Spectacle: Stories Read online

  Spectacle

  Also by Susan Steinberg

  Hydroplane

  The End of Free Love

  Spectacle

  STORIES

  Susan Steinberg

  Graywolf Press

  Copyright © 2013 by Susan Steinberg

  Stories from the collection first appeared, in earlier forms, in the following literary journals:

  “Cowboys” and “Signifier” in American Short Fiction.

  “Cowgirl,” “Signified,” and “Spectacle” in Conjunctions.

  “Superstar” in Pleiades.

  “Universe” in Web Conjunctions.

  “Spectator” in Western Humanities Review.

  “Cowgirl” also appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses.

  This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  Published by Graywolf Press

  250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

  All rights reserved.

  www.graywolfpress.org

  Published in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-55597-631-6

  eBook ISBN 978-1-55597-064-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012949113

  Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter

  Cover photo: Mel Stuart / Westend61 / Getty Images

  Spectacle

  SUPERSTAR

  I once hung out with this shit group of kids and they were just such shit.

  This to say I made some mistakes.

  Like breaking into this one guy’s car.

  Like stealing the stereo out of that car.

  I was young and I didn’t steal the stereo because I wanted the stereo.

  I stole it, rather, because I wanted the guy.

  This to say I just wanted some thing the guy owned.

  This more to say that nothing else mattered in that moment except this thing the guy owned, this thing that, I now know, was not the guy.

  Anyway there was nothing else in the car.

  Had there been a jacket I would have stolen it.

  Had anything else jarred loose—a mirror, an ashtray— I would have stolen that too.

  But the stereo was the only thing I could snap out of its hole.

  And so there I was, drunk and standing on the sidewalk at two a.m., the bar closing, the drunks stumbling out, holding a car stereo with both hands, a kind of person I didn’t even know I could be, and my friends said, Run.

  This to say I made a mistake.

  Not because I got caught, because I did not get caught.

  Because no one ever once got caught.

  Because this was Baltimore.

  And if you know the place, you know what I mean.

  If you know the place, you’re likely from there.

  I mean you’re likely still there.

  Which I no longer am.

  Which doesn’t mean I figured it out.

  It only means a window appeared and I went through the window before it disappeared.

  Metaphorically I mean.

  But it’s not time for anything deep.

  We’re just talking about this mistake I made.

  How I can’t make myself feel better.

  Because I’m awake and thinking the thoughts I think at four a.m.

  Me, some guy, and it’s always the same.

  Me, some guy, and we’re lying around a bed like kids.

  Then one thing, another, his hands on my face, his face near my face, and just before it all starts up, I’m yanking a stereo out from its hole.

  I’m backing out ass first from the car.

  My friends are screaming, Run.

  To say I shouldn’t have stolen.

  But I’d fallen hard for the guy whose stereo it was.

  And when I fall hard, I fall like the proverbial ton of whatever, and by fall I mean I splinter everything around me.

  Another might call it apocalyptic.

  By another, I might mean the guy himself, the victim I mean, the guy headed away from me fast.

  He might use the word apocalyptic when cracks form in the asphalt, when windows shatter, when women cover their daughters’ eyes.

  When he floats upward to heaven.

  I’m not being melodramatic.

  You’ve never been there to see it.

  And this time, like every time, the entire world had splintered.

  And because he’d been all night in the bar talking to some girl, I was splintering within this splintered world.

  It was very complex.

  The strategy I mean.

  Like if he stood there, I stood here.

  If he looked at me, I looked away.

  And on and on and on.

  God.

  It was summer and it was a hundred degrees.

  This is not an excuse but I’m just saying.

  It was a hundred degrees and my friends said, Run, and we all ran up the street to my car, all of us too drunk to drive.

  And six of us kids squeezed into the car, two up front, four in back, and somehow I ended up in the back, even though it was my car.

  Somehow I ended up sitting on some guy’s lap, the stereo on top of mine.

  And somehow one of the guys ended up in the driver’s seat, and he started the car and drove closer to the car I stole the stereo from, and we sat there.

