Joshua Mohr - All This Life

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. There’s love and it’s here.