The Best Kind of People (25 page)

“I won’t tell anyone,” she teased.

“Good,” he said. “So, how are things with your dad? Have you been for a visit?”

“Nope. Not since that first time. I don’t like going there.”

“That makes sense.” He nodded. “Prison is not exactly pleasant. Are you angry because …” He looked to be choosing his words very carefully. “Are you mad because … your dad ever … you know?”

“Fuck no! No, no, no, never.
GOD
. I’m so tired of getting asked that question.”

“Oh, sorry, I just wanted to know, you know, ’cause we’re friends and all.”

He said we’re friends.
I’m not just some guest in this guy’s house!
Her heart felt, as Amanda would say, all “melty.”

Kevin is making me stupid. Making me use words that aren’t real words.

“So … what are you writing right now?” She was trying to think of something to keep him there. “Still the teenagers? The canoers and the detective?”

“Yeah,” he said absently. “Speaking of, I gotta go write! I’m on a roll.”

She was sad that he wanted to leave her stoned all by herself in the basement watching a bad movie.

“Stay with me!” she said, putting on a fake pout.

“Ah, you sure are tempting, but really, I’ve got to keep the magic going.”

He called me tempting.

Tempting.

This was an anecdote she would circle later in stupid hearts and stars in her diary.

AFTER A FEW
moments, she decided to go upstairs and capitalize on the feeling of being in her body, and feeling weightless and calm. She crawled under the covers with Jimmy, and ran her hands along his chest, tracing his tattoo. He startled and then smiled. She ran her hands through his hair. He rolled on top of her and kissed her mouth, parting her legs with his knee. At first the kissing felt good, and the floating feel was pleasant enough, but as soon as he started fucking her, the revulsion returned. The street light through the window allowed her to see his face above her too clearly. She closed her eyes tight and wished he’d just hurry up.

After, he gathered her up in his arms and said, “I love you so much. That felt so good. I feel so connected to you. I feel like we’re one body.”

She briefly worried about how she should respond but realized his breaths had slowed and deepened and he was fast asleep. She pulled on one of his T-shirts and crept out of the room. Kevin was actually sleeping in Elaine’s room, making it easy to smoke his bong in the basement, where she eventually fell asleep, knowing she’d have to move out as soon as she could. The haven Jimmy’s house had provided had turned far too real.

TWENTY-TWO

THE HOSPITAL FOOD
court was the bowel of a wayward ship, no natural light and few nutritious options. It was possible to look around and forget what season it was. Overtired health care workers hunched over fire-engine red tables, spearing limp salad and texting their families. Visitors shared doughnuts, buttered terrible bagels, and drank coffee, best described as an adequate facsimile, heavily sugared to make it tolerable. Joan generally avoided the area, preferring to bring food from home.

She saw Sadie pushing through the crowd, arms crossed, heading towards her. As soon as Joan had tabled the possibility of selling the house on the phone the night before, she had felt regret. Why had she called up her daughter and told her she’d be taking away the site of her childhood — and all related stability — at such an unstable time? The guilt overwhelmed her.

She observed Sadie’s walk, her demeanour, trying to assess for signs of ill health, a manic or depressive state. She’d been obsessed with George’s health, combing through her recent memories for signs of a shift. Had he said or done anything out of character? What about his strange obsession with baking, with playing squash? She read research papers about men who suddenly acted differently, falling victim to brain tumours and resultant loss of impulse control. If he had a sickness of some sort, and wanted treatment or to become rehabilitated, then things could work out eventually. She’d begun to toy with the idea of reconciliation, even if he was in fact guilty, and to think about the role of second chances, the possibility of him going through enough therapy to truly change in a fundamental way. Then, after having that thought, she would get angry again. She would picture the earnest look on Tammy-Lynn Harrison’s face. She felt as though she existed on a see-saw, swinging from one irrational thought to another.

She poured half a sweetener into her black tea as Sadie joined her. Joan pushed a waxy blueberry muffin her way and offered a fake cheerful hello.

“Hey, Mom, ’sup?” Sadie slouched into a chair, pulling the hood of her grey sweatshirt off her head, revealing a mess of knotted hair.

