Chapter 15
Weeks to deadline: four and some change. Progress made: substantively none.
Then, on the Wednesday of Isla’s first daycare plague, which Sloane had been meaninglessly assured by Miss Lily was “a light one” despite her having to flee the lecture hall, Sloane managed—with some logistical sorcery and much groveling—to secure one of Max’s colleague’s wives to watch Isla nap on the monitor while Sloane formally introduced herself to the alumnae club at The House.
The Women, as she thought of them, who were once The Girls. At which point the hollow urgency of her deadline abruptly shifted, becoming something else.
Alex introduced Sloane last, as the final item on the agenda, which left Sloane an excessive amount of time (certainly too much time for a woman with a sick baby at home, said the Good Mother mommy blogger who lived in Sloane’s brain) to observe The Women.
She could see how they had once been the archetypes on campus—there was a uniform quality, as if the correct amount of polish had been apportioned evenly but executed in different ways.
Most were white, but even the ones who weren’t had a similar look of having recently had their highlights refreshed or gotten a chemical peel.
All seemed youthful in the same way, where Sloane didn’t know whether to identify something as cosmetic or genetic, but it seemed unlikely that this many women could go so long without crow’s feet or gray hair.
(She herself had woken up one day to discover she was visibly getting older.
She was also no longer carded at restaurants or at the grocery store, which could be due to the fact that she was usually holding a baby, or maybe everyone could already tell the light had gone out in her eyes.)
“This is Dr. Sloane Hartley,” Alex said, startling Sloane back to cognizance.
“She’s a sociology professor at the University, soon to be tenured.
We’re hoping she’ll be with us for a good long time.
” She smiled warmly at Sloane, who couldn’t tell where the tenure thing had come from.
Optimism? Solidarity? Not wanting to admit they couldn’t do better than an adjunct lecturer who hadn’t had her eyebrows done in two years?
Sloane had one of those plastic facial razors and was pretty sure it wasn’t cutting it, but she didn’t have time for vanity anymore.
Only shame. “Sloane, would you like to say anything? Share a little about yourself?”
“Oh, um.” Sloane rose to her feet, waving awkwardly to The Women, who uniformly smiled back.
“Hi, I’m Sloane. I previously taught at a small college up north.
I was in a sorority myself, albeit a different one.
” She paused, wondering what else was relevant, and as usual came up with only one thing. “I have a daughter.”
The room seemed to warm in a few pockets of space. “How old?” asked one of The Women, whose eyes shined a little with the prospect of bonding.
“Eighteen months. Almost nineteen,” said Sloane, feeling again the crush of guilt that Isla was somewhere else sleeping, or maybe not. Maybe she was awake, and Sloane wasn’t there.
“Oh,” one of them sighed. “Still squishy.”
A few other women laughed, and Sloane managed a wan smile. “Yeah, she’s a squish, that’s for sure.”
“What’s her name?” A different Woman.
“Isla,” said Sloane.
“Oh, so sweet. That’s perfect,” said another Woman who seemed to genuinely mean it, that a name could be sweet, and be not only suitable but perfect as well, based purely on its phonetics.
“I wanted an Isla,” said another Woman. “But my husband was hell-bent on naming her after his mother, so as a compromise I had a boy.”
Sloane startled herself with a laugh, realizing only when Alex looked expectantly at her that she was still standing. “Right, well, I’m really looking forward to working with you, and doing … whatever a faculty advisor does,” she impressively concluded.
“Inspiring them, I hope,” said Alex with an eye roll that Sloane didn’t entirely understand. “Given what some of The Girls seem to be into these days, they desperately need a fresh dose of professional aspiration in their midst.”
Sloane wanted to ask what that meant, but she could see that the other Women were looking eager to end the meeting, so she decided to leave it to later, when everyone was filtering out.
“What did you mean about inspiring them?” Sloane asked curiously, and the same look crossed Alex’s face, the one that was a mix of dejection and irritation.
“It’s just … sometimes The Girls and I don’t see eye to eye,” she said. “I think I feel very different to them, generationally. They have very different idols.”
