as requested, spelling out her name.

There was a long pause on the line. She waited almost a minute. There was no goodbye, just some ambient kitchen noise, a muffled receiver, and the sound of an older man’s voice. “Just hang up the fucking phone, Jake.” A shaky sound of a receiver and then a click. No pizza.

She thought about calling back, about yelling into the receiver that she wasn’t a criminal, she was a loyal customer who always tipped handsomely. One time she had even given
CPR
to a man having a heart attack in their restaurant, and he’d lived, thanks to her. They had a clipping about it from the newspaper up on their wall. Still, she couldn’t have a pizza? Ungrateful! She unplugged the landline phone and sat on the couch, hugging a throw pillow to her chest.

The house was pretty empty and quiet save for the purring of Payton, curled up on George’s pillow where he always slept whenever George was away. Sadie was upstairs studying. She’d told Joan earlier that she needed some alone time.

She contemplated asking the neighbours if she could order a pizza from their house, but she hadn’t talked to them since George’s arrest. Instead, she made a pot of spaghetti with some pesto and brought up a bowl to Sadie, who was sitting on her bed in front of her laptop, chewing on her hair. She took the bowl of pasta and sat it down on top of a textbook.

“Mom, come look at this,” she said, going over to the peaked attic window that looked out onto Lakeshore Drive.

The reporters were still there. One sat on a lawn chair, hunched over a laptop. Sadie handed Joan the binoculars George used to use for birding.

“Okay, now look,” she demanded.

Joan peered through and saw a car speeding up to the gate. The reporters turned and took some photos. The car sped forward a bit and then stopped on the other side of the hedge on the far eastern side of their property. A bunch of teenagers got out and started climbing the fence.

“Call the police, honey,” Joan said.

“No, I know who it is. It will make things worse.”

Once over the hedge, the kids hurled objects at the house, laughing drunkenly before ambling back over. Joan ran downstairs and saw that it was paper bags of dog poop and some broken beer bottles. Reporters clicked away as she picked up the mess, unable to stop herself from crying.

When she came back in, Sadie was standing by the door fully dressed, a duffle bag over her shoulder.

“I’m going to stay with Jimmy, Mom. I can’t handle it here. I’m worried. Maybe you should go to Clara’s?”

“Honey, you need to be with family right now. We’re going to see your dad Friday afternoon.”

“Mom, we’re not going to visit him at work. We’re going to
prison.
”

“I am well aware of that, honey.”

“Jimmy’s mom said I could crash there for as long as I want to.”

“Did she? Without even talking to me first?”

“She asked if she could, but I said you were probably going through enough.”

“I’m still your parent. I’m still here for you. Nothing will change that.”

“I know, I know.” Sadie shifted her weight impatiently, checking an incoming text message. “Jimmy is parked at the Coffee Hut and I’m going to row the boat over to the beach and return it. Is that okay?”

“Of course that’s not okay. I’ll drive you to the Coffee Hut, for god’s sake.”

“Mom, there are too many people out there. It’s too stressful.”

“This is our house. We haven’t done anything wrong. Those people out there can just
go to hell
.”

Joan’s cell rang and she picked it up without thinking. “I hope your husband gets the shit kicked out of him in jail. You had to have known. What kind of fucking idiot slut couldn’t have known?”

“How did you get this number?” Joan demanded, but the person hung up.

Joan grabbed her keys and they walked out to the Volvo. Sadie ran behind her, shielding her face with her hands as cameras clicked. Joan pressed down on the horn and turned on her bright lights as she drove up to the gate, clicking it open and leaving reporters to scramble to the side as she sped through. Sadie crouched down in the passenger seat.

In the Coffee Hut parking lot, Joan turned off the ignition and touched her daughter’s shoulder.

Joan wanted to explain that Sadie was too damn young to stay over with a boyfriend. That it was not acceptable. What would people say? “You’re so young, Sadie. You have a whole lifetime ahead of living with boys. People will talk …”

“I think I’m the least controversial member of the family these days, Mom. Plus, I’m not living with him. It will be temporary.” Sadie opened the passenger door and got out, opening the back door of Jimmy’s car and throwing her duffle bag in before turning to wave.

Joan waited until they were out of sight to cry.

THURSDAY

FOURTEEN

THE NEXT MORNING,
Joan showed up at Jimmy’s house. Her hair was flattened on one side. She was wearing the old tattered University of Boston sweatshirt she normally reserved for Sunday mornings after church when she cleaned the house. She tried to fix her hair and gave up, ringing Jimmy’s doorbell half hoping his mother wouldn’t be home.

Elaine welcomed her into the house, offered her a cup of coffee.

“Did you really say that my daughter could stay here? I’m not a huge fan of the idea,” Joan said, “but Sadie is very convinced it’s what she wants to do.”

“I said she could, but only if you were okay with it.”

“I don’t want her to be a burden,” Joan said, looking out the window. It was quieter in this neighbourhood, no reporters or vandals. It might be a good idea after all. “I could give you money for groceries and for the bills,” she said, feeling herself giving in.

