Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

The operator said her daughter had my name, and what was I supposed to say. She said something about how she chose her daughter's name because it meant something else, the name, something beautiful in some other language. And she said something about names in general and something about my mother choosing the same name and then the joke about great minds thinking alike and so on, as if she were the one with a foot in the door of something showbiz.

There was an evening at home I called my shrink. She picked up quick, a fluke, that time, as she, too, was trying to make a call.

I felt awful that evening, desperate, frantic, sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, clutching my new swimsuit to my chest.

I couldn't tell if she was disappointed to find me on the other end.

But we talked for a moment. About what. About my body. My body inside a cagelike swimsuit. And the salesgirl had looked. And the men would look. And how was I supposed to wear the swimsuit in front of the men in the indoor pool when the suit didn't even fit.

The salesgirl had suggested I buy a terrycloth beachrobe as well. And I felt awful, in part, because of this. I felt awful, in part, because I thought she thought I should cover the ill-fitting swimsuit. And I felt awful, in part, because I had never before owned a beachrobe, as I always thought beachrobes for older women, like women old as my mother was when we traveled, who, at the beach, sat beneath a huge umbrella in her terrycloth beachrobe, shivering, who knew why.

Because she was sick.

Yes.

We didn't know it yet.

But we should have known it by the way she stared, unblinking, at the TV

And her face was gray.

She slept like the dead.

My beachrobe, like hers, was short and white.

God, no one prepares one for anything.

The operator told me her daughter played several sports in high school, three sports, who knows which.

She said her daughter would someday be a professional something or other.

Had I been more assertive, I would have said, I don't care about your daughter. I would have said, Your daughter sounds like the bitches I knew in junior high.

Those girls ganged up on me for reasons I can't explain.

And did I play sports in high school, the operator wanted to know

No, I did not. I played no sports in high school.

But I could swim like a fish my mother said.

Often there was no beach or it was fall or winter or about to rain and my mother and brother would go to a nearby mall to buy model airplanes and the glue my brother used that sent my head through the roof.

On those days, I watched TV in the room and called the girls from back home. If one didn't pick up, I called another, often one I hardly knew. I called as many girls as I could think of until I got through to one and then kept her on the phone for as long as I could, just talking about unimportant things, even when she said she had to go, her mother was calling her name.

What a sick feeling in my gut when we disconnected.

I had thoughts of, Who next, Who next, Who next.

And that dial tone, that terror sound from space.

The pool was filled with treading men, their heads bobbing in the deep end.

I stood poolside, half-in half-out of the beachrobe.

This shouldn't have been so intense.

But look. Once I was a girl.

And my father and brother fell to their knees, rolled to their backs.

My mother said from her place on the sand, Quit carrying on.

My father said, Would you look at that.

He said, You can't even pinch an inch.

Well, I was no longer that thin, for what that's worth. I saw that in the dressing room mirror. There was certainly more than an inch.

My father looked at my legs and laughed. My legs were like boys' legs then.

Well, I no longer had boys' legs for what that's worth.

My father said, Don't cry.

And I never knew which way to run. Either into the ocean or into the room. It depended on which way my brother might run. And it depended on the sky.

To make me laugh my father said, What's black and white and red all over.

I never laughed.

My brother said, What.

The operator said, Are you calling a friend.

And I said, Yes.

A good friend, I said.

The operator's daughter had good friends too. They all played sports and why was it, she wanted to know, I didn't play sports.

I just didn't want to. I was always traveling with my family.

Oh, travel is good too. Did you go to Europe.

No, we went to Detroit and Miami and Tuscaloosa.

The operator said, Sports keep you in shape.

I almost joked, In the shape of what.

The operator said, My daughter has a figure, I used to have a figure.

And as I waited for the phone to ring, I wanted connection already. I wanted that feeling of seeing a face, a familiar face one wants to see.

Like one's mother's face, to take this further. One's mother's face in a crowd.

But you get old, you know, the operator said, and the figure goes, Ha, I used to eat whatever I wanted, My daughter eats like a horse and never gains, And the boys, You should see the boys around her, I never had boys…

And as the phone started ringing, I considered saying that my friend wasn't home, that I'd try again later when she was sure to be home and waiting for my call.

I wasn't feeling right about calling my shrink collect.

I had not been back to see my shrink for weeks, and I wasn't, in general, feeling right.

But the operator wanted to know what was Miami like. And Tuscaloosa.

I didn't really know. I only saw the hotels and what was around the hotels.

She said, Tuscaloosa, Now that's a mouthful.

There was a nurse who came in to care for my mother.

She closed my mother's eyes and removed my mother's fingers from the edges of the bed one finger at a time with a pencil.

My brother said this on my machine.

He said, She used a fucking pencil.

Because my mother had died in her sleep, drugged, everyone called it peaceful.

But — maybe obvious to say — who can say what she was dreaming.

My father met the nurse at a convention. I imagine them talking beneath the ballroom chandelier. My father says, What's black and white and red all over. She says, What. He says, A newspaper. She doesn't get it. He says, A nun with a spear though her chest. She says, You're awful, laughing and smacks his arm. He says, A penguin who's been shot. She says, You're killing me, and covers her mouth. She's wearing white stockings. My father gets her number. She becomes his lifelong friend.

Then my mother gets sicker.

A good thing the nurse coming in to care for my mother.

A fluke the nurse becoming my father's girlfriend.

I once said to my shrink, I never went to see my mother before she died.

I said, How do you feel about that.

When my brother went, he stood by her bed.

He called me and said, It's not even her.

So why should I visit, I thought.

My brother said she ate crumbled toast. Her mouth was always open wide. She lay, curled, unmoving, on the hospital bed they had rented and set up in the living room.

Like a fucking table, my brother said.

We just sit around it, he said.

From the floor I told my shrink about my swimsuit. It didn't fit, and I feared the men would laugh.

She said, There's no time now.

She said, Can this wait until Wednesday.

It was Friday. I would see her Wednesday after work. But there were days to get through before then. And I wanted something on the phone.

I said, But my father and brother always laughed.

I now owned a beachrobe.

She said, Can it wait.

In the beginning, I went to the convention, truth be told, to look at men. To pick up men.

I cared less about the convention itself, its topic I mean, and more about picking up men in suits. I wanted something lifelong.