Chapter 13
Sloane, a creature of academia, was built on an operating system of deadlines and deliverables.
Thus, living quietly in the back of her mind was the sinister ticking of a clock, the lofty presence of a mortgage.
In order to achieve some semblance of long-term safety, she would need to advance from the position of mere short-term instructor, ideally by the end of the year.
Which meant she ought to make herself valuable to her department, best accomplished by writing something publishable by the end of the semester, with chances of publication substantively heightened by getting the article submitted, pending revision, with a topic approved by Dean Wilson by midterms. She estimated about six weeks, then, to manage an impossible task.
Then, in lieu of crying her eyes out, she simply told herself this would all happen, somehow, because alternatives did not exist.
“How was your weekend?” asked her TA, Arya, whose presence Sloane was gradually adjusting to.
She liked him a great deal more than she expected, and interacted with him more often, too, given that he preferred to do his research work and grading at the frequently empty second desk in her office.
Arya was older than the average TA, by Sloane’s estimation—too old to be paid such paltry amounts to attend to her tedium, but that was academia for you—and the fact that Sloane knew that, or knew much of anything about Arya at all, was due to Arya being so forthcoming with the details of his life that she couldn’t help but find herself fondly bemused by him—bewildered that he could share so freely, but also catching herself laughing nearly every time he opened his mouth.
It turned out that Arya had a family friend who was among the chosen few for The House—the sophomore, Nina Kaur.
Sloane had mentioned her new faculty advisory position offhandedly to him after the contract had been left in her inbox, which Arya had seen.
He’d chuckled and said he hadn’t thought her the sorority type—and while Sloane privately agreed, warily she felt it was some subtle form of misogyny, as if he’d caught her reading a bodice ripper.
But when she’d pushed back, Arya had explained that his cousin—not technically a cousin, just a thing they called each other despite Nina’s twin, Jasleen, having given him a wolfish look since the tender age of twelve—was also among Sloane’s charges, and that Sloane would surely make valuable contributions to the cult of femininity, which Arya presumed to involve blood oaths, ritual sacrifice, and probably Ozempic.
Arya’s entire existence in her life was an invitation to be more forthcoming, but Sloane couldn’t quite muster up the same energy.
“Oh, it was fine,” she answered vaguely with regard to the events of her weekend, and Arya, undeterred, proceeded to tell Sloane about a show he’d played with his band, showing her the latest damage to his phone screen as proudly as if he’d grown the placenta for it himself.
Sloane’s weekend had actually been, as all weekends now seemed to be, both better and worse than usual.
Aside from her pulsing interior deadlines (each passing day another gash of red in the ledger) and having to wrestle the dog to the vet for long-overdue vaccines (Sloane was instructed to brush Frankie’s teeth more often, to which Sloane nodded enthusiastically as if she would definitely do this despite the fact that Isla was tugging at her blouse and then inevitably her hair and it was all so plainly a lie), Sloane had spent all of Saturday with Isla, which despite its ups and downs (Isla was, after all, becoming much more insistent on mysterious things, and often took over forty minutes to fall asleep for naps) retained a rosy glow of intimacy and pleasure for Sloane, who liked motherhood a great deal more than she had expected to.
That felt a silly thing to say, given how miserable it often made her, but she had a newfound complexity, an ability to hold two things in her heart at one time.
It was an indisputable fact that nobody made Sloane’s life more magical than Isla—and nobody made her more miserable than Isla, either.
Though occasionally it felt like Max was vying competitively for the spot.
In their previous life, when Max had been a rising department star and Sloane had been comfortably admired at her smaller college a short train ride away, Max had taken long bike rides through the woods on Saturday mornings, such that Sloane became accustomed to attending brunches alone, or accommodating these bike rides into wedding attendance or weekend travel as a means of support and also resignation, understanding that Max’s outdoor proclivities made him who he was despite the fact that Saturday morning was a prime spot in Sloane’s social calendar.
