Chapter 25 #2
“I honestly thought it was human,” Sloane admitted, more to herself now than to Alex.
“I’m still not convinced it wasn’t. I really don’t think she was kidding.
And even after you told me it was beef,” Sloane realized, replaying it in her head, trying to decide whether it was more absurd that she couldn’t let it go or that she might actually believe it, “Caroline laughed, but she didn’t confirm or deny it.
She didn’t deny anything. And she didn’t, like, reveal the twist, you know? She was never like ‘HA, gotcha!’ so—”
“Jesus, Sloane.” Alex sighed, gripping the wheel tightly now with both hands. “It was beef, okay? Maybe ox, but probably beef.”
“Probably?” Sloane cried, or wanted to cry.
“I wasn’t there, Sloane, and she does have a fucking farm—”
“But can you actually be sure it wasn’t something else?”
“I’m sure, okay? One hundred percent sure.”
“Okay, but can anyone ever really be that sure—”
“Look, it’s not like human hearts grow on trees, Sloane.
She wouldn’t waste a real one on you just to fuck with me,” snapped Alex exhaustedly, like Sloane was the cause of all her misfortunes—like Sloane had personally planted obstacles in Alex’s path for inner peace.
“Okay? This isn’t about you and I’ve had a hell of a week. So calm your goddamn tits.”
“Waste a real—” Sloane gaped at Alex. “So it’s true, then. Everything she said?”
Alex’s mouth stiffened. “Sloane—”
“You’re actually cannibals? Oh my god. You really are cannibals.
That’s actually the secret.” Sloane wanted to throw up again.
Her brain short-circuited, misfired. She couldn’t understand her thoughts in sequence.
She saw, mostly, a bright, white flash of rage.
“You’re … you’re all cannibals? Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve eaten all of your cooking—I fed it to my daughter—”
“Oh my god.” Alex looked wearily heavenward.
“Sloane. My Bolognese is beef and pork. Okay? Relax. Not all of the human body is worth preparing into food, and even if casually preparing human flesh to be consumed without your consent was something we did for everyone, we couldn’t eat it all the time, it causes neurological disease. ”
“Oh my god.” Sloane’s heart was thundering in her chest. “Oh my god.”
“For the record, if I did give your daughter human liver in her spaghetti, she’d no longer be iron deficient,” Alex said with the same tone of weariness, “and she’d probably start sleeping through the night. But far be it from me to solve all your problems for you.”
“That’s the secret? That’s the literal secret? CANNIBALISM?” Sloane felt hysterical.
“One dinner a semester, we perform a ritual as a house,” said Alex, as if she were coaxing a small child or negotiating with a terrorist. “We don’t eat everything, Sloane, it’s not some kind of disturbing gorge.
It’s a ritual. Everything is followed to the letter.
We do it very seldomly. We do not get caught.
We do not endanger our members. We partake in communion as a sisterhood.
And the result is that everyone has more energy, clearer ambitions …
not to mention the physical effects. It’s rejuvenating and cleansing. ”
“What the fuck are you saying right now?” Sloane demanded.
“What Caroline told you is true,” Alex said with a shrug.
“Clear skin, shiny hair. That’s the least of it.
Check the House lineage from the last decade and you’ll find no cancer, no disabilities, no serious illness of any kind.
Not even the flu. Everyone who partakes in communion is healthy, beautiful, and successful.
It really is purely medicinal in nature, and the benefits are—”
“I’m going to tell,” Sloane rasped. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’m—you can’t seriously think I’ll just let you—”
“Okay,” said Alex. “Who are you going to tell?”
“The police!” Sloane snapped. “The University!”
“Okay,” Alex said amiably. “What are you going to tell them?”
“That you’re a fucking cannibal, Alex—”
“Well, seeing as they’ll find the kitchen completely unstocked with human flesh,” said Alex, “I don’t really understand what you think is going to happen.”
“I’m writing a book about it, for fuck’s sake—”
“Well, if you make those kinds of claims, then a book that no one will publish because it’s unequivocally absurd.”
“I don’t care!” Sloane shrieked. “You can’t just—you can’t—”
“Sloane.” Alex turned her head to look at her. “Come on. Be real with me. You knew there was something weird going on. Right? And now you know what it is.”
“Weird is hardly the fucking word, Alex!”
“You know, there are a lot of things people find abominable,” Alex calmly said. “Homosexuality. Transgender identity. I’m pretty sure if it were up to the current Supreme Court we’d lose interracial marriage any day now.”
“That’s—” Sloane couldn’t speak in a normal register. “That’s not the same thing—”
“Why not? Taboo is taboo,” Alex said with a shrug. “You don’t understand it, so it’s wrong. That’s the general conclusion you’re drawing here. Right?”
“What’s to understand?” Sloane wanted to tear her hair out. Nothing about Alex’s face or voice or demeanor made any sense. “You really think I’ll buy into cannibalism as some kind of … of wellness regimen?”
