The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  “Why should I fucking apologize? Was I that easy to manipulate? Who am I?” she said to the support group, who were rapt. How long had it been since she felt as though anyone was listening to her? Other than at work, it had been a very long time.

  She proceeded to tell the women in the support group what she’d done after that. She pulled into the nearest mid-sized town, one that housed a university and a strip of hotels along a flat expanse of highway. She’d checked herself into the highest hotel on the horizon. She didn’t even bother to bargain-hunt, she just chose the first one she came upon besides the Motel 6. It was a lavish five-star, and a valet took the keys from her shaking, cold hand and exchanged them for a small piece of numbered paper, which she quickly lost in her pocket. In the lobby she signed the credit card slip with an angular scrawl unlike her real signature and didn’t really hear the concierge when he informed her of the checkout time and pointed her towards the elevators. She nodded at the bellhops, noted the entrance to a fancy steakhouse restaurant off the lobby as she walked, but she was not inside herself, truly. Her bones kept moving and she sank behind.

  Her room was on the twenty-seventh floor. It overlooked a skateboarding and roller skating park. She opened the brown curtains and stood barefoot on the carpet, even though she knew it was unwise to do so with so many diseases combed into each tiny thread, ready to attach to her skin. She pressed her nose against the glass as the electric heater warmed her ankles. She stared down onto the streets, pushing her toes into the fibres. Directly below the hotel she watched a lone roller skater, a very proficient one, skate around the perimeter. Her legs were so tiny from Joan’s vantage point that they looked like little bird legs. Her movements and gentle rhythms mesmerized her. The sound of how George had spoken to her reverberated around the beige, tasteful decor.

  “I ordered room service — I’ve never done that before! I opened the mini-bar and drank all the gin. It was kind of nice, actually. And I called my kids. I call them both at seven every night, usually.”

  She didn’t tell the women that they only picked up about once or twice a week, and for those few times she was overwhelmingly grateful.

  She was worried about Sadie.

  For a few moments she’d felt regretful about her decision to get a hotel room. She was fine to drive. She just couldn’t bear the thought of the long stretch of highway and all that time to think. She’d needed a rest. Her phone rang, and she saw the familiar work number appear on the screen, the chief of staff at the Avalon Hills trauma department. She answered hesitantly.

  “Joan, hello. You know …” He cleared his throat, the way he always did. Acid reflux. She knew what was coming. We think the stress of the position might be too much for you, all things considered. Meaning the bad media reflected poorly on the hospital. We have donors, you know. Et cetera. She steeled herself against this possibility.

  “I’m calling because I’m hoping that it’s time for you to come back to work. You are missed. You run a tight ship, and your replacement is getting sloppy, you know. Confidentially …”

  “Well, doctor …” Joan was so shocked she couldn’t really respond. She kept staring out the window, at the cars that looked like toys driving down the busy street. The sight of partying youngsters, couples arm in arm. The skater kept on circling.

  “I know this has been hard, and your coming back would be contingent on checking in with our psychiatrist, but I’m sure it won’t be a problem. We all know how strong you are.”

  “Yes, well, this has been tested lately.”

  “Yes, I can imagine.”

  Joan sat down on the edge of the bed, adjusting the belt of her plush white hotel robe.

  “I don’t know if you’ve read the daily paper …”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Well, the hospital issued a statement of support for you, and I hope that puts your mind at ease. We are here for you. You’ve given the hospital so many years, and you’ve done exemplary work, and we are aware that you were as shocked about the news as anyone could be.”

  “That is an understatement.”

  “Well, I will give you some time to think about it. But we’re hopeful you can return within the week. Would you like to do that?”

  “Yes,” she agreed, hesitantly.

  “Terrific,” he said. “I’ll set up that appointment with Dr. Chua and you’ll be on your way back to work. Terrific.”

  “Terrific,” she parroted, “thank you,” before hanging up.

  Joan had called Clara and told her she would be returning to work.

  “Amazing idea! You need something else to do besides support your husband,” she said. Clara had been on her to stop being so generous with her caring ear, to access her anger.

  “Clara, I’m in a hotel near the prison. I’ve stopped because I can’t really deal with it. I think I might be going crazy.” Going crazy felt like a low moan of white noise in her head; the light of the room looked so bright, her hands didn’t seem to be her own.

  “Good. You need to get fucking crazy. Some crazy shit has happened, and it’s time you stopped trying to solve everything you know you can’t solve.”

  “You know I’m a practical person, and if there is something to be done, I will do it.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. God. But what are you doing for yourself? Why don’t you trot on down to the hotel bar and meet a man. Don’t get his last name. Tell him you’re a corporate saleswoman in town for one night only. And get it on.”

  “Clara! I could never. I’m married.”

  Clara cleared her throat. “My god, are you Amish? I think that when your husband’s in prison and you’re not allowed any conjugal break times, you gotta do what you gotta do.” She laughed.

  “Well, maybe you would, but I’m not like that.”

