The Entire Predicament by Lucy Corin

Author:Lucy Corin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Short Stories (Single Author), (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Fiction
ISBN: 9781459608016
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
Published: 2007-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

MOTORCYCLE

The Judge asked, “Why are you on disability?” and the plaintiff said her arm had been reattached after fifteen hours of microsurgery.

The Judge asked, “Then why do you want the Harley-Davidson back from your brother, who has been keeping it as collateral and over this year rebuilt it from salvaged original parts along with ordering some new ones?”

The plaintiff said, “This is all I have left of my husband.”

He’d given her the motorcycle, and they’d been riding double. In the accident, her arm was severed, and he’d been killed.This is what I pieced together. What a gory moment in history. The motorcycle was scattered, and her husband’s body was scattered. She’d wandered around the dark road with her arm dangling by the inside flap of her skin and muscle, stumbling and unable to tell what was him and what was machine. Somebody sorted it out later, while she was in the ambulance and in the hospital. They divvied up the parts into two piles: people parts for burial in one box on the side of the road, and motorcycle parts in another box on the side of the road, for trash, they assumed, until her brother claimed the parts, knowing her.

“Knowing he could use me,” she said.

She couldn’t spell. The notes of agreement submitted to the Judge as evidence proved it. When the Judge said, “Give your brother the five hundred dollars, and you, sir, give her the motorcycle,” and then cracked the gavel, the plaintiff said, “Yes!”—a whispered hurrah—and made the kind of gesture you make to celebrate when you score in pinball.

Now comes what I have to confess.

Some things she didn’t say in court that I was hoping she’d say were:

“Brother, how could you have put that bike together when you knew I’d want to do it when my arm worked better? I wanted to line the parts in rows in my driveway. I wanted to lift them and fit them into one another. Not because I never learn and I’ll just get out on the road, reckless again, hair in the wind. And not because I don’t hate the machine for what it contributed to his death and my own wrecked body. But because I know that machine is my man’s body, and in my memory of wandering the glossy night road under the stars, I wanted to reconstruct the motorcycle because I could not reconstruct my husband. Because for all my recklessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and disregard for the well-being of my children, I have a soul that loves and knows beauty.”

I was by myself, watching the television in a waiting room, waiting for the guy to change my inspection sticker (yes, I still have that fucking car), and as soon as I knew that’s what I hoped, those words, those ideas, I felt embarrassed of the things I imagined wanting from her.

This is the problem with thinking and with wanting anything.

The couch felt funny against my skin. Inside my skin, my insides felt funny. It’s just not a nice way of speaking.

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