Hydroplane: Fictions Read online

  There was a metal hoop above the garage door, rusted in places, bent. A net hung from the hoop by a single weathered loop of string. A basketball lay deflated in the yard, stuck in the weeds. Our mother often said on her quick walk from the wagon to the front door, looking at the rusted hoop, looking at the deflated ball in the weeds, You kids can't take care of anything, and, Lord give me strength.

  The synagogue had stained glass windows. We sat in the row of hard seats in the back. This, despite our mother's protests. This, despite her, You'll sit up front with me, I'll be the laughingstock, Damn you kids. The synagogue ladies had enormous tits. They said to our mother, Let them sit in the back.

  We should not have been in the garage. But we never cared what our mother told us. We hid our skates and jump ropes, the magazines, in a corner in dusty milk crates. We took our things out of hiding after school. Mostly when there was rain. Or when nothing good was on TV.

  Minutes dragged at school that day, as they did on others, but even more slowly that day, the long second hands of the clocks just dragging across the clocks' faces. And we tried, in our separate classrooms, for we were in separate grades with separate teachers, to hold our breath for thirty seconds just to see if we could, watching the hands drag along the faces. But we could not hold our breath for more than twenty seconds, as twenty seconds, when holding our breath, felt longer than a minute, felt longer even than an hour, and we took in air at twenty seconds, trying not to be heard by anyone around us, knowing we would tell each other in the lunchroom, as we did every day, how long we held our breath in class.

  There was a string tied to the bell that hung from the paint store door we could not help but shake to make the bell jingle, until our father told us to keep our hands in our pockets, saying the one who did so for longest could ride shotgun in the wagon and push the button to raise the garage door when we pulled into the drive.

  In the synagogue were twenty rows of seats. We counted them from our place in the back. The rabbi confused us when we listened. He looked at us as he talked. We were the stars that day.

  When our father bought the coupe he insisted on fully equipped, despite our mother's protests. She said, Your father thinks he's a kid, and slammed a door. They had made a deal though. If he painted the house the blue she wanted, he would get a new coupe at the end of summer. He would get it fully equipped.

  Our mother used to make us go to the synagogue on Saturdays. Our father stayed home and watched TV. We did not want to go with our mother. We wanted to watch TV instead. Or go for a ride with our father. Our mother said, I'll be the laughingstock. Our father never looked up from the TV. Our mother went out to the wagon. Our father said, Your mother thinks she cares. We did not know what he meant. Our mother blared the horn. Our father never looked up. In the wagon we held our breath in the back seat. Our mother did not care if we held our breath.

  Our father found the milk crates where we hid our things in a corner of the garage. He dumped our things out of the milk crates, scattering the things across the floor. We wondered if our father wondered why our things, which should have been in our bedrooms, were in milk crates in the garage. And we wondered if he wondered what the magazines were doing there. The magazines were his.

  But our father, most likely, did not even blink, did not even wonder why our things were in the milk crates in the garage. He, most likely, did not even notice that the magazines from beneath his side of the bed were in the milk crates as he turned them over. Our father carried the milk crates to the space between the cars. He stacked the milk crates and stood on the stack. The ladder leaned against the coupe in a way that likely scratched it.

  This is really a story about our father. About how he hanged himself in the garage that day. We used to say he hung himself. But the word is hanged.

  A neighborhood kid had told us of someone who could breathe through his eyes and so we both tried to breathe through our eyes but could not. We knew if we could breathe through our eyes, we would give the appearance of holding our breath for hours. We practiced this in class for it was something to do to pass the time. But we could only hold our breath for twenty seconds and never breathed through our eyes. We were trying to get to thirty seconds. We thought that perhaps if we got to thirty without breathing, our eyes would have to start to breathe. We started when the second hand reached twelve. We knew if we tried to do this every time the hand reached twelve, we would do this fifty times a class. And the class would go by faster. The hands just dragged around the faces. This day we felt the sickening gray wave. Only when we were breathing. Only when the hand passed near the six, seven, eight, and we were taking in air like the other kids. Only when we were breathing steady, not thinking of not breathing. This day we felt the most sickening gray wave, the wave we felt often enough, though never did we feel this sick. We had watched our father from the sticker bushes through the window after one of their fights. We often watched him through the window. But this time he sat at the kitchen table for longer than he should have. This time he rubbed his face at the table, late for work. We were late for school.

