Grace Zeroes Out (Emerging Writer’s Contest Winner: FICTION)

Our fiction winner is Max Steiner, for his piece “Grace Zeroes Out.” This year’s fiction judge was R.O. Kwon. Of Steiner’s story, she writes:

“Grace Zeroes Out” has stayed with me like a haunting, the narrator’s voice hard to forget. The story is mostly structured as though in a series of triptychs, with each panel revealing a world. Wonderfully precise and moving.

Ploughshares Editorial Associate Hayley Pisciotti wrote the following questions for Steiner about his piece and process.

Hayley Pisciotti: What inspired you to experiment with form in “Grace Zeroes Out”? 

Max Steiner: Getting my hands on a copy of Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever (Counterpoint, 2001) and Darcie Wilder’s literally show me a healthy person (Tyrant Books, 2017) really flipped a switch for me. Little bright moments adding up. But I also wanted to give your eyes more to do and make the page move, and the newspaper-ish blocks and white space and layered arrangement helped me do that. I’m a very visual person. Cutting the narrative into a collage also let me pack in a lot more scenes/square feet. You jump straight to the meat. And I didn’t have to worry about that channel-surfing type FOMO I get sometimes with more linearly connected writing, where I hurry myself on to the next paragraph after having barely started the last because I can see what’s coming and it’s twenty blocks down the road; here the whole point is to appreciate a small moment now and deal with how it might or might not fit later.

HP: Did this particular piece come to you linearly, and did you always know it was going to take a three-tiered form?

MS: The first couple three-sections were straightforward and started out where they were always going to be because they’re really just welcoming the usual suspects. But after that I did a lot of shuffling around to dial in the tension & speed of all the little storylines so that each character feels just within reach as you hop between them. I have a hard time writing strictly linearly because it seems like too much of a bottleneck and narrows down my options plot-wise if I’m too focused on any one particular jumping-off point toward the next thing. I also just like things messy, and this collage-y style that keeps its chunks only loosely connected before eventually tightening the screws down the line makes it so much easier to just add/cut stuff without mangling the other parts floating around. The three-tiered form is because that’s how the math worked out so the last section ends up at zero.

HP: As a writer, what would you like to experiment with next? 

MS: I’m working on some new stuff that the way it reads feels more like a shot of nicotine or fever dream where you’re in the immediate present but also shook loose from the here & now; as if you’re in two places at once—the way your eyes try to focus both on what’s up close and on what’s far away when you look through a chain-link fence sometimes, or think how maybe you wake up at say a motel and vaguely realize where you are but are also kind of out of it and alienated by the room’s angles & light. I’m ditching as many speedbumps as possible, i.e. no punctuation, and instead am dealing mostly in rhythm and sound and density/speed, which if I can pull it off gives you this kind of sensory overload where you’re right at the edge of how much you can actually take in all at once, but still you’re pulled along because the diction is straightforward and real visual and like it spills right out of you, so that once you get to the end of a piece there’s this sense of how did we even get here? This all sounds kind of like whatever if I spell it out like that, but the point is to keep it accessible—that’s my star to steer by at least.

HP: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

MS: Mess around just for the hell of it. Be a pain in the ass about what/who you love. Keep showing up. Cherish bright little moments. Your head’s like so much kindling. Listen, like really listen. Work with gasoline. Break stuff to make stuff. Twist around your usual shapes. Dig up obscure websites. Lurk on reddit. Everything is useful if you let it be. For the plot if nothing else. Don’t forget you have a body too. Keep addictions on a low burn and nourishing. Don’t neglect boredom. People usually like to help out. Connect. Something’s always about to happen.

