Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(176)

She started dating Daniel about three years after the divorce. To my knowledge, which was greatly limited by the kindness of kids who were trying to protect me, she didn’t date very much before him. She seemed to relish the quiet and aloneness, just as she’d always said, and I’d never believed, she would. Her architecture practice flowered: two of her houses were built (one in Bethesda, one on the shore), and she got a commission to convert a grand Dupont Circle mansion into a museum showcasing the contemporary art collection of a local supermarket oligarch. Benjy—who was no less kind than his brothers, but far less psychologically sophisticated—would increasingly mention Daniel, usually in the context of his ability to edit movies on his laptop. That humble skill, which could be learned in an afternoon by someone willing to devote an afternoon to learning it, dramatically changed Benjy’s life. All the “babyish” movies he had been making on the waterproof digital camera I got him two Hanukkahs before were suddenly brought to life as fully realized “adult films.” (I never suggested that the camera should stay at my house, and we never corrected his terminology.) Once, when I was dropping the boys back at Julia’s after a particularly fun weekend of adventures I’d spent the previous two weeks planning, Benjy grabbed at my leg and said, “You have to go?” I told him I did, but that he was going to have a great time and we’d see each other again in just a couple of days. He turned to Julia and asked, “Is Daniel here?” “He’s at a meeting,” she said, “but he’ll be back any minute.” “Aw, another meeting? I wanna make an adult film.” When my car rounded the corner, I saw a man, about my age, in clothing I might wear, sitting on a bench, no reading material, no purpose but to wait.

I knew he went on the safari with them.

I knew he took Max to Wizards games.

At some point he moved in. I don’t know when; it was never presented to me as news.

“What does Daniel do?” I asked the boys one night over Indian. We ate out a lot in those days, because it was hard for me to find the necessary time to grocery shop and cook, but more because I was obsessed with proving to them that we could still have “fun.” And eating out is fun. Until someone asks, “Where are we having dinner tonight?” At which point it begins to feel depressing.

“He’s a scientist,” Sam said.

“But not a Nobel Prize winner or anything,” Max said. “Just a scientist.”

“What kind of scientist?”

“Dunno,” Sam and Max said at the same time, but no one said “Jinx.”

“He’s an astrophysicist,” Benjy said. And then: “Are you sad?”

“That he’s an astrophysicist?”

“Yeah.”

Julia asked a few times if I would go out for a drink with him, get to know him. She said it would mean a lot to her, and to Daniel, and that it could only be good for the boys. I told her, “Of course.” I told her, “That sounds great.” And I believed myself as I said it. But it never happened.

As we were saying goodbye after one of Max’s teacher conferences, she told me that she and Daniel were going to get married.

“Does this mean you’re dead?”

“Excuse me?”

“You would sooner die than remarry.”

She laughed. “No, not dead. Reincarnated.”

“As yourself?”

“As myself plus time.”

“Myself plus time is my father.”

She laughed again. Was her laugh spontaneous or generous? “The nice thing about reincarnation is that life becomes a process rather than an event.”

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“Just stuff from yoga.”

“Well, it flies in the face of stuff from science.”

“As I was saying. Life becomes a process rather than an event. Like that thing the magician told you, about tricks and outcomes. You don’t need to achieve enlightenment, only move yourself closer to it. Only become a bit more accepting.”

“Most things shouldn’t be accepted.”

“Accepting of the world—”

“Yes, I live in the world.”

“Of yourself.”

“That’s more complicated.”

“One life is too much pressure.”

“So is the Marianas Trench, but such is reality. And by the way, what was all that shit about Max being too conscientious?”

“Staying in at recess to go over his homework?”

“He’s diligent.”

“He wants to control what is possible to control.”

“Stuff from yoga?”

“I actually got myself a Dr. Silvers.”

Why did that trigger my jealousy? Because my feelings about her marriage were too extreme to be felt directly?

“Well,” I said, “I believe in a lot of things. But at the very top of the list of things I don’t believe in is reincarnation.”

“You’re constantly coming back, Jacob. Just always as yourself.”

I didn’t ask if the kids knew before me, and if so, for how long. She didn’t tell me when it was going to happen, or if I was going to be invited.

I asked, “Does this mean I’m going to be treated less favorably?” She laughed. I hugged her, told her how happy I was for her, and went home and ordered a video game system, as we’d always agreed we wouldn’t.