Wayward Read online

  Also by Dana Spiotta

  Innocents and Others

  Stone Arabia

  Eat the Document

  Lightning Field

  this is a borzoi book published by alfred a. knopf

  Copyright © 2021 by Dana Spiotta

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Spiotta, Dana, [date] author.

  Title: Wayward / Dana Spiotta.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020038404 (print) | LCCN 2020038405 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593318737 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593318744 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3619.P566 W39 2021 (print) | LCC PS3619.P566 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020038404

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020038405

  Ebook ISBN 9780593318744

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Janet Hansen

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Dana Spiotta

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  2017

  Part One: Sam

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two: Ally

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Three: Sam

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Four: Ally

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Five: Sam

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Six: Ally

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Seven: Syracuse

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part Eight: Clara Loomis

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Nine: Blood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Ten: Sam

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  For Agnes and Emy

  A kind of wild forest blood runs in your veins.

  Mary Ruefle, “Pause”

  2017

  One

  Sam

  1

  One way to understand what had happened to her (what she had made happen, what she had insisted upon): it began with the house. It was the particular house, but it also was where the house was and where she discovered she wanted to be. It was a run-down, abandoned Arts and Crafts cottage in a neglected, once-vibrant neighborhood in the city of Syracuse.

  2

  The house sat high on a tiny lot on Highland Street, which ran atop a hill that bordered a long expanse of grass and trees. It looked like a small, sloping park, but it was actually a cemetery, the old graves scattered across the rise. Unless you were squeamish about graves—Sam wasn’t—the sloping green hill was quite pretty. Highland itself offered a wide view of downtown. You could see the steeples of churches, and you could see how the small city was in a valley surrounded by hills. You could even see the kidney shape of Onondaga Lake, although it was often partly obscured by low-hanging clouds. If you turned your head to the left, or if you looked out the side windows of the house, you could see Syracuse University up on another hill. You would locate it by the quilted low white bubble of the Carrier Dome (named for the nearly absent Carrier corporation—all that remained were a handful of jobs, the dome, and Carrier Circle, a treacherous traffic roundabout that Sam hated). Soon after you spotted the dome you would notice the various spired and turreted campus buildings.

  The decision to leave her husband—the act of leaving, really—began the moment she made an offer on the house. It was a Sunday; Sam woke up at five a.m., unable to continue sleeping. She attributed this unnecessarily early waking to the approach of menopause. Her period still came each month, but odd things had started changing in her body, even her brain. One of which was suddenly becoming awake at five a.m. on a Sunday, her mind shaking off sleep with unnegotiable clarity, as if she had already drunk a cup of coffee. And just as with coffee, she felt alert, an adrenal burst, but she could also feel the fatigue underneath it all, the weariness. That morning the wood floor was cold against her bare feet, but she couldn’t find her slippers. It was still dark. She tried not to wake her husband. She used her phone to illuminate the way to the bathroom. She peed, flushed, washed. She brushed her teeth without looking in the mirror. She pushed up the blinds to peek outside. The sky was gradually lightening with the dawn, and half a foot of snow had fallen overnight. It was one of those Syracuse March snow dumps. Everyone complained because it “should be spring,” but why say that when it never was spring in March in Syracuse. Besides, snow in March was often spectacular because of the spring light. The sunrise that was creeping up now cast a pink-and-gold glimmer, and a little crust of ice on top of the snow glittered from the sky and from the streetlamps. The trees, the roofs of the houses, even the salt-crusted cars looked beautiful. And like most spectacularly beautiful effects, it was almost too much, too dramatic, nearly lurid. Sam loved the drama of a March snow. March meant the sky would be bright, blindingly bright, not the cloudy darkness of January or the dingy gray monotony of February, the worst month. As the day progressed, sharp shadows would be cast across the snow crust, your eyes would squint from the brightn
ess, and, with no wind, you might unzip your coat. Syracuse in these moments could be a Colorado ski slope. March was different because the light brought the promise of spring, and the snow made everything lovely, freshly covered and pristine.

