Hydroplane: Fictions Read online

  On the low-lit street, the date ran off.

  Sure she ran, my father said. She was scared, he said. She's young.

  He wore a ski cap, he said. Imagine. A coat.

  On an island for God's sake, said my father.

  He said, Who wears a coat on an island.

  Then pow, said my father.

  Sure she ran.

  Brass knuckles, he said.

  Lousy island, he said.

  He pulled my nose.

  Eat your eggs, he said.

  Maryland. Shaped like a gun. The city not far from the trigger. A house in the city. A bedroom in the house. A bed in the bedroom pushed to the wall. Under the blanket. Morning in winter. A streak of light piercing the curtain. Dust forming in the streak of light. A single dot of dust. Its flight across the room.

  On a ride in the sports car, it was me and my father's date in the back.

  The best looking one in the factory, he said. Boy look at that body. Out to here.

  Look at her body boy, said my father. You won't see that in the States.

  My brother sat in the front. He read a comic and listened through headphones.

  The spitting image, said my father slapping his back. A son of a gun.

  This was a Friday. He drove us to a dinner in the city. We took the highway. We were speeding to get there. The lady drivers were the worst said my father. The ladies shouldn't even have a license, he said. Watch this, he said as he cut one off. Watch this.

  They swore in Spanish at my father.

  He said, That'll show them to mess with a genius.

  A man in San Juan grabbed my father's shirt. He punched my father's face. My father fell.

  So this was my father lying in the street. My father with a bloody nose. Blood on his best cotton shirt. My rich white American father, an inventor of something that let people breathe.

  This wasn't your father.

  I wish it had been yours.

  Then I could say the right things to you and we could have a drink and maybe laugh at the thought of your father all fucked up in the street.

  But your father would never have been lying on some low-lit street in San Juan.

  Your father would never have been bleeding like that, like some stupid fucker, just bleeding like that.

  I asked my father about the dust.

  I said, Where does it go.

  He said, It goes in the filter.

  It gets crushed, he said.

  Then what, I said.

  He said, It stays in the filter.

  But what if it gets out, I said.

  He said, It won't get out.

  I said, But what if rats in the landfills chew through the filters.

  He said, Rats cannot chew through the filters.

  I said, Yes they can.

  He said, No they can't.

  I said, Yes they can.

  He said, Do you want to be poor.

  There was a day my brother and I were looking through my father's failed inventions for no good reason other than my mother would die and she wanted the house clean, and we were cleaning the room where he kept his failed inventions, his assembled bits of wire and foam and string and metal, and we laughed pretty hard when my brother picked up some crazy looking object, an object that looked like a robot built by retard kids, and I remember saying, What the fuck, and my brother said, Look, and put the object on a table and pushed a small red button on its front, and the whole thing shook then split in two.

  When my brother and I perched on the monkey bars no one could see us. It was too dark. And we were too high up. Not even the kids who stood below us could see us up there.

  The kids were drunk. Sometimes they threw bottles at each other. Sometimes we got sprayed from the crashing bottles.

  Sometimes the kids pissed into the sand. They were crazy kids. Girls and boys. And they couldn't see us where we perched.

  It was hard not to laugh. We knew we could have scared them. We knew we could have jumped onto their backs. It scared us to think how we could scare them. We could have made them piss their pants.

  But we liked the park.

  So we held our breath.

  We sat, silent, unmoving.

  Some masks didn't work. These came back to the island in dirty boxes. Some of the boxes were very small and crammed with masks. The boxes were piled in the factory.

  My father would blame the ladies.

  You're not sewing them tight, he would say.

  Peru would call. And Mexico.

  Those days my father slammed his fist to the desk.

  He stared at the pile of boxes.

  He screamed for hours into the phone.

  He would say, You're just not using them right.

  Those days my brother watched the ladies work. I sat in the lot with the goats. I waited for the husbands to wait for the ladies.

  Mornings in Baltimore. Winter mornings. The curtain pierced by a streak of light. And dust rode on the streak of light. And if I waved my pillow the dust would scatter. I would choose a single dot of dust. It would travel upward like a leaf in a storm. Like a single snowflake in a gust of air. It would pass forever through space and time. This speck of ancient human skin. The air was always full of dust. And nothing could crush it.

  On the ride to our dinner in the city my father said, Listen.

  He talked of factories in foreign countries.

  You don't want to know, he said.

  But he at least made a filter to help.

  He looked at me in the rearview mirror.

  Sweatshops, he said. Now they can breathe.

  He said, That's my job.

  I looked out at the wilted highway palms.

  He said, Listen.

  In the rearview mirror he was eyes and eyebrows. A piece of forehead.

  He said, There's dangerous dust all around us.

  He said, My filter can crush the dust.

  It's a killer, he said, pointing his hand like a gun at my brother's head.

  The date picked dirt out from under her nails. Her nails were red and very long.

  He said, Do me a favor.

  He said, Please don't talk.

  I'm not talking, I said.

  He said, Shut your face.

