might endeavor never to upset her. The confluence of both is striking and has the result of drawing one to her.
Sloane is married to a man named Richard, who is not as handsome as she is beautiful. They have two daughters, equine and vibrant like their mother; and a third child, Lila, Richard’s daughter from his first relationship. As a family they are bound very neatly and yet there is also a porousness, the sort of friendly distance that enables each member of the family to be his or her own person.
They live in Newport, on Rhode Island’s Narrangansett Bay, where great Georgian houses line the rocky coast, on a crowded but lovely street where summer people buy bluefish pâté and Carr’s and lobster from the fish market. Richard and Sloane own a restaurant a few blocks inland from the boats that knock quietly in the harbor. He’s the chef and she’s the front of the house. She’s perfect for the position, the sort of woman who can wear ankle-length dresses and not get lost in them.
Their summer is busy, as it is for everyone on the island. Summer is the time to make all the money they can because the colder months are seedless. In January and February the residents must batten down the hatches, stay inside with their family and their earnings, eating the kale pesto that they have preserved.
During the colder months the residents are also better able to concentrate on the children, their routines, school and recitals and sports. But Sloane is a woman who doesn’t talk about her children, or at least not in the same way as some other women, whose lives revolve around tiny schedules.
When Sloane is not around, people talk about her. In a small town it would be enough that she goes to the gym more than she stops to talk by the bags of baby greens. But that isn’t the reason why people talk.
The salient bit, the gossip, is that Sloane sleeps with other men in front of her husband. Or she does it down the street, or on another island and records it, and shows her husband the video later. If she isn’t with him, she texts with him throughout, to let him know how it’s going. Occasionally she’ll sleep with another couple.
Hers is a trajectory that is not immediately tenable. She’s living in this place year-round, which is strange in itself. Families like hers come for two-week stints in the summer. Occasionally they will spend the entire summer, or the mother will, and the father will come on the weekends. But to be here full-time, in the winter, one can go crazy. There are no malls, no large stores to get lost in. When you leave for the day, you make a list of all the errands you need to run out in the world.
The road to her adult life began with a Christmas party at the home of her father’s boss. One of the richest men in New York City. The house, in the Westchester suburbs, had columns and Persian rugs and gold-edged crystal. Women with low heels.
Outside, the tree branches were swollen with ice. The streets shone. Sloane was her father’s date and her date was a boy named Bobby. He was good-looking, like all the boys she dated. Sloane was twenty-two and taking a break from the restaurant business. She wanted to explore theater. She was going out almost every night and her social calendar was full with a range of events, from warm beer in dank music venues to chilled martinis in homes like this one.
Her father’s boss’s wife, a prim, silver woman named Selma, said:
We should get Keith and Sloane together.
She said this somewhat in front of Sloane’s date, Bobby. It was like an epiphany. Keith, their son; and Sloane, their right-hand man’s daughter, beautiful, well-bred, thin. Deific and, like two horses, ready to reproduce. They lived two blocks from each other. How had they not thought of this before!
Sloane wasn’t so interested in money but all the same this young man, Keith, had a lot of it. His family name was at the top of most of the programs in the art world.
A few weeks later, Sloane went out with Keith. She was happy to do it for her father. That her sexual energy was somehow usable in his business world made her feel powerful.
Keith asked her where she wanted to go for their date and Sloane said, Vong. The next place