Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(74)
“No she didn’t,” Max said.
Jacob shrugged his shoulders.
“And tell her the vet thinks we should put Argus down.”
“Hold on,” Jacob told Julia, then muted the phone.
“That’s not what the vet said, Max.”
“Tell her.”
Jacob unmuted the phone and said, “Max wants me to communicate that the vet thinks we should put Argus down, although the vet said no such thing.”
“She did, Mom!”
“…”
“She did.”
“…”
“We had a nice conversation about quality of life and so on.”
“…”
“I took him to Fort Reno on the way, told him some stories about when I was a kid.”
“…”
“Ate McDonald’s.”
“…”
“Burritos.”
“…”
“No, microwaved.”
“…”
“Of course. Carrots. Hummus, too.”
With a few movements of his hand, Jacob communicated to Max that Julia had asked if he’d eaten vegetables.
“…”
“Will do.”
“…”
“One other thing is that last night we had a little snafu with Sam’s avatar.”
“…”
“In Other Life. His avatar. We were messing around with it.”
“You were,” Max corrected.
“…”
“No, probably not. Max was fiddling with it—”
“What? Dad, that’s just not true. Mom, it’s not true!”
“And I wanted to, you know, display interest, and we ended up doing it together. Nothing dramatic. Just walking around and exploring. Anyway, we killed her.”
“We didn’t. You did. Mom: Dad killed her!”
“…”
“His avatar. Yes.”
“…”
“Unintended.”
“…”
“You can’t fix death, Julia.”
“…”
“I spent a couple of months on the phone with tech support last night. I can probably get it back to more or less where it was, but it’s going to require sitting at his computer until the Messiah calls me away.”
“…”
“I haven’t spoken to Cory in at least a year.”
“…”
“It would be shitty to call him like this after not having returned his calls.”
“…”
“And I don’t think a computer genius is what we need. I’ll figure it out. But enough about the sickness and death over here. How are you guys? Having fun?”
“…”
“You’ve met the infamous Billie?”
“Infamous Billie?” Irv asked Max in the rearview mirror.
“Sam’s girlfriend,” Max said.
“…”
“And?”
“…”
“What’s he like around her?”
“…”
“I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“…”
“And Mark?”
“…”
“Is it good having him there?”
“…”
“Has he had to flush any pot down the toilet, or break up a French-kissing session?”
“French kissing is with tongues, right?” Max asked Irv.
“Mais oui.”
“…”
“What’s wrong?”
“…”
“What?”
“…”
“Something’s wrong. I can hear it.”
“…”
“Now I know something’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?” Max asked.
“…”
“OK, but can you at least tell me what it has to do with, so my mind doesn’t spiral wildly for the next six hours?”
“…”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“…”
“Julia. What’s going on?”
“Seriously, what is going on?” Irv said, finally interested.
“…”
“If it were nothing we wouldn’t still be talking about it.”
“…”
“OK, I get it.”
“…”
“Wait, what?”
“…”
“Julia?”
“…”
“Mark did?”
“…”
“Why the f*ck did he do that?”
“Language,” Max said.
“…”
“He’s married.”
“…”
“But he was.”
“…”
“What do you want me to do? Stab a voodoo doll of myself?”
Jacob turned up the radio to make his conversation harder for his father and son to listen in on. An English grammarian was sharing her infatuation with auto-antonyms: words that are their own opposites. Oversight means both “to oversee” and “to fail to see.” You dust a cake with sugar, dust crops with pesticides; but when furniture is dusted, something is being removed. The house weathered the storm, but the shingles were weathered.