  But here was the important part: Sam figured that she was the only person on earth who thought March snowstorms were wonderful, and this made her feel a bit proud of herself. Always she liked to imagine herself as subtly different from everyone else, enjoying the tension and mystique of being ordinary on the surface but with a radical, original interior life. For example, back when Sam used to shop the sales at the Talbots in DeWitt with the other suburban ladies of her class and age, she separated herself. Sure, Sam had discovered that the classic A-line or sheath dresses made of solid-colored ponte knits were so forgiving, so flattering (“flattering,” that tragic word) to a grotesque midlife misshapenness—a blurriness, a squareness, really. But despite being there and shopping because of an “insider” email-blast notification of a super sale, Sam believed that she was different from the other women. Inside she was mocking the calibrated manipulations, mocking herself, noting the corporate branding and lifestyle implications of the preppy styles and colors. The classic plaids, the buttons on the sleeves, the ballerina flats evoking a tastefully understated sensibility. It even occurred to her that the other women could be having the same interior thoughts and that the idea of conformity—at least in modern America—was never consciously sought after. No one older than a teenager thought, I want this because everyone else has it. No, Sam knew that you were sold the idea that you could be independent-minded even as you bought what everyone else bought. You were allowed to keep a vain and precious sense of agency. This was the very secret to consumerism working in a savvy, self-conscious culture. Her sense of resistance was as manufactured as her need to buy flattering clothing. Nevertheless (!), Sam also believed that her having such self-critical, self-reflexive thoughts as she shopped set her apart from the other women. Surely. So she still believed herself to be (however stealthily) an eccentric person, not suited to conventions of thought or sensibility.

  Lately this desire to be contrary to convention had taken on a new urgency well beyond clothes or matters of taste. An unruly, even perverse inclination animated her. It had been looking for a place to land, for something to fasten on. So now (not before), this odd inner state pushed her toward a highly destabilizing wildness (a recklessness) that she couldn’t suppress any longer.

  She pulled on the same clothes she had worn the day before: stretched-out jeans and a black cowl-neck sweater. She no longer wanted to open her closet full of clothes. Why did she need so many, so much? In the last few months, things that used to captivate her no longer did.

  She crept downstairs and made herself a coffee.

  It was Sam’s habit to check out the real estate listings online. She had the bored-housewife pastime of attending open houses. She knew many of the other people there also had no intention to buy but had come to snoop into other people’s lives or to calculate land values or to imagine a fantasy life brought on by the frame of fresh architecture. This last impulse made sense to her. She had even wanted, at one point, to study architecture (and history, and women’s studies, and literature), but she had talked herself out of it and, in what she characterized to her friends as a retro move, she had gotten married and then pregnant instead. She settled for becoming an architectural amateur. And a “stay-at-home mom” (a term she found degrading, as if she were a prisoner under house arrest).

  Unusual old structures (Syracuse had many) excited her: they were a visible-but-secret code, the past rendered in materials that could be seen and touched. For example, the abandoned People’s AME Zion Church on East Fayette Street. Its tiny perfect form sat on a sturdy, intact limestone foundation. Paint-peeled crumbling white brick rose into a modest bell tower next to a large Gothic-pointed stained-glass window. But the building was lost in the concrete dead zone around I-81, grown over with box maple saplings and covered with graffiti, the windows long boarded up. It belonged to the oldest Black congregation in Syracuse, built a hundred years ago to replace a structure at another site that dated to the 1840s, when it had been a part of the Underground Railroad. Sam had seen old photos of this church when it was a thriving center of the Fifteenth Ward, before the neighborhood was destroyed in the name of urban renewal. Yet it sat stranded and forgotten. Syracuse had so much history that it could neglect wide swaths of it. When Sam saw a building that no one else seemed to see anymore, she would stop her car, get out, walk around the perimeter, and even lay her hand on a brick as a form of communion and respect. Fascinating old buildings and houses, empty or still in use, called to her from all over the city. She sometimes drove out of her way just to glimpse one of her favorites.

  But open houses gave her the rare chance to go inside, which was a much more intimate experience. As soon as she crossed the threshold into a house’s space, she could feel it shape who she was—or would be—in some deep way. Whenever she had a chance to walk inside one, she did, which always worked as an act of imagination, an act she loved. What would it feel like to live here, wake up here, argue with your husband here?