  And the radio, meaning the piece of shit radio in my car, was playing something from that summer, and the kids up front were singing, and there I was in the back of my car, some guy I didn’t like gripping my hips.

  I didn’t know then what we were waiting for, sitting there outside the bar.

  We were waiting for the guy whose stereo I stole to walk out.

  We were waiting for the guy whose stereo I stole to get into his car and see that his stereo was gone.

  But then what.

  I mean what were we going to do about it.

  That was the thing.

  I had the stereo, but now what.

  We’d hooked up, me and the guy whose stereo I stole, in the front of his car, the week before I stole the stereo and the week before that.

  And the liquor, those nights, was doing its thing.

  The stereo was doing its.

  And the guy did this thing those nights where he tilted his head too far to one side when he moved in toward me.

  There was something about this.

  Nothing new.

  That brilliant spinning in one’s gut that no one knows how to describe.

  That everything inside inching up and up, and this is why I wanted him.

  And by wanted I mean I wanted to own him completely.

  I wasn’t dumb.

  I knew that stealing a stereo was not the way to own a guy.

  I knew that the way to own a guy was to push something down, push something else out.

  I know that the way to own a guy, still, years later, is this.

  Like recently, there was this incident.

  There was this guy whose car I scraped by mistake with my car.

  It was raining that day, a downpour, and the guy whose car I scraped by mistake was big and standing on the sidewalk, holding his sagging bags of groceries.

  He was waiting for me to move my car so that he could get into his.

  I mean I’d parked so close, he cou
ldn’t get into his car, and he was waiting in the downpour, burdened with his sagging bags, annoyed.

  And when I backed up my car, one hand up, giving the obligat ory wave, the obligatory thanks for waiting, I scraped his car with my side mirror, because of my shit parking job, and I heard it scrape, even through the sound of the radio, even through the rain and the windshield wipers’ squeak.

  And before I shut off the car, and before the rain refilled the windshield, I saw the guy drop his bags of groceries to the wet ground and smack his forehead with both hands.

  I knew I had a choice to make.

  And I knew the right choice was to get out of the car.

  And I knew I had another choice to make.

  And I knew the right choice was to be a guy.

  As the rain refilled the windshield, I knew I had to open the door.

  And as I opened the door, I heard first the downpour, then heard the guy calling me certain names reserved for women, certain names I’d been called before and would be called again, certain names I’d, eventually, later, not too much later, call others.

  And as I stepped out of the car I was suddenly some very small thing, by which I mean I was suddenly a woman to this guy, absorbing these names reserved for women, standing there in the downpour, reduced to something snail small and just as tightly coiled.

  I wanted to be a guy.

  I wanted to be a certain type of guy.

  But instead I said, Stop yelling at me.

  And he said, Stop being a fucking whore.

  And what does one say to that.

  I wanted to say a lot of things.

  I wanted to say, Is that the best you can do.

  Because it was raining and we were standing in it and it didn’t look like it would stop.

  And his groceries might have slid, at any point, from the bottoms of their sagging bags.

  The world could have come, is what I mean, at any point, to the standstill we’d been waiting for.

  It would have been apocalyptic.

  And this would have been his finale.

  Whore.

  But the point is not this.

  The point is I wanted to be a guy.

  By which I mean I wanted to get up in his face.

  I’m not talking about anything deep.

  I’m talking about a generic performance of guy.

  I’m talking about strapping on the proverbial pair.

  But I never had to.

  Because there was this second guy walking down the sidewalk.

  And this is the point.

  This second guy was walking down the sidewalk and the second guy had seen the whole thing, had seen me scrape this first guy’s car, had seen the first guy smack his head and yell at me, and the second guy walked up to the first guy and called the first guy an asshole.

  And the second guy got up in the first guy’s face and told the first guy to get back into his car, said there wasn’t even a scratch, said, I’ll call the cops if you do not get the fuck back into your car right now.

  And the second guy asked me if I was okay.

  And the second guy called me certain names reserved for women, certain other names I’d been called before and would be called again.

