All This Life

He doesn’t want to watch anything bad happen to Sara, and especially doesn’t want to fight Hank, who will no doubt beat him into a coma.

These are all the things he doesn’t want, things he never asked for, and yet he possesses all of them. These are his birthday gifts. These are his future.

He yearns to be back in bed, where there are fantasies and possibilities that today will turn out to be the one he’s been waiting for, the one to launch him on a splendid adventure, his hopes taking flight.

And that word—flight—is what lured him onto the weather balloon that day. The idea of an effortless voyage. At the time he wanted Sara to get on the balloon with him, but thankfully she refused, watched him drift up until he crashed back down, thump-splat ouch.

The importance of flight has only flown higher itself, gaining more altitude over the years. Back on the day of his accident, Rodney was merely a boy showing off for his girl, being silly, with no concept of anything like consequences or injuries. But since his mom left and his talking left and Sara left, Rodney’s yearning for flight has been profound. If there is a quest awaiting his arrival, it has to be soon.

Yet before any grandiose adventures can crack open, there is the issue of Hank, steroided Hank, standing and frothing in front of him. The last thing Rodney wants to do is lose a fight, but unfortunately that’s what’s going to happen. He’s going to defend his stupid uncle and his liquored-up dad because they are his family. They stayed. They’ve taken care of him, as best they can, and he’s going to get his ass kicked for solidarity.

4

Kathleen is a caricaturist. One of those entertainers and hustlers and performers down by Fisherman’s Wharf — the part of San Francisco reserved for tourists. It’s all shops and restaurants and trinkets. All cioppino and cracked crabs. Clam chowder served in sourdough bread bowls. Ferries to Alcatraz. Carousel rides. Salt-water taffy stands. Sea lions barking on K-Dock, bellowing like drunkards. Gulls, those winged mercenaries, trailing children for lost pieces of corn dog bun. The whole bay can be seen from the end of Pier 39. Sailboats and tankers and the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog creeping in from the Pacific.

She sets up her easel on the Embarcadero, almost skipped work today because of what the brass band did earlier that morning. Traffic still hasn’t recovered. News vans cluster at each end of the bridge, various channels’ anchors hiking out into the middle to make their own melodramatic reporting. Helicopters hovering in the sky above, offering their viewers an aerial shot. A letter has surfaced, a kind of suicide note, found on the kitchen table of one of the jumpers’ apartments: a manifesto, saying that they are all musical notes in a melody, a tune that would carry them away to paradise. Now they’d live a life unburdened by human frailties. “A note in a melody,” said the letter, “doesn’t have any concerns. A note is a note.”

So that created a whole new batch of talking points for the news hubs, gossiping with new guests and experts who spin context, analysis, condemnation. They demonize despite the fact they don’t really know what happened. Or why.

But the way Kat figured it, if tourists have spent money to fly here, they aren’t wallowing in hotel rooms, pondering the significance of this tragedy. If this is your vacation, you explore. So she sits next to her easel, waiting for her first customer.

There are other caricaturists out and about, too, though not as gifted as she. Kat can draw wonderfully, and for five dollars people go home with a solid souvenir. She was one of those kids always doodling on something or other and that habit carried her into the world. She didn’t have to work when she was married. Her husband had a good union gig so she stayed home with her young son. Once he started kindergarten she’d watercolor and sometimes oil paint. But her first love was drawing portraits, headshots. There’s something special about constructing your version of someone else.

And with caricatures, it should have a bit of funhouse mirror to it, which is a freedom she loves taking advantage of. You have buckteeth? Well, now they’re going to jet out of your mouth looking like water slides. Eyes close together? She’ll only draw one eye, right in the middle of your face. Big ears? See how they look like open car doors.

She does this with a smile on her face, which translates to her clientele, most of them taking her facial remixes in stride, giggling and shaking their heads. Sure, occasionally some sulk seeing their “worst” features exaggerated, branding them in idiosyncrasy. But to Kathleen that’s the way life works: We are defined by our worst features. We are those mistakes. We are defined by the discrepancy between the life we think we have versus the one everyone else sees.

We have a collection of mistakes and failures, stacked up like those sea lions on the docks, a pile of all the things we’ve flubbed.