Hydroplane: Fictions (10 page)

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 paintbrushes 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.

The day our father brought the new coupe home, our mother told us never to touch the outside, never to eat inside it, never to play in or around it, never to leave trash on its floor. That goes for you too, she said to our father. She said to us, He thinks he's a kid. Our father made room in the garage for the coupe, moving the ladder, the paint cans, the brushes out from the garage and into the backyard. Our mother said, There's room in the garage for everything, We just bought that ladder, We just bought those brushes. Our mother tried to bring the things back into the garage, but our father said no. He said the things were just taking up space. He said he would bring it all to the curb on trash day. But our mother said why throw the things away. Our father said he would no longer be needing them. He said he was done with painting shutters and doors. Our mother said, You never know. She did not like the blue she chose. It was too dark. She would be the laughingstock. Our
father said, Lord. Our mother slammed a door. The things went forgotten. They stayed in the backyard through fall and winter. Our mother brought them back into the garage in spring. The ladder looked rotted in places. The paint cans were rusted. Our father saw our mother from the window. He said, Are you crazy. And she said, You're crazy. She pushed the things to the wall of the garage.

When our father hammered in the new basketball hoop, all the neighborhood kids stood around watching, hoping he would not fall from the now-weathered ladder. No. We all hoped he would fall. We hoped he would slip from the now-weathered ladder as it creaked and swayed on his way up the brittle rungs. We hoped the ladder would collapse. We hoped he would collapse and fall to his face. We did not hope that he would die, but we hoped that he would crack his skull, that he would bleed a bit. And there would be sirens, a trip to the hospital, something to pass the time.

So we watched as our father hammered in the last nail and climbed down slowly, the ladder creaking with every step, the ladder swaying slightly, and no one moved to hold the swaying ladder to help him. We watched him take the last few steps downward, and it did not look good, we could tell it did not look good, and his shoes pressed straight through the brittle rungs, which broke like twigs beneath his shoes, so that he slid to the ground in a quick bump bump bump, the ladder collapsing, and he landed on his ass in the drive. All the kids laughed as he stood, shaking, as he picked up the basketball from the yard, as he took the first shot with the new ball, one handed, shaking, still, from the ladder collapsing, trying to laugh, and we could see this, how hard he was trying to laugh, and he missed the hoop by several feet, the ball rolling into the weeds to pick up dirt. Lord we laughed as he walked into the house, dirt on his ass, a split in his pants, walking hunched without
removing the fallen ladder from the drive, without retrieving the ball from the weeds, all the kids in the yard laughing, our mother laughing from the window, still laughing when she dragged the broken ladder back into the garage and pulled the door shut.

Our father dragged the broken ladder to between the two cars, forgetting he had split the rungs some time ago, and upon seeing the split rungs, he let the ladder collapse to the coupe. It scratched the coupe. We can say that now. We saw a scratch.

Our father found the milk crates in a corner, dumped the contents of the milk crates, carried the milk crates to between the two cars, and stacked the crates and climbed them. He tied a rope around the pipes on the ceiling in the back of the garage. He tied the rope in the space where the door, when raised upward to open, did not overlap the ceiling.

It should have been our father sitting on the edge of a milk crate, the rope in his hand, reconsidering.

It should have been our father dropping the rope to the floor, deciding to go to work.

Our father did not think we would find him. He did not think we used the garage. He thought we would open the front door using the keys we wore on chewed strings around our necks. He thought we would step inside the house, we would drop our jackets to the floor, we would watch TV waiting for our mother, waiting for our dinner.

And he did not think our mother would find him. She walked to work and would not need to park her car in the garage. She
would come in through the front door like we did. She would make our dinner, and the three of us would eat in front of the TV, our father's dinner warming in the oven. And then what.

Perhaps our mother would have called him at work. And perhaps someone there would have answered the phone and said, He didn't come in to work today. And perhaps she would have called the synagogue ladies a little worried as it had gotten late and as there seemed no good reason for him not to have gone in to work. And perhaps the ladies would have suggested calling the local hospitals, for maybe he slipped and fell or who knew what. And perhaps our mother would have called the local hospitals only to find out nothing. And perhaps the ladies would have suggested she drive the wagon around the neighborhoods looking for his car. And perhaps our mother, at this point, would only have been half-listening. Perhaps she would have been considering the possibility that he left her. Perhaps she would have been regretting already the terrible way she had treated him over the years. And perhaps we would have sensed her regret and perhaps we would have felt a similar regret from the terrible way we had treated our father over the years. And perhaps we would have silently vowed to act more caring in the future. Perhaps we would have made some kind of pact with God to act more caring around our father instead of being the perfect brats we had become. And perhaps had this happened, our father would have walked in from the rain, said, Sorry, traffic, and sat with us, waiting for his dinner.

Or perhaps our mother would have walked out the door and into the rain and into the garage to get the wagon to take it for a drive through the neighborhoods. And she would have seen the coupe in the garage. And she would have seen him in the garage. And then.

There was an afternoon siren. All the neighborhood kids came running to see. We stood in the yard. Our house looked blurred. The trees looked blurred. Lights spun in the blue shuttered windows. It felt weird with everyone standing in front of our house. The garage door was halfway up. Our mother came running up the street. She screamed his name, our names. She pushed a way through the crowd. Someone tried to cover our eyes. Someone dragged us by our arms to the walk. Our mother picked up the basketball from the drive. It looked like a big flat pumpkin. We wondered why she was squeezing the ball how she was. Water squirted from its air hole. Our mother threw the ball at us. She screamed, You can't take care of anything. The garage door wheezed downward. The crowd of neighbors stood on the walk. They whispered. Scattered. Our mother went into the house. The neighborhood kids walked home.

The rabbi said that those in heaven had their arms stuck out in front. He said that they, too, like those in hell, could not bend their arms at the joints. He said there were tables of wonderful food in heaven and this food was there for everyone to eat. He said to imagine the trouble you would face in heaven and in hell. He said to imagine you were starving and there was wonderful food on tables, but you could not eat the food because your arms were stuck out in front. He said to imagine you could lift the food with your hands but you could not get the food to your mouth with your arms unable to bend at the joints. He said, Wouldn't you suffer. He said, Wouldn't you starve. The rabbi said if you could imagine what this would feel like, to suffer, to starve, then you could imagine hell. For in heaven, no one suffered. For they knew to feed each other.