Machine Read online

  machine

  Also by Susan Steinberg

  Spectacle

  Hydroplane

  The End of Free Love

  Copyright © 2019 by Susan Steinberg

  The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Excerpts from this novel appeared originally in different form in the following publications:

  “Killers” in American Short Fiction

  “Machines” in the Believer

  “Saviors” in ZYZZYVA

  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. Significant support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  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 978-1-55597-847-1

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-891-4

  2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

  First Graywolf Printing, 2019

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910930

  Cover design: Kimberly Glyder

  Cover art: Joe LoBianco / Getty Images

  Contents

  Killers

  Stars

  Liars

  Machines

  Saviors

  Animals

  Ghosts

  Liars

  Animals

  Ghosts

  Killers

  Saviors

  Stars

  Machines

  machine

  Killers

  the water is deeper than it looks; and we’re not the worst swimmers, but it’s dark; we tend not to swim at night; no, we tend not to swim at night with guys; we all knew of the girl who drowned; she sank like a stone, they said; she was showing off that night, they said; the guys all said;

  tonight, it’s guys we meet at the boathouse; they’re here for the end of summer; they’re beautiful in a polished way; but we’re beautiful in that polished way; we look out across the water; we whisper nothing and pretend it’s more; so the guys look over or don’t look over; either way, it means the same thing;

  at some point, they’ll be done with us; we’ll have wasted their time, they’ll say; so they’ll threaten us; they’ll terrorize us; So kill us, we’ll say and laugh too hard like fuck these guys; like who the fuck are these guys;

  this summer, we learn we’re part of a demographic; we’re girls who go to private schools; girls at the tops of our classes; girls who stay at the shore all summer and become the stars of the shore;

  so this summer, we learn we’re split into two; I learn we’re split into more than two; I wouldn’t say we’re shattered; we’re not in pieces across your floor; it’s more, I would say, like fractured; I would say, like cracked;

  the ride to the shore this summer was long, and no one talked; I lay across the back seat watching clouds; I slept and dreamed my parents were singing loudly in the front; but when I woke, my mother was sleeping, her head drooped to her chest; my father was staring straight ahead; the radio was playing the song from my dream; it wasn’t the song I would have played, were I in charge; that song would have been good and loud; the windows would have been all the way down; my parents wouldn’t have been there;

  mornings, my father sits with me at the table; he’s mad at me, he says; I’ve been coming home too late, he says; I’ve been coming home too drunk; but I can barely listen to my father; something is going on with him; I can’t say, exactly, what it is; so I’ll say there’s something like a ghost; something at the table, sitting next to my father, sitting on top of my father;

  we’re the stars, this summer, of the shore; we open up our throats to drink; we drink whatever is poured in our cups; we don’t care if things get mixed; like brown drinks mixed with clear; like clear drinks mixed with wine; we don’t care whose shirt we’re wearing; whose car we’re in; whose boat; we’re the girls, this summer, everyone wants; and we dance up on the guys; we dance up on the chairs; we tie cherry stems into knots with our tongues; we open our mouths to show you the perfectly knotted stems;

  the girl who drowned was a local girl; she was no one we knew well; we knew her tan lines when she wore a dress; we knew what they said about her; she was a knockout, they said; the guys all said; even my father said she was a knockout; but she wasn’t that bright, my father said; so there was no one to blame, he said, for her drowning, but her;

  but I often wonder about that night; I often think about that girl; I save the word killers under my tongue;

  some nights, I lie back and close my eyes; I can feel their weight above me; I can feel, in the good way, like a girl; and then I can feel in the bad way; I send my brain to other thoughts, while my body lies there, pretending; I think about light and the speed of light; I think about black holes; and how there’s no right side up or upside down in outer space; there’s no sound on the moon;

  near the end of the ride to the shore was the water; and from then on, it was only the water; my father was silent; my mother slept through it; but I was impressed, I now can admit; it was something to do with its size, or its depth; by depth I only mean physical; though one might make a case for another kind, a holy kind;

