Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(43)



“I know that I went too far in what I wrote.”

“I’m telling you, you didn’t go far enough in what you lived.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You want me to have an affair?”

“No, I want you to write Shabbat letters to me. But if you’re going to write pornographic texts to someone else, then yes, I want you to have an affair. Because then I could respect you.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I’m making perfect sense. I would have respected you so much more if you’d f*cked her. It would have proven something to me that I have found harder and harder to believe.”

“Which is?”

“That you’re a human being.”

“You don’t believe I’m human?”

“I don’t believe you’re there at all.”

Jacob opened his mouth, without knowing what would come out. He wanted to return everything she’d given to him, to catalog her neuroses, and irrationalities, and weaknesses, and hypocrisies, and ugliness. He also wanted to acknowledge that everything she’d said was true, but contextualize his monstrousness—not all of it was his fault. He wanted to mortar bricks with one hand while taking a hammer to them with the other.

But instead of his voice, they heard Benjy’s: “I need you! I really need you!”

Julia released a burst of laughter.

“Why are you laughing?”

“It has nothing to do with things not being lost.”

It was the nervous laughter of oppositions. The dark laughter of the knowledge of the end. The religious laughter of scale.

Benjy called out again through the monitor: “Someone! Someone!”

They fell silent.

Julia searched the darkness for her husband’s eyes, wanting to search them.

“Someone!”





THE N-WORD


Julia had fallen asleep by the time Jacob came back down from calming Benjy. Or she did a perfectly believable impression of a sleeping person. Jacob was restless. He didn’t want to read—not a book or a magazine, not even a real estate blog. He didn’t want to watch TV. Writing wasn’t going to happen. Neither was masturbation. No activity appealed to him, anything would feel like an act, an impersonation of a person.

He went to Sam’s room, hoping for a few moments of peace, observing his first child’s sleeping body. A shifting light spread from under the door onto the hallway, then pulled back: waves from the digital ocean on the other side. Sam, ever vigilant of his privacy, heard his father’s heavy steps.

“Dad?”

“The one and lonely.”

“So…Are you standing there? Do you need something?”

“Can I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer he opened the door.

“You were being rhetorical?” Sam asked, not looking away from the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m watching TV.”

“You don’t have a TV.”

“On my computer.”

“So aren’t you watching your computer?”

“Sure.”

“What’s on?”

“Everything.”

“What are you watching?”

“Nothing.”

“You have a second?”

“Yes: one…”

“I was being rhetorical.”

“Ah.”

“How’s it going?”

“Is this a conversation?”

“Just checking in.”

“I’m fine.”

“Does it feel great to feel fine?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I think I heard it somewhere. So…Sam.”

“The one and bony.”

“Nice one. Anyway, listen. I’m sorry to have to get into this. But. The thing at Hebrew school this morning.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Right. It’s just.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“It’s not even a question of that.”

“Yes it is.”

“It would be a whole lot easier to get you out of this if you had some other explanation.”

“I don’t.”

“A bunch of those words are really no big deal. Between us, it wouldn’t even bother me if you had written them.”

“I didn’t.”

“But the n-word.”

Sam finally turned his attention to his father.

“What, divorce?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Why did you say that?”

“I didn’t.”

“Are you talking about Mom and me?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even hear myself over the fighting and glass-breaking.”

“Earlier? No, what you heard—”

“It’s OK. Mom came up and we had a talk.”

Jacob glanced at the TV on the computer. He thought about how Guy de Maupassant ate lunch at the Eiffel Tower’s restaurant every day because it was the only place in Paris without a view of the tower. The Nats were playing the Dodgers, extra innings. With a sudden burst of excitement, he clapped his hands. “Let’s go to the game tomorrow!”

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