     

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three It’s like you’re poor but in a gross way is how I’d put it. In the hall we’ve got a beat-up washer & dryer combo my dad hauled in from up at the scrapyard on 3rd, and it runs on quarters but it’s got this big hole in the coin box in the back so you can stick your hand in and scrabble out the quarters and do the next load. You try to make like it’s no big deal but you’re not always sure yourself. Mom says that’s just the way things are going to be in this house, but what happens is I’ll have a classmate or whoever over like this one time, and I ask her to help me out and grab the coins for me while I’m busy transferring wads of whites, and she’s like what do you mean grab the coins. Like I have to explain myself. But then I don’t, explain, and just grab the quarters while she’s standing there with this look on her face and doesn’t say a thing. Stuff like that it sticks to you outside of doing laundry too.

two Mom’s on the couch like she always is and she’s not right in the head. Twenty-plus years is what did it at her job where she polished paint off brake pads to make them look like new, until the paint shavings settled inside her enough to turn her strange and retired her early and on disability, where now all she does is hog the couch with her O2 tank leaned up against her leg and she yells at the tv like she can’t just change the channel, but it’s Powerball on CBS like every Mon/Wed/Sat at 10:59 p.m. Eastern and so she really can’t, switch the channel, not while they’re drawing the numbers, and she hoots and hollers at even just an $8 sweep that gets her wheezing out of all holes until she takes a drag of O2 and calms the fuck back down.

one Dad’s holding down his job like he’s trying to drown it. Mornings he heads out with an overdose of caffeine & Marlboro Reds already in him and the buzz gets him through extra shifts and overtime and then some. This is up at the 3M plant where he works the line making double-sided tape. He shoulders just about as much as he can to pick up Mom’s slack because disability checks are a joke. I’m watching him leave for his shift through the screen door, and near the bus stop down the block it looks like he’s praying to the curb the way he’s down on one knee, but turns out he’s just tying his shoe, and out halfway in the street too like some deer, as if some things there’s just no helping it sometimes.

three Just maybe this is gossip but whatever it needs out. Because what’s-her-name from varsity tennis is whoring for the spotlight again when she’s by the bleachers twirling her Dunlop racket and claims all hush-hush how she got felt up sticking round just after chem class stapling lab reports for Mr. so-and-so, and broadcasts it with a smirk that says it’s more real grown-up married mortgaged dick than any of you losers are getting. I whisper-yell this at you could call him just some friend, who’s in the driver’s seat, and we’re parked engine-on at the drive-thru window waiting for our order, and he’s got this quiet smile that spells arson and he was raised on puddle water & Slim Jims and says don’t be sorry a lot and has his very own sugary gossip he can’t ever really get off his chest if he’s smart—that he lights up cars for the insurance money and is good at it too, plants potato chips as fire starters the forensics guys can’t trace—so that all he says to me here now is huh.

two How my mom gets her lottery numbers is she’ll be sitting on the couch and holler at me to go grab her a carton of milk out the fridge and she then checks the MISSING SINCE date that’s printed on the side plus the unlucky kid’s DOB and then cross references the digits with the gospels for some extra who-the-hell-knows. She’s got a whole fever dream worked out to Hail Mary herself into the big bucks and if she scores, she says, she’ll move us all out of this state to somewhere where it doesn’t smell as bad. I am her backup, she adds, if Powerball dead-ends, it’s Grace you’re my plan B she says, so like the stuff you chew the morning after when you messed up and don’t want to be sorry.

one Same couch by the way where Mom’s dad, so my grandpa, yanked out his catheter no pain meds because to him he was sure it was bugged, the bulb at the top end of the tube, and when the only thing came out was blood & piss he went ahead and tore the cable-TV’s coax out the drywall too in L- and S-shapes you can still trace out the way they’re patched up a dirtier shade white than the rest. Maybe this stuff runs in the family. Maybe it’s the couch.

three A couple three-packs of Kool-Aid dye my hair Cherry. I’m squatted in the tub just in case, so any mess goes right down the drain. Latex gloves keep my fingers sugar-free and clean so that later I won’t stain the keyboard when I’m back online, running a Windows 98 holdover pile of junk and cling wrap still drying my hair and all this on the down-low because my mom doesn’t want me dialing up, says it clogs the landline in case someone calls and that it's all liberals & pervs out there online anyway, which she’s not wrong exactly, my mom, about the pervs.

