Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(32)
> How can I miss someone I never met?
> Baruch Adonai Ham’vorach l’olam va’ed.
> I will always, always, always take dishonesty over faux honesty.
> App: Everything you say will one day be used against you.
> Baruch Atah, Adonai…
> Got it: We praise You…
> I’ve been having this weird thing where I can’t remember what people I know look like. Or I convince myself I can’t. I’ll find myself trying to imagine my brother’s face, and can’t. It’s not that I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, or that I wouldn’t recognize him. But when I try to think of him, I can’t.
> Eloheynu melech ha’olam…
> Download a program called VeryPDF. It’s pretty straightforward.
> Eternal God, King of the Universe…
> Sorry, I was just eating dinner. I’m in Kyoto. The stars have been out for hours.
> Did anyone see the video of that Jewish reporter getting decapitated?
> asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim…
> VeryPDF has a million bugs.
> You have called us to Your service…
> My iPhone is making me seasick.
> v’natan lanu et Torato…
> You need to lock rotation. Double click on the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar. Swipe right until you get to something that looks like a circular arrow—it enables and disables rotation lock.
> Could you go blind from staring at a movie of the sun?
> Does anybody know anything about this new telescope that the Chinese are talking about building? It’s supposed to see twice as far back in time as any telescope has before.
> Baruch Atah, Adonai…
> I know I sound like I’m high, but shouldn’t we acknowledge the weirdness of what you just said? It can see twice as far back in time?
> I could fit every word I’ve ever written in my life onto a thumb drive.
> Which means?
> We praise You…
> Imagine if they put a massive mirror in space, really far away from us. Couldn’t we, by aiming a telescope at it, see ourselves in the past?
> Meaning?
> The farther away it was, the deeper into our past we could see: our births, our parents’ first kiss, cavemen.
> The dinosaurs.
> My parents never kissed, and f*cked exactly once.
> Life crawling out of the ocean.
> notein haTorah.
> And if it were lined up straight, you could look at yourself not being there.
> Giver of the Torah.
Samanta looked up.
What on earth would it take for a fundamentally good human being to be seen? Not noticed, but seen. Not appreciated, not cherished, not even loved. But fully seen.
She looked out upon the congregation of avatars. They were trustworthy, generous, fundamentally nice unreal people. The most fundamentally nice people she would ever meet were people she would never meet.
She looked simultaneously at and through the stained-glass Jewish Present.
Sam had overheard every word from the other side of Rabbi Singer’s door. He knew that his father believed him, and that his mother didn’t. He knew that his mother was trying to do what she thought was best, and that his father was trying to do what he thought was best. But best for whom?
He’d found the phone a full day before his mother had.
Many apologies were due, but he didn’t owe any apology to anyone.
With no throat to clear, Samanta began to speak, to say what needed to be said.
EPITOME
The older one gets, the harder it is to account for time. Children ask: “Are we there yet?” Adults: “How did we get here so quickly?”
Somehow, it was late. Somehow, the hours had gone somewhere. Irv and Deborah had gone home. The boys had eaten an early dinner, taken an early bath. Jacob and Julia had managed to collaborate in avoidance: You walk Argus, while I help Max with his math, while you fold laundry, while I search for the Lego piece on which everything depends, while you pretend to know how to fix a running toilet, and somehow, the day that began as Julia’s to have to herself ended with Jacob ostensibly out at drinks with someone-or-other from HBO and Julia definitively cleaning up the day’s mess. So much mess made by so few people in such little time. She was doing the dishes when Jacob entered the kitchen.
“That went later than I thought,” he said preemptively. And to further compact his guilt: “Very boring.”
“You must be drunk.”
“No.”
“How do you have drinks for four hours without getting drunk?”
“Just a drink,” he said, draping his jacket over the counter stool, “not drinks. And only three-and-a-half.”
“That’s some awfully slow sipping.” Her tone was pointed, but it could have been sharpened by a number of things: her lost day off, the stress from the morning, the bar mitzvah.
She wiped her brow with the first part of her forearm that wasn’t soapy, and said, “We were supposed to talk to Sam.”
Good, Jacob thought. Of the conflicts available, this was the least terrifying. He could apologize, make it right, get back to happiness.
“I know,” he said, tasting the alcohol on his teeth.