On a drive to visit Isaac many years before, Sam had asked from the backseat, “God is everywhere, right?”
Jacob and Julia exchanged yet another where-the-hell-did-that-come-from look.
Jacob handled it: “That’s what people who believe in God tend to think, yes.”
“And God has always been everywhere?”
“I suppose so.”
“So here’s what I can’t figure out,” he said, watching the early moon follow them as they drove. “If God was everywhere, where did He put the world when He made it?”
Jacob and Julia exchanged another look, this one of awe.
Julia turned to face Sam, who was still looking out the window, his pupils constantly returning, like a typewriter carriage, and said, “You are an amazing person.”
“OK,” Sam said, “but where did He put it?”
That night, Jacob did a bit of research and learned that Sam’s question had inspired volumes of thought over thousands of years, and that the most prevalent response was the kabbalistic notion of tzimtzum. Basically, God was everywhere, and as Sam surmised, when He wanted to create the world, there was nowhere to put it. So He made Himself smaller. Some refered to it as an act of contraction, others a concealment. Creation demanded self-erasure, and to Jacob, it was the most extreme humility, the purest generosity.
Sitting with her now, rehearsing the horrible conversation, Jacob wondered if maybe, all those years, he had misunderstood the spaces surrounding Julia: her quiet, her steps back. Maybe they weren’t buffers of defense, but of the most extreme humility, the purest generosity. What if she wasn’t withdrawing, but beckoning? Or both at the same time? Withdrawing and beckoning? And more to the point: making a world for their children, even for Jacob.
“You won’t cry,” he told her, trying to enter the space.
“Would it be bad to?”
“I don’t know. I suppose, all things being equal, it would be best not to impose that on them. Impose isn’t the right word. I mean…You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He was surprised, and further embodied, by her I do. “We’ll go over this a few dozen times and it’ll feel different.”
“It will never not destroy me.”
“And the adrenaline in the moment will help hold the tears back.”
“You’re probably right.”
You’re probably right. It had been a long time—it had felt like a long time, Dr. Silvers would correct—since she’d deferred to his emotional judgment in any way. Since she hadn’t reflexively bucked against it. There was a kindness in those words—you’re probably right—that disarmed him. He didn’t need to be right, but he needed that kindness. What if, all those times she reflexively bucked against, or simply dismissed, his perspective, she’d given him a you’re probably right? He would have found it very easy to concede inside that kindness.
“And if you cry,” Jacob said, “you cry.”
“I just want to make it easy on them.”
“No chance of that.”
“As easy as it can be.”
“Whatever happens, we’ll find our way.”
We’ll find our way. What an odd assurance, Julia thought, when the point of the conversation they were rehearsing was precisely that they couldn’t find their way. Not together. And yet the assurance took the form of togetherness: we.
“Maybe I’ll get a glass of water,” she said. “Do you want one?”
“I’ll go to the door and whine when I really need it.”
“You think the kids are losing?” she asked as she walked to the kitchen. Jacob wondered if the water was just an excuse to face away when asking that question.
“I’m just going to turn on the TV for one second. On mute. I just need to see what’s happening.”
“What about what’s happening here?”
“I’m here. You asked if I think the kids are losing. Yes, I think that’s the only way to describe it.”
A map of the Middle East, swooping arrows indicating the movements of various armies. There had been skirmishes, mostly with Syria and Hezbollah in the north. The Turks were taking an increasingly hostile tone, and the newly formed Transarabia was amassing planes and troops in what had been Jordan. But it was containable, controllable, plausibly deniable.
Jacob said, “Rest assured, I’ll be crying.”
“What?”
“I’ll have some water.”
“I didn’t hear what you said.”
“I said, even if you don’t see me crying, I’ll be crying.”
That was something—that felt like something—he needed to say. He’d always known—always felt—that Julia believed she had a stronger emotional engagement with the children, that being a mother, or a woman, or simply herself, created a bond that a father, man, or Jacob was incapable of. She’d subtly suggest it all the time—it felt like she was subtly suggesting it—and would every now and then outright say it, although it was always couched in talk of all the things that were special to his relationship with them, like having fun.
Her perception of their parental identities generally broke that way: depth and fun. Julia breast-fed them. Jacob made them crack up with over-the-top versions of airplane-into-the-mouth feeding. Julia had a visceral, uncontrollable need to check in on them while they slept. Jacob woke them up if the game went into extra innings. Julia taught them words like nostalgia, angst, and pensive. Jacob liked to say, “There’s no bad language, only bad usage,” as a way of justifying the supposedly good usage of words like douche and shitty, which Julia hated as much as the kids loved.
