Here I Am (14 page)

Even when the boys weren't hiding, Jacob and Julia were seeking them—out of fear, out of love. But hours could pass without Argus's absence being noticed. He'd always turn up when the front door was opened, or the bath was run, or food was put on the table. His return was taken for granted. Jacob tried to stimulate heated discussion at dinner, to help the boys become eloquent, critical thinkers. In the middle of one such debate—should Jerusalem or Tel Aviv be Israel's capital?—Julia asked if anyone had seen Argus. “His dinner is just sitting there.”

After only a few minutes of gentle calling for him and casual searching, the boys began to panic. They rang the doorbell. They put out a bowl of human food. Max played through Suzuki Book I, which always elicited a whine. Nothing.

The screen door was closed, but the front door was open, so it was conceivable he had gone outside. (
Who left the door open?
Jacob wondered—angry, but at no one.) They searched the neighborhood, calling for Argus, lovingly then desperately. Some neighbors joined the search. Jacob couldn't help but wonder—only to himself, of course—if Argus had gone off to die, as some dogs apparently do. It became dark, hard to see.

As it turned out, he'd been in the upstairs guest bathroom. Somehow he'd closed himself in, and was too old, or good, to bark. Or maybe, at least until he became hungry, he preferred it in there. He was allowed to sleep in the bed that night. As were the kids. Because they'd thought they'd lost him, and because he'd been so close all along.

At dinner the next night, Jacob said: “Resolved: Argus should be allowed to sleep in the bed every night.” The boys whooped. Smiling, Jacob said, “I take it you'll be arguing the affirmative.”

Not smiling, Julia said, “Wait, wait, wait.”

It was the last time those six animals slept under the same cover.

Jacob and Julia hid themselves inside the work that they hid from each other.

They sought happiness that didn't have to be at the expense of anyone else's happiness.

They hid behind the administration of family life.

Their purest seeking was on Shabbat, when they closed their eyes and made their home, and themselves, new.

That architecture of minutes, when Jacob excused himself to the bathroom and Julia didn't read the book she held, was their purest hiding.

now you deserve to get fucked in the ass

They went to bed, Julia in her nightgown, Jacob in his T-shirt and boxers. She slept with a bra on. She said the support made her more comfortable, and maybe that was the entire truth. He said the warmth of the shirt made it easier to sleep, and maybe that was entirely true as well. They turned off the lights, took off their glasses, and stared through the same ceiling, the same roof, with two pairs of flawed eyes that could be compensated for but were never going to get better on their own.

“I wish you'd known me when I was a kid,” Jacob said.

“A kid?”

“Or just…
before
. Before I became
this
.”

“You wish I'd known you before you knew me.”

“No. You don't understand.”

“Find another way to say it.”

“Julia, I am not…myself.”

“Then who are you?”

Jacob wanted to cry, but couldn't. But he also couldn't hide his hiding. She stroked his hair. There was nothing that she forgave him for. Nothing. Not the texts, not the years. But she couldn't not respond to his need. She didn't want to, but she couldn't not. It was a version of love. But double negatives never sustained a religion.

He said, “I've never said what I feel.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“That's quite an indictment.”

“It's true.”

“Well,” she said, with her first chuckle since finding the phone, “there are so many other things you do well.”

“That's the sound of all not being lost.”

“What is?”

“Your chuckle.”

“That? No, that was the sound of appreciated irony.”

Fall asleep
, he implored himself.
Fall asleep
.

“What do I do well?” he asked.

“You're serious?”

“Just one thing.”

He was hurting. And no matter how much she felt he deserved the hurt, she couldn't tolerate it. She'd devoted so much of herself—forfeited so much of herself—to protecting him. How many experiences, how many subjects of conversation, how many words, were sacrificed in order to soothe his profound vulnerability? They couldn't go to a city that she'd been to with a boyfriend twenty years before. She couldn't make gentle observations about the lack of boundaries at his parents' house, much less his own parenting choices, which often resembled the absence of choices. She picked up Argus's shits because Argus couldn't help it, and because, even if she didn't choose or want him, and even if it was an unfair burden, Argus was hers.

“You're kind,” she told her husband.

“No. I'm really not.”

