Here I Am

ANTIETAM

Neither Jacob nor Julia knew what, exactly, was happening in those first two weeks after Julia discovered the phone: what had been agreed to, implied, broached hypothetically, asked for. Neither knew what was real. It felt like there were so many emotional land mines; they moved through the hours and rooms on their hearts’ tiptoes, with large earphones connected to sensitive metal detectors that could pick up traces of buried feeling — if at the expense of blocking out the rest of life.

At a breakfast that might, to a television audience, have seemed in every way happy, Julia said into the fridge, “We’re always running out of milk,” and through his earphones Jacob heard “You have never taken good enough care of us,” but he didn’t hear Max say, “Don’t come to the talent show tomorrow.”

And the next day, at Max’s school, forced to share the small space of the elevator alone together, Jacob said, “The Door Close button isn’t even attached to anything. Purely psychological.” Through her earphones, Julia heard “Let’s get this over with.” But she didn’t hear herself say, “I thought everything was purely psychological.” Which, through Jacob’s earphones, sounded like “All of those years of therapy and no one knows less about happiness.” And he didn’t hear himself say, “There’s pure, and there’s pure.” A probably content parent in a probably unbroken family entered and asked Jacob if he meant to be pressing Door Open.

All that tiptoeing, all that precious overinterpreting and evading, and it wasn’t a minefield at all. It was a Civil War battlefield. Jacob had taken Sam to Antietam, just as Irv had taken Jacob. And he had given a similar speech about what a privilege it is to be American. Sam found a half-buried bullet. The weapons in Jacob and Julia’s earth were as harmless as that — artifacts of old battles, safe to be examined, explored, even valued. If they’d known not to fear them.

The domestic rituals were sufficiently ingrained as to make avoidance fairly easy and inconspicuous. She showered, he got breakfast going. She served breakfast, he showered. He supervised teeth brushing, she laid clothes out on beds, he confirmed the contents of the backpacks, she checked the weather and responded to it with appropriate outer clothing, he got Ed the Hyena going (warmed in the six months of too cold, cooled in the six months of too hot), she brought the boys out and stepped into Newark to look for cars coming down the hill, he reversed.

They found two seats near the front of the auditorium, but after depositing his bag, Jacob said, “I’ll go grab us some coffees.” Which he did. And then waited at the school entrance with them until three minutes of curtain. Halfway through a girl’s talentless rendition of “Let It Go,” Jacob whispered, “I wish she would,” into Julia’s ear. No response. A group of boys reenacted a scene from Avatar. What was probably a girl used different kinds of pasta to explain how the euro works. Neither Jacob nor Julia wanted to admit to not knowing what Max was going to do. Neither could bear the shame of having been too preoccupied with personal hurt to be present for their child. And neither could bear the shame of the other having been a better parent. Each privately guessed that Max would perform the card trick that the magician had taught him after Julia’s fortieth. Two girls did that cup thing while singing “When I’m Gone,” and Jacob whispered, “So go already.”

“What?”

“No. Her. The singer.”

“Be nice.”

For the finale, the drama and music teachers teamed up for a sanitized version of the opener from The Book of Mormon—living out their dreams while reconfirming why they were dreams. Lots of applause, a brief thank-you from the principal, and the kids filed out and back to class.

Jacob and Julia walked back to their cars in silence. And the talent show wasn’t mentioned at home that night. Had Max chickened out? Did he consider himself talentless? Was his abstention an act of aggression or a call for help? If they’d brought any of these questions to him, he would have pointed out that he told them not to go.

Three nights later, when Jacob came to bed, after having waited the requisite hour, Julia was still reading, so he said, “Oh, I forgot something,” and headed back down to not read the paper while not watching another episode of Homeland and regretting, as he often did, that Mandy Patinkin wasn’t ten years older — he’d have made a great Irv.

Two days after that, Julia walked into the pantry, where Jacob was checking to see if a few hundred billion atoms had spontaneously organized themselves into an unhealthy snack in the ten minutes since he last checked. She walked back out. (Unlike Jacob, she never gave an ostensible explanation for moving away from him, she never “forgot something.”) The pantry wasn’t among the unofficially claimed spaces — as the TV room was Jacob’s, and the small sitting room was Julia’s — but it was too small to be shared.

On the tenth day, Jacob opened the bathroom door to see Julia drying off after a bath. She covered herself. He had seen her come out of hundreds of baths, seen three children come out of her body. He had watched her dress and undress thousands and thousands of times, and twice at the inn in Pennsylvania. They’d made love in every position, offering every view of every body part. “Sorry,” he said, not knowing what the word referred to, only that his foot had half depressed a mine’s trigger.

Or stumbled upon an artifact of old battle, which might have been safe to examine, explore, even value.

What if, instead of apologizing and turning, he’d asked her if the need to conceal herself was new, or old with a new justification?

When Robert E. Lee’s defensive line at Petersburg had been broken and the evacuation of Richmond was imminent, Jefferson Davis ordered the Confederate treasury be moved. It went by train, and then wagon, under many eyes and between many hands. The Union pressed forward, the Confederacy crumbled, and the whereabouts of the five tons of gold bars remain a mystery, although they are assumed buried.

What if, instead of apologizing and turning, he’d gone to her, touched her, shown her not only that he still wanted to make love to her, but that he was still capable of risking rejection?

On Jacob’s first visit to Israel, his cousin Shlomo took the family to the Dome of the Rock, which at the time could be entered by non-Muslims. Jacob was as deeply moved by the devotion of the men on the prayer rugs as he was by the Jews below. He was more moved, because the devotion was less self-conscious: at the Wailing Wall the men merely bobbed; here they wailed. Shlomo explained that they were standing atop a cave carved into the Foundation Stone. And in the floor of that cave was a slight depression, thought to be above another cave, often referred to as the Well of Souls. It was there that Abraham answered God’s call, and prepared to sacrifice his beloved son; there that Muhammad ascended to heaven; there that the Ark of the Covenant was buried, full of broken and whole tablets. According to the Talmud, the stone marks the center of the world, serving as a cover for the abyss in which the waters from the Flood still rage.

“We are standing atop the greatest archaeological site that will never be,” Shlomo said, “filled with the most valuable objects in the world, the place where history and religion meet. All underground, never to be touched.”

Irv was adamant that Israel should dig, come what may. It was a cultural, historical, and intellectual obligation. But to Jacob, until those things were unearthed — until they could be seen and touched — they would be unreal. So it was better to keep them out of sight.

What if, instead of apologizing and turning, Jacob had gone to Julia and lifted the towel, as he’d lifted her veil before the wedding, confirming that she was still the woman she said she was, the woman he still wanted?

Jacob tried to keep the conversations with Julia underground, but she needed the end of their family to be seen and touched. She expressed her continued respect for Jacob, her desire to be friends, best friends, and good co-parents, the best, and to use a mediator and not get lost in all that was not to be cared about, and to live around the corner from each other and go on vacations together, and to dance at each other’s second weddings — although she swore that she would never marry again. Jacob agreed, without believing that any of what she said was either happening or would happen. They’d experienced so many necessary passages — sleep-training the boys, teething, falls from small bicycles, Sam’s physical therapy. This, too, would probably pass.

They could navigate the house to avoid each other, and they could navigate conversations to maintain the illusion of safety, but there was no underground when a child was in the room or the conversation. Many times, Julia would catch sight of one of the boys — Benjy looking up in thought from a drawing of Odysseus facing the Cyclops, Max examining the hairs on his forearm, Sam carefully applying reinforcements as needed in his binder — and think, I can’t.

And Jacob would think, We won’t.

DAMASCUS

The day before the beginning of the destruction of Israel, Julia and Sam were scrambling to get their things together before the Uber driver, Mohammed, was moved to give them a one-star rating, thereby sealing their fate as haram passengers. Jacob was preparing Benjy, who was dressed like a pirate, for a day with his grandparents.

“You have everything?” Julia asked Sam.

“Yes,” he said, unable to muster the herculean effort to conceal his annoyance at nothing.

“Don’t yes Mom,” Jacob said, for Julia’s benefit and his own. Camaraderie had been hard to find in the past two weeks — not because there was cruelty, just the absence of direct interaction. There had been a few moments, usually triggered by a shared reflexive wonder at something one of the boys had said or done, when it felt like Jacob and Julia were once again wearing the same uniform. The day Oliver Sacks died, Jacob shared some of his hero’s life with the boys, explaining the range of his interests, his closeted homosexuality, his famous use of L-dopa with human produce, and how perhaps the most curious and engaged person of the last fifty years spent more than thirty of those years celibate.

“Celibate?” Max asked.

“Not having sex.”

“So?”

“So he was eager to take in everything the world had to offer, but he didn’t want to, or couldn’t, share himself.”

“Maybe he was impotent,” Julia suggested.

“No,” Jacob said, feeling the wound open, “he just—”

“Or maybe he was patient.”

“I’m celibate,” Benjy said.

“You?” Sam said. “You’re Wilt Chamberlain.”

“I’m not whoever that is, and I haven’t stuck my penis into another person’s vagina hole.”

The defense of his celibacy was kind of funny. Referring to “another person’s vagina hole” was kind of funny. But he said funnier, more precocious things every few minutes. It didn’t feel like a metaphor, or accidental wisdom. It didn’t scratch any exposed nerves. But for the first time since she discovered the phone, it forced Julia’s eyes to meet Jacob’s. And in that moment, he felt sure that they would find their way back.

But there wasn’t a lot of camaraderie now.

“What did I say?” Sam asked.

“It’s how you said it,” Jacob said.

“How did I say whatever I said?”

“Like this,” Jacob said, imitating Sam’s Yes.

