They cleared the fairgrounds and headed north on the interstate. The wind rocked the Suburban, as if they were driving a billboard up I-27. A pickup truck sped past with a gun rack in the rear window and a bumper sticker that read: O LORD, PLEASE GIVE US ANOTHER OIL BOOM, AND WE PROMISE NOT TO SCREW IT UP THIS TIME. She braced herself to make another run at her husband's humanity-or to find it again.
'Bode, the poverty in the colonias is staggering. We need to do something.'
'What? What can government do? We spent trillions fighting the war on poverty, and we lost. All we got for our money are more poor people. I got news for you, Little Miss Colonia-Texas is broke! But you want me to give more money we don't have to Mexicans so they can have more babies they can't afford? We can give those Mexicans all the money in the world, Lindsay, but they're not suddenly gonna start wearing J. Crew and shopping at Whole Foods. The solution isn't more money, it's better behavior. But government can't change human behavior. Government can't make people stop smoking or eating fast food or using drugs or having babies they can't feed. So government can't solve poverty.'
'Government can try.'
'It did. It failed. Government has never solved a single social problem, and it's never gonna solve a single social problem. You liberals cry for more money and more government, but the truth is, government can't make a difference in people's lives. Only people can.'
Her husband's words jolted her-and she knew at that very moment what she had to do. What she would do.
'You're right.'
'I am?'
'Yes. And I'm going to make a difference.'
'Good. You go make a difference while I govern a goddamn bankrupt state.'
'How bad is it?'
'Twenty-seven-billion bad.'
'On TV, you said we don't have a deficit.'
'I lied.'
'Why?'
'Voters don't want to hear it.'
'What are you going to do?'
'Cut the budget.'
'What?'
'Everything.'
'Schools?'
'Education and Medicaid eat up three-fourths of the budget.'
'Raise taxes.'
He laughed, but not as if it were funny.
'In an election year? You sound like a Democrat. Raise taxes. That's their answer to every problem.'
She didn't think this was the time to tell him she was a Democrat.
'Use the rainy day fund. What is it now, nine billion?'
'Nine-point-three.'
'Then use it. At least for schools.'
'The tea party will raise holy hell.'
'Do they control you?'
'No. They control the voters who control me.'
They rode in silence for a few miles through land that lay as flat as a table top and was as dry as cement. The drought had turned Texas into another Dust Bowl. When she again spoke, her voice was soft.
'Bode, you don't want to be the governor who gutted public education. You saw the children in Graciela Rodriguez's kindergarten class. They need our help.'
'How many of those kids will graduate in twelve years?'
'Half. Maybe. But she's their only hope. And you're her only hope. I told her you cared. Please don't make me a liar.'
He sighed and stared out the window at cattle searching for grass on the plains.
'Bode, please do the right thing.'
'You mean lose the election?'
'You used to want to do the right thing.'
'I used to lose. Now I win.'
'Is that all that matters?'
'Better than losing.'
'But why do you want to win?'
He looked at her as if she were crazy. 'Because I'm a politician. That's what we do.'
'But why? '
'To keep this state out of Democrats' hands, so they don't screw up Texas like they screwed up the rest of the country.'
'We're pretty screwed up if we've got a twenty-seven-billion-dollar deficit.'
'Don't ever say that in public.'
'Bode, I've been the governor's wife for eight years. I know what to say and not to say in public.'
'Well, if you want to be the governor's wife for another four years-'
'I don't.'
'You don't what?'
'Want to be the governor's wife.'
She could feel the Rangers' muscles tense up front. The governor turned fully to his wife.
'What the hell does that mean?'
There were two Bode Bonners: the public politician and the private man. She still loved the private man, but there was less of him to love. With each passing year living in the Governor's Mansion-with each election-the man seemed to merge into the politician. Or the politician consumed the man. Like a cancer. She had seen cancer eat away at patients in the hospital until they were just a shell of their former selves. The cancer that afflicted her husband-political ambition-had had the same effect on him. Ambition had eaten away all that was good inside Bode Bonner and left him a shell of a man. She had hoped he would recover, but she knew now that he would not survive. He wasn't fighting his cancer. He had become his cancer. She could no longer bear to look at him, this man she had loved and lain with and looked upon as her hero. She now averted her eyes so he could not see her tears.
'Bode, I'm not happy. With my life.'
'Lindsay, this is our life. I'm the governor, and you're the governor's wife.'
'I'm forty-four years old. Becca's in college now. She doesn't need me, you don't need me-what am I supposed to do the rest of my life? Smile for the cameras? Shop? Play tennis and do lunch at the country club? That's not me. I didn't sign up for that.' She wiped her eyes and turned to him. 'Bode, I can't do this anymore.'
His expression changed. She saw fear in his eyes.
'You want a divorce?'
'I want to be useful.'
'You are. You're the governor's wife.'
'I'm used, not useful. Bode, I don't want to just breathe oxygen and fill the space inside my clothes. I want my life to have meaning. I want to make a difference.'
'You do. You volunteer at the homeless shelter, the food bank, the elementary school-'
'I want to be a nurse again.'
'A nurse? '
'Yes.'
'You can't be a nurse.'
'Why not? I kept my license up to date.'
'Where are you gonna work? In the ER at Austin General Hospital? Everyone knowing who you are? It'd be a
