Here I Am (32 page)

A body is only a body. But before he was a body, he was an embodiment. And that, at least for Jacob, was why not: his grandfather's body couldn't be only a body.

For how long could this continue?

Irv argued that they should just buy a plot in Judean Gardens, as close to the rest of the family as possible, and get on with death already. Jacob insisted they wait until things cleared up in Israel and then fulfill Isaac's unambiguous wish for his eternal resting place.

“And what if that takes a couple of months?”

“Then we'll owe the funeral home that much more rent.”

“And if things never clear up?”

“Then we'll remember how lucky we were to have this as the biggest of our problems.”

Julia wanted to rehearse the conversation with the kids. Jacob could have argued that it was unnecessary right then, as they weren't going to have the actual conversation until after the bar mitzvah and burial dust had cleared. But he agreed, hoping that Julia's ears would hear what her mouth said. And more, he interpreted her desire to rehearse as a desire to role-play—an acknowledgment that she wasn't sure. Just as she interpreted his willingness to rehearse as a sign that he was, in fact, ready to move forward with the end.

“ ‘We need to talk about something'?” Julia suggested.

Jacob considered that for a moment, and countered: “ ‘We need to have a family conversation'?”

“Why is that better?”

“It reaffirms that we're a family.”

“But we don't have family conversations. It'll tip them off that something's wrong.”

“Something
is
wrong.”

“The entire point we're trying to convey with this conversation is that nothing is
wrong
. Something is
different.”

“Not even Benjy will buy that.”

“But I don't even have money—” Benjy said.

“Benjy?”

“—to buy something.”

“What's going on, love?”

“What would you wish?”

“What's that, baby?”

“In school, Mr. Schneiderman asked us what we would wish, and he took our wishes to the Wailing Wall, because he was going to Israel for vacation. I think I made the wrong wish.”

“What did you wish for?” Jacob asked.

“I can't tell you or it won't come true.”

“What do you think you
should have
wished for?”

“I can't tell you, in case I change my wish.”

“If sharing them means they can't come true, why are you asking us to tell you our wishes?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, then turned and walked out of the living room.

They waited until they heard his footsteps vanishing up the staircase before continuing.

“And anyway,” Julia said, in a quieter voice than before, “we want to make them feel safe, and then build to the change.”

“ ‘Can you guys come into the living room for a minute?' Like that?”

“Not the kitchen?”

“I think here.”

“And then what,” Julia said, “we tell them to sit down?”

“Yeah, that's going to be a tip-off, too.”

“We could just wait until we're all in the car at some point.”

“That could work.”

“But then we can't face them.”

“Except in the rearview mirror.”

“An unfortunate symbol.”

That made Jacob laugh. She was trying to be funny. There was a kindness in her effort. If this were real, Julia would never make a joke.

“During dinner?” Julia suggested.

“That would first require explaining why we're eating dinner together.”

“We eat dinner together all the time.”

“We briefly assemble at the table occasionally.”

“What's for dinner?” Max asked, tumbling into the room exactly like Kramer, despite never having seen
Seinfeld
.

Julia gave Jacob a look he'd seen a million times in a million contexts:
What do the children know?
What did Sam know when, two years ago, he walked into the room while they were having sex—missionary and under a sheet and without filthy talk, thank goodness. When Max picked up
the phone while Jacob was angrily interrogating Julia's gynecologist about the benignness of a benign lump—what did he hear? When Benjy walked into their kitchen blow-up and said, “Epitome”—what did he know?

“We were just talking about dinner,” Jacob said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You heard?”

“I thought you were calling us for dinner.”

“It's only four thirty.”

“I thought—”

“You're hungry?”

“What's for dinner?”

“What's that have to do with your hunger?” Jacob asked.

“Just wondering.”

“Lasagna and some veggie or another,” Julia said.

“Plain lasagna?”

“Spinach.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Well, you have an hour to work up an appetite for spinach lasagna.”

“I think Argus needs a walk.”