“I’ve been researching, about your father, about the possibility of a mental illness, undetected until now,” she said.

“Mom, if he was sick, would that make him blameless?”

“Maybe. But it means he could try to get well, he could try to … atone. That is, if he’s even guilty. We have to live with the uncertainty for now.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said curtly, picking a blueberry from the top of the muffin and popping it in her mouth. “I want to convince you not to sell the house.”

“Move back in,” Joan said boldly.

“Only if you don’t put it on the market,” she replied. Like mother, like daughter. “Ever. Like, even when I go to school. The house needs to be ours. Forever.”

“Sadie, what about next year, when you’re in college? The house is way too big … for just me — and your dad, if …” The reality of Sadie leaving and the future she had thought would be opening up, of living with just George again, without kids, of drinking red wine at night and doing whatever they pleased, being in their twenties again — that was never going to happen now.

Sadie appeared to contemplate the situation as Joan swallowed the lump in her throat.

“For now, then,” Sadie said. “Don’t do it now. I’ll move back in.”

Joan tried to mask her elation and speak calmly. “Okay, honey. I was thinking that we should spend Christmas with Andrew and Jared and Clara in the city. Would you like that?”

Thanksgiving has been a total bust. Clara had taken over the cooking, while Andrew and Joan went to visit George. The turkey hadn’t turned out, but everyone tried too hard to pretend everything was fine. Joan kept going to the bathroom to cry. She was hoping she could make up for Thanksgiving by planning a better Christmas.

“Seriously?” She pushed her hair out of her eyes, lighting up.

“Sure. It’s important for us to be together. But maybe we won’t bring Jimmy to New York, if that’s okay?” Joan prepared herself for protestations, but none come. Sadie just nodded.

“Yes, that would be best.”

Joan tried not to register any surprise. She sipped at her tea. She didn’t push her luck by asking about Sadie’s college applications. She just enjoyed the moment of calm between them, and felt lucky to have such a good daughter. She had an intuitive feeling that Sadie would be okay. That she was a fighter, and she’d recover.

“I’ll get my stuff and move back tomorrow, okay?”

“Great.”

JOAN STARTED HER
shift, checked the flow chart, and noted who was on duty. The
ER
was pretty full — the start of flu and flu paranoia season. She was at her office door, pass card inserted, when Nancy tapped her on the shoulder. When Joan turned, Nancy’s face broke out into a pink flush.

“Oh, Joan! I’m so happy to see you.” Her expression was sincere and Joan was grateful for it, giving her a big hug, for which she felt a bit foolish afterwards. Looking over her shoulder as they hugged, Joan noticed a big bouquet of flowers on her desk, and a Welcome Back banner.

“Thanks for all this, Nancy. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“Oh, it was from all of us,” she insisted. Though later Joan noted it was Nancy’s handwriting on the card, and from the awkward chill she received from some of the staff she realized it had probably been all Nancy’s initiative. Nevertheless, she was grateful.

Being at work, both managing the staff and seeing the occasional patient, filled Joan with the sense of purpose she’d been missing. She felt as if someone had thrown her a lifebuoy.

WHEN JOAN ARRIVED
at therapy that afternoon, she thought she was fine until she was asked, “And how are you feeling?”

She took a breath, momentarily annoyed that she was being asked about herself after a comforting day of looking after others. “Is it possible to be an intelligent human being — perceptive, intuitive — and also be married to someone who fools you so intensely, who is entirely a fraud, and you have no idea?”

“Do you feel like a fraud?”

“Is it possible to be smart and completely fooled?”

“Do you feel like a fraud, Joan?”

“Of course I do. Not only did I think I knew George, I was in love with him, and I thought I knew every single thing about someone I could possibly know. How does anyone ever get over that feeling?”

“You want to get over that feeling?”

“Why do you answer everything with a question? I am here for answers.”

“You are here for answers.”

“Now you’re just repeating whatever I say.”

The therapist folded her hands in her lap and fixed Joan with that professional non-stare Joan herself offered about three dozen times a day at work. She tried another tactic.

