Chapter 21
Midterms arrived and Isla had another stuffy nose.
Maybe she was worryingly sick, maybe she wasn’t.
Max seemed disinterested in tissues, in holding Isla down to use the electronic snot-sucker everyone hated, to petition the gods and wrestle the titans all to try to help their baby breathe.
Isla sounded increasingly like a French bulldog (or their actual dog, Frankie) when she slept, and Sloane contemplated buying a new humidifier, although she paused when she realized it would then become her job to clean it, and how exactly did she plan to do that when she was already so busy abandoning her child, for reasons unclear?
“Oh god, we all feel that way,” Britt said over dinner, having invited Sloane once again into her home upon learning (from Alex) that Sloane intended to conduct interviews with the alumnae of The House.
(Sloane, for her part, tried very hard not to audibly capitalize The Women, though indeed she was equally as interested in The Women as she was in The Girls.) Britt’s husband, Finn, was loyally and usefully elsewhere in the house playing with the twins, though Britt had prepared a beautiful rack of lamb for Sloane that she claimed was, quote, much less difficult than people thought. (She then sent Sloane the link.)
“There’s just no getting it right as a mother, is there?” Britt remarked. “The whole thing is just … watching yourself get torn into usable slivers and constantly trying to decide which balls are acceptable to drop.”
This was a very hilarious assertion to Sloane, as Britt did not appear to be dropping anything, not even crumbs.
While Sloane did understand that Britt was a person and therefore likely flawed, Sloane couldn’t imagine what in Britt’s life would represent a failure or a disappointment.
“How did it start for you?” Sloane asked, becoming more and more curious about this.
“What exactly was it about The House that made you so…”
She trailed off unintentionally, searching around for a word that meant “inordinately poised” or “immaculately put-together” with a slight hint of “acceptably Stepfordian,” but Britt laughed before she could.
“Some of it is innate,” Britt admitted with a shrug.
“I’m not an anxious person. And I am an ambitious one, so admittedly there are moments when I make choices that other mothers might not.
But it was The House that gave me the ability to do that.
” Coincidentally, when Britt spoke of The House there was a warm glow on her molten highlights; on the styling that looked like a professional blowout, which Britt said was “just a really good ceramic curling iron, I’ll send you the link. ”
“The thing is,” Britt continued, “coming of age in an all-female space was extremely rewarding. And I don’t think you could argue it had anything to do with academia—I’m not advocating for all-girls high schools, believe me.
It was an extracurricular space, a second home, a second chance at the kind of personal growth I’d needed as a teenager.
I learned how to be a woman in The House. ”
Priscilla, who met Sloane at her office for coffee, said similar things.
Priscilla had arrived with a batch of chocolate zucchini bread that was so decadent and rich that Sloane had to fight the impulse to moan aloud.
“You have to understand, I’m not naturally good at making connections with people,” Priscilla said, after dutifully sending Sloane the link for the zucchini bread.
“I think the word for it these days is ‘on the spectrum,’ but the whole point of a spectrum is that everyone is on it somewhere, so yes, adapting is something we can do to varying degrees of success. And if I hadn’t had The House, I don’t think I would have felt comfortable enough—safe enough—to express my dreams, my ambitions, my desires.
Nor would I have really learned how to make the kind of professional connections I needed later in life, especially in this industry. ”
It was a constant refrain, Sloane was learning.
This theme of safety—The House as the ultimate safe place, in a way that felt like the witch’s house in a fairy tale, something of near-magical significance.
Sisterhood, Sloane learned, was a proper noun, as in: The House was a hearth for Sisterhood, where The Women grew into themselves.
She continued her interviews with a sort of mechanical probe, unsure what she was hoping to unearth, inert or perhaps merely circular in her narrative.
What was the specific magic of Sisterhood that seemed so influential, such that it cast off the expectations of society, and, also, had set each woman on an almost inconceivable and certainly unreproducible domino-fall of social capital and luck?
Each woman Sloane spoke to seemed to have benefitted from the “Who Run the World?” philosophy of womanhood—something very close to the girlboss, “She-E-O” mentality that eschewed traditional female constraints—and yet each woman was also hypercompetent at performing domestic femininity.
