All This Life

by Joshua Mohr

  But why go back to the surface when Sara sees lobsters wobbling along the sandy bottom of the pond? There are seven of them. They march in a single-file line, drunken soldiers teetering in an awkward formation. It’s an experience that no other human being has ever had, being so privy to the militarization of marching lobsters.

  “Why aren’t you wearing uniforms?” she wants to ask them.

  But then there’s knocking.

  This knocking clamors and shakes and creates angry waves on the pond.

  The knocking strips this serene pond to a muddy and barren patch of marshland.

  Sara snaps back to her unwanted life. She floats up above the bathwater and knows that it’s Rodney knocking on the bathroom door.

  “Sa. Ra?” he says.

  “I’m here.”

  “Oh. Kay?”

  “Be out in a minute.”

  She takes the helmet off her head and crashes back into this world. Nothing mysterious and wonderful anywhere. Jumper Julie is a liar. Sara’s in a tepid bath, surrounded by pepperoni slices, a film of grease from the processed meat, a sheen slithering on the surface.

  The serene pond is polluted. The serene pond is gone.

  Sara puts the bucket back on her head, takes a big breath, and slowly sinks under the oily water.

  •••

  TECHNICALLY, RODNEY GUESSES, this qualifies as a quest. They did leave Traurig, drive off for an adventure. There was the promise of looking for his mom. But that’s as questy as things have gotten. Besides that, he sits in this retched motel, waiting on Sara. He wants to help her, but he doesn’t know how or when or what to do—wants to swoop up close to her ear and say, “Let’s leave this all behind and be happy. We can do that, Sara.”

  Many times, he’s hovered by the closed bathroom door, listening to her, working up the courage to interrupt. Sometimes she’s crying, while other times she whispers to herself. For the most part, though, it’s deathly silent in there, the only noise running water when the temperature needs to be brought up. Besides that, it’s as still as a graveyard.

  It’s been four days on this crappy quest and Rodney is as confused as he’s ever been, his cabin fever reaching all-time highs. He can’t watch any more TV, nor can he walk around the motel’s neighborhood, a Sacramento armpit, not as merciless as Traurig in terms of temperature but still in the nineties. It’s a collection of stucco strip malls, concrete and asphalt and glass. Balloon Boy imagines his uncle standing in the middle of one of these capacious roads, launching his fly-fish lure, having the time of his life. And he should go home. Call it a day on this sputtering quest. He’s tried leaving for greener pastures and ended up in scenic Sacramento.

  It’s like the moment on the balloon, before anything went wrong. It was everything, the whole gamut of human possibilities teasing on the horizon, and Rodney was so close, so very close until the thump-splat ouch.

  In the motel room, Rodney tries to busy himself with his least-favorite task, talking. He hasn’t called his dad since leaving Traurig, so no doubt Larry and Felix are up in arms. Maybe they’ve filed a missing person’s report. Or they’re so liquored-up it has barely registered that he’s gone. Balloon Boy feels terrible about leaving them in the dark about his whereabouts, but he’s scared to check in. He doesn’t want to be manipulated into abandoning this quest. He and Sara have done the hardest part—they are outside the city limits, outside the state of Nevada, adventure at their fingertips—and now they have to dive in, seize this opportunity, bask in the open road. To find his mother.

  But even if he doesn’t call the remaining members of the Curtis clan, if he finds his mom, he will have to talk to her. Assuming the return address on the postcard is accurate, he might see her soon—later today or tomorrow even. If that’s the case, he needs to practice talking.

  He tries to familiarize himself with the following line: Balloon Boy is here, Mom.

  He spent a lot of time constructing those words, deciding to call himself his nickname to prove a point, one he hates admitting—Rodney is Balloon Boy. They are the same. They live in one body. They have one mother, one who left, and he’s happy to stand right in front of her, but he wants her to immediately remember the accident. This is who I am now, Mom. You need to be okay with this reality.

