by Zoe Whittall
“But his blood is in mine,” Sadie said. “What if he is guilty? What would that make me?” She balled up her portion of the bar and threw it onto the grass.
Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Come on, you know you’re a good person.”
A flash of the man with the rifle came to mind, as it often did in times of stress. Like a blink went off in her head, and it was a clear image floating behind her lids. She wondered, what made him do it? What makes someone do something so insane, as though they have nothing to lose?
“How does anyone know they’re good? Isn’t goodness a lifelong process?”
“You think too much,” Jimmy said. “Some things just are.”
A mere month previously, she’d read an article about the genetics of a criminal disposition. She’d been horrified and entranced by every family story of criminal birthing criminal, even when the child was adopted and raised by ordinary, law-abiding citizens.
“Well, our frontal lobes are still developing. According to science, I don’t even have the maturity to understand the consequences of my actions,” she said.
“Science isn’t always right. Scientists used to believe skull size was the key to our intelligence. Plus, as soon as you start blaming genes for criminal behaviour, then you open up this whole world where everyone is blameless. It’s not credible.”
“I’m worried. You know, they rarely arrest people without enough proof. You know — white, powerful men, they get given every benefit of the doubt, right? It makes me nervous. What if he is guilty?”
“People, and systems, make mistakes all the time. You can’t start thinking he’s guilty,” Jimmy said, though he didn’t sound at all convinced.
“Right, right. He’s not guilty,” she said.
Jimmy’s phone rang the dog-bark ring tone he had programmed for his mother. Sadie knew he would ignore it; he usually did.
“Sixty-eight percent of American teens say they would rather lose a limb than have to go without their cellphones,” Sadie said. Statistical non-sequiturs was a game they played.
But Jimmy didn’t want to play. “I know you told the cops that he didn’t, but seriously, he didn’t touch you, did he?” Jimmy asked, cutting the coolness of his normal face with one that expressed concern, rolling back onto the grass beside her.
“Fuck no, no. Gross.”
“Yeah, your mom would not let that happen. She’s like one of those moms who could lift an entire car off a child if she had to. I want her around when the apocalypse hits.”
Jimmy and Sadie stayed curled up together on the grass until they heard the first bell from across the field. Jimmy jumped up and looked towards the school.
“Oh shit, Sadie.”
“What?”
“Amanda.”
Amanda was walking towards them, barrelling actually, like she was looking for a fight. But when she reached them, she smiled a normal Amanda smile, brief and all teeth as though for a camera.
“Dudes,” she said, catching her breath. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you or explain much last night. The cops freaked me out so much. Are you okay?”
“Not really. I mean, I guess.”
“Yeah, of course, that was a stupid question.”
“How … exactly … is your sister involved?”
“Apparently your dad … you know, asked her inappropriate stuff, on that ski trip?”
Amanda’s sister had just turned fourteen; Sadie could remember her when she was seven. She ripped out handfuls of grass, depositing nervous little hills around her body.
“What stuff?”
Amanda twirled her hair with a finger and scowled. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Right.”
“She was drunk, apparently. But she took off and nothing happened, you know. He just said strange things, was acting totes weird.”
Sadie pressed the grass in her palms so tight her fingers hurt.
“I just wanted to come over and make sure we were all … okay … you know. This doesn’t change anything with us …”
“Of course not.”
Amanda leaned over and gave Sadie a limp hug. She smelled like the rosemary and mint shampoo her mom bought in giant pump bottles.
“Do you think your sister is telling the truth?” Sadie yelled after her as she walked away.
She turned back and squinted, cocked her hip to one side. “Of fucking course she is. She’s a kid, Sadie. What kind of question is that?”
Sadie shrugged. “Last night you said that she lies about stuff.”
Amanda walked back and bent over so that she was eye to eye with both of them. She spoke a little softer. “I know that I said that, because it’s true, she’s a little shit sometimes. But I dunno. This morning she started crying at breakfast, like real crying, not for-attention crying.” She stood up again, and paused before she continued. “You better not spread any lies about her, just because it’s your dad. She’s been through enough.”
“We can’t know, though, Amanda, what’s real. You have to admit this is weird. You know my dad.”
“I know. It is weird. I have no idea who to fucking believe.”
They watched her walk away, not speaking until she was inside. Sadie’s mouth felt sour and dry at the same time, as though something was blocking her from breathing. She took a deep breath in and exhaled, hearing that she was indeed breathing, but it didn’t feel like it. She placed her hand on her neck, the spot where she felt her throat was closing.
“I’m going to go home to check in with my mother.”
Jimmy nodded. He grabbed her hand and they headed towards Jimmy’s car. Sadie put Elaine’s bike in the trunk, one tire sticking out, and they drove in silence, away from the school on the edge of town, curving around the lake until she was down the block from her house. They watched the media trucks as they idled, journalists sipping on coffee from the Hut — shorthand for the exhaustively named Country Cottage Fair Trade Ethical Coffee Hut, a few blocks away by the public beach, a place mostly known to residents. The owners, Pat and Alex, kept a spiral notebook with locals’ tabs scrawled in ballpoint so you could come and get a coffee if you didn’t feel like carrying your wallet on your morning jog. Pat and Alex loved her dad. Pat gave him free coffee all the time and every year Alex made him a cherry pie for his birthday.
