by Zoe Whittall
Jared smelled like a forest when he hugged Joan. She stood back, took in his clean-shaven face, the angle of his jaw. He was almost blindingly handsome, which was matched by the natural kindness that emanated from everything he said and did. “Joan,” he said, squeezing her upper arm warmly, “I’m so glad to see you again.”
She believed him. She could trust him, she realized. She’d developed a new awareness about people and their intentions, something she never used to think about consciously. Her son was lucky to have Jared. She squeezed his sizable bicep and pulled him into another hug, which made him laugh. She hugged Andrew next, whose hugs often felt like handshakes, and she wondered if Andrew even deserved Jared, in some ways. She was unable to stop being critical of her son sometimes, because she saw her worst qualities reflected in his behaviour: his short fuse, his fussiness, the way he worked too hard.
Joan looked around at their home, a cramped space decorated to make it appear bigger. The furniture was mostly black, white, or grey, and in shapes that appeared uncomfortable, at odds with the human body. They had a fake silver Christmas tree, set up on a speaker. Everything was rectangular, there wasn’t a curved angle in sight, only clean lines and lack of colour. Joan thought it was cold and probably impractical to heat. Sadie walked over to a long-haired grey and white cat perched on a diamond-shaped pillow in the large window that overlooked the street.
Jared took Joan’s suitcase and rolled it towards the guest room. “Joan, I am just so pleased to have you in our home. Hotels are so impersonal, and we got this great new Murphy bed behind the bookshelf for guests.” Joan tried to wrap her head around the fact that he was her son’s boyfriend. It was surprising almost every time she met him. It was one thing to know it and to understand it, but to see it and deal with it was quite another thing.
He led her to the guest-room space behind a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Jared had already pulled the bed down. There was a lilac duvet with bright green throw pillows and a stack of turquoise towels in descending order of size on the edge of the bed. Otherwise the space was completely bare. Jared showed Joan how to open and close the wooden screen that would allow her some privacy. Joan wanted to slip into the bed and just lie there, stop time from moving forward.
Instead, she leaned her overnight suitcase against a side of the bookcase and followed Jared back out into the open area, the kitchen and living room combo. Fake it till you make it, she thought, which is exactly what one of the women she disliked in the support group kept saying. She thought it was ridiculous and reductive, until it proved very useful almost every day.
Andrew busied himself around the island in the kitchen area, making a pot of green tea and setting out a basket of Christmas cookies. Sadie sat at the table texting, beside her mother and Jared. Andrew kept putzing around as they small-talked.
“Andrew,” Jared scolded him, “you can actually sit down with us. You don’t have to do the dishes now. He’s so obsessed with cleaning, honestly.”
Sadie giggled. Joan didn’t think either of them had ever seen Andrew be put in his place.
“That’s funny. Andrew never lifted a finger at home,” Joan said. She picked up a star-shaped cookie. It was still warm. She wanted to be hungry. She took a bite and made an approving noise.
“Andrew is so into baking lately.”
Sadie broke out in laughter, then paused. “Oh, you’re serious?”
“No, no, he doesn’t have a lot of free time, but baking is very meditative, right?”
“Jared. Enough,” Andrew said, but he was still smiling, filling up a bulbous glass pitcher of water, throwing in some lemon slices from the fridge. “It’s soothing my nerves. I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping.”
“Me too,” said Joan and Sadie at the same time. Jared scanned them with a sympathetic look.
“I’ve been teaching Andrew about some basic self-care principles my naturopath is keen on, with some vitamins and supplements for stress, and some mindfulness techniques.”
Jared trailed off as Sadie texted and Joan looked around at the life her son had built. Her once lonely, too-smart, and cynical son who never seemed to have time to visit had created his own home here, in this city she’d always considered cold and uninviting, prohibitively expensive, individualistic, and devoid of comfort. The apartment was filled with plants and other signs of vibrancy. He had been doing well, she realized, before this all happened.
later, they took a walk around Lower Manhattan, bundled up in their winter coats, hands clutching phones locked on the camera setting. Shoppers bustled around them with arms full of gift bags, irritated at their slow touristic pace.