“I just gave him a walk,” Jacob said.

“Did he poo?”

“I can't remember.”

“You would remember if he'd pooed,” Max said. “He needs to poo. He's doing that thing where he licks at the beginning of a poo that needs to come out.”

“Why are you telling us this, instead of just walking him?”

“Because I'm working on my speech for Great-Grandpa's funeral, and I need to concentrate.”

“You're giving a speech?” Jacob asked.

“You aren't?”

Julia was touched by Max's charmingly narcissistic initiative. Jacob was ashamed by his own narcissistic thoughtlessness.

“I'll say a few words. Or actually, Grandpa will probably speak on our behalf.”

“Grandpa doesn't speak on my behalf,” Max said.

“Work on your speech,” Julia said. “Dad will walk Argus.”

“I
did
walk Argus.”

“Until he poos.”

Max went to the kitchen and came out with a box of unhealthy organic cereal, which he took back to his room.

Julia called up: “Cereal should be in your mouth or in the box. Nowhere else.”

Max called down: “I can't swallow it?”

“Maybe it's a mistake to talk to all of them at once,” Jacob said, careful with his volume. “Maybe we should talk to Sam first.”

“I suppose I could see the—”

“Jesus.”

“What?”

Jacob gestured at the TV that was now always on. There were images from a soccer stadium in Jerusalem, a stadium in which Jacob and Tamir had seen a game more than two decades before. There were a dozen bulldozers. It wasn't clear what they were doing, or why Israel would allow such images to be broadcast, and that not-knowing was terrifying. Could they be preparing a military site? Digging a mass grave?

The news that reached America was scattershot, unreliable, and alarmist. The Blochs did what they did best: balanced overreaction with repression. If in their hearts they believed they were safe, they overworried, talked and talked, whipped themselves, and one another, into foams of anguish. From the comfort of the living room, they followed the unfolding news like a sporting event, and at times caught themselves rooting for drama. There were even small, shameful disappointments when estimates of destruction were revised downward, or when what appeared to be an act of aggression turned out to be only an accident. It was a game whose unreal danger was to be talked up and savored, so long as the outcome was fixed. But if there was an inkling of any real danger, if the shit started to thicken—as it was soon to do—they dug until the blades of their shovels threw sparks:
It'll be fine, it's nothing
.

Tamir was largely absent. He spent part of every day trying to find a way home, but never with any success. If he talked with Rivka or Noam, he did so privately and didn't share anything. And to Jacob's amazement, he still wanted to sightsee, schlepping an unenthusiastic Barak from monument to monument, museum to museum, Cheesecake Factory to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. It was so easy for Jacob to see in Tamir what he couldn't see in himself: a refusal to acknowledge reality. He sightsaw so he wouldn't have to look.

The scene at the stadium was replaced with the face of Adia, the young Palestinian girl whose entire family had been killed in the earthquake and who was found wandering the streets by an American photojournalist. The story touched the world, and kept touching it. Maybe it was as simple as her beautiful face. Maybe it was how they held hands. It was a feel-good piece amid the tragedy, but it was a tragedy, Jacob thought, or at least inauspicious, that the good feeling was between a Palestinian and an American. At some point, Max started sleeping with a newspaper photo of Adia under his pillow. When her orphanage collapsed and she went missing, Max went missing, too. Everyone knew where he was—it was only his voice, gaze, and teeth that were hidden—but no one knew how to find him.

“Hello?” Julia asked, shaking her hand in front of Jacob's face.

“What?”

“You've been watching while we've been talking?”

“Out of the corner of my eye.”

“I realize the Middle East is collapsing, and that the entire world will get sucked into the vortex, but this is actually more important right now.”

She got up and turned off the TV. Jacob thought he heard it sigh in relief.

“Go walk Argus, then let's finish this.”

“He'll go to the door and whine when he really needs it.”

“Why make him really need it?”

“When it's time, I mean.”

“You think we should talk to Sam first? Before the others?”

