Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

He often thought of that piece by Andy Goldsworthy, for which he lay flat on the ground as a storm came in, and remained there until it passed. When he stood up, his dry silhouette remained. Like the chalk outline of a victim. Like the unpunctured circle where the dartboard used to be.

“He still enjoys himself at the park,” Jacob said to the vet.

“What’s that?”

“I was just saying that he still enjoys himself at the park.”

And with that seeming non sequitur, the conversation rotated 180 degrees, so that the other side faced front.

“Sometimes he does,” Max said. “But mostly he just lies there. And he has such a hard time with the stairs at home.”

“He ran the other day.”

“And then limped for like the next three days.”

“Look,” Jacob said, “obviously his quality of life is diminishing. Obviously he’s not the dog he used to be. But he has a life worth living.”

“Says who?”

“Dogs don’t want to die.”

“Great-Grandpa does.”

“Whoa, wait. What did you just say?”

“Great-Grandpa wants to die,” Max said matter-of-factly.

“Great-Grandpa isn’t a dog.” The full strangeness of that comment started to creep up the walls of the room. Jacob tried to cut it back with the obvious amendment: “And he doesn’t want to die.”

“Says who?”

“Would you two like a little time?” the vet asked, crossing her arms and taking a long backward stride toward the door.

“Great-Grandpa has hopes for the future,” Jacob said. “Like living to see Sam’s bar mitzvah. And he takes pleasure in memories.”

“Same as Argus.”

“You think Argus is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah?”

“No one is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah.”

“Great-Grandpa is.”

“Says who?”

“Dogs take all kinds of very subtle pleasure in life,” the vet said. “Lying in a patch of sun. The occasional bit of tasty human food. It’s hard to say how far their mental experience extends beyond that. It’s left to us to make assumptions.”

“Argus feels like we forgot him,” Max said, making his assumption clear.

“Forgot him?”

“Just like Great-Grandpa.”

Jacob gave the vet a ruffled smile and said, “Who said Great-Grandpa feels forgotten?”

“He does.”

“When?”

“When we talk.”

“And when is that?”

“When we skype.”

“He doesn’t mean it.”

“So how do you know Argus means it when he whines?”

“Dogs can’t not mean things.”

“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that Argus should be put to sleep.”

“Oh. That’s not for me to say. It’s a very personal decision.”

“OK, but if you thought he shouldn’t be put to sleep, you would have just said he shouldn’t be put to sleep.”

“He runs in the park, Max. He watches movies on the sofa.”

“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

“My job, as a vet, is to care for Argus, to help keep him healthy. It isn’t to offer advice about end-of-life decisions.”

“So in other words, you agree with me.”

“She didn’t say that, Max.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you think my great-grandfather should be put to sleep?”

“No,” the vet said, immediately regretting the credence her response lent the question.

“Tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that you think Argus should be put to sleep.”

“That’s really not for me to say.”

“See?” Max said to his father.

“You realize Argus is in the room, Max?”

“He doesn’t understand.”

“Of course he understands.”

“So hold on. You think Argus understands, but Great-Grandpa doesn’t?”

“Great-Grandpa understands.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re a monster.”

“Max.”

“Tell him.”

Argus vomited a dozen almost perfectly formed McNuggets at the vet’s feet.

“How do they keep the glass clean?” Jacob had asked his father, three decades before.

Irv gave a puzzled look and said, “Windex?”

“I mean the other side. People can’t walk in there. They’d ruin all the stuff on the ground.”

“But if no one ever goes in, it stays clean.”

“It doesn’t,” Jacob said. “Remember when we came back from Israel and everything was dirty? Even though no one had been there for three weeks? Remember how we wrote our names in Hebrew in the dust on the windows?”

“A house isn’t a closed environment.”

“Yes it is.”

“Not as closed as a diorama.”

“It is.”

The only thing Irv loved more than teaching Jacob was being challenged by him: the intimations of one day being surpassed by his child.

“Maybe that’s why they face that side of the glass away,” he said, smiling, but hiding his fingers in his son’s hair, which, given enough time, would grow to bury them.

“I don’t think glass works like that.”

“No?”

“You can’t hide the other side.”

“Do animals work like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the face of that bison.”

“What?”

“Look closely.”

Sam and Billie sat in the back of the bus, several empty rows behind the rest.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

“OK.”

“On your iPad.”

“I left it at home.”

“Seriously?”

“My mom made me,” Sam said, wishing he’d invented a less infantilizing explanation.

“Did she read an op-ed, or something?”

“She wants me to be ‘present’ on the trip.”

“What uses ten gallons of gas but doesn’t move?”

“What?”

“A Buddhist monk.”

Sam laughed, not getting it.

“You’ve seen the one where the alligator bites the electric eel?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s fucking nuts.”

Billie took out the generic, lamer-than-an-adult-on-a-scooter tablet her parents got her for Christmas, and started typing. “Have you seen the weatherman with the hard-on?”

They watched together and laughed.

“The best part is when he says, ‘We’re looking at a hot one.’”

She loaded a new video and said, “Check out the syphilis on this guinea pig.”

“I think that’s a hamster.”

“You’re missing the genital sores for the trees.”

“I hate to sound like my dad, but isn’t it insane that we have access to this shit?”

“It’s not insane. It’s the world.”

“Well, then isn’t the world insane?”

“Definitionally it can’t be. Insane is what other people are.”

“I really, really like how you think.”

“I really, really like that you would say that.”

“I’m not saying it; it’s true.”

“And another thing I really, really like is that you can’t bring yourself to say the l-word, because you’re afraid I’ll think you’re saying something you aren’t.”

“Huh?”

“Really, really, really like.”

He loved her.

She put the tablet in a coma and said, “Emet hi hasheker hatov beyoter.”

“What’s that?”

“Hebrew.”

“You speak Hebrew?”

“As Franz Rosenzweig famously responded when asked if he was religious, ‘Not yet.’ But I figured one of us should learn a bit in honor of your bar mitzvah.”

“Franz who ? And wait, what’s it mean?”

“Truth is the safest lie.”

“Ah. Well: Anata wa subete o rikai shite iru baai wa, gokai suru hitsuyo ga arimasu .”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“‘If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.’ Japanese, I think. It was the epigraph to Call of Duty: Black Ops.”