Excerpted from The Book of Ayn (Catapult, November 2023)

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Despite their proximity to the city and the fact of their divorce, my parents insisted on a monthly family Zoom where they pummeled me with questions and discussed the downfall of the American empire and impending demise of the Earth.

My mother, Jackie, was a beautiful, fragile woman who hid her wealth behind a rustic cottage upstate and a chic horsey aesthetic that had no functional relevance to her actual life. Over the last four years, Jackie had found meaning and purpose in political canvassing. Winters, she argued with strangers on the telephone. Summers, she argued on porches and front lawns.

My father, Mark, was a lovable schlub under the orthorexic thumb of his pink-pussy-eared wife and their tyrannical spawn. Once every six months I sat at their dining table, watching my half sisters bully our father and wanting to punch them in their Marxist-private-school throats. They felt entitled to an elite education that taught the value of dedicating one’s life to self-sacrifice, and my father was their financer/punching bag. All through my cancellation Mark had remained quietly and abstractly proud of me. But late in the summer, even he had turned slightly against me: developing a fixation with my fertility that obviously meant he no longer believed in my career.

It was a comfort to think that biological kinship had meant little to Ayn Rand. What she valued most was philosophical mutuality. Ayn believed that one had to choose people, along with every aspect of one’s life, moment to moment, unburdened by the past. True freedom, she said, lived in this untethered sense of forward momentum, in the breaking of bonds and the severing of ties. It was only through selfishness that one could ever be fully and authentically oneself.

During the monthly family Zoom I usually listened with a soft, unfocused mind and retained little information. The discussion topics didn’t rouse me but I often cried when I got off the call. For the three of us. That this was what having a family had amounted to.

But today I had an agenda. I hadn’t borrowed money from my family in years. It was humiliating and un-Randian, but I told myself I had no choice. If I was going to get enough bad attention to support myself, I had to be in Los Angeles. On the call, I told them about Jamie and the tight schedule he’d set. I had three weeks to write the pilot and series doc and already he was setting meetings with producers and networks and private-equity people. Jamie believed I could use my penchant for wrong ideas to my advantage. He had prophesized the imminent rising of my star. And I trusted him, I told them. He was very, very young.

As usual Jackie seemed skeptical. Of both my plans and my morals. Ever since the poop incident, it seemed, my mother had been suspicious of my character. It wasn’t my fault, of course, that my baby brother had died for no reason in his sleep, shattering everyone’s sense of good and evil and the meaning of life itself. But my behavior had not been helpful. I had rejected the pall of grief, the hush of speech, the new moral sensitivity imposed on our home. I hadn’t cared for my parents’ feelings. Acting out was so much easier. Jokes were fun and also useful. They smoothed the edges, consisting, as they did, in the soft stuff of moral subtlety. I had started with practical jokes involving poop and then moved on to other ones—with bad words or ideas that made people feel funny in their tummies. Like they, too, were getting away with something.

Unlike Mark, Jackie was resistant to my humor. She was always sending me articles about sex-trafficked women who’d started their own yoga studios or texting me Thoreau quotes. She made diagnostic allusions to the fact of my being an only child, and maybe she was right and I was spoiled. But so was Thoreau. Everyone knew he’d left Walden on weekends so that his mother could wash his clothes.

“And this manager guy thinks your book will make a good TV show?”

Mark sounded hopeful. I explained that I was not in fact adapting the opioid satire but rather writing an original show about an iconoclastic woman who had been mislabeled an “anti-feminist.”

Jackie’s face lit up. “Jane Fonda?”

“Ayn Rand.”

And now my mother shook her head woefully. “Mark, we failed.”

I was quietly thrilled that the family Zoom was starting to resemble Ayn Rand’s own combative departure from St. Petersburg. Ayn’s mother had become a kind of Soviet darling, an underpaid teacher and beneficiary of the State’s meager rewards system who disapproved of her daughter’s stubborn ambition that dismissed both feminine roles and egalitarianism. Whereas Ayn’s father, having renounced the totalitarian State, had encouraged his brilliant daughter to pursue her dreams, her freedom, and a better life in America.

“Puppy,” said Mark. “I understand that you’re trying to transition to a more lucrative industry and I understand that you were canceled and that it’s not easy these days being from a wealthy family . . .”

I thanked him for seeing these things, for seeing me. Unlike dismissive, unfeeling Jackie, who had now jerked right up to the camera in a great, quivering pink blur. When I’d told her that they were going to publish my first book, Jackie had congratulated me and then begun almost immediately to describe the migration habits of a subspecies of tern that flew amazingly from Alaska to New Zealand, shutting down one side of its brain and then the other, in order to remain awake for the yearlong duration of its flight. I had let her rhapsodize; I couldn’t compete with a creature of such genius and economy.

