The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall

Author:Zoe Whittall
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2016-08-19T13:28:58+00:00

Part Two

the next four months

eighteen

joan embarked on the three-hour journey to the prison and back every Friday during the first month following George’s arrest. She packed her brown leather cross-body satchel with magazines, granola bars, a hairbrush and compact, an extra sweater. She developed rituals. There was a truck stop where the same middle-aged woman with silver curls served her a medium with milk and half a sweetener every week. She often pulled the Volvo up on the side of the road to visit a particular farmer’s cart, buying squash and root vegetables, beets, or kale with dirt still clinging to each leaf. She would rub a hearty apple on her shirt before taking a bite, standing on the gravel shoulder beside her car and looking out over the farmer’s fields towards the mountains. In these moments she could pretend to herself she was visiting a great-aunt at a neighbouring farm, or travelling to the outlet malls for bargains. She brought along easy-to-read entertainment magazines to glance at in line and discard at security. She even began to nod politely at people she recognized in the visitors’ line. Some of the guards learned her first name. There was an unexpected humanity and sense of routine to visiting the prison now. Still, every time she pulled out of the parking lot and began the journey home, she cried. She’d pull over and buy a coffee only to sip it once and then hurl it with all the strength she had into the air behind the other parked cars in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. The anger was the most startling, and the most difficult to diffuse.

Every week, George was allowed three adult visitors for ninety minutes in total. Sometimes Clara would accompany her in the car and then hit the outlet malls while Joan visited with George. She tried to convince the kids to come, but Sadie, after that first visit, stayed away. She spoke with her father on the phone a few times a week, but refused to go visit.

Andrew had basically moved back into his old room on the weekends and insisted on visiting with George by himself for half an hour whenever he went to the prison. Joan would leave at the halfway mark and wait for Andrew in the parking lot. She expected this was because he didn’t want to be emotional in front of her. Improbable as it seemed, they settled into a new routine during this holding pattern — like when you’ve put gauze on a wound, and you’re waiting it out, hoping no infections seep in. Joan went through the motions: waking and dressing, eating and driving, falling into bed exhausted, and numbing out with television and red wine. She was always planning to go back to work in a week or so; she needed the routine again.

On occasion, though, something would happen to shake her from the routine.

She stood in line at the Book Nook in Woodbridge, buying reading material to take to George.

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