Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“I’m not having an affair.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not.”

She started to cry.

“I exchanged some horribly inappropriate texts with someone at work.”

“An actress.”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Does it matter?”

“If it matters to me, it matters.”

“One of the directors.”

“Who has my name?”

“No.”

“Is it that woman with the red hair?”

“No.”

“You know, I don’t even care.”

“Good. You shouldn’t. There’s no reason—”

“How did it start?”

“It just … evolved. As things do. It took on a—”

“I don’t even care.”

“It never became anything other than words.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you do.”

“Maybe four months.”

“You’re asking me to believe that for four months you’ve been exchanging sexually explicit texts with someone you work with every day and it never led to anything physical?”

“I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m telling you the truth.”

“The sad thing is, I believe you.”

“That’s not sad. It’s hope.”

“No, it’s sad. You are the only person I know, or could even imagine, who would be capable of writing such bold sentences while living so meekly. I actually do believe that you could write to someone that you want to lick her asshole, and have that bluff called, and then sit beside her every day for an entire four months without allowing your hand to wander the six necessary inches to her thigh. Without mustering that bravery. Without even sending the signal that it’s OK for her to take up the slack of your cowardice and move her hand onto your thigh. Think about the signals you must have been sending to keep her pussy wet and her hand away.”

“That’s too far, Julia.”

“ Too far? You’re serious? You are the person in this room who doesn’t know what too far means.”

“I know that I went too far in what I wrote.”

“I’m telling you, you didn’t go far enough in what you lived.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You want me to have an affair?”

“No, I want you to write Shabbat letters to me. But if you’re going to write pornographic texts to someone else, then yes, I want you to have an affair. Because then I could respect you.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I’m making perfect sense. I would have respected you so much more if you’d fucked her. It would have proven something to me that I have found harder and harder to believe.”

“Which is?”

“That you’re a human being.”

“You don’t believe I’m human?”

“I don’t believe you’re there at all.”

Jacob opened his mouth, without knowing what would come out. He wanted to return everything she’d given to him, to catalog her neuroses, and irrationalities, and weaknesses, and hypocrisies, and ugliness. He also wanted to acknowledge that everything she’d said was true, but contextualize his monstrousness — not all of it was his fault. He wanted to mortar bricks with one hand while taking a hammer to them with the other.

But instead of his voice, they heard Benjy’s: “I need you! I really need you!”

Julia released a burst of laughter.

“Why are you laughing?”

“It has nothing to do with things not being lost.”

It was the nervous laughter of oppositions. The dark laughter of the knowledge of the end. The religious laughter of scale.

Benjy called out again through the monitor: “Someone! Someone!”

They fell silent.

Julia searched the darkness for her husband’s eyes, wanting to search them.

“Someone!”

Julia had fallen asleep by the time Jacob came back down from calming Benjy. Or she did a perfectly believable impression of a sleeping person. Jacob was restless. He didn’t want to read — not a book or a magazine, not even a real estate blog. He didn’t want to watch TV. Writing wasn’t going to happen. Neither was masturbation. No activity appealed to him, anything would feel like an act, an impersonation of a person.

He went to Sam’s room, hoping for a few moments of peace, observing his first child’s sleeping body. A shifting light spread from under the door onto the hallway, then pulled back: waves from the digital ocean on the other side. Sam, ever vigilant of his privacy, heard his father’s heavy steps.

“Dad?”

“The one and lonely.”

“So … Are you standing there? Do you need something?”

“Can I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer he opened the door.

“You were being rhetorical?” Sam asked, not looking away from the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m watching TV.”

“You don’t have a TV.”

“On my computer.”

“So aren’t you watching your computer?”

“Sure.”

“What’s on?”

“Everything.”

“What are you watching?”

“Nothing.”

“You have a second?”

“Yes: one…”

“I was being rhetorical.”

“Ah.”

“How’s it going?”

“Is this a conversation?”

“Just checking in.”

“I’m fine.”

“Does it feel great to feel fine?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I think I heard it somewhere. So … Sam.”

“The one and bony.”

“Nice one. Anyway, listen. I’m sorry to have to get into this. But. The thing at Hebrew school this morning.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Right. It’s just.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“It’s not even a question of that.”

“Yes it is.”

“It would be a whole lot easier to get you out of this if you had some other explanation.”

“I don’t.”

“A bunch of those words are really no big deal. Between us, it wouldn’t even bother me if you had written them.”

“I didn’t.”

“But the n-word.”

Sam finally turned his attention to his father.

“What, divorce ?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Why did you say that?”

“I didn’t.”

“Are you talking about Mom and me?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even hear myself over the fighting and glass-breaking.”

“Earlier? No, what you heard—”

“It’s OK. Mom came up and we had a talk.”

Jacob glanced at the TV on the computer. He thought about how Guy de Maupassant ate lunch at the Eiffel Tower’s restaurant every day because it was the only place in Paris without a view of the tower. The Nats were playing the Dodgers, extra innings. With a sudden burst of excitement, he clapped his hands. “Let’s go to the game tomorrow!”

“What?”

“So fun! We could get there early for batting practice. Eat tons of shit.”

“Eat tons of shit?”

“Shitty food.”

“Would it be OK if I just watched this?”

“But I’m having an awesome idea.”

“Are you?”

“Aren’t I?”

“I have soccer, and cello, and bar mitzvah lessons, assuming that’s still on, God forbid.”

“I can get you out of that.”

“My life?”

“I’m afraid I can only bring you into that.”

“And they’re playing in L.A.”

“Right,” Jacob said, and quieter, “I should have realized that.”

That quietness made Sam wonder if maybe he’d hurt his father. He experienced a tremor of a feeling that, despite knowing it was utterly foolish, he would grow to experience more often and more strongly in the coming year: that maybe everything was at least a little bit his fault.

“Finish the chess game?”