HOW TO PLAY MATTERS OF DEATH AND REBIRTH
Never speak about them.
HOW TO PLAY BELIEF
At Julia’s second sonogram, we saw Sam’s arms and legs. (Although he wasn’t “Sam” yet, but “the peanut.”) So began the exodus from idea to thing. What you think about all the time, but can’t—without aids—see, hear, smell, taste, or touch has to be believed in. Only a few weeks later, when Julia was able to feel the peanut’s presence and movements, it no longer only needed to be believed in, because it could also be known. As the months progressed—it turned, kicked, hiccupped—we knew more and more and had to believe less. And then Sam came, and belief fell away—it wasn’t necessary anymore.
But it didn’t fall away completely. There was some residue. And the inexplicable, unreasonable, illogical emotions and behavior of parents can be explained, or partially explained, by having had to believe for the better part of a year. Parents don’t have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and parenthood so utterly beautiful: the all-or-nothing wager. The faith.
I watched Sam being born through the viewfinder of a video camera. When the doctor handed him to me, I put the camera on the bed and forgot about it until the nurse came to take him for measuring, or warming, or whatever utterly necessary thing they do with newborns that justifies the teaching of that most important life lesson: everyone, even your parents, will let you go.
But we had twenty minutes with him, so we have a twenty-minute video of the view of the dark window, with the soundtrack of new life—Sam’s new life, ours. I told Sam how beautiful he was. I told Julia how beautiful Sam was. I told her how beautiful she was. All of it was understatement, all of it imprecise—I used that same inadequate word to try to convey three entirely different, essential meanings: beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
You can hear crying—everyone’s.
You can hear laughter—Julia’s and mine.
You can hear Julia calling me “Dad” for the first time. You can hear me whispering blessings to Sam, prayers: be healthy, be happy, know peace. I said it over and over—be healthy, be happy, know peace. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would say, and I hadn’t intended to say it; the words were drawn from some well far deeper than my life, and the hands raising the bucket weren’t my own. The last thing you can hear on the video, as the nurse taps on the door, is me saying to Julia, “Before we know it, he’ll be burying us.”
“Jacob…”
“OK, so we’ll be at his wedding.”
“Jacob!”
“His bar mitzvah?”
“Can’t we ease into it?”
“Into what?”
“The giving away.”
I was wrong about almost everything. But I was right about the speed of the losing. Some of the moments were interminably long—the first cruel night of sleep training; cruelly (it felt) peeling him off a leg on the first day of school; pinning him down while the doctor who wasn’t stitching his hand back together told me, “This is not a time to be his friend”—but the years passed so quickly I had to search videos and photo albums for proof of our shared life. It happened. It must have. We did all that living. And yet it required evidence, or belief.
I told Julia, the night after Sam’s injury, that it was too much love for happiness. I loved my boy beyond my capacity to love, but I didn’t love the love. Because it was overwhelming. Because it was necessarily cruel. Because it couldn’t fit into my body, and so deformed itself into a kind of agonizing hypervigilance that complicated what should have been the most uncomplicated of things—nurturing and play. Because it was too much love for happiness. I was right about that, too.
Carrying Sam into the house for the first time, I implored myself to remember every feeling and detail. One day I would need to recall what the garden looked like when my first child first saw it. I would need to know the sound of the car seat’s latch disengaging. My life would depend on my ability to revisit my life—there would come a day when I would trade a year of what remained to hold my babies for an hour. I was right about that, too, without even knowing that Julia and I would one day divorce.
I did remember. I remembered all of it: the drop of dried blood on the gauze around the circumcision wound; the smell of the back of his neck; how to collapse an umbrella stroller with one hand; holding his ankles above his head with one hand while wiping the insides of his thighs; the viscosity of A&D ointment; the eeriness of frozen breast milk; the static of a baby monitor set to the wrong channel; the economy of diaper bags; the transparency of new eyelids; how Sam’s hands lurched upward, like those of his falling-monkey ancestors, whenever he was placed on his back; the torturing irregularity of his breathing; my own inability to forgive myself for the moments I looked away and something utterly inconsequential happened, but happened. It happened. All of it. And yet it made a believer out of me.
HOW TO PLAY TOO MUCH LOVE
Whisper into an ear, listen for an echo.
HOW TO PLAY PRAYER
Whisper into an ear, don’t listen for an echo.
HOW TO PLAY NO ONE
The night I came home from Islip was the last night I spent in bed with Julia. She shifted when I got under the covers. She mumbled, “That was a short war.”
I said, “I just kissed the kids.”
She asked, “Did we win?”
I said, “As it turns out, there is no we.”
She asked, “Did I win?”
“Win?”
She turned onto her side and said, “Survive.”