  He detests speaking because it’s the purest way for him to know he’s not healing, that he’ll never be whole again. Each time he tries, there’s a sliver of him that hopes this next sentence will pour out of him, that things have miraculously repaired themselves. His old speech therapist, Mrs. Macmillan, had been optimistic when they first started their sessions, in the immediate aftermath of his accident. She called it a motor speech disorder, but Balloon Boy always felt that name didn’t work, made no sense since his motor had seized up. No motor meant no ways to sync up his brain and his facial muscles, so even though he knew precisely what he wanted to work from his lips, all these thoughts hemorrhaged. No motor meant a lifetime of talking his terror sounds.

  He attempts to block out all these impaling thoughts, as they won’t help him. All he has to do is focus on the first word, the first syllable and attempt to articulate himself: “Ba . . .”

  Damn.

  That crushing and inevitable realization that there’s been no progress, there never will be, he’ll be broken forever. It took so much effort to bleat that Ba, one lousy Ba, all that energy to talk like a sheep. His mouth is busted and this quest is busted, and what if Sara is busted, too? What’s going on in there?

  The last time he knocked, she told him that she’d be out “in a minute.” That was progress. Normally, she says, “I’m fine,” and there’s no mention of anything else.

  But it’s been much longer than a minute. It’s been, if his calculations are correct, ten minutes, and that concerns him. It makes him wonder what’s happening and if it’s getting worse, she’s getting worse. He tries not to worry, not to overreact. Saying to himself if she likes long baths—days in the tub—what’s the matter with that? But it’s different with Sara. It has to be. She’s been so upset and Rodney can’t help but think she said “Out in a minute” so he’d leave her alone. Alone for what, why? She might be dangerous. To herself. It’s not normal to stay in the tub for so long. Rodney needs to know what she’s doing in there.

  He knocks and says through the door, “Sa. Ra?”

  More knocking more knocking more knocking.

  She finally answers and he’s happy to hear her voice. “One more minute,” she says, so Rodney walks back over to the bed, relieved. He gnaws a cold clump of pad thai, looks at the sentence he’d hoped to get out: Balloon Boy is here, Mom.

  Should he try talking again?

  No.

  Rodney puts another tuft of Thai food in his mouth.

  Five more minutes and she’s still locked in there.

  Something’s wrong. He knows it. Sometimes you know these things. Sometimes it’s obvious, a tremble, a jolt. And sometimes it travels through your whole body, head to toe, toe to brain, blowing a shower of sparks.

  More knocking more knocking more knocking.

  She doesn’t answer so he jiggles the knob something jugular. Tries to force the locked door open. Saying, “Let! Me! In!”

  No words back.

  More knocking.

  “SA! RA!”

  Balloon Boy will never forgive himself if she’s hurt. He’ll never be able to live with her injuries. He’s learned to live with this own, dragging the mass of it through life, but there’s no way to soldier on if something’s happened to Sara. Not with him so close.

  Sara can’t be alone one minute longer. She might not know it, but she needs him, her Rodney, her Balloon Boy. She has to surround herself with people who care for her. People who aren’t new, people who haven’t just shown up in her life. No, she requires the retrofitted support of those who have loved her for a long time. And it’s horrible that her parents died and horrible how Hank lost it and cussed her out, but there’s still love, Sara. The
re’s love and it’s here.

  Rodney tries to shoulder his way through the door like he’s seen cops do on TV, but he’s making no headway. Looks around for something to swing at it. A fire extinguisher, a suitcase rack, a microwave. But there’s nothing.

  Or there’s one thing, but it’s going to be painful. He can use his leg, his foot. Kick it down, though he’s never done anything like this. A karate kick can force the door open, right? He moves two steps back for momentum, rushes forward with vengeance and vinegar, lifts his battering ram and connects with all this might, making contact next to the knob. Something cracks in his leg. A faraway pain that knows it can’t be the center of attention, not yet, not until Sara’s okay.

  The door rockets open.

  His leg heaves with electric shocks.

  Balloon Boy looks over at the tub and sees Sara’s naked body under the water. He limps in and falls to his knees and grabs her—falling and grabbing and hoping he hasn’t waited too long to help her.

  Luckily, she starts thrashing around in the water.

  She comes up and coughs.

