Machine

by Susan Steinberg

  that so many stars could now be gone;

  that the sun, one day, as well, would be;

  that this wasn’t the kind of thing to overthink;

  and if I never learned to overthink;

  if I could switch thoughts off before they started to spin;

  take that first celebrity suicide;

  I mean the first one in our lives;

  he wrote a note then shot himself;

  we weren’t supposed to hear this;

  they were whispering so we wouldn’t;

  it was our mother and a neighbor from down the street;

  we called her aunt, but she wasn’t our aunt;

  she was these kids’ mother, and we hated her kids;

  we hated her more;

  she made our mother act so dumb;

  she made her drink too much;

  they were drinking, this day, a bottle of orange liqueur;

  the bottom of the bottle was shaped like an orange;

  it was our fake aunt’s bottle she brought over;

  it was too early to be drinking liqueur;

  our fake aunt was often drunk in the day;

  she was divorced, and divorce, back then, meant something;

  it meant fucked-up kids and it meant your reputation;

  it meant our fake aunt fell down, drunk, on her way home from our house;

  but that was a different day;

  that day, she fell over the hose the help had left in a bunch on the lawn;

  we heard her scream, and it could have been from anything, a scream like that;

  my brother and I ran outside to see;

  our fake aunt was facedown in the grass;

  we didn’t want to touch her, so we waited for her to get to her knees, figure it out;

  our mother didn’t drink in the day unless our fake aunt was at our house;

  our mother was weak around other women, and we’d always known she was weak;

  now here she was, pretending not to be drunk, pretending an interest in us we knew was just pretend;

  then, Pow, our fake aunt said and stood and shaped her hand like a gun at her head;

  What, we said;

  our mother said, Nothing;

  to our fake aunt, she said, The kids;

  our mother never once thought before she spoke;

  she always ruined it all;

  my brother said, Why the gun;

  Tell me, he said;

  I said, Tell me;

  there was no reason to keep a secret from us;

  we knew too much already;

  there were bigger things than the things they kept a secret;

  like all of space, for instance;

  like all I knew about space;

  like how spaceships floated in a free fall;

  how astronauts floated within them;

  how weightlessness wasn’t like floating in water;

  it wasn’t a calming thing;

  how a single force could push you out of orbit;

  it could send you to the darkest place;

  because you’ve never had control;

  you’ve always had to pretend it;

  now here we all were, in a kitchen, pretending;

  here we all were, as if nothing;

  we were about to leave for a party;

  it was a bowling party for some kid we didn’t like;

  the bowling alley was on the other side;

  our father drove us and told us, Be good;

  I wasn’t sure if he meant be good at bowling;

  or if he meant be good in some other way;

  there were holy ways we were never taught, but heard about;

  certain kids who knew this stuff, kids we would never be;

  they were kids our mother always called good;

  but we preferred the asshole kids we hated;

  this party was full of assholes;

  my brother bowled, but I sat at the counter;

  I liked the pizza the bowling alley had;

  I liked the local guys who served the pizza, because they also served me beer;

  this was because of how I looked;

  I didn’t care what the reason was;

  I was learning to work with what I had;

  so I sat there, feeling old;

  I drank beer from a cup meant for soda;

  there was music I liked coming from the walls;

  and the sounds of all those crashing pins;

  like the sound of gravity, I thought, then thought it seemed insane;

  like how a crush makes you think, or just drinking does;

  but I didn’t care then there were things in space that couldn’t move out of our way;

  I didn’t care then what asteroid struck us, what black hole sucked us closer to its edge;

  pretty soon, the other kids were at the counter;

  they were talking the shit kids always talked;

  all of them going on and on;

  that first celebrity suicide;

  they said he’d shot himself in the head;

  they said it happened in a kitchen;

  so then I was seeing our kitchen table;

  then I was seeing our mother and the bottle shaped like an orange;

  then I was seeing our dumb fake aunt, her hand like a gun at her head;

  like she was better than him, which she was not;

  like she was better than anyone, but she was the absolute worst;

  there was a night she came by our house with a dog;

  we were eating dinner, and she walked in like she lived there;

  she held up the dog with one hand and said, Does anyone want a dog;

  my brother and I said, We do;

  we said, We want that dog;

  but our mother said no to getting the dog;

  she said no way were we getting a dog when we couldn’t even help around the house;

  we looked at each other like what did that even mean;

  none of us ever helped around the house;

  we had help to help around the house;

  our mother was just pretending again;

  but our fake aunt was better at this;

  this dog was the runt of its litter, she said, and it was the only one that wasn’t brown;

  this dog was gray, she said, and it was the only one with longer hair;

  her kid, she whispered behind her hand, had kicked it across a room;

  because his parents were divorced is what we thought, and now he was all fucked up;

  divorce meant that, and it meant our fake aunt was all dressed up for going out;

