All This Life

by Joshua Mohr

  Take this kitchen. Take the linoleum floor that’s white, yellow, and green, pocked by the jagged bottoms of the chairs, little potholes. Take the sun-bleached curtain over the sink. It used to be lavender, then gray, and now it’s stark white, the wan light growing in intensity every day. Take the fridge, the wheezing fridge, its compressor barely holding on, emitting rumbles and snorts. Take the stove with three burners broken. The countertop with its stains and mildewed edges. The leaky faucet making its own muted thwunk with every drip.

  These are things that should be fixed or changed. A lot of them easily remedied. Buy another curtain; they’re cheap and easy. But nothing is cheap and easy about transcending grief, especially when it hasn’t been given its proper due. Sara realizes that the grieving process in this house has been incomplete, was never really begun.

  Sara could never clean up their house, after their deaths. It was the leftovers in the fridge that paralyzed her. After the funeral, Sara saw a quarter pan of lasagna, the last home-cooked meal that her mom prepared. Sara doesn’t count Hank heating up turkey chili, or Sara reheating whatever the restaurant served for staff meal. No, that lasagna was the end of a family sitting down together.

  After the funeral, Sara ate all that lasagna in one sitting; it was enough to serve four or five people, but Sara’s grief was famished. Her mom had once told her that some brides kept their leftover wedding cake in the freezer and ate a piece to cheer themselves up over the years during trying times. Sara couldn’t pace herself, though, her fork ferociously stabbing at the cold, congealed mess, choking on the dried noodles and cheese and over-baked sauce. Sara didn’t taste anything, finishing it all up and holding the glass dish, letting it fall from her hands to shatter on the floor. Took her two days to inflate the gumption to sweep up the shards.

  There was no way to get her stampeding feelings under control, and she feels the same now with this latest betrayal. All Sara can do is rest her head in a sticky spot next to a pile of fingernails.

  No text back from Nat.

  No way to lasso a sex tape and bring it down.

  Tires screech outside. Hank’s home. Hank’s dog, Bernard, barks from the porch. She hears her brother say back to the bark, “Your master’s still got it, boy! Let’s drink a beer.”

  Hank enters the kitchen, the dog trotting behind. Her brother’s not wearing a shirt and goes to the fridge for a cold one, drinks most of it in a sip, slams the empty on the stained counter. He has another beer in the same motivated way, then belches. The other finished bottle crashes down, too. Hank stares out the gauzy curtain into the backyard, the only item out there besides brush and bugs is an aboveground pool that hasn’t had any water in it since the death of their parents.

  All of this done without looking at or saying one word to Sara.

  She watches him surveying the arid yard, wondering what her brother is thinking. Does he have moments of personal reflection? And would he ever open up to her? These are important questions for Sara, given the circumstances.

  Because she’s going to have to tell him. Sooner rather than later. She’s going to have to come clean about the sex tape. She has no choice. If she lets him find out about it from anyone else, Hank will lose his shit. He’s going to be so pissed, so disappointed. Hank has never turned his temper at Sara, not really. There’s been yelling, but never any violence. He’s gentle with her. Or he was. Until he finds out about this.

  “Is Rodney all right?” Sara says, flexing her hands, in and out. Her heart rate stays too high and her armpits stink.

  “He’ll live,” he says.

  “Will you sit down?” she asks.

  Hank grabs another beer from the fridge and moves a chair back from the table, fixing it into a few potholes. “Well, that was fun.”

  “What was?”

  “Stomping those fools.”

  “What did you do to Rodney?”

  “I gained some respect for him today,” says Hank. “He didn’t have to square up with me. I’d already whupped the other dumb asses. But he wanted to take a go. It was impressive.”

  “Does he need a doctor?”

  “He’s needed a doctor ever since the balloon.”

  “You know what I’m asking.”

  “He’s fine, Baby Sis. He’ll have a headache, but these things happen.”

