Chapter Ten Caroline
Ten
Caroline
Sweet Home
When Van had taken Caroline to meet Dylan for the first time, she had felt like a nine-year-old on Bring Your Child to Work Day.
Van was employed by this small creature, he had mastered the art of infant care, and he wanted to show Caroline what it might look like to one day grow up and hold down the job.
“I’m super excited to see your office,” Caroline teased.
“I hope I make a good impression on your new boss.”
“I guess I should warn you, the guy’s a bit of a screamer,” Van cracked.
“It’s generational.” Caroline sighed. “They just have a different understanding of the workplace culture.”
The whole visit was fascinating. Caroline had never been inside Budweiser Manor, and she could barely keep herself from wandering room to room, exclaiming over the chandeliers, the mirrored side tables, the white sashes tied into bows on the back of each dining room chair.
It looked like something out of a ’90s gangster movie or like the home a little girl would draw for herself.
How could one house have so much white furniture?
What would happen once Dylan was old enough to run around and smear Dorito dust all over everything?
Dylan himself was lovely, though, and as Caroline had held him, she realized that she could see parts of Van in his face—the way his mouth pooched out when he frowned, the roundness of his eyes.
When she and Van had their own baby would he look like Dylan?
Or would her genes mix differently, taking away the poochy mouth but letting Van’s nose break through?
She had texted Nina in the car on the way home.
I met my stepson! Jk jk
Imagine if Bailey heard you calling him that
Ha ha someday she could tho! Crazy to think about.
Do B and V have a legal custody agreement?
I don’t know?
You need to figure that out.
I think it’s more an informal thing between them, super chill
Well if you and Van are serious you need to know. And please say you’re still on birth control.
Oops my IUD just fell out lol
It was weird, Caroline had never asked Van about child support or custody.
Had he officially agreed to pay a certain amount?
Was he going to ask for some weekends? She was curious now that Nina had brought it up, but asking felt inappropriate, like asking for his tax returns or Pornhub history, so instead she had just told him that she liked his new boss and hoped that next time he’d let her use the photocopier.
Caroline had been reluctant to tell her parents about Van’s baby, worried they would find the situation tawdry, so she brought it up carefully, making it sound liberal and generational and almost like Van had done a service for a childhood friend who wanted a baby.
“Bailey is single by choice,” Caroline explained. “It’s such an interesting feminist phenomenon, actually, women choosing to have babies on their own. I know it wasn’t as common when you were my age.”
“In vitro was still in the very early stages then,” said Gwendolyn authoritatively. “And people were really hush-hush about it.”
“Good for Bailey,” Caroline’s dad said agreeably. “But I hope she’s in a strong financial position. Raising children is expensive on a single salary.”
“She has a good job, Dad, it’s fine.” Caroline had once found a copy of her parents’ wedding announcement in The New York Times archive online.
It talked about her father’s position as a lawyer, her mother’s two early books, her grandfather’s involvement in establishing what would become mutual funds, and then, at the bottom, a line that caught her like a bone in the throat: “Gwendolyn and Gregory Lash do not plan to have children.”
So, even as Caroline pitched them Van’s baby as a gesture of feminist allyship, she assumed her parents understood a thing or two about an accidental pregnancy.
A few weeks later Caroline was drinking an iced matcha and scrolling through her social media feed when she saw a post from the Beekman Prize Foundation.
They were announcing their annual honorees, and, to Caroline’s surprise, her mother was being awarded for her contribution to the literary community.
Caroline let out an involuntary yip and called Gwendolyn right away.
“Congratulations, Mom!”
“Caroline, that is like congratulating Donald Trump on having Trump Tower named after him.”
“What? No, you’re being honored.”
“Caroline, please. Don’t patronize me.”
Caroline sighed. Fall was always a fraught time for their household.
It was literary prize season, the time that newspapers published their “Best Books of the Year” lists, the months the National Book Critics Circle, National Book Award, and the Booker all named their winners.
That meant that it was a season with near limitless opportunities for feeling snubbed, and despite the Beekman acknowledgment, Gwendolyn was apparently more than a bit miffed.