  This open house intrigued her because it was cross-listed on an Instagram account for architecture nerds:

  Unique Arts and Crafts bungalow designed by Ward Wellington Ward in 1913. For sale for $38,000! Intrepid buyers only—needs complete rehab. Most original details intact. 110 Highland St., Syracuse, 11am–2pm Sunday. See link in bio for more #cheapoldhouses#saveoldstuff#bungalow#restoration #casementwindowsforthewin

  She was the only fantasy lurker attending the open house at 110 Highland Street that Sunday morning.

  The house was falling apart. The house was beautiful.

  It had leaded glass windows, built-in shelves, and hidden storage benches. Two of the benches were framed by wood-beamed closures (“the inglenook”) and sat at either end of (oh, what she longed for!) an elaborate tile-lined fireplace (“Mercer Moravian tiles”). Sam imagined sitting in the nook, gazing at the fire, reading a book. The tiles were dirty with layers of dust but still intact. She could pick out a narrative in the relief images. (“Saint George and the Dragon,” the agent said.) The clay finish was a rustic, uneven glaze, the colors pink, green, and white. She touched her fingertips to the tiles and felt an undeniable connection. Someone on some podcast had talked about “grounding.” It was when you walked outside with bare feet and let the earth connect with your body. It was supposed to right you, your circadian rhythms or something. Help you get over jet lag. Or maybe it was to mitigate the endocrine disruption of chronic toxic exposure. Or to counter EMF, the low-level but constant electromagnetic waves from Wi-Fi and cellular towers. Or maybe all of that, grounding promoted as a systemic cure-all. Sam scoffed at the idea, even despised it as New Age crap, yet as her fingers touched the tiles, she felt grounded. There was no other word for it, as if a corrective current flowed from the house through the dusty tile and into her hand and, truly, her whole body.

  The tiles were set against patterned deep red brick topped by a mantel made of dark oak, also dirty but intact. Maybe it was Gustav Stickley or it was William Morris who wrote about the Arts and Crafts ideal, how the fireplace should be a work of everyday art. It looked handmade and warm, and its beauty was in its utility and simplicity: she was cold, she needed a fire. The hearth drew her in, invited her to sit. She now understood the fireplace as a form of secular worship. She imagined it would make her feel close to something elemental. (“Obviously, the chimney will have to be looked at.”) To keep her sanity over the long Syracuse winter, Sam needed this beautiful, old, heat-squandering open fire. At her house in the suburbs, they had a glass-fronted gas fireplace that gave off some regulated, efficient BTUs of heat and a low, exhausting fan hum. The gas flame had a cold blue at its center.

  “This house is on the historic register as the Garrett House. It even h
as a Wikipedia page. Designed by the architect Ward Wellington Ward.”

  “Yes, I read that in the notice,” Sam said. “I’m familiar with him.” She had seen some of his house plans at the Onondaga Historical Association. Meticulous, in colored pencil and ink. The three W’s of his name, the repetition of the “Ward”s at each end, the short-long-short look of it, all drawn in that distinctive Arts and Crafts lettering. Everything was a work of art, even his name.

  “Oh good. So you know his houses are very special. Garrett had it built in 1913. After he and his wife died, it fell into neglectful hands, but none of the original details are ruined. Clearly it needs some TLC: a heating system, electrical updates, new roof, mold abatement. Possibly a chimney rebuild. Better drainage in the basement. Shore up the foundations. But it’s still a wonderful house, no?”

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  Later she drove to the big suburban Wegmans and bought some wild halibut, diced sweet potato, and triple-washed organic baby spinach for dinner. She also got Ally’s favorite fruit, mango, and her husband’s favorite cereal, No-Grain Vanilla Granola, and several liter bottles of that German mineral water she liked. She took the groceries to their house. No one was home yet. And then, instead of cooking, she got in her car and drove back into the city. It was nearly six, and the sun was starting to go down. The sky was backlit, iridescent, spring bright, and as she drove she watched the clouds close to the horizon glow pink and orange. She drove back to the city because she had to see the house in this dusk light, this ridiculous, almost garish light. She crested the hill. She pulled into the house’s tiny driveway. The roofline was steep, and the shitty asphalt tiles were coming undone. But. The front windows and the side windows faced the sunset. The city in all directions gleamed, and it looked as if an ocean lay beyond the clouds, some giant lake or shore. Ward Wellington Ward, this architect, he must have known. He thought of the sky and the trees as he designed his house; he knew how much you need those early-spring sunsets in Syracuse, even if they glisten off a foot of snow.