  they’re polished, these guys, so we followed them, like dogs, to the dock; now we dangle our legs off the edge; they throw their cigarettes into the water; they throw crushed cans, and I think some things; like how we’re not the kind to throw shit in; but we’re not the kind to say, Don’t throw that shit; when the cans hit the water, the guys say, What; we say, What, and look to the other side; the other side is the poor side; it’s a strip of dirty beach; it’s weathered motels tilted into a road; it’s beaten-up houses and couches on the lawns; it’s the jetty the locals hang out on; we’re not supposed to go to that side; but we’re not supposed to do so many things; our demographic is confusing; all the expectations, all their opposites;

  there are mountains on the moon tall as the ones on earth; but they’re terrible, treeless; gray and dust; thinking of them, I can scare myself; I can see myself floating there;

  at the ends of nights, we’re under a tree or in a boat or in a bed and taken home; our makeup isn’t what it was; our clothes are twisted; our shoes are somewhere; there are girls who walk us to find our shoes; these are younger girls who want to be us; they’re our shadows and we hate them;

  mornings, my father slams his fork to the table; he pounds the table so that everything shakes; he tries his best to stare me down; but I’ve perfected a better stare; I practice it, nights, on the younger girls; I can make my eyes go completely flat; it’s terrifying how I look;

  the guys have ways to make us give them what they want; they look directly at our mouths; they touch our hair and say it feels so soft; You smell like something I want to eat, they say; You smell like strawberries, they say;
they ask us things to make us feel smart; they say, What would you do for a thousand dollars; they say, Would you steal a boat; they say, Would you kill someone; they say, Would you sleep with us; their mouths are at our ears; we’re like a thousand dollars; we try not to laugh; they’re becoming disappointing; at the boathouse, we wanted to be with these guys; now, with these guys, we want to be at the boathouse; this is a grass-is-greener situation; it has to do with perspective; like how the water from afar is one thing; the water up close is another; like how a body from afar is something; and a body from inside that body is something else;

  the younger girls would sense the potential danger; they would run back to their houses before things got too wild; their parents would wake and make them tea; but my parents are sleeping their deep drugged sleep; my parents are sleeping each at his or her edge of the bed;

  the younger girls still think about love as arrows through hearts; and please, girls; I know about love; I know what it is; just tiny motors whirring in one’s saddest, darkest parts;

  we often drink what’s left in cans; we smoke what’s left on the ground; we don’t care if we look like trash; if our shirts come off; our shorts come off; when we dance like this, it means more than dancing; when we tie cherry stems into knots with our tongues; when we’re found in a boat and crying and can’t tell you why;

  we say, We would sleep with you for a million dollars; But not for a thousand, we say; I realize how fucked up we sound; like what are we, total whores; then it’s one thing to another fast; we only want the one thing; we only want some of that thing; we’re willing to let them kiss us; we’ll let them go up our shirts; but that’s not good enough for them; because it hurts, they say, not to get off; it can go right to their brains, they say; it can fuck them up for good;

  so they must have forgotten who we are; that we’re the tops of our classes; that we know how the body works; and the moment they know this was all a waste; and the moment we know they know; they make a sound to represent agony; the sound reminds me of an animal from a show I saw as a child; they say, What the fuck is your problem; where do we start;

  we know the universe is still expanding; we know we’re shooting farther and farther out into what;

  we know the sun will, at some point, collapse; that the earth will be burned to dust;

  I tried, once, to explain these things in detail to my parents; my mother said, What’s she talking about; my father: Hell if I know;

  we stand to leave these guys on the dock; Just kill me, I say, as we walk; Just kill me, we say, and they’re running to us; for a second, I think love; but now we’re whipping through the air like trash; we’re over their shoulders and spinning; they say they’re going to throw us in; we’re screaming, Put us down; I’m screaming, Fucking killers; and it’s the world through speed, all split, all blurred; and it’s all our fault for being such stars; for being such whores;

  one night, we were on the dock, and there she was, holding a shoe in each hand; my father says she wasn’t bright; and she wasn’t, if you think of bright as top of your class; but if you think of bright, instead, as light; she was laughing out her words; something about some guys acting wild on the jetty; I could see her remember how wild they were; I could see her through the guys’ eyes, my father’s eyes; that night, I became her shadow, and she never even knew;

  at the table, I stare my father down; I’m terrifying with my stare; it’s like I’m stuck in some kind of trance; then everything is fractured; and it’s a hundred forks; a hundred fathers; a hundred mothers saying, What’s her problem; a hundred fathers saying, Go to hell;

  we’re spinning, and all I can think is water; I think of how cold it’ll be; I think of how hard we’ll hit; I think of how far it is to the bottom; and what I would miss above; not my mother and father’s fucked-up shit; not the younger girls who wish so bad they were us; not these beautiful, agonized guys;