“But lending you money at your age,” Mark continued. “Really isn’t good for your self-esteem.”

I completely agreed. Dependence was a trap; I had to be self-reliant. That was the only way to inner fulfillment and existential freedom. But I didn’t have time to wait tables; Hollywood had literally just called me.

“It’s an urgent matter of the zeitgeist,” I said.

“And I want to help you, Pup. I really do.”

I beamed at my loving father. Only he cared. Only he believed in me. Even when he disagreed he still accepted me; still laughed at my jokes; still made the choice not to be offended. Because it was a choice. Every moment of our lives, a choice.

“But I need you to make an appointment at the Murray Hill clinic.”

To freeze my eggs. It was a bribe and definitely his wife’s idea. A woman whose mind couldn’t stretch beyond the cul-de-sac rat maze of their Westchester neighborhood. A woman who could not imagine a life without children like she couldn’t fathom a female hand without a manicure. Whereas the thought of producing a child frightened and depressed me. I could barely care for myself, let alone a tiny, screaming organism with its own needs and ambitions. With its own thoughts and politics. Its own guilt and innocence and impossible-not-to-hurt-feelings. Having a child felt like the least fun way I could destroy myself.

“Please, Dad. I just want to make a TV show.”

“And after that you might want to have kids.”

“I won’t.” My voice was resonant. I believed myself. Or I believed what Ayn said: to be a full-time genius, there simply wasn’t time for progeny.

“But what if you meet someone,” Mark persisted, “who wants to do that with you?”

“I won’t.”

“Not if you keep dating young boys.” Jackie was smug.

“I date young men,” I clarified. “Because the ones my age are all married. Or old.”

Mark blinked at me with glassy eyes. My failure to be loved was suddenly his failure, and Jackie’s fault. Now I had to prove them both wrong. But I was going to cry, and before the call was over. I selected an emoji filter and swiped it on over my face. A sunny yellow avatar filled the frame, swallowing down a mighty sob.

“Puppy. Just make the appointment.”

I nodded. I really could just make the appointment. Whatever they told me there I could probably spin into bad news. Too many hormones; too few eggs.

Jackie looked annoyed. That I had won. That I was heading to LA to get myself canceled. She hated my ambition. As if true art poured only from selfless people who’d been purified by their suffering; magical horse-whispering women who’d borne their own father’s children and lived to start a yoga studio.

“Well, I’ll miss you guys,” I said to my parents. “Till next month.”

Then I got off the phone, and cried.

When I spoke with Vivian that night, she was in a bad way. Her symptoms had worsened; medievalized, really. She was now experiencing a sharp pain—like an army of tiny, spiked wheelbarrows—and a weird swelling sensation at her temples. I was sorry for my friend, whatever was happening to her. Vivian was broke, uninsured, and basically squatting in her five-flight walk-up. I offered to lend her some of my father’s money.

“I’m actually okay.”

I was stunned. Vivian had never described herself as “okay.” She explained that a young couple had just moved into the building and offered her support through their mutual aid organization. They brought her groceries each week and all she had to do was vlog her symptoms for their patrons.

“You have patrons for your Lyme disease?”

But Vivian didn’t find it funny. “They’re good folks, Anna. They were actually just tweeting at me not to kill myself.”

I felt ill. Not because my friend was potentially suicidal but because she’d tweeted about it. Vivian was torturously herself, and I loved that about her. But this new platform felt like some kind of capitulation. Neither one of us liked being told what or how to think, but now, it seemed, Vivian had sponsors to answer to. I was also a little bit jealous. No one on the internet had asked me not to kill myself; in fact one of them had suggested I take my book out onto the penthouse balcony and use it as a parachute. It didn’t matter that I lived twenty floors below the actual penthouse. These people cared nothing for nuance.

“You tweeted you were going to kill yourself?”

“I was mostly kidding but they took me seriously.”

“How good of them.”

I was joking but it seemed to provoke a cool, mutual silence. I looked out at my view. The city skyline signified money and pollution and various forms of supremacy—evidence of all the systems that had failed us. But that, too, was capitulation. Not every problem was the fault of some failing system. Human beings were not so weak and susceptible. Individuals could still think themselves into better futures. If you didn’t believe that, how could you ever be anything but a victim?

“Caretaking will just keep you in need of care.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

It meant that these friends of hers were vampires; sucking Vivian’s anemic blood for their own spiritual strength, using her for their pseudo-religion of altruism. They would get so much more from her than she could ever get from them.

“You need to find a way to look after yourself.”

“Oh you think so, Ayn Rand?”

