All This Life (23 page)

Dead bodies could be survivors. Sara understood that. They were survivors if they escaped their pain. If they were liberated. If they occupied a consciousness swiped clean of appalling memory.

There were lots of things Sara hated about the media, but at the top of the list was their reliance on gaudy alliteration. It was insulting, dismissive. The local press had done it to Rodney right after his accident, naming him Balloon Boy. Such wounding insolence. It was vicious, the calloused practice of shredding someone's identity to a commodity, to a caricature. And the unsurvivor was the latest victim of this assault, the article referring to her as Jumper Julie.

If the media gave Sara a nickname it would be Slutty Sara, or Skank Sara, or Sex Tape Sara. They'd call her these things without any care of the malice tucked into these syllables, venom folded between consonants and vowels.

Sara lost track of time in the tub, or she knew that time passed and didn't care. She never expected to spend four days bathing, but honestly, the tub was the safest haven she'd found since her fiasco posted online. It was warm and nobody was talking and Hank wasn't yelling and decimating her heart and Felix couldn't kick her car and Moses couldn't suspend her from work and Nat didn't know where to find her to post another video, and on the other side of this locked door was sweet Rodney, her only friend left. She expected to spend half an hour in the tub, but being immersed in that womb proved impossible to slide out of—why leave such quiet and warm comfort?

She only exited for quick trips. To eat takeout that Rodney had ordered, Chinese, Thai, pizza. To sleep in spurts, toss and turn, think too much, retreat back to another bath, slipping into solace.

And four days later, they're still in this god-awful motel room. This is a capricious way to dole out her emergency money, but she can't find the verve to try. She feels bad for Rodney, trapped out there. She wouldn't be surprised if he took off on her—she certainly wouldn't blame him. But every time she briefly emerges from the bathroom, there he is, watching TV, using his own phone to scroll around the globe. He always greets her with a serving of food, something to drink.

“Eat,” he says.

“Okay.” But she barely does.

“Be. Nice. To. Sa. Ra,” he says, hoisting a plate of pad thai at her.

It takes him almost twenty seconds to choke it out, but what Sara hadn't realized until right this second is that who cares how long it takes him to talk. It's the warmth behind his words that she craves.

“All right.” She takes it, smiles at him, but sets it down somewhere in the room before crawling into another bath.

She can't believe they're calling her Jumper Julie. She hops from page to page, trying to learn more about her, details that will help Sara get a sense of who this woman actually is, but not much has been released about her. Details are sparse to guard her identity.

Sure, she gets her privacy protected
, thinks Sara,
while my white ass shakes online
.

Sara should be feeling better. That's her mantra in the tub.
You've gotten away
, she tries to tell herself. Traurig and all its drama are in the rearview. Rally, Sara. Feel good.

What would really make her feel good is if Sara can pick up the phone and talk to Jumper Julie. Not for any guidance, just empathy. Empathy that spans all across the sky like storm clouds.

Cumulonimbus empathy.

Instead, she'll have to settle for another bath—the one that started as Jake tweeted back to Paul—and it's time to do it.

This is the time.

Sara points herself at a certain URL.

She opens the page and watches it load.

There is a still image, Sara on her hands and knees, Nat behind her, a banner above them that says S
KANK OF THE
W
EEK
.

And a link that says C
LICK HERE FOR ALL THE ACTION
!

It might sound like masochism, this impulse to watch what's ruined her, but Sara remembers some of her mom's advice. This was when Sara was seven or eight years old and she couldn't stop singing the song “Frère Jacques.” It had been in her head for weeks and every time there was a lapse in conversation, that's when Sara started singing. It was in her head when she fell asleep and when she woke up, in her head while she ate and played.

“Here,” her mom said, “let's listen to the whole song together. That might help get it out of your head.”

She sat on her mom's lap, and they fired up a CD, hearing the entire track, and it worked. “Frère Jacques” was no more, though it was replaced by another song. Sara's life had music back then.

So perhaps that logic can be superimposed here. Perhaps watching her whole sex tape can stop its dismal loop in her head.

Her phone is like a hypnotist swinging a pocket watch, entrancing her. She lies in the bath and hopes this viewing purges all the sick congestion rocketing around her brain.