  I would miss the feeling of everyone looking at us; of everyone laughing at us; the feeling, after, of sleeping it off;

  I would miss the next-day feeling of starting again; of barefoot, getting something to eat;

  and don’t think we’re just teases; I also think about getting them off; I think about putting my hand on them; I think about putting my mouth on them; I think about lying under them; I don’t even need to be good at it; I don’t even need to look;

  the ride back to the city will take me farther and farther from what I am; I’ll lie across the back seat thinking, God;

  were I in charge, the summer would go backward; we would start out split and end up not;

  were I in charge, I would lie alone on the dock and feel the tiny motors whir while staring out at stars;

  there’s a moment, spinning, when spinning feels like being still; and I remember how I spun on the lawn, summers, when I was younger; I remember how hard the earth pulled me down; how when I finally stood, the grass stayed flat in the shape of me; and the grass would rise as I walked away; and I would grow too old for this game;

  so do they throw us in; do we slowly sink; does light stop; does sound change; is it suddenly cold; do we feel the fish; the plants and trash; the sharp edge of a crushed can;

  does the girl who drowned swim back to us; is she a knockout still; do we love her still; do we love her enough to stay;

  or do we push to the top; do we burst face first; are we a miracle; or the opposite; predictable; do we lie under them on the dock;

  because there’s no sound on the moon, I often think about screaming on the moon; I think about what it would be to open my mouth and push out a scream I can feel but not hear;

  because there’s no right side up or upside down in outer space, I often, when looking at the sky, feel I’m dangling above it;

  what I mean is, girls, there is no love the way you think of love;

  what I mean is, girls, I’m sorry;

  in the show I saw when I was a child, an animal was running on dirt; I was supposed to be watching something else; I wasn’t supposed to be watching; I was supposed to be doing my homework; there were things to learn; the beginnings and ends of worlds to understand;

  but someone had turned on this show; and I couldn’t look away; a guy’s voice was saying things; his voice was getting louder; there was a giant orange sun; a leafless tree; the animal running fast on the dirt; the animal running faster; this animal on that animal;