two My mom does this annoying thing where she’s morbidly uptight about money. On my birthdays she’ll schlep her O2 tank over to the file cabinet and dig out the hospital bill they mailed her way like sixteen years ago and she’ll go over each item line by line—Propofol drip, lactation consult, etc.—just to remind me how much I cost out-of-pocket to bring into this world on a USD/pound basis. Thank god it was through the cooch, she’ll add, because C-sections are almost double, and she’ll play it off like it’s just a precious memory but what she’s really saying is you owe me big, and when I give her this look my mom’s like what—debt will kill you, Grace—and I consider her and nod and say right in a flat & tiny voice.

one Dialed back up, I hop on instant messaging and there’s TinkerxBell already online, who I’m pretty sure isn’t the age he says he is, but right now I’m curious what’s the tuition for community colleges in Chicago near where he’s at and average cost of living, and when he gives a ballpark estimate I’m like cool even though it isn’t, cool, not at all, and an hour later I’m still hunkered down and browsing the web: side hustles—egg donor USD/pop—insurance fraud worth it?—sugar daddy how to—success rate of prayer in the state of Illinois.

three On bad days when Mom’s all piss & vinegar and even more-so than her usual, Dad runs her a hot bath and then sits there making sure she doesn’t doze off and drown, which calms her nerves the doctors say, the bath does, and if he’s short on time he’ll pass me the baton and I’ll plop myself down on the toilet seat and do my homework on top of the tank, until the water’s gone stale and Mom’s skin hangs off her like a parachute gone slack and she looks at me and wants out of the tub but can’t get my name off the tip of her tongue. two I’ve heard this out of Dad’s mouth. That she’s still his wife and your mother, Grace, and that he owes her at least that much.

one I’m out with you could call him just some friend and we're in his Nissan spinning donuts by the Kmart. Rain’s coming down hard & near sideways and the lot’s as dead as it gets this late. We’re zeroed in on a single stray shopping cart near the entrance where it says stop stenciled on the asphalt. When he floors the pedal and redlines the engine there’s half a second where nothing happens except the roar’s one big bold threat. A beat later he dumps the clutch and the rear tires break loose and he snaps the steering wheel a hard left and like that we’re in a spin pushing 360s round the shopping cart. I’m pressed snug into the seatbelt and the way it catches most my extra weight it’s like there’s something holding me together that’s not myself for once. So that I let go and space out and what pops up is Mom & Dad and how when he helps her out the bathtub by the hand he’s holding on to what is leaving & what’s left of her, as best he can for my sake too.

three It’s the ugly part of the a.m. and I hop out of bed to take a leak because the heat does something to my bladder. Barefoot down the hall and past the washer & dryer it looks like Dad’s up late in the living room, is standing quiet by the phone with a Coors limp in his hand and is listening back to old calls that went to the answering machine in like ’86, my mom’s brass voice barely hers since it’s so grainy through the speaker, and in mid-message on the third one it’s like my dad snaps out of it all of a sudden and he grabs the handset and presses it to his ear but it’s just the dial tone on the other end of the line. I don’t know what to do except give him some privacy and take my leak, and I don’t flush because I don’t want to ruin his moment.

two On trash night it’s three trips to the curb to get all the garbage squared away and it can get messy. Mom’s used-up dud tickets littered in a line where I drag the bags across the front yard. I can’t help but look them over sometimes as I pick up after myself. Turns out the past couple months Mom’s Powerball numbers were just my birthday over and over in mm-dd-yy. Not sure what to read into this exactly, except she must be really getting worse and pretty soon it’ll maybe be the one thing about me she can keep straight, this one string of numbers. I check a couple more tickets for her combos under the slogan where it says BELIEVE IN SOMETHING BIGGER, but they’re still all the same. one This sense of just quote ending up somewhere.

