“Here,” her mom said, “let’s listen to the whole song together. That might help get it out of your head.”
She sat on her mom’s lap, and they fired up a CD, hearing the entire track, and it worked. “Frère Jacques” was no more, though it was replaced by another song. Sara’s life had music back then.
So perhaps that logic can be superimposed here. Perhaps watching her whole sex tape can stop its dismal loop in her head.
Her phone is like a hypnotist swinging a pocket watch, entrancing her. She lies in the bath and hopes this viewing purges all the sick congestion rocketing around her brain.
At first, it forms a trance for Sara, a molested daze: She stares at herself, on her knees sucking Nat’s cock, licking down the bottom of his shaft to the balls, gripping him with one hand and playing with her nipple with the other, and she’s barely fifteen seconds into the clip and that’s all she can take. Her hands erupt like vibrating phones again and she puts the real one on the floor, flexes her fingers.
There’s not enough room in the world for both these Saras. If they are conjoined twins, one is a survivor, the other an unsurvivor, and Sara has no idea which she is.
There are discussions that you can have with yourself in a bathtub in a crappy motel room when you feel like no matter what you do your life doesn’t have any hope, any future.
She might not be able to escape in the literal sense, not yet, but escapism is a possibility. She can use her imagination to leave this room, leave the fifteen seconds of the sex tape behind. She can transform this place into something else. Transform her into something else.
Sara surveys the bathroom for props. Props are key. All that’s around Sara are scratchy and cheap motel towels and a baby bar of soap and shampoo that smells like motor oil. All that’s on the floor is a sad paper plate with two pieces of pepperoni pizza that Rodney asked her to eat—“Eat. Sa. Ra.”—and his concern was so heartfelt that she brought the pizza to her bath, knowing she’d never devour them, slices sitting on the floor next to the tub.
Finally she spies something useful. She peeps a prop that can transform even the saddest motel bathroom into something better.
A bucket. A bucket for ice. A bucket so you can get ice from the machine at the end of the hallway and bring the cubes back to chill your bourbon. A bucket can transform into a helmet if you seize the day and quickly move from the tub to the countertop and place it on your head and scurry back to the water. It’s a helmet with superior powers that makes her invisible, which is what Sara most covets right now.
No one can see Sara’s sex tape when she’s wearing that helmet.
She has been erased.
She looks down at the pizza.
She doesn’t see grease. Doesn’t see sustenance. Doesn’t see ingredients.
Sara removes the pepperoni slices and plops them down, and the second they hit the bathwater they morph into lovely lily pads, bobbing on a serene pond, with crows cawing in the distance, and she swims through the pond, undetectable. No one knows where she is. Moving anywhere. Moving anywhere she likes. Moving anywhere she likes and nobody can zero in on her and make Sara self-conscious, feel like a loser, a slut. She slaloms between these lily pads and now she dives down, experiencing the depth of this serene pond. Swimming lazily through the kelp.
Is there kelp in serene ponds?
There’s kelp in this serene pond.
This serene pond also has other sea amenities too. Such as jellyfish that don’t sting but Sara can reach out and touch their illuminated shapes, tentacles waving in the current. Such as a gentle orca, a docile and mammoth presence that likes to have her belly scratched like she’s the family’s golden retriever. Such as a whole school of sardines, swimming tightly in a swarm, their silvery bodies moving in fast circles, looking like a shimmering tornado, and Sara swims through them into the center. Existing inside the wave of their rolling bodies. Existing and protected from the outside world.
Sara under the water.
Holding her breath.
Holding her breath for a long time.
A true explorer of this pond wants to experience everything, even if it means working to the very bottom. Where there’s a coral reef, and it glimmers with iridescent life. Sara swims and inspects everything. She is invisible and she is happy and there is nothing that can take that away from her.
And languidly hovering by the reef is Jumper Julie. She’s a mermaid, smiling at Sara. Jumper Julie says, “How are you feeling?” and Sara says, “Scared,” and Jumper Julie says, “Your life will get better,” and Sara says, “I didn’t know people could speak underwater,” and Julie says, “We live in a mysterious and wonderful world,” and Sara says, “Why did you jump off a bridge if the world is so mysterious and wonderful?” and Jumper Julie says, “I regretted jumping as soon as my feet left the bridge.”
For a few seconds, she feels wonderful. Like she’s been shot with a happiness bullet. She feels fixed. She is a good person.
“It’s time to go back,” says Jumper Julie.
“I’m okay down here.”
“Please, go back,” Jumper Julie says.
But why go back to the surface when Sara sees lobsters wobbling along the sandy bottom of the pond? There are seven of them. They march in a single-file line, drunken soldiers teetering in an awkward formation. It’s an experience that no other human being has ever had, being so privy to the militarization of marching lobsters.
“Why aren’t you wearing uniforms?” she wants to ask them.
But then there’s knocking.
This knocking clamors and shakes and creates angry waves on the pond.
The knocking strips this serene pond to a muddy and barren patch of marshland.
Sara snaps back to her unwanted life. She floats up above the bathwater and knows that it’s Rodney knocking on the bathroom door.
“Sa. Ra?” he says.
“I’m here.”
“Oh. Kay?”
“Be out in a minute.”
She takes the helmet off her head and crashes back into this world. Nothing mysterious and wonderful anywhere. Jumper Julie is a liar. Sara’s in a tepid bath, surrounded by pepperoni slices, a film of grease from the processed meat, a sheen slithering on the surface.
The serene pond is polluted. The serene pond is gone.
Sara puts the bucket back on her head, takes a big breath, and slowly sinks under the oily water.
•••
TECHNICALLY, RODNEY GUESSES, this qualifies as a quest. They did leave Traurig, drive off for an adventure. There was the promise of looking for his mom. But that’s as questy as things have gotten. Besides that, he sits in this retched motel, waiting on Sara. He wants to help her, but he doesn’t know how or when or what to do — wants to swoop up close to her ear and say, “Let’s leave this all behind and be happy. We can do that, Sara.”
Many times, he’s hovered by the closed bathroom door, listening to her, working up the courage to interrupt. Sometimes she’s crying, while other times she whispers to herself. For the most part, though, it’s deathly silent in there, the only noise running water when the temperature needs to be brought up. Besides that, it’s as still as a graveyard.
It’s been four days on this crappy quest and Rodney is as confused as he’s ever been, his cabin fever reaching all-time highs. He can’t watch any more TV, nor can he walk around the motel’s neighborhood, a Sacramento armpit, not as merciless as Traurig in terms of temperature but still in the nineties. It’s a collection of stucco strip malls, concrete and asphalt and glass. Balloon Boy imagines his uncle standing in the middle of one of these capacious roads, launching his fly-fish lure, having the time of his life. And he should go home. Call it a day on this sputtering quest. He’s tried leaving for greener pastures and ended up in scenic Sacramento.