Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

But before this.

What I thought: If straw looks like dead things, I need to sleep.

I thought to pull off to the shoulder.

But I kept on driving as I couldn't stop. There was a power behind this driving and driving. I had a power. It felt like that. Like something holy. Or something soaring. Predictable even. A rocket soaring through space.

And there were crazy thoughts. The likes of which I can't explain. But look, they were crazy. Somewhat psychic.

I saw the rain stop before it stopped. I saw the car skid before it skidded. The tire blew before it blew. Bits of black rubber flew up from the road. I didn't see the bits of black rubber. But I smelled the scorch.

The car stopped in a shallow ditch.

And there I was standing, waiting for help, in that nighttime cow smell, alone.

We were told in drivers' ed to wait for a man. We were told to light a flare and wait for a man to show and help with the car.

But I didn't have flares. I never have. I have never even considered flares or the heavy blanket we were told in drivers' ed to buy and keep in the trunk for reasons then unknown.

I was driving across from Baltimore. And if a tire blows in Baltimore, there's a place to ditch the car and a bus to take home if one has the fare.

I was driving across to teach.

I stand in a classroom most days.

I stand there thinking, How am I here.

I think, Out the window, Look how flat.

It's Missouri out there is what I think. That somehow I got to Missouri.

I stopped out front of my mother's house before I went.

My mother was standing on the walk.

I rolled down the window and waved.

My mother said, Pull over.

She said, Come on.

I pulled over but didn't get out of the car.

My cat slept in a box on the seat.

My mother said, You and that dirty cat.

She said, Why Missouri.

Good question.

I imagined flat and endless farms.

And imagine. It was all I imagined.

To live, I said.

To make a living, I said.

You and your living, my mother said.

We shook hands through the window before I went.

Then the ride. The ride's euphoric moments. A song I knew. The sunrise in the rearview mirror. Predictable thoughts of what if what if what if.

Dumb.

He kissed my nose, and I will always say he didn't mean to. His aim was off. I will always say it.

Look, I hadn't thought of him of flares of blankets since drivers' ed, and that was high school, that was summers ago in the church basement, the teacher with the stained shirts and glass eye. What did we call him. I don't know. The boys all called him something. His eye like some kind of milky jewel rolling back and forth in its socket. His gut pushing out the sauce stains on his shirts. And his son who took us on the road in the long red car with the zigzag stripe and the brake on the passenger's side. The boys all talked about the long red car, even that boy with the off aim.

It's fast, said the boy one night behind the headstone.

But it wasn't fast, as it turned out. Sure it looked fast with the zigzag stripe. But the boy hadn't driven the long red car. He didn't know how slow it went. I was first to drive it in the class. I didn't want to drive it first. But the teacher said my name. He was not a Jew. This my mother told me. He had a good last name my mother said. He said mine wrong. He said, You're first, and everyone laughed at the thought.

When I went driving with the teacher's son, the car went so slow, the teacher's son said, Are you on pills, as if it were my fault how we crept. And I said to him, Your car has no power.

He said something back I can't remember. Something I can't quite care about now.

And had I told my mother what he said.

She would have held my hand.

She would have said, Fix your nails.

She would have said, You won't get married with nails like those.

I sat in the graveyard behind the church at night with the boys from drivers' ed. It was dark and quiet but for us. Just one boy worth mentioning today. Just that boy I already mentioned. Just one night worth mentioning in the graveyard. I gave that boy two pills that night, pressed them into his palm, and he showed them to the other boys. He said, I told you she wants me.

I said, I don't like you.

Then a scuffle. Me and the boy scuffling in the grass. The other boys running off for good. Me and the boy sitting in the grass.

The moon shone on the backs of headstones.

Crosses stuck up from their tops.

We were sitting in the grass when the cops came prowling.

But this isn't about him and me sitting in the grass. And this isn't about those Baltimore cops with nothing better to do but prowl.

This is about Missouri.

Imagine this place. There are no streetlights. The road is wet with rain.

And at some point my tire will blow. The car will skid and stop in a ditch. I will get out of the car and stand in a pile of straw with the cat. I will wait for a man. He will pull over. He will help me change the tire. He will drive the car from the ditch to the shoulder. Then he will touch me in the wet straw.

The drivers' ed teacher told us girls to learn to change a tire. He said, In case a man doesn't pull over. He said, Ask your fathers to show you how.

I asked my mother how to change a tire.

She said, Ask who you marry to do it for you.

She said, You'll marry if you fix your nails.

I was arrested in the graveyard that night. The boy was arrested. I'd say the cops were pushy that night. They said things to me I can't remember. Though I do remember the boy laughed hard. The cops laughed too.

They pushed me into one car, the boy into another.

I can't care about what they said.

And besides. It doesn't matter. None of it does. In Missouri everything changed.

I was standing in straw with the cat. I was waiting for something. I don't know what. A man I thought.

Early, I had driven toward a sunset. A song came on. And the night felt holy, as I mentioned, somehow. Then more so as the sky turned black. I soared like a rocket through the dark. The road was wet. It was black everywhere the headlights weren't. The headlights hit the straw and again. I was looking at all that straw thinking, Come on already, Happen already. I knew something would. And then the car skidded. The wheel turned on its own. I recall the dark thrill of a hydroplane. We had learned of these in drivers' ed. The road was wet enough to skid on. Perhaps it was then the tire blew What did they teach us of hydroplaning. To turn the wheel to the shoulder. I remembered. I veered the car toward the shoulder and the car stopped past in a ditch.

I was stuck.

First thought: It's quiet.

Then: I have no flares.

And, as mentioned, I had never even considered flares. And if I'd had them, I would never have lighted them on the roadside for various reasons, one having to do with a fear of the straw catching fire and then, in time, of farmland Missouri going up in flames.

But the straw was wet and wouldn't catch fire. I knew this. It was too wet.

Regardless.

I wouldn't have wanted cops to see flares and find me there stuck in a ditch. Because I knew how cops could get when a girl made a dumb mistake.

My mistake was not checking the tires before I went. There was a way to check. A way to kick.

My mistake that one night was not ducking lower in the grass. We should have ducked low, me and the boy. I should have ducked my head to his lap. He should have lowered his head to my shoulder. But he kissed my nose, this boy, behind the headstone, and it felt like something, his kiss. Sandpaper. Predictable.

The cops came prowling through the graveyard with flashlights, with nothing better to do but prowl, and saw our heads above the headstone.