  Sara swells with conflicting sensations, a different kind of conjoined twins. On one hand, she’s happy that Felix got hooked, glad that the buffoon learned that there are consequences for being nasty. But she has guilt now, too. Some shame that it’s her fault that Rodney got hurt. She’ll apologize. It’s easy to be honest with him because she once loved him, probably still does deep down, in some unhelpful ways. They’d still be dating if he’d never mounted that balloon, and because of that he deserves the truth.

  And so does her brother, her protector. She loves the fact that he went down there for her. She loves that there’s no thinking with Hank, no weighing the pros and cons, no looking at problems from all sides and selecting the prudent course.

  No, Hank only leaps.

  He loves her and he leaps.

  He loves her and he leaps and she is protected.

  It’s going to be a hard conversation, but Sara has to be strong. He’s been strong for her, and Sara has to meet his brawn with some of her own.

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Hank,” says Sara. “I’m sorry this happened, but you should hear it from me.”

  Her brother’s face, its mass of freckles and moles and some acne from the steroids, has a tenderness to it that Sara hadn’t expected to see. Normally, he wears his rage like war paint, but now he looks gentle and concerned.

  “Everyone already knows,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.

  “You know?”

  “I’ll beat Nat’s ass for you,” says Hank. “Wanna beer?”

  “Sure.”

  He gets two more out of the fridge, and they sit at the sticky kitchen table. “You okay?” he asks.

  “I ruined my life.”

  The dog rests his head on Hank’s huge thigh. “Don’t say that.”

  “What’s left for me?”

  Hank rubs Bernard’s head. “Why are you asking that, Baby Sis?”

  Sara loves it when he calls her that. Baby Sis. So familial. What you call someone you love, no matter what they do.

  “I trusted Nat,” Sara says, checking her phone again to see if he’s responded to her texts, which he hasn’t. She sets the phone on the table next to the pile of fingernails and turns it over so she can’t see its teasing face. “I’m so stupid.”

  “You can’t ruin your life, Sara, because our lives were already pretty ruined.”

  “Don’t say our lives are ruined.”

  “Pretty ruined.”

  “That’s not better,” she says.

  “Look around,” Hank says, pointing toward the squalor drenching their house, and right on cue the fridge burps and snorts. “This ain’t the Ritz. Hell, people probably thought you’d have six sex tapes by now.”

  For the first time all day, Sara laughs. For the first time since hearing about what Nat had done, she’s unaware of her body. She’s not thinking about her vibrating hands. She’s unaware that her heart has slowed to its normal resting rate.

  The laughter is pure. It is encompassing, taking over all of her conscious mind, freeing her. For that moment she is a human being without a digital twin. She has no mirror in cyberspace. Hers is an identity unmarred by technology. Sara is a laughing woman drinking a beer with her brother.

  “Six sex tapes!” she says, leaning over and punching Hank in the arm.

  “At least five.”

  Another punch.

  “Hank!”

  “So one’s pretty good,” he says. “Baby Sis, you’re ahead of the game as far as I’m concerned.”

  Hank holds his beer toward his sister and they let them clink. No one says anything corny like cheers. They let the bottles do the talking.

&nbs
p; “I’ve already been to jail four times,” he says, “so you’re doing better than me.”

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s the best that can be expected of them. In the grand scheme, maybe they’re not doing so badly.

  That lone gust of bravado dissipates quickly, though. Perhaps her brother can be unaffected by all of this, yet Sara doesn’t know if she’s up to the challenge. She wants to be a badass. She wants to be unflappable, poised for whatever comes her way. Problem is it’s coming back, these symptoms, the buzzing hands and heart and breathing. Quickly, she’s back to being a wretched twin.

  “I don’t know how to face everyone in town,” she says.

  “Don’t worry about those bozos.”

  “I mean it, Hank.”

  “So do I.”

  “They all think I’m a whore.”

  “You’re a whore; I’m a caveman. Fuck ’em.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  “Fuck ’em, Baby Sis.”

