Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“I’m scared,” he said again. “And I’m sick of bonding with Eitan’s dad.”

“You have more than Eitan’s dad.”

“That’s right: we have the Arabs.”

“Us.”

“ Us? Your children are asleep on organic mattresses. My son is in the middle of that ,” he said, pointing at the television again. “I give more than half of everything I have, and you give one percent, tops. You want to be part of the epic, and you feel entitled to tell me how to run my house, and yet you give and do nothing. Give more or talk less. But no more referring to us. ”

Like Jacob, Tamir preferred not to keep his phone in his pocket and would rest it on tables or counters. Several times, despite it looking nothing like Jacob’s phone, Jacob instinctively picked it up. The first time, the home screen was a photo of Noam as a child, lining up a corner kick. The next time, it was a different photo: Noam in his uniform, saluting. The next time: Noam in Rivka’s arms.

“I understand that you’re worried,” Jacob said. “I’d be losing my mind. And if I were you, I’d probably resent me, too. It’s been a long day.”

“Remember how you were obsessed with our bomb shelter? When you first visited? Your father, too. I practically had to drag you out of there.”

“That’s not true.”

“When we defeated half a dozen Arab armies in ’48—”

“ We? You weren’t even born.”

“That’s right, I shouldn’t have said we . It includes you, and you had nothing to do with it.”

“I had as much to do with it as you did.”

“Except that my grandfather risked his life, and therefore risked my life.”

“He had no choice.”

“America has always been a choice for us. Just as Israel has for you. Every year you end your seder with ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ and every year you choose to celebrate your seder in America.”

“That’s because Jerusalem is an idea.”

Tamir laughed and banged the table. “Not for the people who live there, it isn’t. Not when you’re putting a gas mask on your child. What did your father do in ’73, when the Egyptians and Syrians were pushing us toward the sea?”

“He wrote op-eds, led marches, lobbied.”

“You know I love your father, but I hope you can hear yourself, Jacob. Op-eds? My father commanded a tank unit.”

“My father helped.”

“He gave what he could give without sacrificing, or even risking, anything. Do you think he considered getting on a plane and coming to fight?”

“He didn’t know how to fight.”

“It’s not very hard, you just try not to die. In ’48 they gave rifles to skeletons as they got off their boats from Europe.”

“And he had a wife at home.”

“No kidding.”

“And it wasn’t his country.”

“Bingo.”

“America was his country.”

“No, he was homelandless.”

“America was his home.”

“America was where he rented a room. And do you know what would have happened if we’d lost that war, as so many, and so many of us , feared would happen?”

“But you didn’t lose.”

“But if we had? If we had been pushed into the sea, or just slaughtered where we were?”

“What’s your point?”

“Your father would have written op-eds.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at with this mental exercise. You’re trying to demonstrate that you live in Israel and I don’t?”

“No, that Israel is dispensable to you.”

“Dispensable?”

“Yes. You love it, support it, sing about it, pray for it, even envy the Jews who live there. And you will survive without it.”

“In the sense that I wouldn’t stop breathing?”

“In that sense.”

“Well, in that sense, America is dispensable to me, as well.”

“That’s absolutely right. People think the Palestinians are homelandless, but they would die for their homeland. It’s you who deserves pity.”

“Because I won’t die for a country?”

“You’re right. I’ve said too little. You won’t die for anything . I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but don’t pretend it’s unfair or untrue. Julia was right: you don’t believe in anything.”

It would have been the moment for one or both of them to storm off, but Jacob took his phone from the table and calmly said, “I’m gonna take a piss. And when I come back, we’re going to pretend the last ten minutes didn’t happen.” Tamir showed nothing.

Jacob closed himself in the bathroom, but he didn’t pee, and he didn’t pretend the fight hadn’t happened. He took his phone from his pocket. The home screen was a photo taken on Max’s sixth birthday. He and Julia had given Max a suitcase filled with costumes. A clown costume. A fireman costume. An Indian. A bellboy. A sheriff. The first one he tried on, commemorated digitally, was the soldier costume. Jacob flushed nothing down the toilet, went into his phone’s settings, and replaced the photo with one of the stock generic images: a treeless leaf.

He went back to the kitchen and took his seat across from Tamir. He’d decided to try the joke about the difference between a Subaru and an erection, but before he could get the first word out, Tamir said, “I don’t know where Noam is.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was home for a few days. We exchanged some e-mails, and talked. But he was deployed this afternoon. Rivka doesn’t know to where. And I haven’t heard anything. He tried calling, but I stupidly didn’t have my phone on. What kind of father am I?”

“Oh, Tamir. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling.”

“You can.”

“Noam will be OK.”

“You can promise me that?”

Jacob scratched at no itch on his arm and said, “I wish I could.”

“I believed a lot of what I said. But a lot of it I didn’t believe. Or I’m not sure I believe.”

“I also said some things I didn’t believe. It happens.”

“Why can’t he send even a one-sentence e-mail? Two letters: O-K.”

Jacob said, “I don’t know where Julia is,” trying to meet Tamir’s realness with his own. “She’s not on a work trip.”

“No?”

“No. And I’m scared.”

“Then we can talk.”

“What have we been doing?”

“Making sounds.”

“It’s all my fault. Julia. The family. I acted as if my home were dispensable.”

“Slow down. Tell me what—”

“She found a phone,” Jacob said, as if that statement needed something to interrupt in order to be spoken. “A secret phone of mine.”

“Shit. Why did you have a secret phone?”

“It was really stupid.”

“You had an affair?”

“I don’t even know what that word means.”

“You would know if it were Julia having an affair.” Which released the emergency brake of Jacob’s mind: Was she having sex with Mark at that moment? Was he fucking her while they talked about her? Tamir asked, “Did you fuck her?”

Jacob paused, as if he needed to consider the question, as if he didn’t even know what the word fuck meant.

“I did.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“Not in the house.”

“No,” Jacob said, as if offended by the suggestion. “In hotels. Once in the office. It was just permission to acknowledge our unhappiness. Julia was probably even grateful that it happened.”

“Everyone is so grateful for the permission that no one wants.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s the same conversation we were just having. The same.”

“I thought it was revealed to be bullshit?”

“Some, yes, but not this part: you can’t say, ‘This is who I am.’ You can’t say, ‘I’m a married man. I have three great kids, a nice house, a good job. I don’t have everything I want, I’m not as respected as I might wish, I’m not as rich or loved or fucked as I might wish, but this is who I am, and choose to be, and admit to being.’ You can’t say that. But neither can you admit to needing more, to wanting more. Forget about other people, you can’t even admit your unhappiness to yourself.”