The Best Kind of People (34 page)

Dr. Taylor and Joan were wearing the exact same cardigan sweater, a lilac cotton blend with tiny pearl oval buttons. They also had remarkably similar haircuts. From the year on her degree posted above her desk, they were presumably about the same age.

This had put Joan off during their initial session. Doctors are supposed to be older somehow, if not in years then in levels of experience. Joan knew this was shifting, and many professionals were now younger than her by many years, but trusting someone with her psychological well-being, well … she had been hoping for someone with clear memories of the Kennedy assassination, who could look down on her by at least a decade and offer some worldly, aged wisdom.

When she’d arrived today, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say to Dr. Taylor. But once she got started, she found she couldn’t stop. When she left, she expected to feel unburdened, lighter, the way she had after her previous appointments. But she didn’t. She kept seeing her therapist’s detached face nodding, taking notes, in that same sweater. Joan wanted her to tell her what to do, to explain Joan to Joan. But of course, she couldn’t do that.

Joan stopped at a coffee shop on the way home. She ordered a scone and a mug of tea and sat down at a table. She was trying to practise being alone in public, being alone in the world and relaxed. It felt awkward. She picked up a paper, forced herself to read through the local news. George’s beating had actually stalled debate about the merits of the accusations. One headline did catch her eye, in the arts briefs section:
KEVIN
LAMOTT
TO
PUBLISH
NOVEL
BASED
ON
WOODBURY
SEX
SCANDAL
. “The celebrated local author has written the book from the perspective of one young female victim, and her friendship with the daughter of the teacher, a character based on the popular science teacher from Avalon Hills preparatory school, known widely for its rigorous and high-achieving academic standing.”

Joan left her hot tea and scone and got in the car.

ELAINE LOOKED AS
if she had been expecting Joan. She was sitting at her kitchen table, hair pulled back in a wide elastic headband.

“I want to see Kevin,” Joan demanded in lieu of a hello, pushing her way through the glossy white door of the ugly pink brick house.

“Kevin isn’t living here right now,” Elaine said.

This Joan wasn’t expecting. She had come up with a monologue that she’d rehearsed on the drive over, a rage-fuelled diatribe with several moments of cutting wit and savvy social commentary, as well as some personal jabs at his paucity of integrity and surfeit of balls.

Elaine offered Joan some tea from a pot that had been steeping far too long; her first sip was bitter and soupy. Joan stopped drinking it after one swallow, instead just warming her hands on the mug. She looked around the house, the mess inside Elaine’s head made manifest in the disarray.

“Listen, Joan, I know you must be justified in wanting to injure Kevin in some way. Believe me, truly believe that I am sincere when I tell you that I am angry at his sense of entitlement over your family’s story, and it is in fact the very reason why we are currently separated.”

Joan took in that information, stirring the tea she was never planning to drink.

“But I can’t control what he does,” Elaine said, wrapping her hands around the teapot. “I can only react in a way that I think is right. And I don’t think it’s right to condone it, and I feel betrayed that he didn’t tell me what he was writing about, that he went away and got swept up in the industry bullshit, and didn’t consider your family, or his own. I mean, he wrote a scene about Jimmy and Sadie having sex, for god’s sake. He didn’t even bother to change the physical details of what they look like. Jimmy is just devastated.”

Joan wasn’t sure what Elaine was expecting her to say or feel. To sympathize with the disintegration of trust, the loss of her family? They were playing in different leagues on that front.

“Well, at least Kevin is still out walking around in the world. At least his mistakes weren’t catastrophic.”

“I wasn’t trying to compare at all, Joan. I wasn’t. I guess I was trying to defend myself. I know that the whole town has ganged up on you and your family, and that hasn’t been fair at all, and you lack support in so many ways. I honestly cannot believe how you manage to get up every morning. I feel like what Kevin did is in the same vein as those vigilante hysterics who call your voice mail or throw eggs at your front door, and worse …”

“I suppose … Thanks for saying those things. It is nice to hear that someone recognizes how hard it’s been.” She looked at Elaine and for the first time she didn’t distrust her, or dislike her, anyway. Her face seemed to change. She looked humble and worried, and Joan realized she really wasn’t her enemy, or an obstacle, after all.

