Work Text:
May 28th, 1992
“I’m worried about her, Mom.”
“Oh, aren’t you a little mother hen, Kendall,” Caroline says, distracted as she reaches for the ice cubes in the freezer. Her head is pounding, part hangover, part dread of what the evening might bring — either another night alone in this godforsaken house with her children or having to play hostess if her husband shows up for the weekend with the Kellmans and God knows who else in tow. She despises New York, the Hamptons, the house, the parties, all of the phony Americanism Logan tries to wrap them in. So much of it boring and cheap — it’s nearly impossible to remember a time when she found any of it tolerable, let alone glamorous.
Kendall stands in the middle of the kitchen. Her son is nearly as tall as her now, that’s new. So is the cracking voice. He spent the spring semester at some kind of student leadership institute in Japan — she can’t quite remember the details — so she hasn’t seen him for months. He still hasn’t quite grown into his ears, though, and she tugs at one as she carries the ice cube tray back to the counter. She drops the cubes into her glass one by one, each making a scraping sound as it hits the ones before it.
Kendall cups a hand protectively around his ear for a moment, tilting his head down toward his shoulder, but then seems to realize how childish it makes him look and straightens up again. He continues pestering her. “She’s… there’s something wrong. You can see that, right? She’s not eating. How long has it been like this?”
“Girls go through these phases,” Caroline waves a hand through the air, not bothering to turn and look at him. “It passes.” She reaches for the bottle of gin.
“But she’s nine! Did you — did you say something to her?”
Caroline does turn around at that, one hand still resting on the neck of the bottle. She looks at his spotty face, reddened with frustration. Sure, Roman was easy to baby and took to her sense of humor like a rat to poison, but Kendall has always been her true favorite. He has her looks and her personality — and the same dangerous, fragile tenderness he’ll need to cauterize one day — no matter how hard he tries to mimic his father’s bluster. She wouldn’t have had any more children, if Logan hadn’t been adamant about it. The others may well have sprang from his forehead fully formed for how foreign they are to her.
She used to fantasize about leaving Logan, years ago, before their relationship went truly sour. Things were always seamless in those daydreams, especially when Kendall was still very young — she’d just slip away one afternoon with him in her arms, get in some disgusting taxi that would somehow bring her to a new life, one she had some modicum of control over, and there would be no pursuant screaming matches, custody battles, paperwork, alimony negotiation, nothing, she’d simply snip the Roy name from them both once and for all.
She’d snuffed those dreams out eventually in favor of the cold awareness that Logan would — inevitably — divorce her exactly when and how it suited him. They seem unbearably quaint to her in retrospect. None of her children were ever really hers to take, least of all this one.
“Mom!” Kendall whines, snapping her focus back.
“I’m not always the villain, Kendall. It’ll do her some good, anyway. She’ll be a social outcast if she doesn’t lose that baby fat soon.”
Kendall stomps his foot in exasperation. “Why don’t you care about her! You — you don’t care about any of us! You didn’t call me on my birthday and you don’t even look at Shiv unless you’re criticizing her and — and you treat Roman like some toy. And you act like it’s all a — a big joke!”
“You treat Roman like a toy, darling,” she replies, drily. The children don’t seem to particularly like each other, most of the time, with all their brutal little games Logan encourages. Just a few days ago, their first time back together since Christmas, Siobhan had nearly drowned Roman in the pool. But Caroline grew up alone, so perhaps their world is just not one she will ever understand.
“Well, I’m not his fucking mother!” Kendall yells, with more force than she’s ever seen from him.
Her glass hits the floor between them — had she thrown it or dropped it? — sending shards of glass everywhere. Kendall jumps back and ducks his head down. She sucks in a breath, trying to steady herself. “You are an ungrateful little snit,” she says, low, “do not talk to me that way.”
Kendall’s voice is meek, now. “S — sorry, I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean it. I — I just thought… can’t we get her a new therapist or something?”
“Don’t cower, you know your father hates it,” she says, an automatic response. Don’t cry. Don’t hide. Don’t stutter. Don’t lose. Caroline glances down at the floor, where her former drink is now a slowly spreading puddle. She is wearing sandals but Kendall’s feet are bare, a fact that makes her anger flare again. “Well. I’m sure you’ll all get new therapists after the divorce.”
Kendall visibly pales. “What?”
She turns back to face the cupboards, and, moving slowly, carefully, reaches to retrieve a new glass. “Your father and I are separating. I’ll be moving back to England in the fall, you three will remain in New York, at least for the time being. I think it’s best you don’t mention anything to the others just yet.”
“You’re just... leaving us?” She can hear in his voice that he’s crying already and she wants to reach over and shake him until he stops, until he understands. She was never part of that “us”. She never held a baby before the nurse put him in her arms. An inadequate, naive, twenty-year-old mother and a baby so quiet they had worried something was wrong with him, ran extra tests to make sure she hadn’t already failed at motherhood. But nothing was wrong. The nurse handed her a perfectly healthy baby boy, and she held him against her skin, flooded with relief and happiness, until Logan scooped him up and boasted — first to her, but then the same to every visitor — “Look at my son.”
“It’s easier for everyone this way.” She waves her hand dismissively and hopes Kendall will take the cue to leave. He does not. He continues standing there, looking at her like he’s expecting something, tears running down his cheeks. “Honestly, Kendall. You’re too old for all this. Surely most of your friends have divorced parents — are they all crying about it?”
He tries to wipe away his tears with his sleeve but it only makes him look more pathetic. “Do you hate us?” he asks, miserably.
She narrows her eyes and takes another deep breath. “Life would certainly be easier if I did.”
Kendall nods then, only slightly, as if he actually does understand and is ceding the point, but the gesture looks too grown up on him. It is one of her own, she realizes.
Siobhan appears in the kitchen doorway, smiling and panting with a Nerf gun in each hand. She looks more tired than usual, perhaps, but not as though she is wasting away. Caroline suspects the hunger strike is an effort to annoy her, more than anything, so she has no plans to acknowledge it. Siobhan would probably just twist it into being her fault and complain to Logan, who would be all too glad to toss the, “ex-wife made our daughter anorexic,” card to his legal team.
“Kenny, c’mon!” Siobhan yells. She doesn’t seem to notice the broken glass on the floor, but she cocks her head when her brother turns to look at her. Caroline isn’t privy to what that look between them says — the three of them are fluent in a language she’s never understood — but Kendall scrubs his sleeve over his face again and quickly walks to meet Siobhan in the doorway. Distracting her from the clumsy drunk in the kitchen, Caroline imagines.
If Kendall was so concerned he should have just talked to her himself, the way Siobhan follows him around like an orphaned duckling, tugging on his sleeve. Caroline watches Kendall crouch down so Siobhan can whisper something in his ear, sharing attack strategy or Roman’s hiding place, most likely. He laughs and nods at her and takes one of the Nerf guns from her hand. Siobhan immediately runs off down the hallway, but Kendall doesn’t follow. He stands up straight and looks silently at his mother, disappointment written across his face.
Any other mother would find a look like that unbearable, she thinks. It would leave her heartbroken. Distraught.
She turns away from him. She pours gin into the glass with a steady hand.
Caroline was never any good with her children.