Wayward

by Dana Spiotta

  Her mother was sick.

  Her mother would die, if not right away, then soon. Sam had tried to make herself think about it. She felt she should come to terms with it (and “come to terms” was funny, and wrong, as if you had some negotiating to do, as if terms could be worked out: here are my terms on how I will let my mom—), but it was impossible, because the fact of her mother’s end didn’t feel real to Sam. When she was with her, talking to her, arguing with her, watching her pour coffee into her white mug and then add a tab of sweetener and then stir it with a spoon, she wondered, how could this not go on forever? The ordinary details of her mother and of their relationship felt immutable and endless as the earth itself, because Lily had always been in Sam’s world. But the signs were there, always, that time was running out and that the stasis was an illusion. Her mother’s hands—the very hand that stirred the coffee was now thin and knuckled and ugly. Her once-perfect skin mottled, her veins exposed, her body clearly stiffer, less able. But how can we notice such things when they happen so slowly, so gradually? And why should we? We are designed to not notice, to accept and stay with the moment. If Sam grabbed her mother’s hands and wept over them, what difference would it make except to ruin one of the comfortable times left, one of the easy times in which her mother would tell a story about Raisin or they would talk about the garden or, probably their favorite subject, the details of Ally’s maturing, as Ally was the embodiment of their connection, but not merely that. Ally was genetics plus magic. She took their stuff, whatever random bits of genetic code (“snips” the woman on the podcast said, which were actually, it was explained, “SNPs,” which stood for “single-nucleotide polymorphisms”) she inherited and whatever bits of behavior she witnessed and learned from, and Ally became someone neither Sam nor Lily had ever known before—a candescent, radiant new being, always as startling to them as a newborn, even as they attended every aspect of her emerging mature personhood. Thank god for Ally.

  “I told her I would give her the money for her YAD trip this summer,” her mother had mentioned over breakfast.

  “That’s very generous of you.” At this point the visit had been like all the others. Sam sat at the table across from her mother. There were berries that Lily had grown last summer and frozen, and she served them with homemade vanilla scones.

  Everything was perfect. But then Lily put down her cup and Sam knew. Sam knew before Lily even spoke.

  “I need to tell you about something, and I need you to listen and not overreact,” Lily said.

  “Okay, what?” Sam said, her voice already too loud and urgent. “What?”

  “There’s a thing that happens when you get to my age. You become aware, whether you want to or not, that this is your last chapter. This”—Lily gestured around the room and toward the window—“this is your last place, the last place you will live. Only recently did it dawn on me all the things I will never do: I will never have an apartment in Rome. I will never have another lover. I will never radically change my life again.”

  “How do you know that? People live a lot longer than eighty these days.”

  Lily looked down and smiled. Nodded.

  “The older you get, these considerations get smaller and closer, until one day you realize you won’t see another summer, and then finally, I suppose, another morning.”

  “Ma, what are you talking about?”

  “My doctor noticed something, and it seems I’m not well.”

  “What do you mean, ‘something’? What exactly is wrong?”

  “Listen to me, Sam. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want you looking up stuff on the internet or searching for clinics or experimental trials.”

  “On my god. You have cancer, what kind? Where? What is the prognosis?” Sam could feel the tears coming. Pathetic, but it just happened. She wiped her eyes and pointed at the scone on her mother’s plate. “You shouldn’t eat sugar, Ma!”

  “This is what I mean. I don’t want advice or help.”

  “You have to let me help. I have to talk to your doctor.”

  “No, I don’t want help. That is exactly what I don’t want.”

  Sam was sobbing now, getting angry but still trying to convince her mother of something.

  “If it’s serious, you need help. You can’t do this by yourself. Whatever you need, I will do it. I’ll move here and help you,” Sam said.

  “Sam,” her mother said calmly.

  “What?”

  “Move here and I will kill you.”

  Sam laughed, but also continued to cry. She looked at her mother through her tears. Sam shook her head, shocked at her mother’s resistance. Sam leaned over and put her head on the table, weary. Then put her hands over her head as if the ceiling might fall on it.

  “I will not be a reason for you to upend your life.” Lily put her hand on Sam’s hand, turned it over, pressed it. Sam looked up at her.

  “Want to help me? I need you to be strong. Your falling apart makes things worse.”

  Sam sat up, took a deep breath, collected herself.

  “But why can’t you tell me? I can help you with whatever it is on your terms. I need to make sure you get what you need.”

  “I don’t want that, don’t you see? I want things to be normal. I want you to call me and tell me about your life. I want to hear about Ally, and I want to talk politics. I want to garden and walk my dog. I want my life as it is and as it has been, until I die.”

  Sam nodded, her eyes sore and red and swollen. Her mother smiled at her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Sam took another deep breath and sighed. She felt a heavy calm descend, something that felt chemical rather than emotional, the tears releasing or refusing to reuptake a neurotransmitter deep in her brain.

