Here I Am (17 page)

Max got down on a knee, placed his face in front of Argus's, and said, “That's my boy. Look at me. There you go, boy.”

“OK,” she said, removing the thermometer. “A little high, but within the healthy range.”

She then ran her hands over Argus's body, examining the insides of his ears, lifting his lip to look at the teeth and gums, pressing Argus's belly, rotating his thigh until he whined.

“Sensitive on that leg.”

“He had both of his hips replaced,” Max said.

“Total hip replacements?”

Jacob shrugged.

“The left was a femoral head osteotomy,” Max said.

“That's an interesting choice.”

“Yeah,” Max went on, “he was on the border in terms of weight, and the vet thought we could spare him the THR. But it was a mistake.”

“Sounds like you were paying pretty close attention.”

“He's my dog,” Max said.

“OK,” she said, “he's obviously got some tenderness. Probably a bit of arthritis.”

“He's been pooping in the house for about a year,” Max said.

“Not a year,” Jacob corrected.

“Don't you remember Sam's slumber party?”

“Right, but that was unusual. It didn't become a consistent problem until several months after that.”

“And is he also urinating in the house?”

“Mostly just defecating,” Jacob said, “some peeing more recently.”

“Does he still squat to poop? Often it's really an arthritic problem, rather than an intestinal or rectal one—the dog can no longer assume the position, and so poops while walking.”

“He often poops while walking,” Jacob said.

“But sometimes he'll poop in his bed,” Max said.

“As if he doesn't realize he's pooping,” the vet suggested. “Or simply has no control.”

“Right,” Max said. “I don't know if dogs get embarrassed, or sad, but.”

Jacob received a text from Julia:
made it to the hotel
.

“We'll never know,” the vet said, “but it definitely doesn't sound pleasant.”

That's it?
Jacob thought.
Made it to the hotel?
As if to a tolerated colleague, or the most minimal communication required to satisfy a legal obligation. And then he thought,
Why does she always give me so little?
And that thought surprised him, not just the flash flood of anger it rode in on, but how comfortable it felt—and that word,
always
—despite his never before having consciously thought it.
Why does she always give me so little?
So little of the benefit of the doubt. So few compliments. Such rare appreciation. When was the last time she didn't stifle a laugh at one of his jokes? When did she last ask to read what he was working on? When did she last initiate sex? So little to live off. He'd behaved badly, but only after a decade of wounds from arrows too blunt to get the job done.

He often thought of that piece by Andy Goldsworthy, for which he lay flat on the ground as a storm came in, and remained there until it passed. When he stood up, his dry silhouette remained. Like the chalk outline of a victim. Like the unpunctured circle where the dartboard used to be.

“He still enjoys himself at the park,” Jacob said to the vet.

“What's that?”

“I was just saying that he still enjoys himself at the park.”

And with that seeming non sequitur, the conversation rotated 180 degrees, so that the other side faced front.

“Sometimes he does,” Max said. “But mostly he just lies there. And he has such a hard time with the stairs at home.”

“He ran the other day.”

“And then limped for like the next three days.”

“Look,” Jacob said, “obviously his quality of life is diminishing. Obviously he's not the dog he used to be. But he has a life worth living.”

“Says who?”

“Dogs don't want to die.”

“Great-Grandpa does.”

“Whoa, wait. What did you just say?”

“Great-Grandpa wants to die,” Max said matter-of-factly.

“Great-Grandpa isn't a dog.” The full strangeness of that comment started to creep up the walls of the room. Jacob tried to cut it back with the obvious amendment: “And he doesn't want to die.”

“Says who?”

“Would you two like a little time?” the vet asked, crossing her arms and taking a long backward stride toward the door.

“Great-Grandpa has hopes for the future,” Jacob said. “Like living to see Sam's bar mitzvah. And he takes pleasure in memories.”

“Same as Argus.”

“You think Argus is looking forward to Sam's bar mitzvah?”

“No one is looking forward to Sam's bar mitzvah.”

“Great-Grandpa is.”

“Says who?”

“Dogs take all kinds of very subtle pleasure in life,” the vet said. “Lying in a patch of sun. The occasional bit of tasty human food. It's hard to say how far their mental experience extends beyond that. It's left to us to make assumptions.”

“Argus feels like we forgot him,” Max said, making his assumption clear.

