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I don’t even know what I was going to say because I don’t know what I can say. Nothing, probably, because the damage is done and no amount of ‘sorry’ can fix it.
I gave up, because I know when I’m being ignored.
And I cried. Then I cried some more. Then I considered canceling the job interview and just going to Levi’s house and telling him I’d canceled in the hopes that he’d, I don’t know, take me back and I could become the perfect country house-girlfriend who cans and jams and quilts and eventually has a slew of kids and never writes another word in her life.
But I didn’t cancel. I know what I’d think of myself a year from now if I did, what I’d think of myself in five years. I’d think I gave up on my ambition, that I settled, that I traded in what I really wanted from life for a man.
“Does South Dakota have any good cuisine?” Silas asks as we drive down Interstate 81.
“Probably,” I say.
“I mean, are there any regional specialties,” he says. “Like we’ve got apple hand pies, or Wisconsin has cheese, or Kansas City has barbecue.”
“Buffalo burgers?” I say, pulling out my phone. “I’m pretty sure South Dakota still has bison.”
“They’re endangered,” he admonishes. “Don’t eat endangered animals.”
“They farm them,” I say, pulling up a Wikipedia page.
“You can farm buffalo?”
“You can farm anything if you try hard enough.”
“There’s no way that’s true,” Silas says. “You can’t farm whales.”
“Has anyone tried hard enough?”
Silas frowns.
“There are animals who won’t breed in captivity,” he says.
“Is that why you’re not married?” I ask, still looking at the Wikipedia page on South Dakota.
“June,” Silas says, as if he’s scandalized. “That was sexist.”
“I’m full of surprises,” I deadpan.
“Just don’t tell that one in your interview,” he says. “I don’t know, or do. If you think they’ll be into it. Read the room, I guess.”
“Give me more advice, please,” I say.
“Fart before you go into the interview room,” he says instantly. “Don’t hold it in, because then you’ll end up gassing everyone in there, and they’ll know it was you, and you will not get hired at that job. You will not.”
I stare wordlessly at my older brother.
“According to a friend,” he says.
“Any other advice?” I ask.The sun’s barely up when Silas drops me off at the airport with a hug, a hair-ruffle, and one final admonishment not to hold in farts. The sky is getting lighter, but somehow, it feels worse than the dark.
I don’t like sunrises. I know that sounds strange to say, since they’re supposed to be symbolic of the hope of a new day or whatever, but to me, they’ve always just meant that the sun is coming up and I still haven’t finished my homework. That I’ve stayed up all night and now the time to hit this deadline is well and truly running out.
I stand there, in the check-in area of the Roanoke airport, and look through the huge plate-glass windows at the sunrise, and I think of the windows in Levi’s bedroom. I don’t want to, but there it is.
Maybe this was never going to work out, I think, already feeling the tears welling in my eyes for the 345,577th time since yesterday. He was always ready to see the sunrise and I always wanted it to stay dark for a few more hours and maybe that’s some kind of metaphor for how we are and why we can’t be together.
I stand there. I stare at the sun, fully aware that you’re not supposed to do that. I try to put together some explanation involving darkness people and daylight people, and I try to tell myself it was fated that we wouldn’t work out, but I’m tired and I’m wrecked and I can’t make any of it work, even in my own head.
All I can really think is that I’m here, staring at the sunrise, and he’s somewhere watching the exact same sunrise and we are so, so far apart.Getting from Sprucevale to Bluff City is a lesson in how far apart small towns truly are, even in modern America. I know I should think it’s amazing that I can get there in less than twenty-four hours, but mostly, I just think it’s exhausting.
First, the two-hour drive from Sprucevale to the Roanoke-Blackburg Regional Airport. Then, two hours of waiting for a quick flight to the Charlotte Airport.
I call Levi again from Charlotte, sitting in an uncomfortable chair and staring out the window at planes and trucks going back and forth across the tarmac. There’s no answer, so I hang up without leaving a voicemail because I still don’t know what I would say.
Hi, I’m still sorry but I’m also calling you from a different state because you were right that I was always going to leave, I was just ignoring that problem?