Jimmy drummed his fingers on the dash until Sadie placed her hand on his to soothe him. They watched the neighbours out pretending to get their mail, or re-oiling the gates at the ends of their winding driveways. It made Sadie want to change the plan. She didn’t want to check in with her mom. They pulled up to the gate, which was blocked by a line of journalists who didn’t even react to their car’s presence because they were so entranced by the house in front of them.
sadie and jimmy usually chose to hang out at the Woodbury house because its size and splendour allowed them to imagine they were alone most of the time. Sometimes they would sneak into Clara’s guest suite and pretend it was their own apartment. At that moment, as she looked at the house, with the journalists at the gate, she knew her family would be gathered in the kitchen. The house seemed to shrink before her eyes.
Jimmy beeped the horn, then laid on it. The reporters turned, flashbulbs popping. The neighbourhood had transformed from familiar haven to movie set, the same way the school had transformed on the day the man with the rifle walked through the door. Sadie had returned to being a spectacle again. She remembered standing on the front steps of the house when the reporters came after the school incident. She’d worn her favourite red terry cloth dress with the white plastic belt, and the perfect white Keds that all the girls wore that year. She’d gripped the eraser in her hand the whole time. Her mother had wrapped her arm around her while they huddled together before they took the photographs, and she remembered being surprised that her mother was nervous. Joan smelled liked she did on h
olidays, as if she’d worn perfume for the occasion, even though you wouldn’t be able to smell her in a photograph. Later, Joan said, “A whole lot of fuss. That was a whole lot of fuss, right?” She’d laughed nervously while preparing supper, a flush in her cheeks. George had thrived in the spotlight. “Your mother is a bit shy about these things,” he’d explained to Sadie, pouring Joan a glass of wine. “I’m just not meant for the spotlight,” she’d agreed. “But you’re a natural,” she’d teased, and kissed him on the cheek.
“What should we do?” Jimmy’s voice brought Sadie back to the moment.
She looked at the reporters, and realized she’d rather have the house be engulfed in flames than have to go through the scrum of strangers. A skinny guy with a goatee emerged from a purple pup tent in the ditch and started fiddling with his camera.
Jimmy leaned his head out the window.
“move!”
He laid on the horn again and Sadie hunched down in her seat, lifting her arm to press the remote that allowed the gate to open. She half expected the reporters to run in with the car, but they didn’t. She saw her mother’s face peek through the living room curtains and felt relieved at the familiar sight, at knowing Joan was there to protect her, as she had throughout her life.
four
andrew sat, head in hands, on his childhood bed in the late morning. He pressed his fingers into his cheekbones, massaging the points where he could feel a sinus headache about to bloom. His whole system felt off. He was very tired but couldn’t imagine ever sleeping again. Andrew Woodbury the teenager would have relished the opportunity to lounge in bed, but adult Andrew was a regimented machine. His work, exercise, and even social schedule were precise and unwavering. He woke at 5:30 a.m., an hour before his partner Jared, and was at Cyclefit by 6:00. He went to bed by 11:00 p.m. on weekdays. Tuesdays usually began with a breakfast meeting with Olivia, one of the senior partners. He’d sent a hurried late night text to explain his absence, then stayed up most of the night researching his father’s charges and checking on his mother, whom he’d given a Xanax before bed. When he’d gone to check on her, she was sitting up in bed, arms clutching a pillow to her chest, staring at nothing. He handed her the pill and she’d sighed before putting it into her mouth for a dry swallow and a sotto thanks.
He made the bed, pulling the antique farmer’s quilt tight over his pillows, making sure each corner was even and symmetrical. Several of the quilted squares had faded so much that they were ripping along the seams. He selected several safety pins from the night table drawer and placed them around in all the spots that were starting to unravel. He pulled on a pair of boxers and grabbed his old drama club T-shirt from the closet. It was from a senior year production of Fiddler on the Roof. His mother had replaced his adolescent posters with framed antique oil paintings, portraits of British Woodburys through the ages that Joan found ugly and wished to hide away in a room largely unseen by guests. The room smelled of dust. Everything needed a wipe-down, a shake-out. He punched down the throw pillows then opened the window, propping it up with a leather-bound Bible.
He unpacked his luggage and tried to smooth out a plain white button-down shirt that he could wear to the arraignment hearing the next day. His mother had kept some of his old clothes, relics of another moment in fashion that was almost back in style, hanging in the closet. He lit a clove candle on the dresser top out of habit, running a finger over the film of dust coating the top of the wax, trying to clear the room of its musty, unused smell. He found a gram of pot in the bedside drawer that he’d left almost a year ago, at Thanksgiving. It was stale but would do the trick. He rolled a joint on the cover of an outdated issue of InStyle magazine, crumbling it on top of Drew Barrymore’s face. The candle made the room smell like a pie baking in an aura of neglect. He lit the joint from the candle and then blew it out.