“I could give you a hundred examples…”

“Three or four would be extremely helpful right now.”

She didn't want to do this, but she couldn't not. “You always return your grocery cart to the right place. You fold up your
Post
and leave it for another reader on the Metro. You draw maps for lost tourists…”

“Is that
kindness
, or
conscientiousness
?”

“So you're conscientious.”

Could he tolerate her hurt? She wanted to know, but didn't trust him to tell her.

She asked, “Does it make you sad that we love the kids more than we love each other?”

“I wouldn't put it that way.”

“No, you would say I'm your enemy.”

“I was worked up.”

“I know.”

“I wasn't meaning what I was saying.”

“I know,” she said. “But you were saying it.”

“I don't believe that anger reveals truth. Sometimes you just say something.”

“I know. But I don't believe that any something comes from nowhere.”

“I don't love the kids more than I love you.”

“You do,” she said. “
I
do. Maybe we're supposed to. Maybe evolution forces us to.”

“I love you,” he said, turning to her.

“I know you do. I've never doubted that, and I don't doubt it now. But it's a different kind of love than the kind I need.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“I don't know.”

Fall asleep, Jacob
.

He said, “You know how novocaine leaves you unsure of where your mouth ends and the world begins?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Or how sometimes you think there's going to be another stair when there isn't, and your foot falls through an imaginary stair?”

“Sure.”

Why was it so hard for him to cross the physical space? It shouldn't have been, but it was.

“I don't know what I was saying.”

She could feel him struggling.

“What?”

“I don't know.”

He tucked his hand behind her hair, cupping the back of her neck.

“You're tired,” he said.

“I'm really exhausted.”

“We're tired. We've run ourselves into the ground. We need to find ways to rest.”

“I would understand if you were having an affair. I'd be angry, and I'd be hurt, and I'd probably be moved to do something I don't even want to do—”

“Like what?”

“I would hate you, Jacob, but at least I'd understand you. I always understood you. Remember how I would tell you that? That you were the only person who made sense to me? Now everything you do confuses me.”

“Confuses you?”

“Your obsession with real estate.”

“I'm not obsessed with real estate.”

“Every time I walk past your laptop, the screen is filled with a house listing.”

“Just curious.”

“But why? And why won't you tell Sam he's better than you at chess?”

“I do.”

“You don't. You let him believe that you let him win. And why are you such a completely different person in different situations? You become passive-aggressively quiet with me, but you snap at the boys, but you let your father walk all over you. You haven't written me a Friday letter in a decade, but you spend all of your free time working on something that you love but won't share with anyone, and then you write those texts that you say mean nothing. I walked seven circles around you when we got married. I can't even find you now.”

“I'm not having an affair.”

“You're not?”

“I'm not.”

She started to cry.

“I exchanged some horribly inappropriate texts with someone at work.”

“An actress.”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Does it matter?”

“If it matters to me, it matters.”

“One of the directors.”

“Who has my name?”

“No.”

“Is it that woman with the red hair?”

“No.”

“You know, I don't even care.”

“Good. You shouldn't. There's no reason—”

“How did it start?”

“It just…evolved. As things do. It took on a—”

“I don't even care.”

“It never became anything other than words.”

“For how long?”

“I don't know.”

“Of course you do.”

“Maybe four months.”

“You're asking me to believe that for four months you've been exchanging sexually explicit texts with someone you work with every day and it never led to anything physical?”

“I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm telling you the truth.”

“The sad thing is, I believe you.”

“That's not sad. It's hope.”

“No, it's sad. You are the only person I know, or could even imagine, who would be capable of writing such bold sentences while living so meekly. I actually do believe that you could write to someone that you want to lick her asshole, and have that bluff called, and then sit beside her every day for an entire four months without allowing your hand to wander the six necessary inches to her thigh. Without mustering that bravery. Without even sending the signal that it's OK for her to take up the slack of your cowardice and move her hand onto your thigh. Think about the signals you must have been sending to keep her pussy wet and her hand away.”

“That's too far, Julia.”

“
Too far?
You're serious?
You
are the person in this room who doesn't know what
too far
means.”

“I know that I went too far in what I wrote.”

