Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  “Not raising your voice—or not beating me or molesting the children, for that matter—doesn’t qualify as something you do well. It qualifies as basic decency. And anyway, you don’t raise your voice, because you’re repressed.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “If you don’t say so.”

  “Even if that’s why I don’t raise my voice, and I don’t think it is, it’s still a good thing. A lot of men scream.”

  “I’m jealous of their wives.”

  “You want me to be an asshole?”

  “I want you to be a person.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Are you sure there isn’t something you need to tell me?”

  “I don’t understand why you keep asking me that.”

  “I’ll rephrase the question: What’s the password?”

  “To what?”

  “To the phone you’re clenching.”

  “It’s my new phone. What’s the big deal?”

  “I’m your wife. I’m the big deal.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “What do you want, Julia?”

  “Your password.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know what it is you can’t tell me.”

  “Julia.”

  “Once again, you have correctly identified me.”

  Jacob had spent more waking hours in his kitchen than in any other room. No baby knows when the nipple is pulled from his mouth for the last time. No child knows when he last calls his mother “Mama.” No small boy knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story that will ever be read to him. No boy knows when the water drains from the last bath he will ever take with his brother. No young man knows, as he first feels his greatest pleasure, that he will never again not be sexual. No brinking woman knows, as she sleeps, that it will be four decades before she will again awake infertile. No mother knows she is hearing the word Mama for the last time. No father knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story he will ever read: From that day on, and for many years to come, peace reigned on the island of Ithaca, and the gods looked favorably upon Odysseus, his wife, and his son. Jacob knew that whatever happened, he would see the kitchen again. And yet his eyes became sponges for the details—the burnished handle of the snack drawer; the seam where the slabs of soapstone met; the Special Award for Bravery sticker on the underside of the island’s overhang, given to Max for what no one knew was his last pulled tooth, a sticker Argus saw many times every day, and only Argus ever saw—because Jacob knew he would one day wring them out for the last drops of these last moments; they would come as tears.

  “Fine,” Jacob said.

  “Fine what?”

  “Fine, I’ll tell you the password.”

  He put the phone on the counter with a righteous force that might, just might, have jarred loose the workings, and said, “But know that this lack of trust will always be between us.”

  “I can live with that.”

  He looked at the phone.

  “I’m just trying to remember what the password even is. I lost it right after I got it. I don’t even think I’ve used it yet.”

  He picked up the phone and stared at it.

  “Maybe the password the Blochs use for everything?” she suggested.

  “Right,” he said. “That’s definitely what I would have used: t-h-i-s-2-s-h-a-l-l-p-a-s-s. And…nope.”

  “Hm. I guess not.”

  “I can probably have the store unlock it.”

  “Maybe, and this is just a stab in the dark, you could capitalize the first letter, and type t-w-o instead of the numeral?”

  “I wouldn’t do it like that,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No. We always do it the same way.”

  “Give it a try.”

  He wanted to escape this childish terror, but he wanted to be a child.

  “But I wouldn’t do it like that.”

  “Who really knows what one would do? Just try it.”

  He examined the phone, and his fingers around it, and the house around them, and with an unmediated impulse—as reflexive as the kicked leg of a hammered knee—he hurled it through the window, shattering the glass.

  “I thought it was open.”

  And then a silence that struck bedrock.

  Julia said, “You think I don’t know how to get to our lawn?”

  “I—”

  “And why wouldn’t you just create a sophisticated password? One Sam wouldn’t be able to guess?”

  “Sam looked at the phone?”

  “No. But only because you’re incredibly lucky.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “How could you have written those things?”

  “What things?”

  “It’s way too late in this conversation for that.”

  Jacob knew it was too late, and absorbed the gouges in the cutting board, the succulents between the sink and window, the kids’ drawings blue-taped to the backsplash.

  “They didn’t mean anything,” he said.

  “I feel sorry for someone who is capable of saying so much and meaning nothing.”

  “Julia, give me a chance to explain.”

  “Why can’t you mean nothing to me?”

  “What?”

  “You tell someone who isn’t the mother of your children that you want to lick your cum out of her asshole, and the only person who makes me feel beautiful is the fucking Korean florist at the back of the deli, who isn’t even a florist.”

  “I’m disgusting.”

  “Don’t you dare do that.”

  “Julia, this might be hard to believe, but they were only texts. That’s all that ever happened.”

  “First of all, that’s easy to believe. No one knows better than I do that you’re incapable of an actually brave transgression. I know that you’re too big a pussy to actually lick anyone’s asshole, cum-filled or not.”

  “Julia.”

  “But more important, how much needs to happen? You think you can go around saying and writing whatever you want without consequence? Maybe your father can. Maybe your mother is weak enough to tolerate that kind of piggishness. But I’m not. There’s decency and indecency, and they’re different. Good and bad are different. Do you not know this?”