  “I want to be a kid again.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I want to move.”

  “Everybody has sex, Sara. I know it feels like the end of the world today, but it will get easier living with it.”

  “What if I don’t want to live with it?”

  “People live with worse,” he says. He finishes his beer and goes for more. “Hey, what do you want me to do to Nat when I kick his ass?”

  “I don’t want that.”

  “Any requests or shall I improvise?”

  “Don’t hurt him.”

  “Not even a little bit? A black eye?” says Hank, coming back with two more cold ones.

  “That would make me feel bad for him and I don’t want to pity that asshole.”

  “What about a liver punch? Hurts like hell and no visual evidence.”

  Bernard barks and Hank scratches his head.

  “Even the dog thinks Nat needs an ass kicking,” says Hank.

  “Please leave him alone.”

  “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  Sara doesn’t change her mind as they sit in the kitchen drinking beers, but she would like to hear how her brother would defend her. She’d like to listen while someone outlines exactly how he’d protect her. It doesn’t matter that their house is made of cinderblocks. It doesn’t matter all the broken down things scattered about, a linoleum floor lined with potholes.

  “Will you tell me about it?” she says.

  Hank smiles. “You want details?”

  Yes, she wants to hear about every punch, every kick. She has to hear every single way he will defend her. She has to know.

  A MOMENT PASSES and then Hank says, “Come with me,” getting up and opening the back door.

  “I don’t want to move.”

  “You said you wanted to be a kid again. Come on.”

  Hank waves for her to follow, and he walks through the back door. Sara sighs, knows that it’s easier to do it by herself so he doesn’t come back and carry her over his shoulder.

  By the time she’s in the backyard, Hank is already standing in the pool. She can only see him from the chest up. She peeks around the whole dusty rectangle of yard. It’s all dirt and weeds and fire ants. Flat as a grave.

  “You used to love swimming,” he says and pretends to do the breaststroke, walking in a circle. “The water is perfect, Baby Sis.”

  Sara can’t get in the pool fast enough, tearing toward it and leaping in. There are a couple inches or so of dust and sand at the bottom. The walls are cracked and puckered. But right now Sara doesn’t see any of that. All she sees is water and her brother and her parents sitting in chairs on the side, watching them swim.

  There are so many memories back here that Sara can’t pick out one, can’t zero in on one day where they were all here, all alive. It’s not one recollection from their past, but a hive of them, a colony of reconstructions, Hank showing off how long he can hold his breath underwater, Sara doing handstands, legs together, toes pointed perfectly. Their mom works her way through yet another Sudoku book. Their dad flips burgers on the barbecue. There are enough memories now to fill this pool.

  “I like the backstroke,” she says and mimics the motion, moving in the same circular direction as her brother, both of them walking around and swinging their arms.

  “You’re good at it,” he says.

  Hank laughs and Sara laughs, and they are both laughing.

  They are laughing like children and walking in circles and sort of swimming and they spend the next ten minutes like this. Hank forgets to tell her what he’ll do to Nat, and Sara forgets she wants to know.

  She switches to freestyle.

  Hank says, “How the hell do you do the butterfly again?”

  He awkwardly flaps his muscled arms like he’s trying to fly and Sara laughs so hard that she sits down on its sandy bottom, then lies down completely. She doesn’t say anything, straightening out and moving her arms and her legs back and forth in the dust, a desert snow angel.

  “Is this right?” he asks, shaking his arms in quick small circles.

  8.

  The day Balloon Boy was born, Rodney had been with Sara. They left their junior high and kissed in the park and then saw a man with a big balloon tied to a tree. It wasn’t typical; it was flat like a big hunk of gray bread, about four feet across, hovering close to the ground. Rodney and Sara asked the guy what he was doing.

  “It’s a homemade weather balloon for some experiments,” he said.

  “What kind of experiments, sir?” Rodney asked.

  “Do you two want to be my assistants?”

