Chapter 23 #2
“Can’t I be sincere in my brand?” Caroline seemed to carefully dance away from delivering an outright challenge. Still, Sloane saw a flicker of extreme calculation behind Caroline’s eyes. She understood almost innately that this was a woman well-trained by Alex.
“Well.” Sloane took a sip of her wine to buy some time. “Speaking as a sociologist, I think I can safely guess that your demographic is—”
“Young, impressionable women,” Caroline confirmed. “Give or take some horny incels and neofascists.” Caroline’s lips curled up, inviting Sloane to take up arms. “Say the word ‘traitor’ out loud and maybe we can take the gloves off.”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Is Alex right about you—are you dangerous?
” Sloane said, settling more comfortably on the kitchen stool.
“Are you exploiting other women and profiting off their adoration while knowingly contributing to a system that holds them back? The traditional patriarchal system that your content appears to uphold can only be damaging to them,” Sloane remarked.
“Conservative women are, arguably, aligning with men for power that will only be used against them, whether they grasp that or not. Do you feel any sense of accountability, or even awareness?”
Sloane paused to watch Caroline watch her. There was something very prowling about her, something meticulously on the hunt.
“Do you think, for example,” Sloane attempted, spinning out the thought experiment, “that you will have to have a child in the next few years purely for the sake of the brand?”
“That’s an interesting question.” Caroline’s eyes flashed. “You’re a mother, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Sloane. “I have a daughter.”
“And you wouldn’t want her watching my content.”
“No,” Sloane said honestly. “I would not.”
Caroline leaned against the counter, appearing thoughtful. Unhurried.
“What do you think a good woman is?” Caroline asked. She seemed genuinely pensive, and Sloane considered it.
“I suppose it’s kind of impossible to remove the constraints of the patriarchy from that question,” Sloane hedged.
“Oh, come on.” Caroline smirked at her. “Take off your sociology hat for a moment. What would you be, if you were a good woman? What would you know how to do then that you don’t know now?”
“God. Almost anything.” The answer seemed snatched from somewhere in Sloane’s lungs.
“I wish I had a better temper and no dysmorphia. I wish I had thicker skin, or that I could put down my goddamn phone. But isn’t that more a question of what do I wish I were?
” Sloane mused aloud. “Not what a good woman is generally.”
“Yes and no, though, right? Because the answer to a good woman should be a good person,” said Caroline shrewdly. “If we were really free—if this were a winnable game—then your womanhood would have nothing to do with it.”
“Is that possible? Removing my womanhood from the equation?” Sloane was intrigued, both by the idea this was all a game and by the question of whether she could exist outside her social identity.
But then again, Caroline Collins had gone to a prestigious University, where she had been selected and shepherded by the most high-achieving women Sloane had ever met.
“The Country Wife posits not.” Caroline seemed playful, or possibly more toying, as if with her food, when it came to dissociating her identity. “Of course, The Country Wife is a moment, not an institution. That’s the nature of content and consumption, don’t you think?”
“So then this is a job,” Sloane observed aloud.
“Digital content creation has always been a job,” countered Caroline. “And lifestyle content is a uniquely feminine space. It follows that if there is money to be made, someone will make it. If not me, then someone worse.”
Sloane sipped her wine. “Worse in that they’re more sincere?”
“Possibly.” A timer went off, an old-fashioned egg timer that looked quaintly vintage. Caroline began slicing into a large, irregularly shaped steak, which sagged juicily, visibly tender.
“Maybe I’m just very good at it,” Caroline said, carving up the meat.
“The domestic roles. The homesteading. Maybe there’s no harm in monetizing the fact that I’m pretty and I like animals and I can cook.
Maybe,” she said, looking up for a moment, “the truly unfeminist thing would be to devote my life to my husband without an audience, so that only he benefited from the things that I know. From the woman that I am, which is considered good specifically because I’m a nurturer. A natural caregiver.”
“So that’s a good woman?” prodded Sloane. “A good wife? A good mother?”
Caroline rolled her eyes, turning to Sloane to distribute thin-sliced pieces of steak across filigreed Italianate porcelain. “Wife and mother are roles. Womanhood is intrinsic. Not,” she said, stabbing a warning blade into the air at Sloane, “in the biological sense. I’m not a fucking Republican.”
