The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  He lay back on the bed and tried to picture Karen, getting turned on the way he had as a young man. He imagined her shirt unbuttoned, her skirt tossed aside, and then her being prey to someone like George Woodbury. As soon as the imagining got too real, he lost his hard-on. He stared at the blank screen of his laptop, the hangover overwhelming him. He used to always be ready to go, but now it seemed, the closer he got to forty, that was no longer the default. Then he got an email response to the group query he’d sent to all the girls involved in the case whom he’d been able to find on Facebook. Miranda was the only one who had replied. But she was the main girl. He pumped his fist in the air, took a deep breath, and opened her message. He took notes in his flip book as he read.

  — Parents not supportive of her going to cops.

  — Former party girl, sober since ski trip.

  — Lonely?

  By the end of the email, he knew she wasn’t lying. Too many details, all of them convincing. She had all the money in the world, but she’d lost a lot by coming forward. He googled her name. An old Twitter feed with cleavage selfies, white girls throwing gang signs, silent since the arrest of George Woodbury, and several Facebook groups and Tumblr pages that, politely put, disparaged her credibility, with comments more cruel than anything any critic had ever said about Kevin’s books.

  He got in his car and drove back to Avalon Hills, to the room at the Hilton that was getting expensive but was starting to feel like a home of sorts, to finish the draft.

  thirty-two

  andrew insisted on waking Sadie up so early on the day after Christmas that he was able to drop her off at Jimmy’s house by ten. She slept most of the drive from New York, thanks to the second pill she’d stolen from the bathroom when she woke up sweating and alarmed at 3 a.m. Andrew was moody and drove too fast, but she barely noticed.

  She realized that Jimmy was one of the only friends she had left in Avalon Hills. The sympathy any of her other friends had displayed after her father’s arrest had faded away, and mostly she was a social pariah at school.

  She used the key Elaine had made for her, and found them in the kitchen making pancakes. It looked like a scene from a commercial where a company is trying to convince you to spend more quality time with your family by using their products.

  “Hey honey!” Elaine exclaimed, coming over to offer Sadie a powdery hug. Jimmy was more reserved, just nodding, but he couldn’t contain his smile. His relaxed demeanour and lack of immediate jumping on Sadie made her like him again for a moment. It was as if he had heard the universe telling him to calm down.

  “How was New York City?” Elaine asked.

  “It was great,” she said. “Relaxing.”

  Elaine began pouring the batter into a cast iron skillet. Sadie worked up the nerve to ask what she wanted to know.

  “How’s Kevin? When is he coming home again?” She tried to make it sound casual, like small talk.

  “He’s already back in town,” said Jimmy, eyes rolling.

  “Where is he?”

  Elaine paused and ran some warm water over the top of the maple syrup bottle in the sink.

  “Kevin and I are having some problems.”

  Jimmy snorted. Sadie was ashamed to admit that her heartbeat sped up a little. Maybe he’d confessed he had feelings for someone else?

  “Right now he’s staying at the Hilton while we’re talking through some … grown-up issues.”

  Elaine rarely used terms like that; she was usually more straight-up.

  Jimmy put down his mug. “Mom, what the hell do you mean? Did he cheat on you or something?”

  “No, of course not, nothing like that.”

  “He’s supposed to be doing so well. He apparently sold his new book for, like, a million dollars or something. I read it online.”

  “That’s true, Jimmy. We should all be happy for him in that way. Now help me with these pancakes,” she said, motioning towards the plates.

  “What, now that he doesn’t need you to depend on, he’s not going to stay anymore?” Jimmy was visibly upset, taking a plate of pancakes over to Sadie. “Doesn’t he want to stay here anymore? Now he has money, he doesn’t need you?”

  “You’re acting like he was a kept man, Jimmy, and that is ridiculous and not at all true.”

  “So what is it then?”

  “Jimmy, for the last time, it’s private, between Kevin and me, and you do not get to know every detail.”

  She sat down at the table with her own plate but didn’t touch her pancakes. She watched as Sadie and Jimmy took a few bites while she sipped her coffee.

  “Look, I’m sorry if this is upsetting, but you’re going to have to live with the uncertainty for a few days until things get sorted. It’s not my intention to have Kevin leave, and it’s not what I want. But there are some things you cannot control, as we have all learned — especially you, Sadie — these past few months.”

  Sadie’s head was racing with possibilities. Maybe he was brushing Elaine off, and wasn’t telling her why. Or maybe he’d even told her — but then why would Elaine be so nice to her right now? Maybe she knows he has feelings for someone but doesn’t know it’s me. Kevin was a smart guy; he’d know to keep his mouth shut on this.

  Sadie got up and went to the bathroom so she could text Kevin. I hear you might not be home as planned. What’s up? Xo

  He responded immediately. Oh, it’s a long story and it has to do with my book. Elaine can fill you in.

  Kind of a cold response, she thought. She went back out to the kitchen. The room was empty. She could hear Jimmy in the living room playing video games. The dirty plates sat on the table, the leftover food congealing. Sadie gathered them up and started rinsing them in the sink and putting them in the dishwasher.

