Joshua Mohr - All This Life

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.

“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 PASSESand 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.

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?”