Machine

by Susan Steinberg

  she would touch my hair, and I never liked her touching me;

  and the kids watching from the yard;

  her hurt look when I ducked and ran;

  her dumb hurt look that I still get sad to think;

  there were science nights on the roof of the school;

  telescopes pointed at planets;

  some guy and I were forced by our mothers to go;

  we would take our turns looking at the sky;

  then we would sit on the other side of the roof;

  we would smoke and look at the view;

  there were as many lights there to look at;

  as many things we couldn’t explain;

  one night, we got caught by the teacher;

  the rumor was this teacher was a witch;

  her nails were filed to absolute points;

  we called her crazy to her face;

  but all we got was yelled at then sent home;

  and they called my mother, because of who I was;

  and have I even told you who I was;

  have I told you the kind of privileged I was;

  before we lost our privilege, that is;

  and my mother, can I say how furious;

  needless to say I was going back to private school;

  my punishment would be over;

  everything would be back to what we called normal;

  my short skirt, my blazer;

  my hair pulled back in the tightest knot;

  all of my friends there waiting for me;

  all of them now so scared of me;

  I was the real thing now coming to get them;

  the ugly thing that would take them all the way down;

  but was it my fault the girl fell in;

  fault is too strong a word;

  but did it happen because of me;

  she was there for a second, then not;

  then I stood for a second, stuck;

  I mean I didn’t at all help out;

  and what was I thinking;

  I wasn’t thinking;

  girls drowned falling from shorter heights;

  they drowned in shallower water;

  and I can’t go back and do the right thing;

  I can only tell you this girl was saved;

  that the guys jumped in and saved her;

  it had just been crazy for a while;

  all this commotion on the jetty;

  then all this commotion in the water;

  then all this shit the following day;

  the girl’s mother, my mother, and someone had to be punished;

  for having a weak character;

  for being addicted to being scared;

  for being addicted to being watched;

  and wasn’t one terrible night enough;

  wasn’t one girl who drowned too much;

  and what was I thinking;

  and what was I feeling;

  well, at least I still was feeling;

  now, this is the definition of privilege;

  this is the only one;

  and guys on the jetty don’t matter;

  and nights on the jetty don’t matter;

  and nights on the jetty are nights on the dock;

  and nights on the dock are nights of girls falling;

  and all the girls falling is one girl drowning;

  and that girl doesn’t matter;

  not by the end of summer;

  not with that certain feeling;

  that feeling one might call it a weight;

  school around the corner;

  months of snow and dark;

  and the basketball game feels like a dream;

  not a dream but a daydream of freezing time;

  and if only I’d pressed pause;

  made the planet’s spinning stop;

  just to think for a second;

  or not think for a second:

  but the girl was trying to block me;

  she was trying to crowd me, and the guy said, Play nice;

  so I said to the girl, Play nice;

  then the girl had a decision to make;

  be a good player or be a good girl;

  so there came a moment the girl was distracted;

  and I was standing alone in that moment;

  and in that moment, the guy passed the ball;

  I was close enough to shoot;

  I admit, even shooting, I was still just trying to look good;

  I shot the ball like look at me;

  the guy clapped when I took the shot;

  and the ball looked like it was going in;

  and I wanted so bad for it to go in;

  I wanted so much to score;

  to walk away like no big thing;

  to go back to the grass, like game over;

  but the girl was in my face again;

  I could feel my fingers breaking;

  I fell to the ground for the longest time;

  someone called time out;

  then the guy was running toward me;

  my hand was on top of his now;

  and we’d been here before;

  he’d saved me before;

  but not like he saved the girl;

  not like an actual savior;

  jumping off of the jetty;

  crashing into the water;

  just to save some girl he never even liked;

  I watched the rest from the sand;

  I watched as the girl stumbled away, the guys holding on to her arms;

  I waited there as the sky got light;

  I sat there until my mother came to get me;

  She could have drowned, she said;

  I could have drowned, I said;

  I should have drowned, I said;

  and did I even mean it;

  does it even matter;

  either way, she looked so scared;

  and she should have been scared;

  we all should have been;

  I don’t need to explain this;

  and eventually, this moment had to end;

  it was time for us to go home;

  and what else is there to say;

  just the story, I guess;

  the true story, I mean;

  the terror I haven’t told you;

  so here, now, is the night on the dock;

  so here is the girl who will drown;

  here is the girl now on her knees;

  and the kids who are going to push her;

  the kids are too drunk, and the girl is too drunk;

  and here is her just-fucked hair;

  here is her perfect face;

  here is the opening of her mouth;

  and the words that aren’t her words;

  the words from something holy;

  and the words from something not;

  and the hands on her back, and the world goes dark;

  then the thoughts that make me wild;

  thunderstorms and fireflies;

  sky and our sick fascination with stars;

  the telescope on the roof of the school;

  Jupiter’s moons lined up like that;

  or rings around Saturn like some kind of joke;

  I could take you all the way into space;

  I could take you so far back in time;

  I could make you feel the things I feel;

  or I could make this thing a fiction again;

  say the basketball is going in;

  say the dead are coming back;

  Machines

  There was the situation with his father’s boots. It wasn’t exactly a situation. It was just the size of his father’s boots. And the way they stood at the foot of the bed. Like someone was standing in them.

