by Dana Spiotta
“Right. Just go to Pornhub, you know? There it is in like very specific categories.”
“Of course. I regularly scrutinize Pornhub.”
“I was joking.”
“In fact, between you and me, I get pretty aroused by some of the really not-positive stuff. Some real patriarchal bullshit. So that’s confusing.”
“Yes, I can imagine it is.”
Sam began to drive out from Fayetteville to meet Laci at the diner once a week. It was through Laci that Sam met MH. MH (real name Devereaux, a.k.a. Mother Hubbard) was a sort of mentor to Laci. At first, Laci referred to her in a cryptic way.
“Who is this MH? What does ‘MH’ stand for?”
Laci would look over her shoulder before answering. “She started some of the groups, but she doesn’t want to admit that. She doesn’t think we should have specific leaders, you know?”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Leaderless.”
“No,” Laci said. “We call it ‘leaderful.’ ”
Sam groaned.
One day MH accompanied Laci to the diner. Laci might have disappointed Sam in real life, but MH did not. There was no mistaking her when she walked in. At sixty-five, she had the hard contours of someone who could do pistol squats and burpees. Her hair was silver rather than gray, and her eyes a high contrast, striking blue. She was wrinkled but beautiful in an austere, Walker Evans way. Sam guessed that MH was actually more glamorous as an older woman than she probably had been as a young woman. She didn’t have that quality of a thing faded, a hint of beauty lost. She looked peak. MH immediately launched into a monologue about her “n=1” self-experiment in carnivory. She was eating nothing but meat and water for a month, “nose-to-tail,” with lots of organ meat and raw suet.
“Only ruminants. No fish, fowl, or swine.”
Sam nodded.
“The ruminants’ stomachs’ fermentation can alchemize anything into perfect human nutrition.” Apparently, when MH was into something, or on to something, she was always deep in. MH also explained that she was part of a subgroup within the Hardcore Hags, Harridans, and Harpies group: Half Hobos, which was, Sam gathered, for hipster derelicts, those willfully itinerant, but a Half Hobo also encompassed the self-conscious resistance of a heretic or dissident. (Later Sam would discover that MH’s Twitter profile “photo” was a painting of Saint Wilgefortis, a bearded female saint who was crucified. In the painting, Wilgefortis looked like Jesus with breasts. Sam laughed, but she couldn’t quite tell how funny MH was being—she had to be joking about Messiah references, right?) Even though it was a group, Sam suspected MH was the only Half Hobo.
“Is a Half Hobo like a freegan, like those dumpster divers?” Sam asked MH.
“Half Hobos live at least half their lives as hobos.” MH didn’t have a permanent address. She stayed with friends around town and kept her possessions in a (very nice) leather duffel.
“A demi-derelict,” Sam said.
“It’s about having an optimal and deliberate relationship to the local, to the things, the culture, the people that surround you. To itinerate, and to use up—consume—as little as possible.”
“Faux po’?” Sam said.
There was an awkward silence. Then MH laughed. Wow, were her teeth beautiful. Laci laughed after MH did. MH was very pronouncy, full of certainties, which Sam found both ridiculous and highly attractive. Seeing MH and Laci secretly in the city became Sam’s main reaction to the election, her personal expression of “resistance.”
It was true that the election had changed everything, had escalated everyone’s anger and disease, but Sam understood it as a confounding rather than a causal factor in her defection from her marriage.
6
“I don’t want to talk about the fucking election,” she said to Matt. “And it has nothing to do with why I am leaving. The election was months ago.”
“Yeah,” Matt said.
Sam sighed. “Four months, two weeks, and six days ago. But no, that isn’t it.”
It took some time to get through to him. The more he insisted that her leaving was irrational and an overreaction, the more adamant she became. What she realized was that one person could unilaterally end a marriage. The more he challenged her, the more certain she felt. She had no real particular unhappiness this week, this day. But, she understood, it had been there for a while, waiting for a chance to breathe.
He acquiesced, finally. But he was pissed.
