Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  The photo albums. He’d have liked some of those. But they shouldn’t be separated any more than the volumes of the Grove Encyclopedia of Art. And there was no way around the fact that Julia had taken almost all the pictures: observe her absence among them. Was her absence her claim to ownership?

  The growth chart, inscribed on the kitchen doorframe. On New Year’s and Jewish New Year’s, Jacob would make a production of calling everyone to be measured. They stood facing out, backs flat as surfboards, never on tiptoes but always willing tallness. Jacob pressed a black Sharpie flush with the tops of their heads and drew a two-inch line. Then the initials and date. The first measurement was SB 01/01/05. The last was BB 01/01/16. Between them, a couple dozen lines. What did it look like? A tiny ladder for tiny angels to ascend and descend? The frets on the instrument playing the sound of life passing?

  He would have been happy enough to take nothing and simply start again at the beginning. They’re only things. But that wouldn’t be fair. More, it would be unfair. Very quickly, the fairness and unfairness took on more importance than the things themselves. That feeling of aggrievement reached its peak when they started talking about amounts of money that simply didn’t matter. One spring afternoon, cherry blossoms stuck to the window, Dr. Silvers told him, “Whatever the conditions of your life, you’re never going to be happy if you use the word unfair as often as you do.” So he tried to let it all go—the things, and the ideas he imbued them with. He would begin again.

  The first purchases for the new house were beds for the kids. Because Benjy’s room was on the small side, he needed a bed with storage drawers. Perhaps those were actually hard to find, or perhaps Jacob made the task hard. He spent three full days researching online and visiting stores, and ended up with something quite nice (from the offensively misnamed Design Within Reach), made of solid oak, which cost more than three thousand dollars. Plus tax, plus delivery.

  The bed obviously needed a mattress—talk about obvious—and the mattress obviously had to be organic—talk about unobvious—because Julia would ask if it was, and then, not trusting his answer, would peel back the sheets and have a look. Would it kill him simply to say, “I went with something easy?” Yes, it would. But why? For fear of disappointing her? For fear of her? Because she was right, and it mattered what chemicals children spend nearly half of their lives pressed up against? Another thousand dollars.

  The mattress needed sheets, obviously, but first it needed a mattress cover, because even though Benjy was on the verge of the end of nighttime accidents, he was still on the wrong side of that verge—it occurred to Jacob that the divorce might even inspire regression—and one such accident could effectively ruin the thousand-dollar organic mattress. So another hundred and fifty dollars. And then those sheets. The plural is not only for the various kinds of sheet necessary to define a sheet set, but for the second sheet set, because that’s what people get. He often found himself at the mercy of such logic: this has to be done in such and such way because it has to, because it’s what people do. People get two pieces of silverware for every one they will ever use. People buy esoteric vinegars for salads that they might make once, if ever. And why is the functionality of the fork so underrecognized? With a simple fork, one doesn’t need a whisk, a spatula, salad tongs (two forks for that), a “masher,” or pretty much any other highly specialized kitchen utensil whose real function is to be bought. He found his share of peace by resolving that if he was going to buy things he didn’t need, at least he was going to get crummy versions of them.

  Imagine arriving in the afterlife and not knowing if you were in heaven or hell.

  “Excuse me,” you ask a passing angel, “where am I?”

  “You’re gonna wanna ask the angel at the information desk.”

  “And where would that be?”

  But he’s gone.

  You look around. A strong case could be made for it being heaven. A strong case could be made for it being hell. That is what IKEA is like.

  By the time he was finished preparing his new house for the boys, Jacob had made half a dozen trips to IKEA, and even then he couldn’t discern if, on balance, he loved or loathed it.

  He loathed the particleboard, the bookcases that needed books to keep them from floating away.

  He loved imagining the scrutiny that had to be applied to every detail—the shortest functional length of a dowel that will be reproduced eighty million times—in order to sell things for prices that verged on magical.

