Wayward

by Dana Spiotta

  “He ignored Mom, and then he said he wanted blood tests and a CT scan to see what was going on. My parents nodded.

  “After he left, my mom whispered to us. ‘Did you see that he is an NP? All this time, and we don’t get to see a doctor?’

  “ ‘It’s fine, Sam. NPs have more clinical experience than doctors.’

  “ ‘What about diagnostic skills? Isn’t that what doctors are for? Why does a perfectly healthy teenager pass out?’

  “This was where things got weird, got wrong. I finally confessed to my parents that I didn’t sleep at all the night before and maybe I drank a gallon of iced coffee. Also I fake-ate breakfast, so maybe I hadn’t eaten anything but coffee since the night before. But the good news was that I probably didn’t have a tumor, and I fell on my hands and didn’t hit my head. I was hoping this would calm them down, and also maybe we could just go home so I could sleep. But Mom has a way of making everything worse. A need, a need to make everything worse. And things beyond my control—our control—were in motion.

  “So Mom went to his counter where he was putting orders into his computer. She doesn’t think I saw what happened, but I could see and hear it all.

  “She told him about all my recent X-rays. My wrist was sprained at soccer two weeks earlier. ‘In fact, we came here then,’ she said. Four months ago I had a skating crash and twisted an ankle. And over the previous winter I had had a concussion. All of these times I had X-rays. In addition, there was the orthodontist, and the new three-hundred-and-sixty machine at the dentist, the panoramic radiograph machine—boy, she hated that thing. ‘Her teeth are fine,’ she said, but then she caved, which is maybe why she was so wound up about this one. She told the NP she didn’t want me to have another bout of radiation exposure. No scan.

  “He finally looked up at her and frowned. He said nothing, just went back to his computer and his typing. He pretended she wasn’t talking.

  “ ‘Excuse me,’ she said. And her voice was loud. I knew she was upset. ‘But do you really think it’s necessary for her to get a brain scan? She says she didn’t hit her head.’

  “He stopped typing and looked back up at her with a sigh.

  “ ‘Yes, it is necessary. She blacked out.’

  “ ‘But she told me she blacked out after she sank to the ground. She remembers not hitting her head.’

  “Again he said nothing. Just tapping into the computer.

  “ ‘I don’t want her to have another exposure.’

  “ ‘She needs the scan—that is my professional judgment and it is the standard of care.’ He was, to be fair, not giving Mom much here. But he couldn’t be bothered with assuaging her fears. You could tell he hated her. His expression was, well, contemptuous. You know if it had been my dad, it would have been handled differently by this dick. He had sized her up; she was shrill, controlling, noncompliant.”

  “You sound like you’re on her side,” Joe said.

  “Up to a point. But then she escalated things, raised her voice, and absolutely insisted that I not get a scan. That in her judgment as a mother, it was not needed.

  “I could see them squaring off. He grew quieter, she grew louder. She told him that in fact I had stayed up all night and drunk a bunch of coffee. He looked at her and click, clicked into his computer. She saw his face, and then she mentioned it wasn’t any kind of a problem; I simply got carried away. I was an honors student. Why did she have to keep talking? What difference does it make if I’m an honors student?

  “So now he thinks I was lying about everything because I didn’t tell him the full story. That we are all lying. Things are quiet, but there is like a clip to his tone, a kind of adversarial feel to his treatment from here on out.

  “They didn’t give me the CT. But the next thing I know, I was alone in a room with a social worker, getting interrogated about my lifestyle, from drug use to sex. Lol. Once all the blood tests came in, we were finally allowed to go home. He glared at my mother as we left. And yeah, she smiled right at him as she walked out with her arm around me, like ‘I told you so, I win.’

  “Nightmare but it was over, right? Wrong.

  “The next day, two people show up at our house from Child Protective Services. Turns out anyone can anonymously sic them on you. The charge? Denying medical care to a minor. Hah! My mother laughed out loud at this, but then she let them into our living room. She went to her desk and pulled out a file of my medical records.

