Chapter Ten Caroline #3
“That was horrendous,” Caroline groaned, snugging herself up against him. Van smelled so good to her, some mysterious elixir made from deodorant, shampoo, and whatever amazing pheromones his body created.
“Aw, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Liar. You’re just a good sport.”
“All good,” Van said absently.
“You know, you were amazing at the table.” Caroline turned on her side to face him, his perfect profile, his chest against the cotton undershirt. “I love that you had a poem memorized and ready.”
“Ah, yes, the great poet Ronnie Van Zant,” said Van with a laugh.
“Who is that?”
“Caroline, I was reciting the lyrics to ‘Freebird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd.” Van beamed.
He began to sing the poem aloud and it suddenly clicked why the verses had sounded so familiar.
It was a song played on a thousand classic rock stations for fifty years.
Caroline pulled her hair across her face and laughed with embarrassment—for herself and for Van at the same time.
God. Van turned back to his phone. “I’m trying to figure out if Dylan has diaper rash or eczema.
The rash is mostly on the inside of his butt.
Here, look at this picture.” He turned the screen for Caroline to see.
They slept tangled up in her childhood bed that night and woke at nine, Caroline momentarily disoriented by the sounds of New York, the wheeze of a bus on the avenue, the wail of a siren across town. “We’re meeting Nina downtown for brunch.” She rubbed her eyes sleepily.
“I’m not sure…” Van looked at his phone. “There’s an Acela at ten thirty but then the next one isn’t until noon…”
“You want to head back right away?” Caroline asked, offended. “Let’s get brunch with Nina and then grab an afternoon train if we have to.”
“The noon wouldn’t get us home until almost five and Dylan goes to bed at six.” Van looked sorry, but not sorry enough. “If you want to have brunch with Nina you should stay. You could take the later train.”
Caroline frowned. The idea that Van was going back to Greenhead with or without her stung.
“Okay, that’s fine,” Caroline said tightly. “We’ll just get bagels at the train station.” She got up and went to take a shower and texted Nina from the bathroom.
Oh shit we can’t make brunch. Van has to get back for Dylan.
Noooo!
I’m so sorry
Honestly it’s fine but I’m a little worried about you
What? Why?
I think you and Van are in really different places in life
I know. But it’s like when your boyfriend goes away to college and you’re still in high school. It feels like a big difference but it’s not.
Lol you say that like you had a boyfriend in high school
So you ARE mad!
No but seriously, I just want you to be careful with your heart
He has a BABY not a terminal illness. Cut him some slack for now, OK? It’s a hectic time.
I’m not interested in cutting some slack for a dude I don’t know. I am interested in taking care of my GIRL. YOU. I love you, ok?
Ok ok ok, Caroline sent an emoji of a bagel and then turned her phone to Do Not Disturb.
Dylan The Whole Time
After the rash on Dylan’s bum cleared up, Van became focused on sleep training.
After sleep training it was an ear infection.
All through the month of December Caroline waited for things to get back to normal.
Before Dylan was born, Van would drive straight to Caroline’s house after work, but now he went to Bailey’s first, arriving at Caroline’s cottage close to nine looking rumpled and dreamy, a blotch of spit-up on his shirt.
When they walked at Appleton Farms, instead of noting the mussed grass of a deer trail or the feather of a hawk on the path, he talked about the nearsightedness of infants under six months, the advantages of playing babies classical music.
He took parenting as seriously as he took everything else, reading countless articles about early childhood development.
He was fascinated with Dylan, even the parts that were objectively disgusting, the hair that fell out on top of his head, the way you could almost see through his translucent pale skin.
Caroline felt horribly jealous and, on top of that, guilty for judging a baby over his hideous skin.
She had been so used to feeling the full force of Van’s care, manifested with oil changes for her car, cups of coffee delivered to her desk, waterproofing spray for her boots—Van’s love language being, obviously, “acts of service”—that she was startled by the shift.
