world. We want to live forever. It’s a funny kind of vanity, and I can’t figure out if it makes us better, or worse.”
“Whatever. That’s no excuse. I hope all those losers who teased you have tragic hair now. Middle parts and dandruff. I’d be gratified by that knowledge.”
“No hair. Cue balls,” he said while combing his fingers through his own receding hairline. It was about a half inch higher than when she’d met him. It occurred to her that their backgrounds were different, but in one basic way, they were similar. They didn’t like themselves. Or more aptly put, they were never content with what they were but were always striving for something better. Which seemed pretty dumb, given the boys on the 59th Street team, who probably built shrines to their balls in their attics but couldn’t figure out how to unscrew a lightbulb without instructions.
“Do you regret being Indian?” she asked.
He looked up her, surprised. “Sometimes,” he said. “Not just my skin. The way I look, generally,” he said, with his hands on his belly. It wasn’t nearly as big as he imagined.
“But I love you how you are,” she told him, then reached her hand across the seat and pulled the wool fabric of his trousers between her fingers. His voice was hoarse. “Thanks.”
She veered off the highway at Lincoln but kept her hand in his lap. He picked it up and squeezed. The moment felt too good to ruin with words, so she didn’t.
This was the first time they’d driven in a car together, and it felt more real than anything they’d ever done. Like the two of them had sloughed their city shells, and the skin underneath, unaccustomed to exposure, was soft and easily bruised.
Ten miles down, the road narrowed. Farmland stretched in every direction. There weren’t any cars anymore. Only the sound of wheels on cement.
“What’s that smell?” Saraub asked.
She smiled, because it had been a long time since she’d smelled air this sweet. “Corn. The combines do the threshing right there in the fields. Farmers, they’d get squirrelly in summer if a couple of weeks went by without rain. Whole towns would be on edge. You could practically hear them collectively grinding their teeth at night like crickets. They prayed for rain, then when it came, they prayed for it to stop. That’s why my mom called it God’s Country.”
“God’s Country. I like that.”
They were still holding hands. Warmth threaded through her stomach, and in this quiet car, on this dark road, on the way to visit her sick mother, she felt safe. She wondered if she’d lived for so long without happiness, that now that it had found her, she couldn’t recognize it. “Why do you punch walls?”
He let go of her hand, then pressed his nose against the passenger window, so she couldn’t see him. “What do you mean?”
“The walls in your study. You punched them. I saw the marks. There were holes.” It seemed important to her now to know. Maybe she’d driven him to it, with her endless bleaching and straightening. Maybe she’d driven Betty to her red ants, too.
“I guess I get mad,” he said, still showing her the back of his head.
“At me?” She was close to crying all over again. Surprising how hard this question had been to ask.
He nodded. “Yeah.” The tears came fast to her cheeks. He didn’t notice them. “But not just you. A lot of things…I’ve always done that. Punched things when I’m alone. So no one knows when I’m mad. Did it scare you?”
She waited a while, until she knew her voice wouldn’t break. “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t think I realized it until now, but it did.” By the glare of the windshield’s reflection, she could almost see the skittish kid with greasy hair that she used to be. They weren’t so different as she liked to pretend. They’d each kept their fear, a gnawing thing.
“Is that why you left?” Saraub asked.
She shook her head, and the tears returned. “It’s not you—”
“—It’s me.” He finished for her, then laughed a bitter, humorless laugh that let her know a part of him, at least for now, had changed for the worse because of what she’d done.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
Three miles later, at the intersection of Main Street and the Nebraska State Psychiatric Hospital, was a Super 8. She thought she’d stayed in it before, but she couldn’t remember for sure. These motels all looked the same. She waited in the