The Best Kind of People (35 page)

Some of the women looked down uncomfortably, shifting.

“I have to leave him,” she said.

It was only after Joan said it out loud that she knew it was right.

“I’ve learned to live without him. I’m sad, angry. I miss who I thought he was, but I have to do this.”

She didn’t expect applause, but she felt something close to it inside. The relief of having made a decision and the certainty she was right.

Dr. Forrestor repeated back to her what she had said, in that calming active-listening way, and hearing it cemented it further.

When Joan got home, she walked upstairs and got into bed, still in her coat, dropping her purse and boots on the floor. Clara knocked softly on the door, holding a cup of coffee. Opening her eyes felt impossible. The muscles in her face wouldn’t allow it. She felt Clara sit down on the edge of the bed, and tuck in the duvet tight around her.

“I know I have to leave him. I’ve decided to. I just can’t go much beyond that right now, okay? I
know.”

Clara looked surprised. “I heard about that bullshit Kevin Lamott novel. I’ve blackballed him in an editorial meeting, but the managing editor might go over my head about it. Apparently he’s an ‘it’ interview for the spring season.”

“Good for him,” she said.

“You’re not serious. Joan, you are a character in his book. So is Sadie.”

“It’s not as though I have control over the story that gets played out in the media either,” Joan said. “I have to just give up and let the sharks eat me — the cops, the lawyers, the media, the opportunistic, exploitative writers who decide to prey on my daughter. I have no control, Clara. And that is the entirety of the life lesson I have learned from this experience. No one has control. At all.”

The sigh Clara emitted was loud, and turned into a grumbling groan that startled Payton, who was asleep on George’s old pillow. Joan didn’t want to tell her that George had been interviewed for the book, that he hadn’t even told her. It would only fuel more reaction from Clara, and she was too exhausted.

“I need to sleep. I have a night shift tonight,” Joan said. It was the first in a string of five night shifts, and the first one was always the most difficult in the best of circumstances.

THIRTY-SIX

SADIE HEARD THE
harsh whine of the garage door struggling to rise around seven in the morning, signalling the safe arrival home of her mother. When she was little, she would feel comforted by this sound, and sink into a deeper sleep. It was Joan’s third night shift in a row, and Sadie sat up, nudging Jimmy awake. He moaned, cracked his knuckles, and tried to pull her back into a cuddle.

“We forgot to set the alarm, babe,” she whispered. He was supposed to have woken up an hour earlier and gone home.

“Shit,” he mumbled into the pillow, before sitting up and scrambling to pull on a T-shirt. They heard Joan open the dishwasher downstairs, the click of the morning news coming on.

Sadie and her father used to use Joan’s five night shifts a month as an excuse for a a bit of hedonism. Supermarket cakes containing novel-length ingredient lists of preservatives, iced thick with frosting the colour of nothing found in nature, which left a chemical aftertaste. They’d drive to the corner store instead of walking or biking, so that George could buy a full-flavour beer, a ginger beer for Sadie. After dinner, usually pizza or Chinese takeout, he’d smoke a cigar on the back porch and Sadie would bring out her homework and they’d talk through some of the assignments, both feeling a little sick.

THESE WERE THE
first night shifts Joan had worked since Sadie had moved back home. Sadie was nervous about being alone in the house, and on the first night she’d called Jimmy in a panic when she’d heard a noise outside around midnight. He’d come over, and they’d slept wrapped around each other.

“What should I do?” Jimmy asked now, sitting up and pulling on his T-shirt.

“You could try to sneak out the side way, or you can just lie here. She may not come check on me. We could just leave together once she’s asleep.”

“I’ll chance it,” he said, getting back under the covers, lying flat.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, she heard Joan on the attic ladder. Sadie rolled on her side, hoping to block Jimmy, but she’d be busted if Joan actually pulled herself up into the room. Luckily, Joan remained eye-level with the floor, hands around the last rung of the ladder, looking up at Sadie lying there pretending to be texting.

When Sadie finally made eye contact with her mother, Joan smiled at her warmly. “I’m going to sleep now. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. I left you some muffins on the table,” she said.