“You could have waited a year, until Ally graduated from high school, but clearly the urgency you feel precludes consideration for others.”
“That’s right,” she said. “That’s right.”
“Then you tell her,” he said. At some point he had abandoned his smoothie, and he was pouring himself a scotch. “I mean, tell Ally right away, as soon as possible. Don’t try to make jokes or pretend that nothing bad is happening.”
Ally. Good god, she hadn’t thought about having to tell Ally. Ally would love that little house. They could fix it up together. Ally could decorate her room; they could go to estate sales like they used to on Saturday mornings. Ally always had an eye for a vintage find. She’d buy something for a few bucks, and then they would look it up on eBay when they were in the car riding home. Invariably, it would be collectible, valuable. But then Ally started doing indoor soccer on Saturdays, and then she had ice skating, and finally the increasingly demanding YAD meetings. (“Pitch simulations,” Ally would say, correcting Sam. YAD was the hypercompetitive baby entrepreneur club at Ally’s school.) When Ally got her driver’s license, her weekends became her own, and that was the end of those early Saturday morning sorties.
“I’m taking a shower,” Matt said. “I will come down when she gets home.”
Sam thought she should reheat the chili from last night and put spoons and bowls on the kitchen table, but she didn’t. Within an hour, Ally walked in, sweaty from her game, and dropped her backpack and duffel. She held her phone in her hand and had her earbuds in. Sam sat on the couch next to a newly clean Matt, waiting for her. He hadn’t said anything as they waited, but he did pour himself another drink. They both must have looked stricken, because Ally glanced up from her phone, stopped, and pulled the earbuds out.
“What’s happened?”
Matt took a sip of his scotch and looked at Sam, and she almost lost her nerve. If she spoke, her voice would fail her.
“What’s wrong, what’s going on, you guys are freaking me out—” Ally said. “Is it Grandma?”
“No! Everything is okay,” Sam said, her mother voice returned to her. “We just need to talk to you.”
“What?”
“Can you sit for a minute?”
Ally wiped her face with her hand. She stepped over her dropped backpack and her gym bag with her cleats tied to the strap. She was wearing her shorts and soccer knee socks still. Her face was pink, and her long hair was tied in a high ponytail. Even post-game, she looked held together, somehow efficient, to Sam. She might be sweaty, but that childish messiness was gone. Sam felt, as she sat on the couch, a sense of her own disheveledness: she hadn’t bothered to blow out her hair or put any lipstick on in weeks. Sam barely even looked in the mirror when she washed her face. She wore the same jeans and sweater she had worn yesterday, and her fingernails and cuticles were ragged from not wearing gloves. Ally, Sam noticed, had clear polish on her perfect ovals.
“Ally, Daddy and I wanted to talk to you, but first let me say this has nothing whatever to do with you. We love you.”
“Oh,” Ally said.
Sam felt her throat constrict. Ally was so tough. There was a thick pause.
Ally’s eyes flared at Sam. “Just say it.”
“We are splitting up,” Sam said. Ally, to Sam’s surprise, started blinking back tears. Ally never cried. Sam believed, because of the oval nails and the neat ponytail, that Ally someho
w knew everything, that she had figured it all out. But no. Sam’s own eyes began to blur again. Sam knew not to touch Ally, but she moved to do so anyway. Ally’s hand went up, her fingers spread, and her palm pressed the air. No. Stop. Sam sat back down. Matt made some odd throat-clearing noises, which Sam knew he made when he was trying to get a grip on his emotions. No one spoke for a full thirty seconds.
“Daddy, how can you leave?” Ally said to Matt. Then she shook her head.
“I’m leaving.” Sam’s mouth was dry. She could hear herself swallow. “It’s me. But I’m not leaving you, I am leaving Daddy.”
“What?” Ally said, looking at Sam as if she were insane. (Which, Sam would discover, was what everyone would wonder. Everyone would think Matt had to be the leaver, not Sam.)