  He loathed the experience of passing someone whose cart’s contents were not only identical to his, but identically stacked. And he loathed the carts: three mortal enemies and one palsy case for wheels, and turning radiuses like rainbows—not the shape, but actual rainbows.

  He loved the unexpected object—beautifully designed, perfectly named, and actually made from materials denser than shaving cream. That black marble Ädelsten mortar and pestle. Was it a loss leader? An act of love?

  He loathed the machine that punched that poor chair over and over, punched it all day every day and probably through the night, confirming both the resilience of the chair and the existence of evil.

  Jacob sat himself on a sofa—green velvet-like upholstery holding in whatever is the opposite of kelp and pony hair—and closed his eyes. He’d been having a hard time falling asleep. For a long time. But this felt OK. Despite the river of strangers passing in front of him, and occasionally sitting beside him to test the comfort, this felt safe. He was in his own world in that world that was in its own world in the world. Everyone was looking for something, but there was an endless supply, so no one’s gratification had to come at anyone else’s expense—there was no need to fight, no need even to disagree. So what that it was utterly soulless? Maybe heaven wasn’t populated by souls, but emptied of them? Maybe this was fairness?

  He was awoken by what he at first thought was the punching of that depraved machine, as if his resiliency were being violently challenged again and again and again. But it was just the tapping of a friendly angel.

  “We’re closing in ten,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m really sorry,” he said.

  She asked, “For what?”

  —

  By the time of the earthquake, Jacob would walk downstairs every morning not wondering if Argus had pooped, but where and with what solidity. It was a horrible way to start a day, and Jacob knew it wasn’t Argus’s fault, but when time was of the essence and kids weren’t cooperating robotically, poop in four places could force a meltdown.

  “Jesus Christ, Argus!”

  And then one of the kids would come to Argus’s rescue: “He can’t help it.”

  And then Jacob would feel miserable.

  Argus made Rorschachs of persians and orientals, relocated the stuffing of upholstered furniture to closets and his stomach, and scratched wood floors like Grand Wizard Theodore. But he was theirs.

  Everything would have been so much easier if Argus were suffering—not just uncomfortable, but in deep pain. Or if a vet could find cancer, or heart disease, even kidney failure.

  When Jacob told Julia he was going to Israel to fight, she told him he had to put down Argus first. He didn’t, and she didn’t mention it again. But when he came home from not leaving, it was an open, if invisible, wound.

  In the following months, Argus’s condition worsened along with everything else. He started whining for no obvious reason, paced before sitting down, ate less and less until he hardly ate at all.

  —

  Julia and the boys would be there any minute. Jacob wandered through the house, noticing the imperfections, adding to the infinite mental punch list of things that should be taken care of: the cracked grout in the dripping shower; the sloppy bit of overpainting where the hallway wall met the floor; the torqued vent in the dining room ceiling; the fussy bedroom window.

  The doorbell rang. Then rang again. Then rang again.

  “Coming! Coming!”

  He opened the door to sm
iles.

  “Your doorbell sounds weird,” Max said.

  Your doorbell.

  “It does sound a little weird. Weird good? Or weird bad?”

  “Maybe weird good?” Max said, and that might have been his opinion, but it might have been kindness.

  “Come in,” Jacob said. “Come. I have some great snacks—Cheddar Bunnies; the truffle cheese you like, Benjy; those lime tortilla chips, Max. And the whole line of Italian sodas: aranciata, limonata, pompelmo, clementine.”

  “We’re good,” Sam said, smiling as if for a family photo.

  “I’ve never even heard of pompelmo,” Max said.

  “Neither had I,” Jacob said. “But we’ve got it.”

  “I love this place,” Julia said, quite sincerely and convincingly, despite it being a scripted line. They’d rehearsed the visit, just as they’d rehearsed the divorce conversation, and how to share the new schedule of moving between houses, and so many other experiences too painful to have only once.

  “So do you guys want a tour? Or do you want to just explore it yourselves?”

  “Maybe explore?” Sam said.

