"Into the Woods and Out of the Woods"
Eric is the only van der Woodsen who can walk a straight line.
His father went off course years ago, so many years that Eric can't remember the man's face. So many years that Lily mixes him up with second and third husbands when telling Eric the stories of his childhood. Eric's first "Daddy" was something out of a legend, the prehistory that set the conditions for the van der Woodsens' life together. Once upon a time, in a land far away (the East 90s on Madison, so he's been told), a handsome stockbroker stepped off his familiar path and wandered into the darkness. Wandered away from an East Side princess of a wife, away from a daughter as small and pretty as a fairy, away from a little boy in diapers. And they never saw him again. The End.
Eric used to think Lily learned to wander from his dad. Or that maybe she went away to search for him. As the Amtrak shuttled toward Newport bearing two small children on another unexpected visit to their grandmother's, Eric would hold tight with one hand to his red rolling suitcase, clutch an unwrapped Jolly Rancher in the other, and imagine that this, finally, was the visit when Lily would find him. She'd disappear for a month, as usual, but this time at the end of it, she'd walk up the lawn to their grandmother's estate holding their father's hand, leading him past the tennis courts and reflecting pool back to his children. The van der Woodsen family would repeat the moral to each other—no more wandering in the woods—and for the rest of their days they would stick to the path. The End.
Serena probably told him the stories. "Mommy's going to find Daddy, just wait!" And then she'd take out one of his Bernstein Bears books or the paper bag full of peanut butter sandwiches Lily had told the maid to prepare. He'd munch on his sandwich while holding his sister's hand and listening to her read, grateful to have such a smart big sister who knew so much more than him. Grateful for his companion on the path.
At some point—either the second divorce or the first boyfriend with no job, a title, and a bad-tempered dealer—Eric realized why his mother wandered. Butterflies. Lily couldn't help but chase them, and it had nothing to do with his father. Lily wasn't made for straight paths, but for the ziggy-zaggy swoops of a Monarch, flitting from sunlight to shade, basking against a tree and then dancing into a clearing. Soon Eric could identify a butterfly a half-mile down the path, could pinpoint the exact moment Lily would bolt in another frantic wing-bourn chase. The visits to Grandmother's house no longer set him shivering in anticipation and dread, hope and despair warring in his five-year-old stomach. Anything he could expect, he could handle, and Lily's unpredictability was nothing if not expected.
Soon, the visits to grandmother stopped altogether. Serena was eleven. Old enough to stay home with the overnight maid. Old enough to watch her little brother when their mother simply had to follow yet another butterfly to Chamonix, or Palm Springs, or Capri. Strangely, the path felt straighter and safer than ever with the two children traveling it alone. Eric knew one thing for certain: Serena would never stray. The End.
Until the night she didn't come home. Eric went to sleep at nine, just as he always did, but when he woke at seven Serena's bed was empty. He sat on the neatly made sheets and leaned against the piles of lace-trimmed pillows, and they seemed to whisper "She's gone, she's gone, she's gone," like the soft mournful rustling of trees in the wind. He called her phone. "It's Serena! Umm, leave a message!" The recording was giggly and breathless and short. For the first time, he heard the flightiness in her voice, the reverse image to her sunny cheer.
She stumbled through the door at eleven, her hair a mess of tangled gold around her shoulders, her lipstick smeared, her skirt short, her jacket gone. "Headache. Off." She grunted as she barreled headfirst into the bed. Eric closed her bedroom door behind him and tiptoed to the kitchen. He poured a bowl of cornflakes, the crunching of his molars against the cereal his token resistance to the silence. She had left the path. She had visited the darkness.
Over the next few years, the route Eric took to school often changed, but the path never did. From a SoHo loft, or a Central Park West penthouse, or a brownstone on East 64th, he still walked straight amid the redwoods of the Manhattan skyline. He still followed the markers Serena had laid out for him years before: Up on Fifth, along the park. Right on 89th by the wishing well building. Through the courtyard and into St. Jude's. Class. Homework. TV. Bed. Kiss Lily goodnight when she's home. Serena's trips to the forest grew longer, more frequent. She returned home scratched, her clothing torn. Lily chased the butterflies above, but Eric could tell his sister was caught in the bramble. He watched her and worried, waited for the day she stopped coming home.
It was October. The leaves had changed and fallen, but the sky was still blue. The path was all before him, and Eric could see the end fathoms away in the distance, clear despite the intervening miles. His sister was gone. He walked alone.
Eric was the only van der Woodsen who could walk a straight line. At fourteen years old, he accepted this. At fourteen years old, he vowed to follow the path straight to the end and to never veer into the darkness.
At fourteen years old, he fell in love.
It was the captain of the St. Jude's swim team. He was a Senior, tall, strong, and straight, in every way. Eric churned through his lane with the tenacity with which he struggled to keep to the path, channeling every flutter and flip of his heart or his gut into backstrokes and breaststrokes and kicks. "Great butterfly, van der Woodsen," the older boy called on the way to the lockers, patting Eric's shoulder as he passed. Eric hid in a bathroom stall until the last shower went silent, afraid to strip before the other boys. Afraid of what they'd see under his clothes.
That night, Lily left a note and an unsealed envelope on the kitchen table.
Darling E—
Off to Biarritz with Claude. Why don't you visit Grandmother in Newport? She hasn't seen you in over a year. Here's some money for your visit. Hire a car to take you there.
All my love, you precious boy. – L
The envelope held three thousand dollars. Enough for ten cars. Or one trip to Biarritz.
He tossed the red rolling suitcase on his bed. It had an Elmo sticker on the back, the vestige of a long-ago trip to Sesame Place with Serena and a nanny. The corners were worn and faded, a tiny hole in the canvas-covered frame. He had better luggage in the hall closet, a brand-new Tumi matched set. But the old red suitcase was for visits to Grandmother van der Woodsen, so that was what he would take.
He tossed clothes haphazardly into the open pit. Argyle socks mixed with alligator-sporting polos tangled with wide-whale corduroys and yellow-striped ties. He threw a pair of sneakers and a pair of patent leather dress shoes on top. Whatever his hand happened to touch went flying into the bag: his eighth-grade yearbook; a wood box Serena had decoupaged with their photograph; the program from Lily's second wedding.
He wandered into the bathroom and grabbed his toiletries case, along with a washcloth and a paper-wrapped bar of soap from the St. Regis in Rome, a remnant of Lily's most recent honeymoon—or honeymoon-period, they were one and the same by now. He grabbed his razor from its stand on the glass shelf by the pedestal sink.
He dropped the toiletries case, the washcloth, the soap. He stared at the razor and sank to the marble floor, his back against the tub.
The path led in one direction, to Grandmother's house. But here, unexpectedly, he found his detour into the woods. A friend beckoned to him, a friend with such sharp teeth, and such bright eyes, and such strong hands. He dismantled the razor, freed the blades. They winked at him. They let him know what his father, his mother, his sister, had already learned. The van der Woodsens love the woods.
Even as Eric fled the path, he took it with him: two straight lines, one stretching each wrist from hand to sleeve. Then the lines blossomed red and spread, soaked into his cuffs, dripped to his khaki trousers. He slid to the floor, leaving his trail of red behind him, marking his entrance to the woods.
In the distance keys jangled, a door slammed, heels clicked against hardwood. In the bathroom, Eric curled his knees to his chin, held his arms to his chest. He felt the fluid soak into his shirt, marking him with scarlet.
He closed his eyes and entered the darkness, quiet and wet in the belly of the wolf, waiting to be reborn. The End.