The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  She poured half a sweetener into her black tea as Sadie joined her. Joan pushed a waxy blueberry muffin her way and offered a fake cheerful hello.

  “Hey, Mom, ’sup?” Sadie slouched into a chair, pulling the hood of her grey sweatshirt off her head, revealing a mess of knotted hair.

  “I’ve been researching, about your father, about the possibility of a mental illness, undetected until now,” she said.

  “Mom, if he was sick, would that make him blameless?”

  “Maybe. But it means he could try to get well, he could try to … atone. That is, if he’s even guilty. We have to live with the uncertainty for now.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” she said curtly, picking a blueberry from the top of the muffin and popping it in her mouth. “I want to convince you not to sell the house.”

  “Move back in,” Joan said boldly.

  “Only if you don’t put it on the market,” she replied. Like mother, like daughter. “Ever. Like, even when I go to school. The house needs to be ours. Forever.”

  “Sadie, what about next year, when you’re in college? The house is way too big … for just me — and your dad, if …” The reality of Sadie leaving and the future she had thought would be opening up, of living with just George again, without kids, of drinking red wine at night and doing whatever they pleased, being in their twenties again — that was never going to happen now.

  Sadie appeared to contemplate the situation as Joan swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “For now, then,” Sadie said. “Don’t do it now. I’ll move back in.”

  Joan tried to mask her elation and speak calmly. “Okay, honey. I was thinking that we should spend Christmas with Andrew and Jared and Clara in the city. Would you like that?”

  Thanksgiving has been a total bust. Clara had taken over the cooking, while Andrew and Joan went to visit George. The turkey hadn’t turned out, but everyone tried too hard to pretend everything was fine. Joan kept going to the bathroom to cry. She was hoping she could make up for Thanksgiving by planning a better Christmas.

  “Seriously?” She pushed her hair out of her eyes, lighting up.

  “Sure. It’s important for us to be together. But maybe we won’t bring Jimmy to New York, if that’s okay?” Joan prepared herself for protestations, but none come. Sadie just nodded.

  “Yes, that would be best.”

  Joan tried not to register any surprise. She sipped at her tea. She didn’t push her luck by asking about Sadie’s college applications. She just enjoyed the moment of calm between them, and felt lucky to have such a good daughter. She had an intuitive feeling that Sadie would be okay. That she was a fighter, and she’d recover.

  “I’ll get my stuff and move back tomorrow, okay?”

  “Great.”

  joan started her shift, checked the flow chart, and noted who was on duty. The er was pretty full — the start of flu and flu paranoia season. She was at her office door, pass card inserted, when Nancy tapped her on the shoulder. When Joan turned, Nancy’s face broke out into a pink flush.

  “Oh, Joan! I’m so happy to see you.” Her expression was sincere and Joan was grateful for it, giving her a big hug, for which she felt a bit foolish afterwards. Looking over her shoulder as they hugged, Joan noticed a big bouquet of flowers on her desk, and a Welcome Back banner.

  “Thanks for all this, Nancy. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

  “Oh, it was from all of us,” she insisted. Though later Joan noted it was Nancy’s handwriting on the card, and from the awkward chill she received from some of the staff she realized it had probably been all Nancy’s initiative. Nevertheless, she was grateful.

  Being at work, both managing the staff and seeing the occasional patient, filled Joan with the sense of purpose she’d been missing. She felt as if someone had thrown her a lifebuoy.

  when joan arrived at therapy that afternoon, she thought she was fine until she was asked, “And how are you feeling?”

  She took a breath, momentarily annoyed that she was being asked about herself after a comforting day of looking after others. “Is it possible to be an intelligent human being — perceptive, intuitive — and also be married to someone who fools you so intensely, who is entirely a fraud, and you have no idea?”

  “Do you feel like a fraud?”

  “Is it possible to be smart and completely fooled?”

  “Do you feel like a fraud, Joan?”

  “Of course I do. Not only did I think I knew George, I was in love with him, and I thought I knew every single thing about someone I could possibly know. How does anyone ever get over that feeling?”

  “You want to get over that feeling?”

  “Why do you answer everything with a question? I am here for answers.”

  “You are here for answers.”

  “Now you’re just repeating whatever I say.”

  The therapist folded her hands in her lap and fixed Joan with that professional non-stare Joan herself offered about three dozen times a day at work. She tried another tactic.

  “I want to know if I am actually not a very smart person, if I’ve just assumed I was this whole time. If I’m actually a dim-wit, an intolerable needy woman, blinded by love.”

  “I do not think you are dim-witted at all.”

  “Thank you. Finally you say something.”

  “You are frustrated with me.”

  “It isn’t personal. I am frustrated with everyone. I can’t stand Clara’s impatience with me. I hate those women in the support group who have no other identity besides as a girlfriend or wife. I am more than that, right? I can be. I just loved that part of my life so much. I was happy.”

  “You were happy.”

  “I don’t know if I can just let that go.”

  “Letting go is hard.”

  It went on like this until Joan wrote her a cheque at the end of the hour — an hour spent telling the therapist that life was shit and her asking Joan to repeat that her life was shit and in what way. Oddly, in the car afterwards, Joan did feel lighter.