  “ ‘No care, huh? Here.’ And out came all my papers from the ER visits and the doctor visits for asthma, glasses, dermatologist, pediatrician. With all the ER stuff, I worried for a moment that they might flip the charges to Munchausen syndrome by proxy or something.

  “ ‘Here’s the thing,’ Mom said in a calm voice. ‘The nurse-practitioner who called this in is a power-mad asshole. He didn’t like being questioned by a pain-in-the-ass loud woman like me. He was a condescending prick, and he should be fired for misusing government resources.’

  “So whatever, she had escalated things and I suffered. In the investigation that followed I had to convince one social worker after another that all was fine. She had to be questioned. Dad had to be questioned. ‘It is a process,’ Dad said. ‘We just have to let it run its course. I’ll write a letter of complaint to the hospital. But this is the law. So we submit to whatever the process entails.’ And no one—even Mom—could be indignant about any of it: they had so much power to ruin your life. Full compliance or they could even show up at school and question me. Can you imagine? The whole experience was traumatizing.”

  “Overreach,” Joe said, shaking his head.

  “That’s not the point. As Dad said, it’s rigorous for a reason. To uncover hidden abuse or neglect. Of course, they closed the case after the required investigation. But it would be on some super-secret record for ten years in case another incident happened. We all agreed to never breathe a word of it to anyone—Mom swore me to secrecy. But then there she was, onstage at Destiny mall, telling a bunch of hateful bros about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Ally.”

  “I am just collateral damage to her self-immolation.”

  “But I don’t think she meant to upset you.”

  “Immolate is exactly what she has done to her life.” She read from her phone: “ ‘To sacrifice.’ The Latin root word ‘immolatus’ means ‘to sprinkle with sacrificial meal.’ ”

  3

  Joe didn’t just give her serious gifts, like books he thought she should read. He bought her romantic expensive gifts, like jewelry, candles, lingerie, and perfume. This was fun, receiving the grosgrain ribbon–tied shopping bags with the tissue. Then reaching in and finding a little box or a little fabric bag. Opening it up and seeing what Joe imagined she would like. It wasn’t about buying her or spoiling her because she didn’t expect or ask for it. But she saw it as a tribute to her, a proof of how much he thought about her when he wasn’t with her.

  She liked how Joe watched her when she opened a gift. She liked putting on soft things that smelled good. Like fine black stockings and silk tap pants. And how much it turned them both on to see Ally anointed with and then stripped of these trappings. It was like pretending to be someone else, which was fun, because she didn’t know yet who she wanted to be. Am I the sort of woman who enjoys lingerie? If I am, what does that mean? It could be cool to be buttoned up and conservative on the outside and sort of wild and kinky on the inside. But that is just capitulating to the most obvious and reductive commodification of sexual arousal, her mother would probably say. Maybe, but how would she know if she didn’t try it out for herself ? And what if it aroused her?

  “I like corrupting you,” he said, pouring her a glass of pink champagne. She smiled, took a sip. It looked sweet but it smelled like bread. By the third sip, she liked the way it tingled the back of her tongue and seemed to warm her from the inside. And
kissing between sips was heaven. He gave her another box. “More?” she said. He laughed. “Open it.” It was a sleek purple-and-white oblong device that fit into her hand. A fancy vibrator that charged via USB. She covered her mouth. He laughed and laughed.

  “We don’t have to use it. It’s kind of a joke. Are you upset with me?”

  “No!” Ally said. She was dying to try it. “But we have to charge it.”

  “I already did that,” he said.

  “I guess you were pretty confident I would go for it.”

  “You are adventurous,” he said. “Plus champagne.”

  They played with it, and to her shock, she discovered that he or she could just hold the smooth silicone tip against her clitoris and an orgasm would come super fast, and then another, even if she didn’t urge it on or focus herself. Even if she resisted it.

  “What do you think?” he asked, after four of them in a row.

  “It feels good, but I also feel like I fucked a robot.”