When he did come over, they made out and drank wine and watched movies at her cottage, but she noticed he kept looking at his phone, and when she peered over his shoulder, she saw he was just scrolling through pictures of Dylan, looking at a shared photo site Bailey had made for her friend group.
It was better than catching her boyfriend on Tinder, but only barely.
For Christmas Caroline assumed she would return to New York, a restaurant dinner with her parents followed by a weekend of museums and light bickering, so was startled to learn the Lash family had entirely different plans.
“We’re going to Anguilla with Ned Clark!” announced Gwendolyn.
“What? Why?” Caroline was bewildered.
“Because Megavoice represents about six writers with homes there and one of them invited Ned and asked him to bring his friends.”
“Mom, Ned Clark is not your friend. He’s your literary agent! Why would you spend Christmas with your literary agent instead of your daughter? This is not normal!”
“Oh, Caroline,” Gwendolyn tutted. “I blame this on myself for not giving you a sibling. You only children can be very territorial about your parents. You’re not used to sharing. But this is what most grown children eventually have to realize. Parents divide their time among siblings for holidays.”
“Mom.” Caroline frowned. “Ned Clark is not my sibling.”
“As adults we have the chance to create our own chosen families,” said Gwendolyn firmly, and left Caroline to fend for herself.
Bailey announced that she would take the baby back to Florida for the holidays and Van moped around like a lovesick teenager.
His family was going to Maine for the week, and he invited Caroline to tag along, but all of his cousins would be there, meaning Van would be sharing the sleeping porch with three teenagers, so she decided to stay on the Neck and work on her writing instead.
They exchanged gifts on the twenty-third, Caroline giving Van a new birding book from Sibley and Van presenting her with a shiny silver compost can for her kitchen counter.
It was better than the Christmas her mother gave her a subscription box of Proactive for her hormonal acne, she reflected, but as soon as Van left, Caroline shoved the compost can under the sink next to the bucket of old sponges.
In January, along with a vague sense of impending doom, Caroline experienced her first true New England winter.
She was shocked by just how much colder life was in her little cottage.
She missed New York’s cozy taxi rides, the blasts of heat that came up through grates in the sidewalk, the feeling of eight million other bodies keeping the entire city ten degrees warmer.
Van, of course, loved the cold. Over and over he repeated that “there was no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing,” a statement so empirically false that Caroline found herself mentally tallying the survivors of hurricanes, tornados, and wildfires who would kick him in the shins for saying so.
Still, she layered running tights under her jeans, she layered wool socks until her toes cramped in her boots, and she bought a pair of electric handwarmers shaped like happy avocados that she kept in the pockets of her coat.
Van, meanwhile, pulled on his green wool hat and sauntered out into the world, comfortable as could be, as if there weren’t literal icicles hanging from the bumper of her car.
One frigid Saturday in January they drove to the Crane Estate to hike the trails up in the dunes.
Van had been with Dylan the night before, Caroline had eaten dinner alone with a crossword, and even once he got to the cottage and climbed into her bed, Caroline couldn’t shake the feeling that he was only there in body; his spirit was still somewhere over at Budweiser Manor.
She parked her car in the town lot by a row of horse trailers—dogs and horses were allowed on the beach in the winter—and together she and Van walked the boardwalk to the beach to the trails in the dunes.
Even though Greenhead was most wonderful in the summer, the season of beachcombing and fruit picking, Caroline could see that there was an almost alien beauty to the place in the winter.
The marshes and the beach were covered in snow, tree branches froze and shimmered like glass, the river turned white and jagged as the tide pushed and pulled, buckling plates of ice along the banks.
She and Van walked the long rolling hills from the castle to the cliff and stood at the top, looking down the beach and across the ocean at the islands in the distance.
“Aw, Van, remember when you took a tour of your own workplace just to try to hit on me?” Caroline squinted at him playfully.