Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

They said, Look at this.

We didn't jump.

We weren't scared.

Our legs touched in the grass.

When drivers' ed ended, the boys went driving. They drove their fathers' cars. I drove a car my mother bought. The boys didn't want to ride with me. The boys stopped going to the graveyard. They all thought I was too good now. This, because I owned a car. The teacher's son owned two. The boys had told me this. That he owned two. They told me one night in the graveyard. Our first night there. Nothing worth mentioning now. A night I told them I could get pills. I said, I can give you what you want. We sat and talked, big deal. We talked about getting high. We sat in a circle, and I said, I can get you pills.

The boys said the teacher's son had a sports car.

Well, then, I would see this car. I would tell the boys about it. I would tell the boy I wanted.

I said, Next week, I'll get you high.

The boys said the teacher's son lived in a house.

I would see the house, then, too.

The teacher's son had a mustache.

When he picked me up in his long red car, my mother wasn't yet home from work. He knocked. I wanted to call out, Later Ma, before leaving the house, but she was still at work.

And so I drove his car through Baltimore. It felt vast and light, like pushing a weightless building up the streets. And now I can say it was euphoric, pushing this thing. I have not felt anything like it since.

Look, I was laughing so hard, pushing slow and loose and light through the streets, that the teacher's son said, Are you on pills.

It doesn't matter that he said this.

I knew better than to drive on pills.

And yes his car had a type of power despite what I said.

Regardless.

What matters is what happened later.

I was stranded on the roadside in farmland Missouri. I was stuck there standing in straw like a cow.

What matters is the car that eventually came.

I didn't wave down the car.

I stood there waiting as if waiting for nothing.

I thought of my mother as I stood there. I thought of what she would have done. She would have waved down this car with her fixed up nails, screaming, Stop.

Her rings would have glinted in the headlights.

She would have said to me, Straighten, as the man stepped from his car.

She often said, Straighten.

She often said, They want one thing, Give them what they want.

She often said, Here's five dollars, Fix your nails.

I always took the five dollars. I bought small white pills with the money.

Because no one was looking at my nails.

I should have said, Ma, they're looking at my tits, You know this.

They weren't huge.

But I saw how the teacher's son looked when I drove.

He said, Can you change a flat tire.

We were drifting past rows of small houses.

He said, I can teach you.

He said, Pull over.

We were drifting outside a small house, and he said, I live in this house. He said, Let's change a tire together.

It was his house, not his father's. He lived in his own house because he was old enough to live alone. And he had the thick mustache of a man, not sprigs of hair that felt like sandpaper on my face. He said, Pull over, and I let the car drift toward a tree. It felt so easy and lightweight drifting. He pressed the passenger brake for me when I didn't brake. He said, You're really something. He reached over and put the car into park.

He said, Come on.

And I thought, split second, Don't.

I thought, So you will never know how to change a tire. I thought, Big deal, Make him drive you home.

But I went in the house.

Because the boy would want to hear of his other car. His sports car. And the boy would want to hear of his house. And I wanted that boy. So I went.

But look. I never told the boy a thing. I never had to. And still, we sat in the graveyard that night. What does this mean. That he wanted me, this boy. It didn't matter, the teacher's son's house. It didn't matter what I saw.

Still, I got him in a way. The boy that is.

Still, we were in the graveyard that one night just doing nothing, a kiss.

Big deal the cops found us, our heads sticking up from the headstone. Big deal they pushed me into the back of a car. They pushed him into another.

In a small room, it was me and a cop. He shook a bag in front of my face.

He said, Are these your pills.

He said, Then whose are they.

I wasn't on them anyway at the time.

He said, Where did they come from.

My mother walked in.

He said, Come on.

I said, Ma.

The cops said things. They called me things. I can't care about this.

My mother's face was all unfixed. She said, You're high.

I wasn't high. But I should have been. I had almost swallowed a pill. I was sitting in the grass with the boy. The bag was open in my lap. I was holding a small white pill. The boy was holding two. We were working up spit enough to swallow.

His leg touched mine in the grass.

To this day I have not wanted anyone more.

And now. Big deal I'm grown.

I teach in Missouri. Outside the window is flat.

But look. First it's dark. I'm stuck in a ditch. A car stops up on the shoulder. The other car is not a car but a truck. No one gets out. The truck is still running. I'm standing in all that scratchy straw The cat is standing beside me. Here's what I first think: It's a man in the truck. And then: He will help me. And then: He will touch me. His nose will come nearer mine. His teeth. Then a kiss, a taste of something old. A taste of straw even, old and hard and covered in all that Missouri dirt. Then straw against my back, cutting into my back.

He opens the door to his truck.

He wears a hat.

He says, What's your name.

I lie because I'm a Jew.

My mother told me to always lie.

My mother said, There are no Jews in Missouri.

She said, They will treat you there like you're a Jew.

The teacher laughed every time he got my name wrong and the boys in class laughed too and I always laughed. Big deal my name. They called the teacher Glass-eye. It was Glass-eye they called him, okay. Big deal what they called me, laughing. Big deal the boy laughed too. I didn't care that he laughed. I cared about getting his face to press against mine and more. But he never tried anything on me except that one night against the headstone. And it was nothing that time.

Then why am I still thinking about it.

Good question.

Because we got arrested. Before it could turn into something more.

Before his mouth went lower.

Before my hands went to his hair.

The cops said, Look at this.

His hand was on my face.

I can't remember what I said.

Perhaps there was nothing for me to say.

Sometimes there was nothing.

When we went driving the teacher's son said, Are you on pills. And what was there for me to say. I was just euphoric. I couldn't press the brake I was so euphoric from drifting in that car. He had to press the brake for me. He put the car into park. We were near pressed to a tree out front of his house. He laughed at me. And when he laughed, I noticed lines around his eyes and that he looked older than he should have looked. I followed him into the house. He gave me a can of soda in the kitchen. He opened the can. He said, I'll be back. He went into the bathroom. I didn't drink the soda. There was a calendar on the wall. It had pictures of naked girls on it. Their tits were huge. He came into the kitchen and said, Come into the garage. He said that was where the other car was. The sports car the boys had talked about. It had a flat. He'd show me how to change a tire.

Looking back I realize I should have called my mother at work from his house. There was a telephone next to the calendar. I would have said where I was. I would have said, I'm at the drivers' ed teacher's son's house, Ma.