“It is uncanny, honestly,” Sloane commented mindlessly to Max, eating from the container of autumn stew that Deirdre Voss had urged her to take home with her.
(“You have a sick baby at home,” Deirdre had said, “and I made a fucking vat of the stuff. It’ll save you a night of cooking,” she added, as if Sloane had any idea what made beef this tender or squash this bright.
Sloane was a good cook, but it was like The Women had all taken some advanced symposium on adulthood that she had slept through that day.)
“I can’t even form a pattern, really. I mean, what do they all have?
The prestige of their University degrees, sure, and maybe there’s something to this idea of all-female spaces being focused on personal growth, but how exactly does that lead to a Supreme Court clerkship or the fucking Pulitzer?
Are they sacrificing virgins in the basement? Is it something in the water?”
“Where exactly is this research going?” Max asked, pausing beside Sloane at the kitchen table where she was again scrolling VidStar, ostensibly for the book.
So far, there had been nothing especially illuminating.
She supposed she could seek out other all-female spaces and see if she could discover the secret sauce via elementary compare-and-contrast, but where was she supposed to go?
Did convents still exist? Should she pop by a gymnastics training center?
“I’m not sure yet,” Sloane admitted, leaning back with a sigh.
One of the other women Alex had recommended she speak with had made a bulgogi some days ago that made Sloane want to weep for craving it.
The recipe was apparently pulled from Bon Appétit—she’d sent Sloane the link—and yet Sloane simply could not achieve the same rust-colored, caramelized result.
Was it patience? Did Sloane lack patience?
Did she lack practice? But then the others aside from Priscilla were all mothers whose time was equally as limited.
How had they sprouted more time, and did it have something to do with unlocking a level of the game somehow?
Did Sloane need a cheat code?
“Well, just remember, this isn’t the best use of your time if Burns isn’t interested in it,” Max pointed out, which was somehow more frustrating than Max leaving the microwave door open despite the fact that he was right.
Maybe it was because he was right. Couldn’t he be right about something else, such as what was best for engaging their daughter developmentally?
Or performing the laundry with something beyond a perfunctory, indiscriminate cold-water cycle?
Alex needed Sloane to review the midterm grades for The Girls—a requirement from International, or so Sloane was informed—so, the following night, Sloane took Isla over to Alex’s house, relieved to smell Bolognese already simmering on the stove.
(Sloane hadn’t even bothered cooking, which was starting to weigh on her socially, but not so much that she’d bring some half-assed version of her spaghetti down on Alex’s door.)
“Lyla!” said Theo, which was his toddler-speak for Isla. In response, Isla smiled and waved with one pudgy hand from Sloane’s arms.
“God, she’s so precious,” Alex said dreamily, which was another thing Sloane appreciated.
Sloane didn’t technically believe a more darling baby than Isla existed, so for all The Women to acknowledge this made her warm to them automatically, in a way that made her feel she was perhaps too close to what were supposed to be her subjects.
“What a magnificent squish she is,” Alex declared with a quick tickle to Isla’s side.
“Oh, you’re a godsend,” Sloane said the moment she clocked the parenting strongholds: curly pasta that Isla could eat with her hands, cheese ready for Isla to sprinkle.
Sloane wanted to cry with relief—alarmingly, she realized that wasn’t even hyperbole.
Her eyes actually pricked from the kindness, the honest-to-god benevolence.
“I swear, Isla’s given up eating just to spite me. ”
“Oh, they get that way sometimes,” Alex said. “It’ll pass. And anyway, she’s alive. She’s safe. She’s healthy. You’re doing great.”
“Low bar to clear,” Sloane muttered, lowering Isla to the floor so she could wander over to where Theo was stacking his favorite set of beautiful, hygge-colored cups (Alex had sent her the link).
“It’s not, though,” Alex reassured her. “Come. Sit. Relax.” She patted the cushioned chair.
“You’ve done so much,” Sloane moaned, and Alex laughed.
“I have to feed my son too, you know. It’s really nothing. You’re the one doing me a favor,” she added, gesturing to the printed sheet of grades.