Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  “What’s ethos?”

  “Guiding belief.”

  “What was their ethos?”

  “Don’t price-gouge your fans, don’t tolerate violence at shows, don’t make videos or sell merchandise. Do make music with anticorporate, anti-misogynist, class-conscious messaging, and make it make your face melt.”

  “You’re a good dog.”

  “We should probably get going.”

  “My ethos is ‘Find light in the beautiful sea, I choose to be happy.’ ”

  “That’s a great ethos, Max.”

  “It’s a line from a Rihanna song.”

  “Well, Rihanna is wise.”

  “She didn’t write the song.”

  “Whoever wrote it.”

  “Sia.”

  “So Sia’s wise.”

  “And I was just kidding.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “What?”

  “Ethos.”

  “Don’t price-gouge your fans, don’t tolerate violence at shows—”

  “No, seriously.”

  Jacob laughed.

  “Seriously,” Max said.

  “Let me think about it.”

  “That’s probably your ethos.”

  “That’s Hamlet’s ethos. You know Hamlet, right?”

  “I’m ten, I’m not unborn.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Also, Sam’s reading it in class.”

  “I wonder where Fugazi is now. I wonder if they’re still idealistic, whatever they’re doing.”

  “You’re good, Argus.”

  —

  When they got to the vet’s office, they were led to an examining room in the back.

  “In a weird way this reminds me of Great-Grandpa’s house.”

  “That is weird.”

  “All the photos of the dogs are kind of like the pictures of me, Sam, and Benjy. And the jar of treats is like the jar of hard candies.”

  “And it smells like…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “I was going to say death, but it didn’t feel like a nice thing to say, so I tried to keep it to myself.”

  “What does death smell like?”

  “Like this.”

  “How do you even know?”

  Jacob had never smelled a dead person. His three dead grandparents had died either before he was born or early enough in his childhood for him to have been protected from it. None of his colleagues or friends, or former colleagues or former friends, had died. Sometimes it amazed him that he’d managed to live forty-two years without proximity to mortality. And that amazement was always followed by the fear that the statistics would catch up with him and offer a lot of death at once. And he wouldn’t be ready.

  The vet took half an hour to see them, and Max gave Argus treat after treat.

  “Might not mix well with the McNuggets,” Jacob warned.

  “You’re good. You’re so good.”

  Argus brought out a different side of Max, a sweetness, or vulnerability, that usually faced away. Jacob thought about a day he spent with his father at the National Museum of Natural History when he was Max’s age. He had so few memories of time alone with his father—Irv worked long hours at the magazine, and when he wasn’t writing, he was teaching, and when he wasn’t teaching, he was socializing with important people, to confirm that he was an important person—but Jacob remembered that day.

  They were facing a diorama. A bison.

  “Nice,” Irv said, “right?”

  “Really nice,” Jacob said, moved—shaken, even—by the extreme presence of the animal, how self-contained it was.

  “None of this is by accident,” Irv said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They go to lengths to re-create an accurate nature scene. That’s the point. But there are a lot of accurate scenes they could have chosen, right? The bison could have been galloping instead of standing still. He could have been battling, or hunting, or eating. There could have been two instead of one. They could have perched a small bird on his back. A lot of choices.”

  Jacob used to love being taught by his father. It felt intoxicating, and safe. And it confirmed that Jacob was an important person in his father’s life.

  “But the choices aren’t always made freely,” Irv said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they have to hide what brought the animals here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where do you think the animals come from?”

  “Africa, or something?”

  “But how do they end up in dioramas? Do you think they volunteer to be taxidermied? Are they roadkill that lucky scientists stumble upon?”

  “I guess I don’t know.”

  “They’re hunted.”

  “Really?”

  “And hunting isn’t clean.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No one ever got something that didn’t want to be gotten without making a mess.”

  “Oh.”

  “Bullets leave holes, sometimes big ones. Arrows, too. And you don’t bring down a bison with a little hole.”

  “I guess not.”

  “So when they position the animals in the dioramas, they turn the holes and gashes and tears away from the viewer. Only the animals painted into the landscape get to see them. But remembering they’re there changes everything.”

  Once, after hearing Jacob recount an example of Julia’s subtle belittling, Dr. Silvers said, “Most people behave badly when wounded. If you can remember the wounds, it is far more possible to forgive the behavior.”

  Julia was in the bath when he’d come home that night. He tried—with gentle knocking, calling into the room, and unnecessarily loud shuffling—to make her aware of his presence, but the water was too loud, and opening the door, he startled her. After catching her breath, and laughing at her fear, she rested her chin on the tub’s lip. They listened to the water together. A seashell brought to the ear becomes an echo chamber for one’s circulatory system. The ocean you hear is your own blood. The bathroom that night was an echo chamber for their shared life. And behind Julia, where the towels and hanging robe should have been, Jacob saw a painted landscape, a flat forever occupied by a school, a soccer field, the Whole Foods bulk section (a grid of plastic bins filled with painted split peas and brown rice, dried mango and raw cashews), a Subaru and a Volvo, a home, their home, and through a second-story window there was a room, so tiny and precisely painted, only a Master could have made it, and on a table in that room, which became her office once there was no more need for a nursery, was an architectural model, a house, and in that house in that house in the house in which life happened was a woman, carefully positioned.