“I can handle my half of a conversation with my son,” Julia told Jacob. Then she asked Sam, “Did you remember your toothbrush?”

“Of course he has his toothbrush,” Jacob said, making a small allegiance correction.

“Shit,” Sam said, turning and hustling upstairs.

“He wanted you to chaperone,” Julia said.

“No. I don’t think that’s true.”

She picked up Benjy and said, “I’m going to miss you, my little man.”

“Opi said I can say bad words at his house.”

“In his house, it’s his rules,” Jacob said.

“Well, no,” Julia corrected.

“Shit, or penis…”

“Penis isn’t a bad word,” Jacob said.

“I doubt Omi would like you talking like that.”

“Opi said it didn’t matter.”

“You misheard him.”

“He said, ‘Omi doesn’t matter.’”

“He was joking,” Jacob said.

“Asshole is a bad word.”

Sam came back down the stairs with his toothbrush.

“Dress shoes?” Julia asked.

“Fuuuuuuck.”

“Fuck, too,” Benjy said.

Sam hustled back up the stairs.

“Maybe give him a bit more space?” Jacob suggested in the form of a question ostensibly addressed to the collective consciousness.

“I don’t think I was being annoying.”

“Of course you weren’t. I just meant that Mark can play the bad guy on the trip. If necessary.”

“Hopefully it won’t be.”

“Forty pubescents away from home?”

“I wouldn’t describe Sam as pubescent.”

“Pubescent?” Benjy asked.

“I’m glad Mark will be there,” Jacob said. “You know, you might not even remember, but you said something about him, a couple of weeks ago, in the context of—”

“I remember.”

“We said a lot of things.”

“We did.”

“I just wanted to say that.”

“I’m not sure what you just said.”

“Just that.”

“Take the opportunity to get to know him a bit,” Julia said, moving right along.

“Max?”

“Don’t just go off to your separate worlds.”

“I don’t have a world, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’ll be fun picking up the Israelis tomorrow.”

“Will it?”

“You and Max can be Team America.”

Max came down the stairs. “Why are you talking about me?”

“We weren’t talking about you,” Jacob said.

“I was just saying to Dad that you guys should try to find things to do together while everyone’s away.”

The doorbell rang.

“My folks,” Jacob said.

“Together together?” Max whispered to Julia.

Jacob opened the door. Benjy wrestled himself free of Julia’s arms and ran to Deborah.

“Omi!”

“Hey, Omi,” Max said.

“I’ve got Ebola?” Irv asked.

“Ebola?”

“Hey, Opi.”

“Cool Moshe Dayan outfit.”

“I’m a pirate.”

Irv lowered himself to Benjy’s level and performed what might very well have been a perfect Dayan impression, if anyone had known what Dayan sounded like: “The Syrians will soon learn that the road from Damascus to Jerusalem also goes from Jerusalem to Damascus!”

“Arrrgggg!”

“I wrote up his schedule,” Julia said to Deborah. “And put together a bag with a few prepared meals.”

“I’ve prepared a meal or two million in my day.”

“I know,” Julia said, trying to reciprocate Deborah’s obvious affection. “I just want to make it as easy as possible.”

“I have a freezer full of very frozen foods,” Deborah told Benjy.

“Morningstar Farms veggie bacon strips?”

“Hm.”

“Fuuuuuuck.”

“Benjy!”

Sam came running down the stairs with his shoes, paused, said, “Goddamn it!” and turned back around.

“Language,” Julia said.

“Dad says there’s no bad language.”

“I said there’s bad usage. And that was bad usage.”

“Are we gonna burn the midnight oil?” Irv asked Benjy.

“I don’t know.”

“Not too late,” Julia told Deborah.

“And tomorrow we’ll fetch the Israelis?”

“I’m taking him to the zoo,” Deborah said. “Remember?”

Irv held up his phone: “Siri, do I remember what this woman is talking about?”

Sam came running back down the stairs with a belt.

“Hey, kid,” Irv said.

“Hey, Opi. Hey, Omi.”

“All’s copacetic with your hate speech?”

“I didn’t do it.”

“You know, I once chaperoned your dad’s class on a Model UN trip.”

“No you didn’t,” Jacob said.

“Sure I did.”

“Believe me, you didn’t.”

“You’re right,” Irv said, winking at Sam. “I’m thinking of the time I took you to the actual UN.” And then, slapping his own hand: “Bad father.”

“You forgot me there.”

“Obviously not permanently.” And then, to Sam: “Ready to give ’em hell?”

“I guess so.”

“Remember, if they seat a delegate from so-called Palestine, you tell them what’s what, then get up and walk out. You hear me? Punch with your mouth, and talk with your feet.”

“We’re representing Micronesia—”

“Siri, what is Micronesia?”

“And we, you know, debate resolutions, and respond to whatever crisis they manufacture.”

“They the Arabs?”

“The facilitators.”

“He knows what he’s doing, Dad.”

Three full honks, followed by nine rapid blasts—Shevarim, Teruah.

“Mohammed is losing patience,” Julia said.

“And it was never his forte,” Irv said.

“We’ll go, too,” Deborah said. “We have a big day planned: story time, arts and crafts, a nature walk—”

“—eat jelly fruit slices, make fun of Charlie Rose…”

“Come on, Argus!” Jacob called.

“I want to marry jelly fruit slices.”

“We’re going to the vet,” Max explained to Deborah.

“Everything’s fine,” Jacob said, alleviating concern that belonged to no one.

“Except he poops in the house twice every day,” Max said.

“He’s old. It’s convention.”

“Does Great-Grandpa poop in the house twice every day?” Benjy asked.

Silence as everyone privately acknowledged that, as their visits had become so rare, it was impossible to rule out the possibility that Isaac pooped in the house twice a day.

“Actually, doesn’t everyone poop in the house twice a day?” Benjy asked.

“Your brother means in the house, but not in the bathroom.”

“He has a colostomy bag,” Irv said. “Wherever he goes, there his poop is.”

“What’s a whatever bag?” Benjy asked.

Jacob cleared his throat and began: “Great-Grandpa’s intestines—”

“Like a doggie bag for his crap,” Irv said.

“But why would he want to eat it later?” Benjy asked.

“Maybe someone could check in on him while we’re away,” Julia said. “You could even bring the Israelis by on the way home.”

“That’s what I was planning,” Jacob lied.

Mohammed honked again, this time with the sustain pedal.

Everyone headed out together: Deborah, Irv, and Benjy off to a marionette Pinocchio at Glen Echo; Julia and Sam to catch the bus from school; Jacob, Max, and Argus to the vet. Julia hugged Max and Benjy, and didn’t hug Jacob, but told him: “Don’t forget to—”

“Go,” he said. “Have fun. Make world peace.”

“A lasting peace,” Julia said, the words having organized themselves.

“And say hi to Mark for me. Really.”

“Not now, OK?”

“You’re hearing something I didn’t say.”

A curt “Goodbye.”

Halfway down the stoop, Benjy called back: “What if I don’t miss you?”

“You can call us,” Jacob said. “My phone will always be on, and I’ll never be more than a short drive away.”

“I said what if I don’t miss you?”

“What?”

“Is that OK?”

“Of course it’s OK,” Julia said, giving Benjy a last kiss. “Nothing would make me happier than for you to have so much fun you don’t think about us at all.”

Jacob came down the stairs to give Benjy the last, last kiss.

“And anyway,” he said, “you’ll miss us.”

And then, for the first time in his life, Benjy chose not to voice a thought.

THE SIDE THAT FACES AWAY

They stopped at McDonald’s on the way. It was a vet visit ritual, something Jacob started doing after hearing a podcast about a shelter in L.A. that euthanized more dogs than anywhere else in America. The woman who ran it put down each and every dog herself, sometimes a dozen a day. She called each by its name, gave each as good a walk as it could handle, talked to it, stroked it, and, as a final gesture before the needle, fed it McNuggets. As she put it, “It’s the last meal they would ask for.”

Argus’s visits in the past couple of years had been for joint pain, eye cloudiness, fatty lumps on the belly, and incontinence. They weren’t suggestive of an imminent end, but Jacob knew how nervous the vet’s office made him and felt that he owed his pal a reward, which might also serve as a positive association. Whether or not he would have chosen them as his last meal, Argus tore through the McNuggets, swallowing most of them whole. For as long as he’d been a member of the Bloch family, he had eaten Newman’s Own twice a day without any variation. (Julia militantly banned table scraps, as they would “force Argus to become a beggar.”) The McNuggets always led to diarrhea, sometimes vomiting. But that usually took a few hours, which could be timed to coincide with a walk in the park. And it was worth it.

Jacob and Max got McNuggets for themselves, too. They almost never ate meat in the house — again, Julia’s decision — and fast food ranked just below cannibalism on the list of things not to be done. Neither Jacob nor Max missed McNuggets, but sharing something Julia disapproved of was a bonding experience. They pulled over at Fort Reno Park and made an impromptu picnic. Argus was loyal enough, and lethargic enough, to be trusted off-leash. Max stroked him as he swallowed McNugget after McNugget, telling him, “You’re a good dog. You’re good. You’re good.”

Pathetic as it felt, Jacob was jealous. Julia’s cruel comments — however accurate, however deserved — lingered painfully in his mind. He kept returning to the line “I don’t believe you’re there at all.” It was among the least specific, least pointed things she’d said in the course of their first fight about the phone, and a different person’s mind would probably have attached itself to something else. But that was what echoed: “I don’t believe you’re there at all.”

“I used to come here a lot when I was younger,” Jacob said to Max. “We’d sled down that hill.”

“Who was we?”

