by Zoe Whittall
Moments later Andrew opened his eyes, stretched out his lanky body, and was startled by her still presence.
“Jesus, Mom, I didn’t hear you come in,” Andrew said, his feet poking out from under the sturdy plaid wool blanket. “I have a car coming to get me at 6:30 a.m. I’m going back for a day to get my stuff, see Jared, you know. But I’ll be right back. I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I can drive you to the airport.”
“I already called,” he said, sitting up and taking his empty cereal bowl to the kitchen. Joan followed him.
“For god’s sake, let me take care of something. You and your sister make me feel so goddamn useless!”
Andrew opened the dishwasher and set his bowl inside. “Mom, I think you should go talk to somebody. A psychologist. Someone in the city maybe, who doesn’t know everyone here.”
“Really? You think it’s a good idea that I talk to someone? Remember how enthusiastic you were about that prospect?”
“I was a kid, Mom. Everyone has a therapist in New York.”
Joan pulled open the dishwasher, took out the cereal bowl, and inspected it. “You have to rinse the dishes — this is an old machine,” she said, rinsing it and scrubbing away a stubborn Cheerio. “Maybe you’re right, Andrew.”
He turned around and handed her a piece of paper. “This is the name of a support group. It’s in Woodbridge. It’s for female partners of … people in prison.”
She looked at the paper. It said Sundays, 3 p.m., and there was an address. Tomorrow. “Thanks for this, Andrew. It’s very kind of you.”
“Good night, Mom. I’ll be in touch. I mean, I’ll be back in a few days, and you can call me any time, right? You’re not alone with this.”
Joan was grateful for those words, but they seemed only to emphasize the opposite. She missed George. She heard his voice on the phone once a day, but never for long, and it didn’t sound like him. He sounded like an imposter, and she felt as though she’d tripped and fallen into some alternate reality, the protagonist from some terribly implausible show on the Space Channel.
the next afternoon, she drove thirty-six miles to the Woodbridge health clinic that hosted the support group for women with partners in prison. She arrived half an hour early, sat in the car, and watched women park their cars and go in through the side door. It was windy, and she put her hat in the glove compartment lest it blow away but then didn’t get out of the car. More women arrived, some in minivans, others in compact cars; a few walked from the bus stop. She felt the same way she had felt when she was young and travelled to different countries: surprised that the world still looked familiar. The parks in Sweden and Morocco looked like regular parks she’d seen at home. The women who parked their cars and walked into the centre looked like anyone. It’s not as though she expected them to be wearing neon signs that said Married to a Pervert, but she had expected to see something that would give away their status, an indication however subtle, some sort of obvious physical sign of weakness. She looked at her phone, turned it to silent, and applied some Carmex to her lips. They were dry and flaking, no matter how much water she drank. The stress showed on her face. Every step felt heavy as she made her way inside.
Joan lingered outside in the basement hallway in front of a display of health pamphlets. She pretended to be interested in the details of diabetes treatment, as though she couldn’t have written the entire pamphlet herself from memory. She waited so long to actually enter that she was a few minutes late, and walked in while a woman was speaking.
“The way I see it, he’s sick. It’s a sickness. You can’t control what you’re born with, right? My one kid’s got the Down’s syndrome. He can’t help that neither. Now he’s been found out, and he can get help, and he wants to get help. Who am I to leave now? I believe in second chances.”
The woman who was talking resembled a pug dog; she had one of those smooshed-up faces. Joan took one of the two empty seats around the circle and couldn’t stop herself from thinking that if the woman didn’t hang on to this guy, she’d probably have a hard time finding some other man to replace him. Then she felt awful for thinking that.
The room was cold and the walls were mostly bare save for a few aids Awareness posters and one about getting your flu shot. The only man in the room was clearly the facilitator, wearing a sticker that read Bob, although she knew he was really Dr. Robert Forrestor, whose biography on the health clinic’s web site said he specialized in treating sexual compulsions and disorders, and had started this group after writing his last book, about the family life of sex offenders.
She had spent a lot of time staring at the photo on the web site, concocting an entirely imaginary family life for him. She imagined his wife, perhaps an academic with greying brown hair and a soft middle, cutting up ripe plums for a fruit salad on Sunday afternoon.
He nodded at Joan warmly.
As the woman spoke, she pulled on the cuffs of her soft pink cable-knit sweater. There was a coffee urn, and stacks of Styrofoam cups beside it. Joan didn’t know anyone actually used Styrofoam anymore. She looked around at the group, most of them in their thirties. They were all wives or mothers of prisoners, some of them sex offenders.
“Do you mean that if someone decides to rape someone, he’s sick, he’s not a criminal?” asked a woman with a purple streak in her hair.
A woman with a name tag reading Mallory scoffed. “Where would that rationalizing stop?”
