Here I Am (15 page)

“Nope.”

“Nirvana? Great, great,
great
song. Anyway, Kurt Cobain's marbles seemed to have migrated to his mouth, and there was one phrase I had a particularly hard time making out. My best guess, after hundreds of listenings, was ‘I can see from shame.' I didn't realize I was wrong until many years later, when I sang it, at the top of my lungs, like an idiot, with Mom. Not long after we got married.”

“She pointed out that you were wrong?”

“Yeah.”

“That's so Mom.”

“I was grateful.”

“But you were singing.”

“Singing wrongly.”

“Still. She should have let it go.”

“No, she did the right thing.”

“So what was the real lyric?”

“Fasten your seat belt. It was: ‘aqua seafoam shame.' ”

“No way.”

“Right?”

“What's that even supposed to
mean
?”

“It doesn't mean anything. That was my mistake. I thought it had to mean something.”

Neither Jacob nor Julia knew what, exactly, was happening in those first two weeks after Julia discovered the phone: what had been agreed to, implied, broached hypothetically, asked for. Neither knew what was real. It felt like there were so many emotional land mines; they moved through the hours and rooms on their hearts' tiptoes, with large earphones connected to sensitive metal detectors that could pick up traces of buried feeling—if at the expense of blocking out the rest of life.

At a breakfast that might, to a television audience, have seemed in every way happy, Julia said into the fridge, “We're always running out of milk,” and through his earphones Jacob heard “You have never taken good enough care of us,” but he didn't hear Max say, “Don't come to the talent show tomorrow.”

And the next day, at Max's school, forced to share the small space of the elevator alone together, Jacob said, “The Door Close button isn't even attached to anything. Purely psychological.” Through her earphones, Julia heard “Let's get this over with.” But she didn't hear herself say, “I thought everything was purely psychological.” Which, through Jacob's earphones, sounded like “All of those years of therapy and no one knows less about happiness.” And he didn't hear himself say, “There's pure, and there's pure.” A probably content parent in a probably unbroken family entered and asked Jacob if he meant to be pressing Door Open.

All that tiptoeing, all that precious overinterpreting and evading, and it wasn't a minefield at all. It was a Civil War battlefield. Jacob had taken Sam to Antietam, just as Irv had taken Jacob. And he had given a similar
speech about what a privilege it is to be American. Sam found a half-buried bullet. The weapons in Jacob and Julia's earth were as harmless as that—artifacts of old battles, safe to be examined, explored, even valued. If they'd known not to fear them.

The domestic rituals were sufficiently ingrained as to make avoidance fairly easy and inconspicuous. She showered, he got breakfast going. She served breakfast, he showered. He supervised teeth brushing, she laid clothes out on beds, he confirmed the contents of the backpacks, she checked the weather and responded to it with appropriate outer clothing, he got Ed the Hyena going (warmed in the six months of too cold, cooled in the six months of too hot), she brought the boys out and stepped into Newark to look for cars coming down the hill, he reversed.

They found two seats near the front of the auditorium, but after depositing his bag, Jacob said, “I'll go grab us some coffees.” Which he did. And then waited at the school entrance with them until three minutes of curtain. Halfway through a girl's talentless rendition of “Let It Go,” Jacob whispered, “I wish she would,” into Julia's ear. No response. A group of boys reenacted a scene from
Avatar
. What was probably a girl used different kinds of pasta to explain how the euro works. Neither Jacob nor Julia wanted to admit to not knowing what Max was going to do. Neither could bear the shame of having been too preoccupied with personal hurt to be present for their child. And neither could bear the shame of the other having been a better parent. Each privately guessed that Max would perform the card trick that the magician had taught him after Julia's fortieth. Two girls did that cup thing while singing “When I'm Gone,” and Jacob whispered, “So go already.”

“What?”

“No. Her. The singer.”

“Be nice.”

For the finale, the drama and music teachers teamed up for a sanitized version of the opener from
The Book of Mormon
—living out their dreams while reconfirming why they were dreams. Lots of applause, a brief thank-you from the principal, and the kids filed out and back to class.

Jacob and Julia walked back to their cars in silence. And the talent show wasn't mentioned at home that night. Had Max chickened out? Did he consider himself talentless? Was his abstention an act of aggression or a call for help? If they'd brought any of these questions to him, he would have pointed out that he told them not to go.

Three nights later, when Jacob came to bed, after having waited the requisite hour, Julia was still reading, so he said, “Oh, I forgot something,” and headed back down to not read the paper while not watching another episode of
Homeland
and regretting, as he often did, that Mandy Patinkin wasn't ten years older—he'd have made a great Irv.

