Chapter 7
It was the following week, on a Monday, when Sloane got the email from a woman named Britt Landau.
I’m sure you have a lot going on—I certainly know what those early days back at work are like!—but Alex was adamant that you’d be the perfect fit for our girls—
Alex as in the woman Sloane had met last week. Alex, with whom Sloane had had a potentially ill-advised coffee, though she’d come out of it light as air, as if a burden had gently lifted.
“Do you hate me?” came from the doorframe of Sloane’s office, and Sloane looked up, slightly bug-eyed from the glasses she didn’t technically need at this distance.
Still, her eyes had been hurting and she was on day two of a migraine, as she always seemed to be these days.
Isla’s naps had been disrupted all weekend, maybe teething, maybe the cruel pain of abandonment, maybe the sightless eldritch terror that was a sleep regression, it didn’t matter the reason.
The point was that Sloane was not, regardless of explanation, prepared.
“You can say it,” Alex added with a sigh, falling into the chair opposite Sloane’s desk.
“I’m a monster. I’ve added yet another thing to your plate.
I brought you a cappuccino with oat milk,” she added, almost in the same breath, setting it down beside Sloane’s ancient desktop. “It’s decaf, don’t worry.”
Sloane had told Alex last week during their coffee date that she was still breastfeeding, which meant her caffeine intake was still limited, as was her ability to take pills for her headaches, or for anything really.
She knew her milk supply was dropping but Isla wouldn’t eat anything consistently enough for her to stop nursing completely, and anyway she loved it, sort of.
There were definite moments when she loved it uncomplicatedly, the closeness and the hand-holding and the sweetness of time with nothing more pressing to do than nurture the baby she adored—but admittedly, the constancy of that love was fading; now it was pockmarked and brittle, the joy easily upended by the dread.
The stronger Isla got, the less Sloane was able to keep her daughter from yanking her blouse open in public.
She’d never thought twice about breastfeeding out in the open, but it took on a slightly more insidious, humiliating flavor when she couldn’t say no.
At the time Sloane confessed it, Alex had then relayed a story about breastfeeding her then-almost-two-year-old while standing upright in the DMV line.
“Honestly, I still miss the cuddles,” Alex had said, and astoundingly, had not proceeded to add anything about when Sloane should stop, as all other adult humans seemed to do.
“Seriously, people are bugging you about that? Dude, whatever,” Alex had said with a flick of her golden hair.
“Who is anyone to judge you for what you do to get through the day? We’re all just trying our fucking best.”
The words melted again like butter through Sloane’s consciousness, drawing her gently back to the moment. To the version of Alex who stood now in her office unexpectedly, holding a coffee that Sloane hadn’t asked for—that she hadn’t needed to request.
“You think I should hate you?” Sloane echoed, reaching gratefully for the cup.
“Well, I assume you got the email from Britt. I was trying to beat her to it and ask you about it in person, but sometimes it’s easier to just let Britt do Britt.
” Alex gave Sloane a wry smirk as if Sloane would know what that was like; she said it in the same tone with which she described the antics of her son, Theo, who was apparently some sort of jock prodigy, not that Alex (uncoordinated, more of an indoor cat, per Alex) knew what to make of that.
“Anyway, look, it’d be a huge favor to me, and I really don’t think it would be much work for you. ”
“You want me to be your sorority’s faculty advisor?
” Sloane asked, a little confused. She’d been in a sorority, at her mother’s urging, a fact she’d thoughtlessly shared with Alex the previous week.
Sloane’s faculty advisor had been an eighty-year-old woman named Nancy who was semi-retired.
She’d only ever come to the faculty brunch they threw to celebrate the girls on honor roll, which was paid for by the parents’ club, so it was one of the few things Sloane participated in, again because her mother insisted.
Alex’s house, however, was nothing like Sloane’s had been.
They’d walked by it on their way back from coffee, with Sloane pausing to take in the absurdity of The House’s elegance.
She’d begun to capitalize it in her mind, probably due to the way Alex spoke about it.
The House required a great deal of maintenance.
