Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(173)



“Would be?”

“Don’t do that. I’m asking for your help.”

“I don’t think you are. I think you’re asking for forgiveness.”

“For what? I haven’t even done anything.”

“Every thought after the first thought will lead you back to Newark Street.”

“That’s not necessarily true.”

“Not necessarily?”

“I’m here. I said goodbye to my children.”

“You don’t owe me an apology,” he said. “It’s not your country.”

“Maybe I’ve been wrong about that.”

“Apparently you were right.”

“And like you said, even if it isn’t my home, it’s yours.”

“Who are you, Jacob?”

For three consecutive years, Max’s eyes were closed in his school portrait. The first time, it was a small disappointment, but mostly funny. The second year, it was harder to excuse as an accident. We talked about why such photos are nice to have, how much his grandparents and great-grandfather cherished them, how it was a waste of money to spoil them on purpose. The morning of picture day that third year, we asked Max to look us in the eye and promise to keep his eyes open. “I’ll try,” he said, his eyes blinking wildly, as if to flush out a fly. “Don’t try,” Julia said, “do it.” When the photos came back, all three boys had closed their eyes. But I’ve never seen more genuine smiles.

“Maybe this is who I am,” I said to Tamir.

“You say that as if you couldn’t choose to be who you wanted to be.”

“Maybe I choose this.”

“Maybe?”

“I don’t know what I should do, and I’m asking you to talk this through with me.”

“So let’s talk it through. Who are you?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘Maybe this is who I am.’ So who, maybe, are you?”

“Come on, Tamir.”

“What? I’m asking you to explain what you meant. Who are you?”

“It’s not the kind of thing that can be articulated like that.”

“Try. Who are you?”

“OK, never mind. I’m sorry I came over here.”

“Who are you, Jacob?”

“Who are you, Tamir?”

“I am someone who goes home, no matter how difficult.”

“Well then, you took the words out of my mouth.”

“Maybe. But not out of your heart. Wherever you go, you won’t be going home.”

When my mother first got sick, she mentioned that my father visited Isaac’s grave once a month. When I asked him about it, he deflected, as if I’d confronted him about a gambling addiction.

“Penance for burying him in America,” he said.

“What do you do there?”

“Just stand around like a jerk.”

“Can I go with you next time?” I asked my father; I told Tamir, “Stay.”

“Then who would go?” Tamir asked.

“No one.”

“Then what would save it?”

“Nothing.”

“Just let it go?”

“Yes.”

I was right: my father cleaned the site of twigs, leaves, and weeds; he wiped down the gravestone with a wet rag he’d brought in a ziplock in his jacket pocket; and from another ziplock he removed photos.

“The boys,” he said, turning them toward me for a moment and then laying them on the ground, facedown, above his father’s eyes.

I’d wanted to make an eruv around the suicides and carry the shame away from them, but how would I bear my own shame? How, coming home from Islip, would I face Julia and the boys?

“It feels like we were burying him five minutes ago,” I said to my father; I said to Tamir, “It feels like we were picking you up at the airport five minutes ago.”

My father said, “It feels like everything was five minutes ago.”

Tamir brought his lips to my ear and whispered, “You are innocent.”

“What?” I whispered, as if I were looking at stars.

“You are innocent.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled back and said, “No, like, too trusting. Too childlike.”

“What, gullible?”

“I don’t know that word.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Of course Steven Spielberg wasn’t in the men’s room.”

“You made up that whole thing?”

“I did.”

“You knew who he was?”

“You think we don’t have electricity in Israel?”

“You’re very good,” I said.

“I see you,” my grandfather would say from the other side of the glass.

“You’re very innocent,” Tamir said.

“See you,” my grandfather would say.

“And yet we’ve never been older,” my father said, and then chanted the Mourner’s Kaddish.


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Six closed eyes, three genuine smiles.


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