Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(140)

“And having a gratifying career is impossible.”

“For anyone?”

“For good fathers. But it’s so hard to deviate. All these f*cking Jewish nails driven through my palms.”

“Jewish nails?”

“Expectations. Prescriptions. Commandments. Wanting to please everyone. And the rest of them.”

“Them?”

“Did you ever have to read that poem, or journal entry, or whatever, by the kid who died in Auschwitz? Or maybe Treblinka? Not really the important detail, I just…The one about ‘Next time you throw a ball, throw it for me’?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Consider yourself lucky. Anyway, I might not be getting it exactly right, but the gist is: don’t mourn for me, live for me. I’m about to get gassed, so do me a favor and have fun.”

“Never heard it.”

“I must have heard it a thousand times. It was the theme song of my Jewish education, and it ruined everything. Not because every time you throw a ball you’re thinking of the corpse of a kid who should have been you, but because sometimes you just want to veg out in front of shitty TV, and instead you think, ‘I should really go throw a ball.’?”

Tamir laughed.

“It’s funny, except that throwing a ball becomes an attitude toward academic achievement, becomes measuring the distance from perfection in units of failure, becomes going to a college that murdered kid would have killed to go to, becomes studying things you aren’t interested in but are good and worthy and remunerative, becomes getting married Jewishly and having Jewish kids and living Jewishly in some demented effort to redeem the suffering that made your increasingly alienating life possible.”

“You should smoke a bit more.”

“The problem is,” Jacob said, taking back the apple, “the fulfillment of the expectations feels amazing, but you only fulfill them once—‘I got an A!’ ‘I’m getting married!’ ‘It’s a boy!’—and then you’re left to experience them. Nobody knows it at the time, and everybody knows it later, but nobody admits it, because it would pull a foundational log from the Jewish tower of Jenga. You trade emotional ambition for companionship, a life of inhabiting a nerve-filled body for companionship, exploration for companionship. There’s a good in commitment, I know. Things have to grow over time, mature, become full. But there’s a price, and just because we don’t talk about it doesn’t mean it’s endurable. So many blessings, but did anyone ever stop to ask why one would want a blessing?”

“Blessings are just curses that other people envy.”

“You should smoke more pot, Tamir. It turns you into f*cking Yoda, or at least Deepak Chopra.”

“Maybe it allows you to listen differently.”

“You see! That’s exactly what I mean.”

“You’re becoming funny,” Tamir said, bringing the apple to his mouth.

“I was always funny.”

“So maybe I’m the one listening differently.”

Tamir took another hit.

“What was Julia’s reaction? To the texts?”

“Not good. Obviously.”

“You’ll stay together?”

“Yeah. Of course. We have the kids. And we’ve had a life together.”

“You’re sure?”

“I mean, we’ve talked about separating.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Jacob took another hit.

“Have I ever told you about my TV show?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean my TV show.”

“I’m high, Jacob. Pretend I’m a six-year-old.”

“I’ve been writing a show about us.”

“You and me?”

“Well, no, not you. Or not yet.”

“I’d be great in a TV show.”

“My family.”

“I’m in your family.”

“My family here. Isaac. My parents. Julia and the kids.”

“Who would want to watch that?”

“Everybody, probably. But that’s not the point. The point is, it’s probably really good, and probably the writing I was born to do, and for the last ten or so years I’ve been pretty singularly devoted to it.”

“Ten years?”

“And I’ve never shared it with anyone.”

“Why not?”

“Well, before Isaac died, it was because I was afraid of betraying him.”

“With?”

“With the truth of who we are, and what we’re like.”

“How would that be a betrayal?”

“I was listening to the radio the other morning, a science podcast I like. They were interviewing a woman who’d lived in that massive geodesic dome for two years—nothing goes in, nothing goes out. That one. It was pretty interesting.”

“Let’s listen to it now.”

“No, I’m just searching for a metaphor.”

“It would make me so happy to listen to it right now.”

“I can’t even tell if you’re serious or making fun of me.”