“I bought a little house in the city. You will love it. Once I fix it up, you will love it. The windows in your room, the view. You can help me fix it—”
“Are you kidding? I mean, really?” Ally said. “I’m not moving. This is my junior year. I have to stay right here.” She said this with such bitter emphasis that Sam simply nodded.
Matt said he would stay in the suburban house (which was “his obligation” he said, meaning to Ally, said in such a way as to gently remind, to upbraid, or to scold Sam about all the obligations she had apparently abrogated, meaning to Ally and to him). Sam watched Ally, who was staring at the floor. Ally stood up, reached for her backpack. She finally looked up at Sam.
“Ally—”
“I have to do my homework,” she said. “A lot of work. Just leave me alone.”
Sam nodded. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” Sam said, which definitely made them all feel worse.
Ally started to leave but stumbled into the arm of the couch. At the door to the living room, she looked back at Sam. And then she left.
Sam did not go after her, although she wanted to. She wiped her face again.
“What have you done, Sam,” Matt said. But it wasn’t a question, or it wasn’t stated like a question.
* * *
—
The next day, Sam slept until six, which was very late for her. She glanced over at her husband. Matt didn’t get up until six-thirty, and when he was asleep, he looked peaceful and young. He was good in sleep. Not everyone was. Matt didn’t snore, drool, or mouth-breathe. Sam went down to the kitchen, and she could hear the coffee already brewing. Ally was at the kitchen table, earbuds in, studying her Latin.
Ally looked up, and Sam waved. Ally pressed pause on her music.
“Good morning,” Sam said, at once amazed and alarmed by how her child had become so self-sufficient. Ally pressed her lips together, shook her head slightly—she was, it seemed clear now, livid—and then she spoke:
“Go to your stupid house. I don’t care what you do. This is better anyway. I don’t want to live with you.”
Sam nodded.
“Or talk to you, or have anything to do with you.”
“Come on, Ally. I know this is upsetting.”
“This is not upsetting. You, you, are upsetting.”
Stupidly, Sam reached out to Ally, touched her shoulder. Ally whipped away from her.
“Do not!”
In the awkward days that followed, Ally wouldn’t look at her or talk to her. Who was this girl, this tough, hard woman?
“Don’t push her,” Matt said, and Sam knew he was right, knew how it could backfire with Ally. The truth was that these days, Ally got along better with Matt than Sam. This had been true for a long time despite their being “as close as a mother and daughter could be” (as Sam once bragged to other adults). Sam thought she had escaped the rebellious teen thing, the whole “I can’t stand my mother” drama that other moms complained about. But then there was the fiasco at the hospital, and, even before that, things had begun changing once Ally hit puberty. Sam could feel Ally separate, almost like a membrane ripping, except Sam didn’t believe it. Ally became more distant, more self-sufficient, more of a mystery to Sam. Of course, whatever Sam had lost, Matt gained. Sam wasn’t an idiot; she knew these things change and change again. She worked to not be too hurt when she walked in on Ally and Matt snickering and no one could explain what was so funny. So now, when Ally shut her out, Sam relied on Matt to be her conduit. He was good with parenting, albeit less passionate than Sam. He was practical and constant. So Sam longed for her, but she was used to her mother love being unrequited. Even now she told herself this was temporary, that she and Ally would be close again when Ally was in college, just as Sam was close with her own mother, Lily. She persisted in believing that Sam and Ally would be like Sam and Lily, despite many differences. For instance, Sam had never had a falling-out like this with her own mother. Why draw analogies between herself and her daughter? Ally was not her. (Which was good, wasn’t it?)
Sam waited for the closing, called her lawyer every day to speed it up. It was an all-cash transaction, after all. Matt pulled the money from their “emergency” savings. She thanked him, and he replied that it was her money too. After it had become clear that Sam was still leaving despite Ally’s anger, he had changed tactics. He became supportive, almost sentimental. Not a trace of anger or sarcasm in his tone. He even flirted with her and made her laugh. A performance of his capacity to be a generous, attentive husband even when wronged. Was this performance for her or for himself ? Yet his accommodations were seductive.