  It was then I became some sweet thing.

  It was then I pushed something down, pushed something else out.

  It was then I knew I owned the situation, meaning I knew I now owned both guys.

  It’s not something I want to explain.

  If you’ve got the parts you understand.

  As for the rest of you.

  Just know I knew it was good to be a woman.

  Meaning it was very bad to be a woman.

  And the first guy squeezed into his car and left.

  And the rain slowed.

  And the sun, at some point, came out.

  Listen.

  There’s a chair across the room and were you here with me now, sitting in the chair across the room, I would get out of bed, I would walk across the room to the chair, I would sit at your feet, my head in your lap, my head demanding you pet it.

  And you would pet it how I wanted it.

  And bricks would loosen from the walls.

  And sidewalks would fissure.

  Animals would run to their dark holes filled with leaves.

  I’m just saying.

  Would I own you.

  Do you think I would.

  I’m just saying something.

  I’m just saying I’m kind of a whore.

  Which is not to say don’t like me.

  Because I’m also kind of sweet.

  Which is just to say.

  The world should no longer be about wanting and wanting the way it was when I was younger and dumber, drawing in my bed, drawing some asshole’s name on my hand, and hearts.

  But here we all are.

  Meaning here I am wanting again.

  The utter inconvenience of what I am.

  The utter inconvenience of it all.

  But I was just so fucking powerful that night.

  I was in the backseat of my car that night.

  I had a stolen stereo on my lap.

  I was feeling like a superstar.

  The kids up front were singing again.

  And the bar door opened and the guy whose stereo I stole stumbled out.

  Someone turned down the radio.

  Someone was laughing, then everyone was laughing, even I was laughing my head off.

  And the guy whose stereo I stole stumbled out with that girl on his arm, the girl stopping to untwist the strap on her shoe.

  One of the kids up front said, Who’s she, and my legs were shaking, then I wasn’t laughing, and I almost screamed out the window, I’ve got your stereo, you dumb fuck.

  I almost waved the stereo around, almost smashed it to the street right there in front of the bar, in front of the guy and the girl, and I would have screamed something, would have done all of this, but the guy driving my car sped off before I could scream.

  Next someone turned up the radio and some song was on, and the six of us were riding up some burned-out Baltimore street.

  There was no one on the street but us.

  We were screaming out the words to this song.

  Then another song came on and we knew that song too.

  And it was only us, the six of us, singing on this crazy, burned-out Baltimore street.

  I was just so fucking powerful in that moment.

  Like how I’m just so fucking powerful in this moment.

  Like how I kind of, admit it, own you.

  I don’t.

  I mean I kind of, admit it, have you.

  No.

  I mean I think this is the climax.

  This is it.

  This is it now.

  I rolled down the window and pushed my body, hands first, arms next, head next, upward through that open space and threw the stereo as hard as I could.

  I heard it smash to bits against the side of some burned-out building.

  I think you saw this coming.

  I think you think, Big deal.

  But someone could have gotten hurt.

  I could have gotten caught.

  It’s enough that I feel like shit.

  Because I would have done almost anything that night.

  Though I resisted hard at first.

  Not stealing the stereo, which I didn’t resist.

  I mean something about the guy whose lap I was on.

  He pulled me back into the car like a savior.

  He whispered to me to spend the night.

  I said, No way.

  And he said, Why not.

  And I said, Because.

  And he said, That’s not an answer.

  And I said, It’s the only answer you’re getting.

  But later that night, when it was me and him on some sidewalk somewhere, he came closer, nearly tilting his head, and I closed my eyes, pretended.

  There are things that now I know.


  Nothing deep.

  Like that only the guy is the guy.

  Like that objects are only objects.

  Listen to me.

  It had been a hundred degrees that day, and it was a hundred degrees that night, and after the guy and I hooked up, we were lying on top of his sheet, sticking to his sheet, a fan droning on the tilted dresser.

