The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  “Did you know that dog bites are twice as common on a night when there’s a full moon?” she asked, pulling him towards her.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Anecdotally,” she said. Their lips were almost touching. She ran her hand along his jaw, feeling the faint stubble. “My mom noticed it at the hospital. Every full moon, a few dog bites. Then she found a study that confirmed it.”

  Jimmy lifted her breast to his mouth. Could they have sex on the floating dock without being seen or heard? She moaned, cupping one hand around his head. A dog barked again across the lake. Doubtful. They pulled apart.

  “Mr. Eglington,” Sadie said, giggling. He was always on his deck with the binoculars. Jimmy nodded, thankful for the darkness.

  Sadie picked at the scab on her knee that had dried in the shape of Florida. A chunk of Key West broke free under her nail.

  the woodbury house was dark except for two glowing squares of kitchen light. A quarter of the way around the lake, at Sadie’s best friend Amanda’s house, Carter the family dog continued to bark ceaselessly as a police car pulled into the driveway. The red and blue lights blinkered in a lazy swirl. Sadie and Jimmy stared as though they would be able to tell just by looking why the cops were there.

  “That’s weird,” Jimmy said. “Should we swim over?” He dipped a toe into the still water.

  “Nah, it’s late. Let’s just call her when we get back.”

  Jimmy curled up into a ball and somersaulted back into the lake. Sadie watched him tread water for a moment and then followed. When they reached the shore, they pulled on their clothes on the strip of rocky beach. Conan gripped the bark of the largest oak tree, shimmying upwards, teeth tearing a sheaf of mouldy paper from 1997 Taxes, green eyes aglow.

  joan was drying the last dinner plate, about to go wrap Sadie’s birthday presents, but her husband George took the dishtowel from her hand and replaced it with a glass of red wine. She took a sip, turned back to the expansive bay window, trying to make sure Jimmy and Sadie were not in any trouble. She hated when they swam at night. She would get flashbacks of a teenaged girl she’d worked on at the hospital who had drowned and come back to life but remained essentially brain-dead. The image would be of the girl’s cold arm hanging off the gurney as she was wheeled down the hall at the trauma centre.

  George kissed her cheek. “Come sit down, the kids are fine. Remember those nine hundred years of swimming lessons? Those ceremonies with the badges?”

  “Maybe I should go check on them anyway,” she said.

  George gave her an affectionate squeeze. “The water is so calm right now. They’re okay.”

  She joined him at the table, placing an open Tupperware of lemon squares between them. She looked at the wine, tilted her glass in his direction in a gesture of what’s up?

  Marriage is so much about embedded routines. That night they’d had grilled salmon and rice noodles, sautéed greens. The same as every Sunday night. Usually George was watching the news by now, head leaned back and mouth agape with a slow, murmuring snore. Joan glanced towards the window again, unable to stop herself from getting up and leaning over the sink on her tiptoes, pressing her forehead against the glass. All she was able to see in the moonlight was a dark blur of water beyond the edge of the hill, and the tip of the long wooden dock. George made a whirring sound and a helicopter motion with his hand, gently mocking her overprotective nature.

  Joan surrendered with a laugh and sat back down. George raised his glass in a cheers, and pulled at the side of his lips before speaking. “Honey, for weeks I’ve been receiving these cryptic messages in my office mailbox,” he said, handing her two scraps of torn loose-leaf paper, both folded in half, that he’d pulled from his blazer pocket. One read People Are Watching You, and the other Be Careful.

  “Teenaged nonsense.” She sipped her wine, swirled it around, and set it back on the table. She was excited to see Sadie open her presents in the morning at breakfast.

  “Or so I thought, but today Dorothy told me to call a lawyer. She knows everything, working in the front office all day long, of course. She said there’s a rumour you’re being set up. It was all so Hollywood movie–sounding that I laughed at her. But she looked deadly serious. She wouldn’t tell me anything else. Dorothy was acting strange — stranger than normal, anyway.”

  “She’s such a nutbar, Dorothy. Set up for what? Did you believe her?”

  Dorothy McKnight was the secretary, and she irritated both of them, especially at parties, always wanting to talk about conspiracy theories and how Barack Obama was a Muslim.

  “So I called Bennie during my spare this afternoon — he’s the eldest son of my father’s lawyer. You know, they’re always at our Christmas parties?”

  “Isn’t he a kid?” asked Joan.

  “No, he’s forty, if you can believe it,” he said. “I called him again tonight. I’m on edge, Joan. I just wanted to tell you this. I don’t know what’s happening.” He took another generous sip of wine.

  “A practical joke? It’s so strange.”

  George shook his head. “I really don’t know.” This was a phrase George — learned, stoic, opinionated — rarely used. He prided himself on knowing the things that mattered.

  sadie and jimmy jogged up the dirt path, wet bare feet on the stones between the bramble that curled into the sloping backyard. They were breathless when they reached the plateau, pausing where a row of kale and lettuces grew, waiting to be culled on her mother’s gardening day the following weekend. The rectangular in-ground pool that bordered their back deck made its usual hum of white noise. A circular hot tub, currently on the fritz, faced out onto the lake, edging out over the sharp lip of the hill. Ornate gardens sculpted carefully to appear wild surrounded the pool. Sadie leaned down and rubbed some lavender between her palms, cupping her hands around her face to inhale the warm scent on her way to the side entrance.

