Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

JACOB

At my grandfather’s funeral.

JULIA

That’s true. You wailed.

JACOB

I wept.

JULIA

But remembering it as the exception proves—

JACOB

Nothing.

JULIA

All those repressed tears metastasized.

JACOB

Yes, that’s exactly what the dentist thought the oncologist will think.

JULIA

Throat cancer.

JACOB

Who said anything about cancer?

JULIA

Throat malignancy.

JACOB

Thank you.

JULIA

Is it too soon to observe how poetic that is?

JACOB

Way too soon. I haven’t even been diagnosed, much less gone through super-fun chemo and recovery only to learn that they didn’t get it all.

JULIA

You’ll finally have your baldness.

JACOB

I already do.

JULIA

Right.

JACOB

No, really. I went off Propecia. I look like Mr. Clean. Ask Benjy.

JULIA

You saw him recently?

JACOB

He came by on Christmas Eve with Chinese food.

JULIA

That’s sweet. How did he look?

JACOB

Enormous. And old.

JULIA

I didn’t even know you were on Propecia. But I guess I wouldn’t know what pills you take anymore.

JACOB

I’ve actually been on it for a long time.

JULIA

How long?

JACOB

Around when Max was born?

JULIA

Our Max?

JACOB

I was embarrassed. I kept them with my cummerbund.

JULIA

That makes me so sad.

JACOB

Me, too.

JULIA

Why don’t you just cry, Jacob?

JACOB

Sure thing.

JULIA

I’m serious.

JACOB

This isn’t Days of Our Lives . This is life .

JULIA

You’re afraid that letting anything out will leave you open to letting things in. I know you. But it’s just the two of us. Just you and me on the phone.

JACOB

And God. And the NSA.

JULIA

Is this the person you want to be? Always just joking? Always concealing, distracting, hiding? Never fully yourself?

JACOB

You know, I was hunting for sympathy when I called.

JULIA

And you killed it without having to fire a shot. This is what real sympathy is.

JACOB

(after a long beat)

No.

JULIA

No what?

JACOB

No, I’m not the person I want to be.

JULIA

Well, you’re in good company.

JACOB

Before I called, I found myself asking — literally asking aloud, over and over—“Who’s a gentle soul? Who’s a gentle soul?”

JULIA

Why?

JACOB

I guess I wanted proof.

JULIA

Of the existence of gentleness?

JACOB

Gentleness for me.

JULIA

Jacob.

JACOB

I mean it. You have Daniel. The boys have their lives. I’m the kind of person whose neighbors will have to notice the smell for anyone to realize he’s dead.

JULIA

Remember that poem? “Proof of Your existence? There is nothing but”?

JACOB

God … I do. We bought that book at Shakespeare and Company. Read it on the bank of the Seine with a baguette and cheese and no knife. That was so happy. So long ago.

JULIA

Look around, Jacob. There is nothing but proof of how loved you are. The boys idolize you. Your friends flock to you. I bet women—

JACOB

You? What about you?

JULIA

I’m the gentle soul you called, remember?

JACOB

I’m sorry.

JULIA

For what?

JACOB

We’re in the Days of Awe right now.

JULIA

I know I know what that means, but I can’t remember.

JACOB

The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The world is uniquely open. God’s ears are, His eyes, His heart. People, too.

JULIA

You’ve become some Jew.

JACOB

I don’t believe any of it, but I believe in it.

(beat)

Anyway, it’s during these ten days that we’re supposed to ask our loved ones to forgive us for all of the wrongs we committed—“knowingly and unknowingly.”

(beat)

Julia—

JULIA

He’s just a dentist.

JACOB

I am so sincerely sorry for any times that I knowingly or unknowingly wronged you.

JULIA

You didn’t wrong me.

JACOB

I did.

JULIA

We made mistakes, both of us.

JACOB

The Hebrew word for sin translates to “missing the mark.” I am sorry for the times that I sinned against you by small degrees, and I am sorry for the times that I sinned against you by running directly away from what I should have been running toward.

JULIA

There was another line in that book: “And everything that once was infinitely far and unsayable is now unsayable and right here in the room.”

The silence is so complete, neither is sure if the connection has been lost.

JACOB

You opened the door, unknowingly. I closed it, unknowingly.

JULIA

What door?

JACOB

Sam’s hand.

Julia starts to cry, quietly.

JULIA

I forgive you, Jacob. I do. For everything. All that we hid from each other, and all that we allowed between us. The pettiness. The holding in and holding on. The measuring. None of it matters anymore.

JACOB

None of it ever mattered.

JULIA

It did. But not as much as we thought it did.

(beat)

And I hope that you will forgive me.

JACOB

I do.

(after a long beat)

I’m sure you’re right. It would be good if I could let my sadness out.

JULIA

Your anger.

JACOB

I’m not angry.

JULIA

But you are.

JACOB

I’m really not.

JULIA

What are you so angry about?

JACOB

Julia, I’m—

JULIA

What happened to you?

They are silent. But it’s a different silence than the kind they’d known. Not the silence of just joking, concealing, distracting. Not the silence of walls, but the silence of creating a space to fill.

With each passing second — and the seconds are passing, two by two — more space is created. It takes the shape of the home they might have moved to had they decided to give it one more shot, to go deeply and unconditionally into the work of re-finding their happiness together. Jacob can feel the pull of the unoccupied space, the aching longing to be allowed into what is wide open to him.

He cries.

When was the last time he cried? When he put down Argus? When he awoke Max to tell him he hadn’t gone to Israel, and Max said, “I knew you wouldn’t go”? When he tried to encourage Benjy’s budding interest in astronomy, and took him all the way to Marfa, where they got a tour of the observatory and held galaxies in their eyes like oceans in shells, and when that night they lay on their backs on the roof of the Airbnb cabin and Benjy asked, “Why are we whispering?” and Jacob said, “I hadn’t even noticed that we were,” and Benjy said, “When people look at stars, they tend to whisper. I wonder why”?

HOW TO PLAY LATE MEMORIES

My earliest memory is of my father handling a dead squirrel.

My last memory of the old house is leaving the key in the mailbox in an envelope with a stamp and no destination or return address.

My last memory of my mother is spoon-feeding her yogurt. I reflexively made the airplane sound, though I hadn’t done that for fifteen years. I was too embarrassed to acknowledge it with an apology. She winked, I was sure.

My last memory of Argus is hearing his breathing deepen, and feeling his pulse slow, and then watching myself reflected in his eyes as they rolled back.

Despite the texts and e-mails that we have continued to send back and forth, my last memory of Tamir is from Islip. I told him, “Stay.” He asked, “Then who would go?” And I said, “No one.” And he asked, “Then what would save it?” And I said, “Nothing.” “Just let it go?” he asked.