“Usually friends. Grandpa might have taken me a couple times, though I don’t remember it. When it was warm, I’d come here to play baseball.”

“Games? Or just goofing around?”

“Mostly goofing. It was never easy to get a minyan. Sometimes. Maybe the last day of school before a break.”

“You’re good, Argus. So good.”

“When I got older, we’d buy beer from the Tenleytown Grocery — just over there. They never carded us.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You have to be twenty-one to buy beer legally, so usually places will ask for ID, like a driver’s license, to see how old you are. Tenleytown never did. So we all bought beer there.”

“You were breaking the law.”

“It was a different time. And you know what Martin Luther King said about just and unjust laws.”

“I don’t.”

“Basically, it was our moral responsibility to buy the beer.”

“Good Argus.”

“I’m kidding, of course. It is not good to buy beer before you’re of age, and please don’t tell Mom that I told you that story.”

“OK.”

“Do you know what a minyan is?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s ten men over the age of thirteen. That’s what’s required for prayers to count at synagogue.”

“Sounds sexist and ageist.”

“Definitely both,” Jacob said, pulling a wildflower. “Fugazi used to play a free show here every summer.”

“What’s Fugazi?”

“Only the greatest band ever to have existed, by any definition of great. Their music was great. Their ethos was great. They were just great.”

“What’s ethos?”

“Guiding belief.”

“What was their ethos?”

“Don’t price-gouge your fans, don’t tolerate violence at shows, don’t make videos or sell merchandise. Do make music with anticorporate, antimisogynist, class-conscious messaging, and make it make your face melt.”

“You’re a good dog.”

“We should probably get going.”

“My ethos is ‘Find light in the beautiful sea, I choose to be happy.’”

“That’s a great ethos, Max.”

“It’s a line from a Rihanna song.”

“Well, Rihanna is wise.”

“She didn’t write the song.”

“Whoever wrote it.”

“Sia.”

“So Sia’s wise.”

“And I was just kidding.”

“Right.”

“What’s yours?”

“What?”

“Ethos.”

“Don’t price-gouge your fans, don’t tolerate violence at shows—”

“No, seriously.”

Jacob laughed.

“Seriously,” Max said.

“Let me think about it.”

“That’s probably your ethos.”

“That’s Hamlet’s ethos. You know Hamlet, right?”

“I’m ten, I’m not unborn.”

“Sorry.”

“Also, Sam’s reading it in class.”

“I wonder where Fugazi is now. I wonder if they’re still idealistic, whatever they’re doing.”

“You’re good, Argus.”

* * *

When they got to the vet’s office, they were led to an examining room in the back.

“In a weird way this reminds me of Great-Grandpa’s house.”

“That is weird.”

“All the photos of the dogs are kind of like the pictures of me, Sam, and Benjy. And the jar of treats is like the jar of hard candies.”

“And it smells like…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I was going to say death, but it didn’t feel like a nice thing to say, so I tried to keep it to myself.”

“What does death smell like?”

“Like this.”

“How do you even know?”

Jacob had never smelled a dead person. His three dead grandparents had died either before he was born or early enough in his childhood for him to have been protected from it. None of his colleagues or friends, or former colleagues or former friends, had died. Sometimes it amazed him that he’d managed to live forty-two years without proximity to mortality. And that amazement was always followed by the fear that the statistics would catch up with him and offer a lot of death at once. And he wouldn’t be ready.

The vet took half an hour to see them, and Max gave Argus treat after treat.

“Might not mix well with the McNuggets,” Jacob warned.

“You’re good. You’re so good.”

Argus brought out a different side of Max, a sweetness, or vulnerability, that usually faced away. Jacob thought about a day he spent with his father at the National Museum of Natural History when he was Max’s age. He had so few memories of time alone with his father — Irv worked long hours at the magazine, and when he wasn’t writing, he was teaching, and when he wasn’t teaching, he was socializing with important people, to confirm that he was an important person — but Jacob remembered that day.

They were facing a diorama. A bison.

“Nice,” Irv said, “right?”

“Really nice,” Jacob said, moved — shaken, even — by the extreme presence of the animal, how self-contained it was.

“None of this is by accident,” Irv said.

“What do you mean?”

“They go to lengths to re-create an accurate nature scene. That’s the point. But there are a lot of accurate scenes they could have chosen, right? The bison could have been galloping instead of standing still. He could have been battling, or hunting, or eating. There could have been two instead of one. They could have perched a small bird on his back. A lot of choices.”

Jacob used to love being taught by his father. It felt intoxicating, and safe. And it confirmed that Jacob was an important person in his father’s life.

“But the choices aren’t always made freely,” Irv said.

“Why not?”

“Because they have to hide what brought the animals here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Where do you think the animals come from?”

“Africa, or something?”

“But how do they end up in dioramas? Do you think they volunteer to be taxidermied? Are they roadkill that lucky scientists stumble upon?”

“I guess I don’t know.”

“They’re hunted.”

“Really?”

“And hunting isn’t clean.”

“It isn’t?”

“No one ever got something that didn’t want to be gotten without making a mess.”

“Oh.”

“Bullets leave holes, sometimes big ones. Arrows, too. And you don’t bring down a bison with a little hole.”

“I guess not.”

“So when they position the animals in the dioramas, they turn the holes and gashes and tears away from the viewer. Only the animals painted into the landscape get to see them. But remembering they’re there changes everything.”

Once, after hearing Jacob recount an example of Julia’s subtle belittling, Dr. Silvers said, “Most people behave badly when wounded. If you can remember the wounds, it is far more possible to forgive the behavior.”

Julia was in the bath when he’d come home that night. He tried — with gentle knocking, calling into the room, and unnecessarily loud shuffling — to make her aware of his presence, but the water was too loud, and opening the door, he startled her. After catching her breath, and laughing at her fear, she rested her chin on the tub’s lip. They listened to the water together. A seashell brought to the ear becomes an echo chamber for one’s circulatory system. The ocean you hear is your own blood. The bathroom that night was an echo chamber for their shared life. And behind Julia, where the towels and hanging robe should have been, Jacob saw a painted landscape, a flat forever occupied by a school, a soccer field, the Whole Foods bulk section (a grid of plastic bins filled with painted split peas and brown rice, dried mango and raw cashews), a Subaru and a Volvo, a home, their home, and through a second-story window there was a room, so tiny and precisely painted, only a Master could have made it, and on a table in that room, which became her office once there was no more need for a nursery, was an architectural model, a house, and in that house in that house in the house in which life happened was a woman, carefully positioned.

* * *

Finally, the vet came. She wasn’t what Jacob was anticipating, or hoping for: some gentle, gentile, grandfather figure. To begin with, she was a she. In Jacob’s experience, vets were like airplane pilots: virtually always male, gray (or graying), and calming. Dr. Shelling looked too young to buy Jacob a drink — not that the situation would ever arise — was fit, firm, and wearing what appeared to be a tailored lab coat.

“What brings you here today?” she asked, riffling through Argus’s chart.

Did Max see what Jacob saw? Was he old enough to pay any attention? To be embarrassed?

“He’s been having some problems,” Jacob said, “probably just normal stuff for a dog of his age: incontinence, some joint issues. Our previous vet — Dr. Hazel at Animal Kind — put him on Rimadyl and Cosequin, and said we should consider adjusting the dosage if things didn’t improve. They didn’t improve, and we doubled the dosage, and added a dementia pill, but nothing happened. So I thought we’d seek another opinion.”

“OK,” she said, putting down the clipboard. “And this dog has a name?”

“Argus,” Max offered.

“Great name,” she said, lowering herself onto a knee.

She held the sides of Argus’s face, and looked into his eyes while she stroked his head.

“He’s in pain,” Max said.

“He has occasional discomfort,” Jacob clarified. “But it’s not constant, and it’s not pain.”

“Are you in pain?” Dr. Shelling asked Argus.

“He whines when he gets up and down,” Max said.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“But he’ll also whine if we don’t drop enough popcorn during movies,” Jacob said. “He’s a catholic whiner.”

“Can you think of other times he whines out of discomfort?”

“Again, almost all of his whining is for food or a walk. But that’s not pain, or even discomfort. Just desire.”

“He whines when you and Mom fight.”

“That’s Mom’s whining,” Jacob said, trying to relieve the shame he felt in front of the veterinarian.

“Does he get enough walks?” she asked. “He shouldn’t be whining for a walk.”

“He gets a lot of walks,” Jacob said.

“Three,” Max said.

“A dog of Argus’s age needs five walks. At least.”

“Five walks a day?” Jacob asked.

“And the pain you’ve witnessed. For how long has it been going on?”

“Discomfort,” Jacob corrected. “Pain is too strong a word.”

“A long time,” Max said.

“Not that long. Maybe half a year?”

“It’s gotten bad in the last half a year,” Max said, “but he’s been whining since Benjy was like three.”

“Same could be said of Benjy.”

The vet looked into Argus’s eyes for another few moments, now in silence. Jacob wanted to be looked at like that.

“OK,” she said. “Let’s take a temperature, I’ll check his vitals, and if it feels right, we can do some blood work.”

She pulled a thermometer from a glass bottle on the counter, squeezed some lube onto it, and positioned herself behind Argus. Did it thrill Jacob? Did it depress him? It depressed him. But why? Because of Argus’s stoicism whenever this happened? How it reminded him of his own unwillingness, or inability, to show discomfort? No, it had to do with the vet — her youthful beauty (she seemed to be reverse-aging as the visit progressed), but more, her tender care. She inspired fantasizing in Jacob, but not about a sexual encounter. Not even about her guiding in a suppository. He imagined her pressing a stethoscope to his chest; her fingers gently exploring the glands of his neck; how she would extend and bend his arms and legs, listening for the difference between discomfort and pain with the closeness and quietness and care of someone trying to crack a safe.