  He said, Don't even start.

  Other drivers looked at us. Some were men. Their windows were open, their arms out the windows. Our windows were up.

  My father said, What do you know about landfills.

  But I wasn't thinking about the rats. About their sharp teeth chewing straight through the filters. The dangerous dust released.

  I was watching a kid in the car next to ours. He was in the back seat like I was. He was watching me through the window too, but then he was gone.

  My brother said nothing, reading his comic. We could hear his music.

  My father said, What does she know. He looked at my brother. He said, Your sister's crazy. He laughed. He nudged my brother's arm.

  My brother was off in his own crazy world. Who knew what he thought. His brain was made of dirt. Or shells. Or rotten fruit.

  My father's forehead was sweating. The back of his neck was sweating. He said, You don't know shit. He smacked the wheel. He said, You just don't know.

  There was dried grass all along the roadside. Signs for things. Drinks. Chickens, live and cooked.

  He smacked the wheel. He said, What do you know.

  Empanadas. Succulent ribs. Lemon-lime drink.

  You know nothing, he said.

  Homestyle empanadas. Like your mother's empanadas.

  My mother made no empanadas.

  We had regular food. American food.

  Fried chicken in a bucket. Buttered rolls in a bucket. Regular drinks.

  He said, Listen to me.

  He said, You don't listen.

  Then he slowly stopped the car in a lane on the highway. The date said something sad in Spanish. Cars screeched to a stop behind us. My father put the car into park. He got out of the car and
walked into traffic.

  In California my father rented a car and took us to theme parks. My brother and I rode the rides while my father sat on a bench drinking coffee from a paper cup.

  At one park we could pan for gold. We left the park with vials of dirt. There were specks of gold in the dirt. It was hard to see the specks.

  Hold that dirt, said my father.

  You'll be rich, he said.

  He took us to a restaurant, and the city blinked below us.

  The wine made me feel like I could laugh. My brother's face was red.

  My father said, This is the life.

  I said, What do you mean.

  I mean the life, he said.

  Big deal, I said. And I knew that if I laughed my brother would start laughing too. And I knew that if my brother started that every person in the restaurant would turn and stare because my brother sounded like a retard, and now he was drunk as well.

  So I held my breath and thought of my mother dying.

  There was a time my father would say to me, One day it's yours.

  I would take over. The men would work for me. The ladies too.

  But the rats, I would say.

  So my brother could take over instead. My brother the genius who couldn't tie a shoe.

  The kids who came to the park at night were drunk. They were the wild kind of kids. They threw bottles and hard. They were looking for a fight. They could have killed us you know.

  I imagine your father lying there on that street and how I would think what a fuckup, your father, and I would tell you this, and maybe we would laugh together over a drink and I would confess to you that my father, too, was a fuckup.

  But it was my father lying in the street like that, and so I'm kind of alone here, you see, because your father, though maybe a fuckup in his own fucked up way, is not the fuckup mine is.

  Your father would never have been there, and you know it, and we will never have a drink and laugh it up.

  We were sitting, the three of us, in a lane on the highway. On a Friday of all days. Car horns blaring. Cars swerving around us. It was me and the date in the back seat. My brother's music went all the way up. My father was walking along the shoulder. Then he shrunk out of sight. A goat was walking along the shoulder. My brother saw the goat and laughed. Cars were nearly hitting us. I don't have to tell you how fast they were going. Our car shook when the others passed. It occurred to me to drive the car. But I didn't know how to drive yet. My father's date was crying. I wasn't old enough to drive. I said to the date, Drive the car. I wasn't nice in how I said it. Her shoulders were shaking. She looked so stupid. Like a stupid kid. Her shoulders shook from crying. I said, Drive-o the fucking car-o. I pointed to the steering wheel. I made my hands like I was driving. I yanked on her arm. I screamed, Drive-o drive-o. She climbed over into the driver's seat. I looked at her ass when she climbed over. Her pants were tight and pink. My brother moved his head to his music. He laughed but he couldn't hear himself laugh. He couldn't hear how stupid he sounded, how fucking retarded, and I can't even tell you what it did to me when he laughed like this. What it did to me in my gut. I said, Stop it you retard. Stop it you retard fucker. Look, he couldn't hear me. And he wasn't retarded. He was wired wrong. And we were about to be killed and it wasn't by our own choosing. The date drove slow and found my father walking. The goat was walking with him. Minutes we crept beside the two. My father walking rigid. His face and neck were red. The goat bounced beside him. The cars behind us nearly slammed us. I screamed at my brother to roll down his window. I took his headphones off his ears. I screamed again. Then my brother was crying. I screamed at my father to get in the car. I said to the date, Stop that crying el stupid-o bitch-o. The cars behind us nearly killed us. The goat ran into brown weeds off the highway.

  I imagine my father laughs at some point, lying there on his back, facing nothing, the sky, and who knows what it looked like, the sky, that night, and, really, who cares.

