Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“I’m sure it is, because there was an article about it.”

“Where?”

“The Arts section.”

“The Arts section? Since when do you read the Arts section, and since when were video games art?”

“It’s not a game.”

“And even if it did make all that money,” Jacob said, sliding his feet into the stirrups of his high horse, “so what? What is that even a measure of?”

“How much money it made.”

“Which is a measure of what?”

“I don’t know, how important it is?”

“There’s a difference, I’m sure you realize, between prevalence and importance .”

“I’m sure you realize that I don’t even know what prevalence means.”

“Kanye West is not more culturally important than—”

“Yes he is.”

“—than Philip Roth.”

“First of all, I’ve never even heard of that person. Second, Kanye might not be valuable to you, but he’s definitely more important to the world.”

Jacob remembered the period when Max was obsessed with relative values— Would you rather have a handful of diamonds or a houseful of silver? For a moment, which disappeared as it emerged, he saw the smaller Max.

“I guess we look at things differently,” Jacob said.

“That’s right,” Max said. “I look at things correctly. You don’t. That’s a difference. How many people watch your TV show every week?”

“It’s not my show.”

“The show that you write for.”

“That’s not a simple question. There’s people who watch it when it’s first on, then people who watch other showings, and DVR—”

“A few million?”

“Four.”

“Seventy million people play this game. And they had to buy it, not just turn on the TV when they didn’t feel like spending time with their kids or making out with their wives.”

“How old are you?”

“Basically eleven.”

“When I was your age—”

Max pointed at the screen.

“Pay attention to what you’re doing, Dad.”

“Of course I am.”

“Just don’t—”

“Under control.”

“Dad—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeahs,” he said, then turned his attention from the iPad to Max. “They’re a band.”

“Dad!”

“You really inherited Mom’s talent for worrying.”

And then there was a sound Jacob had never heard before — a cross between a screeching tire and the dying animal it just ran over.

“Oh shit!” Max screamed.

“What?”

“Oh shit !”

“Hold on, is that blood mine?”

“It’s Sam’s ! You killed him!”

“No I didn’t. I just smelled some flowers.”

“You just inhaled a Bouquet of Fatality!”

“Why would there be a bouquet of fatality ?”

“ So assholes have a stupid way to die!”

“ Easy , Max. It was an honest mistake.”

“Who cares if it was honest!”

“And with all due respect—”

“Oh shit, shit, shit!”

“—it’s a game.”

Jacob shouldn’t have said that. Clearly he shouldn’t have.

“With all due respect,” Max said with scary composure, “fuck you.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said”—Max was unable to look his father in the eye, but he had no trouble repeating himself—“ fuck you .”

“Don’t you ever speak to me like that.”

“Too bad I didn’t inherit Mom’s talent for eating shit.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing.”

“Nothing, OK ?”

“No, not OK. Mom does a lot of things, and eating shit is not one of them. And yes, I know you weren’t speaking literally.”

Had Max also heard them fighting? The broken glass? Or was he merely fishing, seeing what kind of response he might get? What kind of response did he want? And what was Jacob prepared to give?

Jacob stamped to the door, then turned back and said, “When you’re ready to apologize, I’ll be—”

“I’m dead ,” Max said. “The dead don’t apologize.”

“You aren’t dead , Max. There are actual dead people in the world, and you aren’t one of them. You are upset. Upset and dead are different states.”

The phone rang — a reprieve. Jacob was expecting it to be Julia; when away, she always checked in before the kids went to bed.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Benjy?”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Is everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m in my pj’s.”

“Do you need anything, buddy?”

“No. Do you?”

“I’m fine.”

“You just wanted to say hi before bed?”

“ You called me .”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to Max.”

“Now? On the phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Benjy wants to talk to you,” Jacob said, handing the phone to Max.

“Could we have a little privacy?” Max asked.

The absurdity of it, the agony and beauty of it, almost brought Jacob to his knees: these two independent consciousnesses, neither of which existed ten and a half years ago, and existed only because of him, could now not only operate free of him (that much he’d known for a long time), but demand freedom.

Jacob picked up the iPad and left his offspring to talk. While he fiddled, he accidentally maximized the window behind Other Life. It was a discussion board, with the heading “Can You Humanely Euthanize a Dog at Home?” The first comment his eyes fell upon read: “I had the same problem, but with a grown dog. It’s so sad. My mum took Charlie to our friend, a farmer down the way, who said he would be able to shoot him. It was much easier for us. He took him for a walk, talked to him, and shot him while they were walking.”

Instead of calling to check on Benjy, who was obviously fine, Julia fussed with her hair, sucked in her cheeks, tugged down her shirt, scrutinized her makeup, pressed her belly, squinted. She texted Mark, if only to create a hard stop to her self-loathing: confirmed kid is alive. ready whenever . By the time she got to the hotel bar, he was already at a table.

“Spacious accommodations?” he asked as she took the seat across from him.

“A room of my own? An oven would feel spacious.”

“Sounds like you were born seventy-five years too late.” And then, with a faux wince: “Too soon?”

“Let’s see, my father-in-law would say it’s absolutely fine, so long as the person making the joke doesn’t have a cell of goyish blood. Then Jacob would disagree. Then they’d switch positions and fight with twice the energy.”

The waiter approached.

“A couple of glasses of white?” Mark suggested.

“Sounds great,” Julia said. “Are you going to have one, too?”

Mark laughed and held up two fingers.

“How is Irv? Seems like he’s stirred up a lot of shit.”

“He’s a human plunger. But it beats being ignored.”

“Being universally reviled?”

“Talking about him is exactly what he’d want us to be doing right now. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”

“Moving along.”

“So how’s it going?”

“What? The divorce?”

“The divorce, your rediscovered interior monologue, the whole thing.”

“It’s a process.”

“Isn’t that how Cheney described torture?”

“You know that old joke: ‘Why are divorces so expensive?’”

“Why?”

“Because they’re worth it.”

“I thought that’s what they said about chemo.”

“Well, both make you bald,” he said, holding back his hair.