Here I Am

  “What the fuck, Tamir?”

  “What are you crying about?”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “If you’re not crying, then stop crying.”

  “I’m not.”

  Tamir rested a hand on each of Jacob’s shoulders, and rested his forehead against Jacob’s. Jacob had breast-fed for a year, been given baths in the kitchen sink, fallen asleep on his father’s shoulder a thousand times—but this was an intimacy he had never experienced.

  “You have to do it,” Tamir said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You do, but you’re afraid.”

  “I don’t.”

  But he did. But he was afraid.

  “Come,” Tamir said, bringing Jacob to the wall. “It’s easy. It will take only a second. You saw. You saw that it wasn’t a big deal. And you’ll remember it forever.”

  This is so unlike me.

  “Dead people don’t have memories.”

  “I won’t let you die.”

  “No? What will you do?”

  “I’ll jump in with you.”

  “So we die together?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that doesn’t make me any less dead.”

  “It does. Now go.”

  “Did you hear something?”

  “No, because there was nothing to hear.”

  “Seriously: I don’t want to die.”

  Somehow it happened without happening, without any decision having been made, without a brain sending any signal to any muscle. At a certain point, Jacob was halfway over the glass, without ever having climbed it. His hands were shaking so violently he could only barely hold on.

  This is so unlike me.

  “Let go,” Tamir said.

  He held on.

  This is so unlike me.

  “Let go.”

  He shook his head and let go.

  And then he was on the ground, inside the lion’s den.

  This is the opposite of me.

  There, on the dirt, in the middle of the simulated savannah, in the middle of the nation’s capital, he felt something so irrepressible and true that it would either save or ruin his life.

  Three years later he would touch his tongue to the tongue of a girl for whom he so happily would have cut off his arms, if only she had let him. And the following year an air bag would tear his cornea and save his life. Two years after that he would gaze with amazement at a mouth around his penis. And later that year he would say to his father what for years he had been saying about him. He would smoke a bushel of pot, watch his knee bend the wrong way during a stupid touch-football game, be inexplicably moved to tears in a foreign city by a painting of a woman and her baby, touch a hibernating brown bear and an endangered pangolin, spend a week waiting for a test result, pray silently for his wife’s life as she screamed as new life came out of her body—many moments when life felt big, precious. But they made up such an utterly small portion of his time on earth: Five minutes a year? What did it sum to? A day? At most? A day of feeling alive in four decades of life?

  Inside the lion’s den, he felt surrounded and embraced by his own existence. He felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, safe.

  But then he heard it, and was brought back. He looked up, met Tamir’s eyes, and could see that Tamir heard it, too. A stirring. Flattening foliage. What did they exchange in their glance? Fear? But it felt like laughter. Like the greatest of all jokes had passed between them.

  Jacob turned and saw an animal. Not in his mind, but an actual animal in the actual world. An animal that didn’t deliberate and expound. An uncircumcised animal. It was fifty feet away, but its hot breath was steaming Jacob’s glasses.

  Without saying a word, Tamir climbed back over the fence and extended his hand. Jacob leaped for it but couldn’t reach. Their fingers touched, which made the distance feel infinite. Jacob jumped again, and again their fingertips brushed, and now the lion was running, halving the distance between them with each stride. Jacob had no time to gather himself or contemplate how he might get an extra inch or two, he simply tried again, and this time—because of the adrenaline, or because of God’s sudden desire to prove His existence—he caught hold of Tamir’s wrist.

  And then Jacob and Tamir were once again sprawled on the pavement, and Tamir started laughing, and Jacob started laughing, and then, or at the same time, Jacob started crying.

  Maybe he knew. Maybe he was somehow aware, a teenager laughing and crying on that pavement, that he would never again feel anything like it. Maybe he saw, from the peak of that mountaintop, the great flatness before him.

  Tamir was crying, too.

  Thirty years later, they were still on the brink of the enclosure, but despite all the inches they’d grown, it no longer felt possible to enter. The glass had grown, too. It had grown more than they’d grown.

  “I’ve never felt alive since that night,” Jacob said, bringing Tamir another beer.

  “Life has been that boring?”

  “No. A lot of life has happened. But I haven’t felt it.

  “There are versions of happiness,” Tamir said.

  Jacob paused before opening the bottle and said, “You know, I’m not sure I believe that.”

  “You don’t want to believe it. You want to believe that your work should have the significance of a war, that a long marriage should offer the same kind of excitement as a first date.”

  “I know,” Jacob said. “Don’t expect too much. Learn to love the numbness.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “I’ve spent my life clinging to the belief that all the things we spoke about as children had at least a grain of truth to them. That the promise of a felt life isn’t a lie.”

  “Did you ever stop to ask yourself why you put such an emphasis on feeling?”

  “What else would one put an emphasis on?”

  “Peace.”

  “I’ve got plenty of peace,” Jacob said. “Too much peace.”

  “There are versions of peace, too.”