  I imagine, too, he had a bit too much to drink, and suddenly the whole thing seems very funny to my father, lying there, a fucking genius, an inventor for fuck's sake, his back pressed to the street.

  Then he tries to move his arms to get himself up and the pain moves in faster than he can lift his body from the ground and he starts thinking it's not really so funny anymore, this life, the utter absurdity of it all, this life, I mean, really, the minute by minute tedious choice between pain and death.

  Is this too much.

  On the low-lit street the date ran like hell. She didn't come in to work the next morning.

  She left me there, my father said.

  My father and I sat at the table. No one was eating. My brother sat on the floor.

  Pow, said my father.

  Brass knuckles, he said.

  And, he said, he has my wallet.

  And he really socked me good.

  My brother laughed.

  My father looked over at my brother.

  My father said, Is something funny.

  My brother was laughing on the floor.

  My father got up and walked toward my brother. My brother's sneakers were cockeyed, the Velcro undone.

  My father was staring, noticing something.

  I said, Don't stare.

  He said, Tie your shoes, son.

  But there were no ties.

  He said, Did you hear me, son.

  He walked closer to my brother.

  My brother back-crept to a corner.

  My father said, You think this is funny.

  He said, You think it's funny that your father got socked.

  My brother laughed. I knew he was laughing at the word socked. I knew he would think this word was funny. And my father said it thick and slurred. It sounded more like thocked. And that was funny.

  My father said, What's funny, son.

  I said, Did you thock him back.

  My father turned to look at me. His eyelids were swollen.

  Who do you think you are, he said.

  You should have thocked him, I said.

  My father's nose was bleeding again.

  My brother was laughing his head off.

  My father turned to my brother.

  I picked up the pitcher.

  You should have thocked him, I said.

  My father turned. He said, You know nothing.

  He said, Do yourself a favor. He said, Put that pitcher down.

  You should have crushed him, I said.

  I was standing by the table.

  Then I was standing on a chair.

  He said, Get off that chair.

  My brother put his headphones on. He turned his music up. I could hear his music. Some metal song I had heard before. And I heard the ocean. Or was it the air. Something whistled. My brother's head rocked. Light came from the window. There were millions of dust specks in the light. I said, This place is fucking dusty. Then something crashed. Then something else.

  As my father was getting back into the car he said to me, You don't know shit.

  The date climbed into the back.

  Drivers swore at us. My father drove. We ate somewhere in the city. Rice and beans. Plantains. Everything was soft and wet.

  My brother read his comic. He wore his headphones.

  The date looked at her lap. She was devout. A good one. But her pants were pink and up her crack. In the States she would have been another kind of lady. My brother and I saw this kind of lady when we took the long way home from the park. Some of the ladies were men. They called my brother Sugar. This made my brother laugh.

  I should say, before I forget, that I liked the city. San Juan. Music came from every doorway. There were dogs on the sidewalks. Hookers on the sidewalks. Smells like the smell of burning meat.

  On the ride home from dinner no one spoke. I sat as far from the date as I could. I pressed my face to the window and thought of my face pressed to the window. I thought of what it looked like from the other side. I thought of some kid in another back seat.
How he would look at me with my face pressed tight. He would know I was stupid and from the States. He would know I couldn't climb a palm. I couldn't split a coconut. I liked American coconut shredded in a bag. Hamburgers on rolls. Kentucky Fried. And I thought of the goat who ran into weeds. And I thought of how to find the goat. And if I found the goat of what I would do. I would treat it like it was a dog.

  I don't believe there was a man in a ski cap. I think the date punched my father in the face. I think the date's husband punched my father in the face. I think a hooker punched my father in the face. I think a wild kid stabbed my father in the face. I think a lady driver ran over my father's face. I think a Coco Loco split open my father's face. I think the concierge shot my father in the face. I think the goats bit my father's face. I think the rats chewed my father's face. I think the ghost of my mother punched my father in the face. I think my brother laughed in my father's face. I think I threw a pitcher at my father's face. I threw a pitcher at my father's face. I was aiming for my father's face. My father ducked. I threw a pitcher at the wall behind my father.

  My brother was the one called retarded in school, and I was the one who punched the kids who called him retarded.

  My brother could say the alphabet backward and he could count backward and he could do other things that I couldn't do. And I wasn't stupid. So he wasn't retarded.

  There was a night, late, my father out, my brother and I sneaked to the beach. We saw kids on the beach and a fire burning. The Coco Locos and their friends around a fire.

  When they saw us they screamed out, America.

  They said, Stupid fucks.

  But they laughed so we walked even closer.

  A radio on the sand played fast-speed music. Some kids danced in the sand by the fire. Sparks from the fire scared my brother. He looked like he was about to cry. He started to back-creep to the hotel. I felt that weirdness in my gut. But before I could call him a fucking retard, and before someone else could call him a retard, and before I could punch that person in the face, someone, a girl, held my brother's arm. Next thing my brother was walking toward the fire. Next he was dancing on the sand. I have to say he danced like a retard. It wasn't his kind of music.