There was another way of looking at that dichotomy of depth and fun, one that Jacob had spent innumerable hours considering with Dr. Silvers: heaviness and lightness. Julia brought weight to everything, opening up a space for every intimated emotion, urging a fleshed-out conversation about each passing remark, perpetually suggesting the value of sadness. Jacob felt that most problems weren’t problems, and those that were could be resolved with distraction, food, physical activity, or the passage of time. Julia always wanted to give the kids a life of gravity: culture, trips abroad, black-and-white movies. Jacob saw no problem with—saw the great good in—bubblier, dumber activities: water parks, baseball games, terrible superhero movies that brought great pleasure. She understood childhood as the period of soul formation. He understood it as life’s only opportunity to feel safe and happy. Each saw the myriad shortcomings and absolute necessity of the other.
“Do you remember,” Julia asked, “however many years ago, when my friend Rachel came to our seder?”
“Rachel?”
“From architecture school? Remember, she came with her twins?”
“And no husband.”
“Right. He’d had a heart attack at the gym.”
“Cautionary tale.”
“You remember?”
“Sure, that year’s sympathy invite.”
“I guess she went to yeshiva as a girl, or had some kind of rigorous Jewish education. I hadn’t realized that, and ended up feeling so embarrassed.”
“By what?”
“What illiterate Jews we are.”
“But she had a great time, didn’t she?”
“She did.”
“So save your embarrassment.”
“It was years ago.”
“Embarrassment is the Parmalat of emotions.”
That got a great laugh—it felt great to Jacob—from Julia. An irrepressible laugh in the midst of so much tactical strategizing.
“What made you remember her now?”
Silence can be as irrepressible as laughter. And it can accumulate, like weightless snowflakes. It can collapse a ceiling.
“I’m not sure,” Julia said.
Jacob tried to pitch the conversation’s roof: “Maybe you were remembering how it felt to be judged.”
“Maybe. I don’t think she was judging. But I felt judged.”
“And you’re afraid of feeling judged?” Jac
ob asked.
A few nights before, Julia had awoken as if from a nightmare, although she had no memory of any dream. She went down to the kitchen, found the Georgetown Day student directory in the “crap drawer,” and confirmed that Benjy would be the only child in his class with two addresses.
“I’m afraid of our family being judged,” she said.
“Do you judge yourself?”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m going to be the sympathy invite this year, aren’t I?”
Julia smiled, grateful for the deflection.
“Why should this year be different from all other years?”
Their first shared laugh in weeks.
Jacob wasn’t used to this warmth, and it confused him. This was not what he was expecting when rehearsing for this rehearsal of a conversation. He’d anticipated something subtly passive-aggressive. He assumed he’d have to sample a buffet of shit, never having the guts—never finding justification in the cost-benefit analysis of self-defense—to draw upon the small arsenal of retorts he’d prepared.
Dr. Silvers had urged him simply to be present, to sit with his pain (rather than send it back), and to resist the desire for certain outcomes. But Jacob felt the situation would call for some very un-Eastern responsiveness. He would have to avoid saying things that could be used against him at any future point, as everything would be entered into the permanent record. He would have to appear to yield (with gentle affirmations, and declared reversals to positions he already secretly held), without giving an inch. He would have to have the cunning of someone too cunning to read a book about the cunning of samurai.
But as the conversation took shape, Jacob felt no need for control. There was nothing to win; there was only losing to protect against.
“ ‘There are many different kinds of families,’ ” Julia said. “Doesn’t that seem like a good way to go?”
“It does.”
“ ‘Some families have two dads. Some have two moms.’ ”
“ ‘Some families live in two houses’?”
“At which point Max will infer we’re buying a vacation house, and get excited.”
“A vacation house?”
“A house on the ocean. ‘Some families live in two houses: one in the city, one by the ocean.’ ”
A vacation house, Julia thought, willfully confusing herself as completely as Max would. She and Jacob had talked about it—not a house on the ocean, they could never afford that, but something cozy and elsewhere. It was the big news she was going to mention to Mark that day, before he reminded her how newsless her life was. A vacation house would be nice. Maybe even nice enough to make things work for a while, or to simulate a functioning family until the next temporary solution could be found. The appearance of happiness. If they could sustain the appearance—not to others, but how life appeared to themselves—it might be a close-enough approximation of the experience of actual happiness to make things work.
They could travel more. The planning of a trip, the trip, the decompression: that would buy them some time.
They could go to couples therapy, but Jacob had implied a bizarre loyalty to Dr. Silvers, which would have made seeing someone else a transgression (a greater transgression, apparently, than requesting a shot of fecal cum from a woman who was not his wife); and when Julia faced the prospect of opening everything up, the time and expense of twice-a-week visits that would end in either painful silence or endless talking, she couldn’t rouse herself to the necessary hopefulness.