“Also, I think that your daughter may have developed a crush on Kevin. I assure you that her feelings were not returned, and Kevin did not behave inappropriately in that way. I think that she misinterpreted his interest in her for the book. I feel terrible that she likely felt used in this way.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jimmy stood in the kitchen doorway. “That is not true at all. As if she would like him! She just liked that he let her smoke pot and stuff.”

“Jimmy, it was more of a misunderstanding. Kevin is not a parent and does not have an accurate understanding of what being an adult around children means, really.”

Joan stood up when she experienced what could only be called a moment of clarity, in that she recognized she was not willing to engage in another family’s drama when she had enough of her own to deal with. Elaine and Jimmy continued to bicker and Joan was halfway to the door when Elaine reached out and touched her arm.

“You know, Kevin’s been interviewing George in prison. He’s known about the book for months.”

Joan, pulling on her boots, barely reacted. She was so used to hearing humiliating things in front of strangers. She was mechanical, just walking to her car, getting in, and driving away, tears streaming down her face, without really feeling anything.

JOAN STOOD IN
the entrance of George’s hospital room, clutching the door frame, peering inside. She glanced at the guard sitting in his hard-backed chair in the corner; he looked up briefly before returning to the game on his phone.

George was to be transferred back to the prison medical ward later that morning; she had only a few minutes at most. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. It was almost New Year’s Eve, the first she’d be spending alone since childhood. The nurse at the desk, whom she’d met at an urgent care conference years earlier, had called to tip her off. Still, she wasted minutes just standing there, looking at him while he slept, moving the chalky remnants of an antacid tablet around in her mouth.

When she finally walked in, putting her purse down on the side table and opening the blinds to allow in some sunlight, his eyes fluttered open and he tried to speak her name. It came out in a low rasp.

“Don’t try to talk. You might scar your throat forever,” she said.

He reached for her hand. The guard cleared his throat. Joan glanced his way, and then back at George. She didn’t say anything. She held his hand, and from that contact she felt the love she’d always felt and she let it flood her senses. She basked in the memory of it. It was only when the guard made a noise again, this time a hearty fake cough, that she was shaken from her reverie. Then George’s hand was hot, and she dropped it because it felt like a fabric she couldn’t touch without feeling profoundly uncomfortable, a jolt of neural discomfort.

They sat there as though at any moment Godot would come sweeping in. Since his arrest, certain moments felt endless, others went by in a heartbeat. His waiting meant that she was waiting. Her life, which had once been active, was now defined by waiting. She could do small things, such as go to work, buy the groceries, call Clara and discuss what she should or shouldn’t be doing or deciding. But she couldn’t mourn what she’d lost because what she’d lost wasn’t really lost yet, in any concrete way that could be talked about.

She stared at him, stood up.

“Sarah Myers,” she said.

George’s eyes popped from the shock, and if he hadn’t been restrained, Joan felt he would have bucked like an animal. Then he closed his eyes tight, the way a child might when he thinks closing his eyes makes things disappear. He brought his hands up to this face, the
IV
line straining.

She knew this was as close to an admission or apology as she was going to get.

She turned and left the room.

WALKING OUT TO
her car in the hospital parking lot, she had to decide either to drive home and rest before her night shift began or to go to a support group meeting. Both seemed like terrible ideas. She sat in her car, key in the ignition, with the radio on so she could hear the traffic, which was supposed to come on every ten minutes. At 9:11, she heard the announcer say, “And now for the latest traffic …” and then stopped listening, waking again when he shifted to the weather. “Dammit,” she said out loud, startling herself, looking around to see if anyone had seen her talking to herself. She waited until 9:21, but it happened again. Finally she just turned the radio off and started the car, creeping out of the parking lot, making her way towards the interstate.

