Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“…”

“One other thing is that last night we had a little snafu with Sam’s avatar.”

“…”

“In Other Life. His avatar. We were messing around with it.”

“ You were,” Max corrected.

“…”

“No, probably not. Max was fiddling with it—”

“What? Dad, that’s just not true. Mom, it’s not true!”

“And I wanted to, you know, display interest, and we ended up doing it together. Nothing dramatic. Just walking around and exploring. Anyway, we killed her.”

“ We didn’t. You did. Mom: Dad killed her!”

“…”

“His avatar. Yes.”

“…”

“Unintended.”

“…”

“You can’t fix death, Julia.”

“…”

“I spent a couple of months on the phone with tech support last night. I can probably get it back to more or less where it was, but it’s going to require sitting at his computer until the Messiah calls me away.”

“…”

“I haven’t spoken to Cory in at least a year.”

“…”

“It would be shitty to call him like this after not having returned his calls.”

“…”

“And I don’t think a computer genius is what we need. I’ll figure it out. But enough about the sickness and death over here. How are you guys? Having fun?”

“…”

“You’ve met the infamous Billie?”

“Infamous Billie?” Irv asked Max in the rearview mirror.

“Sam’s girlfriend,” Max said.

“…”

“And?”

“…”

“What’s he like around her?”

“…”

“I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“…”

“And Mark?”

“…”

“Is it good having him there?”

“…”

“Has he had to flush any pot down the toilet, or break up a French-kissing session?”

“French kissing is with tongues, right?” Max asked Irv.

“Mais oui.”

“…”

“What’s wrong?”

“…”

“What?”

“…”

“Something’s wrong. I can hear it.”

“…”

“Now I know something’s wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” Max asked.

“…”

“OK, but can you at least tell me what it has to do with, so my mind doesn’t spiral wildly for the next six hours?”

“…”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“…”

“Julia. What’s going on?”

“Seriously, what is going on?” Irv said, finally interested.

“…”

“If it were nothing we wouldn’t still be talking about it.”

“…”

“OK, I get it.”

“…”

“Wait, what?”

“…”

“Julia?”

“…”

“Mark did?”

“…”

“Why the fuck did he do that?”

“Language,” Max said.

“…”

“He’s married .”

“…”

“But he was .”

“…”

“What do you want me to do? Stab a voodoo doll of myself?”

Jacob turned up the radio to make his conversation harder for his father and son to listen in on. An English grammarian was sharing her infatuation with auto-antonyms: words that are their own opposites. Oversight means both “to oversee” and “to fail to see.” You dust a cake with sugar, dust crops with pesticides; but when furniture is dusted, something is being removed. The house weathered the storm, but the shingles were weathered.

“…”

“That isn’t fair.”

“…”

“Perhaps. But it’s also what people say when something isn’t fair.”

“…”

“Of course it is.”

“…”

“So this is just the most hysterical coincidence of timing since—”

“…”

“Ah.”

“…”

“So please tell me what it’s about. If not balance, then—?”

“…”

“Great.”

“…”

“Great.”

“…”

“The way I do it, yes.”

“…”

“Both.”

“What happened?” Max asked.

“Nothing,” Jacob said. And then, to Julia: “Max asked me what happened.”

“…”

“But you’re upset,” Max said.

“Life is upsetting,” Irv said. “Like blood is wet.”

“Scabs,” Max pointed out.

Jacob turned the volume yet louder, to the point of aggression. He was fast until his feet were held fast in concrete. The earth was held up by Atlas, and the earth held Atlas up on his way to elsewhere. After she left, no one was left.

“…”

“There is no of course anymore.”

“…”

“Are you coming home?”

“…”

“I don’t understand, Julia. I really don’t.”

“…”

“But you told me, in bed the other night, that it was something you—”

“…”

“You just said you didn’t stop it. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you.”

“Maybe you guys should get a room?” Irv said to Jacob in a whisper.

“…”

“Now I get it. Why you didn’t call last night.”

“…”

“Does Micronesia even have a bomb?”

“…”

Jacob hung up.

They were in battle against each other, and they had served together in battle.

“Jesus,” Irv said. “What the hell was that about?”

“That was about—”

“Dad?”

For only long enough to be able to dismiss it, Jacob considered telling his father and son everything. That would feel good, but at the price of his goodness.

“That. That was about a whole bunch of logistical crap, having to do with when they’re coming home later, and where the Israelis will sleep, and what they’ll eat, and so on.”

Of course Irv didn’t believe him. And of course Max didn’t, either. But Jacob almost believed himself.

He cleaved to the life from which he cleaved himself.

Billie was preparing her remarks for the General Assembly — after the unproductive caucus of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Micronesian delegation reconvened in Mark’s room and argued well past their scheduled curfew, narrowly voting to hand the bomb over to whatever competent and trustworthy third party could safely disarm it and dispose of the nuclear material — when her phone sang the first two words of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” just enough to unleash a Charybdis of feelings without revealing to others that she didn’t find the song totally cheesy. It was the special tone for Sam’s texts; she had been holding her phone in her hand since the night before, wanting and not wanting to hear I heard .

are you working on your speech?

what makes you think i want to talk to you?

that you just wrote that

someone should invent an emoji

for the word someone should invent

for how hurt i am

i’m sorry

actually, it’s guernica

…

where’d you go?

had to look up guernica

you could have just asked

nobody is like you, and you are never

like anybody else

did you get that off the side of a tampon box?

???

try harder

emet hi hasheker hatov beyoter

what truth? and what lie?

really, really like …

that’s the lie

and the truth?

love

did you just say the hardest thing?

no, that was the easiest

why were you so mean to me?

can i tell you something?

ok

when i was eight, my left hand got smashed

in the hinge of a heavy iron door

three of my fingers were severed

and had to be reattached

the nails are all mangled

when my hand stops growing i’m going

to have fake nails attached

anyway, i keep my hand in my pocket a lot