Venus Drive

The Wrong Arm

There were marks in it, divots in it, a feathering of weals and burns. These were all the scars from all the times something tried to kill her in that arm. The stove tried to kill her. The cleaver tried to kill her. The brillo nearly did it, too.

Winter, she hid the wrong arm in her home sweater. Summer was bees and bad nails in the porch door. We were worried about summer, until it was summer and we forgot to be worried anymore. We packed all the food we needed in the plaid bag, sandwiches and sandwich stuff and twist-off cups of lemon pop, packed it up and drove away. She sat up front, packed in her proper place, beside our father, wrong arm pressed against the window glass.

We were going to see the boats. The boats of the world were sailing up some river.

I wondered what the wrong arm looked like to the drivers driving by. I wondered if they saw its wrongness spread there on the window, the burnt part, the brillo’d part, the cleaver’d.

All we knew about the wrong arm was that it was wrong to touch it, to pinch it, to rub it. Any other part of her was there for us to hold. The wrong arm was not for us to take her by and lead her. The wrong arm was not for us to tap it for her to turn.

The wrong arm would never heal right. That’s why everything knew to try and kill her there. If harmed, our father told us, the wrong arm could be the end of her. He said end of her as though he meant no harm.

Our father told us about that man who died from how his mother dipped him in a river.

He had a wrong heel.

I figured I’d take the heel over the arm any day. This was given my pick. This was given if they let me pick, not just given being given what you got. Our father said sometimes you had to deal with the cards life dealt you, but I knew games where you got new ones. Lantern men granted wishes, too. I wanted to be the kind of boy who would wish the wrong arm wasn’t wrong anymore. I was worried I was the kind of boy who wouldn’t waste a wish.

My brother, my sister, we did not behave on the way to the boats. Some of us had to piss. The car needed gas. The pipe in the gas-place bathroom almost killed her. Maybe it was filled with boiling piss. We got back on the road to the boats.

There would be bees out where the boats of the world were sailing, but our father said you couldn’t be scared of everything, or you might as well be dead.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” she said to us. “I’ve had worse than bees.” She lifted the wrong arm a little where it stuck to the window.

What could be worse than bees?

Maybe wasps were worse. Maybe porch-door nails that could stick you with sickness even if your arm was right. Maybe porch-screen teeth where it was ripped and curled and our father never fixed it. Why didn’t he fix it? Wasn’t he summer worried, at least in winter? The bees were asleep then. There had been time. Who was I to say it, though? Me, who wouldn’t waste a wish.

My brother, my sister, they had their parts of the seat, to eat sandwiches on, to sing. Each of them was nothing to me. Everything that was everything was in front of me. My father was in front of me on the other side of the car. She was in front of me with just the seat between us. The wrong arm pressed through the secret slot between the seat and the door. It was our slot. I could see the blister from the hot-piss pipe. The arm would flutter whenever the road went hard.

We stopped to sit at a picnic bench, to take a picture of us, with trees.

The bench was bad with splinters.

I walked the clear and hunted for hornets. I hunted for ticks. I counted all the things that could kill her here. A piece of bottle, a broken comb. A thorn, even. No lantern man would ever let you wish it all away at once. You could only do it one at a time, and you’d never get it all. You’d just waste your wishes that way.

“What about here?” she said to my father.

“Not yet, not here,” my father said.

Now we were on the river road. We spotted mast tips over the river hills. The plaid bag was on the floor. I was the keeper of it now. I put my hand in to feel the sandwich wax. I heard my father talking to her under the brother-and-sister songs.

He said, “One fucking opinion.”

He said, “Don’t think that way.”

He said, “A specialist in New Paltz.”

He said, “Don’t think you’re getting away from me yet.”

He said, “We have to tell them. That’s the whole point. Who cares about the boats?”

I was beginning to care about the boats.

I was beginning to be someone who wanted to see what kind of boats the world had sent to sail here. I wanted that to be the point.

I started to ask a lot of questions about the boats. I didn’t think it was wrong to ask.

Our father said the boats would be big and from every sea-going land. He said sea-going as though he meant some harm. He said the boats were one thing, and there was also another thing we would all have to talk about when we got to the boats.

I said I had some things I wanted to talk about, too. I said I wanted to know why they boiled piss at the gas station, what purpose did it serve. I said I wanted to know why he didn’t just fix the porch screen while the bees were sleeping. I said I wanted to know if there was an Old Paltz, too.

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop,” she said. “We’ll tell you everything.”

I asked why the wrong arm was so wrong, whether what we were going to talk about was an even wronger wrongness.

“Look,” she said, “the boats.”

My father pulled the car onto a high plain, a meadow. The plaid bag slid when we braked.

We got out of the car and stood in the grass. We stood in our places from the car. People sat on blankets and bed sheets, pointed at the boats.

“Look,” said my father, and we were looking.

“Does this answer any of your questions?” he said to me.

“Some,” I said.

The wrong arm was backways in front of me like it was still in our secret slot. There were scars, blisters, sun peels, stains. There were birthmarks and marks from after being born. It could be anybody’s arm, I thought. We were making it wrong by saying it was wrong. We should be holding it and rubbing it and taking her by it to lead her somewhere. To lead her by it to the boats. We didn’t need a lantern man’s one fucking opinion in New Paltz to make my mother’s wrong arm right again. We didn’t need all the bees to go to sleep to keep the wrongness in my mother from getting wronger. We just needed to waste all our wishes.

“Let’s go closer,” I said.

And then I did the wrong thing.