Two days after that, Julia walked into the pantry, where Jacob was checking to see if a few hundred billion atoms had spontaneously organized themselves into an unhealthy snack in the ten minutes since he last checked. She walked back out. (Unlike Jacob, she never gave an ostensible explanation for moving away from him, she never “forgot something.”) The pantry wasn't among the unofficially claimed spaces—as the TV room was Jacob's, and the small sitting room was Julia's—but it was too small to be shared.

On the tenth day, Jacob opened the bathroom door to see Julia drying off after a bath. She covered herself. He had seen her come out of hundreds of baths, seen three children come out of her body. He had watched her dress and undress thousands and thousands of times, and twice at the inn in Pennsylvania. They'd made love in every position, offering every view of every body part. “Sorry,” he said, not knowing what the word referred to, only that his foot had half depressed a mine's trigger.

Or stumbled upon an artifact of old battle, which might have been safe to examine, explore, even value.

What if, instead of apologizing and turning, he'd asked her if the need to conceal herself was new, or old with a new justification?

When Robert E. Lee's defensive line at Petersburg had been broken and the evacuation of Richmond was imminent, Jefferson Davis ordered the Confederate treasury be moved. It went by train, and then wagon, under many eyes and between many hands. The Union pressed forward, the Confederacy crumbled, and the whereabouts of the five tons of gold bars remain a mystery, although they are assumed buried.

What if, instead of apologizing and turning, he'd gone to her, touched her, shown her not only that he still wanted to make love to her, but that he was still capable of risking rejection?

On Jacob's first visit to Israel, his cousin Shlomo took the family to the Dome of the Rock, which at the time could be entered by non-Muslims. Jacob was as deeply moved by the devotion of the men on the prayer rugs as he was by the Jews below. He was more moved, because the devotion was less self-conscious: at the Wailing Wall the men merely bobbed; here
they wailed. Shlomo explained that they were standing atop a cave carved into the Foundation Stone. And in the floor of that cave was a slight depression, thought to be above another cave, often referred to as the Well of Souls. It was there that Abraham answered God's call, and prepared to sacrifice his beloved son; there that Muhammad ascended to heaven; there that the Ark of the Covenant was buried, full of broken and whole tablets. According to the Talmud, the stone marks the center of the world, serving as a cover for the abyss in which the waters from the Flood still rage.

“We are standing atop the greatest archaeological site that will never be,” Shlomo said, “filled with the most valuable objects in the world, the place where history and religion meet. All underground, never to be touched.”

Irv was adamant that Israel should dig, come what may. It was a cultural, historical, and intellectual obligation. But to Jacob, until those things were unearthed—until they could be seen and touched—they would be unreal. So it was better to keep them out of sight.

What if, instead of apologizing and turning, Jacob had gone to Julia and lifted the towel, as he'd lifted her veil before the wedding, confirming that she was still the woman she said she was, the woman he still wanted?

Jacob tried to keep the conversations with Julia underground, but she needed the end of their family to be seen and touched. She expressed her continued respect for Jacob, her desire to be friends,
best
friends, and good co-parents, the
best
, and to use a mediator and not get lost in all that was not to be cared about, and to live around the corner from each other and go on vacations together, and to dance at each other's second weddings—although she swore that she would never marry again. Jacob agreed, without believing that any of what she said was either happening or would happen. They'd experienced so many necessary passages—sleep-training the boys, teething, falls from small bicycles, Sam's physical therapy. This, too, would probably pass.

They could navigate the house to avoid each other, and they could navigate conversations to maintain the illusion of safety, but there was no underground when a child was in the room or the conversation. Many times, Julia would catch sight of one of the boys—Benjy looking up in thought from a drawing of Odysseus facing the Cyclops, Max examining the hairs on his forearm, Sam carefully applying reinforcements as needed in his binder—and think,
I can't
.

And Jacob would think,
We won't
.

The day before the beginning of the destruction of Israel, Julia and Sam were scrambling to get their things together before the Uber driver, Mohammed, was moved to give them a one-star rating, thereby sealing their fate as
haram
passengers. Jacob was preparing Benjy, who was dressed like a pirate, for a day with his grandparents.

“You have everything?” Julia asked Sam.

“
Yes
,” he said, unable to muster the herculean effort to conceal his annoyance at nothing.

