“This is bad,” Jacob said, transfixed and intoxicated by the images.
“Bad?”
“Very bad.”
“I need to go home.”
“I know,” Jacob said, too groggy to understand, or even to be sure that he wasn’t still asleep. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Now. We need to go to the embassy.”
“Yeah. OK.”
Tamir shook his head and said, “Now, now, now.”
“I get it. Let me put some clothes on.”
But neither moved from the sofa. The television filled with Jewish rage: black-hatted men screaming in Hebrew in London; dark men from one of the last remaining kibbutzim waving fingers at the camera, hysterically repeating words Jacob didn’t understand; Jewish men clashing with Jewish soldiers guarding the Temple Mount.
Tamir said, “You need to come, too.”
“Of course. Give me a minute.”
“No,” Tamir said, grabbing Jacob’s shoulders with the force he used at the zoo three decades before. “You need to come home.”
“I am home. What?”
“To Israel.”
“What?”
“You need to come to Israel with me.”
“I do?”
“Yes.”
“Tamir, you want to leave Israel.”
“Jacob.”
“Now you want me to go?”
Tamir pointed at the TV. “Are you looking at this?”
“I’ve been looking at that for a week.”
“No. No one has ever seen this before.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is how it ends,” he said. “Like this.” And for the first time since Tamir had arrived in D.C., for the first time ever, Jacob saw the family resemblance. He saw the panicked eyes of his boys—the terror he looked into before blood tests and after injuries that drew blood.
“How it ends?”
“How Israel is destroyed.”
“Because Muslims are screaming in Jakarta and Riyadh? What are they going to do, walk to Jerusalem?”
“Yes. And ride horses, and drive shitty cars, and be bussed, and take boats. And it’s not only them. Look at us.”
“It will pass.”
“It won’t. This is how it will all end.”
Neither the images on the screen nor Tamir’s words scared Jacob as much as the terror he saw in his children’s eyes in Tamir’s eyes.
“If you really believe that, Tamir, you need to get your family out of Israel.”
“I can’t!” he said, and then Jacob saw, in Tamir’s clenched teeth, Irv’s fury—the deep inner sadness that knew no expression but directionless rage.
“Why?” Jacob asked. “What could possibly be more important than your family’s safety?”
“I can’t get them out, Jacob. There are no flights in or out. Don’t you think I’ve tried? What do you think I do all day? Go to museums? Go shopping? I’m trying to keep my family safe. I can’t get them out, so I have to go. And you have to go, too.”
Jacob was now too awake for nonchalant bravery.
“Israel isn’t my home, Tamir.”
“That’s only because it hasn’t been destroyed yet.”
“No, it’s because it isn’t my home.”
“But it’s my home,” he said, and now Jacob saw Julia. He saw the pleading he hadn’t been able to see when her home still could have been saved. He saw his own blindness.
“Tamir, you—”
But the words wouldn’t form, because there was no thought for them to express. It didn’t matter: Tamir had stopped listening. He was angled away and texting. Rivka? Noam? Jacob didn’t ask, because he felt it wasn’t his place.
His place was the unoccupied room, typing: you’re begging me to fuck your tight pussy, but you don’t deserve it yet.
His place was the unoccupied room, the same hand pressing a different phone to his ear so that he, and only he, could hear: “Blind people can see. It’s true. Making clicking sounds in their mouths, they can orient themselves by the echoes returning from nearby objects. Doing this, blind people are able to go on hikes in rocky terrain, navigate city streets, even ride bikes. But is that seeing? Brain scans of people echolocating show activity in the same visual centers as in the brains of people with sight; they are simply seeing through their ears, instead of their eyes.”
His place was the unoccupied room, reading: my husband is away this weekend with the kids, come fuck me for real.
His place was the unoccupied room, hearing: “ ‘ So why aren’t more blind people on bikes? According to David Spellman, the preeminent teacher of echolocation, it’s because few are given the necessary freedom to learn how.’
“ ‘It’s the rare parent, maybe one in a hundred, probably fewer, who is able to watch her blind child approach an intersection and not grab his arm. It’s with love that they’re holding him back from danger, but they’re also holding him back from sight. When I teach children to ride bikes, there are inevitably crashes, just as there are with sighted children. But parents of blind children almost always take it as proof that too much is being asked of their child, and they step in to protect him. The more the parents want their children to see, the less possible they make it, because that love gets in the way.’
“ ‘How were you able to overcome that and learn?’
“ ‘My father left before I was born, and my mother had three jobs. The absence of love allowed me to see.’ ”
DE ZELBE PRAYZ
Tamir went upstairs, and Jacob sat there, trying to replay the last few moments, and the last two hours, and the last two weeks, and the last thirteen, and sixteen, and forty-two years. What had happened?