Max got down on a knee, placed his face in front of Argus’s, and said, “That’s my boy. Look at me. There you go, boy.”

“OK,” she said, removing the thermometer. “A little high, but within the healthy range.”

She then ran her hands over Argus’s body, examining the insides of his ears, lifting his lip to look at the teeth and gums, pressing Argus’s belly, rotating his thigh until he whined.

“Sensitive on that leg.”

“He had both of his hips replaced,” Max said.

“Total hip replacements?”

Jacob shrugged.

“The left was a femoral head osteotomy,” Max said.

“That’s an interesting choice.”

“Yeah,” Max went on, “he was on the border in terms of weight, and the vet thought we could spare him the THR. But it was a mistake.”

“Sounds like you were paying pretty close attention.”

“He’s my dog,” Max said.

“OK,” she said, “he’s obviously got some tenderness. Probably a bit of arthritis.”

“He’s been pooping in the house for about a year,” Max said.

“Not a year,” Jacob corrected.

“Don’t you remember Sam’s slumber party?”

“Right, but that was unusual. It didn’t become a consistent problem until several months after that.”

“And is he also urinating in the house?”

“Mostly just defecating,” Jacob said, “some peeing more recently.”

“Does he still squat to poop? Often it’s really an arthritic problem, rather than an intestinal or rectal one — the dog can no longer assume the position, and so poops while walking.”

“He often poops while walking,” Jacob said.

“But sometimes he’ll poop in his bed,” Max said.

“As if he doesn’t realize he’s pooping,” the vet suggested. “Or simply has no control.”

“Right,” Max said. “I don’t know if dogs get embarrassed, or sad, but.”

Jacob received a text from Julia: made it to the hotel.

“We’ll never know,” the vet said, “but it definitely doesn’t sound pleasant.”

That’s it? Jacob thought. Made it to the hotel? As if to a tolerated colleague, or the most minimal communication required to satisfy a legal obligation. And then he thought, Why does she always give me so little? And that thought surprised him, not just the flash flood of anger it rode in on, but how comfortable it felt — and that word, always—despite his never before having consciously thought it. Why does she always give me so little? So little of the benefit of the doubt. So few compliments. Such rare appreciation. When was the last time she didn’t stifle a laugh at one of his jokes? When did she last ask to read what he was working on? When did she last initiate sex? So little to live off. He’d behaved badly, but only after a decade of wounds from arrows too blunt to get the job done.

He often thought of that piece by Andy Goldsworthy, for which he lay flat on the ground as a storm came in, and remained there until it passed. When he stood up, his dry silhouette remained. Like the chalk outline of a victim. Like the unpunctured circle where the dartboard used to be.

“He still enjoys himself at the park,” Jacob said to the vet.

“What’s that?”

“I was just saying that he still enjoys himself at the park.”

And with that seeming non sequitur, the conversation rotated 180 degrees, so that the other side faced front.

“Sometimes he does,” Max said. “But mostly he just lies there. And he has such a hard time with the stairs at home.”

“He ran the other day.”

“And then limped for like the next three days.”

“Look,” Jacob said, “obviously his quality of life is diminishing. Obviously he’s not the dog he used to be. But he has a life worth living.”

“Says who?”

“Dogs don’t want to die.”

“Great-Grandpa does.”

“Whoa, wait. What did you just say?”

“Great-Grandpa wants to die,” Max said matter-of-factly.

“Great-Grandpa isn’t a dog.” The full strangeness of that comment started to creep up the walls of the room. Jacob tried to cut it back with the obvious amendment: “And he doesn’t want to die.”

“Says who?”

“Would you two like a little time?” the vet asked, crossing her arms and taking a long backward stride toward the door.

“Great-Grandpa has hopes for the future,” Jacob said. “Like living to see Sam’s bar mitzvah. And he takes pleasure in memories.”

“Same as Argus.”

“You think Argus is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah?”

“No one is looking forward to Sam’s bar mitzvah.”

“Great-Grandpa is.”

“Says who?”

“Dogs take all kinds of very subtle pleasure in life,” the vet said. “Lying in a patch of sun. The occasional bit of tasty human food. It’s hard to say how far their mental experience extends beyond that. It’s left to us to make assumptions.”

“Argus feels like we forgot him,” Max said, making his assumption clear.

“Forgot him?”

“Just like Great-Grandpa.”

Jacob gave the vet a ruffled smile and said, “Who said Great-Grandpa feels forgotten?”

“He does.”

“When?”

“When we talk.”

“And when is that?”

“When we skype.”

“He doesn’t mean it.”

“So how do you know Argus means it when he whines?”

“Dogs can’t not mean things.”

“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that Argus should be put to sleep.”

“Oh. That’s not for me to say. It’s a very personal decision.”

“OK, but if you thought he shouldn’t be put to sleep, you would have just said he shouldn’t be put to sleep.”

“He runs in the park, Max. He watches movies on the sofa.”

“Tell him,” Max said to the vet.

“My job, as a vet, is to care for Argus, to help keep him healthy. It isn’t to offer advice about end-of-life decisions.”

“So in other words, you agree with me.”

“She didn’t say that, Max.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you think my great-grandfather should be put to sleep?”

“No,” the vet said, immediately regretting the credence her response lent the question.

“Tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him that you think Argus should be put to sleep.”

“That’s really not for me to say.”

“See?” Max said to his father.

“You realize Argus is in the room, Max?”

“He doesn’t understand.”

“Of course he understands.”

“So hold on. You think Argus understands, but Great-Grandpa doesn’t?”

“Great-Grandpa understands.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re a monster.”

“Max.”

“Tell him.”

Argus vomited a dozen almost perfectly formed McNuggets at the vet’s feet.

“How do they keep the glass clean?” Jacob had asked his father, three decades before.

Irv gave a puzzled look and said, “Windex?”

“I mean the other side. People can’t walk in there. They’d ruin all the stuff on the ground.”

“But if no one ever goes in, it stays clean.”

“It doesn’t,” Jacob said. “Remember when we came back from Israel and everything was dirty? Even though no one had been there for three weeks? Remember how we wrote our names in Hebrew in the dust on the windows?”

“A house isn’t a closed environment.”

“Yes it is.”

“Not as closed as a diorama.”

“It is.”

The only thing Irv loved more than teaching Jacob was being challenged by him: the intimations of one day being surpassed by his child.

“Maybe that’s why they face that side of the glass away,” he said, smiling, but hiding his fingers in his son’s hair, which, given enough time, would grow to bury them.

“I don’t think glass works like that.”

“No?”

“You can’t hide the other side.”

“Do animals work like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the face of that bison.”

“What?”

“Look closely.”

NOT YET

Sam and Billie sat in the back of the bus, several empty rows behind the rest.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

“OK.”

“On your iPad.”

“I left it at home.”

“Seriously?”

“My mom made me,” Sam said, wishing he’d invented a less infantilizing explanation.

“Did she read an op-ed, or something?”

“She wants me to be ‘present’ on the trip.”

“What uses ten gallons of gas but doesn’t move?”

“What?”

“A Buddhist monk.”

Sam laughed, not getting it.

“You’ve seen the one where the alligator bites the electric eel?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s fucking nuts.”

Billie took out the generic, lamer-than-an-adult-on-a-scooter tablet her parents got her for Christmas, and started typing. “Have you seen the weatherman with the hard-on?”

They watched together and laughed.

“The best part is when he says, ‘We’re looking at a hot one.’”

She loaded a new video and said, “Check out the syphilis on this guinea pig.”

“I think that’s a hamster.”

“You’re missing the genital sores for the trees.”

“I hate to sound like my dad, but isn’t it insane that we have access to this shit?”

“It’s not insane. It’s the world.”

“Well, then isn’t the world insane?”

“Definitionally it can’t be. Insane is what other people are.”

“I really, really like how you think.”

“I really, really like that you would say that.”

“I’m not saying it; it’s true.”

“And another thing I really, really like is that you can’t bring yourself to say the l-word, because you’re afraid I’ll think you’re saying something you aren’t.”

“Huh?”

“Really, really, really like.”

He loved her.

She put the tablet in a coma and said, “Emet hi hasheker hatov beyoter.”

“What’s that?”

“Hebrew.”

“You speak Hebrew?”

“As Franz Rosenzweig famously responded when asked if he was religious, ‘Not yet.’ But I figured one of us should learn a bit in honor of your bar mitzvah.”

“Franz who? And wait, what’s it mean?”

“Truth is the safest lie.”

“Ah. Well: Anata wa subete o rikai shite iru baai wa, gokai suru hitsuyo ga arimasu.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“‘If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.’ Japanese, I think. It was the epigraph to Call of Duty: Black Ops.”

“Yeah, I study Japanese on Thursdays. I just didn’t understand your usage.”

Sam wanted to show her the new synagogue he’d been working on for the past two weeks. He wondered if it was the best expression of the best of him, and he wondered if she’d like it.

The bus pulled up to the Washington Hilton — the hotel at which Sam’s bar mitzvah party would theoretically take place in two weeks, if an apology could be wrested from him — and the kids disembarked and scattered. Inside the lobby hung a large banner: WELCOME 2016 MODEL UNITED NATIONS. A few dozen suitcases and duffels were piled in the corner, nearly every one containing something it wasn’t supposed to. While Mark struggled to do a head count, Sam pulled his mother aside.

“Don’t make a big deal when you talk to everyone, OK?”

“A big deal about what?”

“About anything. Just don’t make a big deal.”