“Don't
yes
Mom,” Jacob said, for Julia's benefit and his own. Camaraderie had been hard to find in the past two weeks—not because there was cruelty, just the absence of direct interaction. There had been a few moments, usually triggered by a shared reflexive wonder at something one of the boys had said or done, when it felt like Jacob and Julia were once again wearing the same uniform. The day Oliver Sacks died, Jacob shared some of his hero's life with the boys, explaining the range of his interests, his closeted homosexuality, his famous use of L-dopa with human produce, and how perhaps the most curious and engaged person of the last fifty years spent more than thirty of those years celibate.

“Celibate?” Max asked.

“Not having sex.”

“So?”

“So he was eager to take in everything the world had to offer, but he didn't want to, or couldn't, share himself.”

“Maybe he was impotent,” Julia suggested.

“No,” Jacob said, feeling the wound open, “he just—”

“Or maybe he was patient.”

“I'm celibate,” Benjy said.

“You?”
Sam said. “You're Wilt Chamberlain.”

“I'm not whoever that is, and I haven't stuck my penis into another person's vagina hole.”

The defense of his celibacy was kind of funny. Referring to “another person's vagina hole” was kind of funny. But he said funnier, more precocious things every few minutes. It didn't feel like a metaphor, or accidental wisdom. It didn't scratch any exposed nerves. But for the first time since she discovered the phone, it forced Julia's eyes to meet Jacob's. And in that moment, he felt sure that they would find their way back.

But there wasn't a lot of camaraderie now.

“What did I say?”
Sam asked.

“It's how you said it,” Jacob said.

“How did I say whatever I said?”

“Like this,” Jacob said, imitating Sam's
Yes
.

“I can handle my half of a conversation with my son,” Julia told Jacob. Then she asked Sam, “Did you remember your toothbrush?”

“Of course he has his toothbrush,” Jacob said, making a small allegiance correction.

“Shit,”
Sam said, turning and hustling upstairs.

“He wanted you to chaperone,” Julia said.

“No. I don't think that's true.”

She picked up Benjy and said, “I'm going to miss you, my little man.”

“Opi said I can say bad words at his house.”

“In his house, it's his rules,” Jacob said.

“Well, no,” Julia corrected.

“
Shit
, or
penis
…”

“
Penis
isn't a bad word,” Jacob said.

“I doubt Omi would like you talking like that.”

“Opi said it didn't matter.”

“You misheard him.”

“He said, ‘Omi doesn't matter.' ”

“He was
joking,”
Jacob said.

“
Asshole
is a bad word.”

Sam came back down the stairs with his toothbrush.

“Dress shoes?” Julia asked.

“Fuuuuuuck.”

“
Fuck
, too,” Benjy said.

Sam hustled back up the stairs.

“Maybe give him a bit more space?” Jacob suggested in the form of a question ostensibly addressed to the collective consciousness.

“I don't think I was being annoying.”

“Of course you weren't. I just meant that Mark can play the bad guy on the trip. If necessary.”

“Hopefully it won't be.”

“Forty pubescents away from home?”

“I wouldn't describe Sam as
pubescent.”

“Pubescent?” Benjy asked.

“I'm glad Mark will be there,” Jacob said. “You know, you might not even remember, but you said something about him, a couple of weeks ago, in the context of—”

“I remember.”

“We said a lot of things.”

“We did.”

“I just wanted to say that.”

“I'm not sure what you just said.”

“Just that.”

“Take the opportunity to get to know him a bit,” Julia said, moving right along.

“Max?”

“Don't just go off to your separate worlds.”

“I don't have a world, so that shouldn't be a problem.”

“It'll be fun picking up the Israelis tomorrow.”

“Will it?”

“You and Max can be Team America.”

Max came down the stairs. “Why are you talking about me?”

“We weren't talking about you,” Jacob said.

“I was just saying to Dad that you guys should try to find things to do together while everyone's away.”

The doorbell rang.

“My folks,” Jacob said.

“
Together
together?” Max whispered to Julia.

Jacob opened the door. Benjy wrestled himself free of Julia's arms and ran to Deborah.

“Omi!”

“Hey, Omi,” Max said.

“I've got Ebola?” Irv asked.

“Ebola?”

“Hey, Opi.”

“Cool Moshe Dayan outfit.”

“I'm a
pirate.”

Irv lowered himself to Benjy's level and performed what might very well have been a perfect Dayan impression, if anyone had known what Dayan sounded like: “The Syrians will soon learn that the road from Damascus to Jerusalem also goes from Jerusalem to Damascus!”

“Arrrgggg!”

“I wrote up his schedule,” Julia said to Deborah. “And put together a bag with a few prepared meals.”