Tamir had said Jacob wouldn’t die for anything. Even if that were true, why would it matter? What’s so inherently good about such ultimate devotion? What’s so wrong with making good-enough money, eating good-enough food, living in a nice-enough house, striving to be as ethical and ambitious as circumstances allow? He had tried, he had come up short every single time, but against what measure? He had given his family a good-enough life. It felt as if an only life should be better than good enough, but how many efforts for more have ended with having nothing?
Years before, in the time when he and Julia would still share their work with each other, Julia came to the basement with a mug of tea in each hand and asked how it was going.
Jacob leaned back in his Aeron and said, “Well, it’s nowhere near as good as it could be, but I suppose it’s as good as I can make it right now.”
“Then it’s as good as it could be.”
“No,” Jacob said, “it could be a lot better.”
“How? If someone else wrote it? If you wrote it at a different time in your life? We’d be talking about something else.”
“If I were a better writer.”
“But you’re not,” she said, putting a mug on his desk, “you’re only perfect.”
For all that he couldn’t give Julia, he had given her a lot. He wasn’t a great artist, but he worked hard (enough), and was devoted (enough) to his writing. It is not a weakness to acknowledge complexity. It is not a retreat to take a step back. He wasn’t wrong to be envious of those wailing men on prayer mats in the Dome of the Rock, but maybe he was wrong to see reflected in their devotion his own existential pallor. Agnosticism is no less devout than fundamentalism, and maybe he’d destroyed what he loved, blind to the perfection of good-enough.
He called Julia’s cell. She didn’t answer. It was two in the morning, but there was no time of day, those days, when she would answer his call.
Hi, you’ve reached Julia…
But she would see that he had reached for her.
At the beep he said, “It’s me. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but some extremists set fire to the Dome of the Rock, or tried to. Jewish extremists. I suppose they succeeded, technically. It was a very small fire. But, you know, it’s a huge deal. Anyway, you c
an watch. Or read about it. I don’t even know where you are. Where are you? So—”
The voice mail cut him off. He called again.
Hi, you’ve reached Julia…
“I got cut off. I don’t know how much got through, but I was saying that the Middle East just blew up, and Tamir is totally hysterical, and he wants me to take him to the embassy tonight, like now, at two in the morning, to try to somehow get him on a plane. And the thing is, he says I need to go with him. And at first I just thought he meant—”
The voice mail cut him off. He called again.
Hi, you’ve reached Julia…
“And…it’s me. Jacob. Obviously. Anyway, I was just saying that Tamir is freaking out, and I’m taking him to the embassy—I’ll wake up Sam and let him know that we’re going out, and that he has to—”
The voice mail cut him off. The allowed increments seemed to be shrinking. He called again.
“Jacob?”
“Julia?”
“What time is it?”
“I thought your phone was off.”
“Why are you calling?”
“Well, I basically said it in the messages, but—”
“What time is it?”
“It’s like two or so.”
“Why, Jacob.”
“Where are you?”
“Jacob, why are you calling me at two in the morning?”
“Because it’s important.”
“Are the kids OK?”
“Yes, everyone’s fine. But Israel—”
“Nothing happened—?”
“No. Not to the kids. They’re sleeping. It’s Israel.”
“Tell me in the morning, OK?”
“Julia, I wouldn’t call if it weren’t—”
“If the boys are OK, whatever it is can wait.”
“It can’t.”
“Believe me, it can. Good night, Jacob.”
“Some extremists tried to set fire to the Dome of the Rock.”
“Tomorrow.”
“There’s going to be a war.”
“Tomorrow.”
“A war against us.”
“We have a ton of batteries in the fridge.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’m half asleep.”
“I think I’m going to go.”
“Thank you.”
“To Israel. With Tamir.”
He heard her shift, and muffled static.
“You’re not going to Israel.”
“I’m really thinking about it.”
“You’d never let such a dumb sentence slip into one of your scripts.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means let’s talk in the morning.”
“I’m going to Israel,” he said, and this time, removing the I think, expressed something entirely different—a certainty that when spoken aloud revealed to Jacob his lack of certainty. The first time he’d wanted to hear her say, “Don’t go.” But instead she didn’t believe him.
“And why would you do that?”
“To help.”
“What, write for the army paper?”
“Whatever they ask me to do. Fill sandbags, make sandwiches, fight.”
She laughed herself into a fuller wakefulness: “Fight?”
“If that’s what’s necessary.”
“And how would that work?”
“They need men.”
She chuckled. Jacob thought he heard her chuckle.
“I’m not seeking your respect or approval,” he said. “I’m telling you because we’re going to need to figure out what the next couple of weeks will look like. I assume you’ll come home and—”
“I respect and approve of your desire to be a hero, especially right now—”
“What you’re doing sucks.”
