Hydroplane: Fictions

by Susan Steinberg

So this is what's true.

  So this man on the roadside is true.

  I can't say exactly what he looked like. He was big, I recall. Old, I suppose. His teeth looked rotted. But it was dark. He wore a cross on a chain around his neck. It swung when he leaned in toward me. He wore a hat. He changed my tire. He moved my car to the shoulder. He smoked the whole time. He was breathing hard. He said, Let's go for a ride.

  I said, I'm a teacher.

  He said, I'll be your student.

  He laughed and I thought of his laugh against all that farmland quiet.

  And I didn't really get the joke.

  I thought, split second, to say, Explain.

  When the teacher's son said, You know about Jew girls, I said, What about them.

  He said, I like you.

  I knew he did. I knew when someone liked me.

  We were lying on the greasy floor. I saw light through the garage door windows. The light was white, then red. His mustache scratched my face. When I screamed it scared him. He jumped up saying, What the fuck. He said, Go home.

  Tell me why this matters.

  Since then there have been many men.

  My mother said, You could have been beautiful, You could have been married.

  She said, You could have been something else.

  We shook hands through the window before I went. I felt her nails, her rings, pressing into my palm.

  There was a time I liked her.

  When I was young, a kid, my mother would pull my hair, and I would say, Hey, stop that, Ma, and she would say, Hay is for horses, Hay is for horses, and I would say back, Hay is for horses, and she would clap and I would clap, and boy did we laugh our heads off.

  Though I don't understand why it made us laugh.

  Look.

  This man in Missouri was big. He could have crushed me. Really. His gut. His shoulders. We were standing in the straw. There was no moon. I had no mace. He could have crushed me to bits.

  My cat ran into the car.

  The man stood near, his cross swinging against his chest, then not.

  He smelled like smoke.

  He could have crushed me to bits.

  But I can't take this a step further.

  I can't keep pretending he touched me. He didn't.

  I wasn't psychic.

  Though he could have touched me. You know he could have as he was so big and I was not.

  But this is how it goes.

  I said something like, I like your cross.

  He touched his cross.

  He said something, nothing important, and left.

  But this isn't about him either. Look. What matters is I made it to where I was going.

  And sometimes I'm on the couch at home in Missouri. And sometimes I find myself thinking on the couch about that night. I think about what could have happened. But the man drives off and I'm lying on a greasy floor. And it's me and the teacher's son lying there. He says, Look at you, and he sends his fingers up inside, first one, then two, without any warning, without ever asking, and the light turns red and I scream, Stop, and he presses his mouth to mine and hard and I try to scream and I push him off of me and scream, Stop it, and he screams at me and sends me home.

  And I think of my mother saying, as I opened the door that night crying, Would you look at this, Your shirt's on inside-out, you slob.

  And I remember the boys, how they looked at me laughing, and I remember what they called me after they went with the teacher's son on the road in the long red car, after the teacher's son said what to call me.

  And I watch my cat cleaning his paws at one end of the couch, wondering at the length of his tongue, wondering how his tongue keeps him clean.

  There was a night alone in the graveyard. It was late that summer, almost fall. I swallowed a pill, sat in the grass. The boys all thought I was something now. Dried flowers poked up from the dirt. The boys all thought I was too bad now. The moon was higher than the top of the church. The moon was rising higher. The boys all thought I was too loose now. I was too fast now. But really I was something else. I looked for signs of our having been there. A hair in the grass from when we were there. A dropped pill. A thread. But it was dark. And I was scared. And there was nothing of ours in the grass.

  The pill put clouds behind my forehead.

  Big deal, I drove home high.

  It was loose, light, fast.

  Euphoric.

  And you know this is what matters.

  And now I'm in the mirror at home. I'm on my way to teach. I've got a pitiful sauce stain on my shirt, and I think, You better scrub out that stain before you teach. And the telephone rings, and mail gets pushed through the slot. The cat needs to eat. I'm running to get there on time.

  Well, I get to school, and the sauce stain is still on my shirt.

  I'm standing in front of a class.

  A hundred eyes are looking at me.

  A boy spits tobacco into a cup.

  But what matters is you're with me now.

  I've got you where I want you.

  This is the happy ending.

  A man changed my tire. He drove my car to the shoulder. He said something. Nothing. The man drove off. I drove off. There was a song I knew. A sunrise in the rearview mirror. Me and the boy fucking in the grass.