  “Sure,” they said.

  “First thing I need you to do is watch the balloon for me. I have to run to the restroom. Can you do that?”

  “We’re not babies,” said Sara.

  “Don’t touch anything until I’m back,” the man said. “Then I’ll show you how to measure barometric pressure.” He ran off toward the bathroom.

  Sara poked the balloon and said, “I wonder if this could make it to Spain.”

  “Why Spain?”

  “We can go up, up, and away,” she said.

  Back then, Rodney’s goal in life was to impress Sara. Making her laugh was his chief mission, and so he said, “Want to watch me fly?”

  “Don’t be crazy.”

  He strutted to the huge balloon and jumped into the middle of the flat gray thing. It took his weight no problem, kept hovering a few feet high.

  Sara said, “Quit it.”

  He said, “Spain.”

  He reached for the rope and untied it.

  “Get off there, Rodney.”

  He hovered a bit higher.

  “This isn’t funny,” she said.

  “Hey!” said the man, running toward them. “Son, be careful!”

  And Sara said, “Please don’t.”

  They kept screaming at Rodney in alternating sentences, but he wasn’t listening. He smiled at her. He loved every second at first because this was all a joke. No big deal. Nothing to worry about. Rodney knew they’d all laugh once he was back on the ground learning about barometric pressure.

  The balloon was fifteen feet in the air.

  Rodney didn’t feel any fear. He was a kid impressing his girl. Swept up in making her laugh. Sara wasn’t saying anything anymore, only staring up at him, open-mouthed.

  There weren’t any clouds in the sky. He was up there by himself. He felt like a test pilot, brave and fearless. Someone reckless with liberty. The sun shone so violently that he couldn’t even see its shape; it seemed to run and bleed like lava. It made everything a harsh blinding hue, and Rodney squinted into it, not bothered by the opaqueness but feeling welcomed by it, seduced.

  There was also the unmistakable smell of burning hair, a scent that normally meant he was in the kitchen watching Uncle Felix fry fish, singeing the coils from his knuckles and hands. He despised the stink, but up on the balloon, he didn’t mind it. It represented something else: The things that burned this hi
gh in the air were boundaries, limits, and a free Rodney flew, floated, soared. The sky was ready to take him wherever he wanted to go.

  This must have been what it was like when they realized the earth was round, not flat—to understand that there were no edges to fall from, no end to the world. It would spin and spin forever, and they were all so lucky to be here. Rodney for the first time felt a great appetite to experience life outside of Traurig. He didn’t care if it was Spain or not. All he craved was flight.

  Lost in fantasy, there was no part of him that pondered the balloon tipping over. It wasn’t even possible that he’d fall out of the sky, that his skull would jostle and crash. He’d never heard of aphasia or brain traumas or closed head injuries. Rodney had no idea that mouths could curdle and wobble and warp and never work right again.

  How could any of those impossibilities be plausible when he was drifting on a balloon, feeling a warm breeze?

  At first, it was a simple shimmy, a slight waver, a blip of turbulence that barely registered.

  A few seconds later, though, the balloon buckled, shaking from side to side. Rodney tried to dig his hands into it for some grip. He looked down at Sara and she was the last thing he saw.

  The falling was fast. It seemed to Rodney that he was on the balloon and then on the concrete.

  He had two separated shoulders and a broken jaw and a broken nose and a broken wrist and a broken eye socket and three cracked ribs and a shattered ankle and a ruptured kidney and a traumatic brain injury. Everyone in town called him lucky once he was out of the hospital and limping around. All patched up on the outside, but they couldn’t see the tornado unleashed in his head.

  •••

  LYING ON THE front yard’s hot dirt, fresh from Hank punching him in the cheek and in the chin and in the solar plexus, Balloon Boy looks around for his dad and uncle. They both lie in close proximity, moaning and attempting to peel themselves off the dirt.

  “I’ll bring the damaged pole,” Rodney’s father says.