“I want to know if I am actually not a very smart person, if I’ve just assumed I was this whole time. If I’m actually a dim-wit, an intolerable needy woman, blinded by love.”

“I do not think you are dim-witted at all.”

“Thank you. Finally you say something.”

“You are frustrated with me.”

“It isn’t personal. I am frustrated with everyone. I can’t stand Clara’s impatience with me. I hate those women in the support group who have no other identity besides as a girlfriend or wife. I am
MORE
than that, right? I can be. I just loved that part of my life so much. I was happy.”

“You were happy.”

“I don’t know if I can just let that go.”

“Letting go is hard.”

It went on like this until Joan wrote her a cheque at the end of the hour — an hour spent telling the therapist that life was shit and her asking Joan to repeat that her life was shit and in what way. Oddly, in the car afterwards, Joan did feel lighter.

Joan dialed Andrew’s number when she got in the car, putting the phone on hands-free and pulling out of the parking lot. Joan could hear the noise of the city all around him in the background when he picked up the phone. She could picture him with one finger in his ear, blocking out Thirty-Fifth Street on his way home from work.

“Have you seen your father?” she asked him.

Joan knew that he had. Bennie had told Joan as much, in one of his many unreturned voice mail messages.

“Yes, I have. He is so broken, Mom. I know I shouldn’t feel bad for him, but I do.”

“You feel bad?” Joan’s heart broke.

“Okay, okay. Mom, I have to tell you. I don’t know why, but I want him to be innocent. It’s like a survival instinct, as if a bear is coming for him and I can only want to get him out of the way of that bear.”

“I know it’s hard,” Joan said helplessly, pulling the car into the parking lot of the Krispy Kreme and going through the drive-through. The red light was on, the doughnuts were hot, and she ordered six with an iced coffee.

As she chewed through two warm doughnuts, stopping only to sip at the creamy iced coffee, Andrew talked through the whole case. How Bennie was no longer as confident, how he was reconsidering the not-guilty plea, how so much would depend on the judge, on who was on the jury, on so many variables.

“You know how much I hated Avalon Hills, how those kids tortured me. Some of those girls accusing Dad, they look just like the girls who spit in my face, who had their boyfriends kick out my car headlights and kick me into a corner and then piss on me as I huddled there. That’s all I can see, when I see those girls — the evil suburban menace, you know? I know it’s not fair to paint them with the same brush, when I don’t know them. I know that even if people behave like assholes, they do not deserve to be treated badly. But my mind is reaching for excuses to take Dad’s side. I want to believe him so badly.”

Joan couldn’t speak. She had no idea any of those things had happened to Andrew. She felt as though she were on a Tilt-A-Whirl, her son, her baby, being brutalized, and she never knew? He was crying now, she could hear his breathing through the phone, despite the cacophony around him of traffic and hollering. She wanted to protect him now, to make up for it somehow.

Instead, she listened as he took a breath and began speaking like normal Andrew again, composed and distant. “I’ve got to go meet Jared now. We have early evening tickets to a show. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I love you, Andrew. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s cool, Mom. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

Joan sat in the car, looking down at the crumbs in her lap, the grease stains on her purple cotton work pants. She felt sick from the sugar, dizzy from the caffeine. Why did she think she needed two doughnuts? She set the remaining doughnuts aside for Sadie.

When Joan got home that night, she was exhausted in a way that actually felt physical. So accustomed to emotional exhaustion, Joan welcomed the house, which was clean, and thankfully full of groceries now that she’d learned to use the online grocery service. Andrew called back to say that everything was set up for the following weekend. Jared had arranged to give Sadie a fancy spa treatment and haircut at his salon as a Christmas gift, and other than that, they were going low-key on presents. Just spending time together, maybe going to a movie.

Joan hadn’t spoken to George since he blew up at her for questioning him. She didn’t listen to his voice mails, either. Bennie told Joan he was very distraught over their lack of contact. “Good,” she said to Bennie. “You make terrible choices, and you know they are wrong, then you should feel the impact of that loneliness.”