  And I was already looking at the door, I was already thinking of moving like a ghost toward the door, I was already thinking of moving like a ghost away from that burned-out city, and I was praying for the apocalypse, I was praying for that final standstill, and when the standstill came, I moved.

  It wasn’t the real standstill, of course, but a tease.

  Still, it felt real.

  Still, it lit the proverbial match.

  It looked like a window and I went through it and landed here.

  All this to say I’ve learned a few things.

  All this to say I will not steal your things.

  All this to say if I did steal your things, I know now the things will not have your name.

  And they will not have your eyes.

  And they will not smell like your sweat forever.

  And they will not make me remember your hands on my face.

  Or what song was playing when you tilted your head.

  Or the lie you said that I believed.

  They will only make me remember the sound the stereo made when it hit the burned-out building.

  A sound I can’t describe.

  A sound that was more like a color.

  A color that was more like a pain.

  A pain that was more like an answer.

  UNDERFED

  ; there was the time I stood outside; it had snowed the night before; a sound in the distance could have been voices; it could have been something else; it could have been machinery; it could have been just in my head; I wanted the sound to be something else: waves crashing to the sand, an ocean I was standing in, an ocean I was drowning in; I wanted to be sinking into sand; but I was standing in snow under a tree; I was standing in my underthings; there was something about just standing there like that; there was something about just standing still, the sky about to turn light; I was not in a state of dire need; but I’d been up late thinking of dire things; I’d been thinking, for instance, of the reasons girls love love; I’d been thinking, as well, of the reasons guys love war; I every day bought the paper from the box on the corner; I every day spread the paper across my bed; I was reading up on various wars; I followed wars in various places I didn’t know; I was becoming well informed on battle; I was becoming well informed on invasion; because there was nothing going on where I was at all; there was nothing going on where I was but snow; everyone had gone away for the winter; everyone loved to leave for the winter; and yes, I was feeling abandoned; yes, I was feeling melodramatic; then this one friend called who hadn’t yet left; and of course he would leave for the winter too; he would leave, of course, like everyone else; but I wasn’t yet thinking of him leaving; and that night I was up to nothing; I was all the time up to my ears in nothing; and so he called and it wasn’t my fault he called; and so it was completely his fault; look: I want to make a public confession; I want an interrogation; I want a fitting punishment; and where was I on that winter night: I was with this guy in a bar; and who else was with us on that night: there was no one else but us; and did I know that night he had a girlfriend: yes, I knew he had a girlfriend, but I knew nothing specific about his girlfriend, she was just a cutout of a girlfriend, she was just a flattened thing; and how did I feel about this: I felt all right, I felt pretty good, I felt pretty great; so punish me however you see fit; but know I wasn’t all bad; in the bar that night I knew to get this body out the door; so I got this body up the street; I got this body up the stairs and laid it flat on the bed; I was home, safe; I was where I belonged; and I’m sorry my thoughts turned dire; I’m sorry I’d been reading up on wars; I’m sorry for the metaphor; but I confess I was thinking of battle; I confess I was thinking invasion; I knew too much about crossing lines; then I was rushing outside to think in the cold; I can’t explain; years before, things with me seemed all right; I was with this nice guy back then; all my friends liked this guy; he would pick me up in his car; he would take me on hikes; he owned things for going on hikes; I didn’t know the proper names of the things he owned; I still, years later, don’t know their proper names; they clamped to things and heated up and stuck through ice and stuck through mud; the guy and I would walk up hills; we would sleep on wet grass; we would stand there holding hands, staring at some or another sunset; and I would pretend to like the sunset; I would pretend to be a better person than I was; but I would stare at the sunset thinking things like: Tragic, like: Big fucking deal, like: This is not meant to be; it was not, me and him, meant to be; I said, This is not meant to be, on the ride home from our final hike; the radio was up too high; I said, Did you hear me; he pointed to an ear, said, I can’t hear you; then his hand was somewhere on me; I said, This is not meant to be; I said, I’m incapable of falling for