All This Life (9 page)

The expression on her face was pure—that was the word he always thought of when he saw her sleep.
Pure
. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, smelled the lilac from her shampoo.

The sun wasn't even thinking about coming up yet, and in the darkness of the room he paused to watch her breathe. This was a tradition that dated back to her being born; Noah was astounded by her tiny body in her crib. It was hard for him to tell if she was breathing back then or not, and he'd get scared, tell his mom about it. The two of them would sneak back into Tracey's room together, and their mother would put Noah's hand lightly on the baby's back, so he could feel her move with every swell from her lungs.

Noah could see her clearly breathing on the couch. Her nose whistled with every breath.

They'd moved to San Francisco together thirteen months ago. He was taking a new job, a huge promotion, and was excited to relocate to such a beautiful city, a nice pardon from their childhood in the Deep South. It had never occurred to Noah that Tracey would want to move with him. It didn't seem possible that anybody made such a huge life decision on a whim.

“Really?” he said. “You'll leave?”

“Why not?”

“If it was anyone else, I'd have serious questions. What will you do?”

“I'll figure it out.”

“How much does that pay?”

“It's pro bono.”

“So I pay.”

“You pay the rent,” she said, “and I pay with elbow grease, taking care of you.”

They got an apartment in the Mission District, Noah immediately pouring himself into his new gig, excited to prove that he was the best hire they ever made. Tracey was living on the exact opposite schedule, staying up late, sleeping in, exploring. But she did keep her promise of taking care of their place. She didn't seem to know how to do her own laundry, and yet she made sure their common rooms were spotless, the fridge stocked with food.

They'd go out to dinners a few nights a week and she'd tell him all about her adventures. Spoken word shows. Warehouse parties. Underground circus performances. A punk rock squat doing illegal literary readings in a condemned apartment building.

“Where do you even find out about these things?” Noah said, while they were out at Pho, bowls of soup in front of them, the smell of basil and lime ripe in the air. The front windows of the
shop were steamy from the bogs of broth. “Is there a website called ‘Things That Might Get Me Arrested'?”

“I find out about them the old-fashioned way,” Tracey said. “I talk to people. Do you remember talking to people?”

“We're talking right now.”

“Not people you know already. Opening yourself up to the experiences a stranger might offer you.”

“That idea makes my palms sweaty,” he said.

“If I can give you some advice . . .”

“Oh, I can't wait for this.”

Tracey used her chopsticks, pointing them at her brother and clamping them together periodically, like jaws, to punctuate her thought. “My advice would be to follow your sweaty palms. See what happens if you live a life that makes your palms sweat all the time. See what wonders await you.”

“Did Forrest Gump say that?”

“Poor Noah,” said Tracey, pouting, then sticking her chopsticks back in the soup and coming up with a bushel of noodles.

About six months ago, his sister ran into the apartment, tousled and screaming his name. He was at the kitchen table, spreadsheets all around him, a prison of columns and rows. The S&P had dipped eleven points and he was preparing to deal with spooked clients. Tracey kept calling his name from the hallway. He heard her throw down her keys, set what sounded like a weighty duffel in the hall, and finally scramble into the kitchen with something behind her back, blurting out, “Haven't you always pictured me playing music because I totally have?”

“Where have you been?”

“At Ivan's.”

“Is that a new guy you're dating?”

“No, silly,” she said, revealing the clarinet she'd been concealing, “I joined a band.”

“You don't know how to play that, Trace.”

“You don't have to know. He teaches you.”

“So I guess you guys aren't very good,” said Noah.

“Off to hone my craft, skeptic,” she said, going to her room, screeching awful birdcalls on the clarinet all night.

History had taught him that Tracey would be excited about the clarinet for a few months until she lost interest and the next shiny idea infiltrated her life. That was the pattern, and Noah had seen it many times: jewelry making, culinary school, photography, poetry. Tracey tried a bite and moved on.

Now she was learning the clarinet and joining a band. So what? Should he have known simply from that what was going to happen? Was this a sign?

That was the horrible thing about signs: Often they were only legible once the outcome was clear. Reverse engineer from conclusions, work back and spot the initial germs. With that appalling hindsight, Noah could comb the preceding months like his spreadsheets and easily identify his sister first being seduced, recruited, ingratiated. Could see her spending more and more of her time at band practice.

“You should totally join,” Tracey said.

This was weeks later. Maybe months. His sister coming home less and less, and even when she did make a cameo, all she did was shower and change clothes, then leave again. Her promise to pay her share of the rent with elbow grease long abandoned. It didn't really bother Noah; he didn't expect her to keep it up that long. He did, however, miss seeing her regularly. She was the only person that he talked to, besides work colleagues. Emails were his preferred method of communication for everyone, even their parents. Tracey was the only actual company he looked forward to, sought out, and missed now that she was out so often.

“We're getting ready to play a show,” she said.

“Where's the concert?”

“We're still learning the song.”

And she was off again, closing the front door and leaving Noah in solitary confinement with his spreadsheets. Shaking his head a bit at Tracey, actually sort of jealous: She seemed inspired by something. Noah liked his job, liked feeling a sense of winning, beating his fellow traders, beating the market, owning the futures, a steady stream of atta-boys from his higher-ups; promises of increased responsibilities meant that everyone already relied on him and saw a growing role for him. But it would be a stretch to say he derived pleasure from his job, not in the same way Tracey talked about her new band. Noah loved the competition. Tracey had a passion.

