All This Life

by Joshua Mohr

  Noah911 was wrong before about needing that YouTube clip. This is better. This is what he needs, the memory of watching her cremains drift in the sky. She’s not that video. She doesn’t come to life with the click of play. She doesn’t die at the end. YouTube has nothing to do with his sister. She is a mosaic now, living in his heart, each tile a memory that if he stands back and examines their configuration, he sees Tracey.

  He puts the Ziploc bag in his pocket and turns to walk away.

  It’s poetic, Albert, I’ll give you that, it makes sense to trigger me with the scattering of ashes since our mission is to keep the world uncremated, and once I see the man throw the ashes up into the wind, I know I need to move to that precise spot. It’s where the portal will open, this woman will move away from this world and once she’s gone, you will materialize. I’m so curious to see what you’ll look like. I’m excited to shake your hand. This woman doesn’t seem to know what’s coming, she moves next to me, clutching her purse. I steer her with a hand on her forearm, but she’s not squawking or fighting me at all and the greenhouse gas of human sadness is almost over.

  I’m so curious to see what you’ll look like.

  23.

  There’s the issue of Jake’s bit rate. How many bits of his pathos can be processed per second. How it can be compressed to travel faster. How he is inflamed with anger and betrayal, how he feels so dumb for expecting to see a congregation of his followers. They said they’d be here. They told him that. They promised. But the only guy standing at the railing holds some dusty bag and he is crying and Jake wants his people, his friends. He hates being lied to and he’s stupid for thinking his followers were real. They were like him, sitting in front of their computer or phone, and they never wanted to meet the real Jake. They don’t care. He’s alone and he’s so tired of believing and being let down. He just wants one follower to show, one real breathing human to care.

  All these compressed emotions and he needs to express them, needs to jettison some of the spam coursing through him, delete it, throw it away. How can he get rid of all the noise?

  Jake needs a multimedia projection of his sadness, including audio and video, meaning motor control, meaning breathing, meaning facial expressions, meaning talking, meaning corresponding body language, then he needs to make sure his veins—those Ethernet cables under his skin—are capable of transferring all that data quickly enough.

  Like how an HD DVD has 29.4 Mbit/s. That would be ideal.

  Because now there is one follower standing in front of him: his dad. Jake needs to interact with his dad, seeing as how Paul screams at him, “What are you doing?”

  Jake keeps near the edge.

  “Will you step away from the railing?” a guy says, someone even fatter than his dad, someone in a cheap suit.

  “Are you another therapist?” Jake says.

  “I’m a police officer.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “The opposite,” Esperanto says.

  Jake pauses, wondering what exactly is the opposite of trouble. Pleasure? Happiness? Peace? Siri would know.

  “Stay away from me,” says Jake. “I have to do something.”

  “LET’S STOP,” SAYS Wes.

  There are so many people around them that Kathleen can’t figure out why she’s not screaming. Someone would help. That’s what happens. People help each other. Get out one syllable, one simple noise. Yell like Felix did over the phone. Talk like Rodney. Choke out any sound.

  Instead, she does as she’s told, stopping.

  “Your hand,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  Finally, she makes a noise. That wasn’t so hard. Make another. Make the same. Do it louder. Save your life.

  “Give me your hand,” says Wes.

  •••

  THIS IS WORSE than falling off the balloon because at least Rodney did that to himself. This is his mom. This is his mom who needs his help but his foot can’t go more than a mile per hour and he’s embarrassed and she needs him and he’s letting her down and he’s trying, Mom, he’s trying his best, he trudges on with his broken foot, every now and again he tries to run but the pain is too much.

  Balloon Boy is a bone, and a bone is a bomb, and its ignition in his foot blasts through him, up his leg like a chimney, ringing through his chest cavity, blazing in his guts.