Sam had to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
She tried to sleep in the guest room, but Matt begged her—begged her!—to stay in the bedroom. “These are our last nights together,” he said. They didn’t have sex, she made it clear that wasn’t happening, and he said, “I know.” She slept turned away from him, and he pressed his head against her shoulders. She could feel the warmth from his body behind her. His breath slowed and he fell asleep like a child. Warm bodies in bed felt totally different when they touched, even slightly. Anyone would find him appealing when he was asleep, which she realized was such an inadvertent slam that she snorted into the dark room. Matt didn’t understand that he was only one part of it; clearly Ally didn’t understand what Sam was doing. All Sam knew was what she knew. She no longer wanted to be in the suburbs (that had always been his preference, because he liked having land and trees and privacy, and she had thought she liked that too). Or, rather, she could no longer live in the suburbs. “Wanting” sounded volitional, and that was not what this was. She had always disdained people who left marriages by saying they had no choice, as if it were out of their hands. Yet that was how it felt to Sam: a force in motion that couldn’t stop once it started.
The morning walk-through before the closing elated her despite the April damp, the evidence of pests, the cold everywhere. There were so many papers to sign at the closing, and each time she signed or initialed, she felt her certainty harden. The key in her palm stunned her; the first step across the threshold, by herself, as the owner, gave her focus. Purpose.
Once they drew up the separation (but not the divorce, not yet, he insisted), he gave her an additional fifteen thousand dollars (dipping well into their savings but not Ally’s college fund). After the closing, she fixed the house enough for her to move in. She got the basics updated: plumbing and electric (even though the copper crisscross of porcelain knob-and-tube wiring in the attic appealed to her). Sam opened her own bank account with the little leftover money. She said she wanted nothing more, but he just laughed. “You pay our bills. You must know that your job won’t cover it.”
“I can be very frugal on my own.”
“It’s your money too,” he said. He kept saying that, but it didn’t feel like it to her. She agreed to a minimal monthly amount until they settled everything, just enough to cover her property taxes, utilities, and her food. He smiled, and there was a twinge of victory in the corners of his mouth. “Good. Let’s not worry about th
e rest now,” he said. It was truly helpful, she had to admit, that he was being so nice to her. Gentle about everything. But she knew Matt, knew how under the veneer of patience he was simply waiting her out. It was more than a little condescending that he viewed this as temporary, that he imagined that if he behaved, she would come home once it was out of her system. Sam was glad for the ease anyway.
When at last the house was minimally habitable, Sam took only her chest of drawers, two cane chairs, a round wood table, and some kitchen items. She had bought—with a delight that shocked her—a twin-sized mattress and frame. She set the bed in a corner of the living room until she fixed up a bedroom on the second floor. She could fall asleep looking at the fire. The plain iron frame by the window looked like a nun’s bed. Or a saint’s. Good. The mattress was quite expensive—a concession, a signifier really, of her faux poverty (faux po’/demi-dereliction), despite her renunciations and her almost ostentatious austerity. She liked to imagine herself in voluntary poverty (living among the involuntarily poor) like Dorothy Day. But her back hurt sometimes, and she couldn’t have a bad mattress and end up immobile at some point, pinned to the floorboards moaning.
She thought of the old movie where the rich guy pretends to be poor and lives with the hobos in order to suffer and feel authentic things. It goes awry. (A really good movie, except for the ending, in which he has an epiphany about solving everything with laughter.) Sam didn’t want to be like that movie. The title of which lay behind some muggy hormonal veil, not brain fog so much as a muslin sheet she could almost see through.
As soon as the bed was installed, she mouthed goodbye to Ally’s closed bedroom door and left the house in the suburb for the last time. Three weeks after the closing and with much work not yet finished, Sam moved into the house in the city. Scarcely an hour had passed before the doorbell rang. Flowers sent by Matt. Oh for god’s sake. Dusty peach-colored peonies, her favorite. Her leaving had made him attend her, but he didn’t understand that wasn’t her intention at all. Sam just wanted to be alone in her house.
