All This Life

“If you could see what I see,” she said, shaking her head. Here was his sister with that knowing smile of hers, exposing crooked bottom teeth. She had eyes the color of cucumber peel and she loved to rag her brother. He loved it, too. This was a shtick they’d been perfecting for years, his over-concern, her under-concern. They balanced each other out.

Noah was always the greedy go-getter, a hardwired Type A pit bull. Tracey was flighty, wonderfully flighty — it was one of the things her older brother loved about her so much, all the whimsy she saw in the world, all the life, all the hope. How she could actually enjoy where she was without ruining it with superimpositions about the future.

Noah’s therapist once told him that the difference between depression and anxiety was which way you were looking: to your past or to your future. People who were depressed fixated on the past, while their anxious counterpoints couldn’t stop worrying about what was coming next week, next month, next year. A future that might not ever happen.

Noah was staunchly restless, fearful, the future this supernova waiting to blow. He’d always lived that way. And he always won. Captain of the lacrosse team, valedictorian, at the top of his MBA class. Life wasn’t a game, per se, but if there were gods out there keeping score, Noah was winning.

Tracey was neither depressed nor anxious. She was there, floating from moment to moment, a leaf on a river.

“You’re my Forrest Gump,” Noah joked.

“You laugh, but Forrest had a ton of Buddhist wisdom.”

“I think he was retarded, Trace.”

When he left her that morning, she was asleep on their couch. Noah halved a pink grapefruit and spread hummus on a piece of toast, leaving them on the coffee table in front of her with a note that said, Make sure my sister eats this, okay?

He kissed her on the forehead and remembers so clearly thinking that she looked happy. She was flat on her back, drooling a little. The blanket was spilling onto the floor and so he fixed it, covering her up.

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.”