  “What are you doing in here?” she says.

  Rodney talks too fast for anybody to decode: “Don’t. Huuuuu . . .”

  “Get out!” she says, covering up her naked body with her hands.

  “D . . .”

  But he’s so worried, so concerned about what this is, or what it might be, that talking is impossible. He loves Sara. He needs her. He wants to show her every glowing cell that lives inside him. Wants to make her feel better. Wants to shine a microscope into his heart and then hers, and he wants to make Sara inspect both of them—wants her to remember.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” she says.

  Balloon Boy can’t gather himself enough to articulate the simplest oral communications. There are no pens or pencils or pads around. If he hopes to speak with her, he’ll have to use action.

  Rodney stands and gets a towel and drapes it, concealing her small body.

  “I’m so screwed right now, Rodney,” she says, sobbing.

  Rodney consoles her, watching the ice bucket float in the tub with a bunch of pepperonis. He leans over and hugs her, getting wet too.

  “What if I never feel alive again?” Sara asks and grabs the ice bucket, wedging it on her head.

  “I. Love. You.”

  It takes nine seconds for him to get this out, but really it’s taken years.

  Sara stares at him the whole time.

  People don’t pick when or where the good stuff happens. Sometimes it occurs in shabby motel rooms, in Sacramento, with ice buckets for top hats and legs for battering rams. The good stuff happens at all sorts of asinine times, and none of that matters when Rodney hears her say, “I love you too.”

  He reaches into the tub and retrieves her, despite the frenzy going on in his hurt leg. Rodney carries a naked Sara from the bathtub to the bed. He strips out of his own clothes, cuddling with her until she’s fast asleep and he’s left awake, contemplating every detail that brought them here.

  15.

  Curiosity dismembers Kathleen: What’s Wes doing in there?

  He had seemed so earnest in his initial pledge to spend the bulk of his time at UCSF, in the lab, that Kat didn’t question the validity of his assurance. But the first four days he’s been here, he hasn’t gone anywhere, barely left his room.

  Which is why Kathleen finds herself gently placing an ear against the door. She can hear him. He’s talking to someone. Skyping or some other video chat platform? She doubts it; Wes never asked her for the Wi-Fi code. It could be a phone call, but he’s not really leaving time for anyone else to talk, running some kind of filibuster. Kathleen’s been standing with her ear to the door for at least three minutes and he hasn’t let up. He’s not yelling. It’s a steady drip of words, almost mutters. She can’t make out exactly what he’s saying; she can only hear the drone.

  It’s her house. Knock and ask. She doesn’t have to be a hard-ass about it; there don’t need to be any accusations, any talk of the bait-and-switch—You said you’d be at the lab the whole time! He’s her tenant, and that gives Kat certain rights. Namely, the right to know if the rules have changed.

  Of course, the reason that Kathleen knows he hasn’t left the house in four days is that neither has she. The caricature. Rodney’s birthday. It’s left her in—not a depression, exactly. She’s not depressed. It’s a funk, a temporary dip in her morale. She’ll rebound soon. Soon, she’ll shake it off and go back to work, get scribbling on the Embarcadero. She rationalizes that she can take some “vacation” days because of the increased share of the rent that Wes is paying.

  She had imagined herself to be left alone, but she can’t slack off on the couch and feel sorry for herself with Wes mumbling away in there. It makes her feel uncomfortable, and that’s not fair; this is her place, and she should always feel at ease. She should at least feel like she has the right to knock on his door and ask him some questions.

  So why isn’t she?

  It’s not that she’s scared. He’s a nice guy, some lab nerd. That’s not it.

  And she’s no coward, either. She has had plenty of awkward conversations over the years and feels like she holds her own in them.

  She guesses it’s more of what she’ll say. If something fell through with his job, is it really any of her business? He’s paid to rent a room, and that entitles him to a certain amount of privacy. He’s not being overtly loud, not being rude: There are no actual grounds for any interrogation.

  There’s a pause in his filibuster.

  Kathleen takes her ear off the door and is about to walk away when Wes fires up another sermon.