  We could never sit still in the synagogue. We did not understand the rabbi's words. We ran down the aisle. We hid in the coatroom. The synagogue ladies yelled, Enough. Our mother never took us for ice cream after. We always rode home in the back seat. We stared out of opposite windows. We said, You never take us for ice cream. Our mother pushed the garage door button. She parked the wagon, said, Your father and his toys, making sure not to hit the coupe.

  We played horse after dinner in summers in the drive. All the neighborhood kids came over. The sun went low behind our house. The coupe thundered up the street. We made way for the coupe in the drive. Dad's home, we said. The kids knew to back up into the yard. The basketball got tossed to somewhere. Everyone stood in the yard somewhere to make room for the coupe. Game over, we said.

  The rabbi said, There are signs and meanings. He looked at us. We knew of signs and meanings, but we did not know what the rabbi meant.

  One day we begged our father for a ride. Our father was doing nothing that day but watching TV. It was Saturday. Our mother had gone to the synagogue. We no longer had to go. Our father was still unshaven. He had purple pouches beneath his eyes. We said to our father, You never take us for a ride, knowing he would cave, knowing he would take us, saying, Get in the coupe already, One up front, One in back. We fought it out, both of us calling shotgun. The coupe was no longer new. Still, it went fast. Still, it went faster than the wagon. It went faster than other cars on the road. We screamed, Faster, faster, when we reached the hilly parts, hoping we would fly off the hills and bump our heads on the roof of the coupe when we landed. We screamed, Slow down, as we neared the toy store, begging our father to pull into the lot and park and let us walk through the store, promising him we would not ask for toys, we would not touch a thing, promising no hysterics when we walked out with nothing new in our hands.

  We sat in the lunchroom thinking whether or not we should leave through the back door as we sometimes did, thinking whether or not we should go home and watch TV or play broom hockey in the half of the garage that was always empty in the daytime, the half where our father would park the coupe later that night when he got home from work, tired, way past dinner.

  One rule to follow when walking through the toy store was, Look but don't touch, even if there were toys we wanted, ones we'd seen on TV when watching TV after school. One rule was, Keep your hands in your pockets, even if we had no pockets, and we understood what this meant and kept our hands by our sides. One rule was, Don't ask for anything, and we knew we were not supposed to ask for anything, but often we did, often going into fits of hysterics when we were told no, often pulling our hands from our pockets and touching everything we could.

  We wanted our mother to drive us to school. One of us said, It looks like rain. We thought we heard thunder. And our mother said, You won't drown. Our parents were having a fight. Our mother said, Take your keys. We wore our
keys on strings around our necks. We chewed the strings during class.

  The synagogue ladies taught us signs and meanings. They said a loose eyelash meant one could make a wish. A ringing in the ear meant one was being talked about. An itching in the palm meant one would get money. Aching in the legs meant a storm was on its way. They taught us to throw salt over our shoulders. So at dinners we spilled the salt on the tables. They screamed at us that enough was enough. But we shook salt from the shakers onto the floors. And we knocked on wood, we knocked on it hard, on their good tabletops, on the backs of chairs, and as hard as we could, until they called for our mother, said, Enough's enough.

  The milk crates were stacked behind the junior high. We took them one day on our way home from school. We wanted to hide our things in the milk crates. We stacked them in a corner of the garage. No one ever looked in the corners.

  We found our father leaning against the coupe in the parking lot of the toy store. He was looking off into who knows what. We said, Can we have something, and our father said, Not today. And we said, Why not, and our father said, Because I said so, and we said, We'll pay you back, and our father said, You have no money, laughing, saying, You have nothing, but we were almost in junior high and we said, We can get the money, and he said, You have nothing, but he was looking at who knows what. The sky.