  “I promise you that I’ll fill you in once I’ve made my decisions. My plans.”

  Her mother clutched her mug and gazed at Sam with a stoic, placid expression. Not happy, but in control of her feelings. “I know this is hard.” She had clearly thought this through and allowed Sam to visit only when she had it all worked out. “But you need to prepare yourself for what comes next, Sammy.”

  “No,” Sam whispered. “No. You can’t just give in.”

  “I am not giving in. I’m being honest with myself, with you. It’s no secret that this is how it goes. What did you think would happen?”

  Sam wanted to throw something across the room, smash something. She was not prepared! Not now, not yet.

  “But I still need you,” Sam said.

  “I know, and I am still here,” Lily said.

  In the car, with the podcast woman droning on about adaptogens, she parsed her mother’s words, looking for clues. She should have asked how long. Her mother was stubborn. Sam conceded that her own stubbornness was just as intractable. What was worse was that Sam felt so childish and selfish. Her mother was sick, and, Sam realized, she expected her mother to comfort her about it. Really, Sam was pathetic. Useless. No wonder her mother wouldn’t involve her. She couldn’t handle it.

  * * *

  —

  When Sam arrived back at her family’s house in the suburb, both Matt and Ally were out. Both of them had texted that they wouldn’t make it home in time for dinner. Matt, whatever. But Ally—Sam wanted to see Ally, just behold her was all. Ally was supposed to be the buttress against losing her mother, the counter. Sam sat at her kitchen table and ate some water crackers with slices of salty hard cheese and sipped on a glass of red wine. Her dinner.

  She just needed to be in the same room with Ally. Sam had fucked it all up. She had stupidly timed her motherhood so that Ally would be leaving for college right when Sam lost her mother. Sam gasped at that sudden, naked thought. She was losing, was in the process of losing, her mother. She cried again, and she did not like the feeling of drinking wine while crying. Even for her,
even all alone, especially all alone, it created a distracting performance of self-pity. Pull it together. She couldn’t think about Lily, not yet. Sam needed to do something, but at that point it wasn’t clear what. There were, however, some things she didn’t do.

  Sam did not tell Matt that her mother was ill. She did not tell Ally either. When Sam called her mother the next day, she did not bring it up.

  Several weeks later, she found the house. The broken, needy house on Highland. The house buy was an act of instinct. What Sam wanted was not a safe house or an escape or even a sanctuary but, rather, a place to be alone, to do some time, to change herself. Whatever she was—the sum total of fifty-three years on the earth in this body—was insufficient to what would come next. She clearly had to change.

  The only certainty she felt was that she had done everything wrong. Her accommodations to the future were insufficient. Foolish, shallow, meaningless.

  Alone now in her new house, she coped by smoking a cigarette. Sam was bereft, bereaved. Ahead of time. Pre-bereaved. She should explain her mother’s illness to Ally. Then Ally would understand why Sam had to upend her life, why Sam was so unhappy. But she didn’t want Ally to know about Lily. Ally was so close to Lily; Sam wanted to protect her from this terrible grief. Ally needed to leave, not be bound to her mother and grandmother. Even in her loneliness, Sam tried to figure out what she could do for Ally.

  She sent her daily text. Nothing still. Would this chill go on forever?

  Sam knew that her love for Ally distorted her view of her. Sam was always shocked when the world didn’t fall at Ally’s feet. Sometimes Sam wondered—if Ally were another person’s daughter, would I even like her? But she couldn’t actually imagine that. It was impossible for her brain to have perspective on her girl; it was like not being able to smell your own breath. The ferocity of Sam’s attachment was what made Sam feel like herself.

  From the moment Ally was born, pushed out of Sam’s body (nothing could be more common than motherhood and yet nothing about it could ever be banal), Ally became Sam’s sun, Sam’s primary concern. She felt a directedness and a purpose and a meaning she had never experienced before. Another way of putting it: it was the least fake feeling she had ever had, the most earnest. Did all mothers feel this way? Did fathers feel this way? No, yes, doesn’t matter. On some level, it was Ally and then there was every other human on the earth.

  At first it was physical. The need to hold and feed and comfort. That was the best part of being a mother, answering that need. It was so simple and complete. Sure, there were times Sam longed for sleep, times she felt positively enslaved, but all it took was the head on her chest, the hand clutching at her, Sam’s own hand supporting the plump, perfect back. Touching her was like taking a drug. The back, the foot, the leg, the little arm; the lips, the ears, the toes, the perfect tiny nose. The thighs, the dimpled knees, the lines of fat at the wrists, the tapered, padded fingers with the tiny oval of a nail. Look at her. The eyes, well, they were the same always, the same today. Large, heavy lidded, dark brown, wide-set, extravagantly lashed. What a beauty she was and is. Even at the height of her adolescent awkwardness, Sam had found her profoundly, significantly beautiful. Was it “true”? Did others see her the way Sam did? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sam had felt this abiding love for sixteen years, and it was the best thing she had ever felt or would ever feel. And the twinge came every day when she remembered that Ally wasn’t talking to her because of what Sam had done. Sam had left. The twinge was there when she texted her each night. Her pretend-cheerful unanswered texts. Even estranged, this love was the most real thing Sam felt, the feeling that gave the lie to all the other things people called love. She was immoderate, overwrought, many stupid things. But she was constant, and it took no effort at all. Maybe that was the thing about love and constancy. When you really felt it, there wasn’t any going back. It wasn’t maintained or cultivated, like a rare flower. It didn’t need work. It was or it wasn’t.