  He nodded. “Just something to add to the repertoire.”

  “Sex via technology. Is this what they mean by the Internet of Things?”

  He laughed and kissed her.

  Later she thought, do we have a repertoire? An index or inventory of things they did? Did that mean he was already bored—she’d heard about this, how things tended to go over time—or did he know that they would run out of things to do if they didn’t keep adding new ones? She sent him a pic of her in the lingerie he had bought. She regretted it, because it didn’t feel thrilling. It felt a little panicked, actually. And maybe the truth was that she was a little bored herself with sending pictures.

  He loved it, though. He sent a bunch of heart emojis and a heart-eyed emoji face.

  4

  Joe was in town for a whole week. He was cutting the ribbon on his new project, “The Cope,” an old convent he had transformed into unique high-end apartments and a co-working space. Ally would attend the ribbon cutting but not as his date, of course. “You’ll be my date, but we must be discreet. You come as part of the public. As my YAD mentee, it makes sense for you to attend.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “We just can’t hold hands and make out,” he said. She laughed. “We’ll meet at my hotel room later and celebrate.”

  Ally would have to make up some story for her dad, but honestly, he barely noticed. He always figured she had vocal practice or studying or simulations. Or soccer. Which she did, actually. She was taking a precollege summer course, and she had a shit ton of homework she had to do tonight too, so her time with Joe would set her back a bit. Still, she was proud of him, excited to see him and be with him as he showcased another of his development transformations.

  The ribbon cutting was preceded by a tour of the apartments for VIPs and the press. They followed him through the arched doorway of the former convent dormitory.

  “The building was designed by Archimedes Russell in 1896 for the Sisters of St. Francis. The exterior has barely been touched except for repointed brick and replacing the roof.”

  Joe led the group down the hall to the apartments. “Notice the oak wainscoting. Some of it is original to the halls, some of it is repurposed boiserie from the chapel.”

  It was a rich deep oak, and it looked great in the high-ceilinged hall. Joe had amazing taste, and he had saved this extraordinary building.

  He ushered everyone into one of the apartments.

  “Here is our top-end apartment: a two-bedroom with a full eat-in kitchen, terrace, and city view.”

  It was true there was a city view. Floor-to-ceiling multipaned windows were original to the building, with the wood muntins refinished to a rich glow. Joe showed them the black kitchen cabinets with the gray granite countertops and the subway tile backsplashes. The appliances were stainless steel.

  Ally walked over and inspected the “open plan” kitchen with the stools at the counter. She could easily picture the kind of guy who would rent this place. And it was for a guy, of course. A single guy. Someone, she thought, with one of those expensive gaming chairs.

  Joe pointed out the exposed brick wall, the exposed ductwork, the exposed support beams, and the distressed hardwood floors.

  Ally thought, again, of the guy who would rent this place and what he would find cool and beautiful about exposed ductwork. Did it really go with the elegant convent building? It wasn’t a factory warehouse. Yet here were those bulbs in cages—what did they call them?

  “Note the Edison bulbs. And the bedroom features reclaimed wood sliding barn doors, a gorgeous contrast with the industrial gray walls.”

  Edison bulbs! And barn doors? But she pushed it from her mind; the windows were beautiful, and if it weren’t for Joe they would be unused, dusty, falling apart.

  They followed Joe to the three-story-tall chapel. Here, thank god, things were pretty untouched. The oak pews, the organ, the vaulted ceilings. Ever since she was a kid, she had loved going into churches. They were never religious, her family, but her mother told her that churches were the most beautiful buildings in any place you visited. “And you can sit in peace, for free.” They would go in for a moment of quiet. A place where people still spoke in hushed voices and felt embarrassed to text.