  “No, of course, you live for other people. It gives your life meaning. Do something selfish for once. He owes you one, right? For sticking it out. You should fuck any man you want and George should just say thank you, thank you, thank you for staying with me.” She laughed again. Joan could tell she’d been drinking. She could hear people in the background. Clara was talking in the voice she took on when she was cognizant that others were overhearing. Her laugh was full and cackling. “I mean, it’s not as if he was faithful.”

  “Fuck you, Clara. Fuck you.” Joan hung up the phone and threw it on the ground. It didn’t smash or make any sound against the plush beige carpet. She’d just alienated her only support system and she didn’t even get the satisfaction of breaking something.

  She’d dressed and gone down to the lobby of the hotel to check her email. She didn’t like to answer email on her phone and had recently just disabled it entirely. But first she grabbed a newspaper and forced herself to read the article entitled simply what wives don’T know. The article opened with details of George’s case, and then chronicled several famous wives of sex offenders who had no idea, and quoted a researcher about how common this is. The words soothed Joan, that she wasn’t the only fucking idiot.

  The paragraph her boss had informed her about was towards the end. It read:

  Woodbury, 52, is head of nursing at St. Joseph Medical Center in Avalon Hills. Following the arrest of her husband, she was described in a statement from her workplace as a “kind and compassionate individual” and a “long-serving, greatly admired and universally liked member of our team.”

  The statement had choked her up. She’d bit her lip, blown her nose into a scratchy hotel bar napkin.

  Then Joan had checked her email. There was one from Andrew with a list of names and numbers of therapists in the city. One from Clara’s BlackBerry saying sorry. She pictured her standing in the middle of the dinner party typing in the hurried response.

  She called the first therapist on the list and set up an appointment.

  Joan had then checked the home voice mail, and was reliev
ed to hear that there were no threats or obscene messages. They’d tapered off over the last couple of weeks but still she anticipated them. Perhaps there was a new scandal the hordes were paying attention to now.

  She had then sent Andrew and Sadie a joint email requesting they all have dinner. She wanted to see them. She needed to see them. “There are things we need to discuss,” she wrote. It sounded official. But all she wanted to discuss was their lives, how they were getting along, how they were managing to cope. She had recently been experiencing an odd sort of nostalgia for when they were younger and required constant supervision. At the time she’d often felt as though she couldn’t wait for Sadie to become independent, to have some time to herself, but now she longed for her seven-year-old daughter — watching her skate on the lake in the winter, her insistent voice calling out, “Are you watching, Mom?” or trying to get just a few more minutes’ sleep before hearing “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy” while a small hand tugged at the duvet.

  As she’d clicked off the computer, she felt as though she’d accomplished a mountain of tasks and was now heading back to work. She was filled with purpose. For a short moment the pain and desperation that had become so commonplace lifted, and she remembered her real self again.

  “Anyway, so I’m going back to work, and I’m thankful for that,” she said now to the support group.

  Dr. Forrestor looked at her, and she wondered if she’d been speaking for too long. He thanked her for sharing and moved on to the woman on her left, and Joan felt better, briefly, and less burdened.

  nineteen

  kevin brushed his teeth in the ensuite bathroom, watching Elaine in the medicine cabinet mirror. She sat up in bed reading the Economist. He tapped the side of his toothbrush twice on the side of the sink and put it away. The bathroom light was interrogative, its purpose to highlight the ageing process. He couldn’t put off telling her any longer. He’d been writing the book based on the Woodbury scandal in secret for a couple of months, and it was weighing on him. The news would hit the papers the next day that the pitch had gone to auction and a number of publishers had been fighting over it. He’d finally inked a deal. He didn’t want to feel like a coward for one minute longer. He splashed his face with cold water, dried it on the hand towel.

  “My new novel is based on a true story,” he began, climbing into bed, “and tomorrow my agent is going to announce the advance I got to write it, and it’s bigger than anything I’ve received before.”

  Elaine took off her reading glasses and looked at him, the magazine falling to the floor. “Oh my goodness! This is terrific news!” He hadn’t seen her this excited about anything in so long, he felt sick at having to elaborate. She reached out and caressed his cheek. “Wait — did you change the whole book? What true story?”

  “Well, it’s about the Woodbury case, actually, set at Avalon prep. The narrator is, uh, his daughter. But it’s fictionalized.”

  “Kevin …” She paused, and he could almost see the joy draining from her face. “That is tricky territory. You can’t do that.”

  “Well, it’s done. It’s a novel. You can’t penalize me for that. It’s an incredible story, don’t you think? It happened right in front of me. It wasn’t possible to resist.” He knew Elaine was too smart for that response, but it was all he had.

  “It’s not ethical,” she said. “Sadie is not a character, she is a human being this family cares a great deal about. And I can penalize you for that. Why else would you have kept it a secret from me, if you didn’t feel some kind of guilt about it?”

  From there it took a turn to a deeper kind of conflict, with Elaine insisting it was a parasitic move because he was desperate to be relevant again, and that his masculinity was preventing him from learning from humility and truly working hard to improve, that he was too entitled and his early success had stilted him. That she was exhausted by him, and that this was the last straw, that he hadn’t cleaned the bathtub even once in five years. They fought for hours, about his rights as a writer and Elaine’s right to protect her kid. They never agreed. And she shut him out of her room, and he retreated to the couch, too angry to talk.