three By now I’m pretty sure TinkerxBell gets off on my whole situation, and when he asks do you use your food stamps on tampons or what’s the deal I snort and want to say that’s not how it works buddy, but then what I actually do is I ham it up and tell him how sometimes when I’m especially hard up I’ll skip the feminine care aisle altogether and tear another strip off my D.A.R.E. t-shirt and Lysol it and shove it down there, say this just to flip his shit, and after ten seconds of no reply he’s like omg i LOVE u in a half joking toss-off kind of way that still feels kind of nice, you know?

two You could call him just some friend is in his garage under the Nissan and I’m there too because I had to get out of the house. Mom’s playing a show about hoarders who won’t stop hoarding at max volume. Every other weekend he pops the hood to fix what needs fixed and it seems like there’s just no end to it. He got the thing used with a one hundred and fifty thousand miles already on it, at a public auction the IRS put on to sell off property they seized from whoever wouldn’t stop slacking on their taxes. Usually when he’s in the guts of his Nissan he’s in a weird mood and won’t say a thing until he’s wiped down his hands, but today he’s humming & twitchy. Something about a girl he finally asked out. Some girl who’s totally new news to me. A couple gaskets on the engine block are chewed half off so that

now oil leaks into places it’s not supposed to leak into, and the whole thing smells sour when he’s worrying it uphill. Plus the rubber boot on the front axle joint is split and slings grease into the exhaust and only makes the smell worse, and the handbrake’s hit or miss with all the rust settled on the pads. It’s too much to keep up with he says. Two blocks down Mom’s probably by now at the part where the hoarders stand tongue-tied by the screen door and watch trash bags getting sold out from under them. Something’s really going to blow out on me if I don’t call it he says and gives me a look as if he’s about to ask what I’m thinking but then doesn’t and slams the hood shut.

one I carry my anger slung low around my hip, and some nights when it’s cleared up nice I’m out back on the porch with the fireflies, and I aim a single-action six-shooter with an empty chamber into the navy dark and cock the hammer and shoot the stars blind, and all you’d hear if you’re listening for something to hold on to is the click click click of shooting blank, until all that’s left is the anemic bruised moon.

three Up late I’m sweating buckets because the AC’s broke again and I’m watching this show on cable where they help losers file for bankruptcy. It’s all very reality TV-looking. They got a lawyer with bleached teeth on staff who talks like he got his license out a cereal box, and he’s sitting at the kitchen table with this woman poring over letters and bills. What her deal is is that she inherited her mom’s house plus an adjustable rate mortgage slapped on and then got behind on payments when the interest rate kicked up, and so she maxed out a couple 0% APR cards to patch up her Honda beater and pick up shifts doing delivery for Domino’s, but then driving off the lot some dude T-boned her and since that dude’s liability insurance was basically just a signed napkin she was left holding the bag and an extra 2k in the hole with nothing to show for it. When asked how she feels about the Chapter 7 she tells the camera that there’s mostly guilt. All she wanted was to finish paying off her mom’s debt, stay close to her that way. But that it’s also a weight off her shoulders to be honest, she says, now that she finally let herself let go.

two You up?—this from TinkerxBell and timestamped some three nights ago, and more messages in a sort of ramble since. About how lately he’s been binging movies that have anything bunny in them—ones that whisper doomsday into a sleepwalking kid, ones that show a bullet-slowing shades-wearing Jesus that real is only ever so real, ones that wear just shorts and tennis shoes on an overpass and make no linear sense whatsoever. Which TinkerxBell says is so dank go check em out when you get a chance would be curious what you think. Then nothing. Then nothing. Then haven’t heard from you in a while. Then nothing. Then hope you’re okay. one How often do you get the right words from the right person. Instead of the right words from the wrong person or the wrong words from the right person or the wrong words from the wrong person, and all the noise in between.

