by Joshua Mohr
Father and son not saying a word.
Again.
“Why did you post this?” Paul asks.
“I never wanted to get a dog,” Jake says.
“Let’s get you out of here,” says Paul, tugging on Jake’s shoulders. He has to get his boy out of there now, right now. Jake’s too young to understand self-preservation, to value sparing yourself from seeing things you don’t have to endure. Paul should have been more present at the moment on the bridge, should have told his son to put down his phone. Don’t film this. Don’t capture any of this.
And it’s inexcusable that Paul is only finding out now that Jake posted it. He should have known right away. He should have stood guard outside his door, poked his head in every five minutes, if only to say to his son, “I’m here. I’m right here if you need me.”
There’s no need for fantasy sports when the real competition had been going on upstairs, Jake versus his own confusion, his naïveté, his limited understanding of consequences. Paul has let down Jake, and that stops now.
“I don’t know why you thought I wanted a dog in the first place,” Jake says.
“Are you hungry?”
“This is my favorite,” says Jake, pointing to the screen, the tall woman in the purple pants throwing her clarinet then leaping.
“Come on,” Paul says, “we need to go.”
“Did you see how she holds her nose right before she jumps? Isn’t that strange?” asks Jake.
“How about some pizza?”
“I like how she holds her nose like that.”
“Pizza?”
“No.”
“Macaroni and cheese?”
“Okay.”
“Go downstairs and put on a pot of water. I’ll be down as soon as I clean this up.”
But the boy simply sits there, awash in the computer’s light.
“Jake, move it.”
Finally, he gets up and slinks out of the room.
Paul fishes his cell phone from his pocket, calling to set up an appointment with a psychologist. No one answers and he listens to the long litany of various instructions. He leaves a detailed voice-mail, asking for an appointment in the next couple days.
He assesses the damage, begins cleaning things up.
He starts with the printer, unplugging it and collecting the scattered pieces of plastic. Paul goes to the hall closet and gets a vacuum, sucking up all the dirt. He puts the pieces of the alarm clock on top of the printer. The terra-cotta shards from the succulent’s pot are the last thing he collects. Loads it all into a garbage bag. Remembering all those butterflies whirling around the garden as they dismembered their family.
He’s finished tidying the room and walks to the door, turning off the light, which only amplifies the presence of Jake’s computer. It is glowing. Paul stomps over to it in a huff, as if it’s that very dog that Naomi had dumbly promised Jake and it had pissed all over the floor, Paul ready to shame the pet, rub its nose in the mess.
This is the computer’s fault, not his boy’s.
No way is it his boy’s.
No way can his boy be blamed.
Paul sits down in front of the computer, lured closer to watch the clip again, but instead he scrolls down a bit.
He can see the comment. He can see, “I feel sad for whoever posted this.”
And Paul bursts into tears. He crumbles under the mass of his own ignorance. Having a kid is the ultimate risk. It creates such a limited perspective. A tube of love. And your vision can be so obscured that you do not understand the dangers on the periphery. You want nothing else but to adore and train and watch them prosper, but the world will have its way with them. Protection is a wicked illusion.
Paul cannot keep Jake safe, even if he spends the rest of his days guarding the boy’s room. He has to let him out. He has to teach his son to fend for himself, and that’s the great paradox of being a parent: He doesn’t want to teach him everything, wants to hold back just enough that Jake needs him. Paul wants to always be needed by his boy, but that greedy motive might prevent Jake from having access to all the tools needed to survive.
Even if you do give them every tool, it’s like indoor rock climbing, Paul’s main source of exercise. You can have everything you need, make it to the top, but what if you’re scaling the wrong wall? Paul himself had all the tools, supportive parents that stayed together, a Stanford education, a trough of options, and yet he still found an existence that perpetually disappoints him.
That’s what he’ll try and focus on, making sure Jake mounts the right wall.
If Paul’s parents were here they’d say, Pay attention. They’d say, It will be the hardest thing you ever accept but you can’t protect him. Teach him to scale the right wall and hope for the best.
