Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

My father's forehead was sweating. The back of his neck was sweating. He said, You don't know shit. He smacked the wheel. He said, You just don't know.

There was dried grass all along the roadside. Signs for things. Drinks. Chickens, live and cooked.

He smacked the wheel. He said, What do you know.

Empanadas. Succulent ribs. Lemon-lime drink.

You know nothing, he said.

Homestyle empanadas. Like your mother's empanadas.

My mother made no empanadas.

We had regular food. American food.

Fried chicken in a bucket. Buttered rolls in a bucket. Regular drinks.

He said, Listen to me.

He said, You don't listen.

Then he slowly stopped the car in a lane on the highway. The date said something sad in Spanish. Cars screeched to a stop behind us. My father put the car into park. He got out of the car and walked into traffic.

In California my father rented a car and took us to theme parks. My brother and I rode the rides while my father sat on a bench drinking coffee from a paper cup.

At one park we could pan for gold. We left the park with vials of dirt. There were specks of gold in the dirt. It was hard to see the specks.

Hold that dirt, said my father.

You'll be rich, he said.

He took us to a restaurant, and the city blinked below us.

The wine made me feel like I could laugh. My brother's face was red.

My father said, This is the life.

I said, What do you mean.

I mean the life, he said.

Big deal, I said. And I knew that if I laughed my brother would start laughing too. And I knew that if my brother started that every person in the restaurant would turn and stare because my brother sounded like a retard, and now he was drunk as well.

So I held my breath and thought of my mother dying.

There was a time my father would say to me, One day it's yours.

I would take over. The men would work for me. The ladies too.

But the rats, I would say.

So my brother could take over instead. My brother the genius who couldn't tie a shoe.

The kids who came to the park at night were drunk. They were the wild kind of kids. They threw bottles and hard. They were looking for a fight. They could have killed us you know.

I imagine your father lying there on that street and how I would think what a fuckup, your father, and I would tell you this, and maybe we would laugh together over a drink and I would confess to you that my father, too, was a fuckup.

But it was my father lying in the street like that, and so I'm kind of alone here, you see, because your father, though maybe a fuckup in his own fucked up way, is not the fuckup mine is.

Your father would never have been there, and you know it, and we will never have a drink and laugh it up.

We were sitting, the three of us, in a lane on the highway. On a Friday of all days. Car horns blaring. Cars swerving around us. It was me and the date in the back seat. My brother's music went all the way up. My father was walking along the shoulder. Then he shrunk out of sight. A goat was walking along the shoulder. My brother saw the goat and laughed. Cars were nearly hitting us. I don't have to tell you how fast they were going. Our car shook when the others passed. It occurred to me to drive the car. But I didn't know how to drive yet. My father's date was crying. I wasn't old enough to drive. I said to the date, Drive the car. I wasn't nice in how I said it. Her shoulders were shaking. She looked so stupid. Like a stupid kid. Her shoulders shook from crying. I said, Drive-o the fucking car-o. I pointed to the steering wheel. I made my hands like I was driving. I yanked on her arm. I screamed, Drive-o drive-o. She climbed over into the driver's seat. I looked at her ass when she climbed over. Her pants were tight and pink. My brother moved his head to his music. He laughed but he couldn't hear himself laugh. He couldn't hear how stupid he sounded, how fucking retarded, and I can't even tell you what it did to me when he laughed like this. What it did to me in my gut. I said, Stop it you retard. Stop it you retard fucker. Look, he couldn't hear me. And he wasn't retarded. He was wired wrong. And we were about to be killed and it wasn't by our own choosing. The date drove slow and found my father walking. The goat was walking with him. Minutes we crept beside the two. My father walking rigid. His face and neck were red. The goat bounced beside him. The cars behind us nearly slammed us. I screamed at my brother to roll down his window. I took his headphones off his ears. I screamed again. Then my brother was crying. I screamed at my father to get in the car. I said to the date, Stop that crying el stupid-o bitch-o. The cars behind us nearly killed us. The goat ran into brown weeds off the highway.

I imagine my father laughs at some point, lying there on his back, facing nothing, the sky, and who knows what it looked like, the sky, that night, and, really, who cares.

I imagine, too, he had a bit too much to drink, and suddenly the whole thing seems very funny to my father, lying there, a fucking genius, an inventor for fuck's sake, his back pressed to the street.

Then he tries to move his arms to get himself up and the pain moves in faster than he can lift his body from the ground and he starts thinking it's not really so funny anymore, this life, the utter absurdity of it all, this life, I mean, really, the minute by minute tedious choice between pain and death.

Is this too much.

On the low-lit street the date ran like hell. She didn't come in to work the next morning.

She left me there, my father said.

My father and I sat at the table. No one was eating. My brother sat on the floor.

Pow, said my father.

Brass knuckles, he said.

And, he said, he has my wallet.

And he really socked me good.

My brother laughed.

My father looked over at my brother.

My father said, Is something funny.

My brother was laughing on the floor.

My father got up and walked toward my brother. My brother's sneakers were cockeyed, the Velcro undone.

My father was staring, noticing something.

I said, Don't stare.

He said, Tie your shoes, son.

But there were no ties.

He said, Did you hear me, son.

He walked closer to my brother.

My brother back-crept to a corner.

My father said, You think this is funny.

He said, You think it's funny that your father got socked.

My brother laughed. I knew he was laughing at the word socked. I knew he would think this word was funny. And my father said it thick and slurred. It sounded more like thocked. And that was funny.

My father said, What's funny, son.

I said, Did you thock him back.

My father turned to look at me. His eyelids were swollen.

Who do you think you are, he said.

You should have thocked him, I said.

My father's nose was bleeding again.

My brother was laughing his head off.

My father turned to my brother.

I picked up the pitcher.

You should have thocked him, I said.

My father turned. He said, You know nothing.

He said, Do yourself a favor. He said, Put that pitcher down.

You should have crushed him, I said.

I was standing by the table.

Then I was standing on a chair.

He said, Get off that chair.

My brother put his headphones on. He turned his music up. I could hear his music. Some metal song I had heard before. And I heard the ocean. Or was it the air. Something whistled. My brother's head rocked. Light came from the window. There were millions of dust specks in the light. I said, This place is fucking dusty. Then something crashed. Then something else.

As my father was getting back into the car he said to me, You don't know shit.

The date climbed into the back.

Drivers swore at us. My father drove. We ate somewhere in the city. Rice and beans. Plantains. Everything was soft and wet.