“Have they ever nominated me for an actual Beekman Prize? No. They save the proper awards for the quote-unquote literati and then they throw crumbs like this—‘contribution to the community’—at the ghettoized commercial genre writers.”
“Mom, it’s an honor—”
“It’s not. They know I single-handedly underwrite a dozen fellowships a year, they know I am the biggest financer of the Authors Guild, they know that when asked to support other writers I open my checkbook every single time.
That’s why they are giving me this fake award, but when it comes to admitting that I’m an actual artist they can’t do it.
They have to save the real Beekman Prizes for the weirdos.
The ones who write about gutting fish while mourning their meth-head parents or the ones who write books they call ‘structurally playful’ because there’s no coherent plot.
God forbid you write something accessible, sell a million copies, and have some talent! ”
Caroline had her parents on speakerphone, and as she listened to her mother rant, she mouthed an apology to Van, who grinned.
Caroline’s father jumped in. “Macmillan has bought a table for the gala. We’d love it if you and Van would join us.”
“Really? Those tables are like ten grand. I’m sure they have a bunch of executives they want to bring,” Caroline hedged.
“I need you there, Caroline.” Gwendolyn came back on the line. “And it’s black tie, so Van will have to borrow something.”
“I’m sure he has a tux, Mom,” Caroline quickly said. She was sure of no such thing, in fact she doubted he owned any pants with fewer than seven pockets, but it irritated her to hear her mother assume. She looked at Van, dressed in a Patagonia fleece, who shook his head.
The day of the prize ceremony Van took off work and they rode the train to New York, sitting next to each other on the left side of the car, sharing a pack of M&Ms, and watching the pretty coastal towns of Connecticut flash by, big houses on green lawns, boats moored along the inlets and harbors.
At the Lash apartment they quickly dressed for the ceremony, Caroline wearing a rented silk dress and Van a tuxedo he borrowed from his father.
They got stuck on the bow tie, the ends facing up and down rather than sideways, but together they watched a YouTube video and figured it out.
When Caroline stood back to admire her handiwork she was momentarily surprised by the man before her.
With his damp hair combed back behind his ears, with his face freshly shaven, with his shiny black shoes, Van looked kind of like the guy in a perfume ad who would dive off a cliff fully clothed, who would extend his arm to a ballerina as diaphanous curtains blew across his face. He looked like a goddamned smoke show.
In the Cipriani ballroom Gwendolyn Lash greeted board members and patrons with kisses and the haughty grandeur of a villainous queen.
She was gloriously outfitted in a black chiffon gown with a layered collar that framed her face like a dark rose.
When Caroline spotted Ned Clark in her mother’s entourage, sipping a glass of whiskey, a flush bloomed in her cheeks.
She took Van’s hand and led him to the opposite side of the ballroom, where the line for a glass of wine was longer, but they could hide among the swarm of young people in prom attire, the associate editors and book reviewers whose companies had splashed out thousands of dollars for an evening of elbow-rubbing with writers and celebrities.
Of course, Caroline knew that among her milieu she was a cliché, the girl who only dated fuckboys in New York, who then left the city and immediately snagged a real boyfriend. But being a cliché made it no less sweet, and Caroline introduced Van in his perfume-ad finery to everyone she saw.
As Caroline chatted, catching up on ten months of gossip, Van discreetly texted on his phone.
He was distracted. Apparently, Dylan had a rash on his backside and Bailey couldn’t get it to calm down.
No amount of Vaseline or Aquaphor was doing the trick, and she had bought a tube of old-fashioned Desitin at CVS.
Van was concerned, though, because he had read somewhere about the possibly harmful effects of talc, or maybe it was petroleum, and maybe it was only bad if they ate it.
After cocktails, a dozen servers in black vests streamed out of the kitchen striking chimes with small mallets, indicating that it was time to sit for dinner.
Caroline found her place card between Van and a Macmillan executive and wedged her tiny purse under her chair.
Ned was across the table and Caroline caught his eye and nodded coolly.
It turned out their table was the V-est of the VIP, which should have been wonderfully fun for the guest of honor, but Caroline could tell, even from across the table, that her mother was peeved.