Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(30)
After a moment of questioning himself, the best he could muster was “I guess I’m someone who says things he knows he shouldn’t say.”
“I guess so.”
“But I’ll get better at that.”
She scanned the room. God, did he hate her little stolen surveys: of his homework, his belongings, his appearance. Her constant judgment carved through him like a river, creating two shores.
“What have you been doing up here?”
“Not e-mailing, or texting, or playing Other Life.”
“OK, but what have you been doing?”
“I don’t really know.”
“I’m not sure how that could be possible.”
“Isn’t this your day off?”
“No, it’s not my day off. It’s my day to get some things done that I’ve been putting off. Like breathing and thinking. But then we had to make an unscheduled visit to Adas Israel this morning, as you might remember, and then I had to meet with a client—”
“Why did you have to?”
“Because it’s my job.”
“But why today?”
“I felt that I had to, OK?”
“OK.”
“And then in the car it occurred to me that even though you have almost certainly thwarted it, we should probably continue to act as if your bar mitzvah is going to happen. And among the many, many things that only I would remember to remember is your suit.”
“What suit?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s true. I don’t have a suit.”
“Obvious once stated, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I continually find it amazing how many things are like that.”
“Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, we need to get you a suit.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“The first three places we go aren’t going to have what we need, and should we find something passable, it’s not going to fit, and the tailor is going to get it wrong twice.”
“Do I have to be there?”
“Where?”
“The suit place.”
“No, no, of course you don’t have to be there. Let’s make things easy and build our own 3-D printer out of popsicle sticks and macaroni, and render a perfectly accurate anatomical model of you that I can schlep to the suit place alone on my day off.”
“Could we teach it my haftorah?”
“I’m not laughing at your jokes right now.”
“That didn’t require saying.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t have to say you aren’t laughing for someone to know you aren’t laughing.”
“That didn’t require saying, either, Sam.”
“Fine. Sorry.”
“We’re going to have to talk when Dad comes home from his meeting, but I need to say something. It is required.”
“Fine.”
“Stop saying ‘fine.’?”
“Sorry.”
“Stop saying ‘sorry.’?”
“I thought the whole point was that I was supposed to be apologizing?”
“For what you did.”
“But I didn’t—”
“I’m very disappointed in you.”
“I know.”
“That’s it? You don’t have anything else to say? Like maybe, ‘I did it and I’m sorry’?”
“I didn’t do it.”
She put her hands on her waist, forefingers through belt loops.
“Clean up this mess. It’s disgusting.”
“It’s my room.”
“But it’s our house.”
“I can’t move that board. We’re only halfway done with the game. Dad said we could finish after I’m not in trouble anymore.”
“You know why you always beat him?”
“Because he lets me win.”
“He hasn’t let you win in years.”
“He goes easy.”
“He doesn’t. You beat him because it excites him to capture pieces, but you’re always thinking four moves ahead. It makes you good at chess, and it makes you good at life.”
“I’m not good at life.”
“You are when you’re thoughtful.”
“Is Dad bad at life?”
“That’s not the conversation we’re having right now.”
“If he focused, he could beat me.”
“That might very well be true, but we’ll never know.”
“What conversation are we having?”
She took the phone from her pocket. “What is this?”
“That’s a cellular telephone.”
“Is it yours?”
“I’m not allowed to have a smartphone.”
“Which is why it would upset me if it were yours.”
“So you don’t need to be upset.”
“Whose is it?”
“No idea.”