Chapter 31
“It’s hard to believe we were ever that young,” said Sloane in the car.
Nina Kaur. She remembered Nina, the sophomore; had recognized her the moment she saw her from the pictures Alex had shown her of all the candidates.
She’d had a certain look in her eye tonight, a sort of wild recklessness.
Maybe just intoxication, or maybe the look of someone who’d fuck a professor because he seemed like more of a man than the average college boy.
Poor thing, she had no idea. Wash a man’s underwear and all of a sudden the mystery was gone.
“They looked like children, you know? Like little girls.” Beautiful ones, almost unbelievably so, like their very existence defied any preexisting constraints on the limits of physical perfection, but still.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Max, shifting in the driver’s seat. He’d seemed distracted through most of dinner, and still was. “What about that guy, your TA? He seemed way too old to be dressed like that.”
“Well, he is,” said Sloane. “He’s a grown-ass man wearing a silly costume.”
“And that’s not weird to you?”
“Not really,” said Sloane, with a shrug. “He was just there with his cousin. You’re supposed to find a date for invite and she probably needed one. It’s sweet.”
“I guess,” said Max.
Sloane couldn’t wait to get home.
Theo was asleep with his head in Alex’s lap when they arrived, so Sloane and Alex whispered their goodbyes and then Sloane pulled Max into the bedroom, greedily tugging down his trousers and getting to her knees.
She could feel herself throbbing with something, desperation.
Max groaned when she slid a hand between her own legs, unable to wait.
As soon as they both were adequately lubricated she shoved him back on the bed, digging out her vibrator and holding it to her clit as she rode him, holding in her mind’s eye the desperate, fleeting thoughts of desk-fucking and bare Malibu abs.
By Sunday, Isla had come down with another runny nose and was beginning to be more verbally expressive.
She was starting to say “please” and “thank you” unprompted.
She remained uninterested in food or sleep.
Her hair was almost long enough to be considered girly.
She was growing and changing, minus the disinterest in food or sleep.
“Babe, look,” whispered Sloane urgently, hoping Max would see that Isla was singing to herself.
“What?” said Max, because maybe it was only visible to Sloane. Or maybe only Sloane had ever cared.
On Monday she had a check-in meeting with Dean Burns. “We’re concerned you’re not showing a commitment to this department,” he said. “You rarely come to department events. Your colleagues routinely observe you leaving early.”
“I have a child,” said Sloane. “A baby. She’s not even two years old.”
“Of course, Sloane, we understand that, but Max spends time with the other members of his department and has already published in a journal this semester, and your only pitch so far has been—”
Right, of course. Given everything (cannibalism), Sloane had lost track of the deadline in recent weeks, her timeline irrevocably and necessarily shifting, such that “her future with the department”—a thing that evidently wouldn’t exist if Burns had his way—could fucking wait.
“Aren’t you concerned that Max spends more time with his department than with his daughter?” said Sloane. “Who even reads academic journals, Dr. Burns? Do you really think that contribution is worth becoming an absence in your own child’s life?”
“Sloane, please understand, when we’re choosing tenured faculty members, we do have to consider whether they will put the University first. It’s an honor, not a given, to be selected for the University’s permanent faculty—”
“Do you really want me to tell you that you’re more important than my daughter?” asked Sloane, incredulous. “Because you’re not, Dean Burns. I think if you considered this for even a moment you’d realize that what you’re asking is unfair.”
“Many members of our faculty are parents, Sloane. You’re not the first woman to have a child.”
“No,” Sloane agreed, not mentioning that she was also not the first woman to be passed over within the department as retaliation for having one.
“Dean Burns, I am doing research, even if you don’t care for it, but of course my time is limited right now.
My child is young and my daily responsibility to her is substantial.
As she grows older and more independent, then yes, I will be able to make the choice to spend longer hours away from home and contribute more enthusiastically to faculty research and programming. Until then—”
“Until then, I suppose it makes sense to table this discussion for now.” Burns symbolically flipped her file closed. “And it’s possible we may need to cut your lecturing hours next semester, to make room for more invested faculty.”
Though she’d felt so gorgeously, coolly in control at the beginning of their conversation, Sloane’s heart briefly stopped at that. “But then I’d only be a part-time adjunct.” She inhaled, slowly, and exhaled. “I’d lose benefits. I’d lose childcare.”
“Well, fortunately you have Max,” said Dean Burns, as if this was something Sloane should have considered—as if she ought to have known this would be the only plausible end.
Sloane walked slowly back to her office with the thought that it really didn’t matter, did it?
What she said, what she did, the impossibilities she magically performed.
Every day was laden with the guilt of being away from her child, of being an inadequate employee, of failing to be maximally exploited and thus losing the parts of the paycheck she needed to keep the abandoned child alive.
Would anything be different if she were prettier or dressed better?
If she had a nanny and stayed behind to hear from her colleagues about what hot new sociology trends were sweeping the nation and whether Janet had fucked Robert in the bursar’s office, would anything really be better?
Would life really be easier, or would it just be something else?
What did Sloane even want out of life, really?
She realized Alex had asked her that question; that Caroline had essentially said the same thing.
What even was a Good Woman? Sloane wanted uproariously to laugh.
A good woman was just a good loser, because there was no fucking way to win.
You fall in love, you marry someone devoted and interesting, and bam, you still somehow turn into your mother, and his mother, and every mother since the dawn of time.
Was heterosexual marriage the problem? But then there was still the matter of being denied tenure, of being told the details of your life are uninteresting to serious men.
Were men the problem? But then you made a new friend, a new circle of friends, and it turned out they had the same problems as you except their hair was nicer because they were goddamn cannibals.
So maybe the problem was that Sloane was a woman, born with a losing hand. Where the motherfuck did it end?
She walked through her office door and stopped when she spotted Arya there, sitting at the usual desk, typing something diligently into the grading system.
She saw him again in his tiny orange shorts, the pattern of his abs like a blazing beacon of youth and sex.
That little quirk in his mouth, the way he undressed her when he looked at her, unwrapping her like the treat for which he had been so decadently patient, so impeccably behaved.
Arya looked up when he saw her, a warp of pleasant surprise melting to blithe confusion in the moment their eyes finally met.
“What?” he asked her.
Sloane shut the office door behind her and locked it. She let her bag fall from her shoulder onto the floor. The clock ticked down the twenty minutes left until her next lecture, which was plenty of time to cross an invisible line.
“Oh,” said Arya.
So Sloane wasn’t a good woman.
But did it really even matter anymore?