All This Life (11 page)

So much for distraction.

She sends another note to Nat:
Didn't you like me?

She paces, worrying about Rodney, wondering why Nat won't text her back. Paces and almost cries and there's no way to escape this new life—the one she never asked for—her life with a conjoined twin.

She realizes she'll never be able to separate herself from digital Sara, nude and pixilated. Perfectly preserved. Frozen for all time. Sex tape as fossil. Her twin will never age and will always be there. Her twin feels to her like a wholesale tragedy, and from here on out, Sara will never be alone again, always dragging this twin through their life.

And the mere presence of that thought in her head, the fact that it shuttles around within her, makes Sara hyperventilate, rest her head on the kitchen table, the Formica a bit sticky from one of Hank's pancake stacks. It's all a bit sticky. The whole room, the whole house. They should have moved after their parents died. They should have redecorated. They should've tried to make it less their parents' place, but neither of them really wanted to do that. It's a way of preserving the extravagances of memory, living in the house long after their parents have gone.

Take this kitchen. Take the linoleum floor that's white, yellow, and green, pocked by the jagged bottoms of the chairs, little potholes. Take the sun-bleached curtain over the sink. It used to be lavender,
then gray, and now it's stark white, the wan light growing in intensity every day. Take the fridge, the wheezing fridge, its compressor barely holding on, emitting rumbles and snorts. Take the stove with three burners broken. The countertop with its stains and mildewed edges. The leaky faucet making its own muted
thwunk
with every drip.

These are things that should be fixed or changed. A lot of them easily remedied. Buy another curtain; they're cheap and easy. But nothing is cheap and easy about transcending grief, especially when it hasn't been given its proper due. Sara realizes that the grieving process in this house has been incomplete, was never really begun.

Sara could never clean up their house, after their deaths. It was the leftovers in the fridge that paralyzed her. After the funeral, Sara saw a quarter pan of lasagna, the last home-cooked meal that her mom prepared. Sara doesn't count Hank heating up turkey chili, or Sara reheating whatever the restaurant served for staff meal. No, that lasagna was the end of a family sitting down together.

After the funeral, Sara ate all that lasagna in one sitting; it was enough to serve four or five people, but Sara's grief was famished. Her mom had once told her that some brides kept their leftover wedding cake in the freezer and ate a piece to cheer themselves up over the years during trying times. Sara couldn't pace herself, though, her fork ferociously stabbing at the cold, congealed mess, choking on the dried noodles and cheese and over-baked sauce. Sara didn't taste anything, finishing it all up and holding the glass dish, letting it fall from her hands to shatter on the floor. Took her two days to inflate the gumption to sweep up the shards.

There was no way to get her stampeding feelings under control, and she feels the same now with this latest betrayal. All Sara can do is rest her head in a sticky spot next to a pile of fingernails.

No text back from Nat.

No way to lasso a sex tape and bring it down.

Tires screech outside. Hank's home. Hank's dog, Bernard, barks
from the porch. She hears her brother say back to the bark, “Your master's still got it, boy! Let's drink a beer.”

Hank enters the kitchen, the dog trotting behind. Her brother's not wearing a shirt and goes to the fridge for a cold one, drinks most of it in a sip, slams the empty on the stained counter. He has another beer in the same motivated way, then belches. The other finished bottle crashes down, too. Hank stares out the gauzy curtain into the backyard, the only item out there besides brush and bugs is an aboveground pool that hasn't had any water in it since the death of their parents.

All of this done without looking at or saying one word to Sara.

She watches him surveying the arid yard, wondering what her brother is thinking. Does he have moments of personal reflection? And would he ever open up to her? These are important questions for Sara, given the circumstances.

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.

That lone gust of bravado dissipates quickly, though. Perhaps her brother can be unaffected by all of this, yet Sara doesn't know if she's up to the challenge. She wants to be a badass. She wants to be unflappable, poised for whatever comes her way. Problem is it's coming back, these symptoms, the buzzing hands and heart and breathing. Quickly, she's back to being a wretched twin.

“I don't know how to face everyone in town,” she says.

“Don't worry about those bozos.”

“I mean it, Hank.”

“So do I.”

“They all think I'm a whore.”

“You're a whore; I'm a caveman. Fuck 'em.”

“It's that easy?”

“Fuck 'em, Baby Sis.”

“I want to be a kid again.”

“Me, too.”

“I want to move.”

“Everybody has sex, Sara. I know it feels like the end of the world today, but it will get easier living with it.”

“What if I don't want to live with it?”

“People live with worse,” he says. He finishes his beer and goes
for more. “Hey, what do you want me to do to Nat when I kick his ass?”

“I don't want that.”

“Any requests or shall I improvise?”

“Don't hurt him.”

“Not even a little bit? A black eye?” says Hank, coming back with two more cold ones.

“That would make me feel bad for him and I don't want to pity that asshole.”

“What about a liver punch? Hurts like hell and no visual evidence.”

Bernard barks and Hank scratches his head.

“Even the dog thinks Nat needs an ass kicking,” says Hank.

“Please leave him alone.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

Sara doesn't change her mind as they sit in the kitchen drinking beers, but she would like to hear how her brother would defend her. She'd like to listen while someone outlines exactly how he'd protect her. It doesn't matter that their house is made of cinderblocks. It doesn't matter all the broken down things scattered about, a linoleum floor lined with potholes.

“Will you tell me about it?” she says.

Hank smiles. “You want details?”

Yes, she wants to hear about every punch, every kick. She has to hear every single way he will defend her. She has to know.

A MOMENT PASSES
and then Hank says, “Come with me,” getting up and opening the back door.

“I don't want to move.”

“You said you wanted to be a kid again. Come on.”

Hank waves for her to follow, and he walks through the back door.
Sara sighs, knows that it's easier to do it by herself so he doesn't come back and carry her over his shoulder.

By the time she's in the backyard, Hank is already standing in the pool. She can only see him from the chest up. She peeks around the whole dusty rectangle of yard. It's all dirt and weeds and fire ants. Flat as a grave.

“You used to love swimming,” he says and pretends to do the breaststroke, walking in a circle. “The water is perfect, Baby Sis.”

Sara can't get in the pool fast enough, tearing toward it and leaping in. There are a couple inches or so of dust and sand at the bottom. The walls are cracked and puckered. But right now Sara doesn't see any of that. All she sees is water and her brother and her parents sitting in chairs on the side, watching them swim.