“I'm telling you, you didn't go far enough in what you lived.”

“What's that supposed to mean? You want me to have an affair?”

“No, I want you to write Shabbat letters to me. But if you're going to write pornographic texts to someone else, then yes, I want you to have an affair. Because then I could respect you.”

“You're not making sense.”

“I'm making perfect sense. I would have respected you so much more if you'd fucked her. It would have proven something to me that I have found harder and harder to believe.”

“Which is?”

“That you're a human being.”

“You don't believe I'm human?”

“I don't believe you're there at all.”

Jacob opened his mouth, without knowing what would come out. He wanted to return everything she'd given to him, to catalog her neuroses, and irrationalities, and weaknesses, and hypocrisies, and ugliness. He also wanted to acknowledge that everything she'd said was true, but contextualize his monstrousness—not all of it was his fault. He wanted to mortar bricks with one hand while taking a hammer to them with the other.

But instead of his voice, they heard Benjy's: “I need you! I really need you!”

Julia released a burst of laughter.

“Why are you laughing?”

“It has nothing to do with things not being lost.”

It was the nervous laughter of oppositions. The dark laughter of the knowledge of the end. The religious laughter of scale.

Benjy called out again through the monitor:
“Someone! Someone!”

They fell silent.

Julia searched the darkness for her husband's eyes, wanting to search them.

“Someone!”

Julia had fallen asleep by the time Jacob came back down from calming Benjy. Or she did a perfectly believable impression of a sleeping person. Jacob was restless. He didn't want to read—not a book or a magazine, not even a real estate blog. He didn't want to watch TV. Writing wasn't going to happen. Neither was masturbation. No activity appealed to him, anything would feel like an act, an impersonation of a person.

He went to Sam's room, hoping for a few moments of peace, observing his first child's sleeping body. A shifting light spread from under the door onto the hallway, then pulled back: waves from the digital ocean on the other side. Sam, ever vigilant of his privacy, heard his father's heavy steps.

“Dad?”

“The one and lonely.”

“So…Are you standing there? Do you need something?”

“Can I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer he opened the door.

“You were being rhetorical?” Sam asked, not looking away from the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm watching TV.”

“You don't have a TV.”

“On my computer.”

“So aren't you watching your computer?”

“Sure.”

“What's on?”

“Everything.”

“What are you watching?”

“Nothing.”

“You have a second?”

“Yes: one…”

“I was being rhetorical.”

“Ah.”

“How's it going?”

“Is this a conversation?”

“Just checking in.”

“I'm fine.”

“Does it feel great to feel fine?”

“What?”

“I don't know. I think I heard it somewhere. So…Sam.”

“The one and bony.”

“Nice one. Anyway, listen. I'm sorry to have to get into this. But. The thing at Hebrew school this morning.”

“I didn't do it.”

“Right. It's just.”

“Don't you believe me?”

“It's not even a question of that.”

“Yes it is.”

“It would be a whole lot easier to get you out of this if you had some other explanation.”

“I don't.”

“A bunch of those words are really no big deal. Between us, it wouldn't even bother me if you
had
written them.”

“I didn't.”

“But the n-word.”

Sam finally turned his attention to his father.

“What,
divorce
?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Why did you say that?”

“I didn't.”

“Are you talking about Mom and me?”

“I don't know. I can't even hear myself over the fighting and glass-breaking.”

“Earlier? No, what you heard—”

“It's OK. Mom came up and we had a talk.”

Jacob glanced at the TV on the computer. He thought about how Guy de Maupassant ate lunch at the Eiffel Tower's restaurant every day because it was the only place in Paris without a view of the tower. The Nats were playing the Dodgers, extra innings. With a sudden burst of excitement, he clapped his hands. “Let's go to the game tomorrow!”

“What?”

“So fun! We could get there early for batting practice. Eat tons of shit.”

“Eat tons of shit?”

“Shitty food.”

“Would it be OK if I just watched this?”

“But I'm having an awesome idea.”

“Are you?”

“Aren't I?”

“I have soccer, and cello, and bar mitzvah lessons, assuming that's still on, God forbid.”

“I can get you out of that.”

“My life?”

“I'm afraid I can only bring you into that.”

