Here I Am Read online

  “If we’d been sitting closer to the fire, you might have been spared.”

  “Although hard to explain the puddle. Ah, well. Next time I’ll do butter.”

  “Next time is right now,” she said—an offering and a summoning.

  “And I’m supposed to just churn them out?” With a wink: “Churn?”

  “Yes, I get it.”

  “Your stoicism is a butter pill to swallow.”

  “So give me something good.”

  “I know what you’re thinking: Bad butter puns, how dairy!”

  That got a chuckle. She reflexively tried to withhold her laughter (not from him, but herself) and felt an unexpected desire to reach across the table and touch him.

  “What? You can’t believe it’s not better?”

  Another chuckle.

  “Butter precedes essence.”

  “That one I don’t get. What do you say we move on to bread puns, or maybe even dialogue?”

  “Have I milked it too much?”

  “Relent, Jacob.”

  “Who ya gonna call? Goat’s Butter!”

  “Best yet. Definitely the one to end it on.”

  “Just to clear the dairy air, I’m the funniest man you’ve ever known?”

  “Only because Benjy isn’t yet a man,” she said, but the combination of her husband’s overwhelming quickness and his overwhelming need to be loved brought waves of love, pulled her into its ocean.

  “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Toasters don’t toast toast, toast toasts toast.”

  “Toasters toast bread.”

  “The margarine for error is too small!”

  What if she’d given him the love he needed, and she needed to give, if she’d said, “Your mind is making me want to touch you”?

  What if he’d been able to make the right joke at the right time, or better still, be still?

  Another glass of rosé.

  “You stole a clock from the desk! I just remembered that!”

  “I did not steal a clock.”

  “You did,” Julia said. “You totally did.”

  The only time in his life he impersonated Nixon: “I am not a crook!”

  “Well, you definitely were. It was a tiny, folding, cheap nothing. After we made love. You went to the desk, stopped the clock, and put it in your jacket pocket.”

  “Why would I have done that?”

  “I think it was supposed to be romantic? Or funny? Or you were trying to show me your spontaneity credentials? I have no idea. Go back and ask yourself.”

  “You’re sure you’re thinking of me? And not some other man? Some other romantic night at an inn?”

  “I’ve never had a romantic night at an inn with anyone else,” Julia said, which shouldn’t have required saying, and wasn’t true, but she wanted to care for Jacob, especially right then. Neither knew, only a few steps onto that invisible bridge, that it never ended, that the rest of their life together would require steps of trust, which only led to the next step of trust. She wanted to care for him then, but she wouldn’t always.

  They stayed at their table until the waiter, in splutters of profuse apology, explained that the restaurant was shutting down for the night.

  “What was the name of that movie we didn’t watch?”

  They would have to go to the room.

  Jacob put the duffel on the bed, just as he had. Julia moved it to the bench at the foot of the bed, just as she had. Jacob removed the toiletry bag.

  Julia said, “I know I shouldn’t, but I wonder what the kids are doing right now.”

  Jacob chuckled. Julia changed into her “fancy” pajamas. Jacob watched her, unaware of anything that had changed about her body in the decade since they’d last been there, because he’d seen her body nearly every day since. He still stole peeks, like a teenager, at her breasts and ass, still fantasized about what was both real and his. Julia felt herself being watched, and liked it, so took her time. Jacob changed into boxers and a T-shirt. Julia went to the sink and ritually craned her neck back, a worn habit, examining herself as she gently pulled on a lower eyelid—as if she were about to insert a contact lens. Jacob produced both toothbrushes and applied toothpaste to each, resting hers, bristles up, on the sink.

  “Thanks,” Julia said.

  “Do. Not. Mention. It,” Jacob replied in a funny robot voice whose utterly random arrival could only have been an expression of anxiety about the emotions and actions now expected of them. Or so Julia thought.

