“Are you talking about the honey badger?” Hale appeared in the doorway. “The honey badger doesn’t drink water. It gets all the fluid it needs from the blood of the snakes it eats.”
“Knew that.” Fran nodded.
Bailey and Vannyput Dylan to bed together, reading him a book, singing him a lullaby, changing him out of one soft outfit into another because one had pictures of moons on it and was therefore “pajamas.”Bailey had set up Dylan’s bassinet next to her own bed and so as Van wrapped him in his sleep sack and laid him down, Bailey put a glass of water, her satin sleep mask, her jade roller, and her lip treatment on her nightstand and pulled down the side of the blankets so that she’d be able to slip in quietly later on without waking him.
They ate dinner, pasta and salad and cake for Colin’s birthday, everyone in their long underwear or pajamas. They had champagne and then more wine and then while Augusta and Fran went and put the big kids to bed, the rest of them put on a scary movie,The Shining, and piled onto the couches. RJ was bombed, a red wine stain on his shirt, but he made everyone laugh doing Jack Nicholson imitations and then falling asleep at the scariest part. Fran had seemed annoyed at RJ all night, wincing when he knocked over his drink, perching on the opposite couch, but when Bailey asked her about it, Fran just grimaced and shook her head.
Bailey and Van sat together, and she rested her legs across his lap. She wouldn’t have done that a month ago, but without Caroline in the picture she could, and he rubbed the arch of her foot with his thumb.
Eben and Max had brought a joint and a huge jigsaw puzzle they set out on the table, half watching the movie and half absorbed in a thousand-piece depiction of a “Roman Orgy,” occasionally muttering “Here’s a nipple,” or “Pass me that foot.”
Bailey nestled closer to Van, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He had taken a shower after skiing and was wearing soft sweatpants and a long-sleeve T-shirt Bailey recognized from years ago, a faded line drawing of a fly fisherman on the pocket. Bailey took her finger and traced it along Van’s knee and he grew very still, and she could tell that while he was pretending to watch the movie, the only thing he was paying attention to was her. She caught his eye and cocked her head toward the kitchen.
In the kitchen they kissed, Van holding Bailey’s hips with two hands. It was something they had done thousands of times, but it felt somehow different, charged with a new spark that was both tender and fluttery. Van slipped a hand in her shirt and under her bra and Bailey felt everything go warm. Van’s bedroom was upstairs, they couldn’t pass through the living room and disappear up there together without everyone seeing, and Dylan was asleep in Bailey’s room, so instead they opened the door to the pantry, a closet six feet deep lined with cans of soup and soda. In the dark they whispered quietly as they pulled off Van’s shirt and Bailey’s long underwear. Van kissed her breasts and then moved his mouth down further and further. Bailey leaned against the wall, knocking a can to the floor with a crash. They quietly giggled and Van kept going, Bailey’s hand in his hair. She was about to come, Van licking and pressing with his thumb, when suddenly the pantry door opened and the lights clicked on. From the kitchen their entire friend group screamed, first with horror and then, when they saw who had his face between Bailey’s knees, with total and complete delight.
So, it turnedoutthat Vanny was Bailey’s bacon; he always had been. They had sex that night and again in the morning, and they spent the day playing with Dylan in the lodge and drinking hot cocoa while everyone else skied. They drove home together on Sunday night, and without any real discussion, Van followed her into Budweiser Manor and stayed.
Of course, everything was a million times easier with Van around. He fed Hissy and Prissy, he brought out the dreaded diapers, and he took over the arduous process of sterilizing all the bottles and pump parts. With Van at home in the mornings Bailey could do a workout on her exercise bike, could blow-dry her hair, could even read thenewspaper, which she really could have done all along, on her phone while feeding Dylan, but without Vanny watching over her shoulder she had ended up mostly reading Page Six and feeling very guilty about it. Van was a force for good in more ways than one, and together with Dylan things felt almost perfect.