  It was hard to tell why they were fighting. Our father said something. Our mother said, What do you care. They thought we had already gone to school. But really we were hiding in the sticker bushes out front, watching their fight through the window. We saw our mother hurl her car keys across the kitchen. They just missed hitting our father's face. Our father had ducked just in time. He said something. She said, What do you care. Our father said, Wait. But she left the house. We ducked lower in the bushes, laughing. Our mother was running down the drive. We looked through the window to see our father hurl a plate to the front door. He sat at the kitchen table. He rubbed his face. The pouches beneath his eyes looked darker. He was not crying. We felt the gray wave and stopped laughing.

  But, really, it seems like none of this ever happened.

  In the lunchroom one of us folded a piece of paper into a fat triangle, and one of us pushed it toward the other, and the other pushed it back, and so on, until the lunchroom bell rang, and we had just two classes left before we could walk home. We were no longer thinking of our father sitting at the kitchen table that morning, which seemed days ago already, really, all those minutes in a day, our father sitting there, the darkest pouches beneath his eyes, rubbing his just-shaved face. Really, it seemed like it never happened.

  The synagogue ladies made us dinners. They lived in houses by the synagogue. We liked the neighborhood kids, not the synagogue kids. And the synagogue kids did not like us back. And the synagogue ladies did not like us either. They clattered in their kitchens making food for us that smelled bad. Chopped liver. Deviled eggs. Gefilte fish. The ladies pulled our faces toward their tits every chance they got and squeezed us. We were the stars that month. They sent cakes and briskets and boiled potatoes to the house. All this food filling the goddamn house.

  We knew to hold our breath in the toy store when we did not get what we wanted. Our faces turned purple when we held our breath. Our mother could walk off when we did this. Our father could not walk off. He said we would faint. But we never fainted. And he always caved.

  In our last class of the day we held our breath for almost twenty-two seconds straight. The second hand dragged from twelve to five. We let in air before it hit five. The teachers' voices sounded underwater. We felt we were slipping to the floor. The teachers never noticed us slipping. We hoped to last all the way to six. We wanted to drown out the teachers for longer. But the final bell rang.

  In the paint store our mother held strips of colored paper. The strips were different shades of blue for she said she wanted a dark blue shade. Like midnight blue, she said to the paint store salesclerk, sending the three of us to the door to wait. The salesclerk handed her several strips of blue colored paper over the counter, and our mother walked to where we stood by the door waiting for her with our father, our hands in our pockets, strips of blue paper in her hand. She said to our father, What do you think, knowing he would not give a damn one way or the other, knowing how he never cared, Blue, green, red, What's the goddamn difference. She waved the paper strips in front of his face and said, What do you think. He looked at the strips and said, it turned out, I was thinking red.

  We played a game of horse in the drive. The sun went low behind our house. We could hear our father's coupe in the distance. Everyone backed into the yard. The coupe thundered up the drive. Our father blared the horn. The garage door wheezed upward. Our father pulled the coupe into the garage. He stepped out from the coupe and gave a look. A lost look. A look to the sky. A blank baby look we saw. A sign of trouble we now know A look we could see was frightening, blank.

  We dragged our father back inside the toy store. The basketball hoop was on a shelf. We said, Just look at it. The other customers looked at us. The salesclerk looked to see if our father would cave. We said, You never get us anything, and held our breath. Our father said to stop. He said, Whoever stops can push the button. But we were almost in junior high and no longer cared about pushing a button, raising a door. We held our breath. Our father caved. He said, I'll look if you stop, Lord help me.

  Our mother answered the phone when the neighbor called her at work that afternoon. We could hear our mother's voice through the phone. The neighbor told her to hurry. We stood in the doorway of the neighbor's house. We heard our mother.

  Our father was up on the ladder when it was a new ladder when we were small. Our father painted the shutters midnight blue, using the new brushes our mother bought in the paint store. He whistled some song and the shutters looked dark, too dark, and we knew our mother would think this.