  They snuck up the back stairs, rubbing their wet heads on the threadbare sunburst swim towels hanging from the coat hooks by the door to the basement. Jimmy traced a finger along Sadie’s spine, causing her to pause, shiver, and bat his hand away before she stepped over Payton, the fat sleeping tomcat on his designated fourth-step nap space. She headed for the kitchen barefoot, in search of iced tea. The plan to sneak up to Sadie’s room and finish what they had started was immediately thwarted by the unusual presence of her parents, seated at either end of the kitchen table.

  The Woodbury parents were the academic sort, floating brains in denial of the body. Sadie reasoned that it was better not to talk about sex with them, to ensure that both she and her parents retained the privacy they both needed. It was less denial, she reasoned, more maturity. The same way that they all went to church on Sundays but never talked about God. Some things were meant to stay inside our own heads. When Jimmy stayed over, she was never sure if they knew or not. She did know that neither party was eager to discuss it.

  When they entered the kitchen, the adults reacted with a sudden and uncharacteristic silence. Her mother’s brownish-grey bob was pushed back behind her ears with the help of her glasses. Joan usually had two facial expressions — tired from work or happy to have a day off. Her face betrayed a sense of resigned incredulity. She never drank after dinner.

  “What’s up with you guys? You’re not usually up this late.”

  “Nothing,” Joan said, in a way that sounded the opposite. She picked up the container of lemon squares and held them out to Jimmy, who put a whole one in his mouth and grabbed a second, grinning appreciatively while he chewed.

  “It’s past midnight …” Sadie sing-songed expectantly. Joan stared at her daughter for a few moments before realizing what she meant.

  “Oh, happy birthday, darling!” Joan said, half present.

  “Yes, happy birthday, beautiful daughter,” said George, standing up to give her a hug.

  Sadie felt a
brief moment of birthday excitement, and then the house seemed to shake with a pounding on the front door, followed by an insistent baritone call: “We’re looking for George Alistair Woodbury!”

  “What’s going on?” Sadie said, peering through the kitchen entrance and down the hall to the foyer. Red and blue flashed through the open windows, a light show for the symphony of cicadas. She approached the door tentatively. George sat back down at the table, staring into his glass of wine.

  “Sadie, don’t. I’ll get it,” Joan said as she approached the door, peering through the peephole cautiously. She opened it slowly to find two plainclothes detectives and several uniformed officers.

  “Hello, ma’am, is your husband home?”

  They made it only a few feet down the front hall before spotting him through the living room, still at the kitchen table. He stood, knocking over his glass. It pooled, then slowly dripped onto the kitchen floor.

  For months Joan would replay this moment, trying to decipher the look on her husband’s face. Was it guilt? Confusion? Indignation? Stoicism? Acting? But nothing, not even a revolving camera of omniscience, a floating momentary opportunity to narrate, would allow anyone to truly understand the truth about George. He became a hard statue, an obstacle, a symbol.

  The father and the husband, from that moment, had been transformed.

  early monday

  two

  joan watched as George was cuffed in the foyer of their home. Sexual misconduct with four minors, attempted rape of a minor. The words didn’t make sense. The police were gentle with him, and he did nothing to resist but offer up a face blooming in perplexity. Joan was baffled by her own reaction. Politeness. wasp accommodation. She just let them take him away, standing there as detectives filled the house like a swarm of unwanted bacteria. She didn’t know what to do. She did nothing. The shock and shame consumed her. She noted a blush creeping over George’s stubbled neck and face as he tried to maintain some semblance of authority. He was still wearing a blazer, his collar loosened, his tie draped over the back of his chair at the head of the kitchen table. It felt as if she were being forced to watch someone attack him and she felt a violent urge to protect him at all costs. But she stood still, watching.

  “We’ll get this mistake sorted,” he said. “You’ve nothing to worry about, Joan. Tell the kids it’s just an error.” He leaned over and kissed her. His tone was assured, commanding, but Joan noticed that his right eye twitched in an insistent triple staccato, as it did when he was getting a stress headache.

  A search warrant was placed in Joan’s hand, which she gripped out of instinct but did not read. She was overcome with dizziness, and leaned into the coat rack, watching as the police car drove away through the front stone gate.

  “Ma’am,” said a nameless officer, “can you show us to your husband’s computer?”

  “Certainly,” she said. Certainly? Who speaks like that? What the fuck are you looking for? How would you like to hand your computer over to a stranger wielding infinite power? Certainly echoed in her head, mockingly, as she walked up the stairs, a stranger’s steps mimicking her own.

  She was in crisis mode. To remain calm was to her advantage. Politeness gets you further than outrage. Joan had been an emergency room nurse for almost twenty-five years. Hysteria helps no one. Triage is second nature. But this time she had no idea what to do first, let alone what to do next, and so she followed the most identifiable chain of command. There was a ringing in her right ear that got louder as she watched while the heavy-set cop with one wonky eye unplugged the computer and lifted it, trailing the cord behind him as he walked back into the hallway, then turned to survey her briefly before continuing down the stairs into the living room, the kitchen, pulsating with sweat. She gripped the banister. She stopped herself from kicking him in the back.

