All This Life

He retraces her steps, leaving the San Francisco side, walking by the tollbooths and onto the bridge. He moves slowly, a zombie of sorrow. It’s hard to block out TheGreatJake’s video, hard for him not to imagine the brass band strutting and playing their music right here. They stepped here. They breathed here. They were alive here, only days ago.

The thing about that YouTube video is it’s the only memory that matters. Because it’s new. Because Noah911 had seen Tracey that day. Because he’d made her breakfast, written her a note: Make sure my sister eats this, okay? Because it makes him feel closer to her and because it’s the opposite of the ashes. It shows her whole, shows her smile. It’s a way to talk to Tracey. A cyber-séance. A Ouija board with comments.

That video is his sister now. It is Noah911’s companion and he’ll watch it all day, every day, thankful that digital videos never get worn out, never fatigue or snap, never get grainy with age. She is perfectly preserved and pristine.

An armful of ashes is the worst burden a brother can carry.

But he has to retrace these steps, if he wants to end up in the exact spot she jumped.

SHIT, SLEEP. HE’S sleeping. For how long? Paul doesn’t know. He looks at the laptop, teetering on his thighs. It says 11:04 AM. But that can’t help Paul, considering he doesn’t know when he nodded off.

“Any news?” he calls over to the officer at the front desk, a different person, a man. This one seems even younger than the one who took the initial report in the parking lot. They must be coming straight out of high school. They are almost as young as Jake, charged with keeping up the world’s order. Paul knows it’s impossible. Order is a trick, a trap, a dupe. You think there’s order until your boy runs off.

“What?” the officer asks.

A coffee. A Red Bull. Paul needs something. He carries the laptop over to the front desk, sets it down. “Is there any new news?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you ask Esperanto?” Paul says, refreshing his feed, seeing that his son has been taking advantage of the cat’s nap, the mouse posting these two messages in the meantime:

The first: I wonder how many of you would meet me at the Golden Gate Bridge? I have something up my sleeve that you won’t want to miss!

The second: Meet me there in an hour for the finale!!!

Paul doesn’t like the word finale. He detests it, sounds like a synonym for something final.

No, he’ll never say that word, but why else go to the bridge, what would bring him back there? He has to save Jake from the edge. Because that’s exactly what Jake had said, right after the brass band leaped: I want to see over the edge. It was a sentence that floored Paul, took the wind right out of him, leaving only a vacuum of confusion before he gathered himself again: Here was his boy, his fourteen-year-old boy, and he saw things that he was too young to know about, should be shielded from these aspects of humanity, if that’s even the right word. Jake shouldn’t know about stuff like this, should be given a complete childhood. Plenty of years to try and process these atrocities, but not yet.

“Is he at his desk?” Paul says, trying to move through the door to the precinct, but it’s locked.

“You can’t go back there.”

“Buzz me in.”

Paul pounds on the door, says, “Esperanto!”

“Step away from the door,” the officer says.

Still pounding: “Esperanto! Esperanto!”

The young officer hops on the phone, talking fast into it.

Paul thrashes and screams, “Finale! He said finale! What does he mean?! What the fuck does he mean by that?!”

SARA STOPS THE car in front of the address, turns off Google Maps. They sit there, idling. She feels compelled to say something — to reassure him, to let him know that whatever happens, she’s here. That was the thing that made her feel so comforted last night after the scary bath, being in bed with him, safe, and she wants to make him know that she’ll do the same.

That’s what she wants to do, but it comes out like this: “Don’t get your hopes up. We don’t know that she still lives here.”

Which is true, logical. But it belies her aims, and she tries to soften it. “No matter what, we’ll deal with it together, okay?”

He nods, but Rodney is nervous. That’s easy to see. He never fidgets like this. He’s picking at one of his eyebrows, a tic Sara had never observed before, and if he keeps it up he’ll have a bald spot.

She leans over and kisses him on the cheek. “Let’s go.”

More nodding. Even a smile.

And they are out of the car, on the sidewalk, up the front stairs. They knock on the door and a woman answers. It is not Kathleen. The woman’s face is totaled. A split red lip. Bright green and silvery swelling on her cheek, the color of trout scales.

“Who are you?” she says.

“Does Kathleen Curtis still live here?” Sara says.