Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

It was Barak calling from upstairs, asking if he could use the iPad.

“What’s wrong with yours?”

“We want two.”

Tamir hung up.

“It’s a regional catastrophe,” Jacob resumed, “not an Israeli one. It’s geological, not political.”

“Nothing is not political,” Tamir said.

“This isn’t political.”

“Give it a few minutes.”

“And if you were somewhat less insistent on hearing your name, it would be somewhat easier to say.”

“Ah…”

“What?”

“It’s our fault.”

“That came out wrong.”

“And can I ask you,” Tamir went on, “who you is? When you say, ‘If you were somewhat less insistent,’ who is the you ?”

“You.”

“Me, Tamir?”

“Yeah. Israelis.”

“ Israelis. OK. I just wanted to be sure you didn’t mean Jews.”

“Look, it was a statement, and he was being careful.”

“But this isn’t political.”

“He didn’t want to make it political.”

“So what’s the plan?” Julia asked, walking into the room.

“Dumbarton Oaks,” Jacob said.

“Julia,” Tamir said, turning to face her, “let me ask you. Do you feel a need to be careful when one of your friends is injured?”

“Theoretically?”

“No, in life.”

“What kind of injury?”

“Something serious.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever had a seriously injured friend.”

“Some life.”

“Theoretically? Yes, I’d be careful. If it were necessary.”

“And you?” Tamir asked Jacob.

“Of course I would be careful.”

“We’re different in that way.”

“You’re reckless?”

“I’m loyal.”

“Loyalty doesn’t require recklessness,” Julia said, as if she were taking Jacob’s side, which she didn’t feel like doing, especially without knowing what they were talking about.

“Yes, it does.”

“And no one is helped by a loyalty that makes the situation worse,” Jacob said, wanting Julia to feel that he had her back.

“Unless the situation is going to get worse anyway. Your father would agree with me.”

“Which only proves the sanity of my argument.”

Tamir laughed at that. And with his laugh, the rising temperature was halved, the pressure relieved.

“What’s the best sushi in Washington?” Tamir asked.

“I don’t know,” Jacob said, “but I know it isn’t as good as the worst sushi in Israel, which is better than the best sushi in Japan.”

“I’ll probably stick around here while you guys go out today,” Julia said. “I’ve got some things to catch up on.”

“What kind of things?” Tamir asked, as only an Israeli would.

“Bar mitzvah stuff.”

“I thought it was canceled.”

Julia looked at Jacob. “You told him it was canceled?”

“I did not.”

“Don’t lie to your wife,” Tamir said.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“He keeps saying it?” Julia asked.

“You can’t see it,” Jacob told Julia, “but he’s nudging me right now. So you know.”

Tamir gave Jacob another invisible nudge and said, “You told me that with Isaac’s death, the earthquake, and what happened between the two of you—”

“I did not say anything,” Jacob said.

“Don’t lie to your wife, Jacob.”

“What, about Mark?” Julia asked. “And did you tell him about your phone?”

“I hadn’t told him about anything that you just told him about.”

“And it’s none of my business,” Tamir said.

Addressing only Julia, Jacob said, “What I told him was that we were talking about how to modify the bar mitzvah, in light of, you know, everything.”

“Modify what?” Sam asked.

How do children do that? Jacob wondered. Not only enter rooms silently, but at the worst possible moment.

“Your bar mitzvah,” Max said. And where did he come from?

“Mom and I were talking about how to make sure the bar mitzvah feels good within the context of, you know.”

“The earthquake?”

“What earthquake?” Benjy asked, without looking up from the maze he was drawing. Had he always been there?

“And Great-Grandpa,” Jacob said.

“Dad and I—”

“You can just say we ,” Sam said.

“We don’t think we can have a band,” Jacob said, taking over the parental side of the conversation in an effort to demonstrate to Julia that he was also capable of delivering difficult news.

“Fine,” Sam said. “They sucked shit anyway.”

It’s very hard to have a productive dialogue with a thirteen-year-old boy, as every gently broached subject becomes an Ultimate Conversation, requiring defense systems and counterattacks to attacks that were never launched. What begins as an innocent observation about his habit of leaving things in the pockets of dirty clothes ends with Sam blaming his parents for his twenty-eighth-percentile height, which makes him want to commit suicide on YouTube.

“They didn’t suck,” Jacob said.

Still focusing on his maze, Benjy said, “When Mom parked the car, it wasn’t right, so I picked it up and put it in the right place.”

“Thank you for that,” Julia said to Benjy. And then, to Sam: “There’s a nicer way to put it.”

“Jesus,” Sam said, “I’m not allowed to have an opinion anymore?”

“Now, hold on a minute,” Jacob said. “ You chose them. Mom didn’t. I didn’t. You did. You watched the videos of half a dozen bands, and it was your opinion that Electric Brigade should be the band for your bar mitzvah.”

“They were the least pathetic of three totally pathetic options, and I chose them under duress. That’s not the same as being a groupie.”

“What duress?”

“The duress of being forced to have a bar mitzvah when you know I find all of this shit to be bullshit.”

Jacob tried to spare Julia from having to be the one, yet again, to object to bad language: “ Shit to be bullshit , Sam?”

“Is that poor usage?”

“Impoverished. And try to believe me when I tell you I would have been every bit as happy not to pay the utterly mediocre Electric Brigade five thousand dollars to play bad covers of bad songs.”

“But the rite of passage is nonnegotiable,” Sam confirmed.

“Yes,” Jacob said, “that’s correct.”

“Because it was nonnegotiable for you, because it was nonnegotiable for—”

“Correct again. That’s what Jewish people do.”

“Not negotiate?”

“Have bar mitzvahs.”

“Ah … I’d completely misunderstood the whole thing. And now that I realize we have bar mitzvahs because we have bar mitzvahs, what I really feel moved to do is marry a Jewish woman and have Jewish children.”

“You need to slow down,” Julia said.

“And I definitely don’t want to be buried,” Sam said, the Ultimate now within sight. “Especially if Jewish law requires it.”

“So be cremated like me,” Max said.

“Or don’t die,” Benjy suggested.

Like a conductor zipping up a piece of music, Julia gave a quick and stern “ Enough ,” and that was it. What was so scary about her? What about that five-foot-four woman, who never inflicted physical or emotional violence, or even saw a punishment all the way through, terrified her husband and children to the point of unconditional surrender?

Jacob broke down the breakdown: “The thing we want to be sensitive to is the appearance of enjoying life too much in the face of Great-Grandpa’s death. Not to mention the earthquake. It would be in poor taste, and also just feel bad.”