  Stars

  ; I’ll say the setting is the boathouse; the setting is a washroom; the setting: night and summer; I’ll say raining and raining all week; I’ll say the color of the walls; the color of my hair; the color of her hair; our heights, our weights; say there’s no such thing as fiction; say there’s only substitution; there’s only this standing in for that; and her standing in for another her; and her for another and so on; say there’s nothing to do at night in rain; the guys get drunk and play billiards; the girls get drunk and watch; some nights, we make up games; some nights, the games are drinking; other nights, they’re dares; on this night, the game is piercing our ears through the hardest part of the ear; it’s the girl’s idea to do this; she’s done it before to girls, she says, at her school; and it’ll only hurt, she says, for a flash; I have to wonder about the word flash; like is it a thing now, flash; like are the girls at her school now using that word; the girls at my school are not; I say, Flash, and slow to make her feel dumb; so this is where everything starts; the setting: the edge of the tub; the setting: rain hitting the window; and sitting still so not to fall in; and a girl standing in for me; and a girl standing in for everything else; this girl who is now the girl in charge; this girl who won’t be for long; she holds ice to my ear to numb it; she pinches to see if I can feel it; I tell her I can and what the fuck is she even doing, no warning; we can hear the guys in the billiards room; sometimes she plays the guys; sometimes she even beats them; she thinks it makes her look good; I think it makes her look like a guy; and the guys don’t want us looking like them; they want us looking small and weak;
to the guys, I like to seem small and weak; to the girls, I like to seem something else; to the girls, I like to seem terrifying; like a supernova; like the ends of their sad little worlds; but I close my eyes to be alone; I focus on the sound of the ice; it sounds like the dull crush of something coming through snow; winter is just a few months away; and the world of winter, of snow and school and long nights, is hard to think of in summer; I say, It sounds like snow, then wish I hadn’t said it; it sounded sentimental; I can feel regret so immediately; every word we speak, these days, is such a risk; she says, Snow, and slow, and now I feel dumb; so I open my eyes and look at her face; one of her eyes is bigger than the other; I sense it’ll get even bigger as she gets older; I’ll hold this observation like a secret; I can make this observation work, in the future, in my favor; but for now, I close my eyes again; and she pinches my ear again; and before I can tell her I feel it still, she sticks the needle through my ear, straight through to the other side; the pain is like a light; I say, God; I want, now, to destroy her; I want to tell her what she is; so much lesser than me; so much dimmer; but I just sit here taking it; I’ve become so good at faking my way through every painful thing; I say, Your turn; but she’s sliding down the wall now; she says, I’m too fucked up, and slides down to the floor; she says, Your ear; she says, You’re absolutely gushing; her head droops to her shoulder; she has such a look on her face; and I think to get the guys right now; I could show them how sad she looks; but I’m not yet that kind of girl; I still feel things way too much; I mean I can feel the tiles against her back; I can feel the floor against her legs; I can feel the rain hit hard at the window; when I hear something coming through snow, I feel the cold of walking though snow; it doesn’t matter what comes through it: a plow, a dog, a stranger coming up the walk; I can feel the entire world around me like a pulse; like a house I’ve never lived in; inside my ear is pounding; like hundreds of footsteps all at once; like the hallways at school, and school will soon start; and how terrible it always feels at first; how terrible, my uniform; terrible, my double life; to be one girl in the classroom; to be one girl in the washroom; to forget at times which one is which; there will come a night at the end of summer; the setting: the same; the conflict: the same; but this time, the girl will pull a nail from her pocket; this time, the game will be to drag the nail up each other’s arms; I’ll plan, again, that night, just to take it; and not to care about the pain; and not to care about the scar; to wear it inside my uniform that winter like a badge; to show it to the girls at school and say it was more than just a game; say it was more an initiation; more a secret club; that night, I won’t even look at her face as she drags the nail up my arm; I’ll look, instead, at the easy way my arm opens up toward her; it’ll feel cold then hot like any pain; it’ll feel hot then hotter like any thrill; like any shame that replaces a thrill; then the thrill, again, of the shame; I’ll say, Your turn, but she’ll say, I’m bored; she’ll say, I’m done, and look toward the door; so I’ll never drag that nail up her arm; but I’ll now know, watching the dark line spread on mine, that I have to overthrow her; I have to become the one in charge; I hope you can understand this; it’s just a transfer of power; some law of physics; some conservation; there will come nights when I wish to have this power back; when I’m small and weak and some guy says, Your eyes; some guy says, Come on; then tells me where to put my hand; then tells me where to put my mouth; then tells me what will happen if I don’t; but not what will happen if I do; no warning of that feeling of dirt; no warning that feeling of buried alive; and the girl in the classroom is totally dead; that girl pushing up her sleeve like a pro; the scar on her arm she’ll never be able fully to hide; and, Did it hurt, the girls will say; Of course it fucking hurt, I’ll say; And what did you do, the girls will say; What do you think I did, I’ll say; but you know I won’t go after her with the nail; I’ll never be that kind of girl; so I’ll only grab her hair and pull and hard; it’ll be like pulling a string on a talking doll; like pulling a tail on a dog; her head will jerk in a blur before me; she’ll make a sound I’ll be surprised by; I won’t have expected a sound at all; but I’ll terrify her for a second; I’ll look like something she hasn’t, before this, seen; and I’ll see her see it, what I am; a fucking force; a massive star; and she’ll always be a minor star; a proto-star; so everything, then, will start to shift; so everything will, eventually, be mine; let’s call this climactic moment; let’s call this big, my God; but first, you have to be nothing; first, you have to sit on the edge of that tub; first, you have to feel the needle pushing slowly through; and the small explosions in your ear; and the gushing down your neck you think won’t stop; first, you have to consider the weakness of calling for help; I know if I call, the guys will rush in to save me; because they love me at my weakest; so I open my mouth to scream; but then she’s laughing, sitting on the washroom floor; her teeth are fucking perfect; her eyes are absolutely charming; I want to tell her I love her eyes; I want to sit closer to her; I want to rest my head on hers; I want to let her pull my self into her self; because this isn’t the night to overthrow her; this isn’t the night to be in charge; because on this night, I’m still pretending; I’m still insisting what lies beneath every wrecked human body is good;