The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

  But inside, she was seething. Her anger felt infinite. Whatever happened, though, whatever she had to do to keep her family together in the meantime, Joan now had a place to land.

  Part Four

  the trial

  forty-three

  joan opened the back door of the Town Car and lowered her head in to nod at the driver. Then she stood with her back to the open door, waiting for everyone to come out of the house. “We have to show up together, stand together as a family,” she’d said while filling everyone’s coffee cups at the breakfast table. She fiddled with the brooch she was wearing on her lapel, an amber pin that used to belong to her late mother-in-law. George gave it to her on their first anniversary. She must have worn it the last time she wore this blazer, which was at George’s arraignment hearing. She hadn’t purchased any new clothes since then. She unhooked it, pricking her thumb in the process. She watched a bead of blood rise, detached from the pain, as Andrew and Jared came down the front steps. She pitched the brooch off into the rock garden that lined the driveway. Her phone rang. Bennie’s face. Accept or decline. Her thumb was too sweaty to work the screen.

  andrew had been to court dozens of times, but only when he could influence the outcome with his tenacity and ability to over-prepare for every possible scenario. This time he had no control, and the result was that his father would either go to jail or be set free. He wanted George to be found not guilty — of course he did. But he didn’t want him to be absolved in a general sense; he wanted to see his father atone somehow. The prospect of him being free, of having to deal with that, was also daunting. He felt ashamed to admit that to anyone.

  “Do I look okay?” Joan asked him nervously.

  “Yes, you’re channelling your best Julianna Margulies,” he said, getting into the car and smoothing out his trousers. Jared held his hand but there was a distance between them that was undeniable. That they were breaking up felt inevitable.

  Clara got in next. Andrew knew she was the only one who was sincerely hoping George wouldn’t get out.

  “Your father wants to talk to you,” said Joan, handing the phone to Andrew.

  “I just want you to know that whatever happens, I love you and Sadie and your mother more than anything. I’m doing everything I can to be exonerated and to have this whole mess put behind us,” he said.

  “We’re on our way and we’re here for you, Dad,” Andrew said, robot-like. Though he didn’t quite believe the words he said, he knew he had an obligation to say them.

  He passed the phone back to Joan as Sadie emerged from the house, followed by her new friend Lena. Sadie wore a modest green dress with the shoes Joan had polished the night before, but both of the girls’ hair had the same shock of turquoise in their bangs.

  “How very 1998,” Andrew said dryly when they got in the car. He could tell they were both stoned but didn’t say anything about it. He knew that Sadie was conflicted about her father. She still didn’t know about Sarah Myers, and he felt some guilt that she didn’t have all the information. At the same time, he wanted her to be a kid who could still get excited about dying her hair.

  Joan was the last one in the car. She stood outside, the phone on speaker.

  “Is it looking good? Are you hopeful?” she asked Bennie.

  “Joan, I have no way of knowing for sure. So much depends on the judge’s leanings, and what Miranda is like on the stand. I’m prepared and confident, but I can’t know the future.”

  “Okay,” Joan said. “See you there.”

  Andrew watched his mother settle into the front seat. He wondered if she felt as unsure as he did.

  the first thing Sadie noticed when she was ushered into the courtroom was the heat. She looked around, trying to see if she was imagining it. No one looked at all sweaty. How could she be the only hot person? She knew her face was reddening; the high collar of her dress irritated her neck. Her mother gripped her left hand as she walked ahead of her; Lena held on to the strap of Sadie’s purse as she followed.

  “Jesus, your dad is popular,” Lena whispered.

  Sadie wished she wasn’t stoned. Indeed, many of the powers that be in town were there to support George’s innocence, prominent businessmen who sat on several boards with him. Even the mayor sat in the front row, and then a swell of teachers from Avalon Hills prep. The girls and their parents seemed outnumbered. It wasn’t as though anyone was advertising their position on George’s guilt, but Sadie could tell where they stood by looking at them. Her legs stuck to the wooden bench almost as soon as she sat down. She heard high-heeled sandals clicking down the aisle as people took their seats. A group of men with stern and weathered alcoholic faces, wearing T-shirts that said Men’s Rights Are Human Rights, packed two rows at the back. Dorothy stood against the back wall. Elaine and Jimmy were there too. When Sadie caught his eye, he waved, then jumped up and ran over to her, leaning awkwardly over the bench to kiss her cheek but catching her earlobe instead. He whispered, “I love you.”