They could have done exactly what she’d spent her professional life facilitating and her personal life condemning: a renovation. There was so much that could be improved in their house: revamp the kitchen (new hardware, at minimum, but why not new countertops, new appliances, ideally a reconfiguration for better flow and lines of sight); new master bath; new closets; open up the back of the house to the garden; punch in a couple of skylights above the top-floor showers; finish the basement.
“ ‘One house where Mom will live, and one house where Dad will live.’ ”
“OK,” Jacob said, “let me be Sam for a minute.”
“OK.”
“You’re going to move at the same time?”
“We’re going to try to, yes.”
“And I’m going to have to carry my stuff back and forth every day?”
“We’re going to live within walking distance of each other,” Julia said, “and it won’t be every day.”
“Is that really something you can promise? I’m being me now.”
“I think it’s an OK promise for the situation.”
“And how will we divide time?”
“I don’t know,” Julia said, “but not every day.”
“And who’s going to live here? I’m being Sam again.”
“Hopefully a nice family.”
“We’re a nice family.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Did one of you have an affair?”
“Jacob.”
“What?”
“He’s not going to ask that.”
“First of all, of course he might. Second, it’s one of those things that, however unlikely, we absolutely need to have a prepared answer for.”
“OK,” Julia said, “so I’ll be Sam.”
“OK.”
“Did one of you have an affair?”
“Who am I?” Jacob asked. “Me? Or you?”
“You.”
“No. That’s not what’s going on here.”
“But I saw your phone.”
“Wait, did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? Or he didn’t?”
“I don’t believe that he did.”
“So why are you saying it?”
“Because the kids know things that we don’t think they know. And when he helped me to unlock it—”
“He helped you unlock it?”
“I didn’t know whose it was.”
“And he saw—?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him—”
“Of course not.”
Jacob got back into the character of himself.
“What you saw was an exchange with one of the other writers on my show. We were sending lines back and forth for a scene in which, well, two people say some pretty inappropriate things to each other.”
“Convincing,” Julia said, herself.
“And you, Mom?” Jacob asked. “Did you have an affair?”
“No.”
“Not with Mark Adelson?”
“No.”
“You didn’t kiss him at Model UN?”
“Is this really productive, Jacob?”
“Here, I’ll be you.”
“You’ll be me?”
“Yes, Sam, I did kiss Mark at Model UN. It wasn’t premeditated—”
“Not a word I would ever use.”
“It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t even enjoyable. It simply happened. I am sorry that it happened. I have asked your father to accept my apology, and he has. Your father is a very good man—”
“We get the picture.”
“Really, though,” Jacob said, “how are we going to explain our reasoning?”
“Reasoning?”
They never used the word divorce. Jacob could bring himself to say it, because it wasn’t going to happen. But he didn’t want it aboveground. Julia couldn’t say it, because she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t know where to put it.
If Julia were to be fully honest, she couldn’t easily say her reasons for doing what they couldn’t say. She was unhappy, although unconvinced that her unhappiness wouldn’t be someone else’s happiness. She felt unfulfilled desire—profound amounts of it—but presumably so did every other married and unmarried person. She wanted more, but didn’t know if there was more to be found. Not knowing used to feel inspiring. It felt like faith. Now it felt agnostic. Like not knowing.
“What if they want to know if we’re going to get remar
ried?” Julia asked.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Definitely not,” she said. “No chance.”
“You’re awfully sure.”
“There is nothing I’m more sure of.”
“You used to be so unsure of everything, in the best way.”
“I suppose I used to have less evidence.”
“The only thing you have evidence of is that our specific way of doing things didn’t work for the specific person you are.”
“I’m ready for the next chapter.”
“Spinsterhood?”
“Maybe.”
“What about Mark?”
“What about him?”
“He’s nice. Handsome. Why not give that a try?”
“How can you be so ready to give me away?”
“No. No, it’s just you seem to have a connection with him, and—”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Jacob. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried about you.”
That didn’t sound right.
He tried again: “I’m not any more worried about you than you are about me.”
Also not right.
“Mark is a mensch,” Billie said at the edge of the room. Do they spontaneously generate from the upholstery, like maggots from rotting meat?
“Billie?”
“Hello,” she said, extending her hand to Jacob. “We haven’t actually met, although I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Precisely what? Jacob wanted to ask, but instead took her hand and said, “And I’ve heard a lot about you.” A lie. “All good things, by the way.” The truth.
“I was upstairs helping Sam with his bar mitzvah apology, and it occurred to us that we don’t know what, exactly, qualifies as an apology. Does an apology require an explicit disavowal?”
Jacob shot Julia a look of check out the vocabulary on this one.
“Could he simply describe what happened and explain? Are the words I’m sorry strictly necessary?”
“Why isn’t Sam asking?”