“You’re worried that I’m going to embarrass you?”

“Yes. You made me say it.”

“Sam, we’re here to have a blast—”

“Don’t say blast.”

“—and the absolute last thing I’d want to be is a drag.”

“Or drag.”

Mark gave Julia a thumbs-up, and she addressed the group: “Can I have everyone’s attention?”

Everyone withheld his attention.

“Yoo-hoo!”

“Or yoo-hoo,” Sam whispered to no one.

Mark unleashed a baritone that made charm bracelets into wind chimes: “Mouths shut, eyes up here, now!”

The kids silenced.

“OK,” Julia said. “Well, as you probably know, I’m Sam’s mom. He told me not to make a big deal, so I’ll keep this to the essentials. First, I want to let you all know how totally psyched I am to be here with you.”

Sam closed his eyes, willing himself to unlearn object permanence.

“This is going to be interesting, challenging, and awesome.”

Julia saw Sam’s closed eyes but didn’t know what she’d done.

“So … just a bit of housekeeping before passing out room keys, which I believe are cards and not keys, but we’ll call them keys. You’ll find that I’m a very laid-back person. But laid-backness is a two-way street. I know you guys are here to enjoy yourselves, but remember that you’re also representatives of Georgetown Day School, not to mention our archipelago home, the Federated States of Micronesia!”

She waited for applause. Or anything. Billie filled the silence with a single clap, and then she was holding the hot potato of awkwardness.

Julia continued: “So, I’m sure it goes without saying, but recreational drug use isn’t going to happen.”

Sam lost muscle control of his neck, his head slumping forward.

“If you have a prescription for something, of course that’s fine, so long as it isn’t used recreationally or otherwise abused. Now, I realize most of you aren’t even thirteen, but I also want to broach the subject of sexual relations.”

Sam walked to the side. Billie followed him.

Mark saw what was happening and intervened: “I think what Mrs. Bloch is trying to say is, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want us to tell your parents about. Because we’ll tell your parents about it, and then you’ll be in deep shit. Got it?”

The students collectively affirmed.

“My mother is why Kurt Cobain killed himself,” Sam whispered to Billie.

“Cut her some slack.”

“Why?”

As Mark handed out key cards, he said, “Take your stuff to your rooms, unpack, and don’t turn on the TV, and don’t have anything to do with the minibar. We’ll meet at my room, eleven twenty-four, at two o’clock. If you have a device, input it: eleven twenty-four at two. If you don’t have a device, try your brain. Now, being smart and motivated young people, you will use this time to go over position papers so you’re sharp for this afternoon’s minisessions. You have my cell number in case, and only in case, something comes up. Know that I am omniscient. Which is to say, even without being physically present, I can see and hear everything. Goodbye.”

The kids took their key cards and dispersed.

“And for you,” Mark said, handing Julia her key card.

“Presidential Suite, I assume?”

“That’s right. But president of Micronesia, I’m afraid.”

“Thanks for saving me back there.”

“Thanks for making me an icon of cool.”

Julia laughed.

“Wanna grab a drink?” he asked.

“Really? A drink drink?”

“An imbibable relaxant. Yes.”

“I should check in with Jacob’s parents. They’ve got Benjy for the weekend.”

“Cute.”

“Until he comes back a latency-phased Meir Kahane.”

“Huh?”

“He was a deranged right-wing—”

“You need need a drink drink.”

And then, suddenly, there was nothing logistical to go over, no small talk to indulge in, only the inching shadow of their conversation at the bespoke hardware gallery, and all that Julia knew but wouldn’t share.

“Go make your call.”

“It will only be five minutes.”

“Whatever it is, it is. Text me when you’re ready and I’ll meet you at the bar. We have plenty of time.”

“It isn’t too early for a drink?”

“In the millennium?”

“In the day.”

“In your life?”

“In the day, Mark. You’re already drunk on your bachelorhood.”

“A drunk person wouldn’t point out that a bachelor is someone who has never been married.”

“Then you’re drunk on your freedom.”

“Don’t you mean aloneness?”

“I was imagining what you might say.”

“I’m drunk on my new sobriety.”

She thought of herself as being unusually astute about the motivations of others, but she couldn’t parse what he was doing. Flirting with someone he desired? Bolstering someone he felt sorry for? Innocently bantering? And what was she doing? Any guilt she might have felt about flirting was now so far beyond the horizon it might well have been right behind her. If anything, she wished Jacob were there to watch.

They used to have their own secret lines of communication, ways of smuggling messages: spelling in front of the young children; whispering in front of Isaac; writing notes to each other about a phone conversation in progress; hand and facial gestures organically developed over years, like when, in Rabbi Singer’s office, Julia pressed two fingers to her brow and gently shook her head while flaring her nostrils, which meant: Let it go. They could find a way of reaching each other around any obstacle. But they needed the obstacle.

Her mind leaped: Jacob had forced Sam to listen to a podcast about messenger birds in World War I, and it captured Sam’s imagination — he asked for a homing pigeon for his eleventh birthday. Delighting in the originality of the request and, as always, wanting not only to go to any length to provide for her children, but also to be seen as having gone to any length to provide for her children, she took him seriously.

“They make wonderful indoor pets,” he promised. “There’s a—”

“Indoor?”

“Yeah. They need a big cage, but—”

“What about Argus?”

“With a little conditioning—”

“Great word.”

“Mom. With a little conditioning, they can totally be friends. And once—”

“What about pooping?”

“They wear pigeon pants. Basically a diaper. You change it every three hours.”

“No burden there.”

“I would do it.”

“Your school day is longer than three hours.”

“Mom, it would be so fun,” he said, shaking his fists in the way that once inspired Jacob to wonder if he might have a sprinkle of Asperger’s. “We could take it to the park, or to school, or Omi and Opi’s, or wherever, attach a message to its collar, and it would just fly home.”

“Can I ask what’s fun about that?”

“Really?”

“In your own words.”

“If it isn’t obvious, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“And is it difficult to train them?”

“It’s super easy. You basically just give them a great home, and they’ll want to come back.”

“What makes a home great?”

“It’s spacious, in direct sunlight, and the chicken wire enclosing it is too tightly meshed for his head to fit through and get stuck.”

“That does sound nice.”

“And the bottom is lined with grassy sod, which is changed regularly. And he has a bath, which is cleaned regularly.”

“Right.”

“And lots of tasty treats, like endive, berries, buckwheat, flax, mung bean sprouts, vetch.”

“Vetch?”

“I don’t know, I read it.”

“How spacious a cage are we talking about?”

“Really great would be six by nine.”

“Six by nine what?”

“Feet. Six-foot width and length, nine-foot height.”

“And where would we put such a spacious cage?”

“In my room.”

“We’d have to raise the ceiling.”

“Is that something we could do?”

“No.”

“So it could be a bit less tall and still OK.”

“And what if it doesn’t like its home?”

“It will.”

“But what if it doesn’t?”

“Mom, it will, because I’m going to do all of the things you’re supposed to do to create a great home that it loves.”

“I’m just asking what if.”

“Mom.”

“I can’t ask a question?”

“I guess it doesn’t come back. OK? It goes and keeps going.”

It took only a week for Sam to forget that there were such things as homing pigeons in the world — he learned that there were such things as Nerf guns in the world — but Julia never forgot what he said: It goes and keeps going.

“Why not,” she said to Mark, wishing there were a nearby surface to rap her knuckles against. “Let’s have a drink drink.”

“Only one?”

“You’re right,” she said, preening the underside of her wing before a flight that would reveal the comfort of her cage. “It’s probably too late for that.”

SOMEONE ELSE’S OTHER LIFE

It had been more than eight hours since they’d driven home in silence from the vet’s office, four hundred ninety minutes of avoiding each other in the house. There were ingredients, but there was no will, so Jacob microwaved burritos. He arranged a dozen baby carrots that had no chance of being eaten, and a heaping dollop of hummus so Julia could see the amount missing from the container when she returned. He brought the food up to Max’s room, knocked, and entered.

“I didn’t say come in.”

“I wasn’t asking for permission. Just giving you time to take your finger out of your nose.”

Max put his finger into his nose. Jacob put the plate on the desk.

“Wat’cha doin’?”

“I’cha not doin’ nothin’,” Max said, turning the iPad facedown.

“Seriously, what?”

“Seriously, nothing.”

“What, dirty movies? Buying stuff on my credit card?”

“No.”

“Looking up home euthanasia recipes?”

“Not at all funny.”

“Then what?”

“Other Life.”

“I didn’t know you played that.”

“No one plays it.”

“Right. I didn’t know you did it.”

“I don’t, really. Sam won’t let me.”

“But the cat’s away.”

“I guess so.”

“I won’t rat you out.”

“Thanks.”

“Get it? Cat’s away? Rat you out?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the deal with that, anyway? It’s a game?”

“It’s not a game.”

“No?”

“It’s a community.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Jacob said, unable to resist using his most belittling voice.

“No,” Max said, “you don’t.”

“But isn’t it more — to my understanding, anyway — more like a bunch of people who pay a monthly membership to gather and explore an, I don’t know, imagined landscape together?”

“No, it’s not like synagogue.”

“Well played.”

“Thanks for the food. See ya.”

“Whatever it is,” Jacob said, trying again, “it looks cool. From what I’ve been able to see. From a distance.”

Max plugged his speech orifice with a burrito.

“Really,” Jacob said, sidling up. “I’m curious. I know Sam plays — I mean, does—this all the time, and I want to see what it’s all about.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“You realize I won a National Jewish Book Award at the age of twenty-four?”

Max turned the iPad faceup, swiped it bright, and said, “I’m currently recruiting work valences for a resonance promotion. Then I can barter for some psychic upholstery and—”

“Psychic upholstery?”

