“It doesn’t scare me!” I shove his hand away and stand up. “I’m not good at relationships, and I’ve told you that. I’ve been very clear about it. You said that was what you liked about me, and now you’re asking me to”—I wave a frantic hand in the air—“do this?”
“Yes. I’m asking you to do this. Move in with me, Jane. It’ll just get better.”
“Who says it will get better? That’s ridiculous. We both agreed that we have issues, thanks to our shitty families, but everything has been working really well, and now you’ve screwed it up. I can’t do this. I can’t be that.”
“Be what?” Now he’s standing too, his voice rising along with his body.
“Some kind of . . .” I growl in frustration and pace to the fridge to pour more wine. “I don’t know. Some kind of constant fucking companion. A stupid, nurturing idiot.”
“Jane, listen to yourself. There’s nothing stupid about loving someone.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Really? Tell that to Meg.”
I loved her. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I loved her, and she left. Loving her brought me pain, and I don’t accept pain. I put it behind me and I won’t ever accept it again. I have to get out of this.
“Jane—” he starts, but I shake my head.
“You should go. I need to make travel arrangements.”
“I get it, okay? I know what your family was like. And I know it hurt you so much when Meg died. But can’t we just try?”
“Try what? Settling down? Fuck up a little family together, just like both our parents did? What’s the point, Luke?”
He knows better than this. His own mother focused so much manic, destructive energy on him in childhood that he didn’t speak to her for most of his adult years and has always sworn he doesn’t want a traditional life. That was why he liked me.
“The point is that I love you,” Luke says, “and I’ve never wanted to live with anyone before either. Never. But I want to live with you, so you take that however you want. Just . . .” He throws up his hands in exasperation. “Go on your trip. Think about it. Really think about it. And decide what you want to do when you get back.”
He dons his jacket in quick tugs, telegraphing his anger, wanting me to feel it and respond. But I can’t feel it, just like I can’t feel much of anything. He grabs his wallet and keys and jerks the door open, wanting some words from me that I don’t know; but just as he’s stepping out and closing the door behind him, he stops.
I stand there staring. I have techniques for making people like me, but I have no tools for smoothing things like this over, because I usually don’t care. This time I do care, but all I can feel is outrage that he’s doing this to me. Making me hurt when he’s supposed to love me.
The tight expectation in his face sags to disappointment. “Call me, okay? Let me know what’s going on with your niece?”
“Sure,” I say, “whatever.”
Luke waits for another heartbeat before closing the door. He’s finally done talking, at least. I take the bottle of wine to the couch and sulk, waiting for my cat to pay attention to me. I’ll look into plane tickets tomorrow. I’m too exhausted to bother tonight.
CHAPTER 5
The Oklahoma City airport has changed. It’s beautiful now, buffed to a shine by energy-industry money into a very modern facility. I rent a car and tell Siri to find me a good barbecue restaurant on my way out of town. Home is still two hours away.
Home. It doesn’t mean to me what it means to other people. I scowl at the very idea of nostalgia. Even if someone had a great childhood, it was still childhood, full of powerlessness and dependency. Why would anyone want that back?
I don’t understand that any more than I understand why I would want tiny people depending on me. The idea of children feels cloying and gross. Just being loved by Luke is sometimes too much. It feels like he needs me, and I want to hurt him for that. And lately, very occasionally, it feels like I need him, and that’s a violent crack of lightning inside me. Another good reason to end this.
I’m free now. Glad that I left. The sticky, niggling hints of fear and commitment are washed away with the distance.
Sighing, I turn my mind toward planning my lunch. I’ll definitely have brisket and maybe a few ribs with extra-spicy sauce. Corn bread with honey butter. Pudding for dessert. Sweet tea.
“Mmm. Sweet tea.” I smile as my phone tells me to exit the freeway and turn onto Freedom Street.
Freedom Street. Jesus Christ. There’s a fucking Indian reservation five miles from this spot. And I’m the screwed-up psycho in this world?
The barbecue place is tiny and run-down, and there’s a Route 66 sign in the corner of the window even though Route 66 is half an hour south of here. But Siri was looking out for me. The food is almost as good as I want it to be, and the young Hispanic guy named Felix who serves me is very pleasant to look at and quite flirtatious. All in all, a good afternoon.
I didn’t have any trouble getting time off work, because I didn’t give them an opportunity to imagine they should be upset. I emailed my bosses over the weekend and presented the issue as an emergency, assuring them I knew I could count on their support. They wouldn’t have dared to contradict me, especially when I mentioned that Kayla is my firstborn niece. I was only sixteen years old when she was born. The first grandchild in the family!
That’s all true, though I barely remember anything but the scorn I felt for my stupid brother, who was turning twenty-one and on his way to his first state prison stint when the baby arrived.
Regardless, now I’m on paid short-term leave. I suppose I shouldn’t have abandoned Rob to his own devices at this delicate juncture. If I’m gone more than a week, he might be the golden boy again by the time I get back. But Jesus, he was boring, and, hard work or not, he’ll never live down his drunken fuckup. I can pick up my campaign when I get back and continue slowly destroying his reputation. And if I find my wayward niece? I’ll make sure they all know I’m a goddamn hero.
I grin at the idea and set off toward home sweet home.
The land is flat and ugly, drying out with the dying sun of fall, and the suburbs go on forever now, broken up by tiny old towns that have been shriveling since they got bypassed by the interstate. There is no freeway to my old stomping grounds. Not enough people want to go there. It’s all two-lane highways and stop signs at every main street. But the highways are built wide enough for trucks. Lots of trucks.
It’s been so long since I’ve driven here that I’m startled by the red of the dirt. I’d forgotten it. I’d never even noticed it growing up, to be honest. But now I see the huge wounds in the earth leaching iron into puddles like spreading blood. Construction on a new house has opened a huge, pretty gash filled with reddened rainwater. It’s a startling change. The soil of Minnesota is black as pitch.
When I was young these scrubby lands were dotted with pumpjacks bobbing up and down. They pulled crude oil from the ground and provided nice points of interests in the landscape, like lolling cattle. I don’t see any bobbing pumpjacks now. No big oil derricks either. They’ve all been replaced with boring pipes that bring the natural gas out of the rock. The few pumps I do spy are stubby and misshapen, working to press wastewater and earthquakes into the ground.