  Jacob brushed his teeth and thought, What if I don’t get hard? Julia brushed her teeth, searching the mirror for something she didn’t want to see. Jacob applied five seconds of Old Spice to each armpit (despite being an inert and sweatless sleeper), washed his face with Cetaphil Daily Facial Cleanser for Normal to Oily Skin (despite having Normal to Dry Skin), then applied Eucerin Daily Protection Moisturizing Face Lotion, Broad Spectrum SPF 30 (despite the sun having disappeared hours ago, and despite sleeping under a ceiling). He gave an extra squirt of Eucerin to his trouble spots: around the alas (a word he knew only from neurotic Google searches—Alas, poor Yorick, the alas of your missing nose), and between the eyebrows and the tops of the upper eyelids. Julia’s regimen was more complex: a face wash with S.W. Basics Cleanser, application of Skin-Ceuticals Retinol 1.0 Maximum Strength Refining Night Cream, application of Laneige Water Bank Moisture Cream, gentle tapping application of Lancôme Rénergie Lift Multi-Action Night cream around her eyes. Jacob went to the bedroom and did the stretches that everyone in the family made fun of, despite the chiropractor’s insistence that they were necessary for someone with such a sedentary lifestyle, and the fact that they actually helped. Julia flossed with an Oral-B Glide 3D Floss Pick, which, despite being both an environmental nightmare and a rip-off, spared her from gagging. Jacob returned to the bathroom and flossed with the cheapest thing he could find at CVS, string being string.

  “You already brushed?” Julia asked.

  Jacob said, “Beside you. Just a minute ago.”

  Julia made a dollop of hand cream disappear in her palms.

  They moved to the bedroom, and Jacob said, “I have to pee,” as he always did at that moment. He went back into the bathroom, locked the door, performed his nightly solitary ritual, and flushed the unused toilet to complete the charade. When he reentered the bedroom, Julia was propped against the headboard, applying L’Oreal Collagen Re-Plumper Night Cream across the thigh of her bent leg. Jacob often wanted to tell her that it wasn’t necessary, that he would love her as she was, just as she would love him; but wanting to feel attractive was who she was, just as it was who he was, and that, too, should be loved. Julia tied back her hair.

  Jacob touched a tapestry, a depiction of a naval battle beneath the bannered words “The American Situation: War of 1812,” and said, “Nice.” Did she remember?

  Julia said, “Please tell me not to call the kids.”

  “Not to call the kids.”

  “Of course I shouldn’t.”

  “Or call them. We’re not vacation fundamentalists.”

  Julia laughed.

  Jacob was never immune to her laughter.

  “Come,” she said, patting the bed beside her.

  Jacob said, “We have a big day tomorrow,” illuminating several emergency exit paths at once: they needed rest; tomorrow was more important than tonight; it wouldn’t be a disappointment if she acknowledged her tiredness.

  “You must be beat,” Julia said, redirecting things slightly by putting the onus on him.

  “I am,” he said, almost as a question, almost accepting his role. “And you must be, too,” asking her to accept hers.

  “Come,” she said, “hold me.”

  Jacob turned off the lights, placed his unfolded glasses on the bedside table, and got into bed, beside his wife of a decade. She turned onto her side, bringing her head into her husband’s armpit. He kissed the North Pole of her head. Now they were on their own, without history, no dead stars to navigate
by.

  If they’d said what they were thinking, Jacob would have said, “To be honest, it’s not as nice as I remembered.”

  And she would have said, “It couldn’t have been.”

  “When I was a boy, I used to ride my bike down a hill behind the house. I’d narrate each run. You know, ‘Jacob Bloch, set to attempt a new land speed record. He grips his handlebars. Can he do it?’ I called it ‘The Huge Hill.’ More than anything else in my childhood, it made me feel brave. I went back the other day. It was on the way to a meeting, and I had a few minutes. I couldn’t find it. I found where it was, or should have been, but it wasn’t there. Only the gentlest slope.”

  “You grew,” she would have said.