“Why not? People get stung by bees on purpose. They swallow charcoal and coat their faces in snail mucus. Plenty of people support the consumption of raw meat. It’s very European.”
“Jesus, Alex, stop—”
Alex began enumerating on her fingers. “Bull testicles, raw ox heart—”
“—I’m going to throw up all over your fucking car—”
“—not to mention all the weird shit people say to shove in your vagina on VidStar. Have you heard of perineum sunning?”
“None of those things involve eating humans!” Sloane wanted to primal scream with frustration. “You can’t eat humans, Alex, it’s a very simple rule!”
“Sloane.” Alex turned to look at her again. “What do you want to be in life? Conventional or extraordinary?”
“You’re not seriously telling me I’m too conventional right now—”
“I’m not telling you anything, Sloane. I’m not threatening you, I’m not convincing you, I’m not doing a single fucking thing.
I’m asking you a simple question.” Alex glanced again at Sloane’s face before turning back to the road.
“Just sit with it for a second, Sloane. Nobody’s making you do anything.
No one’s asking you to be complicit. You can tell whoever you want.
You can publish your book about it for all I care.
I just want you to be honest for a second—not even with me, just with yourself.
If I told you that you could be beautiful, innovative, able-bodied, successful, powerful, rich—if I said you could have everything you’ve ever wanted and nobody would ever know or even guess what you had to do to get it—would you really choose convention, even then? ”
That’s completely fucking bullshit and you know it, Sloane thought but didn’t say, at first because it felt so obvious, so undeniably real.
But as they drove silently over the two-lane road, the darkness a blur beside the windows, Sloane gradually understood that the believable window for authentic disagreement had closed, and the last-ditch window of necessary sanity was even more rapidly diminishing.
Because did she think cannibalism was fucking disgusting?
Absogoddamnfuckinglutely yes. But she also understood that she didn’t have to say anything.
Of course Alex could tell her all of this, openly and without fear, because nobody would ever believe Sloane even if she did point fingers, and worse than that—it wasn’t as if Sloane couldn’t understand Alex’s point.
Because what wouldn’t Sloane do if it meant a loving marriage, a happy child, a rewarding career?
Forget the other two things, even. What wouldn’t she do to guarantee a healthy life for Isla, a life for herself where she could see her daughter grow up strong and well, where she had the resources to personally ensure that nobody ever caused her daughter harm, where her daughter would never have to know abandonment or pain or fear?
It was impossible, of course, irrational, but what else was motherhood?
What was womanhood if not a lifelong desperation for things that were not and could never be guaranteed?
As usual, Sloane collapsed into thoughts of Isla.
A missing of her, eternal, that disappeared only momentarily for things like irritation, when Isla wouldn’t sleep or wouldn’t eat.
Nothing felt natural to Sloane anymore but Isla, such that sometimes, with Max, Sloane would even feel a sort of hunger for Isla’s smallness, the smell of her skin.
Sloane’s desire had transformed itself, now an unrecognizable mutant.
So many things had disappeared from Sloane when she became a mother. Her younger self, her ability to make mistakes. Her capacity for judging the desperation of others. There was suddenly no limit to the person she could be—to what she genuinely believed you could become.
It was true there was a loss of something; in the unsurgical cleaving of her life, some fragments had simply fallen away.
Caretaking was draining work, her time ruled by not just the presence of but the worry and the longing for The Child.
There was so much capacity for resentment, for all the grains of life in the hourglass lost to the wee hours, the distant specter of the capable adult she used to be, hovering out of reach like a ghost while she swayed half-asleep but still upright.
The things she used to love, the loathing for herself she used to feel, were suddenly immaterial.
The person staring back in the glass had already shape-shifted irretrievably, the old her was gone.
If it wasn’t baby weight, it was the pain of being torn in two or the atrophy from months of being forced out of her natural shape, first the belly and then the carrying of the child, the soothing, the protecting, the strength she would reach for and use whether she possessed it in actuality or not.
But all those things were nothing. The physical shape-shifting only camouflaged a love that was more like insanity, contortions of the body to cage the madness inside.
A love that defied reason and felt closer to pain.
It would never be reciprocated—impossible, who had ever loved their parent as they loved their child?
Who could ever reasonably ask for that kind of love in return?
This, it was a rush of maternal carnage, love like nothing she’d been capable of before because it fell so close to violence.
It was a love that didn’t whisper about the atrocities it would gladly commit.
So Sloane said nothing, and the silence didn’t necessarily feel like complicity or assent. It did feel like nausea. It felt uncomfortable—unlivable.
But then again, Sloane was a mother. She had lived through nine months of the unlivable before.
“I need a drink,” said Sloane.
“In the thermos in the door,” said Alex with a gesture from her chin, because she’d thought of everything. Because of course she did. Because—cannibalism included!—she’d done more for Sloane’s sanity in two months than anyone else had done in Sloane’s entire life.
No wonder Caroline couldn’t hate her. Sloane laughed through a mouthful of straight whiskey, not even knowing where to start.