“And they're playing in L.A.”

“Right,” Jacob said, and quieter, “I should have realized that.”

That quietness made Sam wonder if maybe he'd hurt his father. He experienced a tremor of a feeling that, despite knowing it was utterly foolish, he would grow to experience more often and more strongly in the coming year: that maybe everything was at least a little bit his fault.

“Finish the chess game?”

“Nah.”

“You're OK with money?”

“Yeah.”

“And this thing at Hebrew school. It obviously isn't because of Grandpa, right?”

“Not unless he's also the grandfather of whoever did it.”

“That's what I thought. Anyway—”

“Dad, Billie's black, so how could I be a racist?”

“Billie?”

“The girl I'm in love with.”

“You have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“I'm confused.”

“She's the girl
I'm in love with.”

“OK. And you said
Billie
? But a girl, right?”

“Yes. And she's black. So how could I be racist?”

“I'm not sure that logic quite works.”

“It does.”

“You know who points out that some of his best friends are black? Someone who isn't comfortable with black people.”

“None of my best friends are black.”

“And for whatever it's worth, I'm pretty sure
African American
is the preferred nomenclature.”

“Nomenclature?”

“Terminology.”

“Shouldn't the guy who's in love with a black girl be the one establishing the nomenclature?”

“Isn't that the pot calling the kettle African American?”

“Pot?”

“I'm joking around. It's an interesting name, that's all. Not a judgment. You know you were named for a great-great-uncle who perished in Birkenau. With Jews there always has to be some significance attached.”

“Some suffering, you mean.”

“Gentiles pick names that sound nice. Or they just make them up.”

“Billie was named after Billie Holiday.”

“So she's the exception that proves the rule.”

“Who are you named after?” Sam asked, his interest a small concession in response to the guilt of having forced his dad's voice into quiet sadness.

“A distant relative named Yakov. Supposedly an amazing, larger-than-life guy. Story goes he crushed a Cossack's head in his hand.”

“Cool.”

“I'm obviously not strong like that.”

“We don't even
know
any Cossacks.”

“And at most, I'm the size of life.”

One of their stomachs grumbled, but neither knew whose.

“Well, bottom line, I think it's awesome that you have a girlfriend.”

“She's not my girlfriend.”

“Nomenclature strikes twice. I think it's awesome that you're in love.”

“I'm not in love. I love her.”

“Whatever's going on, this obviously stays between us. You can count on me.”

“I've already talked to Mom about it.”

“Really? When?”

“I don't know. Couple of weeks ago?”

“This is old news?”

“It's all relative.”

Jacob stared at Sam's screen. Was this what drew Sam to it? Not the ability to be elsewhere, but to be nowhere?

“What did you tell her?” Jacob asked.

“Who?”

“Your mother?”

“You mean
Mom
?”

“That's the one.”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know, as in you don't feel like talking about it with me right now?”

“As in that.”

“It's strange, because she's convinced you wrote those words.”

“I didn't.”

“OK. I'm becoming annoying. I'll go.”

“I didn't say you were annoying.”

Jacob moved to the door to leave, but paused. “Wanna hear a joke?”

“No.”

“It's dirty.”

“Then
definitely
no.”

“What's the difference between a Subaru and an erection?”

“No means no.”

“Seriously. What's the difference?”

“Seriously, not interested.”

Jacob leaned forward and whispered, “I don't have a Subaru.”

Despite himself, Sam released a huge laugh, the kind involving snorting
and saliva. Jacob laughed, not at his own joke but at his son's laughter. They laughed together, vigorously, hysterically.

Sam struggled, without success, to regain his composure, and said, “The funny thing…the really funny thing…is…you
do
have a Subaru.”

And then they laughed more, and Jacob spit a little, and teared up, and remembered how horrible it was to be Sam's age, how painful and unfair.

“It's true,” Jacob said. “I totally have a Subaru. I should have said Toyota. What was I thinking?”

“What were you thinking?”

What was he thinking?

They calmed down.

Jacob gave the sleeves of his shirt another roll—a bit tight, but he wanted them over the elbow.

“Mom feels that you need to apologize.”

“Do
you
?”

