23 Life Is a Circle
Life Is a Circle
These are all the things I’d like to say to Will: Why do I feel like every time we take two steps forward, you take one back?
Are you trying to get away from me? Why are you so charming sometimes and so glum others?
What is a person who had an apartment in New York and studied law doing in an RV in the middle of nowhere?
Why did Lucy trust you so much? Why do I?
How can my brain explain to my heart that I shouldn’t get too close to you?
Let alone the things I don’t know how to put a name to it—or I don’t dare.
But what I actually say to Will is this: “Could you put on a little music?”
“Sure.” He turns on the radio.
We say nothing else for the next half hour.
I’m not sure what Lucy meant to accomplish with this task.
Leaving the state was supposed to be somehow symbolic, I guess.
I honestly don’t know why I never did it before.
I could have taken a bus to South Dakota, which is pretty close to Ink Lake.
A few hours, and I would have finally made it out of Ink Lake.
I was about to do it a few times before.
Like when I got picked to compete in a national skating tournament right before Lucy got sick.
Or when my parents bought four tickets to San Francisco to go on vacation, but then they had to pay for some expense they had thought Lucy’s insurance would cover and Mom decided the smartest thing was to get a refund.
“How many hours did you say it was?”
“Five,” Will responds. “Almost six.” We left at dawn, thinking we could make it back the next day. We’ve already driven a lot, and the sky is deep blue. He says we should stop and stretch our legs.
While he’s pumping gas, I go inside the station for two coffees. He drinks his in one gulp, while I save most of mine for the journey.
“You ever been to San Francisco?”
“Yeah.” Will doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “Why?”
“Nothing, I was just thinking about how we were supposed to go there on vacation a few years ago but we ended up canceling. It would probably have been fun. Lucy was always talking about all these places she wanted to go. She was a little obsessive about it. That’s normal, though, right?
Anyone would want that if they were condemned to live in a hospital room and struggle just to survive. It must be…claustrophobic.”
“What about you, though? You never wondered what was out there?”
“Sometimes I prefer not to know about things that are far away.”
“Why, though? You could go anywhere. Barcelona, for example. The food there’s great and the sun just makes you happy. Or Bali. Or Paris, even if the French aren’t the nicest people and the Eiffel Tower’s overrated.”
“Have you been to all those places?”
“Yeah.” Will clears his throat and glances over. “And lots of others too. Norway, Iceland, Argentina. Cyprus, that was a crazy trip. I also took a train trip through a bunch of cities in Europe.”
I admire and envy him, and hate him a little bit too, because all those things seem out of reach for me, and yet living them through him reminds me that they exist and tells me how mediocre my life is. “How’s that possible?”
“I used to travel in the summers.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Sure, but still, I want to know your reasons.”
“Because it’s addictive. And maybe I was making a mistake too, trying to find something that wasn’t there in any of those places.
Or just wanting to clear my mind completely.
Still, I don’t regret it. When you come back from a place and it’s so different from what you know, it’s like you’re someone else, even if that doesn’t mean you’re better. You’ve changed.”
“Is there still somewhere you’re dreaming of going?”
“You mean just one place?” He looks uncertain and then concentrates on passing a truck loaded with cattle feed. “There are dozens, hundreds.”
“And yet there you are spinning your wheels in Ink Lake, a place most people wouldn’t go to if you paid them and offered them room and board.”
Will shakes his head. “Let’s say I’m on standby right now.”
“Like when there’s a problem on live TV?”
“I guess.”
“That’s not possible, Will.”
“Why not?”
“Because no matter what you want, time keeps flowing past without looking back to see who gets left behind. Life doesn’t have a pause button.”
“What was it you said the other night about choices?” he asks.
“You’re cheating,” I say kiddingly, because he misstated my words. “What I said was: As long as you don’t choose, everything’s still possible.”
“Same difference. Anyway, how about you? Where is it you want to go?”
“I told you: I’d just as soon not know about what’s far away. When something can’t be, it’s torture to even talk about it.”
He knits his eyebrows. “Why so?”
