Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(108)
“?‘There are many different kinds of families,’?” Julia said. “Doesn’t that seem like a good way to go?”
“It does.”
“?‘Some families have two dads. Some have two moms.’?”
“?‘Some families live in two houses’?”
“At which point Max will infer we’re buying a vacation house, and get excited.”
“A vacation house?”
“A house on the ocean. ‘Some families live in two houses: one in the city, one by the ocean.’?”
A vacation house, Julia thought, willfully confusing herself as completely as Max would. She and Jacob had talked about it—not a house on the ocean, they could never afford that, but something cozy and elsewhere. It was the big news she was going to mention to Mark that day, before he reminded her how newsless her life was. A vacation house would be nice. Maybe even nice enough to make things work for a while, or to simulate a functioning family until the next temporary solution could be found. The appearance of happiness. If they could sustain the appearance—not to others, but how life appeared to themselves—it might be a close-enough approximation of the experience of actual happiness to make things work.
They could travel more. The planning of a trip, the trip, the decompression: that would buy them some time.
They could go to couples therapy, but Jacob had implied a bizarre loyalty to Dr. Silvers, which would have made seeing someone else a transgression (a greater transgression, apparently, than requesting a shot of fecal cum from a woman who was not his wife); and when Julia faced the prospect of opening everything up, the time and expense of twice-a-week visits that would end in either painful silence or endless talking, she couldn’t rouse herself to the necessary hopefulness.
They could have done exactly what she’d spent her professional life facilitating and her personal life condemning: a renovation. There was so much that could be improved in their house: revamp the kitchen (new hardware, at minimum, but why not new countertops, new appliances, ideally a reconfiguration for better flow and lines of sight); new master bath; new closets; open up the back of the house to the garden; punch in a couple of skylights above the top-floor showers; finish the basement.
“?‘One house where Mom will live, and one house where Dad will live.’?”
“OK,” Jacob said, “let me be Sam for a minute.”
“OK.”
“You’re going to move at the same time?”
“We’re going to try to, yes.”
“And I’m going to have to carry my stuff back and forth every day?”
“We’re going to live within walking distance of each other,” Julia said, “and it won’t be every day.”
“Is that really something you can promise? I’m being me now.”
“I think it’s an OK promise for the situation.”
“And how will we divide time?”
“I don’t know,” Julia said, “but not every day.”
“And who’s going to live here? I’m being Sam again.”
“Hopefully a nice family.”
“We’re a nice family.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Did one of you have an affair?”
“Jacob.”
“What?”
“He’s not going to ask that.”
“First of all, of course he might. Second, it’s one of those things that, however unlikely, we absolutely need to have a prepared answer for.”
“OK,” Julia said, “so I’ll be Sam.”
“OK.”
“Did one of you have an affair?”
“Who am I?” Jacob asked. “Me? Or you?”
“You.”
“No. That’s not what’s going on here.”
“But I saw your phone.”
“Wait, did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? Or he didn’t?”
“I don’t believe that he did.”
“So why are you saying it?”
“Because the kids know things that we don’t think they know. And when he helped me to unlock it—”
“He helped you unlock it?”
“I didn’t know whose it was.”
“And he saw—?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him—”
“Of course not.”
Jacob got back into the character of himself.
“What you saw was an exchange with one of the other writers on my show. We were sending lines back and forth for a scene in which, well, two people say some pretty inappropriate things to each other.”
“Convincing,” Julia said, herself.
“And you, Mom?” Jacob asked. “Did you have an affair?”
“No.”
“Not with Mark Adelson?”
“No.”
“You didn’t kiss him at Model UN?”
“Is this really productive, Jacob?”
“Here, I’ll be you.”
“You’ll be me?”
“Yes, Sam, I did kiss Mark at Model UN. It wasn’t premeditated—”