  “I should go home and feed Payton,” she said to Jimmy, calling through the divide into the living room. He pressed Pause and stood up.

  “Okay, sure.” He followed her to the door. “So, like, I didn’t want to say anything, but how’s your dad recovering?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, after what happened …”

  “What happened?!”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened. “It was on the front page this morning …” He fished in the recycling box by his feet. teacher charged with attempted sex assaults injured in christmas prison attack.

  “How could you not know? Didn’t your mom tell you? I mean, we were trying not to bring it up, you know, to let you do the talking, and that’s why I figured you looked so distracted.”

  She scanned the article to make sure he was alive. He was. In hospital.

  “Obviously, my mother would rather I find out this way,” she said. No wonder she’d left. Why would she lie? Why would Andrew and Jared both lie to her?

  She looked at her phone. Seventeen missed calls from her mother. “Well, she has been calling and I haven’t called her back.” She thought about calling Andrew. After he’d dropped her off he probably went to see her dad in the hospital. Why didn’t they tell her? Take her along? She was sleepy and still high in the car, so maybe he didn’t think she could handle it.

  “Come back inside. You should come in and relax and let me take care of you.”

  “I’m so sick of feeling like I’m in need of care or comfort. I’m pissed off. I need to go home.”

  She ran outside, not even sure how she’d get home. Then she remembered she’d left her old bike strewn beside their house. It was cold, but she didn’t feel it. Her hands went numb on the handlebars all the way to the outskirts of town near the highway turnoff where the hotels and conference centres had their own little universe. It started to snow, and then rain. She knew she was cold but didn’t feel anything. Cars beeped at her, not expecting to see a bike on the side of the boulevard in this kind of weather. When she finally arrived, lungs hurting, hands burning from the cold
, she stashed her bike behind the Hilton Dumpster, took off her winter coat, and undid two buttons on her blouse in the reflection of a car window.

  thirty-three

  joan and clara made it to the hospital fifteen minutes before the start of visiting hours. They met Bennie in the icu waiting room. Joan, forgetting this wasn’t her hospital, pushed through the double doors of the icu. Clara and Bennie stayed in the hallway. A security guard sat in a hard-backed chair at the end of the bed looking less than thrilled. He was startled by her arrival, but quickly caught on to who Joan was. It was likely the first time he’d seen a woman age years before his very eyes, in the span of a few seconds.

  George was handcuffed to the gurney. The room, like much of the hospital, was in serious need of funding, seemed filthy and obviously understaffed compared with the trauma centre. George looked as if he’d survived a bombing.

  “George,” Joan said in a whisper, leaning over him, investigating the bruising on his neck, doing a quick vitals check. She did these things instinctively, without quite realizing it. He opened his eyes briefly, tried to speak but couldn’t. She put her lips to his forehead and kissed him gently. When she pulled back, he gripped her hand in what felt like terror.

  “It’s going to be okay, George. It will all be okay, don’t worry. You’re going to recover and you’re going to get out of jail and all will be normal and fine again,” she said. She sat beside him, murmuring words of comfort, while tears fell down his swollen, disfigured face. Joan had witnessed hundreds of injuries in her career, but to see her husband this way made her sick and angry in a way she’d never experienced.

  She watched as he fell back asleep, until she heard a stirring at the entrance. It was Andrew.

  “Andrew, it’s okay. He’s going to be okay. What are you doing here? I needed you to stay with Sadie at home. But come sit by your father. He needs our support.”

  “Sadie’s at Jimmy’s. We left before dawn. I couldn’t handle waiting any longer,” he said. He continued to stand near the door, not looking at his father. Joan stood up, offering him the seat next to the bed, but Andrew shook his head. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Andrew, come see your father.”

  He didn’t move from the doorway, just leaned forward a bit, took a look at the machines monitoring his father’s vitals, and stepped back into the hall.

  Joan gave George’s hand a squeeze and he opened his eyes. “Andrew is here. He hasn’t been sleeping lately. I’m going to go talk to him, but I’ll be right back.”

  Andrew was pacing the hall, hands balled in fists.

  “Andrew, he should know we’re here supporting him. For god’s sake, he was almost murdered. He’s your father.”

  Andrew shook his head. “Mom, Bennie needs to discuss something.”

  “What could possibly be more important right now?”

  Andrew didn’t answer, just led her back to the family room, where Bennie was sitting in one of the scuffed pink plastic couches, leaning over his laptop.

  “Joan,” he said, shutting his computer, “things aren’t looking good. We’ve come up against a significant roadblock and it could sink the case. My research team will need to speak to you at length about this. Andrew as well, but he already knows about it.”

  “What does he know?”

  “You should sit down,” he said, motioning to the couch across from him. She remained standing. An orderly mopped the floor, figure eights of bleach.

  “Actually, Andrew already knows about it because he brought it to our attention, this morning.”

  “What does he know, Bennie?”

  He sighed heavily. “Do you know the name Sarah Myers?”

  Joan racked her brain. Nothing. “No.”

  “Think back to when you lived in the city, in that apartment building, when you started going back to nursing school.”