  —

  Finally, the vet came. She wasn’t what Jacob was anticipating, or hoping for: some gentle, gentile, grandfather figure. To begin with, she was a she. In Jacob’s experience, vets were like airplane pilots: virtually always male, gray (or graying), and calming. Dr. Shelling looked too young to buy Jacob a drink—not that the situation would ever arise—was fit, firm, and wearing what appeared to be a tailored lab coat.

  “What brings you here today?” she asked, riffling through Argus’s chart.

  Did Max see what Jacob saw? Was he old enough to pay any attention? To be embarrassed?

  “He’s been having some problems,” Jacob said, “probably just normal stuff for a dog of his age: incontinence, some joint issues. Our previous vet—Dr. Hazel at Animal Kind—put him on Rimadyl and Cosequin, and said we should consider adjusting the dosage if things didn’t improve. They didn’t improve, and we doubled the dosage, and added a dementia pill, but nothing happened. So I thought we’d seek another opinion.”

  “OK,” she said, putting down the clipboard. “And this dog has a name?”

  “Argus,” Max offered.

  “Great name,” she said, lowering herself onto a knee.

&
nbsp; She held the sides of Argus’s face, and looked into his eyes while she stroked his head.

  “He’s in pain,” Max said.

  “He has occasional discomfort,” Jacob clarified. “But it’s not constant, and it’s not pain.”

  “Are you in pain?” Dr. Shelling asked Argus.

  “He whines when he gets up and down,” Max said.

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “But he’ll also whine if we don’t drop enough popcorn during movies,” Jacob said. “He’s a catholic whiner.”

  “Can you think of other times he whines out of discomfort?”

  “Again, almost all of his whining is for food or a walk. But that’s not pain, or even discomfort. Just desire.”

  “He whines when you and Mom fight.”

  “That’s Mom’s whining,” Jacob said, trying to relieve the shame he felt in front of the veterinarian.

  “Does he get enough walks?” she asked. “He shouldn’t be whining for a walk.”

  “He gets a lot of walks,” Jacob said.

  “Three,” Max said.

  “A dog of Argus’s age needs five walks. At least.”

  “Five walks a day?” Jacob asked.

  “And the pain you’ve witnessed. For how long has it been going on?”

  “Discomfort,” Jacob corrected. “Pain is too strong a word.”

  “A long time,” Max said.

  “Not that long. Maybe half a year?”

  “It’s gotten bad in the last half a year,” Max said, “but he’s been whining since Benjy was like three.”

  “Same could be said of Benjy.”

  The vet looked into Argus’s eyes for another few moments, now in silence. Jacob wanted to be looked at like that.

  “OK,” she said. “Let’s take a temperature, I’ll check his vitals, and if it feels right, we can do some blood work.”

  She pulled a thermometer from a glass bottle on the counter, squeezed some lube onto it, and positioned herself behind Argus. Did it thrill Jacob? Did it depress him? It depressed him. But why? Because of Argus’s stoicism whenever this happened? How it reminded him of his own unwillingness, or inability, to show discomfort? No, it had to do with the vet—her youthful beauty (she seemed to be reverse-aging as the visit progressed), but more, her tender care. She inspired fantasizing in Jacob, but not about a sexual encounter. Not even about her guiding in a suppository. He imagined her pressing a stethoscope to his chest; her fingers gently exploring the glands of his neck; how she would extend and bend his arms and legs, listening for the difference between discomfort and pain with the closeness and quietness and care of someone trying to crack a safe.

  Max got down on a knee, placed his face in front of Argus’s, and said, “That’s my boy. Look at me. There you go, boy.”

  “OK,” she said, removing the thermometer. “A little high, but within the healthy range.”

  She then ran her hands over Argus’s body, examining the insides of his ears, lifting his lip to look at the teeth and gums, pressing Argus’s belly, rotating his thigh until he whined.

  “Sensitive on that leg.”

  “He had both of his hips replaced,” Max said.

  “Total hip replacements?”

  Jacob shrugged.

  “The left was a femoral head osteotomy,” Max said.

  “That’s an interesting choice.”

  “Yeah,” Max went on, “he was on the border in terms of weight, and the vet thought we could spare him the THR. But it was a mistake.”

  “Sounds like you were paying pretty close attention.”

  “He’s my dog,” Max said.

  “OK,” she said, “he’s obviously got some tenderness. Probably a bit of arthritis.”

  “He’s been pooping in the house for about a year,” Max said.

  “Not a year,” Jacob corrected.

  “Don’t you remember Sam’s slumber party?”

  “Right, but that was unusual. It didn’t become a consistent problem until several months after that.”

  “And is he also urinating in the house?”

  “Mostly just defecating,” Jacob said, “some peeing more recently.”