She made the decision about what to do with her day both passively and impulsively, by watching the exit to Avalon Hills go by from where she drove in the left highway lane. It’s not that she didn’t want to veer over, she just didn’t do it. Maybe it wasn’t lack of desire but lack of ability to make a choice. She looked ahead, wondering if she’d also miss the exit for Woodbridge and just keep driving until she reached the next horizon, then the next horizon, until she ran out of gas or reached the sea.

As she drove, she tried to remember Sarah Myers, but could see only the gap in her front teeth, and remember the pink stretch pants she’d outgrown but still continued to wear all the time with the yellow jelly shoes. These were children’s clothes. She remembered how scared she was to be a mother, how unprepared. That her own mother told her it would get easier, and it did. But it was still hard to leave Andrew with a babysitter to go to school at night. Not as hard as being a housewife, though. She remembered how angry she felt when George would come back from school. She resented that he didn’t have to be tethered to a crying baby all day long. Then, when she hired Sarah, she almost turned around on her way to class, because the longing was too much.

Sarah would be in her later thirties or early forties now. Joan was in her fifties and hadn’t really believed in any birthday since she was thirty-five or so. She was still shocked whenever she looked in a mirror. This is a life? This is what happens?

She pictured George when Andrew was a baby and he was in his late twenties, the green and grey plaid shirt he used to wear over a Marlboro T-shirt, brown tattered cowboy boots, the way he used to dress to disguise his class status. After Andrew was born, he went through a phase of acting like a teenager again, not wanting to be home with the baby, drinking too much, as if he was rebelling against getting older. She’d forgotten about that period. When she eventually had to yell at him, something she’d never done before, telling him to get it together and accept that their lives weren’t about themselves anymore, he pouted but then acquiesced. It was a trying time in their young marriage. How could she have forgotten those details? She’d revised their history in her mind to be seamless, as though they’d never hit any marital bumps before this one. Was what happened with Sarah part of the time when he was acting like a spoiled, entitled child?

The trial was still a few months away. For the first time, she wasn’t desperate for it to happen. She had the certainty about his guilt that she’d been looking for, and it felt more like confirmation than shock, if she was really thinking about it honestly.

EVENTUALLY SHE SWITCHED
to the right lane, and took the exit for Woodbridge, passing by the Target and the retirement home and the stretch of suburban homes now so familiar she could autopilot her way to the health centre. When she parked the car and gathered her things, she decided just to keep quiet at this session, be a witness to others’ pain.

But it was a smaller group than usual, and the plan was thwarted when Dr. Forrestor turned to her first and instead of a generic greeting she could easily respond to with a “pass,” he said, “Last time you met with us, you had stopped visiting your husband every Friday. Is that still the case?”

“No,” Joan said. “I took a break from the regular visit, yes, but I actually just came from seeing him this morning.”

She briefly considered leaving it at that and letting the focus shift to Melissa, who was biting her cuticles and staring bug-eyed at the floor. But what was the point of not sleeping all day? Perhaps it would help to talk about how his eyes popped when she said the word
Sarah.

“I found out some things I just can’t overlook.”

The women nodded.

“He was beaten up pretty badly in prison,” she started. She’d told other people this, and they’d all reacted with concern and shock. The faces of the women looking back at her in this group hardly changed at all. They nodded. They’d probably held bruised hands, looked at fresh shiners through panes of glass.

“I found out something, from our past. When we were young, and my son was just a toddler, we lived in Boston when George was almost done his PhD. He had his defence schedule and everything, but he changed his mind. He came home one day and said he’d decided we should move back home to Avalon Hills. I was so happy — I hated the city, it was hard being alone with the baby all the time. He said it was to care for his father, who had just gotten sick, but I found out this week that it was because he had … assaulted our son’s babysitter, and he paid her off and moved us home. I had no idea.”