All This Life

Because she’s going to have to tell him. Sooner rather than later. She’s going to have to come clean about the sex tape. She has no choice. If she lets him find out about it from anyone else, Hank will lose his shit. He’s going to be so pissed, so disappointed. Hank has never turned his temper at Sara, not really. There’s been yelling, but never any violence. He’s gentle with her. Or he was. Until he finds out about this.

“Is Rodney all right?” Sara says, flexing her hands, in and out. Her heart rate stays too high and her armpits stink.

“He’ll live,” he says.

“Will you sit down?” she asks.

Hank grabs another beer from the fridge and moves a chair back from the table, fixing it into a few potholes. “Well, that was fun.”

“What was?”

“Stomping those fools.”

“What did you do to Rodney?”

“I gained some respect for him today,” says Hank. “He didn’t have to square up with me. I’d already whupped the other dumb asses. But he wanted to take a go. It was impressive.”

“Does he need a doctor?”

“He’s needed a doctor ever since the balloon.”

“You know what I’m asking.”

“He’s fine, Baby Sis. He’ll have a headache, but these things happen.”

Sara swells with conflicting sensations, a different kind of conjoined twins. On one hand, she’s happy that Felix got hooked, glad that the buffoon learned that there are consequences for being nasty. But she has guilt now, too. Some shame that it’s her fault that Rodney got hurt. She’ll apologize. It’s easy to be honest with him because she once loved him, probably still does deep down, in some unhelpful ways. They’d still be dating if he’d never mounted that balloon, and because of that he deserves the truth.

And so does her brother, her protector. She loves the fact that he went down there for her. She loves that there’s no thinking with Hank, no weighing the pros and cons, no looking at problems from all sides and selecting the prudent course.

No, Hank only leaps.

He loves her and he leaps.

He loves her and he leaps and she is protected.

It’s going to be a hard conversation, but Sara has to be strong. He’s been strong for her, and Sara has to meet his brawn with some of her own.

“There’s something I need to tell you, Hank,” says Sara. “I’m sorry this happened, but you should hear it from me.”

Her brother’s face, its mass of freckles and moles and some acne from the steroids, has a tenderness to it that Sara hadn’t expected to see. Normally, he wears his rage like war paint, but now he looks gentle and concerned.

“Everyone already knows,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.

“You know?”

“I’ll beat Nat’s ass for you,” says Hank. “Wanna beer?”

“Sure.”

He gets two more out of the fridge, and they sit at the sticky kitchen table. “You okay?” he asks.

“I ruined my life.”

The dog rests his head on Hank’s huge thigh. “Don’t say that.”

“What’s left for me?”

Hank rubs Bernard’s head. “Why are you asking that, Baby Sis?”

Sara loves it when he calls her that. Baby Sis. So familial. What you call someone you love, no matter what they do.

“I trusted Nat,” Sara says, checking her phone again to see if he’s responded to her texts, which he hasn’t. She sets the phone on the table next to the pile of fingernails and turns it over so she can’t see its teasing face. “I’m so stupid.”

“You can’t ruin your life, Sara, because our lives were already pretty ruined.”

“Don’t say our lives are ruined.”

“Pretty ruined.”

“That’s not better,” she says.

“Look around,” Hank says, pointing toward the squalor drenching their house, and right on cue the fridge burps and snorts. “This ain’t the Ritz. Hell, people probably thought you’d have six sex tapes by now.”

For the first time all day, Sara laughs. For the first time since hearing about what Nat had done, she’s unaware of her body. She’s not thinking about her vibrating hands. She’s unaware that her heart has slowed to its normal resting rate.

The laughter is pure. It is encompassing, taking over all of her conscious mind, freeing her. For that moment she is a human being without a digital twin. She has no mirror in cyberspace. Hers is an identity unmarred by technology. Sara is a laughing woman drinking a beer with her brother.

“Six sex tapes!” she says, leaning over and punching Hank in the arm.

“At least five.”

Another punch.

“Hank!”

“So one’s pretty good,” he says. “Baby Sis, you’re ahead of the game as far as I’m concerned.”

Hank holds his beer toward his sister and they let them clink. No one says anything corny like cheers. They let the bottles do the talking.

“I’ve already been to jail four times,” he says, “so you’re doing better than me.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s the best that can be expected of them. In the grand scheme, maybe they’re not doing so badly.