“I wonder if the winner of an actual National Book Award would need to ask.”

“And that’s you?” Jacob asked, touching an elflike creature.

“No. And don’t touch the screen.”

“Which one is you?”

“None of them is me.”

“Which one is Sam?”

“None.”

“Which is Sam’s person?”

“His avatar?”

“OK.”

“There. By the vending machine.”

“What? The tan girl?”

“She’s a Latina.”

“Why is Sam a Latina?”

“Why are you a white man?”

“Because I didn’t have a choice.”

“Well, he did.”

“Can I take her for a spin?”

Max hated the feeling of his father’s hand on his shoulder. It was repulsive to him — an experience somewhere near the middle of the spectrum whose opposing poles were runny eggs and thirty thousand people demanding gratification when the Nationals Park Kiss Cam imprisoned his mom and him in the Jumbotron.

“No,” he said, shaking his shoulder free, “you can’t.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You could kill her.”

“Obviously I won’t. But even if I did, which I won’t, can’t you just put in some more quarters and continue?”

“It took Sam four months to develop her skill set, bounty of armaments, and psychic resources.”

“It’s taken me forty-two years.”

“Which is why you shouldn’t let anyone take your controls.”

“Maxy…”

“Max is fine.”

“Max. He who gave you life is begging you.”

“No.”

“I command you to let me partake in Sam’s community.”

Max let out a deep, dramatic sigh.

“Two minutes,” he said. “And only aimless wandering.”

“Aimless Wandering is my middle name.”

With great reluctance, Max handed Jacob the iPad.

“To move, just slide your thumb in the direction you want to go. To pick something up—”

“My thumb is the squat one on the end, right?”

Max didn’t respond.

“I’cha kidding, dude.”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

When Jacob was a kid, games had one button. They were simple, and fun, and no one felt that they were in any way lacking. No one felt a need to crouch, to pivot, to switch weapons. You had a gun, you shot the bastards, you high-fived your friends. Jacob didn’t want all these options — the more control available, the less control he felt.

“You kinda suck at this,” Max said.

“Maybe it’s this game that kinda sucks.”

“It’s not a game, and it made more money in one day than every book published in America that entire year combined.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“I’m sure it is, because there was an article about it.”

“Where?”

“The Arts section.”

“The Arts section? Since when do you read the Arts section, and since when were video games art?”

“It’s not a game.”

“And even if it did make all that money,” Jacob said, sliding his feet into the stirrups of his high horse, “so what? What is that even a measure of?”

“How much money it made.”

“Which is a measure of what?”

“I don’t know, how important it is?”

“There’s a difference, I’m sure you realize, between prevalence and importance.”

“I’m sure you realize that I don’t even know what prevalence means.”

“Kanye West is not more culturally important than—”

“Yes he is.”

“—than Philip Roth.”

“First of all, I’ve never even heard of that person. Second, Kanye might not be valuable to you, but he’s definitely more important to the world.”

Jacob remembered the period when Max was obsessed with relative values—Would you rather have a handful of diamonds or a houseful of silver? For a moment, which disappeared as it emerged, he saw the smaller Max.

“I guess we look at things differently,” Jacob said.

“That’s right,” Max said. “I look at things correctly. You don’t. That’s a difference. How many people watch your TV show every week?”

“It’s not my show.”

“The show that you write for.”

“That’s not a simple question. There’s people who watch it when it’s first on, then people who watch other showings, and DVR—”

“A few million?”

“Four.”

“Seventy million people play this game. And they had to buy it, not just turn on the TV when they didn’t feel like spending time with their kids or making out with their wives.”

“How old are you?”

“Basically eleven.”

“When I was your age—”

Max pointed at the screen.

“Pay attention to what you’re doing, Dad.”

“Of course I am.”

“Just don’t—”

“Under control.”

“Dad—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeahs,” he said, then turned his attention from the iPad to Max. “They’re a band.”

“Dad!”

“You really inherited Mom’s talent for worrying.”

And then there was a sound Jacob had never heard before — a cross between a screeching tire and the dying animal it just ran over.

“Oh shit!” Max screamed.

“What?”

“Oh shit!”

“Hold on, is that blood mine?”

“It’s Sam’s! You killed him!”

“No I didn’t. I just smelled some flowers.”

“You just inhaled a Bouquet of Fatality!”

“Why would there be a bouquet of fatality?”

“So assholes have a stupid way to die!”

“Easy, Max. It was an honest mistake.”

“Who cares if it was honest!”

“And with all due respect—”

“Oh shit, shit, shit!”

“—it’s a game.”

Jacob shouldn’t have said that. Clearly he shouldn’t have.

“With all due respect,” Max said with scary composure, “fuck you.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said”—Max was unable to look his father in the eye, but he had no trouble repeating himself—“fuck you.”

“Don’t you ever speak to me like that.”

“Too bad I didn’t inherit Mom’s talent for eating shit.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing.”

“Nothing, OK?”

“No, not OK. Mom does a lot of things, and eating shit is not one of them. And yes, I know you weren’t speaking literally.”

Had Max also heard them fighting? The broken glass? Or was he merely fishing, seeing what kind of response he might get? What kind of response did he want? And what was Jacob prepared to give?

Jacob stamped to the door, then turned back and said, “When you’re ready to apologize, I’ll be—”

“I’m dead,” Max said. “The dead don’t apologize.”

“You aren’t dead, Max. There are actual dead people in the world, and you aren’t one of them. You are upset. Upset and dead are different states.”

The phone rang — a reprieve. Jacob was expecting it to be Julia; when away, she always checked in before the kids went to bed.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Benjy?”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Is everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m in my pj’s.”

“Do you need anything, buddy?”

“No. Do you?”

“I’m fine.”

“You just wanted to say hi before bed?”

“You called me.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to Max.”

“Now? On the phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Benjy wants to talk to you,” Jacob said, handing the phone to Max.

“Could we have a little privacy?” Max asked.

The absurdity of it, the agony and beauty of it, almost brought Jacob to his knees: these two independent consciousnesses, neither of which existed ten and a half years ago, and existed only because of him, could now not only operate free of him (that much he’d known for a long time), but demand freedom.

Jacob picked up the iPad and left his offspring to talk. While he fiddled, he accidentally maximized the window behind Other Life. It was a discussion board, with the heading “Can You Humanely Euthanize a Dog at Home?” The first comment his eyes fell upon read: “I had the same problem, but with a grown dog. It’s so sad. My mum took Charlie to our friend, a farmer down the way, who said he would be able to shoot him. It was much easier for us. He took him for a walk, talked to him, and shot him while they were walking.”

THE ARTIFICIAL EMERGENCY

Instead of calling to check on Benjy, who was obviously fine, Julia fussed with her hair, sucked in her cheeks, tugged down her shirt, scrutinized her makeup, pressed her belly, squinted. She texted Mark, if only to create a hard stop to her self-loathing: confirmed kid is alive. ready whenever. By the time she got to the hotel bar, he was already at a table.

“Spacious accommodations?” he asked as she took the seat across from him.

“A room of my own? An oven would feel spacious.”

“Sounds like you were born seventy-five years too late.” And then, with a faux wince: “Too soon?”

“Let’s see, my father-in-law would say it’s absolutely fine, so long as the person making the joke doesn’t have a cell of goyish blood. Then Jacob would disagree. Then they’d switch positions and fight with twice the energy.”

The waiter approached.

“A couple of glasses of white?” Mark suggested.

“Sounds great,” Julia said. “Are you going to have one, too?”

Mark laughed and held up two fingers.

“How is Irv? Seems like he’s stirred up a lot of shit.”

“He’s a human plunger. But it beats being ignored.”

“Being universally reviled?”

“Talking about him is exactly what he’d want us to be doing right now. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”

“Moving along.”

“So how’s it going?”

“What? The divorce?”

“The divorce, your rediscovered interior monologue, the whole thing.”

“It’s a process.”

“Isn’t that how Cheney described torture?”

“You know that old joke: ‘Why are divorces so expensive?’”

“Why?”

“Because they’re worth it.”

“I thought that’s what they said about chemo.”

“Well, both make you bald,” he said, holding back his hair.

“You aren’t bald.”

“Please, God, not distinguished.”

“Not even distinguished.”

“Just taller than my hair.”

“You’re all the same: endlessly experimenting with facial hair configurations, obsessed with thinning hair where there isn’t any. And yet indifferent to the paunch spilling over your belt.”

“I am a very bald man. But that’s not the point. The point is, divorce is profoundly expensive — emotionally, logistically, financially — and it’s worth it. But just.”

“Just?”

“It’s no landslide. It just barely ekes it out.”

“But you eke it out with your life, right?”

“Better to get out of the building with burns over ninety percent of your body than perish inside. But best to have left before the fire.”

“Yeah, but it’s cold outside.”

“Where’s your burning house? Nunavut?”

“I always imagine house fires in winter.”

“And you?” Mark asked. “What’s the news on Newark Street?”

“You’re not the only one in a process.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, unfolding the napkin.

“Nunavut?”

“What?”

“You’ll be sharing none of it?”

“It’s truly nothing,” she said, refolding it.

“So, fine.”

“I shouldn’t talk about it.”

“You probably shouldn’t.”

“But even though we haven’t started drinking, I’ve got a psychosomatic buzz.”

“This is going to be a bomb, isn’t it?”

“I can trust you, right?”

“I suppose it depends.”

“Seriously?”

“Only a trustworthy person would admit to his unreliability.”

“Forget it.”

“I cheated on my taxes last year, OK? Badly. I deducted an office I don’t even have. Now you can blackmail me, if it comes to that.”