  If they’d said what they were thinking, Jacob would have said, “I’m thinking about how we’re not having sex. Are you?”

  And without defensiveness or hurt, Julia would have said, “Yeah, I am.”

  “There’s nothing I’m asking you to say here. I promise. I just want to tell you where I am. OK?”

  “OK.”

  And risking another step onto the invisible bridge, Jacob would have said, “I’m worrying that you don’t want to have sex with me. That you don’t desire me.”

  “You don’t need to worry,” Julia would have said as she would have brought her hand to the side of his face.

  “I always desire you,” he would have said. “I was watching you undress—”

  “I know. I felt it.”

  “You look every bit as beautiful as you did ten years ago.”

  “That’s plainly untrue. But thank you.”

  “It’s true to me.”

  “Thank you.”

  And Jacob would have found himself in the middle of the invisible bridge, above the chasm of potential hurt, at the farthest point from safety: “Why do you think we aren’t having sex?”

  And Julia would have stood beside him and, without looking down, said, “Maybe because the expectation is so great?”

  “Could be. And we’re genuinely tired.”

  “I know I am.”

  “I’m going to say something that isn’t easy to say.”

  “You’re safe,” she would have promised.

  He would have turned to her and said, “We never talk about how I can’t get hard sometimes. Do you ever think it’s you?”

  “I do.”

  “It isn’t you.”

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  “Julia,” he would have said, “it isn’t you.”

  But he didn’t say anything, and neither did she. Not because the words were deliberately withheld, but because the pipeline between them was too occluded for such bravery. Too many small accumulations: wrong words, absences of words, imposed quiet, plausibly deniable attacks on known vulnerabilities, mentions of things that needn’t be mentioned, misunderstandings and accidents, moments of weakness, tiny acts of shitty retribution for tiny acts of shitty retribution for tiny acts of shitty retribution for an original offense that no one could remember. Or for no offense at all.

  They didn’t recede from each other that night. They didn’t roll to opposite sides of the bed, or withdraw into two silences. They held each other and shared a silence in the darkness. But it was silence. Neither suggested they explore the room with their eyes closed, as they’d done the last time they were there. They explored the room independently, in their minds, beside each other. And in Jacob’s jacket pocket was the stopped clock—a decade of 1:43—which he’d been waiting for just the right moment to reveal.

  i’ll keep making you cum after you beg me to stop

  In the hardware gallery parking lot, she sat in her car—her Volvo like everybody else’s, in a color she knew was wrong the second after it was impossible to change her mind—not knowing what to do with herself, knowing only that she had to do something. She wasn’t sufficiently adept with her phone to waste the kind of time she needed to waste. But she could squander at least a little. She found the company that made her favorite architectural model trees. They weren’t the most realistic, they weren’t even well made. She didn’t like them because they evoked trees but because they evoked the sadness that trees evoke—the way an out-of-focus photograph might best capture its subject’s essence. It was extremely unlikely that the manufacturer intended any of that, but it was possible, and it didn’t matter.

  They were featuring a new line of autumn trees. Who could be the market for such things? Orange Maple, Red Maple, Yellow Maple, Autumn Sycamore, Light Orange Aspen, Yellowing Aspen, Turning Maple, Turning Sycamore. She imagined a tiny, younger Jacob, and a tiny, younger Julia, in a tiny, scratched and dinged Saab, driving shoelace roads bordered by an infinity of tiny, turning trees, under an infinity of tiny, massive stars, and like the trees, the tiny young couple weren’t realistic, or well made, and they didn’t evoke their bigger, older selves, but they evoked the sadness that they would grow to evoke.

  Mark tapped her window. She tried rolling it down and realized the car needed to be on, but the key wasn’t in the ignition or in her hand, and she didn’t have it in her to go through her bag, so she clumsily opened the door.

  “I’ll see you at the Model UN trip.”

  “What?”