“But you’re enabling Republican values,” argued Sloane.
“Aren’t you? Could you even say you’re not one publicly without alienating the vast majority of your audience?
” Caroline was carefully arranging the steaks on the plate, adding a sprig of fresh rosemary for garnish.
“You’re the first step down a dystopian rabbit hole, algorithmically speaking,” Sloane continued.
“You’re the entry point to alt-right content, and to the belief that what you do is what women were meant to do, for men. ”
“Let me tell you something. The women who believe this? They’re going to believe anything they’re told,” said Caroline without looking up. “I mean, come on. You think any Black women are buying into this shit? You think many disability advocates are into doing everything the long way around?”
“So you’re both complicit and unaccountable, then,” Sloane challenged. “And you don’t see the hypocrisy in that?”
Caroline’s eyes had a hungry glint, like someone looking at a pig for slaughter.
Pity, that’s what it was. “You don’t win this game with virtue, Dr. Hartley.
Convincing people that you’re smart or that you’re right doesn’t change anything.
All there is in this world is money. Either you make it and use it or someone else will. ”
“That’s what you took from Alex?” Sloane found herself genuinely disappointed, almost hurt, even though Alex had only been Caroline’s sorority advisor, not her personal sensei. Still, somehow, irrationally, it was as if Caroline had left a papercut on Sloane’s heart.
She almost wished Caroline had turned out completely brainwashed, earnestly praising her husband and kissing the flag while spewing vitriol about vaccinations.
It would have been easier, more detached from reality, but more honest. This—this was unbearable, because Sloane had no argument.
Because Sloane could only say what she had always been told, which was to try anyway.
Try harder. And though it was true, it had never particularly moved her to anything but exhaustion and anxiety and fear.
Caroline slid the plated steak toward Sloane, a silver meat fork in the shape of a decorative trident placed ever so carefully beside it.
“I don’t hate Alex,” Caroline said, appearing to concede to some internal monologue. “I’m grateful to Alex. She taught me something invaluable. She gave me an enormous gift, and I will always treasure it. She and I just disagree about the broader mission. The greater goal.”
Sloane picked up the trident, spearing a slice of steak to transfer to her plate.
It spilled over with shining juices, though it had taken more effort to pierce than she’d expected.
It had to be a particularly muscular cut, which seemed like a rookie mistake for someone who made a living on domesticity.
“I wish I were better at this,” Sloane said, realizing that weeks of research with women her age had probably made her expect too much from a twenty-five-year-old hobbyist. “I wish I could cook—like, really cook, and know how to do everything correctly, not just prepare meals from instructions. You’re right, I do feel like I should be better at all this stuff.
The caretaking, the homemaking. Your taste is beautiful, and it’s so obviously innate.
” Sloane shook her head, sluicing a crust of bread through the juices of the steak.
“I can see why you have such a following.”
“You think this is innate?” Caroline looked amused, partitioning a bit of steak for herself.
“When I joined The House I couldn’t even boil an egg.
I’m still not very good at my mom’s recipes.
Most of her stuff says to ask the gods, who never answer for me.
” She paused, half smiling to herself. “Probably because I’m a traitor. ”
“So do you think that’s it?” asked Sloane, taking a sip of wine. “Does leaning into the hearth, the womanhood of it all—does that somehow give us more than it takes from us?”
Caroline, who had been drinking her wine, snorted. “What?”
“I just—” Sloane felt her cheeks flush. “I’m just, you know, speculating.
That having a women-dominated space must allow for something unique.
That something about sisterhood must have a genuine impact on personal growth that contributes to the success of everyone who comes out of it.
Maybe that’s the reason for the mommy blogging, the trad wife thing, these micro-collectives of women that are really just …
just safe spaces, and maybe that’s enough t—”
“Jesus Christ. Stop.” Caroline set down her glass, looking at Sloane with something like amusement. “You have no idea, do you?”
“Well, I was in a house, but not The House,” said Sloane, before Caroline held up a hand.
“Look, Dr. Hartley, let’s be clear about something.