“Why would you cheat on your taxes?”

“Because it’s an honor to contribute to our functioning society, but only to a point. Because I’m a schmuck. Because my accountant is a schmuck and told me I could. I don’t know why.”

“The other day I was at home and heard a buzzing. There was a cell phone on the floor.”

“Oh shit.”

“What?”

“There is not a single story about a cell phone that ends well.”

“I opened it up and there were some pretty sexually explicit messages.”

“Texts, or images?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“An image is what it is. A text could be anything.”

“Licking cum out of assholes. That kind of stuff.”

“Image?”

“Words,” Julia said. “But if you ask for the context, I’m going to call the IRS.”

The drinks arrived, and the waitress scurried off. Julia wondered how much, if anything, she had heard, what she might tell the hostess, what young, unencumbered women might have a laugh that night at the expense of the Bloch family.

“I confronted Jacob about it, and he said it was just talk. Just some seriously overheated flirting.”

“Overheated? Licking cum out of assholes is Dresden.”

“It’s not good.”

“And who was at the other end of them?”

“A director he works with.”

“Not Scorsese…”

“That’s too soon.”

“Seriously, Julia, I am so very sorry to hear this. And shocked.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. Like you said, the door has to open to light up the dark room.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Do you believe him?”

“In what sense?”

“That it was just words.”

“I do.”

“And does the distinction matter to you?”

“Between talking and doing? Sure it matters.”

“How much does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“He cheated on you, Julia.”

“He didn’t cheat on me.”

“Too big a word for having had sex with another woman?”

“He didn’t have sex with another woman.”

“Of course he did. And even if he didn’t, he did. And you know it.”

“I’m not excusing, or minimizing, what he did. But there’s a difference.”

“Writing to another woman like that is a betrayal, no hairs to split. I’m sorry, but I can’t sit here and allow you to think you don’t deserve better.”

“It was only words.”

“And if you’d written those ‘only words’? How do you think he’d have reacted?”

“If he knew that we were having this drink, he’d have a grand mal seizure.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how insecure he is.”

“In a marriage with three children?”

“He’s the fourth.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What?”

“If he were only pathologically insecure, OK. He is who he is. And if he’d only cheated, I suppose I can see the way back from that. But the combination? How can you accept it?”

“Because of the boys. Because I’m forty-three years old. Because I have almost twenty years of history with him, almost all of which is good history. Because regardless of the stupidity or evil of his mistake, he’s a fundamentally good person. He is. Because I’ve never sexted with anyone, but I’ve done my share of flirting and fantasizing. Because I often haven’t been a good wife, often on purpose. Because I’m weak.”

“Only the weakness is persuasive.”

A thought walked in, a memory: checking the boys for ticks on the porch of the rental in Connecticut. They passed the kids back and forth — looking in armpits, through the hair, between toes — she and Jacob double-checking each other’s work, always finding ticks the other missed. She was good at removing them in their entirety, and he was good at distracting the boys with funny impressions of their mother shopping in the supermarket. Why that memory right then?

“What do you fantasize about?” Mark asked.

“What?”

“You said you’ve done your share of fantasizing. About what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, taking a drink. “I was just talking.”

“I know. And I’m just asking. What do you fantasize about?”

“That’s not of your business.”

“Not of my business?”

“None.”

“Drunk on your weakness?”

“I don’t find you cute.”

“Of course not.”

“Or charming. Despite all of the effort.”

“It’s effortless to be this charmless.”

“Or sexy.”

Mark took a long drink, draining the remaining half of his glass, then said, “Leave him.”

“I’m not going to leave him.”

“Why not?”

“Because marriage is the thing you don’t give up on.”

“No, life is.”

“And because I’m not you.”

“No, but you’re you.”

“There is not a part of me that wishes I were alone.”

But as the words entered the world, she knew they were false. She thought about her one-bedroom dream homes, the subconscious blueprints for her departure. They predated the sexting, by years.

“And I’m not going to destroy my family,” she added, at once a non sequitur and the logical conclusion to the line of thought.

“By fixing your family?”

“By ending it.”

Just then, at the best, or worst, possible moment, Billie came running up, giddy or asthmatic.

“I’m sorry to interrupt—”

“Is everything OK?”

“Micronesia has a n—”

“Slow down.”

“Micronesia has a nu—”

“Breathe.”

She reached for one of the glasses and took a gulp.

“That’s not water,” she said, her hand to her chest.

“It’s chardonnay.”

“I just broke the law.”

“We’ll testify to your character,” Mark said.

“Micronesia has a nuclear weapon!”

“What?”

“Last year Russia invaded Mongolia. The year before was bird flu. Usually they wait until the second afternoon, but. We have a nuke! Isn’t that cool! So lucky!”

“What do you mean we have a nuke?” Mark asked.

“We need to convene the delegation.”

“What?”

“Pay for your drinks and keep up with me.”

Mark put some cash on the table and the three race-walked toward the elevators.

“The program facilitators released a statement that a weapons dealer was caught attempting to smuggle an armed suitcase bomb through Yap Airport.”

“Yap Airport?”

“Yeah, I don’t know, that’s what it’s called.”

“Why through Micronesia?” Mark asked.

“Precisely,” Billie said, although not one of the three knew even approximately what that meant. “We’ve already started to get offers from Pakistan, Iran, and, weirdly, Luxembourg.”

“Offers?” Mark asked.

“They want us to sell them the bomb.” And then, to Julia: “You understand, right?”

Julia gave an uncertain nod.

“So explain it to him later. It’s a whole new ball game!”

“Let’s round up the kids,” Julia said to Mark.

“I’ll get the ones on eleven, you get the ones on twelve. Meet in your room?”

“Why mine?”

“Fine, mine.”

“No, mine is fine, I just—”

“Mark’s room,” Billie said.

Mark got on the elevator. Billie held Julia back for a moment.

“Is everything OK?” Billie asked when the elevator doors closed.

“It’s confusing to have a nuclear weapon.”

“I meant you.”

“What about me?”

“Are you OK?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You look like you’re about to cry.”

“Me? No.”

“Oh, OK.”

“I don’t think I am?”

But maybe she was. Maybe the artificial emergency released trapped feelings about the real emergency. There was a trauma center in her brain — she had no Dr. Silvers to explain that to her, but she had the Internet. The most unexpected situations would set it off, and then all thoughts and perception rushed toward it. At the center was Sam’s injury. And at the center of that — the vortex into which all thoughts and perceptions were pulled — was the moment when Jacob carried him into the house, saying, “Something happened,” and she saw more blood than there was but couldn’t hear Sam’s screaming, and for a moment, no longer than a moment, she lost control. For a moment she was untethered from rationality, from reality, from herself. The soul departs the body at the moment of death, but there is a yet more complete abandoning: everything departed her body at the moment she saw her child’s flowing blood.

Jacob looked at her, sternly, hard-hearted, godlike, and made each word a sentence: “Get. Yourself. Together. Now.” The sum of everything she hated him for would never surpass her love for him in that moment.

He put Sam in her arms and said, “We’ll call Dr. Kaisen on the way to the emergency room.”

Sam looked at Julia with a prehuman terror and screamed, “Why did that happen? Why did that happen?” And pleaded, “It’s funny. It’s funny, right?”

She gripped Sam’s eyes with her eyes, held them hard, and didn’t say, “It will be OK,” and didn’t say nothing. She said, “I love you, and I’m here.”

The sum of everything she hated herself for would never surpass her knowledge that in the most important moment of her child’s life, she’d been a good mother.

And then, as quickly as it had seized control, Julia’s trauma center relented. Maybe it was tired. Maybe it was merciful. Maybe she had looked away and looked back, and remembered that she was in the world. But how had the last thirty minutes passed? Had she taken the elevator or the stairs? Had she knocked on the door of Mark’s room or was it open?

The debate was under way and roiling. Did anyone notice her absence? Her presence?

“A stolen nuclear weapon is not an occasion for bartering,” Billie said. “We want this thing disarmed, pronto, period.”

“We didn’t steal it. But I totally agree with what you just said.”

“We should just bury it.”

“Can’t we turn it into energy somehow?”

“We should give it to the Israelis,” said a boy in a yarmulke.

“Screw that, let’s bury it in Israel.”

“If I can butt in for just a moment,” Mark said. “My role here isn’t to suggest conclusions but to help you ask provocative questions, so try this one on for size: Is it possible that there’s an important option we haven’t yet entertained? What if we kept the bomb?”

“Kept the bomb?” Julia said, making her presence unignorable. “No, we can’t keep the bomb.”

“Why not?” Mark asked.

“Because we’re responsible people.”

“Let’s just play this out.”

“Play is not the right word for a discussion about a nuclear bomb.”

“Let him talk,” Sam said.

Mark talked: “Maybe this is a chance to finally control our destiny? For most of our history, we’ve been at the mercy of others: overrun by the Portuguese and Spanish trading goliaths, sold to Germany, conquered by Japan and the United States…”

“I don’t suppose anyone brought an extremely small violin?” Julia said to the kids. Nobody understood the joke.

Mark lowered his volume, asserting calm: “I’m just saying, we have never been fully self-reliant.”

“There hasn’t been a fully self-reliant country in the history of the world,” Julia said.

“Oh, you just got served,” a boy said to Mark.

“Iceland is fully self-reliant,” Mark said.

“Oh, you just got served!” the same boy said to Julia.

“No one’s getting served,” Mark said. “We’re thinking our way through a very complicated issue.”

“Iceland is a Hooverville,” Julia said.

“Look,” Mark said, “if I’m being an idiot, the only thing my blathering will have cost us is three minutes.”