  “Go on. Your names are on the doors of your rooms, so you can’t miss them.”

  He heard himself.

  The boys went upstairs, slowly, deliberately. They didn’t speak, but Jacob could hear them touching things.

  Julia hung back, and waited until the kids were on the third floor before saying, “So far, so good.”

  “You think?”

  “I do,” she said. “But it’ll take time.”

  Jacob wondered what Tamir would have to say about the house, should he ever see it. What would Isaac have said? He spared himself the move to the Jewish Home, unaware that he was also sparing himself Jacob’s move—and sparing Jacob.

  Jacob led Julia into what would become the living room—emptier now than if it had never been enclosed by walls. They sat on the only piece of furniture, the green sofa that Jacob had fallen asleep on a few weeks before. Not that exact sofa, but one of its two million identical siblings.

  “Dusty,” she said. And then: “Sorry.”

  “No, it is. Horribly.”

  “You have a vacuum?”

  “I got the kind we have,” Jacob said. “We had? You have? And I mop it, too. All the time, it feels like.”

  “There’s dust in the air, from the work. It keeps settling.”

  “How does one get dust out of the air?”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” she said.

  “And expect a different result? Isn’t that the definition of insanity?”

  “Do you have a Swiffer duster?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll get you one. They’re really useful.”

  “I can get it if you send me the link.”

  “At that point it’s easier for me to just get it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you feel OK about Argus?”

  “No.”

  “You should.”

  “My feelings have never once cared about what they should be.”

  “You’re good, Jacob.”

  “Compared to what?”

  “Compared to other men.”

  “I feel like I’m bailing water with a colander.”

  “If life were easy, everyone would do it.”

  “Everyone does.”

  “Think about how many trillions of trillions of people are never born for every one who is.”

  “Or just think about my grandfather.”

  “I often do,” she said. Her eyes raised, and scanned the room. “I don’t know if it’s annoying or helpful when I mention things—”

  “Why so binary?”

  “Right. Well. The walls are rather dark.”

  “I know. They are, right?”

  “Disconsolate.”

  “I hired a colorist.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I used that paint you like. Farrow whatever.”

  “Farrow and Ball.”

  “And they offered a colorist’s services, I assumed as a courtesy because I was buying so much of their overpriced paint. And then I got a bill for twenty-five hundred dollars.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Two thousand five hundred. And I feel like I’m living underneath a Union kepi.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those Civil War hats. I’ve been listening to this history of—”

  “You should have asked me.”

  “I can’t afford you.”

  “Would have been pro bono.”

  “Didn’t my father teach you there’s no such thing as a free colorist?”

  “There’s paper everywhere,” Benjy said, coming down the stairs. He seemed buoyant, unfazed.

  “It’s just protecting the floor while they finish the work,” Jacob said.

  “I’m going to trip a lot.”

  “It’ll be long gone by the time you live here. The paper on the floor, the ladders, the dust. All of it will be gone.”

  Max and Sam came back down.

  “Can I have a mini-fridge in my room?” Max asked.

  “Definitely,” Jacob said.

  “For what?” Julia asked.

  “Don’t you think there’s too much paper on the floors?” Benjy asked his brothers.

  “For all those Italian sodas.”

  “I think Dad intended those as something special for your first time here.”

  “Dad?”

  “They would definitely not be an everyday beverage.”

  “Sam, don’t you think the paper on the floor is bad?”

  “Fine, so I could keep the dead rats.”

  “Dead rats?”

  “I gave the OK for a python,” Jacob said, “and that’s what they eat.”

  “Actually, they’d probably have to be frozen,” Max said. “And I don’t think those mini-fridges have little freezer sections in them.”

  “Why would you want a python?” Julia asked.

  “Because I’ve wanted a python forever, because they’re amazing, and Dad said now that we had the new house we could finally get one.”

  “Why doesn’t anybody care that I’m going to trip all the time?” Benjy asked.

