Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(177)

The wedding was three months later, and I was invited, and the kids did know before me, but only by a day. I told them not to mention the video game system to her, and that was the actual missing of the mark.

I can’t help but compare it to our wedding. There were fewer people, but many of the same people. What did they think when they saw me? Those who had the guts to approach either pretended there was nothing remotely awkward going on, that we were simply making small talk at the wedding of a mutual friend, or they put their hands on my shoulder.

Julia and I were always good at catching eyes, even after the divorce. We just had a way of finding each other. It was a joke between us. “How will I find you in the theater?” “By being you.” But it didn’t happen once all afternoon. She was preoccupied, but she must also have been keeping track of where I was. I thought about slipping out at various points, but that was not to be done.

The boys gave a charming speech together.

I asked for red.

Daniel spoke thoughtfully, and lovingly. He thanked me for being there, for welcoming him. I nodded, I smiled. He moved on.

I asked for red.

I remembered my mother’s speech at my wedding: “In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don’t seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other’s pain, and being present for it.” Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it?

I watched the horah from my table, watched the boys lift their mother in the chair. She was laughing so hard, and I was sure that with her up at that vantage we would catch eyes, but we didn’t.

A salad was placed in front of me.

Julia and Daniel went from table to table to make sure they said hello to every guest, and for pictures. I saw it approaching, like the wave at a Nats game, and there was nothing to do but participate.

I stood at the margin. The photographer said, “Say mocha,” which I did not. He took it three times to be sure. Julia whispered to Daniel, gave him a kiss. He walked off, and she took the seat beside me.

“I’m glad you came.”

“Of course.”

“Not of course. It was a choice you made, and I know it’s not uncomplicated.”

“I’m glad you wanted me here.”

“Are you OK?” she asked.

“Very much so.”

“OK.”

I looked around the room: the doomed flowers, sweating water glasses, lipstick in purses left on chairs, guitars becoming detuned against speakers, knives that had attended thousands of unions.

“You want to hear something sad?” I said. “I always thought I was the happy one. The happier one, I should say. I never thought of myself as happy.”

“You want to hear something even sadder? I thought I was the unhappy one.”

“I guess we were both wrong.”

“No,” she said, “we were both right. But only in the context of our marriage.”

I put my hands on my knees, as if to further ground myself.

“Were you there when my dad said that thing? ‘Without context, we’d all be monsters’?”

“I don’t think so. Or I don’t remember it.”

“Our context made monsters of us.”

“No, not monsters,” she said. “We were good, and we raised three amazing kids.”

“And now you’re happy, and I’m still me.”

“Life is long,” she said, trusting me to remember.

“The universe is bigger,” I said, proving myself.

Sea bass was placed in front of me.

I picked up my fork, so as to touch something, and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What do you tell people when they ask why we got divorced?”

“It’s been a long time since anyone has.”

“What did you used to tell them?”

“That we realized we were just really good friends, good co-parents.”

“Aren’t those reasons not to get divorced?”

She smiled and said, “I had a hard time explaining it.”

“Me, too. I always sounded like I was hiding something. Or guilty about something. Or just fickle.”

“It’s not really anyone else’s business.”

“What do you tell yourself?”

“It’s been a long time since I asked myself.”

“What did you used to tell yourself?”

She picked up my spoon and said, “We got divorced because that’s what we did. It’s not a tautology.”

While the waiters were bringing dinner to the final tables, the first tables were being brought dessert.

“And the boys?” I asked. “How did you explain it to them?”

“They never really asked me. Sometimes they’d trace the outline, but they’d never enter. With you?”

“Never once. Isn’t that odd?”

“No,” she said, a bride in her dress. “It’s not.”

I looked at my boys being silly children on the dance floor and said, “Why did we put them in the position of having to ask?”

“Our love for them got in the way of being good parents.”