In the evening, in lieu of a Christmas Eve feast, they ordered three kinds of mac ’n’ cheese from a specialty restaurant and played Scrabble, approximating a normal family visit. Clara came over for some eggnog and they watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas! while Joan finished knitting the last pair of mittens she was making for gifts: a black pair for Andrew, ice-blue and green stripes for Jared, red for Sadie. They’d decided not to exchange purchased gifts, just homemade things, and not to do any of their usual traditions. “The advantage of New York is you can avoid all those expectations,” Andrew said when Joan asked him if he was sad to miss Christmas in Avalon Hills.
on christmas day, Jared opened up the salon just for Sadie; his gift to her was some fun spa treatments. Joan, Andrew, and Clara were going to the movies.
Joan watched Sadie get settled into her chair in the back of the spa space, after they’d received the grand tour and Joan had turned down Jared’s offer of a relaxing lavender oil massage and manicure. The idea of being touched with such care was inviting. How long had it been since she’d actually been touched by another human being for more than two or three seconds? But she felt as though her arms were wooden and splintery, and that she didn’t deserve such luxury. She was afraid that if someone touched the base of her neck, or the swollen muscles in her shoulders, they would unleash some of the emotions she wasn’t even aware were present, loosen the netting of repression that held her body together. So she accepted Jared’s jars of homemade plum jams and red pepper jellies instead.
They waited for Clara outside the salon. Andrew’s phone chirped an electronic sparrow song. He pulled it from his pocket and walked a distance away. Joan took her own phone out and snapped a candid photo of him.
“Hey, Bennie,” he said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. What? Where is he now?”
He hung up the phone and turned to his mother. She saw that he was crying. It was the first time she’d seen Andrew cry since he was in grade school. He blinked both eyes, then shut them tightly.
“Dad’s in the hospital. Someone tried to kill him.”
twenty-nine
a fine coating of soft chocolatey liquid covered Sadie’s arms and torso, and instead of feeling like a human dipped doughnut, as she had anticipated, the smell dissolved all the tension she was holding in her muscles, and every inhale seemed to bring her closer to herself. “I understand now why rich ladies do this,” she said to her masseuse, a thin brunette with a racing stripe of pink blush across her whitened cheeks. But why did she say that? She was obviously a rich lady’s kid.
Jared poked his head through a long velvet curtain. “How are you, little sis? Did I tell you or what?”
“Jared, I feel amazing.” She felt a swell of affection for him as he smiled wide back at her. Maybe she could move to New York, stay with them. Maybe the problem was the town, the circles she was surrounded by, the excess and wealth.
“Andrew was supposed to come back after he helped your mom with the bags, and now he isn’t answering his phone. Has he texted you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
The masseuse was massaging her face before applying the final bits of a body wrap to her cheekbones when Sadie’s phone vibrated inside her handbag, slumped under the spa table.
“May
be that’s him,” she said.
The massage therapist seemed almost hostile when Sadie reached an arm into her purse. “You’re not relaxing!” she commanded. Sadie sat up mid-rub to check her phone.
“No, it’s an email,” she said. Reading Kevin’s name, her face erupted in a grin. Sadie felt that her whole body was probably noticeably throbbing through all the chocolatey product.
“He probably just went back up to the apartment,” he said.
Sadie couldn’t hear him, could only read and reread the email.
Sadie lady, how are you? Merry Christmas! Jimmy says you two broke up. Don’t worry, you’ll work it out. He’s lucky to have a cool chick like you. Or you’ll find someone else who sees how smart and beautiful you are. Just thinking about you today. I’m sitting by the fire in a cabin with my parents, enjoying the fact that I just came up with the perfect ending for my book. My agent loves it! I’ll be back in Avalon Hills tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing you.
