Chapter Sixteen Caroline #4
“I don’t know the situation, but I would say that you need to believe in your own creative abilities. This isn’t the only story you’ll ever write. You have so much more inside you, so don’t cling to it too tightly. Don’t blow up your whole life at the first opportunity.”
It was bizarrely humane advice, a kindness from the last person she’d expect. “Ned?”
“Yes, Caroline?” He arched an eyebrow.
“Did you get the Preston estate to give me the fellowship?”
“No.” Ned shook his head. “I had nothing to do with that. Even if I were involved in applications, I would have recused myself since we knew each other.”
“Hunh.” Caroline digested this. So, she’d won the fellowship all on her own. There was relief there, but something still nagged at her. “One more question?”
“Sure.”
“Were you using me to get to my mother?”
“Oh.”
She’d said it. The thing she’d wanted to ask for more than a year. But instead of looking ashamed, Ned shrugged.
“I wasn’t. The timing looks bad, but I wasn’t actually pursuing her. She fell in my lap after you and I had gone to that party.”
“So then you just stopped speaking to me?”
“Look, Caroline,” Ned said, almost kindly. “I wanted to fuck you, but I wanted to represent your mother more.”
Caroline sat back in her seat in surprise. It was an insane thing to say, but it was honest. She hadn’t been crazy. Maybe that was enough.
Back at her cottage Caroline showered and covered her bites in antiseptic and band aids, making herself a dinner of cheese, crackers, and apple, eating over the kitchen sink.
Through the window she could see families picnicking on Pavilion Beach, armed against the flies with long-sleeve shirts and bottles of Skin so Soft.
Children dragged buckets across the pebbly shore, screaming at the small waves and chasing seagulls. Little boys collected sticks.
When Caroline wrote her story, had she done something truly malicious?
She had written her story from a place of hurt, she had been so focused on her own pain that she hadn’t really cared what it would do to other people, and the acknowledgment made her hot with shame.
She had been deluding herself, thinking they might not read it, might not recognize themselves, and worst of all, she had outed Colin as bisexual.
That was a million times more evil than calling Bailey cheesy or RJ a drunk.
It was worse than just alienating herself.
She had been vindictive toward their little group and hurt their families along with it, and she would hurt them again when the book was published and again with a film, with every interview, with each word that came out of her mouth.
Her first-edition copy of Tarbox sat on her dining room table on top of her book contract, just where she had left them, two betrayals, one fifty years old and one brand new.
“Mom?” Caroline called home.
“Caroline, I’m so glad you called. I need your advice. Your father and I are going to a summer soiree and the dress code is ‘garden chic.’ I was going to wear that dress from the awards dinner, but Daddy says I shouldn’t wear black.”
“You should wear whatever makes you feel good, Mom.”
“See? GREGORY, CAROLINE SAYS I CAN WEAR BLACK!”
“Hey, Mom? I was calling because Van and I broke up.” Over the entire spring her mother had never asked her about Van, so Caroline hadn’t said a word.
“Oh, no! Why?”
“Well,” Caroline said slowly. “He wanted to spend more time with the baby.”
“What baby?” asked Gwendolyn. Caroline could hear her mother clanking around in the kitchen as they spoke.
“Remember? His friend Bailey? Who he,” Caroline stumbled. “helped get pregnant?”
“Oh, right. The one who wanted to have a child on her own.”
“Well, I think I might have given you the wrong impression of the situation. Bailey and Van had been a couple before I met him. And it turns out Van wanted to be a dad.”
“Oh. That is a plot twist,” Gwendolyn mused. “But better her than you, darling.”
“What do you mean?”
“If Van wanted a baby, it’s better he realized it now so he could have the child with someone else. You don’t want to be a mother yet.”
“What?”
“Caroline, you are a writer. History is littered with women writers who were destroyed by parenthood! They drain you of your creative energy. Right now you are in an absolutely critical stage of your writing career. You’re finding your voice. Motherhood would derail everything.”
Caroline snorted. What a thing to say. “Is that why you didn’t want to have children?”
“What do you mean?” Gwendolyn stopped banging around the kitchen.
“In your wedding announcement when you said you didn’t plan to have children. Was that so that I didn’t drain you of your creative energy?”
“Oh!” Gwendolyn laughed. “I put that in the announcement to torment your grandmother! Believe it or not, my mother and I had a difficult relationship. But Daddy and I always planned to have a baby. You were very much wanted, Caroline.”
“Mom?” Caroline’s voice cracked. She looked around her little cottage, a place of such joy and heartbreak. “I think I need to come home.”