Susan Steinberg - Spectacle - Stories

There is no intentional meaning in this story.

I would not subject you to intentional meaning.

I would not subject you to some grand scheme.

My mother was in Miami. Which wasn’t where she should have been. But I wasn’t where I should have been. No one was, when you think about it. I mean when you really think about it. I don’t mean anything deep about anything deep. I just mean I was confused. Yet I disconnected, pressed some buttons, and there was my mother. Then I reconnected, and there we all were.

I said, They want me to kill Dad.

My mother had left my father thirty years before. There is no reason to go into the details. Suffice it to say it was his fault, as if that wasn’t already clear.

I mean look at me. Look at my history.

I was not calling my mother because she loved my father. I was not even calling her because she was my mother. I was calling her because she was a nurse. I hoped that because she was a nurse she would tell me the right thing to do. I’m not talking morally. I’m talking medically. She knew about this. Though of course once she was wrong. Once she was dead wrong. I mean when my ex flatlined the first time. When she said, He’ll never be the same. She was, of course, dead wrong. He was one hundred percent the same. He was one hundred percent the same in every way.

Impossible, a doctor might have said.

Not impossible, I might have said.

He was a vegetable going under, a vegetable coming back.

But his heart, a doctor might have said.

I might have laughed.

I might have said something regrettable.

My mother said, What.

My brother said, Tell her.

The doctor said, He flatlined.

My mother said, You have to kill him.

She did not, of course, use these words. I don’t know why I’m being so melodramatic. She used technical terms. She said, Take him off the respirator. She said, It’s the right thing to do. She said, Trust me. She said, I need to go, though. She said, I need to get to work. She said, I’m sorry.

And because I more often than not do the wrong thing, I said fine.

A few days later, because I was older, because the decision was mine, I would donate my father’s body to science. I would do this over the phone, and the conversation would be recorded. A woman would ask me questions I had not before this heard.

Do you wish to donate the lungs.

Do you wish to donate the heart.

There were other organs one doesn’t think of.

There were other things besides organs.

The tissue was to go to the tissue bank.

The eyes were to go to the eye bank.

There were other things I can’t remember.

But it was the thought of the eyes removed from the head, the thought of the eyes going their own way, that made me cry. I don’t know why this was. I was not suddenly a believer of the soul. I was not suddenly a believer of anything. It was just think about it.

And as I cried, the woman said, It’s okay, said, Let it out, and I stopped crying and sat there, silent, and the recording went on, just recorded my breathing, the woman’s breathing, the sound of static in the phone, and minutes passed.

And I thought for some reason of a night years before, me, my father, and my brother in some fast-food place. My brother was visiting home from college, and he was sticking his French fries into his milk shake, and I said, Sick, and he said, Fuck you, and I said, Fuck you, and he said, Try it, dumbass, and I stuck a French fry into the milk shake, and it was amazing. My father was poor then, always poorer the next day, living in some shit hole, like a hostel, like a hospital, like a halfway house, and my brother said he would take him to dinner. Anywhere you want, he said. My father wanted to go to the fast-food place. He met us there. He was filthy. His shirt was missing buttons. He ordered two cheeseburgers. He ordered onion rings. He ordered an orange soda. He ate too fast. And, watching us stick French fries into the milk shake, he said, You’re both sick. But then he tried it too, and then he laughed, and then we ordered more French fries and another milk shake, and what I’m trying to say is, you should try it. What I’m trying to say is. What I’m trying to say is.

I did not donate the eyes to the eye bank. At some point I said, I can’t.

The parts that didn’t go to science were burned. And, no, I did not want the ashes. I told the woman to send the ashes to my brother. Because my brother was a better person than I was. He was a total asshole, I told the woman, but he was still a better person than I was. I said, He’s a total asshole. But in the grand scheme, I said. In the big grand scheme, I said. And I laughed, meaning I really laughed, and the recording went on, and the woman cleared her throat, and I just kept on going.

The day the ashes arrived, my brother called me and said, What the fuck, and I said, What, and he said, What the fuck, and I said, Grow up.

There are no more details to tell.

There is no reason to go into the why of my father.

Or the why of madness, which I cannot answer.

Or the why of addiction, which I also cannot answer.

Or the why of poor, which I also cannot answer.

Suffice it to say it’s always about a loss of something. Then a loss of some things. Then a loss of all things.

Then he was already dead, some might say.

What do you mean, I might say back.

If he had already lost everything, some might say, then he was already dead.

Yes, I might say.

Then you didn’t kill him, some might say as they moved toward me.

That’s not the point.

Then what is.

The doctor said he was sorry for our loss.

My brother said, You did the right thing.

Then a lot of serious shit happened in a lot of serious places. My mother drove to work. The doctor flipped a switch. My brother made coffee. The sun rose somewhere, set somewhere else. A brown recluse hunched in the dust.

And the truth is I don’t always leave in the mornings.

Some mornings the guy wants to get to work, and so I have to leave, but the truth is I don’t want to.

Some mornings I’m still lying in their beds, and they’re like, You need to leave, and I just lie there staring at their backs.

Some mornings I note the rib cage. I note the organs seething beneath the rib cage. I note the fragility of what does not, at night, seem fragile.

Some mornings I am not the whore they want me to be.

I am not the killer they want me to be.

Some mornings I try to no avail. To absolutely no avail. To no avail I try, and they get up to make coffee, and I get up and step into my skirt, and I pull on my shirt and walk home.

And the woman performs happy woman on a sunny street.

The woman performs this all feels good this all feels really good.

The woman pulls it together. She pulls it tight. She further tightens that which tightens.

There were late nights he would call from a pay phone, a friend’s house, a hospital, and because it was late, and because I was not poor, and because I was not ferociously mad, but, rather, mad mad, a machine answered my phone and lied that I wasn’t there eating in bed, watching TV, lied that I would return the call.

The machine would then say, Hello, stranger.

The machine would then say, It’s your father, stranger.

There were voices in the background.

There was traffic in the background.

I’m okay, stranger, the machine would then say.

There was screaming in the background.

There was me in my bedroom.

Pick up the phone, the machine would say loudly.

I know you’re there, the machine would say louder.

There was me turning the TV all the way up.

There was every poor soul looking downward.

There was me not believing in the soul.