The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

“I said I’m hungry.” Bunny takes a sip of water, not ready to confront her parents for their unintentional racism. Ever since her grandmother died, the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Spencer Morrison (Bunny’s namesake), Meredith has become increasingly fragile and obsessed with contacting her mother’s spirit, convinced she hears her banging on her headboard at night. “Do you ever experience that?” she’ll ask Bunny, clicking her mouse back and forth on different psychic medium websites while in her study. Bunny doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she doesn’t believe in past lives or future ones, that when we die, it’s just a vast black of nothingness for eternity.

What Meredith is having trouble with is the slow disintegration of power the Morrison and Bartholomew families are experiencing. Both Meredith’s and Chuck’s lineage traces back to the beginning of Washington—the bishops, the mayors, the colonels, whoever “built” the city, families whose names no one’s ever heard of because they don’t need any public notoriety, so they say. Meredith’s family money comes from supplying half of the gunpowder used by the Union Army in the Civil War and more than five billion pounds of explosives for World War II. Chuck’s grandfather helped create the atomic bomb, the family fortune built on nuclear energy and then later on chemicals used to manufacture heat-resistant products, waterproof clothing, etc.—things no one ever thinks about. Theirs was an arranged marriage of fortunes simply built on weaponry and war.

A Black server with the name tag LANCE comes to the table to take their order.

“Lance! Honey, how are you?” Meredith asks. She’s so nice. She shakes his hand for so long, enthusiastically asking about his family: his mother’s health, his brother who’s studying law at Howard University. Bunny notices this. It irks her. It feels phony: her mother’s wide smile, her veneered teeth.

Meredith has always believed that true equality is unattainable; it does not and will not ever exist. She appears to be in acceptance of this—how easy it is for her. Her grandfather, whom she knew as a young girl, always instilled a great pride in the ideologies of capitalism, putting the interests of their family first because of a deep-seated fear of communism. And yet, after the death of her mother, something inside of Meredith is beginning to unravel.

“And what can I get for you this evening, Mrs. Bartholomew?” Lance asks.

“I will have the Cobb salad. Honey, thank you.”

Bunny looks at Lance, doesn’t smile, her usual self. “I’ll get the cheeseburger and fries. Medium, please.”

“And for you, sir?”

Chuck folds his menu and whips it in Lance’s direction without looking at him. “I’ll have the chicken piccata.”

As Lance turns away, Meredith remembers Cate.

“Oh! Lance, honey, we forgot Cate’s order, she’s meeting us, she should be here any minute.” She turns to Chuck. “Did she text you her order?”

Chuck looks at his Samsung. “Cobb salad with blue cheese.”

“I’ll get those right in for you all.”

Meredith leans over and reaches for Lance’s arm, again. “Thank you, honey,” and if words were just sounds you might think she was saying, “I’m sorry, honey.” Meredith had been to a Black Lives Matter rally with an old friend from Yale University, her alma mater, earlier this week.

Cate gallops into the dining room, out of breath, holding her jacket—black pencil skirt, hair in a disheveled bun. With clothes on, she’s almost unrecognizable to us, except that the back of her pink thong is hiked above the waist of her skirt, her blouse aggressively tucked into it. Bunny notices this as Cate takes the seat next to Chuck, but doesn’t say anything.

“Hi, guys, sorry, the Red Line derailed again. No one got hurt, thank God.” Cate throws her hand-me-down-from-Meredith Burberry plaid jacket over the back of the chair.

Chuck shakes his head. “See, what did I tell you about the infrastructure problem.”

“Honey, you should really think about getting a car here,” Meredith says, concerned. She’s only ridden the Metro once—to get to the Women’s March a year earlier.

“I don’t know, I kind of like not having a carbon footprint.”

“Hey, now, I thought you were a Republican,” Chuck says.

“Uncle Chuck. I believe in global warming.”

“Millennials…” Chuck downs the last gulp of wine in his glass.

Cate clears her throat and puts the white cloth napkin in her lap. “I’m assuming you all heard about the horrific shooting at the Midlands music festival.”

“What’s that?/Where’s that?” Meredith and Chuck say simultaneously.

“Missouri,” Bunny says, scrolling through her phone; she’s in the vortex.

Meredith plays with her gold bangles and sips her wine, feigning interest. “No, honey, I didn’t see that.”

Chuck nods with pursed lips. “Ah yes, I saw something about that tonight.”

“Honey, do you feel safe at school?” Meredith asks Bunny.

“There’s secret service at my school, Mom,” Bunny reminds her, scrolling through her phone. This sort of thing will never be a by-product of her kind of upbringing.

“Oh, right.” Meredith sets down her glass.

“I think I’ll be promoted soon.” Cate takes a large sip of water.

“That’s great, honey,” Meredith replies.

Chuck turns to Cate, folds his hands on the table. “I’m confident you will do a great job, but listen to me carefully. As you climb the political ladder, remember to always remain a private person, as much as you can, so you can live as you want—free—rather than create expectations in others that you feel compelled to meet.”

Cate thinks on this for a moment. But isn’t she supposed to meet the expectations of others in politics?

“Always put your own interests first,” Chuck says, pointing his finger at her.

Cate listens to Chuck like a good girl. She knows this, but she also knows that today fame is what you need to succeed in politics. A high profile, not a low one. Chuck is dead wrong about privacy. Cate smiles with her hands folded in her lap, looking around the room, scoffing in her head at the professors, the partisan journalists, the old political wonks and their dopey-looking wives. Fame is a