Susan Steinberg - Spectacle - Stories

That I would follow him out when he left.

That we would climb up to the tree house.

That I did whatever he wanted.

Because whatever he wanted was easy.

Because I had a technique that was surefire.

This technique I had took seconds.

It was easy to pretend I was into it.

It was easy to pretend I wasn’t pretending.

I bought the woman the carton of milk.

And everyone in the store in that moment was happy.

Everyone in the store in that moment was happy because I had done this very kind thing.

And the woman whose milk I bought squeezed my hand with her terrible-feeling hand.

And as our hands went up and down and up again I thought of how kind a human I was.

I mean I thought of how I had done something kind, some thing that would somehow advance humankind in its being kind.

And I knew in that moment of no kinder human.

I mean I knew of no human who in that moment would have bought this woman the carton of milk.

And I wanted the clock to stick there forever, to stick in a time where I was kind.

For God to see is what I wanted.

After my brother left the house, my father would call out my name.

It always meant he needed something.

Like something to eat or drink.

And sometimes I would come down from the tree house.

I would make him whatever he needed.

I would leave it outside his study.

But most times I pretended not to hear him.

I could hear only birds, I pretended.

It was just like amateur porn.

Because of his soft body pressing mine into the bed.

Because of the sounds of the bed and his ugly sounds.

He said, What do you want, into my hair.

There were a lot of things I wanted.

Like I wanted to be a kinder person.

And I wanted to know how to do this.

But I said, Nothing.

I said, God.

His girlfriend’s things were all over the room.

Her lipstick on the dresser.

Her shirt that looked like a shirt I would like across the back of a chair.

Before she left, we heard our mother screaming late at night.

We heard her banging on my father’s study door.

And I would slam my door, scream, Stop.

And my brother would slam his too.

It was unbearable, our limitations.

Unbearable, how we couldn’t help.

How we couldn’t make her stop.

It could have been love with my brother’s friend.

There was something about the tree-house floor.

Something about the sky through trees and the sounds of birds.

I didn’t want my brother to know.

Because it said some things about me.

It said I was not the girl his girlfriend was.

His girlfriend would be saved in the rapture.

Her body would float upward into the air.

But it wasn’t exactly the body that floated upward.

My brother said it was the soul.

And did I even believe in the soul.

I said, What do you want.

And he said, I want to fuck you.

But he was already fucking me.

So I said, What else do you want.

And he said, Shut up.

He said, Shut the fuck up.

Just fuck me, he said.

My brother’s friends wanted me bent like this.

They wanted me spread like this.

They wanted me split like this.

I would say, Take a picture, when they looked at me.

I would say, Fuck you, when they looked too hard.

But they kept on looking.

The woman let go of my hand.

And then the store was just the store again.

The moment was just a moment.

And as the woman was walking out of the store, I felt she was already forgetting me.

And by the time she was out onto the street, I felt she had already forgotten me.

Time was moving forward again, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I could only move forward with the time.

That was all anyone could do.

I always stopped laughing when the video took a turn.

When I felt there was something wrong with laughing.

When I felt there was something wrong with me.

Like I was the only one getting off on ugly.

Like I was the only one with a wretched feeling in my gut.

If I were a guy, I would call this story Ugly People Fucking.

And it would be hilarious.

But if I were a girl, I would call it Universal.

And it would be something else.

It would be a dark basement.

It would be old carpet and closed drapes.

It would be the drinks we were not supposed to be drinking.

It would be my father opening the basement door.

And our faces glowing in the light-blue light.

And my father saying something awful.

My father turning off the TV.

My father taking the video upstairs.

It would be me and my brother’s friend sneaking off.

It would be climbing the rungs to the tree house.

It would be a dark space that made ugly seem lovely.

It would be the night my brother caught me and his friend in the tree house.

And that was ugly too, my brother standing below the tree as we climbed down.

And it was just too ugly, my brother standing there, waiting there, screaming at me to stop.

There was a time my parents had friends.

They came over for drinks on weekend nights.

They wore low-cut shirts and too-tight pants.

The whole house smelled like smoke and cologne.

My brother and I were sent to bed.

And my mother pretended to be a wife.

And my father pretended to be a man.

I followed the woman up several streets.

This sounds worse, I know, than it was.

I was never going to hurt her.

It was never anything like that.

I don’t know exactly what I wanted.

Just the carton of milk, I suppose.

Just to kick the carton of milk out from the grasp of her terrible hand.

I always stopped laughing when the camera moved in on the girl.

Because it moved up close on her face.

And her lipstick was not where it should have been.

And one eye looked larger than the other.

And she looked right into the camera.

My brother and his friends said awful things.

But she kind of looked like someone I knew.

Just someone, and I couldn’t laugh.

He was done, and so we were done.

Then he was looking at me like, You really should leave.

But I didn’t leave, because I didn’t know how.

I was the worst at getting out of things.

He was looking at me like, You really can’t stay.

His face looked awful in the light.

His body was just too soft.

He looked at me like, There’s the door.

And I stood and walked across the room.

There was his girlfriend’s lipstick.

And her shirt across the back of the chair.

I could tell I would really love that shirt.

I thought about taking that shirt.

Not because it was hers.

But because it should have been mine.

But I didn’t take the shirt.

I just said something he didn’t like.

Then I said something else he didn’t like.

I was surprised that he looked surprised.

And it would have been awful, in another context, what I said.

Like if I said it on the street.

Or to your face.

But in this context it was kind.

Earlier, he had pulled the kit out from beneath his bed.

The tools were heavier than you would think.

And I listened to his heart, and I listened to my own.

And I looked into his ears, and I looked into his eyes.

And what I saw in his eyes was not what I expected to see.

I had only expected the color of his eyes, up close.

But when I looked through the tool I screamed.

All I can say is it was terrifying what I saw.

It was lightning across a sky.

It was all of the stars exploding.

It was the biggest fucking mess.

Just imagine the biggest mess you can.