  She resented hearing her life trajectory parroted back to her. Clara got on her phone, texting away distractedly.

  “Is this conversation entirely necessary right now? George needs me,” she said.

  It clicked into focus then: Sarah Myers, the skinny girl with the gap between her front teeth, who always wore an oversized Black Sabbath baseball shirt. She put up an advertisement in the laundry room that read “Responsible babysitter in Apartment 3A. Available after school until midnight” in red and purple Magic Marker scrawl. Joan had pulled off one of the fluttering tags with her number when she was preparing to return to nursing school in the evenings. After that, George picked Andrew up from daycare and Sarah would sit with him at their place while George went to do office hours at school.

  “Why on earth would you be asking about our old babysitter?”

  “Mrs. Woodbury …” Bennie’s pause indicated what Joan already knew, what was slowly bruising down each arm, until every fingernail felt like it had been slammed in a door, and her inhalations came fast and shallow.

  Clara looked up, tuning in. “What? What’s going on?”

  “Mom, I need you to stay calm,” Andrew said, leading her to the couch and gently encouraging her to sit down. “She Facebooked me a few days before Christmas. A weird note. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. She said she used to babysit me when I was little. Then she showed up at our apartment yesterday, and left her card with Jared. So I called her after you left. I was so curious. She saw something about the case on the news. She wanted to find me, talk to me, about something that happened before we left Boston.”

  “Mrs. Woodbury, what happened when she stopped looking after Andrew?” Bennie asked.

  “She only stopped because George’s father was sick and we decided to move. I think I brought Andrew over to say goodbye — probably, anyway. That poor girl’s mother was such an alcoholic. So what happened? Why is she calling?” Joan said.

  Andrew looked at the floor. His fists clenched in his lap.

  Bennie referred to some papers in front of him. “George apparently gave her mother a large sum of money in return for her agreeing to keep quiet, after … after an incident between him and the girl.”

  “Sarah,” said Andrew.

  “Holy shit,” said Clara.

  Sweat drenched the backs of Joan’s legs, sticking to the plastic couch.

  Bennie said, “George and my father arranged everything, in secret, before he retired. I was able to look into the files. George paid for Sarah to go to college. She has suffered for years from emotional difficulties, she claims, as a result of what happened, and completing college using his money — it just never felt right to her. She spent most of the money, she travelled. She developed a considerable addiction problem that she has since recovered from. Her mother died more than ten years ago, and she feels like she needs some closure on the subject. So, when she heard the news on television, she called the police. She said that before her mother died, she apologized for taking the money instead of calling the police. She said that they were poor, and her mother was an alcoholic, and she thought it was the most positive choice for her daughter. Apparently, because of their particularly low station in life, it was likely she wouldn’t have been believed anyway, and sadly, I tend to think that is accurate, especially for the times. Proving rape is never easy, even today.”

  Rape. The word landed hard between them. No one had used that word before without the attempted preceding it.

  “So this entire time, for our entire lives, he has been supporting this young woman? Out of guilt?”

  “Out of fear of getting caught, more likely,” Clara snorted.

  Andrew rubbed his nose with his hand and squinted as though lost in thought. His face paled, anger grew along his jaw as it tensed. “It means he’s definitely fucking guilty, Mom.”

  “How could I not have known?” Joan’s voice reverberated around the room.

  Bennie spoke more quietly. “The majority of sex offenders are very adept at liv
ing completely double lives. Most partners would never know, would never even suspect. Though I must emphasize that this is just an accusation — it hasn’t been proven.”

  “Of course, of all the people in the world, he was just too smart, too, too charming. Who didn’t love George, right?” At this point she was standing up, pacing around them. Andrew shook his head back and forth.

  “All this time I’ve been sticking by him, I’ve been believing him. What a fool! What a fucking fool! She was a child.”

  Andrew spoke up. “Mom, it’s okay. Sit down. Let’s just finish this and process our emotions later.”

  “Don’t talk down to your mother, honey,” said Clara. “She’s allowed to express her feelings.”

  “Why didn’t Sarah press charges?” Andrew asked in a quieter voice. “Is it possible that the attraction was mutual? She was a teenager, right?”

  Bennie actually chuckled at this. “The law is the law, Andrew. You can’t reconfigure this with your sexual liberation theory of law, or whatever. She was thirteen years old.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Andrew said. “I didn’t really mean that. I’m just … grasping at straws.”

  “It is also possible that more victims will come forward, and you need to be prepared for this potentiality.”

  Joan stood up quickly and marched back into George’s hospital room. He was asleep. The window blinds clicked against the glass, moved by the breeze from a heating vent. If Joan could’ve got away with it at that moment, she would have pressed one of the pillows to his face and held it still, in one swift silencing rage.

  Instead, she fluffled up the pillows around his head, and underneath the wet, hardening thrum of rage she felt an immeasurable depth of sorrow at being abandoned. The only sign that love still resided within her and between them, fighting like a gasping bird to stay alive for one more second, lay in the fact that even now, she couldn’t do him physical harm, even though it was the closest she’d ever come to understanding the act of violence. This felt like the end of love.