  Joan dialed Andrew’s number when she got in the car, putting the phone on hands-free and pulling out of the parking lot. Joan could hear the noise of the city all around him in the background when he picked up the phone. She could picture him with one finger in his ear, blocking out Thirty-Fifth Street on his way home from work.

  “Have you seen your father?” she asked him.

  Joan knew that he had. Bennie had told Joan as much, in one of his many unreturned voice mail messages.

  “Yes, I have. He is so broken, Mom. I know I shouldn’t feel bad for him, but I do.”

  “You feel bad?” Joan’s heart broke.

  “Okay, okay. Mom, I have to tell you. I don’t know why, but I want him to be innocent. It’s like a survival instinct, as if a bear is coming for him and I can only want to get him out of the way of that bear.”

  “I know it’s hard,” Joan said helplessly, pulling the car into the parking lot of the Krispy Kreme and going through the drive-through. The red light was on, the doughnuts were hot, and she ordered six with an iced coffee.

  As she chewed through two warm doughnuts, stopping only to sip at the creamy iced coffee, Andrew talked through the whole case. How Bennie was no longer as confident, how he was reconsidering the not-guilty plea, how so much would depend on the judge, on who was on the jury, on so many variables.

  “You know how much I hated Avalon Hills, how those kids tortured me. Some of those girls accusing Dad, they look just like the girls who spit in my face, who had their boyfriends kick out my car headlights and kick me into a corner and then piss on me as I huddled there. That’s all I can see, when I see those girls — the evil suburban menace, you know? I know it’s not fair to paint them with the same brush, when I don’t know them. I know that even if people behave like a
ssholes, they do not deserve to be treated badly. But my mind is reaching for excuses to take Dad’s side. I want to believe him so badly.”

  Joan couldn’t speak. She had no idea any of those things had happened to Andrew. She felt as though she were on a Tilt-A-Whirl, her son, her baby, being brutalized, and she never knew? He was crying now, she could hear his breathing through the phone, despite the cacophony around him of traffic and hollering. She wanted to protect him now, to make up for it somehow.

  Instead, she listened as he took a breath and began speaking like normal Andrew again, composed and distant. “I’ve got to go meet Jared now. We have early evening tickets to a show. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “I love you, Andrew. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s cool, Mom. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

  Joan sat in the car, looking down at the crumbs in her lap, the grease stains on her purple cotton work pants. She felt sick from the sugar, dizzy from the caffeine. Why did she think she needed two doughnuts? She set the remaining doughnuts aside for Sadie.

  When Joan got home that night, she was exhausted in a way that actually felt physical. So accustomed to emotional exhaustion, Joan welcomed the house, which was clean, and thankfully full of groceries now that she’d learned to use the online grocery service. Andrew called back to say that everything was set up for the following weekend. Jared had arranged to give Sadie a fancy spa treatment and haircut at his salon as a Christmas gift, and other than that, they were going low-key on presents. Just spending time together, maybe going to a movie.

  Joan hadn’t spoken to George since he blew up at her for questioning him. She didn’t listen to his voice mails, either. Bennie told Joan he was very distraught over their lack of contact. “Good,” she said to Bennie. “You make terrible choices, and you know they are wrong, then you should feel the impact of that loneliness.”

  She felt harsh as she said that.

  She was still struggling with the feeling that she was letting him down, that she was abandoning her husband at his lowest point. Compassion — it has its limits, she supposed. “You’re allowed to be pissed off,” said Clara, said Sadie. Even Andrew, in his way, had said it. “Don’t be a doormat, Mom.”

  twenty-three

  andrew was standing in the lobby of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, holding two glasses of wine, when Jared arrived a few minutes late. Jared regarded him with caution, and Andrew realized he was probably scowling. Jared cocked his head to the side in a gesture of concern, accepting the small plastic cup from Andrew’s outstretched hand.

  “I’m fine,” Andrew said by way of a greeting.

  “You don’t look fine, you look exhausted.”

  “That’s because I am exhausted,” Andrew said. “Can I be tired without you acting like I have cancer?”

  The crowd grew around them, necessitating that they stand closer. Jared put his hand on Andrew’s arm and gave it a comforting squeeze that prompted Andrew to bristle just as an older woman with an oversized designer purse knocked into his arm, spilling his wine on the sleeve of his suit jacket, the Valentino he’d worn for an important meeting at work. He hissed at the woman.

  “Well, don’t stand in the doorway if you don’t want to get pushed around,” she said with a thick New York accent. Andrew grew livid, felt Jared moving him away towards the last-minute pre-show lineup at the bar.

  “We don’t have to be here, you know. We can just tell Evan we saw the play and he wouldn’t know the difference. I sent flowers to the dressing room,” Jared said, taking a sip of his wine and waving his Visa card at the server for two more.

  “Why would we waste the money?” Andrew said, scanning his ticket, trying to understand where their seats were situated inside the auditorium.

