Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“You aren’t bald.”

“Please, God, not distinguished .”

“Not even distinguished.”

“Just taller than my hair.”

“You’re all the same: endlessly experimenting with facial hair configurations, obsessed with thinning hair where there isn’t any. And yet indifferent to the paunch spilling over your belt.”

“I am a very bald man. But that’s not the point. The point is, divorce is profoundly expensive — emotionally, logistically, financially — and it’s worth it. But just.”

“Just?”

“It’s no landslide. It just barely ekes it out.”

“But you eke it out with your life, right?”

“Better to get out of the building with burns over ninety percent of your body than perish inside. But best to have left before the fire.”

“Yeah, but it’s cold outside.”

“Where’s your burning house? Nunavut?”

“I always imagine house fires in winter.”

“And you?” Mark asked. “What’s the news on Newark Street?”

“You’re not the only one in a process.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, unfolding the napkin.

“Nunavut?”

“What?”

“You’ll be sharing none of it?”

“It’s truly nothing,” she said, refolding it.

“So, fine.”

“I shouldn’t talk about it.”

“You probably shouldn’t.”

“But even though we haven’t started drinking, I’ve got a psychosomatic buzz.”

“This is going to be a bomb, isn’t it?”

“I can trust you, right?”

“I suppose it depends.”

“Seriously?”

“Only a trustworthy person would admit to his unreliability.”

“Forget it.”

“I cheated on my taxes last year, OK? Badly. I deducted an office I don’t even have. Now you can blackmail me, if it comes to that.”

“Why would you cheat on your taxes?”

“Because it’s an honor to contribute to our functioning society, but only to a point. Because I’m a schmuck. Because my accountant is a schmuck and told me I could. I don’t know why.”

“The other day I was at home and heard a buzzing. There was a cell phone on the floor.”

“Oh shit.”

“What?”

“There is not a single story about a cell phone that ends well.”

“I opened it up and there were some pretty sexually explicit messages.”

“Texts, or images?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“An image is what it is. A text could be anything.”

“Licking cum out of assholes. That kind of stuff.”

“Image?”

“Words,” Julia said. “But if you ask for the context, I’m going to call the IRS.”

The drinks arrived, and the waitress scurried off. Julia wondered how much, if anything, she had heard, what she might tell the hostess, what young, unencumbered women might have a laugh that night at the expense of the Bloch family.

“I confronted Jacob about it, and he said it was just talk. Just some seriously overheated flirting.”

“Overheated? Licking cum out of assholes is Dresden.”

“It’s not good.”

“And who was at the other end of them?”

“A director he works with.”

“Not Scorsese…”

“ That’s too soon.”

“Seriously, Julia, I am so very sorry to hear this. And shocked.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. Like you said, the door has to open to light up the dark room.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Do you believe him?”

“In what sense?”

“That it was just words.”

“I do.”

“And does the distinction matter to you?”

“Between talking and doing? Sure it matters.”

“How much does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“He cheated on you, Julia.”

“He didn’t cheat on me.”

“Too big a word for having had sex with another woman?”

“He didn’t have sex with another woman.”

“Of course he did. And even if he didn’t, he did. And you know it.”

“I’m not excusing, or minimizing, what he did. But there’s a difference.”

“Writing to another woman like that is a betrayal, no hairs to split. I’m sorry, but I can’t sit here and allow you to think you don’t deserve better.”

“It was only words.”

“And if you’d written those ‘only words’? How do you think he’d have reacted?”

“If he knew that we were having this drink, he’d have a grand mal seizure.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how insecure he is.”

“In a marriage with three children?”

“He’s the fourth.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What?”

“If he were only pathologically insecure, OK. He is who he is. And if he’d only cheated, I suppose I can see the way back from that. But the combination? How can you accept it?”

“Because of the boys. Because I’m forty-three years old. Because I have almost twenty years of history with him, almost all of which is good history. Because regardless of the stupidity or evil of his mistake, he’s a fundamentally good person. He is. Because I’ve never sexted with anyone, but I’ve done my share of flirting and fantasizing. Because I often haven’t been a good wife, often on purpose. Because I’m weak.”

“Only the weakness is persuasive.”

A thought walked in, a memory: checking the boys for ticks on the porch of the rental in Connecticut. They passed the kids back and forth — looking in armpits, through the hair, between toes — she and Jacob double-checking each other’s work, always finding ticks the other missed. She was good at removing them in their entirety, and he was good at distracting the boys with funny impressions of their mother shopping in the supermarket. Why that memory right then?

“What do you fantasize about?” Mark asked.

“What?”

“You said you’ve done your share of fantasizing. About what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, taking a drink. “I was just talking.”

“I know. And I’m just asking. What do you fantasize about?”

“That’s not of your business.”

“ Not of my business?”

“None.”

“Drunk on your weakness?”

“I don’t find you cute.”

“Of course not.”

“Or charming. Despite all of the effort.”

“It’s effortless to be this charmless.”

“Or sexy.”

Mark took a long drink, draining the remaining half of his glass, then said, “Leave him.”

“I’m not going to leave him.”

“Why not?”

“Because marriage is the thing you don’t give up on.”

“No, life is.”

“And because I’m not you.”

“No, but you’re you .”

“There is not a part of me that wishes I were alone.”

But as the words entered the world, she knew they were false. She thought about her one-bedroom dream homes, the subconscious blueprints for her departure. They predated the sexting, by years.

“And I’m not going to destroy my family,” she added, at once a non sequitur and the logical conclusion to the line of thought.

“By fixing your family?”

“By ending it.”

Just then, at the best, or worst, possible moment, Billie came running up, giddy or asthmatic.

“I’m sorry to interrupt—”

“Is everything OK?”

“Micronesia has a n—”

“Slow down.”

“Micronesia has a nu—”

“Breathe.”

She reached for one of the glasses and took a gulp.

“That’s not water,” she said, her hand to her chest.

“It’s chardonnay.”

“I just broke the law.”

“We’ll testify to your character,” Mark said.

“Micronesia has a nuclear weapon!”