  And then Sam, who had been quiet for an unchar­acteris­tically long time, said, “My room seems nice. Thanks, Dad.”

  And that was the hardest thing for Jacob to hear. Julia saw that he needed help, and stepped in.

  “So,” she said, clapping her hands once, inadvertently raising more dust, “Dad and I were thinking it would be nice to give this house a name.”

  “Isn’t it just Dad’s House?”

  “Right,” Jacob said, composing himself with an imitation of optimism. “But we all want to think of it as one of our family’s two houses.”

  “Yeah, the one that you live in. As opposed to the one that Mom lives in.”

  “I don’t like this house,” Benjy said, verbally cutting the lines of Jacob’s emotional brakes.

  “You will,” Julia said.

  “I don’t like this house.”

  “I promise you will.”

  Jacob felt himself skidding out. It was unfair that he had to move, unfair that he was perceived as the one who left; that all this dust was his was unfair. But he also felt his dependency on Julia’s efforts. He couldn’t do this without her. He couldn’t live without her without her.

  “It’s going to be great,” she said, as if she could keep blowing her optimism into the punctured balloon of Benjy’s happiness and it would keep its shape. “Dad said there’s even room for a Ping-Pong table upstairs.”

  “Totally,” Jacob said. “And I’ve been trolling eBay for an old Skee-Ball machine.”

  “You don’t mean trolling,” Max said. “You mean trawling.”

  “Although,” Sam said, suddenly enlivened, “did you know that trolling actually comes from trawling. Not from, like, trolls?”

  “I didn’t,” Max said, grateful for that lit
tle bit of knowledge. “I’d always assumed trolls.”

  “Right?”

  The moment of normality suggested a normal life.

  “What’s Skee-Ball?” Benjy asked.

  “It’s kind of a combination of bowling and darts,” Sam said.

  “That’s hard for me to imagine.”

  “Like at Chuck E. Cheese’s.”

  “Ah, right.”

  A normal life? Was all this upheaval justified by that ambition?

  “How about Arcade House?” Max suggested.

  “Too much like Arcade Fire,” Sam said.

  “It’s very dusty,” Benjy said.

  “The dust won’t be here.”

  “How about Davenport House?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s on Davenport Street.”

  “That sounds like an old-age home.”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong about calling it Dad’s House,” Sam said. “We can pretend it’s something else, but that’s what it is.”

  “Paper House,” Benjy said, a bit to himself, a bit to no one.

  “What?”

  “Because there’s so much paper everywhere.”

  “But the paper will be gone by the time you move in,” Jacob said.

  “And paper is what you write on, and you’re a writer.”

  “He writes on a computer,” Sam said.

  “And paper rips and burns easily.”

  “Why would you want to name a house after something that rips and burns easily?”

  “Give him a break, Max.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Forget it,” Jacob said. “We can just call it 2328, after the address.”

  “No,” Julia said, “don’t forget it. It’s a nice idea, and we’re five intelligent people. We can do it.”

  The five intelligent people thought. They applied their intelligence to what was ultimately not a question of intelligence, like applying a Phillipshead screwdriver to a crossword puzzle.

  Some religions emphasize inner peace, some the avoidance of sin, some praise. Judaism emphasizes intelligence—textually, ritualistically, and culturally. Everything is learning, everything preparation, perpetually filling the mental toolbox until we are prepared for any situation (and it is too heavy to carry). Jews make up 0.2 percent of the world’s population, but have been awarded 22 percent of all Nobel Prizes—24 percent if you don’t include the Peace Prize. And with no Nobel for Being Exterminated, there was a decade when Jews wouldn’t have had much of a chance, so the practical percentage is yet higher. Why? It’s not because Jews are any smarter than anyone else; it’s because Jews put their emphasis on the kinds of things Stockholm rewards. Jews have been training for Nobel Prizes for thousands of years. But if there were Nobel Prizes for Contentment, for Feeling Safe, or for the Ability to Let Go, that 22 percent—24 percent without Peace—would need a parachute.