“Or Sam and Max. Just in case one of them starts crying. Benjy is going to follow their lead, so we should give them a chance to digest and gather themselves.”

“Or just let them all cry together,” Julia said.

“Maybe just Sam first. He's probably going to have the strongest reaction—whatever that reaction will be—but he's also the most able to process it.”

Julia touched one of the art books on the coffee table.

“What if I cry?” she asked.

The question embodied Jacob, made him want to touch her—grasp her shoulder, press his palm to her cheek, feel the ridges and valleys of their fingerprints align—but he didn't know if that was acceptable anymore. Her stillness throughout the conversation didn't feel standoffish, but
it did create a space around her. What if she cried? Of course she would cry. They would all cry. They'd wail. It would be horrible. The kids' lives would be ruined. Tens of thousands of people would die. Israel would be destroyed. He wanted all of that, not because he craved horror, but because imagining the worst kept him safe from it—focusing on doomsday allowed for the day to day.

On a drive to visit Isaac many years before, Sam had asked from the backseat, “God is everywhere, right?”

Jacob and Julia exchanged yet another where-the-hell-did
-that
-come-from look.

Jacob handled it: “That's what people who believe in God tend to think, yes.”

“And God has always been everywhere?”

“I suppose so.”

“So here's what I can't figure out,” he said, watching the early moon follow them as they drove. “If God was everywhere, where did He put the world when He made it?”

Jacob and Julia exchanged another look, this one of awe.

Julia turned to face Sam, who was still looking out the window, his pupils constantly returning, like a typewriter carriage, and said, “You are an amazing person.”

“OK,” Sam said, “but where did He put it?”

That night, Jacob did a bit of research and learned that Sam's question had inspired volumes of thought over thousands of years, and that the most prevalent response was the kabbalistic notion of tzimtzum. Basically, God
was
everywhere, and as Sam surmised, when He wanted to create the world, there was nowhere to put it. So He made Himself smaller. Some refered to it as an act of contraction, others a concealment. Creation demanded self-erasure, and to Jacob, it was the most extreme humility, the purest generosity.

Sitting with her now, rehearsing the horrible conversation, Jacob wondered if maybe, all those years, he had misunderstood the spaces surrounding Julia: her quiet, her steps back. Maybe they weren't buffers of defense, but of the most extreme humility, the purest generosity. What if she wasn't withdrawing, but beckoning? Or both at the same time? Withdrawing and beckoning? And more to the point: making a world for their children, even for Jacob.

“You won't cry,” he told her, trying to enter the space.

“Would it be bad to?”

“I don't know. I suppose, all things being equal, it would be best not to impose that on them.
Impose
isn't the right word. I mean…You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

He was surprised, and further embodied, by her
I do
. “We'll go over this a few dozen times and it'll feel different.”

“It will never not destroy me.”

“And the adrenaline in the moment will help hold the tears back.”

“You're probably right.”

You're probably right
. It had been a long time—it had
felt
like a long time, Dr. Silvers would correct—since she'd deferred to his emotional judgment in any way. Since she hadn't reflexively bucked against it. There was a kindness in those words—
you're probably right
—that disarmed him. He didn't need to be right, but he needed that kindness. What if, all those times she reflexively bucked against, or simply dismissed, his perspective, she'd given him a
you're probably right
? He would have found it very easy to concede inside that kindness.

“And if you cry,” Jacob said, “you cry.”

“I just want to make it easy on them.”

“No chance of that.”

“As easy as it can be.”

“Whatever happens, we'll find our way.”

We'll find our way
. What an odd assurance, Julia thought, when the point of the conversation they were rehearsing was precisely that they couldn't find their way. Not together. And yet the assurance took the form of togetherness:
we
.

“Maybe I'll get a glass of water,” she said. “Do you want one?”

“I'll go to the door and whine when I really need it.”

“You think the kids are losing?” she asked as she walked to the kitchen. Jacob wondered if the water was just an excuse to face away when asking that question.