“Forgot him?”

“Just like Great-Grandpa.”

Jacob gave the vet a ruffled smile and said, “Who said Great-Grandpa feels forgotten?”

“He does.”

“When?”

“When we talk.”

“And when is that?”

“When we skype.”

“He doesn't mean it.”

“So how do you know Argus means it when he whines?”

“Dogs can't not mean things.”

“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that Argus should be put to sleep.”

“Oh. That's not for me to say. It's a very personal decision.”

“OK, but if you thought he shouldn't be put to sleep, you would have just said he shouldn't be put to sleep.”

“He runs in the park, Max. He watches movies on the sofa.”

“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

“My job, as a vet, is to care for Argus, to help keep him healthy. It isn't to offer advice about end-of-life decisions.”

“So in other words, you agree with me.”

“She didn't say that, Max.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Do you think my great-grandfather should be put to sleep?”

“No,” the vet said, immediately regretting the credence her response lent the question.

“Tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that you think Argus should be put to sleep.”

“That's really not for me to say.”

“See?” Max said to his father.

“You realize Argus is in the room, Max?”

“He doesn't understand.”

“Of course he understands.”

“So hold on. You think Argus understands, but Great-Grandpa doesn't?”

“Great-Grandpa understands.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then you're a monster.”

“Max.”

“Tell him.”

Argus vomited a dozen almost perfectly formed McNuggets at the vet's feet.

“How do they keep the glass clean?” Jacob had asked his father, three decades before.

Irv gave a puzzled look and said, “Windex?”

“I mean the
other
side. People can't walk in there. They'd ruin all the stuff on the ground.”

“But if no one ever goes in, it stays clean.”

“It doesn't,” Jacob said. “Remember when we came back from Israel and everything was dirty? Even though no one had been there for three weeks? Remember how we wrote our names in Hebrew in the dust on the windows?”

“A house isn't a closed environment.”

“Yes it is.”

“Not as closed as a diorama.”

“It is.”

The only thing Irv loved more than teaching Jacob was being challenged by him: the intimations of one day being surpassed by his child.

“Maybe that's why they face that side of the glass away,” he said, smiling, but hiding his fingers in his son's hair, which, given enough time, would grow to bury them.

“I don't think glass works like that.”

“No?”

“You can't hide the other side.”

“Do animals work like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the face of that bison.”

“What?”

“Look closely.”

Sam and Billie sat in the back of the bus, several empty rows behind the rest.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

“OK.”

“On your iPad.”

“I left it at home.”

“Seriously?”

“My mom made me,” Sam said, wishing he'd invented a less infantilizing explanation.

“Did she read an op-ed, or something?”

“She wants me to be ‘present' on the trip.”

“What uses ten gallons of gas but doesn't move?”

“What?”

“A Buddhist monk.”

Sam laughed, not getting it.

“You've seen the one where the alligator bites the electric eel?” she asked.

“Yeah, it's fucking nuts.”

Billie took out the generic, lamer-than-an-adult-on-a-scooter tablet her parents got her for Christmas, and started typing. “Have you seen the weatherman with the hard-on?”

They watched together and laughed.

“The best part is when he says, ‘We're looking at a hot one.' ”

She loaded a new video and said, “Check out the syphilis on this guinea pig.”

“I think that's a hamster.”

“You're missing the genital sores for the trees.”

“I hate to sound like my dad, but isn't it insane that we have access to this shit?”

“It's not insane. It's the world.”

“Well, then isn't the world insane?”

“Definitionally it can't be. Insane is what other people are.”

“I really, really like how you think.”

“I really, really like that you would say that.”

“I'm not saying it; it's true.”

“And another thing I really, really like is that you can't bring yourself to say the l-word, because you're afraid I'll think you're saying something you aren't.”

“Huh?”

“Really, really,
really
like.”

He loved her.

She put the tablet in a coma and said,
“Emet hi hasheker hatov beyoter.”

“What's that?”

“Hebrew.”

“You speak Hebrew?”

“As Franz Rosenzweig famously responded when asked if he was religious, ‘Not yet.' But I figured one of us should learn a bit in honor of your bar mitzvah.”

“Franz
who
? And wait, what's it mean?”

“Truth is the safest lie.”

