Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“Then it’s as good as it could be.”

“No,” Jacob said, “it could be a lot better.”

“How? If someone else wrote it? If you wrote it at a different time in your life? We’d be talking about something else.”

“If I were a better writer.”

“But you’re not,” she said, putting a mug on his desk, “you’re only perfect.”

For all that he couldn’t give Julia, he had given her a lot. He wasn’t a great artist, but he worked hard (enough), and was devoted (enough) to his writing. It is not a weakness to acknowledge complexity. It is not a retreat to take a step back. He wasn’t wrong to be envious of those wailing men on prayer mats in the Dome of the Rock, but maybe he was wrong to see reflected in their devotion his own existential pallor. Agnosticism is no less devout than fundamentalism, and maybe he’d destroyed what he loved, blind to the perfection of good-enough.

He called Julia’s cell. She didn’t answer. It was two in the morning, but there was no time of day, those days, when she would answer his call.

Hi, you’ve reached Julia …

But she would see that he had reached for her.

At the beep he said, “It’s me. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but some extremists set fire to the Dome of the Rock, or tried to. Jewish extremists. I suppose they succeeded, technically. It was a very small fire. But, you know, it’s a huge deal. Anyway, you can watch. Or read about it. I don’t even know where you are. Where are you? So—”

The voice mail cut him off. He called again.

Hi, you’ve reached Julia …

“I got cut off. I don’t know how much got through, but I was saying that the Middle East just blew up, and Tamir is totally hysterical, and he wants me to take him to the embassy tonight, like now, at two in the morning, to try to somehow get him on a plane. And the thing is, he says I need to go with him. And at first I just thought he meant—”

The voice mail cut him off. He called again.

Hi, you’ve reached Julia …

“And … it’s me. Jacob. Obviously. Anyway, I was just saying that Tamir is freaking out, and I’m taking him to the embassy — I’ll wake up Sam and let him know that we’re going out, and that he has to—”

The voice mail cut him off. The allowed increments seemed to be shrinking. He called again.

“Jacob?”

“Julia?”

“What time is it?”

“I thought your phone was off.”

“Why are you calling?”

“Well, I basically said it in the messages, but—”

“What time is it?”

“It’s like two or so.”

“ Why , Jacob.”

“Where are you?”

“Jacob, why are you calling me at two in the morning?”

“Because it’s important.”

“Are the kids OK?”

“Yes, everyone’s fine. But Israel—”

“Nothing happened—?”

“No. Not to the kids. They’re sleeping. It’s Israel.”

“Tell me in the morning, OK?”

“Julia, I wouldn’t call if it weren’t—”

“If the boys are OK, whatever it is can wait.”

“It can’t.”

“Believe me, it can. Good night, Jacob.”

“Some extremists tried to set fire to the Dome of the Rock.”

“Tomorrow.”

“There’s going to be a war.”

“Tomorrow.”

“A war against us.”

“We have a ton of batteries in the fridge.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’m half asleep.”

“I think I’m going to go.”

“Thank you.”

“To Israel. With Tamir.”

He heard her shift, and muffled static.

“You’re not going to Israel.”

“I’m really thinking about it.”

“You’d never let such a dumb sentence slip into one of your scripts.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means let’s talk in the morning.”

“I’m going to Israel,” he said, and this time, removing the I think , expressed something entirely different — a certainty that when spoken aloud revealed to Jacob his lack of certainty. The first time he’d wanted to hear her say, “Don’t go.” But instead she didn’t believe him.

“And why would you do that?”

“To help.”

“What, write for the army paper?”

“Whatever they ask me to do. Fill sandbags, make sandwiches, fight.”

She laughed herself into a fuller wakefulness: “Fight?”

“If that’s what’s necessary.”

“And how would that work?”

“They need men.”

She chuckled. Jacob thought he heard her chuckle.

“I’m not seeking your respect or approval,” he said. “I’m telling you because we’re going to need to figure out what the next couple of weeks will look like. I assume you’ll come home and—”

“I respect and approve of your desire to be a hero, especially right now—”

“What you’re doing sucks.”

“No,” she said, her voice now aggressively clear, “what you’re doing sucks. Waking me up in the middle of the night with this idiotic Kabuki enactment of … I don’t even know what. Resolution? Bravery? Selflessness? You assume I’ll come home? That’s nice. And then what? I’ll single-handedly take care of the kids for however long your paintball adventure lasts? That shouldn’t be any problem: preparing three meals a day for them — make that nine meals, as no two will ever eat the same thing — and chauffeuring to cello lessons, and speech therapy, and soccer, and soccer, and Hebrew school, and various health professionals? Yeah. I want to be a hero, too. I think being a hero would be awesome. But first, before we get measured for capes, let’s see if we can maintain what we already have.”

“Julia—”

“I’m not finished. You woke me up with this absurd shit, so now I’m entitled to hold the conch. If we were actually to entertain this utterly ridiculous notion of you in combat for a moment, then we would have to acknowledge that any army that would include you among its fighting ranks is desperate, and desperate armies tend not to be in the business of treating every life as if it were all of humankind, and without having any military expertise, I’m guessing you’re not going to be called upon for specialized operations, like bomb defusing or surgical assassinations, but something more like ‘Stand in front of this bullet so your meat will at least slow it before it enters the person we actually value.’ And then you’ll be dead. And your kids will be fatherless. And your father will become a yet more public asshole. And—”

“And you?”

“What?”

“What will you become?”

“In sickness and in sickness,” Jacob’s mother had said at his wedding. “That is what I wish for you. Don’t seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other’s pain, and being present for it.”

Jacob had regained the hearing he’d pretended to lose as a child, and acquired a kind of pet interest in deafness that stayed with him into adulthood. He never shared it with Julia or anyone, as it felt distasteful, wrong. No one, not even Dr. Silvers, knew that he was able to sign, or that he would attend annual conventions for the D.C. chapter of the National Association of the Deaf. He didn’t pretend he was deaf when he went. He pretended he was a teacher at an elementary school for deaf children. He explained his interest by saying he was the child of a deaf father.

“What will you become, Julia?”

“I have no idea what it is you’re trying to get me to say. That contemplating having to raise three kids on my own makes me selfish?”

“No.”