Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(54)
“Great-Grandpa has hopes for the future,” Jacob said. “Like living to see Sam’s bar mitzvah. And he takes pleasure in memories.”
“Same as Argus.”
“You think Argus is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah?”
“No one is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah.”
“Great-Grandpa is.”
“Says who?”
“Dogs take all kinds of very subtle pleasure in life,” the vet said. “Lying in a patch of sun. The occasional bit of tasty human food. It’s hard to say how far their mental experience extends beyond that. It’s left to us to make assumptions.”
“Argus feels like we forgot him,” Max said, making his assumption clear.
“Forgot him?”
“Just like Great-Grandpa.”
Jacob gave the vet a ruffled smile and said, “Who said Great-Grandpa feels forgotten?”
“He does.”
“When?”
“When we talk.”
“And when is that?”
“When we skype.”
“He doesn’t mean it.”
“So how do you know Argus means it when he whines?”
“Dogs can’t not mean things.”
“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him that Argus should be put to sleep.”
“Oh. That’s not for me to say. It’s a very personal decision.”
“OK, but if you thought he shouldn’t be put to sleep, you would have just said he shouldn’t be put to sleep.”
“He runs in the park, Max. He watches movies on the sofa.”
“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.
“My job, as a vet, is to care for Argus, to help keep him healthy. It isn’t to offer advice about end-of-life decisions.”
“So in other words, you agree with me.”
“She didn’t say that, Max.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Do you think my great-grandfather should be put to sleep?”
“No,” the vet said, immediately regretting the credence her response lent the question.
“Tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him that you think Argus should be put to sleep.”
“That’s really not for me to say.”
“See?” Max said to his father.
“You realize Argus is in the room, Max?”
“He doesn’t understand.”
“Of course he understands.”
“So hold on. You think Argus understands, but Great-Grandpa doesn’t?”
“Great-Grandpa understands.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a monster.”
“Max.”
“Tell him.”
Argus vomited a dozen almost perfectly formed McNuggets at the vet’s feet.
“How do they keep the glass clean?” Jacob had asked his father, three decades before.
Irv gave a puzzled look and said, “Windex?”
“I mean the other side. People can’t walk in there. They’d ruin all the stuff on the ground.”
“But if no one ever goes in, it stays clean.”
“It doesn’t,” Jacob said. “Remember when we came back from Israel and everything was dirty? Even though no one had been there for three weeks? Remember how we wrote our names in Hebrew in the dust on the windows?”
“A house isn’t a closed environment.”
“Yes it is.”
“Not as closed as a diorama.”
“It is.”
The only thing Irv loved more than teaching Jacob was being challenged by him: the intimations of one day being surpassed by his child.
“Maybe that’s why they face that side of the glass away,” he said, smiling, but hiding his fingers in his son’s hair, which, given enough time, would grow to bury them.
“I don’t think glass works like that.”
“No?”
“You can’t hide the other side.”
“Do animals work like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the face of that bison.”
“What?”
“Look closely.”
NOT YET
Sam and Billie sat in the back of the bus, several empty rows behind the rest.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
“OK.”
“On your iPad.”
“I left it at home.”
“Seriously?”
“My mom made me,” Sam said, wishing he’d invented a less infantilizing explanation.
“Did she read an op-ed, or something?”
“She wants me to be ‘present’ on the trip.”
“What uses ten gallons of gas but doesn’t move?”
“What?”
“A Buddhist monk.”
Sam laughed, not getting it.
“You’ve seen the one where the alligator bites the electric eel?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s f*cking nuts.”