Similarly, The Girls. As in, The Girls were all so promising, so full of life.
“Honestly, I wish I’d been like that when I was their age,” Alex wistfully confessed.
“I was more concerned with boys and parties. Plus I’m pretty sure we were all a little misogynistic then.
I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but the subliminal messaging in TeenBop was ‘Hate yourself, girl!’ and I was nothing if not diligent about it. ”
Something about Alex’s easy intimacy had spurred Sloane to say, “I think I was a pick-me girl.”
“Oh god, were you not like other girls?” Alex’s laughter then was contagious.
Their coffee date stretched into ninety minutes before Alex had to run—she had only been on campus for a meeting she’d had with the administration that morning.
She was actually a human rights lawyer who worked remotely for a firm in the city that Sloane had later googled.
Alex had won a landmark case about a month before, one of several over the course of her career.
“Look,” Alex said then, leaning across Sloane’s desk with a slightly grim look on her face, “I know it sounds very rah-rah girlhood and all that, but we desperately need a new faculty advisor. Our last one got poached by Georgetown—that was inevitable, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how unreasonable the University can be—and we can’t operate without one, per campus rules.
And I really think you’ll like everyone in the alumnae club—Britt included.
” Alex gave Sloane a conspiratorial wink.
“It’s just that she’s the head of a PR firm and has twins, so, you know, time is money. ”
That was certainly true. With motherhood, the number one thing that had changed about Sloane’s life was the value of her time.
If she wasn’t with Isla, then every minute had to have a purpose, because otherwise it was a minute that could have been spent with Isla but wasn’t.
Everything in Sloane’s life had to be for sleep (so she wouldn’t die) or for work, or for Max, or for Isla. This was so clearly none of the above.
“I don’t know, Alex—I mean, I can appreciate that you’re in a bind, but I’m only an adjunct—”
“You’re still faculty! And I don’t see you going anywhere anytime soon—”
“And with the time commitment, and me getting less time at home as it is—”
“Bring Isla,” said Alex, without hesitation.
“We’ve got a meeting this week to go over The Girls’ new member education programming and to review academic standards with The House after bid night.
” Again, Sloane couldn’t help hearing the proper nouns: The Girls.
The House. “You can meet the rest of the volunteers. We’re pretty much all working moms, so we get it—someone’s always got an eye on all the kids, there’s plenty of kid-friendly snacks.
We do have the occasional boozy brunch, you know, for self-care,” said Alex with a teasing smile.
“But you don’t have to commit to that. And they’re useful to know, I promise.
The smartest women I’ve ever met in my life.
And Britt gave me this lipstick,” Alex concluded with a playful shrug.
It was, Sloane admitted to herself reluctantly, the perfect red for Alex’s skin tone, and seemed to be successfully transfer-free, which her own lipstick was not.
Isla looked like she’d been attacked that morning, and all because Sloane had kissed her cheek unthinkingly—thinking only that she, an elite member of the educated class, might look fractionally more capable or less dead with some lipstick on.
“You could use an extracurricular,” Max pointed out later, when Sloane brought it up as if it were a silly thing she wouldn’t possibly do—be faculty advisor for a sorority.
Tonally, it was all very I mean, seriously, Max, who could possibly have the time and energy for that?
“It might look good to the University for you to be more active outside of just lecturing. They’d have a more compelling reason to install you on a tenure track, if that’s still something you’re set on doing. ”
Right, one of her frivolous expectations, job security and/or some vote of confidence in her proficiency at the thing she happened to know a lot about, not that she could get into that again.
“But who knows how much time it’ll take, Max.
And what am I supposed to do with Isla? I mean, Alex mentioned brunch, and maybe sometimes meetings in the evenings—”
“I’ll take Isla,” Max said breezily, as if it were no big deal, as if he took Isla all the time, as if he’d been clamoring for more time with Isla and his pleas had simply gone unheard. “You’re allowed to take some time for yourself, Sloane.”
“But it’s not for me, technically—”
“Sure it is. You need time to be around adults.”