The masseuse pressed a warm face cloth on her skin, washing away the product with a gentle hose and massaging her head, arms, and legs. Then she washed Sadie’s hair with a shampoo that smelled of fresh fruit and painted her nails a bright pink called New Revelations. “Very grown-up,” said the esthetician. Sadie didn’t tell her that several chemicals in nail polish have been linked to diabetes, and that spa workers have astronomical rates of asthma and respiratory illness. Sadie realized she’d stopped her incessant fact quoting. Tidbits weren’t coming to her the way they used to. She was getting used to silence, to speaking when spoken to.
Sadie floated around, feeling soft-skinned and smelling like expensive vanilla extract. After the spa, Jared showed her around the neighbourhood, bought her a vanilla bean cupcake, and they walked back to the apartment.
“Do you know why Andrew doesn’t want me to come home, to help out more with the case?” he asked, his voice squeaking out, as he unwrapped a chocolate cupcake and took a messy bite.
She shrugged. “I dunno. I just assumed you were too busy,” she said.
“No, I keep offering to come. He doesn’t want me to.”
“He’s always been a bit of a lone wolf, and he hates Avalon Hills, so I’m not entirely surprised.”
“Why does he hate it so much?”
“I’m not sure. Because it’s boring?”
“That can’t be the only reason.”
Her phone beeped again, and she couldn’t help but check. She’d responded to Kevin’s email — that she couldn’t wait to read his book and was happy to know that he was coming back because she missed him. “I miss you.” She just wrote it like that, straight ahead. Why not be bold? She didn’t mention anything about Jimmy, and signed it with three xxx’s. Later she thought maybe that was immature-sounding. She kept rereading the line “smart and beautiful.” He thinks I’m smart and beautiful! My whole life I’ve been told I’m smart, but never beautiful. Pretty, her dad used to say. Cute. Hot, Jimmy used to mumble while trying, always semi-successfully, to unhook her bra. Beautiful was a grown-up word. Her mom always associated being pretty or too interested in fashion with weakness. But this compliment felt good.
when they got back to Jared and Andrew’s building, a forty-something woman was standing in the entranceway. She had blunt-cut bangs and a white fur coat cut at the waist. She stared at them in a way that made it seem as if she was trying to place them.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m trying to find Andrew Woodbury. Do you know him?”
Jared looked at her curiously. “I do,” he said.
“I’m his sister,” offered Sadie, in her small-town way.
“Oh. oh,” she said awkwardly. “Do you mind giving him this?”
The card said Sarah Myers, Starling Crafts — ethical repurposed handbags with an email address and phone number.
“What is this about?” Jared asked.
“It’s a little bit complicated,” she said, “but we used to know each other, a very long time ago.”
She turned and ran back out onto the street, walking with purpose.
“That was weird,” Sadie said.
“Totally,” Jared said, opening the front door and climbing the stairs.
When he handed the card to Andrew, he seemed confused and shoved it in his pocket.
“I have to talk to you alone,” said Andrew, giving Jared a serious look.
“What’s up?” asked Sadie.
“Adult stuff,” he said, pulling Jared into the bedroom and closing the door.
“Where’s Mom?” she called, but they didn’t answer.
in andrew and Jared’s bathroom, the room started to spin again, and Sadie crouched down on the floor. She’d run out of weed. She opened the medicine cabinet and saw a bottle of clonazepam prescribed to Andrew. She googled the name on her phone and thought, well, that will do. She took two and went back to the kitchen, where Jared had made her a cup of hot chocolate.
She smiled at him, feeling the absence of any bad feeling, feeling safe. She knew she must be high, but this was definitely better than any high she’d felt before in her life.
thirty
joan and clara drove away from New York City, hitting non-stop holiday traffic, and quickly realized they weren’t going to make it to see George in time for visiting hours. Clara pulled Joan’s car over to gas up and Joan leaned against the ice machine outside the station, begging the charge nurse on his floor to make an exception, but she wouldn’t. Joan was able to get more specific information about his condition, though.