“I've prepared a meal or two million in my day.”

“I know,” Julia said, trying to reciprocate Deborah's obvious affection. “I just want to make it as easy as possible.”

“I have a freezer full of very frozen foods,” Deborah told Benjy.

“Morningstar Farms veggie bacon strips?”

“Hm.”

“Fuuuuuuck.”

“Benjy!”

Sam came running down the stairs with his shoes, paused, said, “Goddamn it!” and turned back around.

“Language,”
Julia said.

“Dad says there's no bad language.”

“I said there's bad
usage
. And that was bad usage.”

“Are we gonna burn the midnight oil?” Irv asked Benjy.

“I don't know.”

“Not
too
late,” Julia told Deborah.

“And tomorrow we'll fetch the Israelis?”

“I'm taking him to the zoo,” Deborah said. “Remember?”

Irv held up his phone: “Siri, do I remember what this woman is talking about?”

Sam came running back down the stairs with a belt.

“Hey, kid,” Irv said.

“Hey, Opi. Hey, Omi.”

“All's copacetic with your hate speech?”

“I didn't do it.”

“You know, I once chaperoned your dad's class on a Model UN trip.”

“No you didn't,” Jacob said.

“Sure I did.”

“Believe me, you didn't.”

“You're right,” Irv said, winking at Sam. “I'm thinking of the time I took you to the
actual
UN.” And then, slapping his own hand: “Bad father.”

“You
forgot
me there.”

“Obviously not permanently.” And then, to Sam: “Ready to give 'em hell?”

“I guess so.”

“Remember, if they seat a delegate from so-called Palestine, you tell them what's what, then get up and walk out. You hear me? Punch with your mouth, and talk with your feet.”

“We're representing Micronesia—”

“Siri, what is Micronesia?”

“And we, you know, debate resolutions, and respond to whatever crisis they manufacture.”

“
They
the Arabs?”

“The facilitators.”

“He knows what he's doing, Dad.”

Three full honks, followed by nine rapid blasts—
Shevarim, Teruah
.

“Mohammed is losing patience,” Julia said.

“And it was never his forte,” Irv said.

“We'll go, too,” Deborah said. “We have a big day planned: story time, arts and crafts, a nature walk—”

“—eat jelly fruit slices, make fun of Charlie Rose…”

“Come on, Argus!” Jacob called.

“I want to marry jelly fruit slices.”

“We're going to the vet,” Max explained to Deborah.

“Everything's fine,” Jacob said, alleviating concern that belonged to no one.

“Except he poops in the house twice every day,” Max said.

“He's old. It's convention.”

“Does Great-Grandpa poop in the house twice every day?” Benjy asked.

Silence as everyone privately acknowledged that, as their visits had become so rare, it was impossible to rule out the possibility that Isaac pooped in the house twice a day.

“Actually, doesn't
everyone
poop in the house twice a day?” Benjy asked.

“Your brother means in the house, but not in the bathroom.”

“He has a colostomy bag,” Irv said. “Wherever he goes, there his poop is.”

“What's a whatever bag?” Benjy asked.

Jacob cleared his throat and began: “Great-Grandpa's intestines—”

“Like a doggie bag for his crap,” Irv said.

“But why would he want to eat it later?” Benjy asked.

“Maybe someone could check in on him while we're away,” Julia said. “You could even bring the Israelis by on the way home.”

“That's what I was planning,” Jacob lied.

Mohammed honked again, this time with the sustain pedal.

Everyone headed out together: Deborah, Irv, and Benjy off to a marionette
Pinocchio
at Glen Echo; Julia and Sam to catch the bus from school; Jacob, Max, and Argus to the vet. Julia hugged Max and Benjy, and didn't hug Jacob, but told him: “Don't forget to—”

“
Go
,” he said. “Have fun. Make world peace.”

“A lasting peace,” Julia said, the words having organized themselves.

“And say hi to Mark for me. Really.”

“Not now, OK?”

“You're hearing something I didn't say.”

A curt “Goodbye.”

Halfway down the stoop, Benjy called back: “What if I don't miss you?”

“You can call us,” Jacob said. “My phone will always be on, and I'll never be more than a short drive away.”

“I said what if I
don't
miss you?”

“What?”

“Is that OK?”

“Of course it's OK,” Julia said, giving Benjy a last kiss. “Nothing would make me happier than for you to have so much fun you don't think about us at all.”

Jacob came down the stairs to give Benjy the last, last kiss.

“And anyway,” he said, “you'll miss us.”

And then, for the first time in his life, Benjy chose not to voice a thought.