Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“But you didn’t come back and say anything else.”

“I was too afraid.”

“What were you afraid of?”

“There was nothing to be afraid of. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I know there was nothing actually to be afraid of. But what were you afraid of?”

“Making it real?”

“Going?”

“No. What we had. What we have.”

Julia tucked her toothbrush deep in her cheek and brought her palms to the sink. Jacob spit, and said, “I’m failing my family just like my father failed us.”

“You’re not,” she said. “But it’s not enough to avoid his mistakes.”

“What?”

She removed the brush and said, “You’re not. But it’s not enough to avoid his mistakes.”

“You’re a great mom.”

“What made you say that?”

“I was thinking about how my mom was a great mom.”

She closed the vanity, paused, as if considering whether to speak, then spoke: “You aren’t happy.”

“What made you say that ?”

“It’s the truth. You seem happy. Maybe you even think you’re happy. But you aren’t.”

“You think I’m depressed?”

“No. I think you put enormous emphasis on happiness — your own and others’—and find unhappiness so threatening that you would rather go down with the ship than acknowledge a leak.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“And yes, I think you’re depressed.”

“It’s probably just mono.”

“You’re tired of writing a TV show that isn’t yours, and that everyone loves but you.”

“Not everyone loves it.”

“Well, you definitely don’t.”

“I like it.”

“And you hate only liking what you do.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do know,” she said. “You know there’s something inside of you — a book, or show, or movie, whatever — and if it could only be released, all of the sacrifices you feel you’ve made wouldn’t feel like sacrifices anymore.”

“I don’t feel that I’ve had to make—”

“See how you changed the grammar? I said, the sacrifices you feel you’ve made . You said, had to make . See the difference?”

“Jesus, you should really get some accreditation and a couch.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“I know.”

“And you’re tired of pretending to be happily married—”

“Julia.”

“—and you hate only liking the most important relationship in your life.”

Jacob often resented Julia, sometimes even hated her, but there was never a moment when he wanted to hurt her.

“That isn’t true,” he said.

“You’re too kind or scared to admit it, but it’s true.”

“It’s not.”

“And you’re tired of being a dad and a son.”

“Why are you trying to hurt me?”

“I’m not trying to. And there are worse things than hurting each other.” She arranged the various anti-aging and anti-dying products on the shelf and said, “Let’s go to bed.”

Let’s go to bed. Those four words differentiate a marriage from every other kind of relationship. We aren’t going to find a way to agree, but let’s go to bed. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We hate each other right now, but let’s go to bed. It’s the only bed we have. Let’s go to our sides, but the sides of the same bed. Let’s retreat into ourselves, but together. How many conversations had ended with those four words? How many fights?

Sometimes they would go to bed and make one more effort, now horizontal, to work it through. Sometimes going to bed made things possible that weren’t possible in the infinitely large room. The intimacy of being under the same sheet, two furnaces contributing to the shared warmth, but at the same time not having to see each other. The view of the ceiling, and all that ceilings make one think about. Or perhaps it was at the back of the brain, where all the blood then pooled, that the generosity lobe was located.

Sometimes they would go to bed and roll to the edges of the mattress that they independently wished were a king, and independently wish it would all just go away, without having enough bones in their forefingers to hold down the word it. It the night? It the marriage? It the entire predicament of this family’s family life? They went to bed together not because they didn’t have a choice— kein briere iz oich a breire , as the rabbi would say at the funeral in three weeks; not to have a choice is also a choice . Marriage is the opposite of suicide, but is its only peer as a definitive act of will.

Let’s go to bed …

Just before easing himself onto the bed, Jacob gave a puzzled look, patted his boxer briefs’ nonexistent pockets, as if suddenly realizing he didn’t know where his key was, and said, “I’m just going to pee.” Exactly as he did every night at that moment.

He closed and locked the door, opened the middle drawer of the medicine cabinet, lifted the stack of New Yorker s, and removed the box of hydrocortisone acetate suppositories. He laid out a bath towel on the floor, rolled another into a pillow, rested himself on his left side with his right knee bent, thought about Terri Schiavo, or Bill Buckner, or Nicole Brown Simpson, and gently pushed it in. He suspected that Julia knew what he did every night, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her, because that would first require admitting to having an entire human body. Almost all of his body was sharable almost all of the time, as was almost all of hers almost always, but sometimes some parts had to be hidden. They had spent countless hours parsing the bowel movements of their children; directly applied Desitin with bare forefingers; twirled rectal thermometers, at Dr. Donowitz’s instruction, to stimulate the sphincter in an effort to relieve a baby’s constipation. But when it came to each other, some denial was required.

you don’t deserve to get fucked in the ass

The asshole, with which every member of the Bloch family was, in his or her own way, obsessed, was the epicenter of Jacob and Julia’s denial. It was necessary for life, but never to be spoken of. It was what one had, but had to hide. It was where everything came together — the cinch of the human body — and nothing, especially not attention, and especially not a finger or cock, and especially, especially not a tongue, could go. There were enough matches by the toilet to both light and fuel a bonfire.

Every night, Jacob excused himself to pee, and every night Julia waited for him, and she knew he hid the suppository wrappers in balls of toilet paper at the bottom of the lidded can, and she knew that when he flushed he flushed nothing. Those minutes of hiding, of silent shame, had walls and a ceiling. Just as their Shabbats, and those whispered confessions of pride, had made architecture of time. Without having hired any men with lumbar braces, or sent change-of-address cards, or even replaced one key on their heart’s ring with another, they had moved from one house to another.

Max used to love playing hide-and-seek, and no one, not even Benjy, could tolerate it. The house was too well known, too thoroughly explored, the game was as done as checkers. So it was only on special occasions (a birthday, as a reward for an act of extreme menschiness) that Max was able to force a game. And they were always as boring as everyone anticipated: someone was holding his breath behind Julia’s blouses in the closet, someone was flat in the bath or crouched under the sink, someone was hiding with his eyes closed, unable to overcome the instinct that it made him less visible.

Even when the boys weren’t hiding, Jacob and Julia were seeking them — out of fear, out of love. But hours could pass without Argus’s absence being noticed. He’d always turn up when the front door was opened, or the bath was run, or food was put on the table. His return was taken for granted. Jacob tried to stimulate heated discussion at dinner, to help the boys become eloquent, critical thinkers. In the middle of one such debate — should Jerusalem or Tel Aviv be Israel’s capital? — Julia asked if anyone had seen Argus. “His dinner is just sitting there.”