And now I was angry. Vivian didn’t just hate cape-wearing, libertarian pro-industrialists; she hated artists. Many times, I’d heard her denounce our grandiose self-exemption from societal concerns. Our treasured moral relativism and allegiance to the sublime mystery of art. That we believed in the supreme importance of an ineffable thing that produced opaque ethical results. It was part of her general hatred of elitism. But in despising art she lacked discernment, and expertise. Recalling Antifa’s toilet-cleaning novelists, I felt myself ice over.

“I’m actually moving to LA for a while.”

“Perfect!” she spat. “You can practice your self-help yoga pants Randianism out there.”

I didn’t wear yoga pants and it was one of my most redeeming qualities. I could feel it; there was no explaining the concept of selfishness to a person whose identity was built on their own physical disintegration. I couldn’t help Vivian either, and ended the call.

I got a blood test and then, a few days later, I had my appointment. The fertility clinic was a large, minimalist space painted in rich, coercive pinks with glossy wall prints of Buddha and Ganesh and gigantic, vaginal close-ups of unfurling lilies. I took a seat in the waiting room opposite an enormous print of the Madonna and child. The world hung darkly over the two figures; her face was lit the sad, lonely blue of screen-gazing as she beheld her pudgy infant Christ. A pensive baby like a balding adult man trying to hold in a fart.

It was a long wait. When I finally went up to inquire with the receptionist I was ushered apologetically down a long pink corridor to the doctor’s office. The door opened on another pink suite with more religious art. The doctor sat at her desk. She was tan and curvy with tight shiny curls and gave off an aura of nubile neatness. Removing her earbuds, she greeted me with the slow, blinking eyes of a ruminant.

“I like to do a short guided after lunch.” She smiled at me, remorselessly.

On the desk was a photo of two red-faced children with the doctor in between; the three of them squashed together, exhausted with happiness. I wondered where their father was. Or if he was merely sperm in a vial. I couldn’t tell—was the photo an admission of failure or an advertisement for single parenting? Whichever it was, I felt a tart little glee that the doctor’s family was so untidy. She was now fussing with the computer; clicking and scrolling, her face growing tense. The meditative calm receding as she read through my file.

“Your test results are quite . . . surprising.”

“How do you mean, surprising?”

“Just for your age.”

I had heard of this. Women in their late thirties, even early forties, who had the ovaries of sixteen-year-old girls. Dangerously fertile. I took a moment to wonder if this held some deeper meaning, was perhaps an arrow pointing me toward an unexpected fate.

The doctor leaned toward me, while something inside seemed to tug her back. I saw the strain in her body, like she was evading some dangerous edge.

“It looks like you’re in the early stages of perimenopause.”

My first thought was doom. That something medically terminal had happened to my body. But this quickly changed, spun into a coldly ascendant, vaguely spiritual feeling; that I had been right about myself all along.

“With the depression,” she said. “And irregular periods and disturbed sleep, it does make sense.”

So did, I’d thought, the stress of my cancellation. But infertility made more sense; both of my symptoms and of my life’s Randian trajectory.

“Freezing is still an option but with your egg count so low . . .”

“No, no.” I waved her away. “I don’t even want children.”

“Oh!”

“I only got the test because my dad made me.”

“Ah.” She nodded, smiling but wary. Her gaze fell over the family photo and she took a greedy little sip.

“And anyway,” I said. “The planet is dying so their lives would just be misery and chaos.”

“Right . . .”

I was mostly joking and really hadn’t meant to become an anti-natalist eco-warrior, but the doctor now seemed to fear me. She withdrew behind the safety of her monitor, and this, along with the print above her desk, pissed me off. The painting depicted another homunculus baby Jesus glaring up at its doting mother. It was an image that, in the context of this office, implied that a child should be the whole meaning and purpose of one’s life.

“You know your wall art is kind of evangelical.”

The doctor flinched. “Beg pardon?”

“Never mind.”

I was embarrassed. Why was I giving this woman—this bureaucrat of the unquestioned ordinance to keep women in babies—the power to hurt me? The doctor’s fingers scuttled over the keyboard and a paper tongue purged from the printer.

“Just in case you want to see someone.” She handed the sheet across the desk. “These are the counselors I recommend.”

“Thanks, I’m good.”

The doctor looked down into her lap, shifting in her chair. I was making a scene. I could feel the omniscient gaze of my stepmother, who knew the doctor from Pilates and who would, no doubt, learn of my transgression and report back to Mark, who would certainly tell Jackie. I could feel the weight of their judgment already. As if I had done it on purpose: made my own body an inhospitable place.

“I’m sorry,” I said gruffly. “I just really don’t want a family.” She looked up again with nervous, hostage-y relief.

“Well, it’s great to know exactly what you want!”

It was, obviously. And crucial to living life for oneself, and on one’s own terms. But I found that I couldn’t, for some reason, return the doctor’s enthusiasm.