you; I said, I’m incapable of falling in love; I’m a wreck, I said; I need another wreck, I said; It’s my father, I said, of course; It’s my mother, I said, of course; I turned down the radio; I said, Did you hear me; he kept on driving; I turned up the radio; I will wreck you, I said; I swear, I said; I was talking at the radio; I was talking at the heat vent; I was talking at my dirty knees; I’d hiked all day through mud; I was scraped all over, dirty all over; I wasn’t averse to dirt; I was averse to something else: like the pressure of having to pretend I cared about a bird, a stone, a star: like the pressure of having to be so fucking nice: like the pressure of having to be a certain type of guy when I was just a certain type of girl; I was just two tits a hole and a heartbeat; I’d heard that somewhere, my brother, my father; I’d heard this somewhere too: two tits a slit and a heartbeat; that was this body; and this body was standing in the snow; this body was up to its ears in nothing; this body was thinking of invasion; this body could be a wrecking ball; this body could swing right in and wreck your home; I confess: it could make itself do awful things; it had done plenty of awful plenty of times; just look at it up in that old tree as a kid; just look at it dangling upside down from the highest branch that could hold it; just look at it dangling by its legs; this was a family trip to the South; this was the trip I learned to climb a tree; and it was on this trip I learned to dive through waves; we stayed in a cottage by the beach; my brother threw bread to birds; my father sat on the sand; my mother slept in the cottage; there was always the sound of waves; I know it all sounds spectacular; and I assure you some moments were; but I assure you some moments were not; nights, I stayed in the tree well after my name had been called; I wasn’t hungry for dinner; I wasn’t ever hungry; I was underfed and happy being underfed; I dangled, nights, from the highest branch; I waited for my father to come back from the bar; I waited for my father to walk under the tree; from up in the tree I would see him stumble up the sidewalk, shirt untucked; I would see him drop his keys to the grass, hear him cuss, see him stoop to the grass; and on one night I would drop down from the tree; and on this night I would crush my father to dust; because I knew it was my job to crush him; because I was the only daughter of the man; because he was the man and I was the only daughter; but most nights my father walked up the sidewalk; he walked into the cottage; the screen door slammed; the cottage went dark; and eventually I would come down from the tree; I would lie on the grass; I would consider stars; I would consider my size; I would consider how the world began; it began, as you know, as a spark; and I began, as well, as a spark; and then everything grew; and a lot of things happened; and a lot more things happened; and the future was the present; and the present was a battle in my head; it was another line for me to cross; and no, I wasn’t terribly cold; and no, the sound wasn’t what I thought it was; it wasn’t what I wanted it to be; it wasn’t waves crashing onto a beach; and yes, I wanted something to c
ome through the snow; yes, I wanted the savior to come through the snow; and yes, one day the savior would come through the snow; but no, it wasn’t on that day; on that day, I was still unsaved; on that day, I was waiting to be punished for my sins; so punish me however you see fit; I shouldn’t have gone with the guy to the bar; we were not supposed to be in the bar; he was supposed to be with his girlfriend; I was supposed to be a better person than I was; I was supposed to be just about as regular a girl as I could be; but just look at us drinking way too much; just look at him looking at me like that; just look at him forgetting his girlfriend; we probably fell in love right there; it was probably total love right then; I was probably totally capable now of falling in love; on our last hike, the guy and I watched a bird soaring over a field; it was a hawk I think, and I wish I’d cared about that bird; and I wish I’d cared about that guy; but I dropped his hand; I sat on a rock; I watched him watch the bird; I’m sure he wasn’t thinking the awful thoughts I was thinking; I’m sure he was only thinking of this bird moving through the space through which he was also moving; I’m sure he was feeling connected to it in a way I could not feel connected; but it was beautiful, I confess, the bird; it was spectacular, I confess; So am I awful, I asked the guy at the bar, and I can’t remember why I asked; I knew he didn’t think I was awful; because he was looking at me a certain way; because he was looking at me like he wanted to devour me; and I wanted, of course, to be devoured; and there was his hand; and there it was on me; and it felt, in that moment, like the world had ended; but the world