Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(148)

“I’m sorry about that. We could skype with them?”

“And we need a Torah. That’s not an accoutrement.”

“Right. Shit. If Rabbi Singer won’t participate—”

“He won’t.”

“My dad can call in a favor from that shul in Georgetown. He knows a bunch of people there.”

“You’ll take care of it?”

“Yes.”

“OK. I can get the…And if I…” She trailed off into her interior plans, into that never-resting maternal lobe of her brain, the place that scheduled playdates two weeks out, and was vigilant about the food allergies of the kids’ friends, and always knew everyone’s shoe size, and needed no automated reminder to make appointments for biannual dental checkups, and kept track of the outflow of thank-you notes for birthday presents.

“What’s the second thing?” Jacob asked.

“Sorry, what?”

“You said you needed me to do two things.”

“You need to put down Argus.”

“Put him down?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s time, and because he’s yours.”

When Jacob was a boy, he used to stop spinning globes with his finger and imagine what life would be like if he lived in the Netherlands, or Argentina, or China, or Sudan.

When Jacob was a boy, he imagined that his finger brought the actual Earth to momentary rest. No one really noticed it, just as no one really noticed Earth’s rotation, but the sun stayed where it was in the sky, the ocean went flat, and photos fell from fridges.

When Julia said those words—Because it’s time, and because he’s yours—her finger held his life in place.

Because it’s time, and because he’s yours.

The space where those clauses met was his home.

But could he live there?

At the last convention he attended, Jacob met two deaf parents and their eight-year-old deaf son. They’d recently moved to the States from England, the father explained, because the boy had been in a car accident and lost his left hand.

“I’m sorry,” Jacob signed, making a ring around his heart with his fist.

The mother touched four fingers to her bottom lip, then straightened her arm, arcing the fingers down—like blowing a kiss without the kiss.

Jacob asked, “Are there better doctors here?”

The mother signed, “British Sign Language uses both hands for finger spelling. American uses only one. He would have managed in England, but we want to give him every best chance.”

The mother and boy went off to the crafts tent while Jacob and the father hung back. They spoke for an hour, in silence, displacing the air between them with the stories of their lives.

Jacob had read of deaf couples who wanted deaf children. One couple even genetically selected for a deaf child. He found himself thinking about that quite often, the moral implications. Once they had shared enough for it not to feel like prying, Jacob asked the man how he felt when he learned that his son was deaf, like him.

“People would ask me if I was hoping for a boy or a girl,” the father signed. “I told them I just wanted a healthy baby. But I had a very secret preference. Maybe you know that they don’t perform the hearing test until you’re about to leave the hospital?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It works by sending a sound into the ear—if it echoes back, the baby can hear. So they leave as much time as they can for the ear to drain of amniotic fluid.”

“If the sound doesn’t echo back, the child is deaf?”

“That’s right.”

“Where does the sound go?”

“Into the deafness.”

“So there was a period of not knowing?”

“A day. For a day, he was neither deaf nor hearing. When the nurse told us that he was deaf, I cried and cried.”

Jacob once again circled his heart with his fist.

“No,” the father signed. “A hearing baby would have been a blessing. A deaf baby was a special blessing.”

“It was your preference?”

“My very secret preference.”

“But what about giving him every best chance?”

“Can I ask if you’re Jewish?” the man signed.

The question was so unlikely, Jacob wasn’t sure he understood it correctly, but he nodded.

“We’re Jewish as well.” Jacob felt that old, embarrassing, singularly comforting recognition. “Where are your people from?”

“Everywhere. But mostly Drohobycz.”

“We’re landsmen,” the father signed. He actually signed, “We’re from the same place,” but Jacob understood that his hands were speaking Yiddish.

“It’s harder to be Jewish,” the father signed. “It doesn’t give you every best chance.”

“It’s different,” Jacob signed.

The man signed, “I once read a line in a poem: ‘You may find a dead bird; you won’t see a flock of them anywhere.’?” The sign for flock is two hands moving like a wave away from the torso.

Jacob returned home from the convention in time for Shabbat dinner. They lit the candles and blessed them. They blessed the wine and drank it. They uncovered the challah, blessed it, tore it, passed it, and ate it. The blessings disappeared into the universe’s deafness, but when Jacob and Julia whispered into their children’s tiny ears, the prayers echoed back. After the meal, Jacob and Julia and Sam and Max and Benjy closed their eyes and moved through their home.