Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(90)
“I don’t know, Jacob. How would I know?”
“And Yael?”
“She’s fine. She’s in Auschwitz.”
Boom shakalaka!
“What?”
“School trip.”
They drove the George Washington Parkway in silence, AC battling the humidity that seeped through the invisible points of entry, small talk between Jacob and Irv battling the awkward silence that pressed against the windows—past Gravelly Point, where aviation buffs holding radio scanners, and fathers holding sons, could almost reach up and touch the landing gears of jumbo jets; the Capitol on the right, across the brown Potomac; the inevitable explanation of why the Washington Monument changes shades of white one-third of the way up. They crossed Memorial Bridge, between the golden horses, circled around the backside of the Lincoln Memorial, the steps that seemed to lead to nothing, and slid into the flow of Rock Creek Parkway. After passing under the terrace of the Kennedy Center and beside the teeth of the Watergate balconies, they followed the curves of the creek away from the outposts of the capital’s civilization.
“The zoo,” Tamir said, looking up from his phone.
“The zoo,” Jacob echoed.
Irv leaned forward: “You know, our favorite primates, Benjy and Deborah, are probably there right now.”
The zoo was at the epicenter of Tamir and Jacob’s friendship, their familialship; it marked the threshold between their youth and adulthood. And it was at the epicenter of Jacob’s life. Jacob’s mind often traveled to his own deathbed scene, especially when he felt that he was wasting his life. What moments, in his final moments, would he return to? He would remember arriving at the inn with Julia—both times. He would remember carrying Sam into the house after the ER, the tiny hand mummified in layers and layers of bandaging, cartoonishly large: the biggest, most useless fist in the world. He would remember the night at the zoo.
He wondered if Tamir ever thought about it, if he was thinking about it then.
And then Tamir let out a deep, subterranean laugh.
“What’s funny?” Jacob asked.
“Me. This feeling.”
“What feeling?”
He laughed again—his greatest performance yet?
“Jealousy.”
“Jealousy? That’s not what I was expecting you to say.”
“It’s not what I was expecting to feel. That’s why it’s funny.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Noam will finally have better stories than me. I’m jealous. But it’s good. It’s as it should be.”
“As it should be?”
“Having better stories.”
Irv said, “Maybe you should call?”
Jacob said, “?‘ Once upon a time there was a man whose life was so good there’s no story to tell about it.’?”
“I’ll try,” Tamir said, punching a long string of numbers. “It’s not going to work, but for your sake, Irv, I’ll try.” After a few moments, an automated Hebrew message filled the car. Tamir hung up and, this time without Irv’s prompting, tried calling again. He listened. They all listened.
“Circuits busy.”
Vey iz mir.
“Try again in a minute?”
“No reason.”
“I don’t mean to be alarmist,” Jacob said, “but do you need to go home?”
Boom shakalaka!
“And how would I do that?”
“We could drive back to the airport and check on flights,” Jacob offered.
“All flights in and out of Israel are canceled.”
Vey iz mir.
“How do you know?”
Tamir held up his phone and said, “You think I’m playing games?”
Boom shakalaka!
THE SECOND SYNAGOGUE
No synagogue is sentient, but just as Sam believed that all things are capable of longing, so did he believe that all things have some awareness of their imminent end: he would tell fires “It’s OK” as the last embers hummed, and apologize to the three-hundred-million-odd sperm before flushing them on their way to wastewater treatment. No synagogue isn’t sentient.
When Sam got home from Model UN, he went straight into Other Life, like a smoker racing to get outside Sydney Airport. His iPad awoke with a memo on the screen: Max’s explanation of Samanta’s death, their father’s guilt (as in, culpability), and his own profound guilt (as in, the feeling of culpability). Sam read it twice—for clarification, and to defer the confrontation with reality.
His failure to spaz upon learning that Max wasn’t playing a sick joke surprised him. Why wasn’t he breaking his iPad over his bedpost, or screaming things that couldn’t be taken back at someone who didn’t deserve them, or at least crying? He wasn’t in any way indifferent to Samanta’s death, and he certainly hadn’t reached some epiphany that it was “only a game.” It wasn’t only a game. What awareness did Samanta have of her imminent end? No avatar isn’t sentient.
Every Skype session with his great-grandfather began with “I see you” and ended with “See you.” Sam was bothered by the knowledge that one such conversation would be their last, and that there ought to, at some point, be some acknowledgment of some version of that fact. They had skyped early the previous morning, as Sam hastily packed for Model UN—Isaac awoke before the sun rose, and went to bed before it set. They never talked for more than five minutes—despite having had it explained to him a hundred times that skyping doesn’t cost anything ever, Isaac refused to believe that longer conversations didn’t cost more—and this one had been particularly brief. Sam shared the vaguest description of the upcoming school trip, confirmed that he wasn’t sick or hungry and that no, he wasn’t “seeing anyone.”