Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(102)

Sunday, mid-morning, when Max’s ritualized complaints of there being nothing to do became intolerably exasperating, Jacob suggested Max come along for some shmira sitting, thinking, This will make you grateful for your boredom. Calling his bluff, Max accepted.

They were greeted at the door by the previous shmira sitter—an ancient woman from the shul who evoked so much chilliness and vacancy she might have been mistaken for one of the dead if her overapplication of makeup had not given her away: only living Jews are embalmed. They exchanged nods, she handed Jacob the keys to the front door, reminded him that absolutely nothing other than toilet paper (and number two, of course) could be flushed down the toilet, and, with somewhat less pomp and circumstance than happens outside Buckingham Palace, the changing of the guard was complete.

“It smells horrible,” Max observed, seating himself at the reception area’s long oak table.

“I breathe through my mouth when I have to breathe.”

“It smells like someone farted into a vodka bottle.”

“How do you know what vodka smells like?”

“Grandpa made me smell it.”

“Why?”

“To prove that it was expensive.”

“Wouldn’t the price do that?”

“Ask him.”

“Chewing gum helps, too.”

“Do you have any gum?”

“I don’t think so.”

They talked about Bryce Harper, and why, despite the genre being too exhausted to raise an original finger, superhero movies were still pretty great, and as often happened, Max asked his dad to recount Argus stories.

“We took him to a dog training class once. Did I ever tell you that?”

“You did. But tell me again.”

“So it was right after we got him. The teacher began by demonstrating a belly rub that would relax a dog when it became agitated. We were sitting in a circle, maybe twenty people, everyone working away at his dog’s belly, and then the room filled with a loud rumbling, like the Metro running beneath the building. It was coming from my lap. Argus was snoring.”

“That’s so cute.”

“So cute.”

“He’s not very well behaved, though.”

“We dropped out. Felt like a waste of time. But a couple of years later, Argus got into the habit of pulling on the leash when we walked. And he’d just stop abruptly and refuse to take another step. So we hired some guy that people in the park were using. I can’t remember his name. He was from Saint Lucia, kind of fat, had a limp. He put a choke collar on Argus and observed as we walked with him. Sure enough, Argus stopped short. ‘Give him a pull,’ the guy said. ‘Show him who’s the alpha dog.’ That made Mom laugh. I gave a pull, because, you know, I’m the alpha dog. But Argus wouldn’t budge. ‘Harder,’ the guy said, so I pulled harder, but Argus pulled back as hard. ‘You got to show him,’ the man said. I pulled again, this time quite hard, and Argus made a little choking noise, but still wouldn’t budge. I looked at Mom. The guy said, ‘You’ve got to teach him, otherwise it’ll be like this forever.’ And I remember thinking: I can live with this forever.

“I couldn’t sleep that night. I felt so guilty about having pulled him so hard that last time, making him choke. And that expanded to guilt about all of the things I’d ever tried to teach him: to heel, offer his paw on command, even to come back. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t try to teach him anything.”

An hour passed, and then another.

They played a game of Hangman, and then another thousand. Max’s phrases were always inspired, but it was hard to say by what: NIGHT BEFORE NIGHTTIME; ASTHMA THROUGH BINOCULARS; BLOWING A KISS TO AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS.

“That’s what you call a group of ravens,” he said after Jacob had solved it with only a head, torso, and left arm.

“So I’ve heard.”

“A lamentation of swans. A glittering of hummingbirds. A radiance of cardinals.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I like knowing things.”

“Me, too.”

“A minyan of Jews.”

“Excellent.”

“An argument of Blochs.”

“A universe of Max.”

They played a word game called Ghost, in which they took turns adding letters to a growing fragment, trying not to be the one to complete a word, while having a word in mind that the fragment could spell.

“A.”

“A-B.”

“A-B-S.”

“A-B-S-O.”

“A-B-S-O-R.”

“Shit.”

“Absorb.”

“Yeah. I was thinking absolve.”

They played Twenty Questions, Two Truths and a Lie, and Fortunately Unfortunately. Each wished there were a TV to lighten their load.

“Let’s go look at him,” Max said, as casually as if he’d been suggesting they dig into the dried mango they’d brought along.

“Great-Grandpa?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s there.”

“But why?”

“Why not?”

“Why not isn’t an answer.”

“Neither is why.”