But on that day, on that morning, Noah alone at the office from 3:00 to 4:30 when coworkers started trickling in before the NYSE opened, after he left Tracey the halved grapefruit and toast smeared with hummus and the note, after he'd already prepped both the meetings he was to lead later, after he did three sets of bicep curls with the forty-pound dumbbell he stashed under his desk, after he ate two hardboiled egg whites and organic blueberries, drank a kale smoothie, after he chastised his young assistant for what he characterized as a “latent undergraduate slack ethic,” after she sat looking at him as he bullied her with his idiotic words, after he watched her leave his office and commended himself at his deft handling of the situation, knowing he was helping her rise to his expectations, to be the best worker she could, mentoring her so she could thrive in this environment the same way Noah did, doling out this bit of tough love for her own good, her own career; after all this, Noah was alone for about three minutes with nothing much to do, and he considered another couple sets of bicep curls when his phone rang, and he yelled to his assistant stationed right outside, “I'm not here,” and she didn't say anything back to him but he heard her greet the caller, and Noah retrieved the dumbbell from under his desk and started hoisting the thing and silently saying to himself,
One, two, three, four
, counting reps and feeling strong,
feeling ripped, feeling like a champion, when he saw his assistant standing in the doorway.

“What?” he said.

“You need to take this.”

The weight hanging limply in his dangling arm, and he said it again, “What?”

She stood there.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“The police.”

The officer's voice was male, low and raspy, like someone with a cold. Someone barely able to choke out the words he had to say.

Noah held the phone with one hand and still had the dumbbell dangling in his other and the officer gave him a cold, objective report of the facts that were known so far: A brass band jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge about ninety minutes ago. They all had their driver's licenses in their pockets, and he was alerting family members of what had happened.

“Is she okay?” Noah asked.

“I'm sorry.”

“Is she alive?”

“I'm sorry,” said the cop.

Noah hung up. He didn't remember if the conversation was over or not. He felt an urge to wash his hands so he floated down the hallway with the weight still in his hand. Thankfully no one else was in the men's room. Noah set the dumbbell on the counter, him at the faucet with a pond of soap in both his palms, rubbing them together for what felt like the entire workday and letting the lather and water wash over each finger, each nail, each freckle and hair and scar, and he cranked the water temperature up as far as it would go and kept his hands moving underneath it, the backs of his hands turning the color of cooked salmon and throbbing and did that one cop have to call all the bereaved families himself, or did they spread the agony around the station, each officer taking
one or two? Finally the heat was too much to take, and Noah held them at eye level, watching every drop jump off his hands into the sink. His sister was dead. He had been told that Tracey was dead. His hands hurt now, drying them on his pants and walking out and leaving the water rushing, the dumbbell perched on the counter.

Back to his office, Noah needed to compartmentalize, to paste on his face a convincing façade. There was nothing he could do to alter the day's events, so why indulge his emotions? It was like playing in a lacrosse tournament in college when he had a torn meniscus in his knee, not smart, not pragmatic, fucking painful, risking more damage, but he wouldn't hear his coach's pleas to step aside, to protect himself—he was going to fight to the end and he was going to win and no one could stop him, nobody.

So Noah didn't tell anyone at work what had happened. He stayed and emailed and trouble-shot a client package with a colleague and led those two meetings with his team and ate a Cobb salad and even remembered leaving his dumbbell in the men's room and got it and stowed it back under his desk.

Compartmentalize and conquer. Get through this. Don't buckle. He was keeping the world at bay until he went into the kitchen for a bottled water and saw someone's half-eaten toast on the counter, and his feet tingled and his heart sped up and he saw tie-dyed things in his periphery and he lost track of how long he stood and stared at the toast till another trader said, “What are you looking at?” and Noah said, “What?” and the guy said, “You're just standing there,” and Noah said, “Oh.”

His hands ached all day from the scalding water. Tracey was gone. He had to tell their parents, but he was unsure what to tell them. How to tell them. He wondered if he should be like that cop and simply assault them with apologies.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Would that work? Maybe with their mom but certainly not with their father. No, he would not hang up on Noah. He would do
the opposite. He'd bully, scold, blame. He'd hide his grief in anger and gift it to his son.

Noah owed them a phone call and one would come, but first, he and his aching hands sat behind his desk. The workday was over. The office empty again. But Noah did not know where to go—how the hell could he go home? To their house? To their house without her?

He wished he had a toothbrush, an acrid taste in his mouth, like getting off a fifteen-hour flight, that hangover of recycled air and germs and dehydration. Like the time his whole family went to New Zealand, Noah nineteen, Tracey nine, and once arrived, they both bought Cokes in the airport and raced to see who could finish the fastest, laughing at how many times Tracey had to stop and burp, her eyes watering from all the carbonation. Noah held his empty can and watched her try to finish hers.

He Googled “brass band+golden gate.”

One news story he stumbled on had a hyperlink to a YouTube page, TheGreatJake's. That was how he found it. Creating a new account, settling on the username Noah911 because that was who he was now: He was Noah soldered to emergency. He was the guy with a new limb, a new life. He was the guy with a ghost attached to his person. There was no Noah without Tracey's tragedy.

This was his new identity.

This was him.

It was almost like the day she was born, a new addition, the quick change to his identity. One minute, he had a new baby sister. One minute, the nurse asked Noah if he wanted to hold her tiny body and he was too scared to stand up with her, fretting a botched handoff and dropping her, hurting her, so he sat in a chair and the nurse handed him the swaddled baby, a beanie on her head, her eyes closed and making a moaning, then a gurgling noise.