“Are you kidding? Look at me: I’m about to turn twenty-three, I live with my parents, I walk dogs for a living, and I have no short- or long-term goals.” I don’t know why, but I get the urge to cry, and I turn my head toward the window.
The purr of the vehicle pierces the silence.
“Greta, I’m going to tell you something.
You’re intelligent, but it’s not just that—it’s the kind of intelligence you have that’s fascinating.
I’m absolutely certain that you’re still in the prologue of your life, about to decide what the story is going to be.
And now you have a map in your hand—a map of longing made to measure for you. ”
I don’t respond. I can’t admit to him aloud how comforting his words are to me, in that slightly hoarse voice of his that sounded so cold to me at first but now, as the distance between us has decreased, is almost like a part of me.
The road is long and solitary.
I look at the landscape and imagine Will going around and around the world, eating sushi in Japan and croissants in France, sky-diving, bungee jumping…
The most exciting thing in my life these past few years is what we’re doing right now, thanks to this game my sister made up for me.
I remember the adrenaline, the tense nerves, the day my grandfather put it on the table in front of me.
I had forgotten that feeling, yearning for something, and now it comes to me in waves, comes and goes.
Maybe waking up from your lethargy is like floating in the middle of the ocean and feeling your muscles relax as the blood flows and your bones strengthen and become stiff instead of rubbery.
Sometimes we need someone to destroy the nest where we’ve gotten comfortable to force us to build a new and better one, one twig at a time.
When I wake up, the blue of the sky has darkened with the clouds that sweep across it. My mouth is dry. I fell asleep without realizing it. I sit up and Will, who’s still driving, smirks.
“Before you ask, we’re almost there.”
I look around and see cliffs behind us with pine trees. In front of us are endless meadows on both sides of the road, which winds up a mountain. Not far off, a group of bison is grazing. We leave them behind us along with a sign notifying us that reads Panorama Point: Highest in Nebraska.
I see the white stone marker that’s been there since 1896 and tells you where the three states lie.
Emotions bubble up in me, and though I know it’s absurd, that it’s just a symbol, still, it’s what Lucy wanted, and maybe, just maybe, it’s what I wanted too, even if I’ve tried to bury what I want for an eternity.
We get out of the car. The wind is cold.
We take a few steps, and I stop and look at Nebraska.
A torrent of emotions rushes through me, extending to my fingertips.
Then, slowly, I take a step into Colorado.
That’s it. I did it. I’ve done it. And just as enthusiastically, I jump to Wyoming.
And I start laughing. I laugh out loud and run back and forth from state to state, as if I’d completely lost my mind.
I look up at Will and see his smile.
“You feel like coming to Colorado?” I say amid giggles.
He nods and takes a few steps. Then we spend a minute in silence, and I look up into his eyes, which stare peculiarly, intensely, in a way that I suspect would make any other human being uncomfortable.
But I’ve gotten used to it, ever since I realized Will is looking at the world in order to find something but can’t figure out what.
“Wyoming?” I ask.
He’s still not talking, but he follows me to the other border.
I take deep breaths of air; I can feel it filling my lungs.
Could this experience be the same for Will, or does he think it’s nothing compared to all those places he’s seen and all the feelings he had before he wound up here with me?
Can two people with such different pasts still share the same emotion, and what happens when that emotion gets concentrated in a tiny space? Can it explode, like a supernova?
“Will, I know this is silly. But I just like it so much…”
Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska…
“It’s not silly, Greta.” He’s just walked up behind me.
“I’m glad you said that, because I don’t want to go.”
“Then let’s not,” he says without even hesitating.
That’s all I need to fall on the ground and stretch out, and he does the same.
I don’t know what state we’re in, but I know Will’s eyes are the green of the meadow grass, and we’re together, very close, and the rising and falling of his chest is hypnotic, and I think—I think!
—I want to kiss him. I need to know what it would feel like, if his lips are as ardent as his eyes, as precise as his gestures, as sweet as his face when he lets his guard down and relaxes.
Or a mix of all three. Or like something else completely.