“No,” she said, her voice now aggressively clear, “what you’re doing sucks. Waking me up in the middle of the night with this idiotic Kabuki enactment of…I don’t even know what. Resolution? Bravery? Selflessness? You assume I’ll come home? That’s nice. And then what? I’ll single-handedly take care of the kids for however long your paintball adventure lasts? That shouldn’t be any problem: preparing three meals a day for them—make that nine meals, as no two will ever eat the same thing—and chauffeuring to cello lessons, and speech therapy, and soccer, and soccer, and Hebrew school, and various health professionals? Yeah. I want to be a hero, too. I think being a hero would be awesome. But first, before we get measured for capes, let’s see if we can maintain what we already have.”
“Julia—”
“I’m not finished. You woke me up with this absurd shit, so now I’m entitled to hold the conch. If we were actually to entertain this utterly ridiculous notion of you in combat for a moment, then we would have to acknowledge that any army that would include you among its fighting ranks is desperate, and desperate armies tend not to be in the business of treating every life as if it were all of humankind, and without having any military expertise, I’m guessing you’re not going to be called upon for specialized operations, like bomb defusing or surgical assassinations, but something more like ‘Stand in front of this bullet so your meat will at least slow it before it enters the person we actually value.’ And then you’ll be dead. And your kids will be fatherless. And your father will become a yet more public asshole. And—”
“And you?”
“What?”
“What will you become?”
“In sickness and in sickness,” Jacob’s mother had said at his wedding. “That is what I wish for you. Don’t seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other’s pain, and being present for it.”
Jacob had regained the hearing he’d pretended to lose as a child, and acquired a kind of pet interest in deafness that stayed with him into adulthood. He never shared it with Julia or anyone, as it felt distasteful, wrong. No one, not even Dr. Silvers, knew that he was able to sign, or that he would attend annual conventions for the D.C. chapter of the National Association of the Deaf. He didn’t pretend he was deaf when he went. He pretended he was a teacher at an elementary school for deaf children. He explained his interest by saying he was the child of a deaf father.
“What will you become, Julia?”
“I have no idea what it is you’re trying to get me to say. That contemplating having to raise three kids on my own makes me selfish?”
“No.”
“Are you implying it’s what I secretly want?”
“Is it? That hadn’t even occurred to me, but it obviously occurred to you.”
“Are you serious?”
“What will you become?”
“I have no idea what water it is you’re trying to lead me to, but I’m fucking tired, and tired of this conversation, so if you have something to say—”
“Why won’t you just tell me you want me to stay?”
“What?”
“I don’t understand why you can’t bring yourself to say that you don’t want me to go.”
“It’s what I’ve been saying for the last five minutes.”
“No, you’ve been saying it’s unfair to the kids. That it’s unfair to you.”
“Unfair is your word.”
“Not once have you said that you—you Julia—don’t want me to go because you don’t want me to go.”
She opened a silence as the rabbi had opened the rip in Irv’s jacket at the funeral.
“A widow,” Jacob said. “That’s what you’ll become. You’re constantly projecting your needs and fears onto the kids, or me, or whoever is within reach. Why can’t you just admit that you—you—don’t want to be a widow?”
He heard, he thought he heard, the springs of a mattress return to their state of rest. What bed was she rising from? How much of her body was uncovered, in what degree of darkness?
“Because I wouldn’t be a widow,” she said.
??
?Yes, you would.”
“No, Jacob, I wouldn’t. A widow is someone whose spouse has died.”
“And?”
“And you’re not my spouse.”
In the 1970s there was no infrastructure to care for deaf children in Nicaragua—no schools, no educational or informational resources, there wasn’t even a codified sign language. When the first Nicaraguan school for the deaf was opened, the teachers taught the lip-reading of Spanish. But on the playground the children communicated using the signs they had developed in their homes, organically generating a shared vocabulary and grammar. As generations of students moved through the school, the improvised language grew and matured. It is the only documented instance of a language being created entirely from scratch by its speakers. No adult helped, nothing was recorded on paper, there were no models. Only the children’s will to be understood.
Jacob and Julia had tried. They had created signs, and they would spell words in front of the still-young kids, and there were codes. But the language they had created, and were even then creating, made the world smaller rather than clearer.
I’m not your spouse.
Because of those texts? Destroy everything because of the arrangement of a few hundred letters? What did he think was going to happen? And what did he think he was doing? Julia was right: it wasn’t a moment of weakness. He pushed the exchange into sexuality, he bought the second phone, he was forming the words whenever he wasn’t typing them, stealing off to read hers as soon as they came through. He’d more than once put Benjy in front of a movie so he could jerk off to a new message. Why?
Because it was perfect. He was a father to the boys, a son to his father, a husband to his wife, a friend to his friends, but to whom was he himself? The digital veil offered a self-disappearing that made self-expression, finally, possible. When he was no one, he was free to be himself. It’s not that he was bursting with stifled sexuality, though he was. It was the freedom that mattered. Which is why, when she texted, my husband is away this weekend with the kids, come fuck me for real, she got no response. And why you can’t STILL be jerking off! got no response. And why what happened to you? were the last words to pass between their phones.