  The room looked like an old lady’s room. There was a pilled white bedspread from another time. There were pillows from that other time. You could imagine an old lady dying in there. I mean in every way except for those giant boots.

  I should say the boots were for fighting fires. That his father once fought fires
at the shore. That he no longer did, but the boots still stood there in the room. And I should say I thought, so many times, walking past the room, to try them on.

  At first, it was just for the joke. It was just to be like how dumb, me clomping around the house in those boots. But then I wondered what the boots would feel like. And what I would feel like in them. And then it was just this private thing, me and the boots at the foot of the bed, when the guy went out to get us beer.

  On this night, the guy was at the market that I wouldn’t go to with him. Because I sometimes went to the market too. And I wanted us to be a secret. And I liked waiting for him in his house. His father was never home at night. He was playing cards with guys. He was drinking with guys at a bar. So I played this game where I was the person who owned the house. It didn’t involve anything more than walking around, touching the railing on the staircase. Pretending I was wearing a dress. Then I would sit alone in his father’s room. His brother’s room was next to his father’s. Some nights, I could hear music. On this night, it was video games. It was things exploding and people screaming. And there were other sounds. Like animal sounds. Machines.

  His brother was mostly a thing we ignored. In that way, in our commitment to this, this story isn’t about him. But in another way, like the way in which his brother forced himself into my private scene, it is.

  I should say in most ways my desires didn’t feel right. Take the guy, for instance. He wasn’t exactly a perfect fit. For the obvious reason, his being him, my being who I was. Take his father’s boots, for instance. It didn’t feel right my wanting to try them on. My wanting to clomp loudly through the house. But it wasn’t some weird thing I had. It wasn’t some replacement for something else. I had a father. I had my own boots.

  I remember his father’s last big fire. It was years before, and it was huge. The house on fire was also huge. The house on fire was on our side. Everyone was talking about it. How his father rushed into that burning house. He rushed through all those burning rooms. I remember his picture in the paper. I stared at that picture so hard my mother said, She’s in love.

  Back then, I didn’t know this firefighter even had kids. And I wouldn’t have cared, back then, besides. Back then, we didn’t talk to the local kids. Back then, we didn’t use the word firefighter. We used the word fireman. We used the word policeman. And mailman. Back then, I had a list of saviors, all of them guys. It was teachers and older guys at school. And older brothers of girls at school. If you’d told me, then, about the fireman’s kid, I would have said fuck you. So if you’d told me, then, I would fuck that guy, some local guy.

  I went with my father to the shore. It was winter, and it was time for him to get his things from the house. It was get them, my mother said, or she would destroy them. I didn’t go to help my father get his things. I went because I wanted to see the shore. And my father didn’t care who went.

  At some point, the video game sounds stopped. It was like nothing was even out there then. It was like everything had been swallowed up, except this old-lady room and me in it. And I imagined I could go on like that forever. Just being in there like being, I imagined, on the moon.

  I should say my desires, for many years, were all I had. Staring at a wall, thinking of a guy. Thinking about my future fame. Then, one day, I was done with this. Something bigger had taken over.

  The last time I was with the guy, we were on the grass behind his house. He was on top of me and I felt like what I’ll call dust. It’s what I’ll call dust floating up, floating down. When the storm came through, I could see the sky turn green around his face. The clouds I tried, first, to ignore. Then thunder like a sound of trees splitting. Like a thousand trees splitting all at once. And there was lightning now, and now there was rain. I wasn’t scared of some storm coming down. I would have stayed there, under him, longer. But he pulled me to standing, and we ran like mad to the house.

  No one ever stayed on our side in winter. There was snow on the ground and in the trees. There was no reason to be at the shore in snow. My father walked slowly though the rooms. He stared too long out of windows. He poured himself a drink and sat at the kitchen table. Eventually he would put his things into boxes. But first, he would sit there looking sad. I couldn’t watch him be so weak. So I went for a ride. The snow in the trees looked blue. It looked better than it did in the city, where it first looked good, then piled for months and everyone complained.