  A wind passed over the house, and deep inside the range hood, the damper flapped.

  “Julia thinks I don’t believe in anything,” Jacob said. “Maybe she’s right. I don’t know if this counts as belief or disbelief, but I’m sure that my grandfather isn’t somewhere other than in the ground right now. What we’ve got is what we’re going to get. Our jobs, our marriages…”

  “You’re disappointed?”

  “I am. Or devastated. No, something between disappointed and devastated. Dispirited?”

  The stubborn recessed light over the sink went dark with a snapping sound. Some connection wasn’t quite secure.

  “It was a hard day,” Tamir said.

  “Yes, but the day has been decades.”

  “Even though it only felt like a few seconds?”

  “Whenever someone asks me how I’m doing, I find myself saying, ‘I’m going through a passage.’ Everything is a transition, turbulence on the way to the destination. But I’ve been saying it for so long I should probably accept that the rest of my life is going to be one long passage: an hourglass with no bulbs. Always the pinch.”

  “Jacob, you really don’t have enough problems.”

  “I’ve got enough,” Jacob said while texting Julia again, “believe me. But my problems are so small, so domestic. My kids stare at screens all day. My dog is incontinent. I have an insatiable appetite for porn, but can’t count on an erection when there’s an analog pussy in front of me. I’m balding—which I know you’ve noticed, and thank you for not drawing attention to it.”

  “You aren’t balding.”

  “I’m smaller than life.”

  Tamir nodded his head and asked, “Who isn’t smaller than life?”

  “You.”

  “What’s so big about me? I can’t wait to hear.”

  “You’ve fought in wars, and live in the shadow of future wars, and Christ, Noam is in the middle of who-knows-what right now. The stak
es of your life reflect the size of life.”

  “And that’s worth envying?” Tamir asked. “One less beer and I’d be offended by what you just said.” He drank down half the bottle. “One more and I’d be furious.”

  “There’s no reason to be offended. I’m just saying you’ve escaped the Great Flatness.”

  “You think I want anything more than a boring white house in a boring neighborhood where no one knows each other because everyone’s watching TV?”

  “Yes,” Jacob said. “I think you’d go as crazy as my grandfather.”

  “He wasn’t crazy. You’re the one who’s crazy.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  The light snapped back on, saving Jacob from having to know what he meant.

  “Listen to yourself, Jacob. You think it’s all a game, because you’re only a fan.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Worse than a fan. You don’t even know who you’re rooting for.”

  “Hey. Tamir. You’re running with something I didn’t say. What’s going on?”

  Tamir pointed at the television—Israeli troops holding back an agitated crowd of Palestinians trying to get into West Jerusalem—and said, “That’s what’s going on. Maybe you haven’t noticed?”

  “But that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “The drama. Right. You love the drama. It’s who we are that embarrasses you.”

  “What? Who does?”

  “Israel.”

  “Tamir, stop. I don’t know what you’re talking about, or why this conversation took this turn. Can’t I just bemoan my life?”

  “If I can just defend my own.”

  With the hope that a bit of empowerment might bring Max out of his funk, Jacob and Julia had started to let him take neighborhood adventures on his own: to the pizza parlor, library, bakery. One afternoon he came back with a pair of cardboard X-ray glasses from the drugstore. Jacob covertly watched him try them on, then read the packaging again, then try them on again, then read the packaging. He wore them around the first floor, becoming increasingly agitated. “These completely suck!” he said, throwing them to the floor. Jacob delicately explained that they were a gag, intended to make other people think you could see through things. “Why wouldn’t they make that clear on the packaging?” Max asked, his anger upshifting to humiliation. “And why would it be any less funny if they actually could see through things?”

  What was going on inside Tamir? Jacob couldn’t understand how the warm banter about happiness had downshifted to a heated political argument with only one participant. Something had been touched, but what?

  “I work a lot,” Tamir said. “You know that. I’ve always worked a lot. Some men work to get away from their families. I work to provide for mine. You believe me when I say that, right?”

  Jacob nodded, unable to bring himself to say, “Of course I do.”

  “I missed a lot of dinners when Noam was young. But I took him to school every morning. It was important to me. I got to know a lot of the other parents that way. For the most part, I liked them. But there was one father I couldn’t stand—a real asshole, like me. And so naturally I hated his child as well. Eitan was his name. So maybe you know where this story is going?”

  “I have no idea, actually.”

  “When Noam entered the army, who should be in his unit?”

  “Eitan.”

  “Eitan. His father and I exchange e-mails when one of us has some small bit of news to share. We never spend time together, and never even talk on the phone. But we write back and forth quite a bit. I didn’t grow to like him—the more I deal with him, the more I hate him. But I love him.” He wrapped his hand around the empty bottle. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How much money do you give to Israel?”

  “How much money?” Jacob asked, going to the fridge to get Tamir another beer, and because he needed to move. “That’s a funny question.”

  “Yes. What do you give to Israel? I’m serious.”

  “What, to the UJA? Ben-Gurion University?”

