she knew, she could not tell Jenny that on top of all these things she wanted from her husband, the thing she wanted most was for him to say it was his fault. That Sloane was not a demon whore. That he liked to watch her get fucked by other men. That he chose Wes for a variety of reasons that, maybe, had nothing to do with what Sloane liked or wanted or needed. And this woman, Sloane was suddenly realizing, did not understand any of it. She thought it was up to Sloane. She thought—
I mean, really, what the fuck is wrong with you? Jenny repeated.
Sloane broke out of her reverie and looked at Jenny, at the way Jenny was looking at her. She realized suddenly that she was more known, better seen, than she’d thought.
You’re the woman, Jenny spat. And you let this happen.
Sloane felt the car seat disappear beneath her.
You’re the woman, Jenny repeated. Don’t you know you’re supposed to have the power?
Last year, before the business with Jenny and Wes had come to a head, Sloane was dropping her mother off at the airport after a visit. It had been a good one. This was also before the day on the golf course when her brother’s daughters asked about her accident. She and her mother were talking about how nice their time together had been, when suddenly Dyan’s voice caught in her throat.
Mom? Sloane said. Are you all right?
That man, Dyan said, indicating a man checking his luggage ahead of them.
Who is it?
It’s no one, Dyan said. He just looks like someone.
Like who?
Like the father of the girl I lived with after the accident. He would always cheat in tennis. We played tennis at his club, he and I. When the ball hit just outside the line, he would always call it for himself. I was seventeen. I didn’t know what to do. I knew he was cheating.
I didn’t know you lived with people after the accident, Sloane said.
Dyan nodded. She went on to explain, for the first time, that her father could not deal with looking at her, so he sent her away to live with a friend. Dyan described the situation very clinically, as if she were talking about somebody else. Sloane began to cry. She hugged her mother, who felt like a cool stone.
It’s one reason, Dyan said, smiling and breaking away, that I don’t like tennis.
Sloane kept holding her hands on her mother’s arms, though she wasn’t sure it was helping. She didn’t feel like a succorer. She thought of everything her mother had ever done for her. All the ways in which she’d ensured Sloane would have the best chance at life. Every magnificent meal she’d cooked. Every time she waited inside a cold rink, a hot dance studio. Every bighearted thing she’d done for her grandchildren, the fine clothes, the thoughtfully chosen toys. The way she often told Sloane she was beautiful, looking into her eyes and confirming a child’s appearance the way only a mother can.
But then there were times like these, when it seemed her mother had pushed things so far down that Sloane couldn’t reach them. The same, she knew, was true of the arrangement that Sloane had with her own husband. That the rules, the lines, were drawn in the sand of a beach, where they were not easily seen. Where the tide could change them over the course of an evening so that by morning, what you’d drawn was gone.
The last time she got too drunk, she was watching her husband inside another woman, and she felt everything inside herself evaporate. She left the room. She stormed out as much as someone like her can storm. Someone who is used to being a calm, lovely, lonely surface. Or maybe she didn’t storm out of the room. Maybe only the inside of her did.
Sloane thought how funny it was the way that memories live in our brains. It’s funny who gets to switch things on and off. You have to decide who’s right. If Richard had never told her it was wrong that nobody said, Thank God you’re alive! when she flipped her brother’s car, that night would have lived in her brain as the night she fucked up her brother’s car. It would mean it was her fault that she and her brother were not close. And she might never have remembered that she and her brother’s great relationship had not ended, as she’d thought,