  I’m not going to delay what happened that night with the boots. I stood on the bed and climbed in. I’ll tell you, it was challenging. I mean physically, and I mean in other ways. The boots were warmer than I thought they would be. They were higher too, and heavier. I couldn’t even walk in them. So I was stuck at the foot of the bed. And I felt regret creeping in. I mean I knew, going in, there would be regret if I tried them on. But I also knew there would be regret if I didn’t.

  What I remember most about the fire is the two kids trapped in a room. This guy’s father had rushed into the house to save them. But he wasn’t able to save both kids. I mean he pulled both kids’ bodies from the fire. But he could only save one of their lives.

  And I remember, after, the house just stood there, half burned up, half not. They eventually took the whole thing down with what I imagine must have been big machines. This happened over the winter when no one was there to watch it. I mean the firefighter was there in winter. And his kids were there. But the people from our side were already forgetting that burned-up house and the kid who died and the entire shore how we did most years once we’d gone back to the city.

  I stopped the car outside the guy’s house. The house was different in the snow. You could almost call it charming. You could almost see smoke from a chimney. I sat in the car, the motor off. I felt like some kind of spy. It was quieter than it was in summer. Not silent though. There were sounds controlled by invisible things. All the different sounds of snow. The sounds of air and grass. In summer we’d left his front door open. We’d gone through his side door too. But now was different, and I couldn’t just walk into his house. We’d already been back to school for months. We’d moved on in the ways one did from summer to winter. I was wearing a coat he’d never seen me in. And boots and socks pulled to my knees. I got out of the car. I walked to the door. I stood there and thought about knocking. I thought about breaking in.

  My father put things into boxes that were our mother’s things. There were pictures that were hers and there was clothing that was hers and there were kitchen tools and other things she would have wanted to keep. Later that night, when my father was sleeping, I took my mother’s things out of the boxes. I took some of his things out too. I stored the things beneath my bed. And the following summer, back at the shore with my mother, I would put the things back in their places. And I would point out the things to my mother to see if and how she would actually destroy them.

  It’s hard to explain how I felt when I saw his brother in the doorway. First, I forced myself to laugh. But it didn’t come out like laughing. It came out more like an animal sound, some fucked-up thing. His brother was just standing there, looking at me like I’d gone mad. I said, What the fuck are you looking at. I realize now he was the one who should have been asking questions. Like why are you in my father’s room. And, why the fuck are you wearing my father’s boots. Still, I stared him down so hard I could see him start to back away. Yes, I know he was young. And I know this makes me an asshole. But I was young then too. The world was young, I tell myself now. I mean no one had it figured out. We were all just things before other things. The star before the supernova. Hydrogen before the star.

  The picture was of his father sitting on the curb. His face was dirty, and he seemed much younger than he was. I stared at that picture so much that day our mother said I was in love. And because I was in love, not with his father but with the picture of his father, I felt the shame I was meant to feel, and I ran to my room and slammed the door until things fell from the walls.

  I sup
pose, looking back, there was more to the boots. That they had to mean something more. But standing there in them, I couldn’t have known what it meant. Then I just thought I was being cute. Or being fun. Or getting revenge. Or getting saved. But on what, from what.

  And I knew, even then, the guy would be gone very soon from my life. So what difference did any of it make. What difference, me standing in those boots. Me lying under him on the grass. I mean time would come in and change it all. The rides would shut down for the summer. The whole fucking shore would shut down. I would go back to school in the city. So what difference us rushing into the house. Me lying under him on his bed. His words at my ear. The sound of the storm.

  I thought about breaking a window. I knew it was wrong to think this. Not to think it, but to break it. Even breaking a small window was wrong. Even the tiny window next to the door. There was nothing in the house I wanted to take. I just wanted, weird as it sounds, to reach inside.

  Later, I thought of my footprints in the snow as evidence. And of threads falling from my coat. Hairs I could have shed. The entire system breaking down on the short path to his door.

  And I thought of him walking through the snow, finding pieces of me and thinking they were pieces of someone else.

  One night, my mother would take my father’s remaining things to the terrace. She would lay his things on the terrace floor. She would cry, her hand in front of her face. Then she would smash his things with his other things until there was a pile of broken things. And she would leave the pile on the terrace. And the help would come in, eventually, to clean it.

  His brother said, What are you doing. I said, What are you doing. I wasn’t sure if this was funny now. Were we joking now. The guy would be back soon with beer. I felt like I had some decisions to make. About big things but also about right now. I said, I don’t know what I’m doing. I said, Get me out of these fucking boots.

  Then I fell straight back to his father’s bed. I felt the boots slowly sliding off. Then I stood and felt weightless and his brother and I said nothing.

  I often imagined being saved by a guy whose job it was to save. I often still imagine this. Ladders and nets and men in hats. Being carried through a smoke-filled room. Being carried like a child.