Interstate 90 Towards Daybreak

The fog is flowing with the ghosts of taillights, and I can’t see what’s ahead of me or remember what’s behind.  I’m eastbound, towards home, towards the murky portents of daybreak.  Home seems so ineffably urgent and important right now. I’m so tired and hungry and lonely that I feel sick.  Every illuminated billboard begins nebulously, the gentle hint of a halo through the earthbound clouds, until they pass my periphery, dying as vague ideas.  The unlit exit signs appear suddenly, without warning, singing the praises of every hamlet suckling at the interstate.  I hate those towns.  I hate this drive, and I’ve made it before.
           
            Never break up in the middle—or worse yet, at the beginning—of a lengthy car ride. This seems like common sense, but it’s surprising how obvious and immediate and overwhelming an impulse can feel when you’re in heavy traffic and in a crescendoing high dudgeon. A car cut me off, a horn honked, and then a guilt-inducing remark from the passenger seat: that’s it. The remainder of the trip passed largely in silence, punctuated only by the occasional snarky comment or eruption of a long-dormant allegation. Looking back, those hundred miles spanned a distance between a gleaming glass city and an appreciation of towns built of sturdy brick. One is beautiful but built to break, while the other one endures resolutely with a quiet and unassuming resiliency.
           
            Northern Wisconsin night pulsates in a sort of primacy largely unknown to the southern part of the state. There are grey wolves prowling the oak barrens, great horned owls standing sentinel over the broken stalks of harvested fields, and they all wear yellow eyes that burn away the mystery of the night. Even the crescent moon is yellow-eyed, tonight, and I wonder who might be keeping an eye on the ghosts of my taillights as I creep below the swirling tides of fog. Diana? Some other god, perhaps, whose face is only visible when you forget what you’re looking for and it’s staring right at you? Either way, there was no one there, not then, and not for some time, now.
 
“Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?” she demanded, her face not more than a foot from my ear. Traffic congestion had heightened with our continued encroachment upon Madison, half of the way home, and I couldn’t glance over at her as much. This angered her even more, although I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do about it. “You’re going to crack a goddamn joke now?” She took some time to control herself, burrowing back into her seat as if preparing for a siege, and muttered bitterly, ”Then again, what isn’t a joke to you?”
I sighed, knowing that a loud, audible sigh wouldn’t help, but unable to stop myself. “Honestly? Very little isn’t a joke to me, and I don’t necessarily think that’s wrong.” A slight, seditious, humorless smile tugged insistently on the clenched corners of my lips. I attempted to backpedal, thinking this salvageable. Fall back to wisdom, Mitchy—it is an ancient wind into a settled fog. “Oh, dear, do you really want a cranky ol…”
She cut me off. “No, never mind, I don’t care anymore.” My wisdom always did come too late. A car cut into the fast lane, and I broke sharply. A car honked behind me. Its driver gesticulated vulgarly at me, as if it was my fault. What the hell? And then she grumbled, low yet meant to be heard, “As if you don’t jerk off enough at home.”
Game over. “That’s it.” How did we come to this?
 
             “I can’t believe you left me at the waterpark,” she gasped, almost as if she’d held the words in with her breath, afraid to breathe for fear of the other. “To go sleep, no less.” Her arms folded and brow furrowed, and her forehead made a slight thump against the window as she ostensibly dedicated her attention to the scrolling scenery.
            Damn it. Really? Why did I have to ask?  I took a moment to consider a response, furtively checking the time. Barely two minutes on the interstate, and already an argument. Shit. There are several options, here, all with their respective pros and cons. Respond in kind, and try to put her on the defensive. I can’t believe you can’t let me take a two hour nap on what is my vacation also and not hold it over my head or take it to heart like it’s a goddamn implicit rejection or statement about how much or little I value your company. This is, naturally, the most childish and common way of reacting to her statement. I could respond inversely, try to assuage any negative emotions she was feeling, and proceed from there. Dear, do you really want a cranky old Mitchy stomping around the waterpark, having a miserable time, making your time miserable? In the end, such a nap is for you and me both. Such a response is easily the wisest. I am not wise.  Or, I could go with my personal favorite, respond with a joke, hope she laughs, and the whole damn thing might go away.
            The joke I settled on was not a good one. “I wasn’t napping, though. I was masturbating to pay-per-view porn.” Her head whipped around like I’d full-armed slapped her. Uh oh. Why did I have to ask what was wrong?
 
           
           
 
            There are gas station attendants’ ears picking up the sound of idling truck engines. There are state troopers asleep in their cruisers, slackened grip upon aimlessly pointed radar guns. There are ghouls in every distant graveyard that breathe the fog this way, my way, the only way I know, alone in a crowd, frothing at the mouth, talking into empty space, screaming at the stars, baying at the moon, laughing for all reasons and none, and a compass heart with iron hands tugging me towards…
            Warm fingers of light are kneading away the darkness before me. I don’t know if I’m approaching the horizon or if it’s approaching me; am I moving? I imagine that the horizon will bring me my home. Will it bring me daybreak?
 
                I flicked the signaler and merged on to the interstate, leaving the hotel behind. We had not reached the threshold of relaxed silence, yet, despite six months of dating. There is no place where that resonates more than when you’re both alone in a car. Throwaway talk about the music, about the news, about the weather, about all the minutiae of the singular and irreplaceable day that reduces it to humdrum and commonplace. So you flounder, jamming conversation into places where it’s too big, bulky, and heavy to fit, until eventually you founder beneath the weight of it.
            “Hell of a trip, eh?” Stupid. Of course it was a great trip. When we weren’t wreaking joyous havoc at the waterpark, we were eating and drinking like a hedonistic king and queen. It beat dully lit nights of drinking jug wine and searching for which high school classmates are on the sex offender registry. Hell, we even had sex with the lights on, and everything but the orgasm was spent with eyes open—in retrospect, microcosmic of the lifestyle within a gleaming glass city which was built to break.
            She didn’t respond. Glancing at me briefly, she graced me with an insincere, melancholic half-smile, before returning her attention to the autumn, Interstate 90 countryside. She moved towards it, a flower-like unfolding towards the westward sun, shifting all of her weight against her door, until I started to wonder just how badly she’d rather be somewhere else, with someone else. The sun hovered just above the forested hills, and I knew that soon those hills would reach up and pull it home. Silence, still, creeping over comfort like a deathly cold fog over a sunbather. The silence read like a polygraph test.  I know better, but it became too much.
            “What’s wrong?”