Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(170)

JACOB

Julia, I’m—

JULIA

What happened to you?

They are silent. But it’s a different silence than the kind they’d known. Not the silence of just joking, concealing, distracting. Not the silence of walls, but the silence of creating a space to fill.

With each passing second—and the seconds are passing, two by two—more space is created. It takes the shape of the home they might have moved to had they decided to give it one more shot, to go deeply and unconditionally into the work of re-finding their happiness together. Jacob can feel the pull of the unoccupied space, the aching longing to be allowed into what is wide open to him.

He cries.

When was the last time he cried? When he put down Argus? When he awoke Max to tell him he hadn’t gone to Israel, and Max said, “I knew you wouldn’t go”? When he tried to encourage Benjy’s budding interest in astronomy, and took him all the way to Marfa, where they got a tour of the observatory and held galaxies in their eyes like oceans in shells, and when that night they lay on their backs on the roof of the Airbnb cabin and Benjy asked, “Why are we whispering?” and Jacob said, “I hadn’t even noticed that we were,” and Benjy said, “When people look at stars, they tend to whisper. I wonder why”?




HOW TO PLAY LATE MEMORIES

My earliest memory is of my father handling a dead squirrel.

My last memory of the old house is leaving the key in the mailbox in an envelope with a stamp and no destination or return address.

My last memory of my mother is spoon-feeding her yogurt. I reflexively made the airplane sound, though I hadn’t done that for fifteen years. I was too embarrassed to acknowledge it with an apology. She winked, I was sure.

My last memory of Argus is hearing his breathing deepen, and feeling his pulse slow, and then watching myself reflected in his eyes as they rolled back.

Despite the texts and e-mails that we have continued to send back and forth, my last memory of Tamir is from Islip. I told him, “Stay.” He asked, “Then who would go?” And I said, “No one.” And he asked, “Then what would save it?” And I said, “Nothing.” “Just let it go?” he asked.

My last memory of my family before the earthquake is by the front door, my parents about to take Benjy for the night, Sam and Julia about to leave for Model UN. Benjy asked, “What if I don’t miss you?” Of course he didn’t know what was about to happen, but how could I remember it any way other than as prophetic?

My last memory of my father is dropping him and his girlfriend at Dulles for his bucket-list trip to the Warsaw Ghetto—his Cooperstown—and my saying, “Who’d have thought it? Taking a shiksa to the Reverse Diaspora Prom?” I always felt that he withheld his laughter from me, but that got a good one. He patted my cheek and said, “Life amazes.” Of course he didn’t know he wouldn’t make it onto the plane, but how could I remember it any way other than as ironic?

My last memory of being married to Julia: the burnished handle of the snack drawer; the seam where the slabs of soapstone met; the Special Award for Bravery sticker on the underside of the island’s overhang, given to Max for what no one knew was his last pulled tooth, a sticker Argus saw many times every day, and only Argus ever saw. Julia said: “It’s way too late in the conversation for that.”


HOW TO PLAY “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

Max asked to have a bar mitzvah. Even if it was the expression of something subterranean, even if it was some kind of hypersophisticated act of aggression, it still pleased Julia and me. The year of study went off without a hitch or complaint, the service was beautiful (Julia and I stood together at the ark, which felt good and right), the party was themeless and genuinely fun, and he banked enough savings bonds to buy something pretty great just as soon as they matured to their face value in twenty years, at which point twice as much would seem like half as much.

Max’s portion was Vayishlach, in which Jacob—the last of the patriarchs—is assaulted by an unknown assailant in the middle of the night. Jacob wrestles him down and refuses to let go, demanding a blessing of him. The assailant—an angel, or God himself—asks, “What is your name?” As Jacob holds on to the man with all his strength, he answers, “Jacob.” (Jacob means “heel-grabber”—he grabbed the heel of his older brother, Esau, as he was being born, wanting to be the first out.) Then the angel says, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel—which means ‘wrestles God.’?”

From the bimah, with a poise far beyond his years or mine, Max said, “Jacob wrestled with God for the blessing. He wrestled with Esau for the blessing. He wrestled with Isaac for the blessing, with Laban for the blessing, and in each case he eventually prevailed. He wrestled because he recognized that the blessings were worth the struggle. He knew that you only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.

“Israel, the historical Jewish homeland, literally means ‘wrestles God.’ Not ‘praises God,’ or ‘reveres God,’ or ‘loves God,’ not even ‘obeys God.’ In fact, it is the opposite of ‘obeys God.’ Wrestling is not only our condition, it is our identity, our name.”

That last sentence sounded a lot like Julia.

“But what is wrestling?”

That sounded like Dr. Silvers.