Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

After only a few minutes of gentle calling for him and casual searching, the boys began to panic. They rang the doorbell. They put out a bowl of human food. Max played through Suzuki Book I, which always elicited a whine. Nothing.

The screen door was closed, but the front door was open, so it was conceivable he had gone outside. ( Who left the door open? Jacob wondered — angry, but at no one.) They searched the neighborhood, calling for Argus, lovingly then desperately. Some neighbors joined the search. Jacob couldn’t help but wonder — only to himself, of course — if Argus had gone off to die, as some dogs apparently do. It became dark, hard to see.

As it turned out, he’d been in the upstairs guest bathroom. Somehow he’d closed himself in, and was too old, or good, to bark. Or maybe, at least until he became hungry, he preferred it in there. He was allowed to sleep in the bed that night. As were the kids. Because they’d thought they’d lost him, and because he’d been so close all along.

At dinner the next night, Jacob said: “Resolved: Argus should be allowed to sleep in the bed every night.” The boys whooped. Smiling, Jacob said, “I take it you’ll be arguing the affirmative.”

Not smiling, Julia said, “Wait, wait, wait.”

It was the last time those six animals slept under the same cover.

Jacob and Julia hid themselves inside the work that they hid from each other.

They sought happiness that didn’t have to be at the expense of anyone else’s happiness.

They hid behind the administration of family life.

Their purest seeking was on Shabbat, when they closed their eyes and made their home, and themselves, new.

That architecture of minutes, when Jacob excused himself to the bathroom and Julia didn’t read the book she held, was their purest hiding.

now you deserve to get fucked in the ass

They went to bed, Julia in her nightgown, Jacob in his T-shirt and boxers. She slept with a bra on. She said the support made her more comfortable, and maybe that was the entire truth. He said the warmth of the shirt made it easier to sleep, and maybe that was entirely true as well. They turned off the lights, took off their glasses, and stared through the same ceiling, the same roof, with two pairs of flawed eyes that could be compensated for but were never going to get better on their own.

“I wish you’d known me when I was a kid,” Jacob said.

“A kid?”

“Or just … before . Before I became this .”

“You wish I’d known you before you knew me.”

“No. You don’t understand.”

“Find another way to say it.”

“Julia, I am not … myself.”

“Then who are you?”

Jacob wanted to cry, but couldn’t. But he also couldn’t hide his hiding. She stroked his hair. There was nothing that she forgave him for. Nothing. Not the texts, not the years. But she couldn’t not respond to his need. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t not. It was a version of love. But double negatives never sustained a religion.

He said, “I’ve never said what I feel.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“That’s quite an indictment.”

“It’s true.”

“Well,” she said, with her first chuckle since finding the phone, “there are so many other things you do well.”

“That’s the sound of all not being lost.”

“What is?”

“Your chuckle.”

“That? No, that was the sound of appreciated irony.”

Fall asleep , he implored himself. Fall asleep.

“What do I do well?” he asked.

“You’re serious?”

“Just one thing.”

He was hurting. And no matter how much she felt he deserved the hurt, she couldn’t tolerate it. She’d devoted so much of herself — forfeited so much of herself — to protecting him. How many experiences, how many subjects of conversation, how many words, were sacrificed in order to soothe his profound vulnerability? They couldn’t go to a city that she’d been to with a boyfriend twenty years before. She couldn’t make gentle observations about the lack of boundaries at his parents’ house, much less his own parenting choices, which often resembled the absence of choices. She picked up Argus’s shits because Argus couldn’t help it, and because, even if she didn’t choose or want him, and even if it was an unfair burden, Argus was hers.

“You’re kind,” she told her husband.

“No. I’m really not.”

“I could give you a hundred examples…”

“Three or four would be extremely helpful right now.”

She didn’t want to do this, but she couldn’t not. “You always return your grocery cart to the right place. You fold up your Post and leave it for another reader on the Metro. You draw maps for lost tourists…”

“Is that kindness , or conscientiousness ?”

“So you’re conscientious.”

Could he tolerate her hurt? She wanted to know, but didn’t trust him to tell her.

She asked, “Does it make you sad that we love the kids more than we love each other?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“No, you would say I’m your enemy.”

“I was worked up.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t meaning what I was saying.”

“I know,” she said. “But you were saying it.”

“I don’t believe that anger reveals truth. Sometimes you just say something.”

“I know. But I don’t believe that any something comes from nowhere.”

“I don’t love the kids more than I love you.”

“You do,” she said. “ I do. Maybe we’re supposed to. Maybe evolution forces us to.”

“I love you,” he said, turning to her.

“I know you do. I’ve never doubted that, and I don’t doubt it now. But it’s a different kind of love than the kind I need.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“I don’t know.”

Fall asleep, Jacob.

He said, “You know how novocaine leaves you unsure of where your mouth ends and the world begins?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Or how sometimes you think there’s going to be another stair when there isn’t, and your foot falls through an imaginary stair?”

“Sure.”

Why was it so hard for him to cross the physical space? It shouldn’t have been, but it was.

“I don’t know what I was saying.”

She could feel him struggling.

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

He tucked his hand behind her hair, cupping the back of her neck.

“You’re tired,” he said.

“I’m really exhausted.”

“We’re tired. We’ve run ourselves into the ground. We need to find ways to rest.”

“I would understand if you were having an affair. I’d be angry, and I’d be hurt, and I’d probably be moved to do something I don’t even want to do—”

“Like what?”

“I would hate you, Jacob, but at least I’d understand you. I always understood you. Remember how I would tell you that? That you were the only person who made sense to me? Now everything you do confuses me.”

“Confuses you?”

“Your obsession with real estate.”

“I’m not obsessed with real estate.”

“Every time I walk past your laptop, the screen is filled with a house listing.”

“Just curious.”

“But why? And why won’t you tell Sam he’s better than you at chess?”

“I do.”

“You don’t. You let him believe that you let him win. And why are you such a completely different person in different situations? You become passive-aggressively quiet with me, but you snap at the boys, but you let your father walk all over you. You haven’t written me a Friday letter in a decade, but you spend all of your free time working on something that you love but won’t share with anyone, and then you write those texts that you say mean nothing. I walked seven circles around you when we got married. I can’t even find you now.”