Joshua Mohr - All This Life

“I’m not going to cry,” says Sara, reaching for the stereo, turning the volume back up.

They don’t talk the remainder of the trip. They drive over a bridge with the river running underneath it, about forty feet below. Once over, Sara takes a turn off and wends down a dirt path and parks near the shore.

She gets out of the car and walks toward the water, kicking her shoes off as she gets close. The back of her shorts and shirt are covered in dirt and Rodney wonders why.

“Come on,” she says. “I want to show you something.”

It’s mid-afternoon when Kathleen Curtis flees the real world for the support of her AA sponsor, Deb, who has a tattoo shop in the Mission District. It’s located only a few blocks from where Kathleen lives, so she stops by her apartment to drop off her art supplies — all the elements that tied her to this morning’s unpleasant drawing of the pregnant girl with the black eye. Kathleen has never lashed out at someone like she did in the caricature, and she’s rightfully scared by her actions.

I guess I’m a psycho now , she’s thought to herself about a thousand times since the incident.

Deb is in the shop with one other woman, who is stretched out on a table, lying on her back, topless. The walls are painted turquoise, not that they’re easy to see. Almost every inch is covered with pictures of Deb’s artwork. Some are photographs of tattoos already on skin, while others are drawings, ideas for customers to peruse. She has some standards in the back — anchors and hearts and whatnot — but most of the wall space is allocated to her passion projects, the work she does with cancer survivors.

Deb, wearing a wifebeater and showing her full sleeves of work, two sugar skulls emblazoned on top of each shoulder, sits in a chair next to the woman. With her tattoo gun in hand, Deb dips the needles into an ink cap filled with yellow, then fires up the gun with her foot pedal — the shop filling with that buzzing sound — and colors in a sunflower on the woman’s chest.

Kathleen looks at the tattoo, sees the whole tableaux, how the sunflower sits on her sternum, flanked by two lush vines that dangle over her puckered scars, a few tendrils of green running down her ribs. It’s a huge piece, and Kat is utterly transfixed.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Kathleen says.

“You can tattoo anything,” Deb says, running the gun up against the sunflower’s black outline, then wiping the excess ink and blood off with her rag. “Eyelids. Lips. Don’t even ask where a man once got a barber’s pole tattoo.”

“Seriously?” the survivor says, then bites her bottom lip in anguish, folds a forearm over her eyes to block out the light.

“Unfortunately,” says Deb.

Kathleen still hasn’t stopped staring at the tattoo covering the scars.

“I started doing breast cancer survivors about five years ago,” says Deb. “After my sister. I wanted to make her chest gorgeous again. Since then, I offer the same service to others.”

“You look beautiful,” Kathleen says to the woman.

“It hurts,” she says.

“We’re almost done,” Deb says, arches an eyebrow. “Only a few more hours.”

“Great,” she says. “I’ll try not to cry the whole time.”

“It’s worth it,” Deb says. Then she turns her attention to Kat: “I thought I wasn’t seeing you till later today. What time is the Craigslist guy coming to see the room?”

“Five o’clock.”

“Her roommate left the country for a couple months,” Deb says to the survivor, “and the sublettor bugged out at the last minute. Now my friend here has to find a replacement.”

“That sucks,” the woman says, her arm still covering her eyes. “But this sucks more.”

“I need a buddy to make sure I don’t get hacked up into little pieces by some creep,” Kathleen says. “Deb will help me vet this guy.”

“So why are you here so early?” Deb asks and takes her foot off the pedal, tattoo gun going silent, and stares at Kathleen.

“Well,” says Kat, stalling, not sure she feels like getting into it with the survivor lying there, “it’s sort of private.”

Deb laughs so hard she snorts.

“Don’t mind me,” the woman says, finally looking up at Kat. “You’ve already seen my business. Might as well share yours.”

Kathleen pulls the caricature from her pocket. It’s folded and creased and has a small rip in it from when Tyler balled it up. Kat shows it to both of them — the exaggerated faces, the bruised fetus with the caption “Life beats babies!” coming from Tyler’s mouth — then she tells the whole gruesome story.

“Let’s take five,” Deb says to the survivor.

“Let’s take twenty,” she says back, sitting up. “I’m seeing spots in my periphery. My body needs a break.” She throws a shirt on and walks to the front door, props it open and goes outside for some fresh air.

“So what happened?” Deb asks.

“It’s Rodney’s birthday, and I guess I’m not handling it too well this year.”

“You think?” Deb takes the caricature and inspects it closer.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them hit me in the face,” Kathleen says. “I deserved it.”

“Stop,” Deb says. “It’s over. What I’m more concerned about is why you did it. What makes this birthday different than his others?”

Deb and Kathleen have talked about Rodney countless times, especially when working Kat’s step nine. That’s when alcoholics are supposed to make amends to people they’ve hurt over the years — the people they’ve betrayed and trampled. Loving a drunkard is like running with the bulls. But since Kat has already completed step nine, why hasn’t she made amends with Rodney?

“I’m not ready,” Kathleen always tells Deb.

Kathleen refuses to reach out to her son, saying that contacting him while he’s still a minor would also open up things with Larry, and she’s not strong enough to deal with that. She knows the first couple years of sobriety are brittle, and she needs to take care of herself. If she relapses, she’ll never right this wrong.

“It’s his eighteenth birthday,” Kathleen says. “He’s an adult. I’m out of excuses and scared about it.”

“Scared?”

“I did the worst thing a mother can do.”

“But that’s done,” Deb says and keeps scouring the caricature. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Kat says.

And that’s the problem. She’s lost. Kathleen can’t get any grip on the right move. A part of her thinks that he’s her only son and that entitles her to intrude back into his life, despite her unforgiveable behavior since his accident. Another part of her feels that’s selfish — she’s made her miserable bed and she needs to stew in these soiled sheets forever, forget about her son, she’s ruined that relationship and must live with the consequences of her selfishness. Of course, she tries to dismiss the latter interpretation, but it rolls into her mind like fog. She never declares a winner in these warring debates. She hears both sides, then gets frustrated and tired and sad, settling for brackish inaction.

She had time, damn it. He wasn’t eighteen. Not an adult. Under Larry’s jurisdiction. Now that those excuses have burned off, leaving her free to make a decision, she’s so bent up about it that all she can do is draw the meanest caricature in the world and hate herself.

“Good thing I have an idea,” Deb says, “and you are going to sit right here in my shop while I finish tattooing that woman. You’re going to watch her take that gnarled fucking scar and have it topped with something wonderful. That’s what you’re going to do. And maybe you’ll feel inspired to get off your ass and contact him, Kat.”