  We stood inside the synagogue ladies' houses in the terrible house smells that never smelled like our house but smelled like chopped liver and gefilte fish and piss and dog, no matter how nice the house was. We heard the kids upstairs in their bedrooms watching TV. These kids were not our friends. Our friends were the neighborhood kids. The synagogue kids were the kids our mother wanted us to play with. They all had TVs in their rooms. They always hid upstairs in their bedrooms watching TV until dinner was on the table. We heard their mothers talking to the kids and the kids saying things like, We're not friends, and the mothers shushing them, and the kids saying things like, I don't like them, and the mothers saying, Get dressed and get the hell downstairs.

  On the walk home from school we dragged our feet. We dragged our jackets along the walk. It could have been any fall day, the dusty smell of leaves and cold. A smell of rain. Thunder in the distance. The airless basketball was still in weeds in the yard. Like a pumpkin growing there. A flattened out pumpkin. A good thought to have in fall. We did not want to watch TV that day. There was nothing worth watching besides. We wanted to look at magazines in the garage. We raised the garage door partway and saw the two cars. We dropped our jackets to the drive. We could not do anything with two cars there. We considered basketball, a game of horse. The two of us. The neighborhood kids had stopped coming around. We ran back to the airless ball in the weeds. Like picking a rotted out pumpkin. Water squeezed out from its air hole. We went to look for the air pump. It was weird in the daytime to see both cars. We never saw the coupe on a school day. We knew our mother walked to work. We saw her run off in the morning. It was not too far for her to walk. But not our father with some kind of work downtown. He always got home way past dinner. Meat warmed on a plate in the oven, potatoes. We thought, split second, our father stayed home sick. We remembered him rubbing his face that morning. We thought of checking in our parents' bedroom. We split second thought of waking him with a jump on the bed, something he would not have liked, perhaps, if sick, but still.

  We raised the garage door higher. We saw the ladder. The rusted paint cans. The paintbrushe
s stuck to the tops of the cans. The brooms in a bucket. The milk crates scattered. The jump ropes, skates. The magazines. The light was on above us.

  Look. There was a shadow. A shapeless shadow. It was not of the brooms. It was shaped like nothing and cast on the cars. This does not sound right. But look. We looked up.

  The salesclerk in the toy store said, You lucky kids. We looked at the purple pouches beneath our father's eyes. The salesclerk said, You lucky ducks, A brand new basketball hoop for you and a brand new ball. Plus a new air pump. We knew the salesclerk hated us. She hated how we acted. She wanted to smack us. We could tell.

  The rabbi said that those in hell had their arms stuck out in front. He said that in hell they could not bend their arms at the joints. There were tables and tables of food in hell, all the wonderful food you could imagine. He said this food was there for everyone to eat, and that was hell.

  The front door swung open. Our mother came outside to inspect our father's work. Our father never said, What do you think. Our mother blocked the sun with one hand and cried. She said, Shit. She said to us, crying, It's too goddamn dark, and our father, regardless, bought the coupe.

  On the ride home from the toy store neither of us called shotgun. Both of us chose to sit in the back seat where we could flick the back of our father's neck for fun as he tried to drive. We laughed at this, at our flicking his neck until our father said, Stop it. So we stopped. But then we leaned up and flicked his neck again. Our father said, I told you to stop, so we stopped, sat back in the seat, then we leaned up slowly, looking at each other, both of us trying not to laugh, and flicked his neck. Our father pulled the coupe onto the shoulder and we stayed there. He said nothing. The traffic whooshed past.

  The neighborhood kids backed into the yard. Our father stepped out from the coupe. He gave a look that was frightening, blank. He picked up the basketball from the yard. He stood with the ball in his hands. He hurled the ball at a neighborhood kid. He said, Get the fuck out of my way. The ball rolled into the weeds. Game over. The kids ran home. We ran into the house. Our mother was watching our father from the window. Our father stood frozen in place in the yard. One of us said, What's wrong with Dad, and our mother said, He's just in a mood.