Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

A shot.

It repeats.

It repeats.

And I'm in a rowboat floating in the deep.

I know it's not really a boat but a car.

I've never been stupid, despite what's been whispered.

My car is parked. It lurks in the flora. I call it flora. This growth through the cracks in the lot. And I lurk.

I watch through the windshield thinking, Hey there sailors, and of if I went, Sailors, of what that would mean to someone else. To some neighbor girl standing on her stoop.

The girls always go in each other's ears, Whisper whisper whisper.

I go, Take a picture, It'll last longer.

But there's no one in the flora but me. How it always is. Me in the flora, the boys on the court. Every evening in summer. In summers.

I find love songs on the radio. The ones that let thoughts become pictures.

I think of bare feet, wet grass. The clichéd crack of dawn.

I know dawn is not a crack but a smear.

Poetry turned it into a crack.

Poetry is why we have cliché.

It's for when science is too hard to grasp.

So there I am in the backyard in spring. I'm seventeen.

I try to imagine a boy, a blue shirt. He crosses my yard. He reaches for me.

But all I can see is my father's suitcase in the grass. My things are in it.

I'd run through grass until night.

But something inside my brain goes, Stay. Something inside goes, Graduate.

There's only a month left of school.

I go back inside before the sun reveals me.

I had dreamed of running though grass the whole way.

But there are eggs on the table. Two. Poached.

The eggs are cold.

My parents whisper in the other room. Their war has ended.

I wash my hands and eat the eggs.

Love songs speed at three four three meters per second.

In air that is. The speed of sound in air.

I learned this in high school. I also learned of the speed of light. One eight six thousand miles per second.

We're linked by speeding sound and light.

Thoughts I have on evenings like these. Thoughts of the type I often have.

I watch the clouds turn orange in the evenings. The tall stiff grass turns orange. This from sunlight. It strikes the flora and turns it to fire. Or to water. Depending on the time. Depending on where the sun is sitting.

And whatever the time and wherever the sun, I'm part of the flora. As is my car. As are the ten. We're linked.

This would perplex the neighbor girls. They think science is hard.

If they were smart they'd go, What about someone who's deaf and blind, What about him, How is he linked.

Meaning if he can't hear sound or see light. Yes, I get it.

Because, I'd go, The waves still touch him.

Sound waves, light waves are what I mean. The blind and deaf get touched by waves.

The girls would go, Stupid.

Though they're the ones stupid.

But if a tree falls in a forest, they'd go. If they were smart.

I'd go, Cliché.

They've been trying to trip me up since high school.

They still stare when they stand on the stoops when I pass.

Take a picture girls, if you like.

All the neighbor girls have dropped out of college. All the neighbor girls are married with houses. They own their own stoops in the neighborhood. They own their own kids who stand on the stoops.

I think of one of the shirted ones in my car.

It goes like this: The ball sails over a shirted one's head. It rolls past my car. Into the flora. Toward the woods. The shirted one chases it down. He sees me sitting inside my car. I smoke a cigarette. I go, Hey there sailor. He goes, Give me a smoke. I go, Get in the car. He gets in the car.

The love song goes and goes.

Then one thing, another. We talk at first. The light leaves the car. We sit a bit closer. Then the song is what links us. Sound, that is. Then we link ourselves in other ways.

Touch, I'd go to the neighbor girls. To see them squirm.

I have spent whole nights in the flora. I have fallen asleep across the front seat.

At sunrise I've noticed the sky looks bruised.

I've been wanting to jot this down in the dust. I've been wanting to show this to one of the ten as he wakes by me on the seat.

But for now the sky's just turning orange. And they glow on the court while the low sun sits on their heads.

And if one of them goes, Take a picture, to me, I'll go, I look where I want.

Outside my brain I see skin beneath see-through white. I see them orbit each other on the court.

Inside my brain a finger slips up and up. The hair of a face on the hair of my face.

And regardless. Look. Inside my brain, we're fucking.

The neighbor girls would go, Why did she think that.

I'd go, Because I think.

The girls knew nothing in high school science. It was all I could do not to leave the classroom.

When they opened their mouths, I covered my ears and quietly sang.

They made their cracks. Their, What is she doing.

Even the teacher went, What in the world.

The girls all laughed.

The teacher went, Would you share your song.

When the ball bounces past to the woods, I duck. I duck when keys clink. Or when feet pound close.

I lower the song so they can't hear it.

And when they're back on the court, I turn it back up.

I never leave the car running in the flora.

I learned to play the radio with the car turned off. I learned to turn the car key backward. And the radio will play. And the lighter will work with the car turned off.

The pebbles on the car floor are rose quartz and white. The silver strips in the flora are mica.

I remember this from the last year of high school. And school ended one day after studying rocks.

The house was quiet for most of that summer.

Then a radio came by mail. My father's gift for ending high school. Mailed to the house near the end of summer. I kept it below the bed with the dust. It played love songs at night that let me have thoughts in pictures.

Thoughts of standing in the backyard grass.

I'm waiting for a boy to cross my yard. He's wearing blue.

And we run off together through the grass.

My father's suitcase is packed with my things.

I'd gone, Stop your fighting.

I'd gone, I'm leaving.

No one heard me as I packed.

I stood in the backyard waiting for him.

Of course, he knew nothing of this.

I went back in the house.

The sun rose.

I ate.

When I leave in the evenings my mother watches from the window. I can see her face pressed to the glass.

She's jealous.

My car seat is softer than hers ever was.

Soft enough to sleep on. And so on.

My radio worked for weeks before it didn't.

It was a whole life change when the radio stopped. I lay in the dark below my bed. Blind and deaf with the radio off. I could feel my arms fuzzed in the dust.

I wrote to my father for the first time ever. I found his address in my mother's drawer.

I wrote, The radio broke, on the back of a scrap. I mailed it to him.

He sent a used car in place of the radio. It was left in the drive behind my mother's.

I don't know who drove it and left it.

High school ended years ago. Was it seven years. It was maybe eight. Regardless.

I recall it ended with science. And science ended with rocks. I learned to tell quartz in a rock pile. Big deal.

And the science teacher wore a shade of blue. And his eyes. I could tell but won't.

He went, Perhaps this could be your major in college.

And he meant it.

The dust on the dash takes my handprint and keeps it.

I stop when I find a love song.

It looks like they're dancing to the song, the ten.

They go, Mother, and, Fucker. They grunt in ways like in war. They slap five.

Give me some skin, we once went on the stoops.