“Okay, Mom. Good night,” Sadie replied, not looking up from her phone. Joan went back downstairs, and Jimmy started to giggle under the duvet. Sadie hit him with her hand and shushed him. He went back to sleep, while Sadie scrolled through Kevin’s Twitter feed and Facebook page for updates. He’d been quiet in the social media sphere ever since their encounter at the hotel. Jimmy said he’d backed up a U-Haul truck and loaded his whole office into it.

Jimmy woke up to Sadie staring at him.

“What?”

“I want to go back to the way things were.”

Jimmy put his hands over his face to hide his grin.

“Yes, yes, me too, I want that,” he said, reaching over to kiss her. She responded and then pulled back, compelled to ask him something first.

“Are you dating anyone else?” She leaned over to apply the coconut lip balm she kept on her bedside table. He shook his head. The relief she felt overwhelmed her so much that she had to look away and nervously reapply the lip balm.

“Well, I did have a girl ask me out, though.”

She clicked the tube shut and tried on an unconcerned facial expression.

“Oh yeah, who?”

“Cheryl.”

“Seriously?” Cheryl wasn’t someone known for dating. At all. Sadie assumed she had an intact hymen, spent her Friday nights watching musicals with her mom. “What did you say?”

“I said that I still loved you.”

“And?”

He shrugged, shifting around under the duvet nervously. “To be honest, she told me you weren’t worth my time. That she’d make a better girlfriend. I told her I wasn’t interested.”

“That bitch!” Sadie said, smiling, trying to prove she wasn’t bothered. She climbed on top of him, taking off her shirt.

“Then she offered to blow me anyway,” he said, grinning.

“No fucking way,” Sadie said. She pulled the pillow out from under his head and hit him with it, got up, cocking her hip faux casual. She pulled a bra from the back of her desk chair and clipped it around her waist. “Was she any good?”

“It didn’t happen.”

“Are you serious? You turned down a blow job even though
I
dumped
you
?” She pulled her bra up, running a finger under the elastic to adjust it, before pulling on a uniform shirt.

He winced visibly at the cruelty of her tone, the mention of her dumping him.

“Not really … Mrs. Collier walked in just as she was about to—”

“Oh.”

“I don’t like her. I’m not even attracted to her …”

“Well, if you were willing to let her do that, then you have to find her attractive somehow.”

“Not really.”

“Whatever, it’s fine. Let’s split … We should actually get to school on time today.”

“You’re jealous,” he said, smiling.

“I’m not jealous of Cheryl!”

“Well, she’s not four hundred years old like Kevin,” Jimmy said.

“I didn’t have a crush on Kevin. I was confused,” she said.

Jimmy started down the attic ladder, ignoring her comment. “Come on, I can’t be late again.”

When Sadie reached the landing, he put his mouth on hers, but she pulled away. It wasn’t his fault, and she had no leg to stand on, but she felt angry about Cheryl anyhow.

THIRTY-SEVEN

WHEN JOAN WOKE
up in the late afternoon after her last night shift, she found Jimmy and Sadie in the kitchen, making open-faced tomato and pickle sandwiches. Sadie’s legs were pulled up against her chest where she perched on a high stool, and Jimmy was at the toaster, slathering slices with mayo when they popped up.

“This is the perfect amount,” he explained, “for three slices of pickle and two tomato. I’ve tested it.”

“I like it with a bit of Dijon,” Sadie said.

“The horror!”

Jimmy turned the music up, and they both started rapping along perfectly with a song emanating from one of their phones as she entered the kitchen. They looked up at her but kept singing as she prepped the coffee maker.

“Are you guys stoned?”

“No,” Sadie said. Jimmy laughed.

“Because we are being scrutinized. I wouldn’t want reporters to snap a photo of the deranged daughter. Are you two back together?” Joan crossed her arms. Why was she chastising them for looking happy and relaxed for the first time in ages? Why couldn’t she just let the moment happen? She pulled at the sleeves of her housecoat and tried not to be so grumpy.

Jimmy looked at Sadie’s face for an answer. She took a bite of her sandwich and shrugged while she chewed. Kids could break up and get back together so easily. The way they looked at each other, it was as though nothing had happened. Joan wanted to take a photo of that moment.

“Mom, stare much?” Sadie offered up a look that was part smile, part scowl, just like she used to. Joan wanted to tell her to savour these moments, but she just fumbled with the coffee tin and looked out the window at the lake.