“Ah. Well:
Anata wa subete o rikai shite iru baai wa, gokai suru hitsuyo ga arimasu.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“ ‘If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.' Japanese, I think. It was the epigraph to Call of Duty: Black Ops.”

“Yeah, I study Japanese on Thursdays. I just didn't understand your usage.”

Sam wanted to show her the new synagogue he'd been working on for the past two weeks. He wondered if it was the best expression of the best of him, and he wondered if she'd like it.

The bus pulled up to the Washington Hilton—the hotel at which Sam's bar mitzvah party would theoretically take place in two weeks, if an apology could be wrested from him—and the kids disembarked and scattered.
Inside the lobby hung a large banner:
WELCOME 2016 MODEL UNITED NATIONS
. A few dozen suitcases and duffels were piled in the corner, nearly every one containing something it wasn't supposed to. While Mark struggled to do a head count, Sam pulled his mother aside.

“Don't make a big deal when you talk to everyone, OK?”

“A big deal about what?”

“About anything. Just don't make a big deal.”

“You're worried that I'm going to embarrass you?”

“Yes. You made me say it.”

“Sam, we're here to have a blast—”

“Don't say
blast.”

“—and the absolute last thing I'd want to be is a drag.”

“Or
drag.”

Mark gave Julia a thumbs-up, and she addressed the group: “Can I have everyone's attention?”

Everyone withheld his attention.

“Yoo-hoo!”

“Or
yoo-hoo
,” Sam whispered to no one.

Mark unleashed a baritone that made charm bracelets into wind chimes: “Mouths shut, eyes up here,
now
!”

The kids silenced.

“OK,” Julia said. “Well, as you probably know, I'm Sam's mom. He told me not to make a big deal, so I'll keep this to the essentials. First, I want to let you all know how totally psyched I am to be here with you.”

Sam closed his eyes, willing himself to unlearn object permanence.

“This is going to be interesting, challenging, and awesome.”

Julia saw Sam's closed eyes but didn't know what she'd done.

“So…just a bit of housekeeping before passing out room keys, which I believe are cards and not keys, but we'll call them keys. You'll find that I'm a very laid-back person. But laid-backness is a two-way street. I know you guys are here to enjoy yourselves, but remember that you're also representatives of Georgetown Day School, not to mention our archipelago home, the Federated States of Micronesia!”

She waited for applause. Or anything. Billie filled the silence with a single clap, and then
she
was holding the hot potato of awkwardness.

Julia continued: “So, I'm sure it goes without saying, but recreational drug use isn't going to happen.”

Sam lost muscle control of his neck, his head slumping forward.

“If you have a prescription for something, of course that's fine, so long as it isn't used recreationally or otherwise abused. Now, I realize most of you aren't even thirteen, but I also want to broach the subject of sexual relations.”

Sam walked to the side. Billie followed him.

Mark saw what was happening and intervened: “I think what Mrs. Bloch is trying to say is, don't do anything you wouldn't want us to tell your parents about. Because we'll tell your parents about it, and then you'll be in deep shit. Got it?”

The students collectively affirmed.

“My mother is why Kurt Cobain killed himself,” Sam whispered to Billie.

“Cut her some slack.”

“Why?”

As Mark handed out key cards, he said, “Take your stuff to your rooms, unpack, and don't turn on the TV, and don't have anything to do with the minibar. We'll meet at my room, eleven twenty-four, at two o'clock. If you have a device, input it: eleven twenty-four at two. If you don't have a device, try your brain. Now, being smart and motivated young people, you will use this time to go over position papers so you're sharp for this afternoon's minisessions. You have my cell number in case, and only in case, something comes up. Know that I am omniscient. Which is to say, even without being physically present, I can see and hear everything. Goodbye.”

The kids took their key cards and dispersed.

“And for you,” Mark said, handing Julia her key card.

“Presidential Suite, I assume?”

“That's right. But president of Micronesia, I'm afraid.”

“Thanks for saving me back there.”

“Thanks for making me an icon of cool.”

Julia laughed.

“Wanna grab a drink?” he asked.

“Really? A
drink
drink?”

“An imbibable relaxant. Yes.”

“I should check in with Jacob's parents. They've got Benjy for the weekend.”

“Cute.”

“Until he comes back a latency-phased Meir Kahane.”

“Huh?”

“He was a deranged right-wing—”

“You
need
need a
drink
drink.”

