All This Life

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.

“I’m Noah,” he said, “your brother.”

He stared down at her shut eyes and asked their mom, “When will she get hair?”

She was in her hospital bed, exhausted, still doped up on an epidural. “You didn’t have any hair when you were born, either.”

“Really?”

“Nope.”

“So she’ll get lots like me?”

“Yes.”

He stared back at her sleeping form.

“Are you going to be a strong brother for her?” said his mom.

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

He’d hold her dead body right now, if they gave it to him. He’d sit in a chair to protect her from being dropped. He’d rock her. He’d say, “I’m Noah, your brother.”

He viewed the clip many times in his office. How he hated and loved it. Easily spotting his sister. Tracey was tall. She wore purple pants, a shirt with a gargantuan collar. She had her clarinet. She threw it off the bridge like a pitcher’s fast ball. She held her nose before jumping, the same gesture her brother had seen her do countless times off of high dives.

Yes, this was who he was now, Noah911.

And he didn’t need to create the username to watch the video, but he did need to register an account to leave a comment. It took him almost an hour to figure out what to say. His ideas shot the gamut from pure vitriol at the person who could post this, indictments of his scruples, TheGreatJake’s adoration of carnage trumping the feelings of the loved ones left behind, the clip besmirching them with every subsequent view. Noah would break the guy’s nose. He’d hurt him much more than that. He’d make TheGreatJake his own emergency, soldered to whoever loved him the way that Noah911 loved Tracey.

He finally settled on the comment “I feel sad for whoever posted this,” because he thought that maybe that message had the potential to reach TheGreatJake. If he cyber-screamed at him, Noah would be dismissed as another troll, another lunatic empowered by the Internet. But if he focused on his own sadness, thrusting it at the poster, if he made a simple and clean statement about the callused nature of sharing the video with the world, maybe TheGreatJake would hear him.

Or maybe he wanted somebody else to hear him because he couldn’t say what he really wanted to say, what he felt in the deepest part of himself: It was his fault she died. His fault for not watching after her diligently enough. His fault for trusting her, or for trusting the world with her. He was the practically minded one; she needed his guidance. He helped her remember all sorts of things. In fact, the only thing he didn’t help her remember to do was practice the clarinet. Noah911 actually thought that maybe the band was teaching her responsibility. He encouraged her music, her involvement. She was growing up, finding her voice. Tracey was changing for the better.

The memory of that tarred and feathered his heart.

And he deserved every daub of hot tar for not taking care of her.