The final thing Paul does before going downstairs is close his son’s computer. He unplugs it and carries it away.
6.
Before it became that morning, it was any other, yesterday rehydrated. Noah sat at his desk in his office on Montgomery Street, in San Francisco’s financial district. It was a ghost town at 3 AM and Noah had been alone in his walk into the office. There was a street sweeper going by, newspapers being disseminated to various boxes and stands, sidewalks hosed down before the swarm, the explosion when the rest of the working stiffs showed up, pounding the pavement, flooding various cafés for caffeine and carbs.
Like clockwork, Noah arrived at this ungodly hour, putting everyone else in his firm to shame with his hawkish commitment to the details. This was what you have to do to be the best, and Noah was committed to storming the highest echelon. He’d been the best Ugly Duckling his first-grade class had ever seen, a lacrosse midfielder who would take your head off, and he was on his way to being the best futures trader at the firm.
There was something about futures that made sense to Noah. He had an instinct for both short- and long-term commodity trading. He approached the whole thing like an athlete, with the simple philosophy that it took diligent hard work every day. He never rested on one single laurel, but saw every futures contract that paid out—that he won—an opportunity to learn from and be even better for the next. There was no celebrating, no grandstanding, no days off. If you weren’t pushing yourself to improve, then you were getting worse.
A lot of traders used futures to hedge their bets, reducing the overall risk of their clients’ portfolios. But what made Noah so good at it was that he never approached futures in this condescending way. They were the closest thing to an actual competition in the market. Futures contracts either paid out or busted. Win or lose. Period. Noah flourished on the risk.
He cracked open a protein shake and peeked at the clock, 3:48. He could hear his sister, Tracey, ragging him about his early approach to his job: “You’re the oldest thirty-five-year-old in the world,” she’d say. “You’re still pretty young! Go out and have fun!”
“I’m thirty-four, Trace.”
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” she’d say, ten years his junior. “Why not enjoy yourself?”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might actually like working?”
“If you could see what I see,” she said, shaking her head. Here was his sister with that knowing smile of hers, exposing crooked bottom teeth. She had eyes the color of cucumber peel and she loved to rag her brother. He loved it, too. This was a shtick they’d been perfecting for years, his over-concern, her under-concern. They balanced each other out.
Noah was always the greedy go-getter, a hardwired Type A pit bull. Tracey was flighty, wonderfully flighty—it was one of the things her older brother loved about her so much, all the whimsy she saw in the world, all the life, all the hope. How she could actually enjoy where she was without ruining it with superimpositions about the future.
Noah’s therapist once told him that the difference between depression and anxiety was which way you were looking: to your past or to your future. People who were depressed fixated on the past, while their anxious counterpoi
nts couldn’t stop worrying about what was coming next week, next month, next year. A future that might not ever happen.
Noah was staunchly restless, fearful, the future this supernova waiting to blow. He’d always lived that way. And he always won. Captain of the lacrosse team, valedictorian, at the top of his MBA class. Life wasn’t a game, per se, but if there were gods out there keeping score, Noah was winning.
Tracey was neither depressed nor anxious. She was there, floating from moment to moment, a leaf on a river.
“You’re my Forrest Gump,” Noah joked.
“You laugh, but Forrest had a ton of Buddhist wisdom.”
“I think he was retarded, Trace.”
When he left her that morning, she was asleep on their couch. Noah halved a pink grapefruit and spread hummus on a piece of toast, leaving them on the coffee table in front of her with a note that said, Make sure my sister eats this, okay?
He kissed her on the forehead and remembers so clearly thinking that she looked happy. She was flat on her back, drooling a little. The blanket was spilling onto the floor and so he fixed it, covering her up.
The expression on her face was pure—that was the word he always thought of when he saw her sleep. Pure. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, smelled the lilac from her shampoo.
