Chapter 17 #2
“It’s just … sometimes I look over and want to slap the phone out of his hand,” Sloane admitted, resigning herself to the guilty pleasure of shit-talking the love of her life.
“But it’s not as if I don’t get the impulse.
I mean, truly. What I wouldn’t give to sit there and scroll my phone for thirty minutes uninterrupted.
Honestly, just the idea of sitting down for thirty minutes without thinking about whether I should be googling baby sign language or preparing iron-rich foods—”
“Fuck the pediatrician, first of all,” Alex said. “You should switch, although given how infrequently you have to see the doctor I don’t see the point of wrestling over the phone with your HMO. So basically fuck her, end of story.”
It was a relief to know that Alex had already done the math of convenience, which was the main thing Sloane’s mind was still capable of doing when it wasn’t spiraling about how she’d become the kind of person she’d once considered ridiculous before Isla had come along to drive a stake through her image of herself.
Before Sloane had understood, in a visceral way, that a man could be authentically progressive and fundamentally useless at the same time.
God, it was fucking marvelous to feel as if someone else understood the value of Sloane’s time.
Typically, after thirty minutes or more of uncharitable feelings toward Max, Sloane made a productive effort to remember things she liked about him.
He was funny and he was very sexy and while he might be less capable of executive function than she was, he was smart and doting and, someday, when the grime of early motherhood wore off, Sloane would recall the spontaneous bursts of love she’d always felt for him; the waves of gratitude when she looked at him and remembered he was hers.
Presently, though, she could only see him with his phone in hand, ignoring Frankie the dog who was in turn ignoring Sloane, looking at something that wasn’t their precious miracle, the child they had made with every functioning brain cell and iota of energy that Sloane no longer possessed.
So then later, when Alex called Sloane about having a meeting to discuss The House’s initiation standards—after Isla’s bedtime, which Sloane had accepted, because although Isla needed to be rocked to sleep each night and was liable to wake within hours, maybe even moments, wasn’t it acceptable for Sloane to ask one thing of Max, who had specifically said she needed to engage in some University extracurriculars?
—Sloane had been playing the “I love Max just as he is, I don’t need him to change, I will simply change myself and it will be fine!
” game for several consecutive days, and had accepted the glass of wine she was offered at the door, and then the two refills after that one.
“The thing is,” Sloane said, by then feeling the whorl of catharsis mixing jauntily with rosé, “isn’t it unfair, that we’re supposed to be independent and successful and do everything our mothers did?”
Alex’s eyes were shining when she looked at Sloane. It was like a glimmer of something had come alive in her. Like love, or lust.
“But there’s a difference between our mothers and us,” Alex said as she refilled Sloane’s wine. “We don’t have to be martyrs. We don’t have to just sit there and take it, Sloane. Why should we sacrifice ourselves and make no demands of others?”
Alex was close to Sloane then, the gentle hint of her perfume a sudden, salacious warmth.
“Honoring ourselves is how we take our power back,” Alex said, and perhaps in retrospect it wasn’t directly in Sloane’s ear, but maybe it was.
Then Alex withdrew, the glass of wine in Sloane’s hand like a cool mist of sanity. Sloane shivered a little from the temperature drop.
“That’s true,” she said. “I guess the difference is that everything I agree to is conditional. I make my own money.” Sort of.
Max made more as a tenured professor, but Sloane was educated, she had been published, she was capable of demanding more of herself, and most importantly, she wasn’t trapped.
If Max left her because she took issue with him playing Scrabble instead of participating in the raising of their child—which Max wouldn’t do, because he wasn’t a monster, just a normal, unconscientious and occasionally selfish but not actively bigoted man—then Sloane, unlike her mother, would be fine, because whether she admitted it to herself or not, she’d erected The Deadline specifically to ensure that she’d be fine.
Maybe not right away, but Sloane had social capital now, thanks to Alex, and Sloane could make her own network outside of the University if necessary, because now she knew women like Alex who could help.
Which also meant that Sloane could probably find someone else to publish her research, should it come to that.
If it wasn’t important to the Almighty Department of Sociology, then couldn’t she get more creative, more innovative—what about a book deal, a newsletter, a platform, something?
Not that she was preparing for a worst-case scenario, per se, but wasn’t Alex right that what Sloane had was agency, the very agency she’d tried to legitimize to Burns—the very agency that the fucking Country Wife had so infantilely given up?
Yes! She would talk to Priscilla about it, Sloane decided.
After all, she hadn’t gone into sociology just to impress an old man whose opinions she didn’t even respect.
She wasn’t having a meeting about a bunch of teenagers being initiated to their social club just to kiss the crest of the University, like indoctrination to a cult.
And also, she should stop worrying about whether Isla was crying for her at home, where Isla’s father also lived.
Sometimes it was about Sloane, goddamnit!
She lifted her wine to her lips with a sigh, something that was equal parts resignation and relief.
“At very least I deserve a little treat,” she said.
After all, she worked hard for the money.
So hard for it, honey! The silliness of intoxication was getting to her, but Sloane felt certain that somewhere in there she’d had a point.
“Self-care,” confirmed Alex with a wink, popping a chocolate-covered cherry in her mouth.