HOW TO PLAY “HERE I AM”
A clause near the end of our legal divorce agreement stated that should either of us have more children, the children we had together would be treated “no less favorably” financially, either in life or in our wills. Despite all the longer thorns, and there were many, this one dug into Julia. But rather than acknowledge what at the time I assumed was the source of her distress—that because of our ages, having more children was realistic only for me—she attached herself to the issue that wasn’t even there.
“I would never, in a million years, remarry,” she told the mediator.
“This doesn’t concern remarriage, but rather having children.”
“If I were to have more children, which I will not, it would be in the context of a marriage, which is not going to happen.”
“Life is long,” he said.
“And the universe is even bigger, but we don’t seem to be getting a lot of visits from intelligent life.”
“That’s only because we’re not in the Jewish Home yet,” I said, trying at once to calm her and to create a bit of innocent camaraderie with the mediator, who shot me a confused look.
“And it’s not long,” Julia said. “If life were long, I wouldn’t be halfway through it.”
“We aren’t halfway through it,” I said.
“You aren’t, because you’re a man.”
“Women live longer than men.”
“Only technically.”
As ever, the mediator wouldn’t take the bait. He cleared his throat, as if swinging a machete to clear a path through our overgrown history, and said, “This clause, which I should say is entirely standard for agreements like yours, won’t affect you in the event that you don’t have any more children. It merely protects you and your children if Jacob does.”
“I don’t want it in there,” she said.
“Can we move on to something genuinely contentious?” I suggested.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want it in there.”
“Even if that means forfeiting your legal protection?” the mediator asked.
“I trust Jacob not to treat other children more favorably than ours.”
“Life is long,” I said, winking at the mediator without moving an eyelid.
“Is that some kind of joke?” she asked.
“Obviously.”
/> The mediator cleared his throat again and drew a line through the clause.
Julia wouldn’t let it go, not even after we’d removed what wasn’t there to begin with. In the middle of a discussion of something entirely unrelated—how to handle Thanksgiving, Halloween, and birthdays; whether it was necessary to legally forbid the presence of a Christmas tree in either’s home—she might say, “Divorce gets an unfair rap; it was marriage that did this.” Such out-of-context statements became part of the routine—at once impossible to anticipate and unsurprising. The mediator showed an almost autistic patience for her Tourettic eruptions, until one afternoon, when splitting the hairs of medical decision-making in the event that one parent couldn’t be reached, she said, “I will literally die before I remarry,” and, without clearing his throat or missing a beat, he asked, “Do you want me to put in some language legally codifying that?”
She started dating Daniel about three years after the divorce. To my knowledge, which was greatly limited by the kindness of kids who were trying to protect me, she didn’t date very much before him. She seemed to relish the quiet and aloneness, just as she’d always said, and I’d never believed, she would. Her architecture practice flowered: two of her houses were built (one in Bethesda, one on the shore), and she got a commission to convert a grand Dupont Circle mansion into a museum showcasing the contemporary art collection of a local supermarket oligarch. Benjy—who was no less kind than his brothers, but far less psychologically sophisticated—would increasingly mention Daniel, usually in the context of his ability to edit movies on his laptop. That humble skill, which could be learned in an afternoon by someone willing to devote an afternoon to learning it, dramatically changed Benjy’s life. All the “babyish” movies he had been making on the waterproof digital camera I got him two Hanukkahs before were suddenly brought to life as fully realized “adult films.” (I never suggested that the camera should stay at my house, and we never corrected his terminology.) Once, when I was dropping the boys back at Julia’s after a particularly fun weekend of adventures I’d spent the previous two weeks planning, Benjy grabbed at my leg and said, “You have to go?” I told him I did, but that he was going to have a great time and we’d see each other again in just a couple of days. He turned to Julia and asked, “Is Daniel here?” “He’s at a meeting,” she said, “but he’ll be back any minute.” “Aw, another meeting? I wanna make an adult film.” When my car rounded the corner, I saw a man, about my age, in clothing I might wear, sitting on a bench, no reading material, no purpose but to wait.
I knew he went on the safari with them.
I knew he took Max to Wizards games.
At some point he moved in. I don’t know when; it was never presented to me as news.
“What does Daniel do?” I asked the boys one night over Indian. We ate out a lot in those days, because it was hard for me to find the necessary time to grocery shop and cook, but more because I was obsessed with proving to them that we could still have “fun.” And eating out is fun. Until someone asks, “Where are we having dinner tonight?” At which point it begins to feel depressing.
“He’s a scientist,” Sam said.
“But not a Nobel Prize winner or anything,” Max said. “Just a scientist.”
“What kind of scientist?”
“Dunno,” Sam and Max said at the same time, but no one said “Jinx.”
“He’s an astrophysicist,” Benjy said. And then: “Are you sad?”
“That he’s an astrophysicist?”
“Yeah.”