  “Sure, include it all. And include your trips to Israel, with your parents, with your own family.”

  “You know I haven’t been there with Julia and the boys.”

  “That’s right, you went to Berlin. Well, imagine you had gone to Israel. Imagine the hotels you would have stayed in, the cab rides, falafel, the Jerusalem-stone mezuzot you would have brought back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Well, I know that I give more than sixty percent of my salary.”

  “You mean in taxes? You live there.”

  “Which is all the more reason you should have to bear the financial burden.”

  “I really can’t follow this conversation, Tamir.”

  “And it’s not only that you refuse to give your fair share, you take.”

  “Take what?”

  “Our future. Did you know that more than forty percent of Israelis are considering emigrating? There was a survey.”

  “That’s somehow my fault? Tamir, I understand that Israel isn’t a college town, and it must be torture to be away from your family right now, but you’re going after the wrong guy.”

  “Come on, Jacob.”

  “What?”

  “You’re complaining about how fucking dispirited you are, about how small your life is.” Tamir leaned forward. “I’m scared.”

  Jacob was moved to speechlessness. It was as if he had entered the kitchen that night with cardboard X-ray glasses and thrown them to the ground in frustration, and instead of explaining that they were only intended to make others think you could see through things, Tamir made himself transparent.

  “I’m scared,” he said again. “And I’m sick of bonding with Eitan’s dad.”

  “You have more than Eitan’s dad.”

  “That’s right: we have the Arabs.”

  “Us.”

  “Us? Your children are asleep on organic mattresses. My son is in the middle of that,” he said, pointing at the television again. “I give more than half of everything I have, and you give one percent, tops. You want to be part of the epic, and you feel entitled to tell me how to run my house, and yet you give and do nothing. Give more or talk less. But no more referring to us.”

  Like Jacob, Tamir preferred not to keep his phone in his pocket and would rest it on tables or counters. Several times, despite it looking nothing like Jacob’s phone, Jacob instinctively picked it up. The first time, the home screen was a photo of Noam as a child, lining up a corner kick. The next time, it was a different photo: Noam in his uniform, saluting. The next time: Noam in Rivka’s arms.

  “I understand that you’re worried,” Jacob said. “I’d be losing my mind. And if I were you, I’d probably resent me, too. It’s been a long day.”

  “Remember how you were obsessed with our bomb shelter? When you first visited? Your father, too. I practically had to drag you out of there.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “When we defeated half a dozen Arab armies in ’48—”

  “We? You weren’t even born.”

  “That’s right, I shouldn’t have said we. It includes you, and you had nothing to do with it.”

  “I had as much to do with it as you did.”

  “Except that my grandfather risked his life, and therefore risked my life.”

  “He had no choice.”

  “America has always been a choice for us. Just as Israel has for you. Every year you end your seder with ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ and every year you choose to celebrate your seder in America.”

  “That’s because Jerusalem is an idea.”

  Tamir laughed and banged the table. “Not for the people who live there, it isn’t. Not when you’re putting a gas mask on your child. What did your father do in ’73, when the Egyptians and Syrians were pushing us toward the sea?”

  “He wrote op-eds, led marches, lobbie
d.”

  “You know I love your father, but I hope you can hear yourself, Jacob. Op-eds? My father commanded a tank unit.”

  “My father helped.”

  “He gave what he could give without sacrificing, or even risking, anything. Do you think he considered getting on a plane and coming to fight?”

  “He didn’t know how to fight.”

  “It’s not very hard, you just try not to die. In ’48 they gave rifles to skeletons as they got off their boats from Europe.”

  “And he had a wife at home.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And it wasn’t his country.”

  “Bingo.”

  “America was his country.”

  “No, he was homelandless.”

  “America was his home.”

  “America was where he rented a room. And do you know what would have happened if we’d lost that war, as so many, and so many of us, feared would happen?”

  “But you didn’t lose.”

  “But if we had? If we had been pushed into the sea, or just slaughtered where we were?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Your father would have written op-eds.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at with this mental exercise. You’re trying to demonstrate that you live in Israel and I don’t?”

  “No, that Israel is dispensable to you.”

  “Dispensable?”

  “Yes. You love it, support it, sing about it, pray for it, even envy the Jews who live there. And you will survive without it.”

  “In the sense that I wouldn’t stop breathing?”

  “In that sense.”

  “Well, in that sense, America is dispensable to me, as well.”

  “That’s absolutely right. People think the Palestinians are homelandless, but they would die for their homeland. It’s you who deserves pity.”

  “Because I won’t die for a country?”

  “You’re right. I’ve said too little. You won’t die for anything. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but don’t pretend it’s unfair or untrue. Julia was right: you don’t believe in anything.”

  It would have been the moment for one or both of them to storm off, but Jacob took his phone from the table and calmly said, “I’m gonna take a piss. And when I come back, we’re going to pretend the last ten minutes didn’t happen.” Tamir showed nothing.