  Kathleen can’t resist putting her ear on the door one last time, hoping to finally decrypt what he’s saying, but it’s no use. Just a gurgle of syllables, like her son.

  It’s hard not to wonder what his eighteenth birthday means. If the needle is going to move, she has to be the one to initiate it. Not a peace offering, or anything that’s insulting to how insensitive she’s been to him over the years, but a way to help him understand that a) she regrets her decision to leave every day and b) she couldn’t imagine coming face to face with her ex-husband again, not after the violence she endured. Now it’s time to find her version of their past and explain it to her son.

  With a sponsor who earns her living tattooing, Kat should get some ink. She should get a portrait of her son. She has the perfect print. She left a copy of it on Rodney’s bedside table, and now is the time to commemorate him on her body. A way to signal her contrition and at the same time indicate some hope for reconciliation. They can heal. As an eighteen-year-old, he’s not under Larry’s dominion anymore. Neither is Kathleen. They are free and if they so choose—if he forgives her—they can reunite.

  That’s it. A tattoo, a portrait, the perfect way to get back in contact with him.

  There’s another pause in Wes’s mutterings. Instead of repositioning her ear, this time she chooses to knock.

  “Yes?” Wes says through the door.

  “Hi, it’s Kat, can we talk?”

  “We are talking.”

  He’s so literal. This is what it must be like to live with a teenager. “Can you open the door, please?”

  Kat wishes she didn’t add the please. It’s her house. If she wants to have a conversation, this guy should show her the respect of opening the door.

  “I can and I will,” says Wes. Soon, he’s standing in front of her, still wearing that lab coat, and maybe still wearing the same clothes from when he first moved in. His stubble is pushing into a mangy beard. The room smells like a hamster’s cage. There are papers strewn over the floor. A few empty plastic bottles of water, though she sees no evidence of food. It’s a room of obsession, Kathleen muses, a scientist so consumed with his calling that the prosaic things suffer.

  And, of course, his poster of Einstein’s face on the wall.

  “I wanted to check in,” Kathleen says, “and hear how thin
gs are going for you.”

  “Things are in motion.”

  Kat points at Einstein. “What did you end up doing with Bob Marley?”

  “I’ve never met Bob Marley.”

  “No, the poster.”

  “He is vacationing in the closet.”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely this time of year,” says Kathleen.

  “Plenty of oxygen,” Wes says.

  “Do you need anything? Have any questions about the city?”

  “No.”

  “Have you had any trouble commuting to UCSF?”

  “I haven’t had to go yet. My colleague has been delayed. But his arrival is imminent. Then we get to work.”

  Okay, now that makes sense. Much more sense than why Kathleen let this unnecessary tension build up. His schedule has been delayed some, which is out of his control, something innocuous. She immediately feels better. Between this revelation and the idea for her portrait tattoo, Kat hopes she might be snapping out of this funk.

  “I was going to watch a movie soon,” Kathleen says. “Would you like to join me? You can save me from eating all the ice cream myself.”

  “I’m under a deadline,” he says.

  “You are?”

  “Our research is reaching its climax. We are about to change the world.”

  Kathleen knows she’s supposed to ask how, tell me all about it, but she’s getting tired of fishing. If he wants to hole away in his hamster’s cage the whole time, so be it. She’ll air it out before her roommate returns.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” she says.

  Wes closes the door and not three seconds later the muttering starts again.

  •••

  KATHLEEN GETS DRESSED, grabs the picture of Rodney for the portrait, and heads out. The neighborhood feels particularly congested. It’s a weekday, and people hurry home. She heads down 18th Street to Valencia, turns toward the shop. Valencia has a bike lane flanking the traffic on both sides, which was supposed to ease the friction between the warring factions, but it’s only made things worse: Bikers yell at cars, sometimes kicking bumpers, spitting on windows, while the autos trundle down the road, drivers too dumb or distracted to check blind spots before making turns, opening doors, almost breaking the bikers’ necks with every action. Kathleen has seen fistfights about the rules of the road. All of it makes her happy to be a serial pedestrian. She’s never had a car in San Francisco, and she’s too clumsy to hop on a bicycle.