“He’s a criminal. Of course he did the crime. He’s guilty. No one is saying it’s right or excusing any behaviour. What we’re saying — I mean” — and she looked at the doctor — “what I believe is that restorative justice is better than just sending everyone to jail so they can come out and reoffend, with more anger in their hearts, more hatred. If some men are able to face their demons and change, they should be allowed to, as long as they follow the rules.”
It was a lot for Joan to take in all at once. She felt simultaneously grateful that these women existed and totally judgemental of them. For the next hour she listened carefully to their stories. A woman named Cindy who spoke in uncertain upspeak, every sentence going up at the end like a question, complained endlessly about how unfair her husband’s po officer was. “He won’t let us live a normal life? And my husband is harassed so much, he’s got no freedom?”
“What’s a po officer?” Joan whispered to the woman next to her, who was knitting a brown and red afghan in her lap.
“Parole officer,” she hissed, annoyed.
Joan imagined what Clara would’ve said to Cindy. If you fuck with children, stop expecting anything but hatred from everyone. Suck it up. She just looked so pathetic, whining about how her husband kept taking shit out on her whenever he got frustrated.
“He should be thankful you didn’t drive a stake through his heart for molesting your daughter!” Mallory practically shouted, unable to control herself.
Apparently this wasn’t the right kind of thing to say. Joan took note.
“Our role is not to judge,” said Dr. Forrestor calmly. “Our role is to listen.”
But Joan swore that she saw Cindy smile to herself. Like yeah, you’re right.
She hated the women in the group when they talked slowly, or mispronounced words, or cried, or expressed shame for staying with their husbands. She hated them because she could relate to them, and that meant she didn’t really know who she was becoming, who she had been, who she was supposed to be.
when joan went home, she ransacked George’s office, looking for clues about where his money had gone, or evidence of something, anything concrete. She felt almost envious of the women in the group who knew things for sure. Facts. George’s office was a room she’d never been much interested in, piled high with books and papers. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for amongst the endless papers of theories and notes. The police had already been through it all, taking his hard dr
ive and later returning everything banged up but apparently containing nothing of interest. “Not even one bit of porn,” said Bennie at the time. “How many men can say that? Heck, how many women?” He looked pleased with himself, but to Joan it seemed to say that most normal men look at porn, and this was therefore just another way her husband was a freak of nature.
When she found nothing unusual at all, just the regular bits of detritus of his life, she curled up on the floor and wrapped herself in the old brown sweater he’d kept draped over his cozy oak office chair since the day they moved in, it seemed. It smelled like his aftershave still, and she inhaled deeply.
Part Two
the next four months
eighteen
joan embarked on the three-hour journey to the prison and back every Friday during the first month following George’s arrest. She packed her brown leather cross-body satchel with magazines, granola bars, a hairbrush and compact, an extra sweater. She developed rituals. There was a truck stop where the same middle-aged woman with silver curls served her a medium with milk and half a sweetener every week. She often pulled the Volvo up on the side of the road to visit a particular farmer’s cart, buying squash and root vegetables, beets, or kale with dirt still clinging to each leaf. She would rub a hearty apple on her shirt before taking a bite, standing on the gravel shoulder beside her car and looking out over the farmer’s fields towards the mountains. In these moments she could pretend to herself she was visiting a great-aunt at a neighbouring farm, or travelling to the outlet malls for bargains. She brought along easy-to-read entertainment magazines to glance at in line and discard at security. She even began to nod politely at people she recognized in the visitors’ line. Some of the guards learned her first name. There was an unexpected humanity and sense of routine to visiting the prison now. Still, every time she pulled out of the parking lot and began the journey home, she cried. She’d pull over and buy a coffee only to sip it once and then hurl it with all the strength she had into the air behind the other parked cars in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. The anger was the most startling, and the most difficult to diffuse.
Every week, George was allowed three adult visitors for ninety minutes in total. Sometimes Clara would accompany her in the car and then hit the outlet malls while Joan visited with George. She tried to convince the kids to come, but Sadie, after that first visit, stayed away. She spoke with her father on the phone a few times a week, but refused to go visit.
Andrew had basically moved back into his old room on the weekends and insisted on visiting with George by himself for half an hour whenever he went to the prison. Joan would leave at the halfway mark and wait for Andrew in the parking lot. She expected this was because he didn’t want to be emotional in front of her. Improbable as it seemed, they settled into a new routine during this holding pattern — like when you’ve put gauze on a wound, and you’re waiting it out, hoping no infections seep in. Joan went through the motions: waking and dressing, eating and driving, falling into bed exhausted, and numbing out with television and red wine. She was always planning to go back to work in a week or so; she needed the routine again.
On occasion, though, something would happen to shake her from the routine.
She stood in line at the Book Nook in Woodbridge, buying reading material to take to George. The cashier was a young woman, straight blond hair tied back with a purple cloth headband. When Joan smiled at her, the girl’s face reddened, and she stumbled at the cash, forgetting the decimal point and charging her $2,754.00.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to fix the error, which only seemed to anger the computer. The line behind Joan grew longer. The point-of-sale system made obvious beeping sounds of displeasure. Joan glanced at her name tag. Tammy-Lynn. Of course! Tammy-Lynn Harrison, one of George’s brightest scholarship students. He’d spoken of her often and fondly.
