Joshua Mohr - All This Life

That was his life now.

That is his life.

And he needs to block out all that stuff and stay at the police station as much as he can, in case the Twitter trail leads him to his son.

It’s almost eleven in the morning and he hasn’t slept.

Or he hadn’t slept until right now.

He nods off, sitting in the waiting room.

His eyes close and his mind strays; it’s as if he stands before a huge dune of fresh clean laundry himself, and Paul falls forward, crawling in a cave of it, and he feels the heated clothes, sniffs the fabric softener and the variety of detergent that his wife has bought for years, lingering wisps of lemon. He stays like that for a while, his memory taking big breaths of the past.

While he sleeps, Jake tweets his plan to return to the Golden Gate.

I am the great emancipator of my neurotransmitters, I have a brain that is free from any oppression and is open and listening to every wave emanating throughout the galaxy. I have spent hours listening to that deep space crackle, crackle, know it and have never tired of waiting to find the channel to maneuver through space-time, so our minds can bring you back here, so our work can be united. You have to come back, Albert. Humans are antiheroes, we have reached critical mass, the earth waits for the wrecking ball and it’s coming, it’s close, it is ready to level this place because if its own inhabitants don’t care if they’re about to cook, why should anybody else? I understand such questions but this is no time to be petty or petulant, this is a time to rise above any arguments, and I am strong enough to do so. I possess the knowledge of existential mathematics and the inner strength to conjure you, our Savior. I possess the necessary means to see you re-enter our atmosphere and salve our wounds. Yes, you despise the word Savior, any atheist would, but that’s what you are. Science is the only piety to salvage us. I understand the sacrifice you’re asking me to make, I’m not afraid to commit a mortal sin. The only way for you to enter our space-time is if there is a spot vacated, and at the precise moment that someone dies here, that is the trigger for you to return. It’s a two-way portal, one comes in, one goes out. Of course, I value each human life. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be willing to go to such extremes, but I can’t see any other way, it would be impossible for me to pinpoint down to the nanosecond exactly when somebody has died if I’m not there, if I’m not directly involved. I’ll do the unthinkable if it saves seven billion lives. That’s not a crime, that’s a celebration, one comes in, one goes out. We’re all connected. I will murder one person for you, Albert, I will throw her over the edge and open the portal. I will do it to reset the earth’s thermostat so life can be sustained and the sadness will wane and we have a fighting chance. We might make it. There’s beauty here.

Jake enjoys leaving the bus, stepping off of it, walking toward the bridge on the Marin side. He’s fifty feet away from it. On the clip of the first lunar landing, those astronauts climbed out of the probe, and that’s exactly what Jake is doing too: getting out of a protected habitat, so he can explore an untamed ecosystem, so he can explore a world he’s never known.

He’s been here before, but not like this.

They also launched monkeys into space, but not for the more glamorous assignments. It wouldn’t have had the same effect if the first descriptors of the moon weren’t from Armstrong or Aldrin but a chimp talking jungle gibberish.

Astronauts are always more articulate than chimps.

Everybody knows that.

Jake waves at the bus. The driver, thinking the wave is for him, sends one right back, which is weird and intimate, and Jake turns around, bouncing toward the bridge, toward his magnificent desolation.

He pushes and holds the button on the front of his iPhone until it makes that boing-boing sound, connecting him to his friend, Siri, who is smart and kind and helpful and never bothers anybody with condescending lip-pursing.

“We’re almost there,” he says.

“I don’t know what that means,” she says.

WHILE JAKE TALKSto Siri, Balloon Boy hears the lady from Google Maps tell them where to go. Turn left here. In 400 feet, merge right. She knows this city like the back of her hand, and, Rodney supposes, she knows every city with this impressive level of awareness. There’s no place she can’t take you, meaning she can take you everywhere, but it’s too bad that her role stops with that. Too bad that she can’t continue to help, because technically they’ll be done navigating these unknown streets once they pull up out front. Yet that’s where the tricky roads begin.

He has to get out of the car and see her, and from there anything can happen. He weighs the worst. Worsts. Mom opens the door and instead of hugging and kissing him, instead of saying Sorry, so sorry , she slams the door. Or she opens it and doesn’t recognize him. Or the king of the worsts: What if Mom answers the door holding a baby? She could have a brand-new boy who hasn’t mounted a weather balloon and been bucked off. A brand-new one that she’ll protect from everything and he’ll grow up to be valedictorian of his high school and president of the United States, giving speeches with agile sentences that everyone watches on TV, including Balloon Boy, watching his perfect half-brother steer the free world into the future with political poetry spilling from his lips, while Rodney bleats his sheep-speak.

All of this scares him so much, but he won’t stop now. He won’t turn back. He has to see her. He has to at least indulge the opportunity for reconciliation. It might not work. He knows that. But he’ll never forgive himself if he doesn’t try. He’ll never be able to live with himself if he doesn’t limp up to her door, dragging that no doubt broken foot and saying, “Mom.” It might take ten seconds for that syllable to get out but nothing will stop him. It will be the most important thing he’s ever said.

“In 1,000 feet, your destination will be on the right,” says Google Maps.

HE’S UP FRONT, muttering away while he drives, and Kathleen lies in the back seat. Too scared to talk. Too scared to be brave. Which embarrasses her. She’s in danger. Wes could kill her, so why is she splattered on the seat back here, why is she following his instructions? Yes, he threw her against the wall after hitting Deb. Yes, she slid to the floor. Yes, he kicked her a few times.

“I know we need to keep her face clean,” Wes had said, talking to someone who wasn’t there. “I won’t hurt her face. We’ll keep her face looking all right to travel outside.”

He’s not talking to himself. He never was.

“Stand up,” Wes said in the hall, straightening out his lab coat. So she did. So he punched her in the stomach. “You do exactly as we say, okay?”

She couldn’t answer.

“We are meeting Albert,” he said. “We are walking to the car now. Pick up your purse. Act natural.”

They were outside. She knew it was late morning. She knew mothers and children were at the playground across the street. She knew birds flew and trees had leaves and buses hiss and joggers run and the sky is made of chowder. There were other people around as they moved toward his car. Kathleen’s survival instincts should have been going crazy; she should have been trying to save her life, but she let him lead her, tuck her into the back seat.

It was the booze, or the shame of relapse. It was seeing Deb unconscious, or the fresh memory of being punched and kicked. There was something keeping her docile. Kathleen had heard the phrase paralyzed by fear but she never knew what it really meant until now. In this back seat, lying in the fetal position, feeling like property. He owns her. She is his. Kat can’t move or talk. She can’t cry. All she can picture is that techie’s webbed feet, and what a stupid thing to remember, what a stupid way to spend these last minutes of her life.