  She picked up the phone and called her sister Clara in the city. “I need you to come here. George has been arrested. Please call Andrew too. I can’t explain right now, the house is full of cops.” Clara’s alarmed voice came through the receiver, but Joan couldn’t accommodate her questions. She was being approached by a man in an expensive suit who had appeared at the door, which was now propped open with one of the decorative garden stones from the front yard. A ladybug. He was red-faced with hypertension, and sought her out from the crowd.

  “Joan! I am your husband’s lawyer, Bennie.” He reached out his hand to shake hers, and then took her arm and led her into the living room.

  “How did you know to come?”

  “George called me earlier this evening, said it was urgent.”

  “But it’s so late.” His grip was solid, paternal, and it made Joan want to fight him off. Something felt off, his arrival out of the blue. He motioned towards the couch, directing her to sit, before sitting himself on the edge of the coffee table across from her like a child.

  “What’s best right now is if you just let the police do their job and co-operate. We’re going to get everything sorted.”

  She watched as police continued to carry everything of value into their trucks, or throw it about the room like robbers in a cartoon. She slowly blinked the room back into focus.

  “Do you want to post bail?”

  “Of course,” she said. If your loved one is trapped somewhere, you do what you can to get them out. It was primal.

  “There has been a mistake,” she said.

  Bennie didn’t agree, he just stared at her briefly and looked down at his iPhone.

  “You should be at the station with my husband,” Joan said to Bennie.

  “My associate is there on my behalf. We have the whole firm working on this.”

  “This is a big deal? Why the fuss? This is a misunderstanding,” she said.

  “This is going to be very high-profile, Mrs. Woodbury. I need you to brace yourself.”

  as george was being processed at the police station, it seemed to Joan that everyone in the town knew immediately. She was not certain how it happened, because she sure didn’t tell anyone, but everyone knew almost as soon as she did. They talked. It must have felt nearly involuntary — it was simply too beyond the realm of possibility to not talk about. Humans crave connection, after all, even when it’s about another’s misfortune. Perhaps especially then.

  three

  jimmy and sadie sat on the loveseat, their heads still wet with lake water. Jimmy held on to Sadie’s hand the way he had on the Cyclone in the summer. A female police officer in uniform sat across from them on the La-Z-Boy, right leg propped on her left knee like a table, and opened up a spiral-bound notebook. Sadie dug her nails into her bare legs, and then twisted her drying ponytail around her fist.

  “Was your father ever inappropriate with you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever talk about sex too frequently, or in an odd way?”

  “No.”

  “Did he walk in while you were changing?”

  “No.”

  “Did your friends ever mention feeling uncomfortable around him?”

  “No. This is totally insane.”

  “I get that this is confusing to you, but we have to follow procedure.”

  “It’s not confusing. You’re making it pretty clear what kind of person you think my father is, and you are wrong. There are real criminals in the world. My father is not one of them.”

  Sadie tried to stay alert, sit up straight, answer honestly, anything to get them out of the house, but this was too much. She twisted her ponytail around her fist for the twentieth time.

  The police officer didn’t offer any words of comfort or contradiction after her outburst, she just kept asking questions as though she were conducting a survey.

  “Have your father’s moods changed lately? Has he been irritable?”

  “No. My father is … honest, kind. He never even looks at women,” she said. “He’s a nerd. He knows
what’s right and wrong. God, he gave me this.” Sadie pulled out the red plastic whistle she always wore around her neck. She’d tied the leather string with a double knot and just never took it off. “It’s a rape whistle,” she said, a frustration building in her chest. She blew it sharply. Everyone in the room was silenced, looked in her direction. She spat the whistle out, the taste of stale plastic and trapped lake water lingering on her tongue as everyone went back to destroying their home. She felt as though she were having one of those dreams where she was screaming but no one could hear her.

  “It’s my birthday,” Sadie said. “I’m seventeen. We have plans to celebrate. This can’t be happening.”

  The cop showed no emotion. She transcribed whatever Sadie said. When she leaned over to write, a tattoo of a swallow was visible underneath her clavicle. Her ponytail ended in a web of split ends touching the collar of her uniform shirt. Her gun lay so casually on her hip. There are guns in our house, Sadie thought. Our anti-gun house is full of steel and bullets. They had an old rifle in the basement, but it was ornamental, historic, passed down for generations. Sadie couldn’t even look at it; that’s how much guns scared her. She flashed to the man with the gun at school. The rain on the black and white floor tiles.

  “I think that’s enough,” Bennie said, sitting down beside Sadie and Jimmy, shutting down the conversation. “All other questions should go through me.”

  Joan, who had been following the detectives around, walked into the room holding a dripping mop, which was oozing soapy water into the carpeting.

  “Can I go pay bail now? This is ridiculous,” she said, looking at her watch as if she were in a waiting room and the doctor was hours late.