  Kevin walked in wearing a ridiculous hat and sunglasses, as though he were some kind of celebrity. He was with a younger woman with long shiny hair, sunglasses that eclipsed her face, and very tall boots. Sadie could tell Elaine was trying not to look at him, but she kept failing. Jimmy shook his head and put his arm around his mother. Kevin stared at Sadie, gave her a half shrug and a little-boy smile, and she gave him her best side-eye in response, pretending to apply lipstick with her middle finger.

  when george was led into the room, the crowd gasped in unison. He had lost weight, and appeared to have aged twenty years in the time since his arrest. Dorothy let out a sob, which prompted Joan to turn and look at her with such derision that she quieted down. Joan wished she could have banned Dorothy and all the wing nuts who had attached themselves to the case.

  George was seated right in front of her, and his proximity was both familiar and enraging. He was trying to project calm, but she could tell he was terrified, the same way he’d been when they’d seen a bear on a camping trip once — fear so intense he couldn’t mask it entirely.

  Joan was relieved when the judge arrived and took his seat at the bench. He seemed tired, as if the crowd were going to lunge at him. “If you are here to support the accused,” he said, “please stand.”

  Joan wasn’t expecting him to say that, and grabbed on to Andrew’s arm as she stood. When she turned to the crowd, she gripped him even tighter, whispering, “Oh my stars,” an expression her grandmother used to use. Almost the entire courtroom was on their feet. Jared, Sadie, and Lena also looked amazed as they stood. Clara remained seated, arms crossed, scowling at George. Joan kicked at her and she stood, sighing.

  Sue Whalen, notorious local journalist, watched with her notebook in her lap. She’d published a front-page newspaper article that morning suggesting the girls had lost their minds in some sort of childish female conspiracy or form of mass hysteria. She’d written that George Woodbury was a valued member of their town, having saved a generation of children from a madman — or had everyone forgetten that?

  Joan was the composed, cherished wife. She felt stuck in her skin. She tried to look grateful. She could barely admit it to herself, but she almost wanted Sarah Myers to waltz in the back door and tell her story, even though she knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t actually want that pain for her family. She didn’t want more attention either, or the pity. A few women from the support group came and sat behind Joan, giving her nods of support. Bennie turned and gave Joan a reassuring look.

  The judge spoke again.

  “There have been some new developments in this case,” he said. “Our key witness has recanted her story after being presented with evidence of several inconsistencies. We also have a new witness, the concierge from the Forrest Ridge Ski Lodge, who saw Mr. Woodbury enter the hotel room of the Avalon Hills administrator Dorothy McKnight at 10 p.m., which corroborates the alibi provided by Mrs. McKnight. As
such, and as the testimony from all other complainants relied on the initial testimony of the original girl, there is not enough evidence to continue with the trial. The charges against George Woodbury are hereby dismissed.”

  The room let out another collective gasp. Dorothy whooped, and the men’s rights folks clapped, patting each other on the back. George put his head down on the desk and started to cry, then leaned over to Bennie and hugged him. Sadie looked back at the crowd as they murmured in excitement. Kevin looked shocked. Jimmy mouthed, “Are you okay?” She didn’t respond. She noticed Miranda, standing with Dorothy, wearing a baseball cap. Everyone was looking at her, and she paled, pulled the hat down further, and ducked out.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered to Lena.

  “What?”

  “Miranda, the main chick,” she said, “who recanted. The men’s rights people must have gotten to her.”

  “Or maybe her story wasn’t straight. Maybe she lied?” The way Lena said it, Sadie knew she didn’t believe it. Sadie looked at her father. He was going to come home. She felt relief, and so grateful, but mostly overwhelmed. What would their life look like now?

  The judge cleared his throat and banged the gavel.

  What followed was a mass of confusion and chaos. The photographers captured Joan in an embrace with her husband, tears in her eyes, but her feelings were far more complicated. When he was arrested, she’d felt as though he’d been ripped from her arms by a bear. She’d been inconsolable, irate, and desperate for his return. She didn’t know what to believe now, or what she should want. One of the women from the support group touched her shoulder, startling her. The woman pulled her into a hug. “It was god’s will! You should be so grateful. You’re so lucky.”

  But that wasn’t what she was feeling at all.

  epilogue

  george settled back into life at Woodbury Lake and published the book he’d written in jail, a memoir of his childhood, his feelings about prison and the prison system, how he felt as a failed scientist. It was dedicated to Joan, his “only love.”

  George insisted Joan stay in the house, but she moved into the condo instead, lonely and angry and totally unsure about what to do. She got cable tv and watched it every night and made lists about taking art classes and going to yoga in the mornings, but she rarely did.

