Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(106)

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.

“I’m just going to turn on the TV for one second. On mute. I just need to see what’s happening.”

“What about what’s happening here?”

“I’m here. You asked if I think the kids are losing. Yes, I think that’s the only way to describe it.”

A map of the Middle East, swooping arrows indicating the movements of various armies. There had been skirmishes, mostly with Syria and Hezbollah in the north. The Turks were taking an increasingly hostile tone, and the newly formed Transarabia was amassing planes and troops in what had been Jordan. But it was containable, controllable, plausibly deniable.

Jacob said, “Rest assured, I’ll be crying.”

“What?”

“I’ll have some water.”

“I didn’t hear what you said.”