Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

She got on her hands and knees. In the basket of magazines? Behind the toilet? She reached her hand around the bowl, and no sooner had she touched it than it buzzed again, as if touching her back. Whose phone was this? One final buzz: a missed call from JULIA.

Julia?

But she was Julia.

what happened to you?

Sam knew that everything would collapse, he just didn’t know exactly how or when. His parents were going to get divorced and ultimately hate each other and spread destruction like that Japanese reactor. That much was clear, if not to them. He tried not to notice their lives, but it was impossible to ignore how often his dad fell asleep in front of the absence of news, how often his mom retreated into pruning the trees of her architectural models, how his dad started serving dessert every night, how his mom told Argus she “needed space” whenever he licked her, how devoted his mom had become to the Travel section, how his dad’s search history was all real estate sites, how his mom would put Benjy on her lap whenever his dad was in the room, the violence with which his dad began to hate spoiled athletes who don’t even try , how his mom gave three thousand dollars to the fall NPR drive, how his dad bought a Vespa in retaliation, the end of appetizers in restaurants, the end of the third bedtime story for Benjy, the end of eye contact.

He saw what they either couldn’t see or couldn’t allow themselves to see, and that only made him more pissed, because being less stupid than one’s parents is repulsive, like taking a gulp from a glass of milk that you thought was orange juice. Because he was less stupid than his parents, he knew it would one day be suggested to him that he wouldn’t have to choose, even though he would. He knew he would begin to lose the desire or ability to fake it in school, and his grades would roll down an inclined plane according to some formula he was supposed to be proficient with, and the expressions of his parents’ love would inflate in response to their sadness about his sadness, and he would be rewarded for falling apart. His parents’ guilt about asking so much of him would get him off the hook for organized sports, and he’d be able to favorably renegotiate his screen time, and dinners would start to look a lot less organic, and soon enough he’d be steering toward the iceberg while his parents played dueling violins at each other.

He loved interesting facts, but was almost always troubled by his strange recurrent thoughts. Like this one: What if he witnessed a miracle? How would he convince anyone that he wasn’t joking? If a newborn told him a secret? If a tree walked away? If he met his older self and learned about all the avoidable catastrophic mistakes he would be unable to avoid? He imagined his conversations with his mom, with his dad, with fake friends at school, with real friends in Other Life. Most of them would just laugh. Maybe one or two could be nudged to a gesture of belief. Max would at least want to believe him. Benjy would believe him, but only because he believed everything. Billie? No. Sam would be alone with a miracle.

There was a knock on his door. Not the sanctuary door, but his bedroom door.

“Scram, fucker.”

“Excuse me?” his mom said, opening and entering.

“Sorry,” Sam said, flipping the iPad facedown on his desk. “I thought you were Max.”

“And you think that’s a good way to talk to your brother?”

“No.”

“Or to anybody?”

“No.”

“So why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe take a moment to question yourself.”

He didn’t know if the suggestion was rhetorical, but he knew this wasn’t the time to take her anything less than literally.

After a moment of questioning himself, the best he could muster was “I guess I’m someone who says things he knows he shouldn’t say.”

“I guess so.”

“But I’ll get better at that.”

She scanned the room. God, did he hate her little stolen surveys: of his homework, his belongings, his appearance. Her constant judgment carved through him like a river, creating two shores.

“What have you been doing up here?”

“Not e-mailing, or texting, or playing Other Life.”

“OK, but what have you been doing?”

“I don’t really know.”

“I’m not sure how that could be possible.”

“Isn’t this your day off?”

“No, it’s not my day off . It’s my day to get some things done that I’ve been putting off. Like breathing and thinking. But then we had to make an unscheduled visit to Adas Israel this morning, as you might remember, and then I had to meet with a client—”

“Why did you have to?”

“Because it’s my job.”

“But why today?”

“I felt that I had to, OK?”

“OK.”

“And then in the car it occurred to me that even though you have almost certainly thwarted it, we should probably continue to act as if your bar mitzvah is going to happen. And among the many, many things that only I would remember to remember is your suit.”

“What suit?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s true. I don’t have a suit.”

“Obvious once stated, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I continually find it amazing how many things are like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, we need to get you a suit.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“The first three places we go aren’t going to have what we need, and should we find something passable, it’s not going to fit, and the tailor is going to get it wrong twice.”

“Do I have to be there?”

“Where?”

“The suit place.”

“No, no, of course you don’t have to be there. Let’s make things easy and build our own 3-D printer out of popsicle sticks and macaroni, and render a perfectly accurate anatomical model of you that I can schlep to the suit place alone on my day off.”

“Could we teach it my haftorah?”

“I’m not laughing at your jokes right now.”

“That didn’t require saying.”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t have to say you aren’t laughing for someone to know you aren’t laughing.”

“That didn’t require saying, either, Sam.”

“Fine. Sorry.”

“We’re going to have to talk when Dad comes home from his meeting, but I need to say something. It is required .”

“Fine.”

“Stop saying ‘fine.’”

“Sorry.”

“Stop saying ‘sorry.’”

“I thought the whole point was that I was supposed to be apologizing?”

“For what you did.”

“But I didn’t —”

“I’m very disappointed in you.”

“I know.”

“That’s it? You don’t have anything else to say? Like maybe, ‘I did it and I’m sorry’?”

“I didn’t do it.”

She put her hands on her waist, forefingers through belt loops.

“Clean up this mess. It’s disgusting.”

“It’s my room.”

“But it’s our house.”

“I can’t move that board. We’re only halfway done with the game. Dad said we could finish after I’m not in trouble anymore.”

“You know why you always beat him?”

“Because he lets me win.”

“He hasn’t let you win in years.”

“He goes easy.”

“He doesn’t. You beat him because it excites him to capture pieces, but you’re always thinking four moves ahead. It makes you good at chess, and it makes you good at life.”

“I’m not good at life.”

“You are when you’re thoughtful.”