Read Online Hydroplane: Fictions by Susan Steinberg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susan Steinberg
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brother grabbed my father's leg.
The concierge spoke Spanish on the phone. We knew he was talking shit about us. We were white, as if you didn't know this. Wewere stupid white fuckers. We were rich white fucks.
This is not anger. I am not angry.
We sat nights, my father on dates, in the hotel room. There was nowhere else to go. We could play on the sidewalk outside the hotel just until it got dark. Just until the concierge shooed us back inside. At nights the lobby stores were closed. And we were not allowed on the beach. Dangerous kids hung out on the beach after dark. The concierge said, Do you want to get killed, and my brother made a gun with his hand and said, Pow. Nights we ordered room service and charged it to the room. There was American food on all the menus. We ordered from the American side. But it all tasted weird and Puerto Rican. The hamburgers came on regular bread. The potatoes were bananas. The TV shows were all in Spanish. Only some words were English. Chevrolet. Golden Skillet. My brother laughed at the cartoon commercials. There was one for chicken, one for something else. A drink.
To say my father was an inventor would be to lie. He mostly invented things that didn't work. In fact, only one thing worked, and you couldn't call someone an inventor when he invented only one thing that worked.
It would be to say I was a killer because I had one murderous moment one night with some kids in the park.
It would be to say my brother was a genius because he had one good idea, just one, once, slamming into the soft walls of his rotted brain.
The things my father built that didn't work were kept in boxesin a room in our house in the States. I never knew what these things were supposed to do, but there were wires and powders and pieces of foam in boxes, always, in this room in the house.
When he invented the one thing that worked, at last, a filter of all things, a filter that clicked into some kind of mask that workers in factories would strap to their faces in order to breathe, he took me and my brother to California. A celebration. My mother was dying and couldn't go. I mean to say she was literally dying. My father said, You could use the air, but she said, Go, to my father and went back to sleep.
My father took us to a restaurant that overlooked a city. Los Angeles, I think, but we were so far up on the top of a hill it didn't matter what city it was.
My father called the waitress darling. He held her by her wrist. He ordered a bottle of wine. Three glasses, he said and winked at my brother. He talked about things we didn't understand. He said his filter could take dust from the air. It could crush the dust to smaller bits. The waitress laughed and said, I don't get it. She walked away.
People want to breathe, my father said. I'm an inventor, for the love of God.
My brother drank his wine like it was water, and my father said, Easy, son.
He smacked the table. Do you hear me, he said.
My brother looked up.
Not you, said my father. Your sister, he said. She never listens.
Below us the city's white lights blinked. It could have been home how it looked. It could have been me and my brother dusted in sand, high up in the city park.
My father said the waitress was a dog.
My brother looked about to laugh.
A toast, said my father.
We raised our glasses.
To dust, he said.
Dust was mostly human skin. I learned this in school.
My brother barked at the waitress.
My father touched our glasses with his glass.
When the man in the coat and cap ran off my father rose to his knees. He must have looked like he was praying. Or like he was drunk. Motionless, touching his bloody face. Struggling to stand while holding his nose. Then the blood between his fingers. Dirt on the knees of his pants.
No big deal, he said.
He could wash the pants.
And he had nothing in the wallet.
A couple bills, he said.
And the wallet was a cheap one bought on the island.
His license. No big deal.
You can replace a license,
The concierge spoke Spanish on the phone. We knew he was talking shit about us. We were white, as if you didn't know this. Wewere stupid white fuckers. We were rich white fucks.
This is not anger. I am not angry.
We sat nights, my father on dates, in the hotel room. There was nowhere else to go. We could play on the sidewalk outside the hotel just until it got dark. Just until the concierge shooed us back inside. At nights the lobby stores were closed. And we were not allowed on the beach. Dangerous kids hung out on the beach after dark. The concierge said, Do you want to get killed, and my brother made a gun with his hand and said, Pow. Nights we ordered room service and charged it to the room. There was American food on all the menus. We ordered from the American side. But it all tasted weird and Puerto Rican. The hamburgers came on regular bread. The potatoes were bananas. The TV shows were all in Spanish. Only some words were English. Chevrolet. Golden Skillet. My brother laughed at the cartoon commercials. There was one for chicken, one for something else. A drink.
To say my father was an inventor would be to lie. He mostly invented things that didn't work. In fact, only one thing worked, and you couldn't call someone an inventor when he invented only one thing that worked.
It would be to say I was a killer because I had one murderous moment one night with some kids in the park.
It would be to say my brother was a genius because he had one good idea, just one, once, slamming into the soft walls of his rotted brain.
The things my father built that didn't work were kept in boxesin a room in our house in the States. I never knew what these things were supposed to do, but there were wires and powders and pieces of foam in boxes, always, in this room in the house.
When he invented the one thing that worked, at last, a filter of all things, a filter that clicked into some kind of mask that workers in factories would strap to their faces in order to breathe, he took me and my brother to California. A celebration. My mother was dying and couldn't go. I mean to say she was literally dying. My father said, You could use the air, but she said, Go, to my father and went back to sleep.
My father took us to a restaurant that overlooked a city. Los Angeles, I think, but we were so far up on the top of a hill it didn't matter what city it was.
My father called the waitress darling. He held her by her wrist. He ordered a bottle of wine. Three glasses, he said and winked at my brother. He talked about things we didn't understand. He said his filter could take dust from the air. It could crush the dust to smaller bits. The waitress laughed and said, I don't get it. She walked away.
People want to breathe, my father said. I'm an inventor, for the love of God.
My brother drank his wine like it was water, and my father said, Easy, son.
He smacked the table. Do you hear me, he said.
My brother looked up.
Not you, said my father. Your sister, he said. She never listens.
Below us the city's white lights blinked. It could have been home how it looked. It could have been me and my brother dusted in sand, high up in the city park.
My father said the waitress was a dog.
My brother looked about to laugh.
A toast, said my father.
We raised our glasses.
To dust, he said.
Dust was mostly human skin. I learned this in school.
My brother barked at the waitress.
My father touched our glasses with his glass.
When the man in the coat and cap ran off my father rose to his knees. He must have looked like he was praying. Or like he was drunk. Motionless, touching his bloody face. Struggling to stand while holding his nose. Then the blood between his fingers. Dirt on the knees of his pants.
No big deal, he said.
He could wash the pants.
And he had nothing in the wallet.
A couple bills, he said.
And the wallet was a cheap one bought on the island.
His license. No big deal.
You can replace a license,
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