  THE TILE FROM his memory mosaic that speaks to Noah as he’s walking away on the bridge, toward San Francisco, is this: Way back during her junior year in high school, Tracey sits in the driver’s seat of her new car. Taking it out for the first time. By herself. She’d gone out with Noah and she’d gone around the block with their parents, but this was her first time navigating the streets alone. Responsible for herself. She has a huge smile on her face. Both hands on the wheel. The light blue polish on her nails is chipped, but she grips that wheel, ready to hit the open road.

  There’s his sister sitting in her car and smiling.

  Noah and their parents watch her drive off.

  SARA SPOTS KATHLEEN Curtis. There’s a moment of second-guessing. But it’s her. Sara’s sure. Sara saw Kathleen every day for years, and Kathleen looks pretty much the same.

  Sara spots Kathleen standing at the railing holding hands with the guy in the lab coat.

  Looking like she’s upset.

  Distraught even.

  A slithering panic.

  •••

  PAUL IS FIVE or six feet away and doesn’t know which impulse to trust: Should he bum-rush Jake, tackle him, throw himself at him?

  Or should he talk to him, try and settle him down?

  Or should he shut up and let Esperanto handle it?

  Paul doesn’t have much time to dwell on this decision because Jake says, “I have to do something.”

  “What?” Esperanto says.

  “A hard reset.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.”

  “Where are my followers?”

  “Do you mind if I walk to you?” Esperanto says.

  “Don’t you come fucking near me!” Jake says.

  “Okay, I won’t, stay calm,” the detective says.

  “Can I walk to you?” Paul says.

  Jake says nothing, only stares at him.

  “Here I come,” says his father.

  I pick her up, Albert. I am holding her aloft.

  24.

  Sara sees the man lift Kathleen, and Sara looks back toward Rodney yelling his name. He’s way back there. He’s too far away. He won’t be here in time.

  Vibrating phone hands are nothing because now she’s a whole cell tower. She’s being inundated with signals, and her body ricocheting around. It’s a fiasco, a frenzy. Sara shakes with all the incoming calls, all telling her what to do, ordering her around. Run away. Help Kathleen. A complete annihilation of her head, too many sounds and voices and motives and plans and agendas, so Sara just stands there.

  THE VOLTAGE WRITHING in his body doesn’t matter anymore, not after Balloon Boy hears Sara yelling his name. He’s running. He’s sprinting on the broken bone.

  “I HAVE TO do something that you’re not going to like,” says Jake.

  “What?” Paul asks.

  •••

  EVERYTHING THAT HAD been stored inside Kathleen erupts. She’s like a bottled beer that’s been shaken, and the cap comes off, spraying everywhere, and thinking about a bottled beer reminds her that she still has one in her purse, and she can crack him with it. She reaches and retrieves the bottle for a second, but it slips from her hand. Clacks on the walkway but doesn’t break.

  She rakes Wes with her fingernails. She shrieks. She’s getting higher and higher.

  “WHAT THE FUCK?” Esperanto says, grabbing his walkie-talkie and talking to the other units stationed in the parking lot. Paul hears his voice describe the man hoisting the woman. Paul sees the detective walking toward the crime, only fifteen feet away. Paul sees Esperanto’s hand on his holster.

  “It’s you and me,” Paul says
to his son.

  NOAH HEARS A commotion coming from back toward the middle of the bridge. He sees a woman up in the air, being waved around by a man. He sees a woman being taken advantage of, sees another tragedy brewing here, and Noah takes off running. Tracey might be gone, but he can help this woman.

  He passes Rodney, who limps along as best he can. They’ll both be there soon.

  BUT SARA IS already there. She is here. She is with Kathleen. She is with the man. Sara tries to think of what to do, and as she contemplates a man pushes past her—a guy whose face is beaten up—and he storms toward the man in the lab coat, and he punches him twice in the stomach and Kathleen is free, dropped on the walkway, and the man with the beaten-up face falls down and wraps himself around her, holds Kat in a hug, protects her.

  But the man in the lab coat recovers quickly, keeps his gaze on them both. Sara knows he’s gathering himself, another attempt brewing, and that’s when she sees the beer bottle down at their feet.

  That’s when she leans down and grabs it.