And then, suddenly, there was nothing logistical to go over, no small talk to indulge in, only the inching shadow of their conversation at the bespoke hardware gallery, and all that Julia knew but wouldn't share.

“Go make your call.”

“It will only be five minutes.”

“Whatever it is, it is. Text me when you're ready and I'll meet you at the bar. We have plenty of time.”

“It isn't too early for a drink?”

“In the millennium?”

“In the day.”

“In your life?”

“In the
day
, Mark. You're already drunk on your bachelorhood.”

“A drunk person wouldn't point out that a bachelor is someone who has never been married.”

“Then you're drunk on your freedom.”

“Don't you mean aloneness?”

“I was imagining what you might say.”

“I'm drunk on my new sobriety.”

She thought of herself as being unusually astute about the motivations of others, but she couldn't parse what he was doing. Flirting with someone he desired? Bolstering someone he felt sorry for? Innocently bantering? And what was
she
doing? Any guilt she might have felt about flirting was now so far beyond the horizon it might well have been right behind her. If anything, she wished Jacob were there to watch.

They used to have their own secret lines of communication, ways of smuggling messages: spelling in front of the young children; whispering in front of Isaac; writing notes to each other about a phone conversation in progress; hand and facial gestures organically developed over years, like when, in Rabbi Singer's office, Julia pressed two fingers to her brow and gently shook her head while flaring her nostrils, which meant:
Let it go
. They could find a way of reaching each other around any obstacle. But they needed the obstacle.

Her mind leaped: Jacob had forced Sam to listen to a podcast about messenger birds in World War I, and it captured Sam's imagination—he asked for a homing pigeon for his eleventh birthday. Delighting in the
originality of the request and, as always, wanting not only to go to any length to provide for her children, but also to be seen as having gone to any length to provide for her children, she took him seriously.

“They make wonderful indoor pets,” he promised. “There's a—”

“Indoor?”

“Yeah. They need a big cage, but—”

“What about Argus?”

“With a little conditioning—”

“Great word.”

“
Mom
. With a little conditioning, they can totally be friends. And once—”

“What about pooping?”

“They wear pigeon pants. Basically a diaper. You change it every three hours.”

“No burden there.”

“I would do it.”

“Your school day is longer than three hours.”

“Mom, it would be
so fun,”
he said, shaking his fists in the way that once inspired Jacob to wonder if he might have a sprinkle of Asperger's. “We could take it to the park, or to school, or Omi and Opi's, or wherever, attach a message to its collar, and it would just fly home.”

“Can I ask what's fun about that?”

“Really?”

“In your own words.”

“If it isn't obvious, I don't know how to explain it.”

“And is it difficult to train them?”

“It's super easy. You basically just give them a great home, and they'll want to come back.”

“What makes a home great?”

“It's spacious, in direct sunlight, and the chicken wire enclosing it is too tightly meshed for his head to fit through and get stuck.”

“That does sound nice.”

“And the bottom is lined with grassy sod, which is changed regularly. And he has a bath, which is cleaned regularly.”

“Right.”

“And lots of tasty treats, like endive, berries, buckwheat, flax, mung bean sprouts, vetch.”

“Vetch?”

“I don't know, I read it.”

“How spacious a cage are we talking about?”

“Really great would be six by nine.”

“Six by nine
what
?”

“Feet. Six-foot width and length, nine-foot height.”

“And where would we put such a spacious cage?”

“In my room.”

“We'd have to raise the ceiling.”

“Is that something we could do?”

“No.”

“So it could be a bit less tall and still OK.”

“And what if it doesn't like its home?”

“It will.”

“But what if it doesn't?”

“Mom, it
will
, because I'm going to do all of the things you're supposed to do to create a great home that it loves.”

“I'm just asking what if.”

“Mom.”

“I can't ask a question?”

“I guess it doesn't come back. OK? It goes and keeps going.”

It took only a week for Sam to forget that there were such things as homing pigeons in the world—he learned that there were such things as Nerf guns in the world—but Julia never forgot what he said:
It goes and keeps going
.

“Why not,” she said to Mark, wishing there were a nearby surface to rap her knuckles against. “Let's have a
drink
drink.”

“Only one?”

“You're right,” she said, preening the underside of her wing before a flight that would reveal the comfort of her cage. “It's probably too late for that.”