“She’s not a burden at all. I hardly notice her, and when I do, it’s nice to have another girl around, you know? You don’t have to worry about money, Joan. Really.”

Joan raised her eyebrows. “She will have her own room?”

“We’ve set her up in the guest room,” Elaine said, and then paused before leading Joan upstairs. Joan was relieved to see Sadie’s clothes there, folded on the lilac bureau, her track shoes lined up against the baseboards, her hair products fanned out on the top of the dresser, alongside some novels and school books.

“And you will watch, to make sure, uh, they aren’t alone together at night?”

Joan was one of those people who thinks sex only happens at night in bedrooms and clings to this rule.

Elaine said, “Well, they’re seventeen. You know I can’t watch them constantly, right? We just have to make sure they both know … what they need to know.”

SADIE STOOD OUTSIDE
the guest room, eavesdropping on Elaine and her mother. What Joan didn’t know was that Elaine bought condoms in bulk at Costco and kept them underneath the sink in the bathroom. One time when Sadie was visiting, Elaine showed her around the house and opened up the cabinet to say there were tampons there and she could use them any time. The condoms were beside the tampons. “You can help yourself to absolutely everything,” she said, in case Sadie wasn’t getting the picture. “I don’t count … anything,” she said, picking up the box of Trojans and pretending to adjust them neatly.

Elaine was the kind of mother who, if she’d had a daughter, would’ve offered her the pill as an option at fourteen after giving a speech over dinner about the struggle for women’s reproductive freedoms in the 1960s. Her own mother hadn’t spoken to Sadie about sex since she’d given her an illustrated copy of
How Babies Are Made
at the age of eight.

“I’m against this. You know, I want her at home. She belongs at home. I miss her.”

Sadie was stunned by her mother opening up like this, so vulnerable, so unlike herself.

“I know,” said Elaine. “But I have the feeling that if I tell her she can’t come here, that would be worse, you know? Who knows where she would go.”

“Well, you don’t know her like I do. Sadie is not stupid or impulsive,” Joan said.

“I agree. I don’t know her. I’m not trying to be her mother. I’m just trying to give her some options, in a difficult situation.”

Sadie couldn’t believe this didn’t provoke a Joan-style rant about permissive and unconventional parenting styles that are damaging, and how children need rules and respond to systems of order imposed on them so that they feel safe in a world full of chaos. “Children need boundaries!” she would normally have shouted, while demanding Sadie get into the Volvo “this instant!”

Instead, she heard her mother clear her throat. “When did it switch, you know, from when we made the decisions to when we just gave up and let them do it? When did we stop being in control?”

Sadie felt confused; she’d never heard her mother express doubt before. She always knew what to do.

“Well, parental control is always somewhat illusory, right?”

“I don’t like this, but I understand how hard it must be for Sadie to be at home. But I want her to know that she is welcome to move home at any time of the day or night, and that I will never stop being her mother.”

“Have you told her this?”

“Of course. Many times. Anyway, let her know I’m expecting her tomorrow at one, like we talked about,” she said.

Sadie felt so guilty, hearing her mother sound so unsure.

“I will.”

FRIDAY

FIFTEEN

THE GATE BUZZED
as Joan was packing up an orange plastic cooler for the ride to the prison. The cooler was from the 1990s, and had
Woodbury
scrawled in black marker on the white top from when the kids used to play team sports. Inside she’d placed ice packs, a bag of green grapes, two small yogurts, hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of water, and a tub of coleslaw left over from Clara’s last takeout order. She rolled up utensils in thick cloth napkins and had just clicked it shut when the gate’s buzzer rang.

She peered through the window and pressed the intercom. “It’s Nancy, from work,” a voice called. Joan buzzed the gate open and watched as Nancy, wearing her pink work scrubs and bright purple raincoat, pulled an oversized warming dish out of the trunk of her red compact car. She blew at the long blond strip of bangs that were falling across her eyes. Joan was both happy to see her and embarrassed to have to remember work niceties that felt so irrelevant in the face of what was happening.

“Oh, uh, hi Joan. I’m just, I was just. I was feeling badly, you know, and wanted to know you were okay, so I brought you a tuna casserole.” She held it out to her.

“Thanks. That’s very kind of you. Come on in.” Joan took the dish in her hands and took a step back so that Nancy could come inside.

Nancy smiled awkwardly, cocking her head to one side. “Oh no, I can’t. I’m on my way in, you know, I’m on tens this week, right? But I just wanted to check in. You know, a lot of us have been concerned.”

Right. There had been no phone calls to Joan, nobody checking in, beyond the card and flowers sent right after the arrest. Probably half of them were hoping to be promoted to Joan’s position if she left for good. Joan had no idea if these thoughts were incorrect or if she was experiencing a paranoid cognitive impairment of some kind, thinking everyone had terrible intentions. Normally she didn’t think ill of her co-workers. They weren’t a bad lot, for the most part.