  That’s when Sara swings her arm back.

  ESPERANTO HAS HIS gun pointed at Wes, who is lying on the walkway, several men penning him in against the bridge’s rail. Paul can see all this, and he understands, he guesses, why Esperanto had to get involved, but he can use some help with his son. There’s still the issue of the finale. There’s still what’s going on inside his boy.

  THE BOTTLE IS still in Sara’s hands. She lets it fall, skittering on the walkway. She swung it at his face for all the rest of them. All the others who have harmed her, who have harmed anyone, all the monsters who think it’s okay to prey on people. She falls close to the man holding Kathleen, nuzzling against them. She looks at his damaged and kind face. Her hands are buzzing again but in a different way.

  KATHLEEN CAN’T DO anything. Except move on hands and knees. Back a few feet. Retreat from Wes. Get as far away from him as she can. Get away from the two people holding her. Finally, she is alone, lying in a heap, blinking her eyes like crazy.

  “Kathleen,” a young woman says, one of the people who were down next to her. “It’s Sara. Sara Clancy.”

  Kathleen keeps blinking.

  “Kathleen,” Sara says.

  “Sara?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Kathleen’s words trail off, stop off, pausing. She can’t say anything else because it’s her son. Her son! Limping up to her. Panting. Sweaty. Her son, Rodney, and Sara with her on the bridge.

  Rodney leans down.

  “Mom,” he says.

  JAKE DIDN’T FILM the fight. He was so close to the action. A few feet away. He could’ve posted this too, shepherded this disaster, but why, what’s the point, it doesn’t matter; he learned today that his followers are hoaxes. They are ghosts. They don’t care about him.

  There are other ghosts, too. The brass band. He captured them here and ever since that morning he’s felt haunted, and he doesn’t want that burden.

  “They’re in here,” Jake says to his dad, shaking his iPhone. He presses the button to get that boing-boing noise and asks Siri, “Should I keep doing this?”

  “Jake, I’m not sure what to say,” Siri says.

  It’s when Siri uses Jake’s name that he almost starts crying, but he’s not going to. Astronauts do not weep during moonwalks. And he’s not sure why when Siri says his name he feels comforted, and cared for, and when that lip-pursing therapist or his parents call his name he feels the opposite. He feels chastised, reprimanded, cornered. He feels violent.

  Siri has reached out through that user interface and caressed his cheek and made him feel better, like doing this is possible, and Jake takes a step toward the railing and his dad says, “What are you doing?”

  Both father and son are right at the bridge’s railing.

  The father’s hand firmly bunches up Jake’s shirt, pulling him, like a bully. Jake tries to fight free and turns his body toward the edge and then Jake throws his iPhone, throws it as far as he can, arcing down to the ocean.

  Why?

  Because he has no choice. Because it’s become an urn full of digital ashes and it’s the only way he can get rid of the ghosts, scattering them where they died. It’s the only way he can separate them from himself.

  IT’S BALLOON BOY and his mom and Sara, sitting on the walkway.

  “Rodney?” Mom says.

  “Mom,” he says again.

  “What are you doing here?”

  It’s hard to pick words to say, so Rodney smiles. It’s been many years, and yet Balloon Boy and his mom are united again. Thanks to Sara. She made sure their lives went on. Made sure that every now and again you end up where you’re supposed to.

  “You,” Balloon Boy says to his mom.

  “Me?”

  “You,” he says, hugging her.