  “It’s not a waste of money if we’re supporting the theatre. It’s no use being here if you could use the time to rest, to catch up on some sleep. We could spend some time together at home, you know.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who needs some rest.”

  Jared exhaled slowly. Andrew didn’t want to be taken care of, and he didn’t want to stop being stressed out. It filled him with a sense of active purpose, kept him from a restless sadness. He was tired of spending time with Jared that was fraught with tension.

  Every meal Jared prepared, every solution to a problem he came up with, wasn’t the right one. Andrew knew that Jared was becoming a punching bag for his own anger and helplessness about his father, and for the subsequent fallout of the stress on his career, his time, the things he enjoyed about life.

  The lights flickered for the final call.

  “My mom wants to spend Christmas with us here, in the city,” Andrew said. “Would that be okay?”

  “Of course, that would be amazing!”

  Jared got really excited about Christmas every year, even though he was Jewish. Andrew always wished they could just order takeout and go to the movies, but he usually invited Jared to Avalon Hills, where Jared was the most excited about the rituals. They holed up at the Woodbury estate, seeing very little of the outside world. Jared had never even seen the town, or any of the local sites.

  “I don’t know if it will be amazing,” he said, leading Jared into the darkened theatre, “but at least we’ll be together.”

  twenty-four

  once sadie decided to move home again, something she was preparing to tell Jimmy about later that night, she felt a renewed sense of purpose. Why was she suddenly an ineffective layabout? Why should she let the haters win? She was the school’s top student. She had papers to write, a student council meeting to chair.

  She drove back to Jimmy’s during her free period, straightened her hair, layered on some mascara, and threw the grey sweatshirt in the hamper. She showed up last to the weekly student council meeting. Cheryl was visibly less than pleased to give up her seat at the head of the table. The afternoon sun was sliding across the long oak table, illuminating the dust on all the leather-bound books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Sadie shut the door and the din fell silent. Sadie smiled at Cheryl, a customer service–style smile, brimming with teeth.

  I dare you, said Sadie’s smile. Basic bitch, just try me.

  “Hello, Cheryl, nice barrettes,” she said.

  Cheryl touched the tiny golden birds in her thin, greasy shoulder-length hair and whispered a thanks, though she knew Sadie’s comment was sarcastic. There was an uncomfortable pause before Cheryl realized Sadie was waiting for her to give up her seat; it was where the designated leadership sat. Sadie looked down at the fidgeting grade reps assembled, at Tony the aspiring cfo who wasn’t great at eye contact at the best of times, furiously tapping on his tablet device, then at Jimmy, who was giving her an encouraging smile that said, Get back on the horse! Even though things at Jimmy’s house had been strained, at school they put on a united front. And having sex with him had made him relax; he’d hovered less that day. Jimmy pushed back whenever anyone gave her cut-eye. It was the only thing that still ignited anything resembling passion in Sadie, and she appreciated it.

  Cheryl handed out copies of the minutes from the last meeting, and the agenda for the hour ahead. Running meetings used to make her happy. They were so efficient. She got things done.

  “First item,” Sadie said, wanting the meeting to go well, scanning the list, “is … the Teacher of the Year award.”

  Some students snickered. Every year it went to her father.

  “Well.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll need a volunteer to adjust the online survey from last year. Do we have a short list?”

  “Uh …” Cheryl started, shifting in her seat. “I’m not sure you know this? But the site? Has been … hacked?”

  “Oh yeah?” Sadie drew a lazy sunflower on her agenda.

  Tony slid the tablet down towards her, set to the school’s homepage, where a black and red screen with a YouTube video h
ad replaced the usual content. She clicked on the video. A seventies disco song started up, and the video of her father accepting the award last year appeared, with images from Girls Gone Wild crudely edited on around it. Sadie’s cheeks burned, but she took a deep breath, gripping the koala eraser in her pocket.

  “Well, obviously this hacker is really … basic. I mean, if this is the best he could do. It’s the most predictable hack in the world.” She slid the tablet back to Tony and fixed him with a blasé stare. “So, uh, Tony,” she said, drawing petals on the flower, “take the site down, obvi. I’m surprised the school hasn’t done it already.”

  “It just went live,” he said, shrugging and looking down again. Sadie knew at that moment that he was the lame hacker in question.

  “Take it down. This school is just so … childish,” Sadie said. “How is anyone going to survive next year at college with so few … social skills?” She looked at Tony again, forcing eye contact, until he physically squirmed. She moved on to the next item on the agenda.

  She went through the list of student concerns, things that Sadie used to care about and that now seemed incredibly silly, but she kept up the facade of being interested in things like the job fair, the holiday bake sale fundraiser, fixing the espresso machine in the student lounge, and telling the animals rights group to stop flinging paint at their parents when they arrived for the talent show. Sadie concluded the meeting with an extra-hard slam of the gavel, which was largely decorative but nevertheless made a satisfying bang. She had completed this very normal thing, running the meeting, and she hadn’t run out or gone home early.

  “Going to the caf, want anything?” Jimmy asked, reaching out to grab her wrist as the group dispersed. She leaned in and kissed him, performing for the group a tableau of normalcy, the way things used to be.