Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(62)

“Yap Airport?”

“Yeah, I don’t know, that’s what it’s called.”

“Why through Micronesia?” Mark asked.

“Precisely,” Billie said, although not one of the three knew even approximately what that meant. “We’ve already started to get offers from Pakistan, Iran, and, weirdly, Luxembourg.”

“Offers?” Mark asked.

“They want us to sell them the bomb.” And then, to Julia: “You understand, right?”

Julia gave an uncertain nod.

“So explain it to him later. It’s a whole new ball game!”

“Let’s round up the kids,” Julia said to Mark.

“I’ll get the ones on eleven, you get the ones on twelve. Meet in your room?”

“Why mine?”

“Fine, mine.”

“No, mine is fine, I just—”

“Mark’s room,” Billie said.

Mark got on the elevator. Billie held Julia back for a moment.

“Is everything OK?” Billie asked when the elevator doors closed.

“It’s confusing to have a nuclear weapon.”

“I meant you.”

“What about me?”

“Are you OK?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You look like you’re about to cry.”

“Me? No.”

“Oh, OK.”

“I don’t think I am?”

But maybe she was. Maybe the artificial emergency released trapped feelings about the real emergency. There was a trauma center in her brain—she had no Dr. Silvers to explain that to her, but she had the Internet. The most unexpected situations would set it off, and then all thoughts and perception rushed toward it. At the center was Sam’s injury. And at the center of that—the vortex into which all thoughts and perceptions were pulled—was the moment when Jacob carried him into the house, saying, “Something happened,” and she saw more blood than there was but couldn’t hear Sam’s screaming, and for a moment, no longer than a moment, she lost control. For a moment she was untethered from rationality, from reality, from herself. The soul departs the body at the moment of death, but there is a yet more complete abandoning: everything departed her body at the moment she saw her child’s flowing blood.

Jacob looked at her, sternly, hard-hearted, godlike, and made each word a sentence: “Get. Yourself. Together. Now.” The sum of everything she hated him for would never surpass her love for him in that moment.

He put Sam in her arms and said, “We’ll call Dr. Kaisen on the way to the emergency room.”

Sam looked at Julia with a prehuman terror and screamed, “Why did that happen? Why did that happen?” And pleaded, “It’s funny. It’s funny, right?”

She gripped Sam’s eyes with her eyes, held them hard, and didn’t say, “It will be OK,” and didn’t say nothing. She said, “I love you, and I’m here.”

The sum of everything she hated herself for would never surpass her knowledge that in the most important moment of her child’s life, she’d been a good mother.

And then, as quickly as it had seized control, Julia’s trauma center relented. Maybe it was tired. Maybe it was merciful. Maybe she had looked away and looked back, and remembered that she was in the world. But how had the last thirty minutes passed? Had she taken the elevator or the stairs? Had she knocked on the door of Mark’s room or was it open?

The debate was under way and roiling. Did anyone notice her absence? Her presence?

“A stolen nuclear weapon is not an occasion for bartering,” Billie said. “We want this thing disarmed, pronto, period.”

“We didn’t steal it. But I totally agree with what you just said.”

“We should just bury it.”

“Can’t we turn it into energy somehow?”

“We should give it to the Israelis,” said a boy in a yarmulke.

“Screw that, let’s bury it in Israel.”

“If I can butt in for just a moment,” Mark said. “My role here isn’t to suggest conclusions but to help you ask provocative questions, so try this one on for size: Is it possible that there’s an important option we haven’t yet entertained? What if we kept the bomb?”

“Kept the bomb?” Julia said, making her presence unignorable. “No, we can’t keep the bomb.”

“Why not?” Mark asked.

“Because we’re responsible people.”

“Let’s just play this out.”

“Play is not the right word for a discussion about a nuclear bomb.”

“Let him talk,” Sam said.

Mark talked: “Maybe this is a chance to finally control our destiny? For most of our history, we’ve been at the mercy of others: overrun by the Portuguese and Spanish trading goliaths, sold to Germany, conquered by Japan and the United States…”

“I don’t suppose anyone brought an extremely small violin?” Julia said to the kids. Nobody understood the joke.

Mark lowered his volume, asserting calm: “I’m just saying, we have never been fully self-reliant.”

“There hasn’t been a fully self-reliant country in the history of the world,” Julia said.