She pocketed her phone and decided to leave them alone. She looked at the to-do list she’d written on the back of an envelope and put up on the fridge. The first item was
George’s Office.
Now was as good a time as any, she reasoned, to box it up.

It existed like a dusty tomb; the housekeeper ignored it and so did everyone else, generally. When she opened the door, she was overwhelmed by the stale smells, the ones she still associated with him: cigar smoke, the spice candle layered in dust, his aftershave.

She moved around the room faster than she had moved in months, as though her muscles had lost years overnight, springs uncoiled and fluid. She flattened out crumpled papers, threw away notes she was pretty sure George would have thought essential, looked for clues, and when she found none, she recycled everything else. The landline phone rang three times in a row, Bennie’s number on the call display, but she didn’t pick up.

Her cell rang next. She went to her office and retrieved her paper shredder, put Andrew on speaker while she fed pages of George’s work into its teeth.

“Mom, you can’t abandon Dad completely before the trial,” Andrew said. “What is that noise?”

“You visit. You call. I need space! I’m shredding his thesis!” Joan yelled. There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, Andrew, I shouldn’t yell at you like that.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I get it,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”

She gathered up the refuse in clear plastic bags and put them into the recycling bin outside. She hauled the tallest kitchen stool upstairs and sprayed down the curtain rods and polished the window panes. His large wooden desk, normally covered with papers, mail, books, mugs filled with pens, and knick-knacks, was completely empty by the end of the evening, everything in a file box and placed in the hall closet. Joan set the vacuum robot to On, left the room, and closed the door. George had never allowed the housekeeper into his office, and it was a dusty, disorganized space, and she bet that the rug hadn’t been vacuumed in years.

WHEN CLARA’S TEXTS
went unanswered, she showed up at the house. When Joan got down on the floor to whiten the baseboards, Clara put on giant plastic gloves, tied her hair up, and joined her. Every room looked as if a bright white highlighter was embracing it.

“Have you told Sadie about Sarah Myers?” Clara started, whitening what was already white as Joan rubbed uselessly at a scuff mark.

“I think Sadie has had her heart broken enough for one year,” she said.

“You’re probably right,” Clara said, standing up and going into the kitchen. “Is she visiting him yet?”

“No, she’s still refusing to go. But they speak on the phone regularly,” Joan said. “I just want her to finish school, solidify her plans for next year, stay on track. I don’t want this year to ruin her life.”

“I don’t want that for you either, Joan,” said Clara. “You should call the divorce lawyer.”

“It’s not like I have a lot of great years ahead of me either way,” said Joan.

“Uh, way to be upbeat. I’m going to make you watch that Molly Shannon ‘I’m Fifty’ skit from
SNL
again.”

“I’m not like you, Clara. I’m not independent. I don’t love being alone.”

“Well, sometimes you just have to accept a shitty situation, Joan. Accept it, and maybe your feelings will change.”

PART THREE

THE WEEK BEFORE THE TRIAL

THIRTY-EIGHT

ANDREW REALIZED HE
was seeing another season change in Avalon Hills. His father’s trial was now only one week away, and it was warm enough to wear a T-shirt and sit in a strip of sun on the dock. He no longer felt strange to be back in this landscape as an adult. He was looking out at the horizon across the water and it soothed the jagged edges of his psyche. He was building new associations with the town, with the house. When people recognized him at the drugstore, he was no longer the gay kid who came home for Christmas. Now, he was the eldest Woodbury, who was sticking around to help out. The more he was seen, the more people got used to him. He’d even seen Alan, the cop who used to bully him, and been awarded the nod, that small-town acknowledgement that was like being part of a club of some sort. Still, he missed the city every day and couldn’t wait to leave.

He dipped his toes in the water and leaned back. The phone buzzed again, and he picked it up to see an endless scroll of calls from various people. A co-worker, Clara, and Jared over and over. Emails came in, all with similar subject lines, like “Have you seen this yet?” They all linked to a Gawker article. The headline read
AVALON
HILLS
GYM
TEACHER
RUMORED
TO
HAVE
RELATIONSHIP
WITH
WOODBURY
SON
WHILE
HE
WAS
STILL
IN
HIGH
SCHOOL
.