Thirteen
Caroline
Arrowhead
Caroline Lash didn’t have any friends. Without Van in her day-to-day life, she realized just how alone she was. Of course, she had Nina. She had her college friends auditioning for shows in LA and singing on a cruise ship somewhere in the Mediterranean. She had her publishing circle, a lively group text that she still followed closely. But she didn’t have anyone to meet for a coffee or invite over to watch Netflix. As much as she liked some of Van’s friends, it would be weird for her to call up Fran or Eben to hang out. She was a conditional member of the group, the side salad that came with the meal. She thought about packing up the cottage and slinking back to New York with her tail between her legs, but her fellowship wasn’t finished, she had to “demonstrate meaningful progress” on a novel. Ned Clark had been the one to send her to Greenhead in the first place, and she couldn’t let Van Whittaker be the one to send her back.
In a moment of weakness, she called her mother to tell her Van had dumped her.
“Caroline?” her father answered in a whisper.
“Hi, Dad, what’s going on?” she whispered back.
“I’ve taken your mother’s phone. She’s in anauthorial voice blackout.”
“A what? A blackout?”
“For herauthorial voice.You know how she finds that bad writing can infect her style, can screw up her entire lexicon. Well, last night her editor strong-armed her into attending an event for another one of her writers and, honey, it washorrendous. I could see your mother sponging it up like fine linen in a pool of Kool-Aid.”
“Oh.” Caroline suppressed a laugh. “Well, I was just calling to catch up a little.”
“She’s trying to do a hard reset right now, rereading her own work and not taking any calls or even listening to NPR. She doesn’t want to hear my voice either, that’s why I’m whispering.”
“Okay, well, call me back when you guys are through the crisis,” Caroline said sarcastically.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he replied earnestly. “I’m sure you understand. Language can be so contagious.”
They hung up and Caroline tossed her phone on her kitchen counter, annoyed. Her mother was in a rut. Well, she wasn’t the only one. In the weeks since she and Van had broken up, Caroline had been struggling with her work too. She had been trying to write about Greenhead, a novel about the Crane family in their castle, but the entire thing felt fake and stupid. She felt like she was holding little marionettes and dragging them around on a stage, the strings getting tangled, the mouths clacking open and shut. She had spent long days down in the basement archives of the Greenhead Public Library looking at old photos and reading about the Chicago industrialists. She had taken copious notes from her tours of the castle, had stomped around the gardens to breathe the same air the Crane family had so long ago, but the story just wasn’t alive.
The secret Caroline was ashamed to admit was that even though she called herself a fiction writer, her work had never really been pure fiction. HerNew Yorkerstory had been based on a real mugging she’d experienced, and everything else had hewn fairly close to the truth as well. She’d written a story in college about two counselors at a music camp who concealed their addictions under the cover of their wholesome veneer—a secret she had discovered one summer and sworn to keep. She’d written a story about a high school friend whose father went to jail for insider trading. Unbeknownst to Nina, Caroline had written about her as well, about her decision to lose her virginity to a boy she’d only known online. Caroline had shared the story with her workshop, had included it in her senior thesis, but never published it, not even in the campus literary journal, for fear of betraying her friend.
That was the crux of it. Caroline could only write about people she knew firsthand, and as she sat at her desk, moving the Crane family marionettes around in their castle, she felt like a complete fraud.
All through Februaryand March,between hours staring at her computer, she forced herself to go for long walks, having somehow absorbed Van’s WASPy belief that brisk walks in the cold could cure whatever ailed you, stomping around Appleton Farms, Strawberry Hill, the Audubon, and Crane Beach. It was weird, Caroline felt like in some ways she was becoming Van, wearing the same wool sweater or fleece vest for days at a time, pulling invasive weeds when she noticed them on the path, collecting litter as she walked. One day she found herself standing still and staring at a bird for twenty minutes and worried she might actually be mentally ill. Birdwatching!
She hadn’t spoken to anyone but the barista at the coffee shop indays when she ran into Fran out on Strawberry Hill. It was low tide, and the river was out, leaving a rocky peninsula where you could stand on the mudflats and look all across the marsh, Little Neck, and the water tower in the distance. Hale and London were throwing rocks in the shallows as Fran used a stick to poke around the mud. She noticed Caroline and waved hello. “Oh my God, hi! What are you doing here?”
“Just needed to get out of the house.” Caroline grinned shyly.
