Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(50)

“That’s what I was planning,” Jacob lied.

Mohammed honked again, this time with the sustain pedal.

Everyone headed out together: Deborah, Irv, and Benjy off to a marionette Pinocchio at Glen Echo; Julia and Sam to catch the bus from school; Jacob, Max, and Argus to the vet. Julia hugged Max and Benjy, and didn’t hug Jacob, but told him: “Don’t forget to—”

“Go,” he said. “Have fun. Make world peace.”

“A lasting peace,” Julia said, the words having organized themselves.

“And say hi to Mark for me. Really.”

“Not now, OK?”

“You’re hearing something I didn’t say.”

A curt “Goodbye.”

Halfway down the stoop, Benjy called back: “What if I don’t miss you?”

“You can call us,” Jacob said. “My phone will always be on, and I’ll never be more than a short drive away.”

“I said what if I don’t miss you?”

“What?”

“Is that OK?”

“Of course it’s OK,” Julia said, giving Benjy a last kiss. “Nothing would make me happier than for you to have so much fun you don’t think about us at all.”

Jacob came down the stairs to give Benjy the last, last kiss.

“And anyway,” he said, “you’ll miss us.”

And then, for the first time in his life, Benjy chose not to voice a thought.





THE SIDE THAT FACES AWAY


They stopped at McDonald’s on the way. It was a vet visit ritual, something Jacob started doing after hearing a podcast about a shelter in L.A. that euthanized more dogs than anywhere else in America. The woman who ran it put down each and every dog herself, sometimes a dozen a day. She called each by its name, gave each as good a walk as it could handle, talked to it, stroked it, and, as a final gesture before the needle, fed it McNuggets. As she put it, “It’s the last meal they would ask for.”

Argus’s visits in the past couple of years had been for joint pain, eye cloudiness, fatty lumps on the belly, and incontinence. They weren’t suggestive of an imminent end, but Jacob knew how nervous the vet’s office made him and felt that he owed his pal a reward, which might also serve as a positive association. Whether or not he would have chosen them as his last meal, Argus tore through the McNuggets, swallowing most of them whole. For as long as he’d been a member of the Bloch family, he had eaten Newman’s Own twice a day without any variation. (Julia militantly banned table scraps, as they would “force Argus to become a beggar.”) The McNuggets always led to diarrhea, sometimes vomiting. But that usually took a few hours, which could be timed to coincide with a walk in the park. And it was worth it.

Jacob and Max got McNuggets for themselves, too. They almost never ate meat in the house—again, Julia’s decision—and fast food ranked just below cannibalism on the list of things not to be done. Neither Jacob nor Max missed McNuggets, but sharing something Julia disapproved of was a bonding experience. They pulled over at Fort Reno Park and made an impromptu picnic. Argus was loyal enough, and lethargic enough, to be trusted off-leash. Max stroked him as he swallowed McNugget after McNugget, telling him, “You’re a good dog. You’re good. You’re good.”

Pathetic as it felt, Jacob was jealous. Julia’s cruel comments—however accurate, however deserved—lingered painfully in his mind. He kept returning to the line “I don’t believe you’re there at all.” It was among the least specific, least pointed things she’d said in the course of their first fight about the phone, and a different person’s mind would probably have attached itself to something else. But that was what echoed: “I don’t believe you’re there at all.”

“I used to come here a lot when I was younger,” Jacob said to Max. “We’d sled down that hill.”

“Who was we?”

“Usually friends. Grandpa might have taken me a couple times, though I don’t remember it. When it was warm, I’d come here to play baseball.”

“Games? Or just goofing around?”

“Mostly goofing. It was never easy to get a minyan. Sometimes. Maybe the last day of school before a break.”

“You’re good, Argus. So good.”

“When I got older, we’d buy beer from the Tenleytown Grocery—just over there. They never carded us.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You have to be twenty-one to buy beer legally, so usually places will ask for ID, like a driver’s license, to see how old you are. Tenleytown never did. So we all bought beer there.”

“You were breaking the law.”

“It was a different time. And you know what Martin Luther King said about just and unjust laws.”

“I don’t.”

“Basically, it was our moral responsibility to buy the beer.”

“Good Argus.”

“I’m kidding, of course. It is not good to buy beer before you’re of age, and please don’t tell Mom that I told you that story.”

“OK.”

“Do you know what a minyan is?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”