I’m a hypocrite,” she said flatly. “I know it and I’ve made my peace with it, because I think there’s something easier than Alex’s version of killing yourself just to lose a race against the ministry of dudes who couldn’t care less if you’re dead or alive.
I don’t care if some fucking white woman in Omaha votes for a sex offender just because I gave her a recipe to make bread.
I’ve given up on what I can’t control, and if I don’t wear the costume and say the lines, Karen and her friends decide I’m out here spreading China flu.
But you? You should ask better questions.
” Caroline leaned closer, a manic spark in her eye.
“Stop asking if I’m some brainwashed cunt and start considering why I’d want anyone to think I was. ”
Caroline gently speared a thin slice of steak, raising it to her lips. She closed her eyes, breathing it in. “The marinade,” she said, “really ties the meal together.”
She took a bite and chewed, gesturing to Sloane’s plate.
“Bon appétit,” Caroline offered, inviting Sloane to follow suit with a distant toast of her wineglass.
Obligingly, Sloane dressed her fork with a velvety ribbon of meat, folding it over on itself until it was perfectly bite-sized.
It smelled rich, hot with chili oil, something almost earthy.
She raised it to her lips and realizing Caroline was watching her—waiting with something like anticipation for Sloane’s verdict on the marinade.
The meat was, as Sloane had anticipated from her initial glance, dense and a little gamey. Savory and mild in flavor beneath the chili glaze, but hardly the kind of disintegrating perfection she’d experience from any of the other Women—the kind of cut that melted sensually away, almost like a kiss.
“How is it?” asked Caroline, her voice slightly husky with fascination.
There was a new energy present in her posture now, something tightly coiled. Sloane tried and failed to think what it could be.
“You said you learned to cook at The House?” Sloane asked, or tried to ask.
The meat was unyielding and tough to swallow; she held a hand guardedly over her mouth, struggling for dignity as she chewed.
“When I was in a sorority—sorry,” she said, referencing her mouth and its ongoing endeavors.
“Mouth’s full—it’s just that when I was in a sorority, we lived off Red Vines and stale Cheetos.
I always thought romanticized, high-minded starvation was a sort of rite of passage for the college years. ”
Caroline shrugged, running her finger through the pink-tinted juices on her plate before bringing it back up to her mouth, sucking lightly. “We all developed a very … distinctive palate over the course of our time there, I suppose.”
Sloane said nothing, and Caroline laughed. She drained her glass of wine and poured herself another, holding it aloft for another toast.
“To good women,” she said. “May we be them, may we raise them, and may they all enjoy their little treats.”
Sloane tried to echo the toast but couldn’t. She felt like she’d been chewing for an absolute age. “Cheers,” she managed to choke out, forcing a swallow, and clinked her glass against Caroline’s before finally washing the bite down with a gulp. “What kind of meat is this?”
“I know it’s a bit tough to swallow at first, but of all the organs, heart has a very mild flavor that I quite enjoy,” said Caroline.
“You get used to it. Eventually you even develop a taste for it. Plus, god, all those nutrients.” She took an overlong sip.
“It’s worth it just for the health benefits, you know? ”
“Heart?” The swallow of wine stuck like a tennis ball in Sloane’s throat. “Beef heart?”
“Do you like it?” The Country Wife’s eyes twinkled with something. Low burning derangement? Sloane’s heart canted, then thundered; her stomach churned. “I’ll send you the link.”
Then Caroline smiled vacantly, as if reliving a happy memory in the recesses of her mind.
“You know what you haven’t asked me, Dr. Hartley?
If The Country Wife is more than a lie. I mean, it’s absurd, right?
It’s just funny to me that you haven’t even wondered whether it’s so dishonest that maybe it’s a cover for something …
bigger,” she mused, her eyes flicking down to the steak on Sloane’s plate. “Or something worse.”
“What am I eating?” Sloane suddenly asked. Her tongue was rubbery, almost ashy with sediment from the steak, and she gagged, doubling over on her stool. “What did you give me?”
Caroline leaned toward Sloane, bracing herself over the kitchen island. Her eyes, Sloane realized, were almost black.
“If you think I’m bad,” whispered Caroline, “just wait ’til you find out what they’re doing in that house.”