The sun wasn’t even thinking about coming up yet, and in the darkness of the room he paused to watch her breathe. This was a tradition that dated back to her being born; Noah was astounded by her tiny body in her crib. It was hard for him to tell if she was breathing back then or not, and he’d get scared, tell his mom about it. The two of them would sneak back into Tracey’s room together, and their mother would put Noah’s hand lightly on the baby’s back, so he could feel her move with every swell from her lungs.
Noah could see her clearly breathing on the couch. Her nose whistled with every breath.
They’d moved to San Francisco together thirteen months ago. He was taking a new job, a huge promotion, and was excited to relocate to such a beautiful city, a nice pardon from their childhood in the Deep South. It had never occurred to Noah that Tracey would want to move with him. It didn’t seem possible that anybody made such a huge life decision on a whim.
“Really?” he said. “You’ll leave?”
“Why not?”
“If it was anyone else, I’d have serious questions. What will you do?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“How much does that pay?”
“It’s pro bono.”
“So I pay.”
“You pay the rent,” she said, “and I pay with elbow grease, taking care of you.”
They got an apartment in the Mission District, Noah immediately pouring himself into his new gig, excited to prove that he was the best hire they ever made. Tracey was living on the exact opposite schedule, staying up late, sleeping in, exploring. But she did keep her promise of taking care of their place. She didn’t seem to know how to do her own laundry, and yet she made sure their common rooms were spotless, the fridge stocked with food.
They’d go out to dinners a few nights a week and she’d tell him all about her adventures. Spoken word shows. Warehouse parties. Underground circus performances. A punk rock squat doing illegal literary readings in a condemned apartment building.
“Where do you even find out about these things?” Noah said, while they were out at Pho, bowls of soup in front of them, the smell of basil and lime ripe in the air. The front windows of the shop were steamy from the bogs of broth. “Is there a website called ‘Things That Might Get Me Arrested’?”
“I find out about them the old-fashioned way,” Tracey said. “I talk to people. Do you remember talking to people?”
“We’re talking right now.”
“Not people you know already. Opening yourself up to the experiences a stranger might offer you.”
“That idea makes my palms sweaty,” he said.
“If I can give you some advice . . .”
“Oh, I can’t wait for this.”
Tracey used her chopsticks, pointing them at her brother and clamping them together periodically, like jaws, to punctuate her thought. “My advice would be to follow your sweaty palms. See what happens if you live a life that makes your palms sweat all the time. See what wonders await you.”
“Did Forrest Gump say that?”
“Poor Noah,” said Tracey, pouting, then sticking her chopsticks back in the soup and coming up with a bushel of noodles.
About six months ago, his sister ran into the apartment, tousled and screaming his name. He was at the kitchen table, spreadsheets all around him, a prison of columns and rows. The S&P had dipped eleven points and he was preparing to deal with spooked clients. Tracey kept calling his name from the hallway. He heard her throw down her keys, set what sounded like a weighty duffel in the hall, and finally scramble into the kitchen with something behind her back, blurting out, “Haven’t you always pictured me playing music because I totally have?”
“Where have you been?”
“At Ivan’s.”
“Is that a new guy you’re dating?”
“No, silly,” she said, revealing the clarinet she’d been concealing, “I joined a band.”
“You don’t know how to play that, Trace.”
“You don’t have to know. He teaches you.”
“So I guess you guys aren’t very good,” said Noah.
“Off to hone my craft, skeptic,” she said, going to her room, screeching awful birdcalls on the clarinet all night.
History had taught him that Tracey would be excited about the clarinet for a few months until she lost interest and the next shiny idea infiltrated her life. That was the pattern, and Noah had seen it many times: jewelry making, culinary school, photography, poetry. Tracey tried a bite and moved on.
Now she was learning the clarinet and joining a band. So what? Should he have known simply from that what was going to happen? Was this a sign?
That was the horrible thing about signs: Often they were only legible once the outcome was clear. Reverse engineer from conclusions, work back and spot the initial germs. With that appalling hindsight, Noah could comb the preceding months like his spreadsheets and easily identify his sister first being seduced, recruited, ingratiated. Could see her spending more and more of her time at band practice.