At first, it forms a trance for Sara, a molested daze: She stares at herself, on her knees sucking Nat's cock, licking down the bottom of his shaft to the balls, gripping him with one hand and playing with her nipple with the other, and she's barely fifteen seconds into the clip and that's all she can take. Her hands erupt like vibrating phones again and she puts the real one on the floor, flexes her fingers.

There's not enough room in the world for both these Saras. If they are conjoined twins, one is a survivor, the other an unsurvivor, and Sara has no idea which she is.

There are discussions that you can have with yourself in a bathtub in a crappy motel room when you feel like no matter what you do your life doesn't have any hope, any future.

She might not be able to escape in the literal sense, not yet, but escapism is a possibility. She can use her imagination to leave this room, leave the fifteen seconds of the sex tape behind. She can transform this place into something else. Transform
her
into something else.

Sara surveys the bathroom for props. Props are key. All that's around Sara are scratchy and cheap motel towels and a baby bar of soap and shampoo that smells like motor oil. All that's on the floor is a sad paper plate with two pieces of pepperoni pizza that Rodney asked her to eat—“Eat. Sa. Ra.”—and his concern was so heartfelt that she brought the pizza to her bath, knowing she'd never devour them, slices sitting on the floor next to the tub.

Finally she spies something useful. She peeps a prop that can transform even the saddest motel bathroom into something better.

A bucket. A bucket for ice. A bucket so you can get ice from the machine at the end of the hallway and bring the cubes back to chill your bourbon. A bucket can transform into a helmet if you seize the day and quickly move from the tub to the countertop and place it on your head and scurry back to the water. It's a helmet with superior powers that makes her invisible, which is what Sara most covets right now.

No one can see Sara's sex tape when she's wearing that helmet.

She has been erased.

She looks down at the pizza.

She doesn't see grease. Doesn't see sustenance. Doesn't see ingredients.

Sara removes the pepperoni slices and plops them down, and the second they hit the bathwater they morph into lovely lily pads, bobbing on a serene pond, with crows cawing in the distance, and she swims through the pond, undetectable. No one knows where she is. Moving anywhere. Moving anywhere she likes. Moving anywhere she likes and nobody can zero in on her and make Sara self-conscious, feel like a loser, a slut. She slaloms between these lily pads and now she dives down, experiencing the depth of this serene pond. Swimming lazily through the kelp.

Is there kelp in serene ponds?

There's kelp in this serene pond.

This serene pond also has other sea amenities too. Such as jellyfish that don't sting but Sara can reach out and touch their illuminated shapes, tentacles waving in the current. Such as a gentle orca, a docile and mammoth presence that likes to have her belly scratched like she's the family's golden retriever. Such as a whole school of sardines, swimming tightly in a swarm, their silvery bodies moving in fast circles, looking like a shimmering tornado, and Sara swims through them into the center. Existing inside the wave of their rolling bodies. Existing and protected from the outside world.

Sara under the water.

Holding her breath.

Holding her breath for a long time.

A true explorer of this pond wants to experience everything, even if it means working to the very bottom. Where there's a coral reef, and it glimmers with iridescent life. Sara swims and inspects everything. She is invisible and she is happy and there is nothing that can take that away from her.

And languidly hovering by the reef is Jumper Julie. She's a mermaid, smiling at Sara. Jumper Julie says, “How are you feeling?” and Sara says, “Scared,” and Jumper Julie says, “Your life will get better,” and Sara says, “I didn't know people could speak underwater,” and
Julie says, “We live in a mysterious and wonderful world,” and Sara says, “Why did you jump off a bridge if the world is so mysterious and wonderful?” and Jumper Julie says, “I regretted jumping as soon as my feet left the bridge.”

For a few seconds, she feels wonderful. Like she's been shot with a happiness bullet. She feels fixed. She is a good person.

“It's time to go back,” says Jumper Julie.

“I'm okay down here.”

“Please, go back,” Jumper Julie says.

But why go back to the surface when Sara sees lobsters wobbling along the sandy bottom of the pond? There are seven of them. They march in a single-file line, drunken soldiers teetering in an awkward formation. It's an experience that no other human being has ever had, being so privy to the militarization of marching lobsters.

“Why aren't you wearing uniforms?” she wants to ask them.

But then there's knocking.

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.