  “Of course I—”

  “No, of course you don’t. You wrote to a woman who isn’t your wife that her tight pussy doesn’t deserve you?”

  “That’s not really what I wrote. And it was in the context of—”

  “And you’re not really a good person, and there is no context that could make such a thing OK to say.”

  “It was a moment of weakness, Julia.”

  “Are you forgetting that you never deleted any of them? That there is a history to refer to? It wasn’t a moment of weakness, it was a person of weakness. And will you please stop saying my name.”

  “It’s over.”

  “Do you want to know the worst part? I don’t even care. The saddest thing about this has been confronting my own lack of sadness.”

  Jacob didn’t believe that, but neither could he believe that she would say it. The pretense of a loving relationship had made the absence of a loving relationship bearable. But now she was letting go of appearances.

  “Listen, I think—”

  “Lick the cum out of her asshole?” She laughed. “You? You’re a coward and a germ freak. You just wanted to write it. Which is fine. Which is even great. But acknowledge the make-believe. You want to want some kind of sexually supercharged life, but you actually want the gate-checked stroller, and the Aquaphor, and even your desiccated, blowjobless existence, because it spares you worrying about erections. Jesus, Jacob, you carry a packet of wipes so you’ll never have to use toilet paper. That’s not the behavior of a man who wants to lick cum from anyone’s asshole.”

  “Julia, stop.”

  “And by the way, even if you found yours
elf in that situation, with an actual woman’s actual asshole filled with your actual cum and beckoning your tongue? You know what you’d do? You’d get your ridiculous hand tremors, sweat through your shirt, lose the one-quarter, Jell-O mold erection you would have been lucky to achieve in the first place, and probably shuffle off to the bathroom to check the Huffington Post for puerile, unfunny videos or relisten to the Radiolab in praise of tortoises. That’s what would happen. And she’d know you were the joke that you are.”

  “I wouldn’t be wearing a shirt.”

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t sweat through my shirt, because I wouldn’t be wearing a shirt.”

  “That’s a fucking mean thing to say.”

  “Stop pushing me.”

  “You’re serious? You can’t be. You cannot be serious.” She turned on the sink faucet, for no obvious reason. “And you think you’re the only one who wants to act recklessly?”

  “You want to have an affair?”

  “I want to let things fall apart.”

  “I’m not having an affair, and I’m not letting things fall apart.”

  “I saw Mark today. He and Jennifer are getting divorced.”

  “Great. Or terrible. What am I supposed to say?”

  “And Mark was flirting with me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve protected you so much. Cared for your pathetic, baby-bird insecurity. Spared you innocent things that you would have had no right to be upset by, but would be crushed by. And you think I’ve never had fantasies? You think every time I masturbate I’m imagining you? Do you?”

  “This isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Did some part of me want to fuck Mark today? Yes. In fact, every part below the brain. But I didn’t, because I wouldn’t, because I’m not like you—”

  “I didn’t fuck anybody, Julia.”

  “—but I wanted to.”

  Jacob raised his voice for the second time in the conversation: “Goddamn it, what’s that smell?”

  “Your dog took another shit in the house.”

  “My dog?”

  “Yes, the dog that you brought home, despite our explicit agreement not to get a dog.”

  “The kids wanted it.”

  “The kids want their arms connected to IV drip bags filled with melted Chunky Monkey and their brains in vats of Steve Jobs’s cum. Good parenting has nothing to do with satisfying your children’s wants.”

  “They were sad about something.”

  “Everybody is sad about something. Stop blaming the kids, Jacob. You needed to be a hero, and you needed to make me a villain—”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Not even close to fair. You brought home a dog that we agreed it would be a mistake to get, and you were the superhero and I was the supervillain, and now there’s a stale shit-bâtard on our living room floor.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to clean it up?”

  “No. Just like it didn’t occur to you to house-train it—”

  “Him. House-train him. And the poor guy can’t help it. He’s—”

  “Or walk it, or take it to the vet, or wash its bed, or remember its heart-worm pills, or check it for ticks, or buy it food, or feed it. I pick up his shit every single day. Twice a day. Or more. Jesus, Jacob, I hate dogs, and hate this dog, and didn’t and don’t want this dog, but if it weren’t for me, this dog would have been dead years ago.”

  “He understands you when you say that.”

  “And yet you don’t. Your dog—”

  “Our dog.”

  “—is smarter than my husband.”

  And then he screamed. It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice at her. It was a scream that had been building in him for sixteen years of marriage, and four decades of life, and five millennia of history—a scream that was directed at her, but also at everyone living and dead, but primarily at himself. For years he’d always been elsewhere, always underground behind a twelve-inch door, always taking refuge in an interior monologue to which no one—including himself—had access, or in dialogue trapped in a locked drawer. But this was him.

