American Rust

by Philipp Meyer

She had decided to let him find his own way. She had made the wrong decision.

The definition of motherhood in two sentences.

You needed money if you wanted to move; you had to move if you wanted money.

It was his own choices. They never felt like choices while he was making them, but nonetheless they were.

Citizens with pensions and health insurance rarely robbed their neighbors, beat their wives, or cooked up methamphetamine in their back sheds.

Between her son and her dignity, it was no contest.

All the things you needed to know in life—you didn’t learn them until you’d already made your decisions.

“I made one bad decision but I made it every day.”

So at the moment worrying about AIDS was like worrying the world would be struck by a comet.

“Get your waders on. It’s about to rain horseshit.”

she had retreated to some place the signals barely reached.

Usually the mistake that killed people—soldiers, pilots, racecar drivers—was the second one. You lived through the first one and then realized it had happened and you were so distracted by it that you made another one.