  “In a couple of weeks. I’m the male chaperone.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  “So we can continue our talk then.”

  “I don’t know how much more there is to say.”

  “There’s always more to say.”

  “Sometimes not.”

  And then, on her day off, wanting only to get as far away from her life as possible, she found herself trampling a desire line home.

  it’s enough when i say it’s enough

  HERE I AMN’T

  > Anyone know how to take a picture of stars?

  > Like in the sky, or with their hands in wet sidewalk?

  > My phone’s flash makes everything white. I turned it off, but the shutter stays open for so long my tiny movements blur everything. I tried bracing my arm with my other hand, but it was still a blur.

  > Phones are useless at night.

  > Unless you need to go down a dark hallway.

  > My phone is dying.

  > Or call someone.

  > Just try to make it comfortable.

  > Samanta, this place is fucking lit!

  > Insane.

  > Where are you that there are stars out?

  > The guy told me there was nothing wrong with it. I said, “If there’s nothing wrong with it, why is it broken?” And he said, “Why is it broken if there’s nothing wrong with it?” And I tried, again, to show him, but of course it worked again. I almost cried, or killed him.

  > What happens at a bat mitzvah, anyway?

  At any given time, there are forty times in the world. Another interesting fact: China used to have five time zones, but now it has only one, and for some Chinese people the sun doesn’t rise until after ten. Another: long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there—not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die. On Earth, the sun rises and sets once each day. A spaceship orbits Earth once every ninety minutes, which would require a Shabbat every nine hours. One line of thinking held that Jews simply shouldn’t be in a place that raises doubts about prayer and observance. Another, that one’s earthly obligations are earthbound—what happens in space stays in space. Some argued that a Jewish astronaut should observe the same routine he would on Earth. Others, that Shabbat should be observed by the time set on his instruments, despite the city of Houston being about as Jewish as the Rockets’ locker room. Two Jewish astronauts have died in space. No Jewish astronaut has observed Shabbat.

  Sam’s dad gave him an article about Ilan Ramon, the only Israeli ever to go into space. Before leaving, Ramon went to the Holocaust Museum, to find an artifact to take with him. He chose a drawing of Earth by a young, anonymous boy who died in
the war.

  “Imagine that sweet child scribbling away,” Sam’s dad said. “If an angel had landed on his shoulder and told him, ‘You’re going to be killed before your next birthday, and in sixty years a representative of the Jewish state is going to carry your drawing of Earth as seen from space into space—”

  “If there were angels,” Sam said, “he wouldn’t have been killed.”

  “If the angels were good angels.”

  “Do we believe in bad angels?”

  “We probably don’t believe in any angels.”

  Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn’t dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain.

  It was always dusk in Other Life, so once every day the “other time” corresponded to the “real time” of its citizens. Some referred to that moment as “The Harmony.” Some wouldn’t miss it. Some didn’t like to be at their screens when it happened. Sam’s bar mitzvah was still a ways off. Samanta’s bat mitzvah was today. Did the drawing simply immolate when the space shuttle exploded? Are any small pieces of it still orbiting? Did they fall to the water, descend, over hours, to the ocean floor, and veil one of those deep-sea creatures that are so alien they look like they came from outer space?

  The pews were filled with everyone Samanta knew, people Sam had never met. They came from Kyoto, Lisbon, Sacramento, Lagos, Toronto, Oklahoma City, and Beirut. Twenty-seven dusks. They were sitting together in the virtual sanctuary of Sam’s creation—they saw the beauty; Sam saw all that was wrong with it, all that was wrong with him. They came for Samanta, a community of her communities. As far as they knew, it was a happy occasion.

  > Just take it to someone else. Insist that they open it up.

  > Just fucking throw your phone from a bridge.

  > Can someone explain to me what’s going to happen here?

  > Funnily enough, I’m crossing a bridge right now, but I’m on an Amtrak and you can’t open the windows.

  > Send us a picture of the water.