three The smell around here sucks. The water pressure sucks. The wall-to-wall carpet sucks. Dinner on paper plates sucks. Co-pay on refills sucks. Dad having to work so much sucks. Goodwill tag sales suck. Trash night sucks. Spotty internet sucks. Steaming clothes in the shower sucks. Loitering at Walgreens sucks. Social security sucks. Credit scores suck. Sussing out when exactly Kroger puts their groceries on discount sucks. Shooting blank sucks. Mom struggling for my name sucks. How Dad can just take it sucks. People suck. Blood’s thicker than water sucks. Sucking so bad sucks. My period sucks. Robotripping sucks. Luck is just stupid. Birds suck. Money sucks. Not knowing anything sucks. Being so so so so tired of it all sucks.

two I’m a couple minutes into playing with the curly cord of the landline when I finally bite the bullet and call up you could call him just some friend. His parents are out on date night, which for them is an every-other-Friday kind of deal, finagled by the bulldog in a pencil skirt they’re seeing for a marriage that’s hit a rough patch or two. So I know that if anyone picks up it’s going to be him. His voice comes through and I ask you up? and I can tell he wants to get off the phone the second he jumps straight over the irony of me asking and says yeah what’s up. What sounded right & heavy earlier in my head now feels warmed-over and trails off into an awkward twenty seconds of Q&A he ends when he says look Grace—I gotta go let’s talk later, and when I stretch out the silence he asks you still there?, and I say yeah and he says okay and I say yeah well I’ll let you go then talk later and I hang up and drop the curly cord I didn’t notice there all bunched up in my hand now gone slack and like it’s somehow not my own.

one It’s late p.m. and I’m in my room messing with the cassettes out the landline’s answering machine. See if I can’t tear Mom’s voice off the tape and burn it to a blank CD. The Price Is Right comes muffled from the next room over where my parents fell asleep in front of the TV. I got a quick & dirty setup going here, snagged a cassette player the size of a shoebox at Goodwill for cheap, which I’m a bit iffy about because you get what you pay for, but Q-tips & rubbing alcohol’s done a good job of at least wiping the tape heads clean and clearing up the signal. RadioShack was about the only store I could find an 1/8″ stereo-to-RCA cable and get the cassette player’s headphones-out jack hooked up to the PC’s line-in. The cassettes are good for thirty minutes on each side, and it’s kind of a pain because half the time the messages aren’t even Mom’s. All the stop rewind and play has me worried I’ll end up popping the tape and ruining it. Mom sounds so not like herself. There’s one where she calls to make sure Dad blow-dries my hair so I don’t catch a cold. A drunk dial where her laugh is just about the brightest thing. Some that must have

been from before Mom & Dad were Mom & Dad. I’m barely through all of it when the TV next door shuts off and I hear Dad’s choked soft groan like he’s lifting Mom up off the couch. I dig up my Walkman and write something in Sharpie on a thumb-width of masking tape. When I’m sure there’s no one in the hall I head to the kitchen and pop the whole thing next to Dad’s lunch for Tuesday in the fridge, and I hope that whenever he listens to the CD it won’t skip just from someone sneezing loudly from across the room.

zero Nine a.m. I’m at the Greyhound station on Main and I get in line like it’s not a confession. My ticket’s all paid for with the money my mom sent me to go buy her scratch-offs and a tallboy with, and on the back in ballpoint is TinkerxBell’s address he offered up to tide me over. FAFSA went through and it’s not a cure-all but it is something. In my duffel bag I have what little leaving needs plus my anger slung low. I tell myself that I’m ready to sunset this place, but still. There’s a voicemail somewhere I left about where you’d find things that have been hurt, just in case, although it’s like, in case of what exactly. The Greyhound station smells about how you’d expect. They call up my line number and open the door out to the lot where the bus is ready and I move along until it’s ticket please and IDbut then I stop, take a moment as if to tie my shoe, and out halfway in the open too like some deer, until the guy next in line gets on my case like are you gone get on with it or what.