  He took four steps toward her, bringing the lenses of his glasses as close to her eyes as to his own, and screamed: “You are my enemy!”

  A few minutes before, she’d told Jacob that the saddest thing had been confronting her own lack of sadness. It was true then, but it wasn’t true anymore. Through the prism of tears, she saw her kitchen: the cracked rubber gasket of the faucet, the casement windows that still looked good but whose frames would crumble if gripped. She saw her dining room and living room: they still looked good, but were two layers of paint over a layer of primer over a decade and a half of slow decay. Her husband: not her partner.

  Sam came home from third grade one day and excitedly told Julia, “If Earth were the size of an apple, the atmosphere would be thinner than the apple’s skin.”

  “What?”

  “If Earth were the size of an apple, the atmosphere would be thinner than the apple’s skin.”

  “I might not be smart enough to understand why that’s interesting. Can you explain?”

  “Look up,” he said. “Does it seem thin to you?”

  “The ceiling?”

  “If we were outside.”

  The shell was so thin, but she had always felt safe.

  They got a dartboard at a yard sale, dozens of Sundays before, and hung it on the door at the end of the hall. The boys missed the board as often as they hit it, and each dart pulled from the door held the door’s previous color on its tip. Julia took the board down after Max came into the living room, blood dripping from his shoulder, saying, “It was nobody’s fault.” What remained was a circle, defined and surrounded by hundreds of holes.

  As she stared at the shell of her kitchen, the saddest thing was her knowledge of what was beneath, what a tiny scratch, in a vulnerable place, would reveal.

  “Mom?”

  They turned to see Benjy standing in the doorway, leaning against the growth chart, his hands searching for pajama pockets that didn’t exist. For how long had he been there?

  “Mom and I were just—”

  “You mean epitome.”

  “What, love?”

  “You said enemy, but you meant epitome.”

  “You can have your kiss now,” Julia told Jacob as she wiped away her tears, replacing them with soap suds.

  Jacob got down on his knees, took Benjy’s hands into his.

  “Bad dream, buddy?”

  “I’m OK with dying,” Benjy said.

  “What?”

  “I’m OK with dying.”

  “You are?”

  “As long as everyone else dies with me, I’m actually OK with dying. I’m just afraid of everyone else not dying.”

  “You had a bad dream?”

  “No. You were fighting.”

  “We weren’t fighting. We—”

  “And I heard glass break.”

  “We were fighting,” Julia said. “Humans have feelings, sometimes very difficult ones. But it’s OK. Now go on back to bed.”

  Jacob carried him, Benjy’s cheek resting on his shoulder. How light he still was. How heavy he was getting. No father knows that he is carrying his son up the stairs for the final time.

  Jacob tucked Benjy back under the covers and stroked his hair.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “I agree with you that heaven probably doesn’t exist.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said there’s no way to know for sure, and so it’s probably not a great idea to organize our lives around it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I agree with.”

  He could forgive himself for withholding his own comfort, but why did he withhold everyone else’s as well? Why couldn’t he just let his kindergartener feel happy and safe in a just and beautiful and unreal world?

  “So what do you think we should organize our lives around?” Benjy asked.

&nbs
p; “Our families?”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Good night, buddy.”

  Jacob went to the door, but didn’t walk away.

  After a few long moments in that silence, Benjy called out: “Dad? I need you!”

  “I’m here.”

  “Squirrels evolved to have bushy tails. Why?”

  “Maybe for balance? Or to keep them warm? Time for sleep.”

  “We’ll google it in the morning.”

  “OK. But now sleep.”

  “Dad?”

  “Right here.”

  “If the world goes on for long enough, will there be fossils of fossils?”

  “Oh, Benjy. That’s a great question. We can talk about it in the morning.”

  “Yeah. I need my sleep.”

  “Right.”

  “Dad?”

  Now Jacob was losing his patience: “Benjy.”

  “Dad?”

  “I’m here.”

  He stood in the doorway until he heard his youngest son’s heavy breathing. Jacob was a man who withheld comfort but stood at thresholds long after others would have walked away. He always stood at the open front door until the car pool drove off. Just as he stood at the window until the back wheel of Sam’s bike disappeared around the corner. Just as he watched himself disappear.

