Chapter Sixteen Caroline
Sixteen
Caroline
Cisgendered Straight Girl Shit
There was a period of time, right after Caroline’s New Yorker story had been accepted by the magazine, where Caroline had sort of floated on a cloud of happy anticipation.
It was similar to the way she imagined the early weeks of a pregnancy might feel, a deep thrill that something enormous was germinating, invisible to everyone around.
But it wasn’t long before the feeling had stumbled and tipped into a more complicated emotion.
At odd hours of the day, waves of anxiety had begun radiating from her stomach.
Would Van and his friends recognize themselves?
Would they even read it? She had been so angry when she wrote the story, but once she’d had a little time to cool off, she saw she’d been scathing in her caricatures.
But what could she do? Caroline tried to steady herself.
She hadn’t actually expected the magazine to even take the piece—what were the chances?
Once they had, she couldn’t very well go back and say she had cold feet.
In between bouts of crippling anxiety, she had combed the internet for gossip about the Palmer Preston biopic.
His first wife was apparently furious with the estate for approving the grandson’s script, and she wasn’t going to allow shooting inside her Labor-in-Vain property.
The young Boston couple who had moved into Preston’s first house on High Street were thrilled, though, and were renting out their ground floor to the film crew and making a killing in the process.
One Thursday afternoon Ned Clark had emailed Caroline out of the blue, cc’ing the Preston Fellowship director, asking if she’d be willing to let them shoot the cottage for two days, and of course Caroline agreed.
It wasn’t hers, and she knew she only lived there by the grace of the author’s estate.
The day the magazine went on sale the celebratory notes had poured in.
Her friends from the publishing house cheered, Nina sent her a string of unhinged texts and memes, and her father was so proud he bought twenty copies.
There it was. The feeling of validation that she had been chasing since the moment she quit her job.
Gwendolyn and Gregory had sent a magnum of champagne to be delivered to her cottage door and it was sweet, but what was Caroline supposed to do with a magnum of champagne when she didn’t have a single friend to drink it with?
The most incredible part of all was that people seemed to really love the story.
After just one day her editor wrote to tell her that they were seeing a huge amount of traffic to the site and the story was being forwarded like wildfire and generating new subscribers.
It wasn’t unheard of—every so often a story hit the zeitgeist and gained traction—but it was certainly unexpected.
A baby literary agent from a small shop wrote to ask if she was seeking representation.
Then a more serious agent wrote and asked the same.
A film scout sent her a direct message asking who held the rights, and Caroline felt so shocked she had to sit down.
Would someone base a movie on her story?
What kind of money did that pay? Within the span of an afternoon, she had booked herself a train to New York for the following week, where she’d do three days of agent meetings, no doubt wearing something black and expensive that she took from her mother’s closet.
Over the weekend, though, something online shifted.
It started with a comment on the original New Yorker post, someone named “Amyyy374” wrote “Now we just celebrate outing people? No.” Amy’s comment was liked dozens of times and then began generating replies.
“I thought this was fiction, but if it’s not that is seriously messed up.
” And “This is about REAL people and has REAL implications for a family. Shame on Caroline Lash.”
When Caroline saw that comment she ran to the bathroom, thinking she might throw up.
Outing people? Had she outed Colin? No, that would be vile, a disgusting thing to do.
She had concealed his identity. She had changed all the names.
Nobody online was saying it was him. They were just being self-righteous for clout.
Right? In the mirror she looked pale, and she splashed water on her face and vowed to take the rest of the day off social media.
Never read the comments. Isn’t that what they said?
On Monday morning Caroline parked at the train station and as she made her way to the platform, pulling her rolling suitcase behind her, she saw Fran across the street, walking toward the bank.
“Fran!” she called out, and waved and Fran turned.
They made eye contact, and even from twenty yards away Caroline could see the shift in her face, from brightness to recognition to cold disgust. Caroline boarded the train, shaking.
For three days she walked around New York feeling like she was wearing her contact lenses inside out.