  I’ll flail one last time, one final flop to break out. All these men with angry faces and black eyes pen me in, saying to stay down, stay cool, you sick bastard, and not one of them realizes what they’re doing, that they’re jeopardizing the future. One final flail and I can go over the edge, which isn’t ideal, Albert, which is the last thing we want, but a martyr has to do the unthinkable during emergencies and so I’ll sacrifice myself for you, our savior. These men are trying to fight me back down, and the cop draws his gun and points it at me, and there’s blood all over my face, not simply in my mouth, but spilling from my forehead. I’m woozy and cold and they use the bridge’s railing as a back wall, but they don’t know that’s the direction I need to go to cool down our despairs. The cop has the gun trained on me but it’s impossible to tell him how much sense this makes. I climb over the railing. All that’s left to do is let go. My fingers relax, fingers open, fingers lose contact. I’ll hit the water and open the portal and you’ll save us, Albert, I’ll be gone but everyone will experience a rebirth, a reboot. They’ll all have lives pardoned from sadness and I’m thankful that the last thing anyone will see of me on my way down to the ocean is my lab coat fluttering behind me like a hero’s cape.

  25.

  Despite her bruised face and an undiagnosed concussion, Deb is like a den mother the next day, ordering everyone around. She shuttles Rodney and Sara to the ER, to get a cast on his foot, and while they wait their turn to be helped, Deb makes sure Kathleen hits a meeting.

  “I’m too mortified for a meeting,” Kathleen had said when it was first brought up.

  “Go get a chip,” Deb had said. “That’s all. You don’t have to share, but you need your one-day coin.”

  True to her word, Deb didn’t make Kathleen share during the meeting. It was hard enough finding the courage for Kathleen to stand up and walk to the front for the silver chip. Most people at this meeting knew Kathleen, so seeing her collecting a one-dayer told them all they needed to know. She took a deep breath and made her way to the front, but something strange happened: She didn’t feel much embarrassment retrieving the chip. She had some shame, yet she also had her son. It was impossible for Kathleen to separate these beginnings.

  She knew that going forward Deb would watch her closely, make Kat do ninety meetings in ninety days, rebuild that foundation. Kathleen doesn’t want to come across as overconfident because nothing will conjure another relapse quicker than hubris, but it isn’t an opulent confidence. It’s having somebody to lose now that’s tempering her reaction. She’s not going to jeopardize anything with Rodney. This is the first day and her commitment radiates.

  After the meeting, Kathleen and Deb walk in Dolores Park across from Kat’s place, killing time until Rodney and Sara call saying they’re done at the ER. It had rained overnight, but the skies are clear, blue. It’s a little past nine, unusually hot, and they wend the path through the park, toward the playground. No parents or kids out there playing, at least none that Kathleen can see. The rain puddles heat from the sunshine, changing states, and steam makes the playground look like the set of a horror movie, dry ice concealing some lurking monster.
r />   “Are they staying with you?” Deb says.

  “I don’t really know.”

  “You haven’t asked?”

  “I’m trying not to put on any pressure,” Kathleen says, “but my inn does have a sudden vacancy.”

  “I’m so glad you’re still with us,” Deb says. “I’m trying to keep my mouth shut about what he tried to do, but I’m thankful you’re still here.”

  Kathleen is wrong; there is a parent and child in the playground. She can hear voices and giggles but can’t see them through the steam. “Don’t make me cry.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk about it later.” Deb’s phone chimes and she checks the text. “It’s Sara. They’re done.”

  “Let’s go get them,” Kathleen says.

  “I want you to work today,” says Deb. “I don’t want any moping or awkwardness. Take them to work with you.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t be idle after a relapse. Especially with Rodney around. Keep busy. I’ll go, too. It will be fun.”

  “I trust you,” Kathleen says.

  BALLOON BOY IS getting the hang of this. The cast clicks in the hospital corridor, making a noise that reminds him of a cowboy’s spur.

  “How does it feel?” a nurse says.

  “Great,” he says, and he means it, clicking around the hall. This cast means that everyone is safe. It means that Sara is out of that motel’s bathtub, and his mom is off the bridge. This cast means that a broken foot is the lowest price to pay for all he’s received.

  “I texted that we’re done,” Sara says. “They’re on the way.”

  “Oh. Kay.”

  “Did you get any painkillers?”

  Balloon Boy shakes his head hell no.

  “I told you to give them to me!” Sara says.

  “Sor . . . ree.” But he doesn’t mean it. The last thing Sara needs is painkillers.

  “Let’s wait outside.”