  Did Lily feel this way about her? Of course. Yet her mother was pushing Sam back, avoiding her.

  And did Ally feel about Sam what Sam felt about her own mother? A skyward, air-sucking entirety? As if her mother were not a person, but a part of her life-support system. A person whose existence enabled yours. A totalizing—and therefore not quite visible—force. Sam didn’t feel any more purpose toward Lily than she did the sun or the earth itself. So when she had walked into Lily’s house and seen, at once, that her mother was hunched, small, fragile—dying, really—she had put it as far out of her mind and heart as she could. She’d gulped down a glass of wine and tried to not notice anything. No cruel inventory of Lily’s wrinkles, her forgetfulness, her blurring features. The beauty she had always possessed was there, but it was blurring, melting…leaving.

  After she had texted Ally, Sam sat alone at her table and ate wedges of apple and some salted almonds. Then she moved to her window and smoked another herbal cigarette.

  16

  For the past few weeks, Sam worked extra days because she needed more hours and she had agreed to update all the displays. Sam had invited Laci and MH to meet her at Loomis House and maybe go out for a drink or a bite after. She was closing up when Laci walked in with a young woman Sam had not seen before. The young woman looked around Loomis House with pursed, skeptical lips.

  “Is MH coming?” Sam asked. MH had not returned her text.

  “I don’t think so,” Laci said.

  “Oh,” Sam said.

  Laci and the girl exchanged a look.

  “This is Tugg,” Laci said. “This is Sam. She works here.”

  Tugg opened her eyes super wide and put her hands to her face, emulating the Screaming in Fear emoji.

  “Oh for god’s sake,” Sam said, but she was over defending Clara’s life. Recently someone had edited the Clara Loomis Wikipedia page and added a “Eugenics Controversy” section, verified and footnoted. Sam couldn’t bring herself to even read it. And today, when she did the spiel about Loomis’s sickly favorite daughter, someone said she had read on Wikipedia that Clara’s oldest daughter was actually the child of John Humphrey Noyes, the spiritual leader of the Oneida Community and that “we really need to address the whole sex cult/abuse issue.”

  Sam wanted to show MH her new project. She was making a curios cabinet. A cabinet of Syracuse curiosities, the way people used to collect and display in the nineteenth century. She was having a letterpress pamphlet printed too, facts about historical Syracuse that she had compiled. Something to give people beyond Clara’s life, her compromised life. A context for her life.

  “Where is MH?” Sam asked. “Have you talked to her?”

  “I haven’t,” Laci said.

  “MH is canceled,” Tugg said.

  Laci shook her head. “We are not canceling her. More like deplatforming her,” she said. “Too much power and influence, and she abused it. She is being contained, so she can’t do any more harm.”

  “What? What happened? What did she do?” Sam said.

  “There’s a petition on Medium,” Laci said.

  Sam’s phone pinged.

  “I just AirDropped you the link,” said Tugg.

  Sam looked down at her phone and tapped. She scrolled and read. “It doesn’t say what she did.”

  “Believe women,” Tugg said.

  “But MH is a woman too,” Sam said.

  Tugg scowled at her.

  “Believe victims. Multiple men came forward too,” Laci said.

  Sam looked at her watch and locked the curio cabinet. She gestured them toward the door as she shut the lights. They waited for her outside.

  Laci told her it was bad, but she couldn’t reveal the details. Just take her word for it. Take the victims’ word for it.

  “Who are the victims?” Sam asked. “How many are there?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,”
Laci said.

  Who was “at liberty”? Sam believed them, of course, but what if their idea of a firing offense was different from her idea of one?

  “She’s my friend. I can’t cut her off without knowing what she did.”

  “Let me make it simple for you. She is an error message. She is malware. Do not open the attachment. Delete. Put in trash. Empty trash,” Tugg said. “And sign the petition.”

  “Yes,” Laci said. “Sign the petition.”

  “Then signal boost the petition,” Tugg said.

  “How can I condemn what I don’t know,” Sam said.

  “Look, you have to trust that we have heard it and it is predatory. We don’t want to traumatize the victims any more by making them speak, making them targets,” Laci said.

  Sam nodded. Speaking up did make people targets. Sam knew this was true. Accused people lashed out in manipulative ways. But MH?