“You should totally join,” Tracey said.
This was weeks later. Maybe months. His sister coming home less and less, and even when she did make a cameo, all she did was shower and change clothes, then leave again. Her promise to pay her share of the rent with elbow grease long abandoned. It didn’t really bother Noah; he didn’t expect her to keep it up that long. He did, however, miss seeing her regularly. She was the only person that he talked to, besides work colleagues. Emails were his preferred method of communication for everyone, even their parents. Tracey was the only actual company he looked forward to, sought out, and missed now that she was out so often.
“We’re getting ready to play a show,” she said.
“Where’s the concert?”
“We’re still learning the song.”
And she was off again, closing the front door and leaving Noah in solitary confinement with his spreadsheets. Shaking his head a bit at Tracey, actually sort of jealous: She seemed inspired by something. Noah liked his job, liked feeling a sense of winning, beating his fellow traders, beating the market, owning the futures, a steady stream of atta-boys from his higher-ups; promises of increased responsibilities meant that everyone already relied on him and saw a growing role for him. But it would be a stretch to say he derived pleasure from his job, not in the same way Tracey talked about her new band. Noah loved the competition. Tracey had a passion.
But on that day, on that morning, Noah alone at the office from 3:00 to 4:30 when coworkers started trickling in before the NYSE opened, after he left Tracey the halved grapefruit and toast smeared with hummus and the note, after he’d already prepped both the meetings he was to l
ead later, after he did three sets of bicep curls with the forty-pound dumbbell he stashed under his desk, after he ate two hardboiled egg whites and organic blueberries, drank a kale smoothie, after he chastised his young assistant for what he characterized as a “latent undergraduate slack ethic,” after she sat looking at him as he bullied her with his idiotic words, after he watched her leave his office and commended himself at his deft handling of the situation, knowing he was helping her rise to his expectations, to be the best worker she could, mentoring her so she could thrive in this environment the same way Noah did, doling out this bit of tough love for her own good, her own career; after all this, Noah was alone for about three minutes with nothing much to do, and he considered another couple sets of bicep curls when his phone rang, and he yelled to his assistant stationed right outside, “I’m not here,” and she didn’t say anything back to him but he heard her greet the caller, and Noah retrieved the dumbbell from under his desk and started hoisting the thing and silently saying to himself, One, two, three, four, counting reps and feeling strong, feeling ripped, feeling like a champion, when he saw his assistant standing in the doorway.
“What?” he said.
“You need to take this.”
The weight hanging limply in his dangling arm, and he said it again, “What?”
She stood there.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“The police.”
The officer’s voice was male, low and raspy, like someone with a cold. Someone barely able to choke out the words he had to say.
Noah held the phone with one hand and still had the dumbbell dangling in his other and the officer gave him a cold, objective report of the facts that were known so far: A brass band jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge about ninety minutes ago. They all had their driver’s licenses in their pockets, and he was alerting family members of what had happened.
“Is she okay?” Noah asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is she alive?”
“I’m sorry,” said the cop.
Noah hung up. He didn’t remember if the conversation was over or not. He felt an urge to wash his hands so he floated down the hallway with the weight still in his hand. Thankfully no one else was in the men’s room. Noah set the dumbbell on the counter, him at the faucet with a pond of soap in both his palms, rubbing them together for what felt like the entire workday and letting the lather and water wash over each finger, each nail, each freckle and hair and scar, and he cranked the water temperature up as far as it would go and kept his hands moving underneath it, the backs of his hands turning the color of cooked salmon and throbbing and did that one cop have to call all the bereaved families himself, or did they spread the agony around the station, each officer taking one or two? Finally the heat was too much to take, and Noah held them at eye level, watching every drop jump off his hands into the sink. His sister was dead. He had been told that Tracey was dead. His hands hurt now, drying them on his pants and walking out and leaving the water rushing, the dumbbell perched on the counter.