  She was unsupportive and patronizing and didn’t understand what it was to be a writer. That’s what Kevin wrote in an email to the girl from Twitter he’d been flirting with, confiding in, for the last few months. That it was easy to be a moralist from your tenured tower. That she used her age in these moments to wield power. That she couldn’t insist on being a control freak who wanted to make sure everything in the house was “done right” and then get upset when people were afraid to clean the bathroom wrong. For the first time he felt truly checked out of their relationship, as though he was getting ready to leave. A deep sadness enveloped him, and then more anger. The announcement in the paper the next day was supposed to be a highlight of his career, one he wanted to share with people he loved. How dare she be so selfish?

  He curled up on the couch, and woke up several times. The final time, he found Sadie sitting on the coffee table, legs crossed, staring at him. She had the bong in her hands, and exhaled a long stream of smoke. He noticed she was wearing one of those linked rings like bruisers used to wear as weapons in his day, but her ring was made of tiny green flowers. He would write that detail down. She smelled of strawberry oil, and he noticed for the first time how her waist-to-hip proportions were perfect; the last time he’d really looked at her, she’d been straight and angular.

  “I hope you don’t mind.” She smiled. Her nails matched the green flowers.

  He did mind, as he didn’t want to have to call his dealer any more than he had to, and his advance cheque hadn’t come in yet, so he was still broke. But he didn’t say anything. At least he knew now that he wasn’t losing his mind and forgetting how much pot he’d been smoking; this was where it had been going.

  “How are things?” he asked, as though the situation was totally normal. He tried to memorize her face, the way it had lost its youthful sheen in the previous month, how her cheekbones seemed to actually be hardening, like a doll’s.

  “Same,” she said, shrugging, giving him a weird smile.

  He nodded back, wondering how to keep asking her questions without seeming to be interviewing her.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  “Nope.” She shrugged again.

  She continued to stare, until he began to feel a bit uncomfortable. “I should go to bed,” he said, as though he had fallen asleep on the couch by accident.

  He wanted to tell her he was heading to see her dad in the morning. He wanted to see her reaction, but Elaine’s voice in his head stopped him. He’d go see George and then he would head to the hospital to try to interview some nurses who worked with Joan. He was having a hard time nailing her character.

  The next day Kevin drove to the prison, stopping twice for large coffees along the way. The adrenalin and excitement he’d felt after he pitched the book had disappeared one morning as he stared at the blank page on his screen and felt a familiar thrum of potential failure behind his eyes. Now he really had to write the book. He watched Sadie and Jimmy sitting at breakfast, both on their phones, eating cereal, feet touching under the table, and thought, How can I make this situation active? George was in jail. His family was trying to keep on keeping on in his absence, dodging reporters and going to work and school. “To be clear, this is fiction,” he wrote to his editor. His editor replied: “No alternate universes, no huge plot divestments though? Use all the usual storytelling elements, and make it as interesting as possible, but don’t stray too far from the original.”

  he didn’t know what to expect when he saw George. He’d already written several chapters of conjecture based on his memory of who George was. But he had no idea how to reconcile the fact that people knew an entire other George, and he had never met the sinister side. Sure, he could be a Jekyll/Hyde character, but that wasn’t going to be easy to portray. It wouldn’t see
m convincing. It did seem closest to the truth, though.

  He’d met George before, at one of his backyard barbecues, and he’d seen him around town. George would lift his hand half off the steering wheel as he drove by Kevin when he was biking around the lake on weekends — the customary small-town thing to do. They’d exchange pleasantries at the Coffee Hut or drugstore, especially if their kids were in tow. George always struck Kevin as a bit of an intimidating figure, who was nonetheless approachable and jovial. He used to joke about him with Elaine, that he didn’t seem real. He’d seemed too perfect, too good a husband, not enough darkness. When you don’t seem real, there is generally something off about you, he thought. That’s what he’d realized while examining character, figuring out the motivations of everyone he invented. He, of course, was the epitome of the other side of the story. Too real, all flaws. Kevin knew he would never win any charm contests. His propensity to stare off was disconcerting to some, but he didn’t worry much about it. Elaine was similar, though in a muted way because she had to be so responsible all the time. But that was okay by him.

  One of the only real conversations he’d had with George was at one of those barbecues, as Kevin was requesting another bourbon from the bar staff by the pool. The servers were wearing all white with ice-blue accents. It was like a scene from a 1970s movie come to life, and Kevin thought it was both pretentious and lovely.

  “When are you going to start your own family, Kev? You can’t stay twenty-five forever,” he’d said. They turned to watch a group of kids running in circles around a patch of sunflowers. Even the toddlers wore designer clothes.

  “I like the life I have,” he’d said, thinking that would be the end of it. Usually it was. Most married men envied him, and the conversation that followed would be full of joking about the chains of monogamy.

  “Sure, sure. You don’t have to do much you don’t want to do. But responsibility is what shapes a man,” he’d said, draining the last bit of bourbon from a rock glass and swirling the remaining ice around. “There is a freedom in responsibility, you know, in confinement. Too much freedom can be dangerous.”