Free Hydroplane: Fictions by Susan Steinberg

my father said. They give anyone a license on this backward island.
    Even the ladies, said my father.
    He was with a date in the city. She worked in my father's factory.
    He said, She's the best looking one. Her hair. It's danger.
    Hot to fucking trot, he said.
    Before the date, he took me and my brother for a ride in the sports car around the hotels. The tires squealed. My brother screamed when the car went faster.
    My father said, That's right, son. He said, This is the life.
    He stopped the car outside the hotel. He said, This is your stop. He said, I've got a date. He said, Hot to trot. He slapped mybrother on the back. Be good, he said.
    We were in his office the following morning. My father had spent the night in the office. He had called us before he went to sleep. He said, I'm working late. Go to sleep, he said. But we watched TV instead.
    In the morning the concierge knocked on the door. He said, Let's go. We would ride in the limo to my father's factory. The limo was better than the sports car. We could see out the windows of the limo, but no one could see us in it. People always tried to see inside. Kids pushing their bikes up the street. Ladies in cars beside us. When I gave them the finger my brother laughed.
    There were plates of eggs and fruit on a table in my father's office, but we didn't eat. My father had two black eyes, a blood-crusted nose. His words sounded thick and slurred.
    He said, I was barely out of the car and this guy, he grabbed me. He punched me. I fell backward to the street. And my nose was bleeding like hell.
    He and the date were getting some drinks in the city.
    I'm allowed, he said.
    He said, Isn't that right, son. He looked at my brother who looked at the silver pitcher on the table. The pitcher curved inward then out. On the inward, things looked upside-down. My brother and I liked to look at ourselves in the pitcher. We looked wild and snake-haired and monstrous.
    It wasn't a pitcher you put things in.
    My father said, Don't touch the pitcher.
    He said, Touch it and die.
    He was looking at me.
    Five hundred dollars, he said, it cost me.
    Keep off it, he said.
    I didn't touch it, I said.
    You were about to, he said.
    My brother couldn't look at my father's face. I had to look.
    My father said, A knuckle sandwich. Pow, he said.
    He nudged my brother and said, Pow.
    My father said, She liked the car. Of course she liked the car, he said. They all like the car. She turned everything on. The radio. Click. The heater. Click. He said, Click click click, and looked at my brother to make him laugh. Click, he said and poked my brother in the gut.
    My brother got up from the table and sat on the floor.
    My father said, A son of a gun.
    When the filters filled with dust they were trashed. Then the trash was poured into landfills. And landfills were full of rats. My father should have known this. He went to school. He should have known about landfills. And about rats. How these rats had very sharp teeth. How they could find the filters in the landfills. How they could chew straight through the filters.
    You're crazy, said my father.
    He said to my brother, Your sister's crazy.
    My brother laughed.
    But I knew dangerous dust was released by rats.
    It became a part of the air again.
    My brother wasn't retarded. He just couldn't learn right. His brain made things backward. Like his right and left. And telling time. And he couldn't tie shoes. He wore slip-on sneakers. The kind with the Velcro. They always looked crooked, too big for his feet.
    It's a phase, said my father.
    He's a genius, he said.
    But my brother and I knew better. His brain was our secret. Only he and I knew how truly fucked up it was.
    My father said, It's because of your mother.
    She was sick, then dead.
    But that wasn't it.
    The masks were sewn in a factory on the island. The factory was small and made only masks. Bigger factories made the filters. These were in Baltimore and I had been to these factories with my brother. They were