(This kind of flexibility made Sloane an ideal partner; a very chill person, a deeply cool girl.) And it wasn’t a terrible cost, not really.
She loved a lazy morning with a book—even on weekdays, she liked to slowly adjust to waking by reading for thirty minutes in bed—but she also loved a trip to the farmer’s market, a long walk, the purchase of fresh flowers to then arrange in her favorite vase that everyone oohed and ahhed over, guessing it was vintage.
Saturday morning had once been a lifestyle, one to which Sloane had committed and coveted despite lacking any sort of discretionary slush fund at the time.
To Sloane’s thinking, just because her salary was barely enough to pay the rent didn’t mean she couldn’t revel in the riches of being young and healthy, and able to support the habit of placing petite wildflower bouquets in the Anthropologie vase she’d bought on sale.
Now, of course, things were different. Gone were Sloane’s leisurely mornings of reading.
Gone, too, was the obsessive checking of her accounts, now that Max’s salary as a tenure track professor paid the bills even without her paltry adjunct contribution.
She could afford the off-season flowers, buy the organic berries, look at things that were new and therefore full price.
And in an unexpected bonus, Max had given up his long Saturday rides.
When Isla was about four months old—back when Sloane still carried her everywhere in the baby wrap, strapped to Sloane’s chest at all times with Sloane never, ever sitting because it was the only way Isla would sleep, despite the aforementioned crimes against Sloane’s perineum that had taken the entirety of Isla’s life up to that point to solve—Max’s morning ride had been canceled, and he’d joined Sloane and baby Isla for what would have been a typical Saturday morning.
It was beautifully temperate, not too hot, and the farmer’s market was idyllic with fresh produce and tiny jars of cream and jam and overall not too crowded for Max, who liked attention but hated crowds.
Isla had slept the whole time cozied up in Sloane’s bosom, and Max and Sloane had held hands—as they had not found the time or luxury to do since Isla’s birth—and they’d bought fresh pastries and split them as they walked, laughing about the days when they’d had no furniture, using stacks of textbooks as substitute nightstands instead.
They revisited their high-minded, intellectual poverty years, this time as an aesthetic for early love, for the days when they could not keep their hands off each other, back when Sloane had gone to sleep naked every night because Max liked it and the ecosystem of her vagina was of no relevant concern and her breasts could be responsibly tasked with holding themselves up without assistance.
That one perfect Saturday had been enough to lure Max to Sloane’s way of thinking, and at first it had felt like a wonderful new window of family life, until they had moved closer to the University for Max, and the local farmer’s market there was too crowded in the fall and it was too cold to walk in the winter and by spring they’d forgotten that was a thing they used to do, and anyway Isla could no longer be put in the baby wrap, due not to size (she was a wee little thing) but incurable wiggling.
These days, Max was still home on Saturday mornings, but now he used them to watch Formula One races or catch up on his periodicals or otherwise dominate the social spaces in the house—such that he was technically present, but not entirely with them.
Not in a way that Sloane could complain about, of course.
Every Saturday, Max asked her if they had any plans.
It was such an odd question, that. “Do we have any plans today?” he would say, despite a shared family calendar and a complete awareness that they did not have plans, and then at some point he would surprise her by saying he had plans. Usually it would go like this:
“Do we have any plans?”
“No, no plans.”
“Okay, I thought so.”
Then thirty minutes would pass, by which time Sloane would hold the question do we have any plans in her head like a test she’d failed.
Why hadn’t she made plans? Their daughter would only be this young once.
It was still a lovely time of year. They hardly spent any time together now, both of them exhausted by the time Isla was down for the night.
They should do something as a family, take the dog for some fresh air, get out of the house, stretch their legs!
“Max, what do you think about checking out [insert family activity here]?” The last time she’d done this, she had suggested a train ride nearby, one that went slowly in a circle.
Trains? Max had asked quizzically, as if it was the dumbest idea anyone had ever had.
You want to ride a train? That goes in a circle?