  She remembered a trip to Montreal with her mother when she was ten. It was a mother-daughter weekend, with a hotel room and a rooftop pool. Her mother let her swim in the pool after dinner, at ten p.m. Her mother watched her do tricks, underwater somersaults and flip dives. The next day they walked through the old part of the city. It was hot and crowded. Her mother pulled her into a tiny stone church that sat right on the harbor. Ally didn’t remember the name, but her mother told her it had been built by Jesuits in the seventeenth century. They sat on a pew. It was cool and dark inside. Light was filtered through stained-glass rose windows. Her mother pointed out that the hanging lights over the pews were all in the shapes of ships. “This is where you would come to pray before you set out to sea. Just like in Moby-Dick,” she whispered. They had listened to parts of Moby-Dick on their drives last summer. And then they had watched the old movie version. “Can you imagine?” Ally looked at the dangling little ship-shaped lights, and she could imagine.

  Joe was explaining all the support he had gathered from the state and federal historic preservation programs, the Regional Economic Development Council initiative, and a county revitalization grant. Ally knew he’d gotten a twelve-year tax break for rehabbing an existing structure. He’d also gotten a recording tax break—whatever that was—and a waiver on sales tax for construction materials.

  But he had saved this building, hadn’t he? And wasn’t that worth the taxpayers’ money? Her eyes grew used to the dark chapel, and she could really see the detail in the huge stained-glass window to her right. It showed a woman in a nun’s habit, with her hands on some downtrodden people. The rays of the sun were behind her. Words beneath her read, “Mother to the Sick and the Poor.” Ally knew who it was. Marianne Cope, who had been named a saint not long ago. She’d been one of the sisters in this convent. She had volunteered to work at a leper colony when no one else would take care of the infectious sick or their orphaned, unwanted children.

  Joe finished talking and took questions from the press.

  5

  Ally worked on a draft of her college essay. She tried to write about her YAD growth, her sense of empowerment through…ugh, so phony and boring already. Instead she wrote this:

  Why I Am Not a Libertarian

  by Ally Raymond

  At first, some of it made sense. But not totally, the way some people look pretty if you kind of squint at them. But then you really look and, uh, not so much.

  My mentor gave me a book, The Fountainhead, which I only read part of because it is long and pretty badly written—highly didactic and super hacky. I also read some essays my mentor directed me to. And I did some
research on my own.

  Let’s start with that word, “libertarian.” Which appears nowhere in Ayn Rand, btw. From the root “liberty,” which ultimately leads to “liber” and “libertas”: free, unrestricted, absent of restraint. Who doesn’t want to be free? So does a libertarian identify with his need to be free, like a vegetarian identifies with his need to not eat animals? One is not a person who values freedom among other ideals. One is a person who puts his freedom above all other concerns. Further definitions of “liber”: unbridled, unchecked, licentious.

  So libertarians, they describe themselves as believing in ultimate equality without condescending “nanny-state” interference; they extol an unfettered marketplace where all can compete fairly. And by fair, they draw a careful distinction. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. But let’s look at how that plays out in the real world.

  A libertarian might see a homeless person with a sign asking for money and say something like “Don’t give him money—he’ll just spend it on beer.” And you might be thinking, so what? Wouldn’t you want a beer if you had to sleep under a fucking highway overpass? Maybe you don’t want to say all of that. If you press the libertarian to elaborate further, he will tell you that he believes the person is homeless because he made “poor choices.” We shouldn’t be responsible for the consequences of other people’s poor choices. So my question is, how much are our choices shaped by things we didn’t choose? But I didn’t say that.

  A libertarian might also take federal, state, and county tax breaks in shitty desperate cities that will do anything for development. But how is that the unfettered marketplace? Isn’t that the same as taking government handouts, just handouts for already rich developers? I never said this either.

  And what about all the things people need to do collectively, like fire departments and utilities and the post office and schools? What about the rapidly unfolding climate cataclysm? Maybe the market has a role, but what if people’s interests are at odds with profits? How can that be resolved except through collective values and, well, constraints? Even if you think the market can solve climate change with private entrepreneurship—via semi-publicly funded privately owned 5G, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, AI, nanotech, data hubs, “additive” manufacturing, and edge computing, etc.—then why isn’t it happening yet? I didn’t ask this question, but I thought of versions of it many times.