“Hi, Tammy-Lynn,” said Joan, obliviously. “It’s okay. I’m in no hurry.”
The girl fumbled, muttered a hello, and called the manager over to fix the error. She bagged Joan’s purchases and moved on to the next customer.
Joan lingered by the door afterwards, obsessed. Was Tammy-Lynn awkward because of the rumours? Joan felt she had to know. She went back into the store and pretended she had forgotten to purchase something. She lingered by a table of lavender candles and throw pillows. She grabbed a gaudy silver photo frame engraved with Family is Love! and brought it up to the cash. This time there was no lineup.
“Forgot this one,” Joan said.
Tammy-Lynn scanned it. “Uh-huh, that’s $7.57.”
Joan handed her the credit card, staring at her a bit too long.
“What?” Tammy snapped. “Look, I know what I saw. I wasn’t drunk. I know he’s a nice man and everything, and he was so kind to me usually, but I know what I saw!” She was yelling then. Joan stumbled back, jostling a display of boxed chocolates.
Joan grabbed the frame.
“I wasn’t drunk!” Tammy-Lynn yelled over the sound of soft eighties rock on the store speakers as Joan fled the scene. Joan stood outside on the sidewalk, momentarily forgetting where she’d parked the car. When she found it, she placed the frame behind the back wheel and listened for the crunching sound as she reversed over it.
every sunday, she went to the support group, even though she felt she didn’t fit in. Regardless, it was a place to vent, with women who, whether she liked it or not, understood what it was like not to have access to your loved one, and to experience both anger and grief, love and rage, because of what he had done or might have done.
On Sunday mornings she’d get up and get dressed as though she were going to church like she usually did, but hadn’t been since the arrest. She’d put on npr and make breakfast for Andrew before he went back to the city, and then she’d sit on the back patio and cover her legs with a blanket and sip coffee, while church went on without her. Every week she’d make a list of household things to get done that day instead of going to the group, and then at the last minute she’d get in the car and drive to the group.
The facilitator was trying to encourage Joan to share more. She had four weeks of attendance before he gently prodded her to participate in the discussion. “Why don’t you tell us about your visits to see your husband?”
“Well.” Joan clasped her hands to keep them from flying away. “Sometimes he just talks, you know, about the book he’s writing. I don’t understand all the jargon, but I like to see that he’s not just rotting away, that something still matters to him. I bring him books and magazines to read.”
“Do you feel like he listens to you?” asked Shelley of the many cat sweaters.
“Yes. I mean, he always asks about the kids first, and then he asks how I’m holding up. Always. I feel like he is genuine in his concern for me — for us.”
“Well, that’s the least he can do …” Shelley muttered. Shelley was having a resentful week.
“He thinks I should go back to work, you know. He said, ‘Joannie, you find so much meaning in it.’ And it’s true. I’m thinking about it. I do miss the routine.”
“Do you speak about the charges against him?”
Dr. Forrestor never said crimes, which Joan appreciated, unless the husband in question had actually been found guilty or admitted to things.
“I always blurt it out right at the end of our time, when I know I have to leave soon. I always ask him to tell me the truth. George reacted badly to this at first, like I was the one who should be embarrassed for asking the question. I want to know, and I need to know, and I deserve to know, right?” Her voice squeaked at the end of the question.
The women sitting around the circle nodded in sympathy.
“Every time he says no, he says it so firmly and with resolve. But I’ve noticed that he looks different when he says it, like his eyes glaze over and he almost vacates his body, like his spirit has been lifted away. Does that sound craz
y? Sometimes he just keeps saying it, no no no no, you know? As if repeating it makes it necessarily so. At first I believed him, the words were comforting, you know?”
“Do you believe him?” Shelley asked.
“I don’t know. I change my mind all the time. My daughter says I’m in denial, and my son says he believes him. But last week when I asked him, he just exploded. He said, ‘Don’t you know how hard it is for me to hear you ask me that every damn visit? This is the one highlight of my treacherous, inhumane week.’ He said that if I really loved him, I would believe him.”
Several women sucked their teeth. “I’ve heard that one before,” said Ann, a mousy woman who rarely spoke, whose husband had assaulted his younger employee.
“He has never spoken to me like that before,” Joan said. “Despite the circumstances of why he is in jail, the encounters we had were always civil. I don’t know, I was so shocked that I just apologized. I felt guilty.” It sounded ridiculous as she admitted it to these women, who were all nodding with empathy.
Joan wasn’t sure why she had immediately assumed responsibility that wasn’t hers. It seemed entirely out of character for her to do that. If you had to choose a Woodbury to be in a bar fight with, you’d want Joan. She didn’t used to back down.