Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(59)
“When I was your age—”
Max pointed at the screen.
“Pay attention to what you’re doing, Dad.”
“Of course I am.”
“Just don’t—”
“Under control.”
“Dad—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeahs,” he said, then turned his attention from the iPad to Max. “They’re a band.”
“Dad!”
“You really inherited Mom’s talent for worrying.”
And then there was a sound Jacob had never heard before—a cross between a screeching tire and the dying animal it just ran over.
“Oh shit!” Max screamed.
“What?”
“Oh shit!”
“Hold on, is that blood mine?”
“It’s Sam’s! You killed him!”
“No I didn’t. I just smelled some flowers.”
“You just inhaled a Bouquet of Fatality!”
“Why would there be a bouquet of fatality?”
“So *s have a stupid way to die!”
“Easy, Max. It was an honest mistake.”
“Who cares if it was honest!”
“And with all due respect—”
“Oh shit, shit, shit!”
“—it’s a game.”
Jacob shouldn’t have said that. Clearly he shouldn’t have.
“With all due respect,” Max said with scary composure, “f*ck you.”
“What did you just say?”
“I said”—Max was unable to look his father in the eye, but he had no trouble repeating himself—“f*ck you.”
“Don’t you ever speak to me like that.”
“Too bad I didn’t inherit Mom’s talent for eating shit.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing.”
“Nothing, OK?”
“No, not OK. Mom does a lot of things, and eating shit is not one of them. And yes, I know you weren’t speaking literally.”
Had Max also heard them fighting? The broken glass? Or was he merely fishing, seeing what kind of response he might get? What kind of response did he want? And what was Jacob prepared to give?
Jacob stamped to the door, then turned back and said, “When you’re ready to apologize, I’ll be—”
“I’m dead,” Max said. “The dead don’t apologize.”
“You aren’t dead, Max. There are actual dead people in the world, and you aren’t one of them. You are upset. Upset and dead are different states.”
The phone rang—a reprieve. Jacob was expecting it to be Julia; when away, she always checked in before the kids went to bed.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Benjy?”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Is everything OK?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s late.”
“I’m in my pj’s.”
“Do you need anything, buddy?”
“No. Do you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You just wanted to say hi before bed?”
“You called me.”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to Max.”
“Now? On the phone?”
“Yeah.”
“Benjy wants to talk to you,” Jacob said, handing the phone to Max.
“Could we have a little privacy?” Max asked.
The absurdity of it, the agony and beauty of it, almost brought Jacob to his knees: these two independent consciousnesses, neither of which existed ten and a half years ago, and existed only because of him, could now not only operate free of him (that much he’d known for a long time), but demand freedom.
Jacob picked up the iPad and left his offspring to talk. While he fiddled, he accidentally maximized the window behind Other Life. It was a discussion board, with the heading “Can You Humanely Euthanize a Dog at Home?” The first comment his eyes fell upon read: “I had the same problem, but with a grown dog. It’s so sad. My mum took Charlie to our friend, a farmer down the way, who said he would be able to shoot him. It was much easier for us. He took him for a walk, talked to him, and shot him while they were walking.”
THE ARTIFICIAL EMERGENCY
Instead of calling to check on Benjy, who was obviously fine, Julia fussed with her hair, sucked in her cheeks, tugged down her shirt, scrutinized her makeup, pressed her belly, squinted. She texted Mark, if only to create a hard stop to her self-loathing: confirmed kid is alive. ready whenever. By the time she got to the hotel bar, he was already at a table.
“Spacious accommodations?” he asked as she took the seat across from him.
“A room of my own? An oven would feel spacious.”
“Sounds like you were born seventy-five years too late.” And then, with a faux wince: “Too soon?”
“Let’s see, my father-in-law would say it’s absolutely fine, so long as the person making the joke doesn’t have a cell of goyish blood. Then Jacob would disagree. Then they’d switch positions and fight with twice the energy.”