  HERE I AMN’T

  > It is with a sense of history and extreme annoyance that I stand at this bimah today, prepared to fulfill the so-called rite of passage into adulthood, whatever that is. I want to thank Cantor Fleischman, for helping transform me, over the past half year, into a Jewish automaton. On the extreme off chance that I remember any of this a year from now, I still won’t know what it means, and for that I am grateful. I also want to thank Rabbi Singer, who is a sulfuric acid enema. My only living great-grandparent is Isaac Bloch. My dad said that I had to go through with this for him, something my great-grandfather has never, himself, asked of me. There are things he has asked, like not to be forced to move into the Jewish Home. My family cares very much about caring for him, but not enough to actually care, and I didn’t understand a word of my chanting today, but I understand that. I want to thank my grandparents Irv and Deborah Bloch, for being inspirations in my life and always urging me to try a little bit harder, dig a little bit deeper, become rich, and say whatever I want whenever I feel like it. Also my grandparents Allen and Leah Selman, who live in Florida, and whose mortal status I am only aware of thanks to the Hanukkah and birthday checks that haven’t been adjusted for cost-of-living increases since my birth. I want to thank my brothers, Benjy and Max, for requiring great portions of my parents’ attention. I cannot imagine surviving an existence in which I bore the undivided brunt of their love. Also, when I threw up on Benjy on a plane, he said, “I know how bad it feels to throw up.” And Max once offered to get a blood test so I wouldn’t have to. Which brings me to my parents, Jacob and Julia Bloch. The truth is, I didn’t want to have a bat mitzvah. No part of me, not even a little. There aren’t enough savings bonds in the world. We had conversations about it, as if my opinions were of consequence. It was all a charade, a charade to set in motion this charade, itself only a stepping-stone in the charade of my Jewish identity. Which is to say, in the most literal sense, without them this wouldn’t have been possible. I don’t blame them for being who they are. But I do blame them for blaming me for being who I am. That’s enough thanking. So, my Torah portion is Vayeira. It is one of the most well-known and studied portions in the Torah, and I’ve been told it is a great honor to read it. Given my total lack of interest in the Torah, it would have been better to give this to a kid who actually gives a Jewish shit, should such a kid exist, and to give me one of the throwaway portions about rules governing menstruating lepers. Joke’s on everyone, I guess. One more thing: portions of the interpretation that follows were blatantly ripped off. Good thing Jews only believe in collective punishment. OK . . God’s test of Abraham is written like this: “Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ Abraham replied.” Most people assume that the test is what follows: God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. But I think it could also be read that the test was when He called to him. Abraham didn’t say, “What do you want?” He didn’t say, “Yes?” He answered with a statement: “Here I am.” Whatever God needs or wants, Abraham is wholly present for Him, without conditions or reservations or need for explanation. That word, hineni—here I am—comes up two other times in the portion. When Abraham is taking Isaac up Mount Moriah, Isaac becomes aware of what they are doing, and how fucked up it is. He knows that he is about to be the sacrifice, in the way that all kids always do when it’s about to happen. It says: “And Isaac said to Abraham, his father, ‘My father!’ and he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ And Isaac said, ‘Here is the fire and the wood but where is the sheep for the offering?’ And Abraham said, ‘God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son.’ ” Isaac doesn’t say, “Father,” he says, “My father.” Abraham is the father of the Jewish people, but he is also Isaac’s father, his personal father. And Abraham doesn’t ask, “What do you want?” He says, “Here I am.” When God asks for Abraham, Abraham is wholly present for God. When Isaac asks for Abraham, Abraham is wholly present for his son. But how can that be possible? God is asking Abraham to kill Isaac, and Isaac is asking his father to protect him. How can Abraham be two directly opposing things at once? Hineni is used one more time in the story, at the most dramatic moment. “And they came to the place that God had said to him, and Abraham built there an altar and laid out the wood and bound Isaac, his son, and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham reached out his hand and took the cleaver to his son. And the Lord’s messenger called out to him from the heavens, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ and he said, ‘Here I am.’ And he said, ‘Do not reach out your hand against the boy, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God and you have not held back your son, your only one, from me.’ ” Abraham does not ask, “What do you want?” He says, “Here I am.” My bat mitzvah portion is about many things, but I think it is primarily about who we are wholly there for, and how that, more than anything else, defines our identity. My great-grandfather, who I mentioned before, has asked for help. He doesn’t want to go to the Jewish Home. But nobody in the family has responded by saying, “Here I am.” Instead, they have tried to convince him that he doesn’t know what is best, and doesn’t even know what he wants. Really, they haven’t even tried to convince him; they’ve just told him what he’s going to do. I was accused of having used some bad language in Hebrew school this morning. I’m not even sure used is the right word—making a list is hardly making use of anything. Anyway, when my parents showed up to speak with Rabbi Singer, they didn’t tell me, “Here we are.” They asked, “What did you do?” I wish I had been given the benefit of the doubt, because I deserve it. Everyone who knows me knows that I make a shitload of mistakes, but also that I am a good person. But it’s not because I’m a good person that I deserve the benefit of the doubt, it’s because I’m their child. Even if they didn’t believe me, they should have acted as if they did. My dad once told me that before I was born, when the only proof of my life was sonograms, he had to believe in me. In other words, being born allows your parents to stop believing in you. OK, thanks for coming, everybody out.