Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

Won what? Lost what?

Won the war. Lost peace.

But it sounds like everyone is accepting

the conditions of the armistice?

Peace with ourselves.

How is Noam?

He will be OK.

I’m so relieved to hear that.

When we were at your kitchen table,

stoned, you told me something

about a daytime hole in a nighttime sky.

What was that?

The dinosaur thing?

Yes, that.

So it was actually a nighttime hole in a daytime sky.

And how?

Imagine shooting a bullet through water.

That’s all you had to say. Now I remember.

What made you think of it?

I can’t sleep. So instead I think.

I haven’t been sleeping too much, either.

For people who talk about being tired

as much as we do, we don’t do a lot of sleeping.

We’re not going to move.

I didn’t think you were.

We were.

Rivka was coming around.

But not anymore.

What changed?

Everything. Nothing.

Right.

We are who we are.

Admitting that is what changed.

I’m working on that myself.

What if it had been night?

When?

When the asteroid came.

Then they would have

become extinct at night.

But what would they have seen?

A nighttime hole in a nighttime sky?

And what do you think that would look like?

Maybe like nothing?

Over the next few years, they would exchange brief texts and e-mails, all matter-of-fact updates, mostly about the kids, never with any tone or tangents. Tamir didn’t come for Max’s bar mitzvah, or Benjy’s, or Julia’s wedding (despite her kind invitation, and Jacob’s appeal), or either Deborah’s or Irv’s funeral.

After the kids’ first visit to his new house — the first and worst day of the rest of his life — Jacob closed the door, lay with Argus for half an hour, telling him what a good dog he was, the best dog, then sat with a cup of coffee that gave its heat to the room as he wrote a long, never-to-be-sent e-mail to Tamir, then stood up, keys in hand, finally ready to go to the veterinarian. The e-mail began: “We’ve lost, but we’ve lost.”

Some of the losing was giving away. Some was having things taken. Jacob was often surprised by what he found himself clutching, and what he freely released — what he felt was his, what he felt he needed.

What about that copy of Disgrace? He’d bought it — he remembered finding it at the used bookstore in Great Barrington one summer; he even remembered the beautiful set of Tennessee Williams plays he didn’t buy because Julia was there, and he didn’t want to be forced to confront his desire to own books he had no intention of reading.

Julia had taken Disgrace from his bedside table, on the grounds of it having sat there untouched for more than a year. ( Untouched was her word. Unread would have been his.) Did his having bought it entitle him to it? Did her having read — touched — it? Did her having touched and read it forfeit her claim to it, as it was now his to touch and read? Such thoughts felt disgraceful. The only way to be spared them was to give away everything, but only a more enlightened or stupid person would rub his palms together and think, They’re only things .

What about the blue vase on the mantel? Her parents had given it to him as a gift. Not to them , but to him . It was a birthday present. Or Father’s Day. He could remember, at least, that it was a gift placed in his hands, with an attached card addressed to him , that it had been carefully chosen for him , because they prided themselves on knowing him, which, to their credit, they did.

Was it somehow ungenerous to assume ownership of something paid for by her parents, which, while undeniably given to him , was clearly intended for their shared home? And beautiful as the vase was, did he want that psychic energy in his sanctuary and symbol of new beginnings? Would it really give his flowers the best chance of blooming?

Most things he could let go of:

He loved the Big Red Chair, curled into whose corduroy he’d done virtually all his reading in the last dozen years. Hadn’t it absorbed something? Taken on qualities beyond chairness? Was the sweat stain on the back the only remnant of all that experience? What was trapped in the wide wales? Let it go , he thought.

The silverware. It had brought food to his mouth, to his children’s mouths. The most fundamental of all human activities, that which we can’t live without. He had washed them in the sink before positioning them in the dishwasher. He had unbent the spoons after Sam’s clumsy psychokinesis; used knives to pry off the lids of paint cans and scrape hardened who-knows-what from the sink; guided forks down the back of his shirt to scratch an out-of-reach itch. Let them go. Let it all go until it’s all gone .

The photo albums. He’d have liked some of those. But they shouldn’t be separated any more than the volumes of the Grove Encyclopedia of Art . And there was no way around the fact that Julia had taken almost all the pictures: observe her absence among them. Was her absence her claim to ownership?

The growth chart, inscribed on the kitchen doorframe. On New Year’s and Jewish New Year’s, Jacob would make a production of calling everyone to be measured. They stood facing out, backs flat as surfboards, never on tiptoes but always willing tallness. Jacob pressed a black Sharpie flush with the tops of their heads and drew a two-inch line. Then the initials and date. The first measurement was SB 01/01/05. The last was BB 01/01/16. Between them, a couple dozen lines. What did it look like? A tiny ladder for tiny angels to ascend and descend? The frets on the instrument playing the sound of life passing?

He would have been happy enough to take nothing and simply start again at the beginning. They’re only things . But that wouldn’t be fair. More, it would be unfair. Very quickly, the fairness and unfairness took on more importance than the things themselves. That feeling of aggrievement reached its peak when they started talking about amounts of money that simply didn’t matter. One spring afternoon, cherry blossoms stuck to the window, Dr. Silvers told him, “Whatever the conditions of your life, you’re never going to be happy if you use the word unfair as often as you do.” So he tried to let it all go — the things, and the ideas he imbued them with. He would begin again.

The first purchases for the new house were beds for the kids. Because Benjy’s room was on the small side, he needed a bed with storage drawers. Perhaps those were actually hard to find, or perhaps Jacob made the task hard. He spent three full days researching online and visiting stores, and ended up with something quite nice (from the offensively misnamed Design Within Reach), made of solid oak, which cost more than three thousand dollars. Plus tax, plus delivery.

The bed obviously needed a mattress — talk about obvious — and the mattress obviously had to be organic — talk about unobvious — because Julia would ask if it was, and then, not trusting his answer, would peel back the sheets and have a look. Would it kill him simply to say, “I went with something easy?” Yes, it would. But why? For fear of disappointing her? For fear of her? Because she was right, and it mattered what chemicals children spend nearly half of their lives pressed up against? Another thousand dollars.

The mattress needed sheets, obviously, but first it needed a mattress cover, because even though Benjy was on the verge of the end of nighttime accidents, he was still on the wrong side of that verge — it occurred to Jacob that the divorce might even inspire regression — and one such accident could effectively ruin the thousand-dollar organic mattress. So another hundred and fifty dollars. And then those sheets. The plural is not only for the various kinds of sheet necessary to define a sheet set, but for the second sheet set, because that’s what people get. He often found himself at the mercy of such logic: this has to be done in such and such way because it has to, because it’s what people do. People get two pieces of silverware for every one they will ever use. People buy esoteric vinegars for salads that they might make once, if ever. And why is the functionality of the fork so underrecognized? With a simple fork, one doesn’t need a whisk, a spatula, salad tongs (two forks for that), a “masher,” or pretty much any other highly specialized kitchen utensil whose real function is to be bought. He found his share of peace by resolving that if he was going to buy things he didn’t need, at least he was going to get crummy versions of them.