  there was a way one dressed for going out;

  there was a way one smelled, so obvious, so desperate;

  our mother said, I said no;

  but our father was petting the dog now;

  he had one arm around our fake aunt’s waist;

  he made sounds into the dog’s fur;

  don’t turn this into a thing;

  our fake aunt wasn’t the one;

  we hated her, but she wasn’t the one we hated the absolute most;

  and whether or not we got to keep the dog;

  it doesn’t matter the outcome of that day;

  that scene in our kitchen doesn’t matter;

  or any scene in our kitchen;

  or in any kitchen, or in any room;

  as if rooms could even protect us;

  as if the sun would never collapse;

  and we would just go on forever;

  obeying some law of inertia;

  a ball rolling straight down the lane;

  no force coming in to stop it;

  there was such dumb hope in those laws;

  such bullshit in those laws;

  because the ball would eventually hit the pins;

  it would send them wild across the floor;

  the pins would eventually hit the walls;

  a kid would press a small white button;

  a machine would sweep the pins away;

 
; a machine would reset the pins;

  and the whole fucking thing would start over;

  that celebrity we loved because he was hot;

  and by hot I mean more than looks;

  the kids were acting like no big deal;

  but I felt I was being emptied;

  then I felt a shadow moving in;

  like the shadow of something you can’t even see;

  or something you’re not supposed to;

  my brother kept asking questions;

  he wanted details no one else did;

  I could see the chewed-up pizza on his tongue;

  I said, Close your mouth;

  he said, What’s your problem;

  I said, Close your fucking mouth;

  what was I even thinking then;

  it’s hard to explain, I guess;

  astronauts again, I guess;

  forced travel through unfamiliar space;

  nearly everything in it unreachable;

  everything in it no better than anything else;

  just hydrogen to helium;

  just helium to something else;

  and something else to something else;

  so what good, I learned that day, was hot;

  what good, I learned, was celebrity;

  I’d always wanted to have it;

  I often imagined, late at night, my entourage, my limousine, my attitude;

  I often tried to will this future for myself;

  though could I even believe in this future;

  or could I only believe in the grander one, the destined one;

  the temporary free fall;

  the on and on, then off;

  no wonder the kids shot at their heads, stuck out their tongues, fell to the ground, laughing;

  we were all just so confused;

  there were times I wanted nothing more than to break free from our orbit;

  I wanted a force to come in, already, and upset it;

  I’d been secretly holding on, I admit, to the hope of this force coming in;

  not an asteroid force or a black hole force;

  but the slightest shred of holy;

  some shred of belief that everything would be revealed;

  that the world was something conceivable;

  a linear path directed toward some good;

  but there would be more celebrity suicides;

  and noncelebrity suicides;

  and more explosion and more expansion;

  how could you not overthink it;

  but the kids got back to bowling;

  the guy at the counter poured me another beer;

  I wasn’t going to drink this one;

  I’d already outgrown this moment;

  I called our mother, said, Come get us;

  but our father came instead;

  my brother put up a fight out front;

  he wanted to keep bowling, he said;

  he was beating the other kids, he said;

  he was now, my brother, officially, the enemy;

  we were staring each other down across an invisible line;

  in the car, our father didn’t talk;

  my brother sighed again and again and again;

  some old song played on the radio;

  what was out the car window passed too fast;

  I couldn’t focus on any of it;

  all those houses whooshing by;

  and all that grass;

  and all those trees;

  all those birds;

  all those stars;

  Saviors

  she always rides fast when the boardwalk is empty; but it’s not empty, really; it’s just not what it is at night; it’s just not what it is with crowds and lights and the smells of grease and sweat and smoke; and the screaming from the rides; the screaming from the games; the step-right-up; the rifle shots; the balloons on the tops of plastic clown heads filling with water so some dumb fuck can win a stuffed toy that isn’t even worth the price of the ticket you need to play the game;

  she always rides fast, her hair flying back so it tangles in a way we call beachy; it’s a way we call just-fucked; it’s a way we all want our hair to look and can’t always get it just right; we use soap on it; we use salt in it; we use cooking oil and suntan oil;

  and at the place where my brother’s friend goes to eat, he always pulls at her tangled hair; he says things like, Rough night; like, Did you get some; he punches his fist into his palm; and she always laughs when he’s being like this; when he’s being a dick;

  my brother’s friend once won a tiny stuffed dog for knocking over a pyramid of cans; and even though it was ragged, dirty, missing an ear, and my brother’s friend pretended to fuck it, she wanted to keep it and tied it by its legs to the back of her bike where it flaps up and up, faster as she goes faster;

  we’re also into my brother’s friend; but we’re into him only sometimes; we’ve both hooked up with him on the dock; and in a sitting room in the boathouse; and in a guest room in the boathouse; and once, just for one of us, on a boat;