Julia asked a few times if I would go out for a drink with him, get to know him. She said it would mean a lot to her, and to Daniel, and that it could only be good for the boys. I told her, “Of course.” I told her, “That sounds great.” And I believed myself as I said it. But it never happened.
As we were saying goodbye after one of Max’s teacher conferences, she told me that she and Daniel were going to get married.
“Does this mean you’re dead?”
“Excuse me?”
“You would sooner die than remarry.”
She laughed. “No, not dead. Reincarnated.”
“As yourself?”
“As myself plus time.”
“Myself plus time is my father.”
She laughed again. Was her laugh spontaneous or generous? “The nice thing about reincarnation is that life becomes a process rather than an event.”
“Wait, you’re serious?”
“Just stuff from yoga.”
“Well, it flies in the face of stuff from science.”
“As I was saying. Life becomes a process rather than an event. Like that thing the magician told you, about tricks and outcomes. You don’t need to achieve enlightenment, only move yourself closer to it. Only become a bit more accepting.”
“Most things shouldn’t be accepted.”
“Accepting of the world—”
“Yes, I live in the world.”
“Of yourself.”
“That’s more complicated.”
“One life is too much pressure.”
“So is the Marianas Trench, but such is reality. And by the way, what was all that shit about Max being too conscientious?”
“Staying in at recess to go over his homework?”
“He’s diligent.”
“He wants to control what is possible to control.”
“Stuff from yoga?”
“I actually got myself a Dr. Silvers.”
Why did that trigger my jealousy? Because my feelings about her marriage were too extreme to be felt directly?
“Well,” I said, “I believe in a lot of things. But at the very top of the list of things I don’t believe in is reincarnation.”
“You’re constantly coming back, Jacob. Just always as yourself.”
I didn’t ask if the kids knew before me, and if so, for how long. She didn’t tell me when it was going to happen, or if I was going to be invited.
I asked, “Does this mean I’m going to be treated less favorably?” She laughed. I hugged her, told her how happy I was for her, and went home and ordered a video game system, as we’d always agreed we wouldn’t.
The wedding was three months later, and I was invited, and the kids did know before me, but only by a day. I told them not to mention the video game system to her, and that was the actual missing of the mark.
I can’t help but compare it to our wedding. There were fewer people, but many of the same people. What did they think when they saw me? Those who had the guts to approach either pretended there was nothing remotely awkward going on, that we were simply making small talk at the wedding of a mutual friend, or they put their hands on my shoulder.
Julia and I were always good at catching eyes, even after the divorce. We just had a way of finding each other. It was a joke between us. “How will I find you in the theater?” “By being you.” But it didn’t happen once all afternoon. She was preoccupied, but she must also have been keeping track of where I was. I thought about slipping out at various points, but that was not to be done.
The boys gave a charming speech together.
I asked for red.
Daniel spoke thoughtfully, and lovingly. He thanked me for being there, for welcoming him. I nodded, I smiled. He moved on.
I asked for red.
I remembered my mother’s speech at my wedding: “In sickness and in sickness. 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.” Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it?
I watched the horah from my table, watched the boys lift their mother in the chair. She was laughing so hard, and I was sure that with her up at that vantage we would catch eyes, but we didn’t.
A salad was placed in front of me.
Julia and Daniel went from table to table to make sure they said hello to every guest, an
d for pictures. I saw it approaching, like the wave at a Nats game, and there was nothing to do but participate.
I stood at the margin. The photographer said, “Say mocha,” which I did not. He took it three times to be sure. Julia whispered to Daniel, gave him a kiss. He walked off, and she took the seat beside me.
“I’m glad you came.”
“Of course.”
“Not of course. It was a choice you made, and I know it’s not uncomplicated.”
“I’m glad you wanted me here.”
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“Very much so.”
“OK.”
I looked around the room: the doomed flowers, sweating water glasses, lipstick in purses left on chairs, guitars becoming detuned against speakers, knives that had attended thousands of unions.
“You want to hear something sad?” I said. “I always thought I was the happy one. The happier one, I should say. I never thought of myself as happy.”
“You want to hear something even sadder? I thought I was the unhappy one.”
“I guess we were both wrong.”
“No,” she said, “we were both right. But only in the context of our marriage.”
I put my hands on my knees, as if to further ground myself.
“Were you there when my dad said that thing? ‘Without context, we’d all be monsters’?”
“I don’t think so. Or I don’t remember it.”
“Our context made monsters of us.”
“No, not monsters,” she said. “We were good, and we raised three amazing kids.”
“And now you’re happy, and I’m still me.”
“Life is long,” she said, trusting me to remember.
“The universe is bigger,” I said, proving myself.
Sea bass was placed in front of me.
I picked up my fork, so as to touch something, and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What do you tell people when they ask why we got divorced?”