  George begged her to come home and resume their normal life. Every time they talked, she seemed closer and closer to taking him back. All the labour she’d put into the house, how she’d pictured growing old there, how happy the garden made her. What she wouldn’t give for afternoons on the dock, mornings in the canoe. Over time, her rage was softening. Every time he talked to her about working with his therapist, righting the wrongs he had made in this life, she was moved to consider the possibility.

  She’d yet to experience the surge of independence one hears about in pop songs about men who have done women wrong. “I Will Survive” playing in the drugstore made her weep with rage. She was not strutting around. She was circling, falling. She stalled signing the divorce papers, aware that when she turned sixty she’d be entitled to half of the trust fund set up when they got married. It was a huge amount of money, which she’d been planning to use for travel since she was in her thirties. If she moved back, she would book tickets for France, for Italy — by herself, she reasoned. Maybe she’d take Sadie along. She’d have more financial security. Maybe she and George could be friends, resume a sort of platonic normalcy, if he committed to therapy and rehabilitation.

  Every time she had that thought, though, she’d remember the girls in the courtroom and Sarah Myers sunbathing on the pavement of their apartment building, and the rage would return. Clara created a dating profile for her online, and she went on some dates, but she found it too hard to trust people. She missed having a partner, a best friend, so much. Weekends felt unbearably long, and she often took extra shifts at work.

  She’d watched Andrew grow colder, more caustic, visiting Avalon Hills less than he had before, and rarely speaking to his father. Jared moved out because Andrew’s moods were out of control, something she only learned from Jared. She’d been posting things on his Facebook, inviting him to come for dinner, and he finally had to let her know.

  She called Sadie every Sunday, and she heard the revelry of dorm life in the background. Sadie sent her an email telling her how she was trying to forget the last year of high school and move on. “I’m working so hard, Mom, but there was an ease with which I used to learn and it is not so easy anymore, to concentrate and to have perspective, to think critically, and engage. My professors have all said the same thing, that my anxiety seems to be a barrier. I’ve gone to the counselling centre here, but haven’t found a good fit.” The one good thing that had come out of everything was that Joan felt closer to Sadie than ever before, and watching her grow into an adult felt like a blessing. She’d changed her major to Gender Studies. She’d cut her hair short and started lecturing Joan on the phone about all sorts of things. Joan remembered that age, feeling like you know everything. Every time it felt annoying, Joan reminded herself that she was happy to hear Sadie engaged with life again, finding meaning and purpose.

  George called Joan relentlessly, trying to reconcile, and sometimes she answered but mostly she did not. When Sadie and Andrew did come home, they would all meet and go out for lunch and it would feel like torture, like getting to visit the life you wanted and had expected to have. George spoke and acted the same way he always had, but Joan’s perception of him had shifted so radically she felt as though she’d experienced some sort of brain injury.

  The town seemed to have collective amnesia. It was only on rare occasions that women were even slightly cold towards George, and he usually won them over with his relentless charm. His friendships seemed unaltered. The only real difference was that he was no longer employed at Avalon Hills prep; but he was almost at retirement age anyway, so it didn’t seem all that unusual to outsiders. He even kept in touch with his former fellow inmates, some of whom he continued to tutor in jail.

  Everyone in the family had changed significantly, except George, who often told them how he felt he had changed. He seemed confident that his family would come back to him, and that Joan would return. And one particularly lonely week the following November, when the skies darkened early and the cold was damp and endless, she did.

  acknowledgements

  i am grateful for the funding this book received from the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

  Thank you to the Writer’s Trust of Canada, my agent Samantha Haywood, publisher Sarah MacLachlan, editor Janice Zawerbny, and the publicity team at House of Anansi Press.

  For editorial help on early drafts, I am grateful to Michael Schellenberg, Heather Cromarty, Andrea Ridgley, Marcilyn Cianfarani, Chase Joynt, Tom Leger, Jake Pyne, Will Scott, Ange Holmes, and Lisa Foad.

  Special thanks to the anonymous folks who answered my questions about what it’s like to have family members in prison and/or be related to a sex offender.

  Zoe Whittall is the author of The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life (2001), The Emily Valentine Poems (2006), and Precordial Thump (2008), and the editor of Geeks, Misfits, & Outlaws (2003). Her debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts (2007) made the Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of the Year and cbc Canada Reads’ Top Ten Essential Novels of the Decade. Her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible (2009) won a Lambda Literary Award and was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. She won the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature in 2016. Her writing has appeared in the Walrus, the Believer, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Fashion, and more. She has also worked as a writer and story editor on the tv shows Degrassi, Schitt’s Creek, and the Baroness von Sketch Show. Born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, she has an mfa from the University of Guelph and lives in Toronto.

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to
publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”