“He’s conscious now, though barely,” she told Clara as they stood in line at the cash. “He has serious bruising on his neck. Apparently the guard intervened and saved him.”
“He’ll be okay?”
“He can’t talk due to the laryngeal fracture. They were able to insert a stent, and things should heal up. But right now he is in a lot of pain and will require monitoring for several days. He’s handcuffed, and mostly sedated.”
Clara booked a double room in a hotel near the hospital while Joan paced the parking lot, letting Andrew know what was happening.
When they pulled out of the service station, Joan’s phone buzzed from its spot in the console between the front seats. Joan read the text from Bennie out loud for Clara. “‘Book a room and get some sleep. He’ll be fine. He’s out of the woods. Meet me first thing in the morning.’”
“I made us a reservation at a hotel. It’s going to be okay.”
“Waiting feels like I might lose it completely. I have no patience left to draw on,” Joan said as Clara skirted around a slow car.
“You have no choice. And you have to tell Sadie,” Clara said, muting the annoying robot voice of the gps.
“No, I’m hoping she won’t see it. I’ve asked Andrew to try to keep her away from the news until she gets home tomorrow and I can deal with it. I’ll call her first thing. I just wanted her to have a fun holiday without worry. I couldn’t even do that.”
“Well, sometimes bad things happen and there’s never a good time for it. Get some sleep and I’ll drive you to the hospital early in the morning,” Clara said.
when joan woke up the next morning, she was confused about where she was until Clara came bustling through the door of their shared hotel room with a tray of coffees and a newspaper.
“It’s hit the local papers, but luckily some dimwit shot his wife and kids yesterday, so it’s below the fold.” She held up the paper. Indeed, the article was smaller than the large printed man shoots family then self. It read simply, alleged sex offender attacked on christmas day while incarcerated.
thirty-one
kevin had a Skype meeting with his agent early in the morning on the day after Christmas. He propped the laptop on a side table in the guest bedroom of his sister’s cabin. His niece and nephews were running around outside the door screaming, playing with the boxes
their toys came in. Kevin was hungover from drinking too much Scotch with his brother-in-law the night before. He took a sip of the warm beer he’d apparently fallen asleep drinking, and pressed the Call button.
His agent’s face appeared a bit fuzzy in the half screen. He shuffled papers for a few moments before he cut to the chase.
“This isn’t the draft, Kev. It’s good in parts, you know, but George is too clean. He’s not a villain. I need the abuse in detail.”
“Well, I don’t have any details. The girls involved in the case aren’t allowed to talk to me.”
“Well, you’re a writer — imagine it. We can’t have a book where the monster is actually a sweet old guy everyone defends. There needs to be more conflict. Don’t be afraid to be imaginative. Use your fictional storytelling devices. It’s going to be based on the true story, right? You can take some liberties.”
“Really? Did James Frey teach us nothing?”
“He’s too empathetic so far, and it’s too confusing. This is a novel, but we need some black and white facts here. Write the rape scenes. Go wild!”
Kevin nodded. The screen froze. He got up and drained his beer.
kevin laid the victim impact statements out on the bed, beside the three sexual assault memoirs he’d taken out of the library and skimmed. He had to nail the voice of the girls.
Write the rape scenes.
He pictured private-school girls, how they would dress and talk, writing a list of the possible sensory details, what a ski lodge looked and smelled like. He remembered his private-school crush on Karen Ridgley, the way she’d stand at the end of her driveway waiting for the school bus across from his house. She always pulled her skirt up higher right before the bus arrived. One day, when he was home sick from school, he watched her sneak home in the middle of the day with a boy, and he stood in the window of his bedroom with the binoculars, trying to see what they were doing, even though he was feverish. He caught a glimpse of them making out on the couch, and returned to bed, imagining what they were going to do.