It had been a long time since he’d woken up and felt a heavy presence on his chest. He used to go back to sleep for fear of having to deal with the day. It happened a lot in Avalon Hills, even when nothing out of the ordinary was going on, a sadness that rendered him semi-useless and unproductive. When he woke up in New York, it was as though the city was inside him like a coiled spring when he lifted back the covers, singing to himself, talking back to the radio, stretching up and out. His hometown made him lethargic. His father used to make him get up and go canoeing first thing in the morning when he’d visit on breaks from university. They’d pull their paddles up and float, watching the pinkish-orange glow as the sun barely crested the trees, mostly in silence until his dad told a corny joke. Something like: Why doesn’t a lobster give to charity? Why? Because he’s shellfish! Groan.
Andrew didn’t question why he reacted so strongly and immediately in his father’s defence. It was primarily a feeling of complete and utter implausibility. His father was a man very detached from his body. George also seemed relatively unconcerned with power; he was afforded the carelessness of not having to think about it because he had a lot of it.
Andrew took a second hit from the joint and coughed. He rarely smoked anymore because he was too busy at work. Plus, it seemed like a childish habit, best reserved for the holidays. He’d rolled this one too tightly and could barely get anything from it. He associated getting high with Avalon Hills, with getting through the grind of family visits. He wondered if Jared would like his vintage collection of Hardy Boys books. He took a photo with his phone and messaged him, Do you want these?
Jared responded immediately. Are u ok? I’ve been waiting to hear from u. I’m going crazy.
Jared was a one-man master class in the art of being self-aware, and did not indulge in wasp denial. He tired Andrew sometimes, as much as he knew that being in touch with one’s emotions was a better way to be in the world. Andrew operated in a kind of cut-off and highly functional fog, rarely knowing how to answer the question “How are you?” with any kind of certainty.
andrew had been in the middle of watching The Great British Bake Off with Jared when he got the call from his aunt Clara. “You have to go home. Your father has been arrested.”
“Arrested?! For what?” He jumped up from the couch and muted the tv.
“I’m coming to get you right now,” she said.
“What do you mean? What on earth for?”
“One count of attempted rape, sexual misconduct with several minors.”
“Are you serious?!”
Are you serious? might be the dumbest thing people say, as a way to buy time to let very serious things sink in.
Jared got up and helped Andrew pack. He’d texted Andrew several times throughout the night and early morning.
I’m here for you, Andrew. Anything you want to talk about. I’m here. You want to take a vacation this weekend? I’ll arrange it.
Jared thought a vacation would cure any and all stress, even though Andrew often found the process of vacationing to be stressful in itself — the planning, the potential chaos of airports and delays, then all that insistence that you relax after months of constant mental and physical activity. He felt the same way about holidays — like they were a kind of work with associated stress.
Jared and Andrew had recently begun to be more intentional about their relationship. Jared had been taking mindfulness classes on his lunch hour and was full of ideas on how to reconnect with the world, and with each other. He’d been teaching Andrew about a type of tapping therapy, where you tap on certain spots of your body and repeat positive sentences about whatever is stressing you out. Andrew would watch him in the living room, tapping at his forehead and saying, “Even though I want that cream cheese muffin, I will make a healthy choice not to eat it.” He tried not to laugh. Jared’s hopefulness and his desire to be a better person were actually among the things he loved most intensely about him.
When they’d met, they were both recently single and heartbroken. Neither was eager to jump right into something new. But the physical
attraction was undeniable, and no amount of pretending they didn’t also like each other and want to spend time together could change it. They’d recently celebrated their three-year anniversary, the longest consistent relationship for Andrew. Most of the time he felt solid with Jared, as though they shared a home base and a core connection too strong to be broken. Occasionally things came up that made him wonder if he was actually settling for less than he wanted. Did all relationships feel that way after a while? He had no real point of comparison. His parents were one of the few couples he knew who had actually stayed together. He often held them up as the ideal, espousing to others that gay men gave up on each other too quickly, that commitment was a lost art.
His parents were very affectionate, but Andrew would never say they were outwardly sexual. As a teenager he was aware of the way most men stared at women, because it seemed to be an automatic impulse that God had not granted him. It gave him some comfort to note that his father also seemed to lack this impulse. He eventually learned that gay men are granted a free pass, in certain geographical areas and using certain coded behaviours, to be overtly sexual amongst themselves without having to know one another. Once Andrew emerged from closeted suburbia, and had access to the ways in which sexuality was communicated through quick looks, gestures, and open admiration, he noticed when it wasn’t present. When you first discover sex and falling in love, for a while it’s all you can see. Coming home from college after months of cruising and gay bars, and burning through the syllabus of his Queer Literature course, he felt as though he saw the subtleties of sex everywhere.
His father was a stark reminder of an old school puritanism, yes, but he also seemed too nerdy and book-bound to be a person with an acknowledged body, let alone a sexual person. He was often described as a floating head or absent-minded professor, never caring much about anything beyond the brain.