  “Does he still squat to poop? Often it’s really an arthritic problem, rather than an intestinal or rectal one—the dog can no longer assume the position, and so poops while walking.”

  “He often poops while walking,” Jacob said.

  “But sometimes he’ll poop in his bed,” Max said.

  “As if he doesn’t realize he’s pooping,” the vet suggested. “Or simply has no control.”

  “Right,” Max said. “I don’t know if dogs get embarrassed, or sad, but.”

  Jacob received a text from Julia: made it to the hotel.

  “We’ll never know,” the vet said, “but it definitely doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  That’s it? Jacob thought. Made it to the hotel? As if to a tolerated colleague, or the most minimal communication required to satisfy a legal obligation. And then he thought, Why does she always give me so little? And that thought surprised him, not just the flash flood of anger it rode in on, but how comfortable it felt—and that word, always—despite his never before having consciously thought it. Why does she always give me so little? So little of the benefit of the doubt. So few compliments. Such rare appreciation. When was the last time she didn’t stifle a laugh at one of his jokes? When did she last ask to read what he was working on? When did she last initiate sex? So little to live off. He’d behaved badly, but only after a decade of wounds from arrows too blunt to get the job done.

  He often thought of that piece by Andy Goldsworthy, for which he lay flat on the ground as a storm came in, and remained there until it passed. When he stood up, his dry silhouette remained. Like the chalk outline of a victim. Like the unpunctured circle where the dartboard used to be.

  “He still enjoys himself at the park,” Jacob said to the vet.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was just saying that he still enjoys himself at the park.”

  And with that seeming non sequitur, the conversation rotated 180 degrees, so that the other side faced front.

  “Sometimes he does,” Max said. “But mostly he just lies there. And he has such a hard time with the stairs at home.”

  “He ran the other day.”

  “And then limped for like the next three days.”

  “Look,” Jacob said, “obviously his quality of life is diminishing. Obviously he’s not the dog he used to be. But he has a life worth living.”

  “Says who?”

  “Dogs don’t want to die.”

  “Great-Grandpa does.”

  “Whoa, wait. What did you just say?”

  “Great-Grandpa wants to die,” Max said matter-of-factly.

  “Great-Grandpa isn’t a dog.” The full strangeness of that comment started to creep up the walls of the room. Jacob tried to cut it back with the obvious amendment: “And he doesn’t want to die.”

  “Says who?”

  “Would you two like a little time?” the vet asked, crossing her arms and taking a long backward stride toward the door.

  “Great-Grandpa has hopes for the future,” Jacob said. “Like living to see Sam’s bar mitzvah. And he takes pleasure in memories.”

  “Same as Argus.”

  “You think Argus is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah?”

  “No one is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah.”

  “Great-Grandpa is.”

  “Says who?”

  “Dogs take all kinds of very subtle pleasure in life,” the vet said. “Lying in a patch of sun. The occasional bit of tasty human food. It’s hard to say how far their mental experience extends beyond that. It’s left to us to make assumptions.”

  “Argus feels like we forgot him,” Max said, making his assumption clear.

  “Forgot him?”

  “Just like Great-Grandpa.”

  Jacob gave the vet a ruffled smile and said, “Who said Gre
at-Grandpa feels forgotten?”

  “He does.”

  “When?”

  “When we talk.”

  “And when is that?”

  “When we skype.”

  “He doesn’t mean it.”

  “So how do you know Argus means it when he whines?”

  “Dogs can’t not mean things.”

  “Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

  “Tell him what?”

  “Tell him that Argus should be put to sleep.”

  “Oh. That’s not for me to say. It’s a very personal decision.”

  “OK, but if you thought he shouldn’t be put to sleep, you would have just said he shouldn’t be put to sleep.”

  “He runs in the park, Max. He watches movies on the sofa.”

  “Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

  “My job, as a vet, is to care for Argus, to help keep him healthy. It isn’t to offer advice about end-of-life decisions.”

  “So in other words, you agree with me.”

  “She didn’t say that, Max.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Do you think my great-grandfather should be put to sleep?”

  “No,” the vet said, immediately regretting the credence her response lent the question.

  “Tell him.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Tell him that you think Argus should be put to sleep.”

  “That’s really not for me to say.”

  “See?” Max said to his father.

  “You realize Argus is in the room, Max?”

  “He doesn’t understand.”

  “Of course he understands.”

  “So hold on. You think Argus understands, but Great-Grandpa doesn’t?”

  “Great-Grandpa understands.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re a monster.”

  “Max.”

  “Tell him.”

  Argus vomited a dozen almost perfectly formed McNuggets at the vet’s feet.

  “How do they keep the glass clean?” Jacob had asked his father, three decades before.

  Irv gave a puzzled look and said, “Windex?”

  “I mean the other side. People can’t walk in there. They’d ruin all the stuff on the ground.”

  “But if no one ever goes in, it stays clean.”

  “It doesn’t,” Jacob said. “Remember when we came back from Israel and everything was dirty? Even though no one had been there for three weeks? Remember how we wrote our names in Hebrew in the dust on the windows?”