She could see, but there was also something wrong and warped and she couldn’t shake it.
She forced herself to look at social media each morning so that she would know what the agents were reading before the meetings, and she saw that the conversation had splintered and evolved.
Entire threads were devoted to discussing the ways in which Caroline’s take on the sexual mores was suburban and twee: “It’s like she’s missed the entire advent of polyamory and thinks that having a baby outside wedlock is a scandal.
” “This is the most sheltered cisgendered straight girl shit I have ever read.” And “This writer wouldn’t last ten minutes dating in Portland.
” Other threads discussed the ways in which Caroline’s story served as a commentary on Palmer Preston’s work.
“Preston was a known misogynist and it’s about time someone called that out.
Bravo!” “Preston would roll over in his grave seeing this hack ride his coattails.” And “Is it just me or do you kind of want to see that guy from Saltburn play the bi character?”
The agents couldn’t have cared less about the mixed reception.
“The fact that a New Yorker story has been trending on social media for a week is incredible. Whatever they paid you, it wasn’t enough.
” By the time she returned to Greenhead, Caroline had signed with a literary agent, had worn her mother’s clothes for the better part of a week, and felt so dizzy and nauseated that she was either having the time of her life or coming down with the flu.
The editor who eventually signed Caroline Lash’s novel-in-progress was a twenty-five-year-old with a butterfly finger tattoo and curtain bangs who lived in Bushwick.
Caroline received $200,000 for the novel, paid out over four years, and when the signing payment hit her account, she went online and bought a first edition of Palmer Preston’s Tarbox for $500 from a rare-book seller in Jackson, Mississippi.
Posting a photo of the book on Instagram artfully arranged on top of her publisher’s contract, Caroline felt first pleased and then overcome by a vague sense of ick, unsure if she was actually celebrating or performing celebration as some kind of prepublication branding exercise.
Do you think it’s gross to share my book deal on social media? Caroline asked Nina.
TBH yes…sorry
Shit.
But everything about social media is thirsty and gross. In fact, I am deleting Instagram, selling my iPhone, and going totally analog.
I don’t believe you
Ugh, FINE, but only because I’m addicted to playing Goat Simulator on the subway
You and all the other hot girls
To clear her head, Caroline drove out to Marini Farms to buy a pint of their tiny little strawberries, deep red and densely seeded, sweeter than candy.
She pulled up into the gravel parking lot in a cloud of dust and got out to admire the bouquets of sunflowers in a neat row of aluminum buckets.
She had been spending so much time on her computer that she had barely registered the beginning of summer and its attendant explosion of fruit and flowers.
Inside, the farmstand tables made from wooden pallets groaned under boxes of yellow squash and zucchini, bushels of fresh-cut scapes that tangled like smooth green snakes.
There were piles of radishes, their white roots long and witchy, heavy purple beets rubber-banded together by their stalks, bouquets of asparagus, and giant heads of cauliflower.
She spotted the strawberries up by the register, and Caroline felt her mouth begin to water.
She had started toward them when she suddenly heard a little boy cry in outrage.
“Mommy, Jane kicked me in the VAGINA!”
“That’s not true!” A redheaded girl came running through the doors from the greenhouse clutching a honey straw. “Charlie kicked ME in the vagina! And I kicked him back in the PENIS!”
They were Augusta’s children, the older two.
With a start Caroline realized that Augusta herself stood at the counter, stacking ears of corn into a paper bag.
She looked like an elegant milkmaid, her long red hair in a braid, her skin creamy, wearing a large white button-down and a pair of leather sandals.
“Can you please not scream about your privates?” Augusta scolded them. “Just say that you kicked each other in the groin. Or better yet, just that you kicked each other.”
Jane looked confused. “But that’s where he kicked me. In the vagina.”
“Right, but.” Augusta looked at the teenager who was tallying up her groceries, as if for help. The teenager smiled bashfully. “Never mind. Did you each have a honey stick? Are those fifty cents? Let’s make sure to pay for those.” Augusta pulled out her wallet.