hadn’t ended just because it felt like it had; and so I downed my drink; I looked away; and the door was still there; and the street was still there; and the world was there beyond that; and walking home, I was feeling okay; and I was feeling okay because I was drunk; and I was feeling okay because I knew how to get this drunk body home; and I was feeling okay until a guy pushed a cart into my legs and said, I’ll give you a thousand dollars to spend the night in your bed; he was filthy; his clothes were torn; his cart was filled with trash; I said, You don’t have a thousand dollars; I said, You don’t even have a dollar; I kicked his cart; and I didn’t mean to kick his cart so hard; then the snow began; and it would snow all night; look: it started out well enough, this spark; on our family trip to the South I met a girl; her name was two names pressed together, one a girl’s and one a guy’s; she was missing her front teeth; she said y’all; and she was the one who taught me how to climb a tree; she was the one who taught me how to dive through waves; climbing a tree was easy; I could climb a tree in seconds; I was scared, however, to dive through waves; there was something about the force; there was something about a force coming at me; there was something about the trust; but still I wanted to try; and so I stood one day in the ocean; and my brother was there, and the girl was there; and my father and her mother stood on the shore; my father and her mother were ankle-deep; I screamed to them, Watch me, but my father didn’t look up; my brother screamed to them, Watch this, but my father was fooling with her mother’s bathing-suit tie; her mother was kicking water at my father; my mother was back at the cottage pretending to sleep; my mother was back at the cottage staring at her hands; my mother was back at the cottage pulling hairs out from her head; I screamed to them, Watch me, as the biggest wave came rushing up, and the girl screamed, Go, y’all; and my brother and I both dove into the wave; and I could have drowned, you know; I would have drowned, you know; and did I want to drown; well, I didn’t, you know; I just dove, felt cold, felt the tug of the world, emerged; I saw my father and her mother in the waterblurred distance; I heard my brother choking beside me; and no, I wasn’t going ashore; I wasn’t tired; I wasn’t hungry; I wasn’t cold; I wanted to stay in the water forever; I wanted to travel farther and farther out; farther out in the water, I could hear only water; I couldn’t hear the girl’s mother laughing; I couldn’t hear my brother choking; I couldn’t see my father looming how he often loomed; farther out was a world I could be in forever; so no, I wasn’t going back; so I floated away, an abandoned boat; I floated, an abandoned shell; but then I felt my father’s arms around me; and then I was screaming, No, and, No; and the girl’s mother had no right laughing as my father dragged me from the water; and the girl had no right laughing; and my brother, my poor brother; and later that night my father went out; my mother slept in a chair; I climbed the tree outside the cottage; I dangled from the highest branch; and the sun went down; and the cottage went dead; and the blood rushed to my skull; and so what if I crushed him; I would put an end to something awful; I would be my brother’s savior; I would be my mother’s savior; and so I dangled from the branch; and the grass grew below my head; and day spread across the roots; and my father never walked up the sidewalk; and there’s nothing much more to say; I dropped to the ground; I brushed off my clothes; I walked into the cottage; and there was my mother; and there was my brother; and this part goes out to the girlfriend: I loved love as much as any girl; I loved war as much as any guy; and I confess I considered swinging this body in and wrecking your fucking home; I confess I knew exactly how to do it; and it would have been spectacular; and I want you now to punish me; because I was being a girl and nothing but; because I was the only daughter of the man; because I kicked that guy’s cart as hard as I could; and, fine, I meant to kick it that hard; and yes, there was trash all over the place; and yes, there was a sound like a sound you’ve never heard; and people were laughing; and the guy, the poor guy: you’ve never seen a sadder face; not even on my mother; not even on my brother; and it was going to snow; and then it was snowing; my God; I was totally wrecked; but yes, I had left him at the bar; yes, I got this body home; I knew how to do things so no one really got hurt; look, girlfriend; there were times things seemed all right; there were nights my father came home on time; and those nights, some, we ate at the table; and some of those nights, we stared at the same storm through the screen; and some of those nights when my mother was sleeping and my brother was sleeping, I stood with my father under the tree;