In his pocket, he closed his hand around nothing, around a knife, and said, “I do.”

The one and phony.

“OK, then,” Sam said.

“It won't be that bad.”

“Yes it will.”

“Yeah,” Jacob said, kissing Sam on the top of his head—the last kiss-able place. “It's gonna suck.”

At the threshold, Jacob turned.

“How's it going in Other Life?”

“Eh.”

“What are you working on?”

“Building a new synagogue.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Because I destroyed the old synagogue.”

“Destroyed? Like with a wrecking ball?”

“Like that.”

“So now you're going to build one for yourself?”

“I built the old one, too.”

“Mom would love that,” Jacob said, understanding the brilliance and beauty of what Sam never shared. “And she would probably have a million ideas.”

“Please don't mention it to her.”

That gave Jacob a spike of pleasure that he didn't want. He nodded and said, “Of course,” then shook his head and said, “I would never.”

“OK,” Sam said, “so, unless there's something else?”

“And the old synagogue? Why did you build it?”

“So I could blow it up.”

“Blow it up? You know, if I were a different dad, and you were a different kid, I'd probably feel obligated to report you to the FBI.”

“But if you were a different dad, and I were a different kid, I wouldn't have needed to blow up a virtual synagogue.”

“Touché,” Jacob said. “But isn't it possible that you weren't building it to destroy? Or at least not only to destroy?”

“No, that isn't possible.”

“Like, maybe you were trying to get something exactly right, and when it wasn't, you needed to destroy it?”

“Nobody believes me.”

“I do. I believe that you want things to be right.”

“You just don't get it,” Sam said, because there was no way he was going to concede any understanding to his father. But his father got it. Sam hadn't built the synagogue to destroy it. He wasn't one of those Tibetan sand-mandala whatevers he'd been forced to hear about during a drive—five silent guys working for thousands of hours on an arts and crafts project whose function was to be functionless. (“And I used to think
Nazis
were the opposite of Jews,” his dad had said, disconnecting his phone from the car stereo.) No, he built the synagogue with the hope of feeling, finally, comfortable somewhere. It wasn't simply that he could create it to his own esoteric specifications; he could be there without being there. Not unlike masturbating. But as with masturbating, if it wasn't exactly right, it was completely and irretrievably wrong. Sometimes, at the worst possible moment, his drunken id would suddenly veer, and in his mental headlights would be Rabbi Singer, or Seal (the singer), or his mom. And there was never any coming back from that. With the synagogue, too, the slightest imperfection—an infinitesimally asymmetrical rotunda, stairs with risers too high for short kids, an upside-down Jewish star—and it all had to go. He wasn't being impulsive. He was being
careful. Couldn't he simply have fixed what wasn't right? No. Because he would always know that it had been wrong: “That's the star that once hung upside down.” To another person, the correction would have made it more perfect than if it had been right the first time. Sam was not another person. Neither was Samanta.

Jacob sat on Sam's bed and said, “When I was young, maybe in high school, I used to like to write out the lyrics of all of my favorite songs. I don't know why. I guess it gave me that feeling of things being in the right place. Anyway, this was long before the Internet. So I'd sit with my boom box—”

“Your
boom box
?”

“A tape player with speakers.”

“I was being dismissive.”

“All right…well…I'd sit with my
boom box
and play a second or two of a song, then write down what I'd heard, then rewind and play it again to make sure I'd gotten it right, then let it play again, and write down a bit more, then rewind for the parts I didn't quite hear, or wasn't sure I'd heard, then write them down. Rewinding a tape is really imprecise, so I'd inevitably go back too far, or not far enough. It was incredibly laborious. But I loved it. I loved how careful it felt. I loved the feeling of getting it right. I spent who knows how many thousands of hours doing that. Sometimes a lyric would really stump me, especially when grunge and hip-hop came along. And I wouldn't accept guessing, because that would undermine the entire point of writing the lyrics out—to get it right. Sometimes I'd have to listen to the same little bit over and over and over, dozens of times, hundreds. I would literally wear through that part of the tape, so that when I listened to the song later, the part I most wanted to get right wasn't there anymore. I remember a phrase in ‘All Apologies'—you know that song, right?”