All This Life

Kathleen is wrong; there is a parent and child in the playground. She can hear voices and giggles but can’t see them through the steam. “Don’t make me cry.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about it later.” Deb’s phone chimes and she checks the text. “It’s Sara. They’re done.”

“Let’s go get them,” Kathleen says.

“I want you to work today,” says Deb. “I don’t want any moping or awkwardness. Take them to work with you.”

“Why?”

“You can’t be idle after a relapse. Especially with Rodney around. Keep busy. I’ll go, too. It will be fun.”

“I trust you,” Kathleen says.

BALLOON BOY IS getting the hang of this. The cast clicks in the hospital corridor, making a noise that reminds him of a cowboy’s spur.

“How does it feel?” a nurse says.

“Great,” he says, and he means it, clicking around the hall. This cast means that everyone is safe. It means that Sara is out of that motel’s bathtub, and his mom is off the bridge. This cast means that a broken foot is the lowest price to pay for all he’s received.

“I texted that we’re done,” Sara says. “They’re on the way.”

“Oh. Kay.”

“Did you get any painkillers?”

Balloon Boy shakes his head hell no.

“I told you to give them to me!” Sara says.

“Sor. . ree.” But he doesn’t mean it. The last thing Sara needs is painkillers.

“Let’s wait outside.”

They move out front of SF General, standing on Potrero Avenue. Traffic whizzes by. A bus hisses and kneels, lowering itself so a woman with a walker can get in. Rodney sits on the curb. Sara stands behind him. She doesn’t want to see his eyes when she asks this next batch of questions. She can’t imagine getting the wrong answer.

“Are you going to stay here?” she asks.

He shrugs.

“I don’t have to go home,” Sara says, thinking about her dead-end job that she might not have and her dead-end love life that she doesn’t want and her dead-end brother who can’t stand her anymore. Why run back to a cinderblock life? “I mean, if you’re going to stay here for a while, I can, if you want.”

“Please. Stay.” Only four seconds.

She relaxes and sits on the curb next to him, leans her head on his shoulder. “Have you called your dad?”

He shakes his head hell no again, then rests his on hers. Not exactly making out, though feeling the warmth of her head on his skin is wonderful. Balloon Boy wishes it were the old days, behind that 7-Eleven, kissing by the dumpster, but he’ll take what he can get.

“They’re probably fishing in the street anyway,” says Sara.

THE FOUR OF them arrive at Kathleen’s favorite spot in front of Pier 39. Balloon Boy helps his mom unload her art supplies, his cast still clicking like a spur. Sara and Deb trail behind them, making small talk, both avoiding anything about yesterday.

“There is a no moping ordinance,” Deb says. “We’re all going to have fun today. This is a mandatory fun zone.” Deb pulls out a pair of binoculars. “I mean, how fun are these?”

“What are those for?” Kathleen says, setting up her easel.

“People-watching.”

There really isn’t anyone out here yet, the tourists trickling out of hotel rooms for designer coffee. By noon, the Embarcadero will be packed.

“We’re people,” Sara says. She has an urge to mention the sex tape, but she’s not going to. She remembers seeing an old horror movie where a woman is being hunted in her dreams by a madman. The whole movie takes place in her head, really. She spends most of the film screaming, hiding, running away, fighting him off. But by the end, she won’t do any of that anymore. She’s had enough, decides to stand her ground and tell the madman that she takes it all back, every yelp, every stride, every bead of sweat, every tear. And once she stops empowering him by believing, he has no way to kill her. He tries, swinging a metal claw at her face and chest, but it passes right through her like vapor. He is dematerializing. He is powerless without her fear. Sara will work on doing that to the sex tape.

“How about a picture?” Deb says. “Can you draw us all?”

“Let me finish setting up and I’ll get on it,” says Kat.

Deb points her binoculars at the Golden Gate Bridge. Balloon Boy senses that something catches her eye and asks, “What?”

She hands him the binoculars. Rodney puts them to his eyes and Deb guides him in the right direction with a pointer finger.

“Do you see that guy?” Deb says. There’s a man working on a scaffold way up near one of the bridge’s towers and Rodney nods. “He’s painting the bridge,” Deb says. “They have to do it all year, every year. The saltwater and fog strip off the paint pretty fast, and they’re always touching it up. They call those spots scars.”

“Let me see,” says Sara, and Rodney hands her the binoculars. “Do they really call them scars?”

“Cross my heart,” Deb says.

“The bridge is so pretty from here,” Sara says. “You’d never know what happened yesterday.”