Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(42)
“I was worked up.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t meaning what I was saying.”
“I know,” she said. “But you were saying it.”
“I don’t believe that anger reveals truth. Sometimes you just say something.”
“I know. But I don’t believe that any something comes from nowhere.”
“I don’t love the kids more than I love you.”
“You do,” she said. “I do. Maybe we’re supposed to. Maybe evolution forces us to.”
“I love you,” he said, turning to her.
“I know you do. I’ve never doubted that, and I don’t doubt it now. But it’s a different kind of love than the kind I need.”
“What does that mean for us?”
“I don’t know.”
Fall asleep, Jacob.
He said, “You know how novocaine leaves you unsure of where your mouth ends and the world begins?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Or how sometimes you think there’s going to be another stair when there isn’t, and your foot falls through an imaginary stair?”
“Sure.”
Why was it so hard for him to cross the physical space? It shouldn’t have been, but it was.
“I don’t know what I was saying.”
She could feel him struggling.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
He tucked his hand behind her hair, cupping the back of her neck.
“You’re tired,” he said.
“I’m really exhausted.”
“We’re tired. We’ve run ourselves into the ground. We need to find ways to rest.”
“I would understand if you were having an affair. I’d be angry, and I’d be hurt, and I’d probably be moved to do something I don’t even want to do—”
“Like what?”
“I would hate you, Jacob, but at least I’d understand you. I always understood you. Remember how I would tell you that? That you were the only person who made sense to me? Now everything you do confuses me.”
“Confuses you?”
“Your obsession with real estate.”
“I’m not obsessed with real estate.”
“Every time I walk past your laptop, the screen is filled with a house listing.”
“Just curious.”
“But why? And why won’t you tell Sam he’s better than you at chess?”
“I do.”
“You don’t. You let him believe that you let him win. And why are you such a completely different person in different situations? You become passive-aggressively quiet with me, but you snap at the boys, but you let your father walk all over you. You haven’t written me a Friday letter in a decade, but you spend all of your free time working on something that you love but won’t share with anyone, and then you write those texts that you say mean nothing. I walked seven circles around you when we got married. I can’t even find you now.”
“I’m not having an affair.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m not.”
She started to cry.
“I exchanged some horribly inappropriate texts with someone at work.”
“An actress.”
“No.”
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“If it matters to me, it matters.”
“One of the directors.”
“Who has my name?”
“No.”
“Is it that woman with the red hair?”
“No.”
“You know, I don’t even care.”
“Good. You shouldn’t. There’s no reason—”
“How did it start?”
“It just…evolved. As things do. It took on a—”
“I don’t even care.”
“It never became anything other than words.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you do.”
“Maybe four months.”
“You’re asking me to believe that for four months you’ve been exchanging sexually explicit texts with someone you work with every day and it never led to anything physical?”
“I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m telling you the truth.”
“The sad thing is, I believe you.”
“That’s not sad. It’s hope.”
“No, it’s sad. You are the only person I know, or could even imagine, who would be capable of writing such bold sentences while living so meekly. I actually do believe that you could write to someone that you want to lick her *, and have that bluff called, and then sit beside her every day for an entire four months without allowing your hand to wander the six necessary inches to her thigh. Without mustering that bravery. Without even sending the signal that it’s OK for her to take up the slack of your cowardice and move her hand onto your thigh. Think about the signals you must have been sending to keep her * wet and her hand away.”
“That’s too far, Julia.”
“Too far? You’re serious? You are the person in this room who doesn’t know what too far means.”