  but today isn’t about my brother’s friend; because last night wasn’t about him; it was only about us getting fucked up; and we’re still fucked up; so we’re walking the boardwalk in search of food; and the sun is too bright; and the smells and the sounds; this isn’t our greatest day;

  now imagine two kids on opposite sides of the boardwalk; the kids are locals, you can tell; it’s the way they style their hair; it’s the way they dress and the way they stand; it’s a small kid and a big kid; the big kid has a bruise on his face; the small kid looks like he never eats; he’s all ribs jutting out and hip bones; he’s a face like the skull of a bird;

  now imagine the kids stretching a wire, high, across the boardwalk; imagine how someone walking along would walk into the wire and stop; can you see how funny that would be if you were the one who thought up this trick, if you were the one tightly holding the wire as someone walked in; and can you see how funny it would be if you were the one to walk into the wire; well, we do walk into that wire; we stumble right in like fucking drunks; it’s funny to the local kids; it’s funny, at first, to us; but it stops being funny at a certain point; our hangovers are too distracting; we’re unable to have real fun;

  but we can force ourselves to pull it together; we duck under the wire and say to the kids fuck off; we say we’re done with this game, and fuck them for wasting our time; but the kids aren’t looking in our direction; they’re back in their places, the wire stretched tight;

  this part is harder to describe; how it happens fast, but also in slow motion; how we see her in the distance; we see her riding down the boardwalk; and it’s her hair all wild, her face like that; and we mean to run out, to tell her to stop; but our reflexes are super slow; it’s like our reflexes are broken; like our reflexes have never worked; and she’s unstoppable, besides; she’s racing to see my brother’s friend; she’s determined to get there first; because if she’s first, he can’t call her a spy; he can’t call her a stalker; and she’ll sit at the counter; she’ll order a soda; she’ll wait, alone, until he walks in; and then what; no one knows what; there’s just a way that love can fuck with you that hard; there’s a way the things your body does are no longer up to you;

  so imagine her riding right into the wire; imagine the kids losing their grip on the wire she’s going so fast; imagine her flying, her bike crashing, the wire like a scarf flowing behind her; can you see her bike spinning away, the wheels on the bike still spinning; can you see how now we’re paralyzed; how we’re absolutely stuck in place; it’s like we know we have to call for help; and we’re saying we have to call; but no one is calling; we’re just walking to her, slow as we can;

  we’re told in our schools to devise a master plan; by master, they mean pretend you’re guys; by plan, they mean forever; our master plan, we decide, is science; we’re atypical in this way; we’re atypical for science kids; we’re hotter than those kids; but like those kids, we need to know the reasons why; we need
to know the numbers of; the fourteen billion years; the one hundred billion stars; the five-point-eight trillion miles;

  last night, three planets in the sky, we looked from the boathouse lawn; we pretended we were just lying there; and had the guys walked over, we would have closed our eyes; but she was the one who walked over; she was the one now lying on the lawn, looking up; so we pointed to show her, perhaps to impress her; and she said, God; and we said, No; because she meant God, and we meant something else;

  so we went inside the boathouse, and she stayed where she was; not because of the planets; not even because of God; it was just because of my brother’s friend; and how sad how she was waiting; sad how she wasn’t allowed in the boathouse; and was she even allowed on the lawn;

  the kids with the wire are standing with us; there’s something fucked up with the small kid; he says to the big kid, Is she dead; on another day, this would make us laugh; on any other day, we would laugh our fucking heads off; the big kid says, Shut your mouth, and punches the small kid in the arm; but you can tell the big kid is scared; he didn’t want to hurt this girl; meaning he didn’t want to hurt a local girl; and the big kid is trying to figure out—you can tell by the way his eyes move—we’ve seen these eyes on guys before—whether to stay there or to run;

  at times you want to ask for forgiveness; but you don’t know forgiveness from what; and you don’t know who you’re asking it from; but at times you feel you’ve done something wrong; you feel the need to be absolved;

  at times you want to press pause on this world, watch everything freeze, then wander around, punching the things you want to punch, and touching some other things;

  her hair is spread around her face; she’s looking up at our eyes; she says, I want my cigarettes; she says, I want my purse; but did she even have her purse with her; she says, I want my doll; we’re like what the fuck doll does she mean; at first, we think she means the stuffed dog she’s tied to the back of her bike; we untie it and hold it in front of her face; but the dog isn’t what she wants; and time is moving weirdly again; and she’s looking too much at our eyes; and she still looks hot, even lying there; and it’s so fucked up to think this now; so it’s time to acknowledge the cut; how much it’s been gushing; how hard it is not to look;

  last night, we said it wasn’t God; we said no one was in control; we said things didn’t happen for a reason; we said things happened because of mass and time and suns exploding; and a tilted planet, a spinning planet, a planet flying out and out;