Sloane frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The official House account is following this girl, an alum from a few years back,” Alex said with the air of a recent argument. “Caroline Pang was her maiden name … Britt,” Alex called, “what’s Caroline’s name now? Or her username?”
“The Country Wife,” said Britt without looking up. Britt had been getting something in her calendar with another alum—even having been around her only a few times, Sloane understood that Britt was always getting something in her calendar.
“The Country Wife? That’s a huge account,” said Sloane, with no mention of her own obsessive following.
“Right, well, I think I’m willfully forgetting,” Alex said with a grimace.
“It’s just…” She hesitated for a second.
“It’s important, Sloane, that you understand the way we choose our Girls.
They’re … ambitious, they’re hungry. We encourage that.
We want them to be politically active, to participate in counterculture, to have divisive beliefs.
We want them to think for themselves—to feel that the world is theirs to conquer.
What we do not want is for them to believe life would be easier if they no longer had choices,” said Alex, zipping her bag shut with such force that Sloane decided it would be better not to question it.
“The point is,” Alex said, sensing perhaps that she had lost the thread, “we want The Girls to find role models in the women who’ve come before them.
The women like you, who are accomplished and prominent in their fields in addition to being thoughtful, caring mothers.
Women who can do it all,” Alex concluded.
Women like Us, Sloane heard, glancing again around the room and realizing that this was it, the final evolution. The Girls would eventually become Good Women—meaning, in this instance, women who could Do It All.
The thought stayed with her the rest of the week, lurking politely in the background of dog walks and diaper changes without disruption.
Then, the following Friday, after Isla’s fever had broken and Sloane’s pre-apportioned twenty minutes of self-loathing were up, Sloane clicked on the weekly minutes Britt had sent over from The House’s alumnae committee and sat back in her chair, scrutinizing the list of names for something she hadn’t yet put words to.
Arbitrarily, she highlighted one (Aimee Rivera-Hughes, which felt suitably unique) and searched her name, pulling up a LinkedIn page and a VidStar account.
Sloane glanced at the professional portrait and chose to visit the VidStar profile instead—which had an immediately recognizable visual theme.
Soft blues, creamy pastels, low contrast and high brightness.
Sloane wasn’t a designer of any sort, but she could tell the overall effect had been curated—that visually speaking, there was a story here.
Aimee posted pictures and videos of her young family that were a mix of posed and candid.
Aimee’s kids had the same toys as Britt’s twins, thoughtfully arranged in a Montessori-style playroom.
Aimee wore the same type of cable-knit cardigan that Priscilla had worn to a dinner at Britt’s house, the one she called her “work sweater” for when the office air-conditioning—determined by her overlords at the Big Five publishing house to which Priscilla’s imprint belonged—got too cold.
Aimee’s ballet flats, which appeared in several of the photos, were so covetable that Sloane wanted desperately to know what they were—she could tell at a glance that Aimee could chase after her kids in them, that she ran errands in them, that she looked impressively pulled together at all times despite the fact that her outfits were simple, elevated basics in a minimalist capsule wardrobe.
Aimee’s husband even looked a little bit like Max.
Then VidStar timed Sloane out, prompting her to log in to the app, so she pulled out her phone.
“Arya,” Sloane called to her TA, who was dutifully at work on his laptop, without looking up from her phone screen.
This time she looked up another name, Deirdre Voss.
Deirdre, that was the one who’d made Sloane laugh.
Her son had the same kids’ play couch as Britt’s twins.
Deirdre had the same shiny hair as Aimee, as Alex.
There was that same unique and yet interchangeable, aspirational quality, the sense that Deirdre just knew what was cool, what was expensive while still being achievable.
She had a Nancy Meyers kitchen, a sun-soaked playroom for her child, a wardrobe that was practical and beautiful at the same time.
She had the thing Sloane didn’t know how to explain—the one that was so easily shorthanded as Taste.
It made Sloane want to ask her what books she read, what music she listened to.
Sloane felt confident it would be an eclectic mix, and that Deirdre would have the perfect recipe for some hearty, provincial food that her iron-enriched offspring consistently ate.