“I just got a text from Liechtenstein,” Billie said, holding her phone as if it were the torch and she were the Statue of Liberty. “They’re offering us a deal.”

“Now, clearly we have no nuclear program of any kind—”

“Liechtenstein is a country?”

“—and wouldn’t have the means or motives to acquire a nuclear weapon on the black market.”

“Jamaica wants in,” Billie said, holding up another text. “They’re offering three hundred billion dollars.”

“They know we’re talking about a bomb, right? Not a nuclear bong? Can I get a hallelujah!”

“Xenophobic,” someone muttered.

“And yet,” Mark went on, “we suddenly find ourselves nuclear, with the ability, should we choose to exercise it, of entering the league of functionally autonomous nations, nations capable of dictating their own terms, nations that aren’t subservient to other nations, or to the predicaments of their histories.”

“Right,” Julia said, her famous composure now in witness protection. “So we have some gripes, so life hasn’t been a trip to Epcot, and hey hey, as it turns out, we just click our uranium heels and boom, life’s bouncer lets us into the greatest of all parties.”

“That’s not what he was suggesting,” Sam said.

“He’s an unclear suggester.” And then, turning to Mark: “You’re an un-cle-ar bomb, that’s what you are.”

“I was trying to suggest that we explore, if only to dismiss, the potential upsides of having a bomb.”

“Let’s bomb someone!” someone said.

“Let’s!” Julia echoed. “Who? Or does it even matter?”

“Of course it matters,” Billie said, puzzled and upset by Julia’s behavior.

“Mexico?” a girl asked.

“Iran, obviously,” Yarmulke Boy said.

“Maybe,” Julia said, “we should bomb some war-torn, famine-ravaged African country where orphans are so skinny they’re fat?”

That killed the buzz.

“Why would we do that?” Billie asked.

“Because we can,” Julia said.

“Jesus, Mom.”

“Don’t ‘Jesus, Mom’ me.”

“We’re not going to bomb anyone,” Mark said.

“But you see, we are,” Julia said. “That’s how the story always ends. You’re either a country that never bombs, or you’re a country that is open to bombing. And once you make yourself open to bombing, you will bomb.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Julia.”

“Only because you’re a man, Mark.”

The kids looked at one another. A few giggled nervously, Sam not among them.

“OK,” Mark said, calling and raising Julia, “so here’s another idea: let’s bomb ourselves.”

“Why?” Billie asked, confused to the point of anguish.

“Because Julia—”

“Mrs. Bloch.”

“—would rather die than save her life. So why draw it out?”

“See what you did?” Sam said to his mother.

“Jamaica went up to four hundred billion,” Billie said, holding up her phone.

Someone said: “Yah, mon.”

Someone said: “Jamaica doesn’t have four hundred dollars.”

Someone said: “We should be asking for real money. The kind we can take home and buy real stuff with.”

Sam pulled his mother into the hallway by her wrist, as she’d many times pulled him.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“What am I doing?”

“I told Dad I didn’t want you to come on this trip, and you made a big deal when I said don’t make a big deal, and you’re more worried about coming off as a cool mom than actually being a good mom.”

“Excuse me?”

“You make everything about you. Everything is always you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and neither do you.”

“You’re making me apologize for words I didn’t write, so I can have a bar mitzvah that only you want me to have. You not only check my online search history, you try to hide the fact that you don’t trust me. And do you think I think the pencils on my desk sharpen themselves?”

“I take care of you, Sam. Believe me, it brings me no pleasure to be shamed in front of the rabbi, or to organize your pigsty desk.”

“You’re a nag. And it does bring you pleasure. The only thing that makes you happy is controlling every last tiny detail of our lives, because you have no control over your own.”

“Where’d you learn that word?”

“What word?”

“Nag.”

“Everyone knows that word.”

“It’s not a kid word.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You’re my kid.”

“It’s annoying enough when you treat your kids like kids, but Dad—”

“Be careful, Sam.”

“He says you can’t help yourself, but I don’t see why that makes any difference.”

“Be careful.”

“Or what? I’ll realize there’s Internet porn, or break a pencil tip and die?”

“Stop now.”

“Or I’ll accidentally say something that everybody already knows?”

“And what would that be?”

“Be careful, Mom.”

“What does everybody know?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

“That we’re all just scared of you. We’re unhappy because we can’t live our lives, because you’re a nag and we’re scared of you.”

“We?”

Billie came into the hallway and approached Sam.

“Are you OK?”

“Go away, Billie.”

“What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Julia said.

Sam continued to lay into his mother, but now through Billie: “Will you please just mind your own business for three consecutive seconds?”

“Did I say something?” she asked Julia.

“You aren’t wanted,” Sam told her. “Go away.”

“Sam?”

Tears brimming, Sam scurried off. Julia stayed there, an ice sculpture of frozen tears.

“It’s kind of funny, right?” Billie said, her eyes overflowing with the tears neither mother nor son could release.

Julia thought about her injured baby pleading, It’s funny. It’s funny.

“What’s funny?”

“Babies kick you from the inside, and then they come out and kick you some more.”

“It’s been my experience,” Julia said, her hand moving to her belly.

“I read it in one of my parents’ parenting books.”

“Why on earth do you read those?”

“To try to understand them.”

SOMEONE ELSE’S OTHER DEATH

Jacob went online and didn’t scan for breaking news in the worlds of real estate porn, design porn, or porn, and didn’t scan for the good fortune of people he envied and would have preferred dead, and didn’t spend a soothing half hour in Bob Ross’s happy little womb. He found the tech support number for Other Life. No great surprise, he had to navigate his way through an automated service — a sedentary Theseus with only a phone cord.

“Other Life … iPad … I don’t know … I really don’t know … I don’t know … Help … Help…”

After a few minutes of saying “I don’t know” and “Help” like an alien impersonating a human, he was connected to someone with an almost impenetrable accent who did everything possible to conceal the fact that he was an Indian impersonating an American.

“Yes, hi, my name is Jacob Bloch and I’m calling on behalf of my son. We had an accident with his avatar…”

“Good evening, Mr. Bloch. I see that you are calling from Washington, D.C. Are you enjoying the unseasonably nice weather this late evening?”

“No.” Jacob had no patience to lose, but being asked to pretend that the phone call wasn’t international found him some nastiness.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bloch. Good evening. My name is John Williams.”

“No kidding! I loved what you did with Schindler’s List.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Jurassic World, not as much.”

“How can I assist you tonight?”

“As I said, there was an accident with my son’s avatar.”

“What kind of accident?”

“I accidentally sniffed a Bouquet of Fatalism.”

“Fatality?”

“Whatever. I sniffed it.”

“And can I ask why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. Why does anyone want to smell anything?”

“Yes, but a Bouquet of Fatality offers instant death.”

“Right, no, I get that — I get that now. But I was new to the game.”

“It is not a game.”

“Fine. Can we just fix this?”

“Were you trying to kill yourself, Mr. Bloch?”

“Of course not. And it’s not me. It’s my son.”

“Your son sniffed it?”

“I sniffed it on my son’s behalf.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Isn’t there some kind of Other Life mulligan, or something?”

“Mulligan, sir?”

“Do-over.”

“If there were no consequences, it would only be a game.”

“I’m a writer, so I really do understand the gravity of mortality, but—”

“You can reincarnate, but without any of your psychic upholstery. So it will be as if you are beginning again.”

“So what do you suggest I do?”

“You could reacquire psychic upholstery on your son’s behalf.”

“But I don’t know how to play.”

“It’s not play.”

“I don’t know how to do it.”

“Simply graze for low-hanging resilience fruit.”

“Graze what?”

“Apothecary vineyards.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“It’s extremely time-consuming, but not difficult.”

“How time-consuming are we talking about?”

“Assuming you became proficient fairly quickly, I would estimate six months.”

“Only six months? Well, that’s fantastic news, because I was sitting here worrying you were talking about something really time-consuming. But this is great, because I don’t have time to get the manifest-destined mole on my breast looked at, but I can certainly spend a thousand hours clamping shut my carpal tunnels while committing brain cell genocide as I scour apothecary vineyards for low-hanging resilience fruit, whatever the fuck that means.”

“Or you could purchase a complete rebirth.”

“A what?”

“It is possible to revert your avatar’s profile to a designated moment in time. In your case, to immediately before sniffing the Bouquet of Fatality.”

“Why the hell didn’t you lead with that?”

“Some people find the option offensive.”

“Offensive?”

“Some believe that it undermines the spirit of Other Life.”

“Well, I doubt that many fathers in my position would feel that way. This is something we can do right now? Over the phone?”

“Yes, I can process your payment and remotely initiate the complete rebirth.”

“Well, this is just the best news I’ve heard … maybe ever. Thank you. Thank you. And really, I’m sorry about being such an asshole earlier. A lot is on the line here.”

“Yes, I understand, Mr. Bloch.”

“Call me Jacob.”

“Thank you, Jacob. I will have to obtain some information about the avatar, and the reversion date and time. But to confirm, you are purchasing the twelve-hundred-dollar complete rebirth.”

“Sorry, did you say twelve hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

“As in: a one, followed by a two, followed by consecutive zeroes, with no decimal?”

“Plus tax. Yes.”

“How much did the game cost?”

“It is not a game.”

“Cut the shit, Williams.”

“Other Life is free.”

“Is this some kind of joke? Twelve hundred dollars?”

“It is not a joke, Jacob.”

“You realize we live in a world with starving children and cleft palates, right?”

“I do realize that.”

“And you still think it’s ethical to charge twelve hundred dollars to correct an accident in a video game?”

“It is not a game, sir.”

“Giving twelve hundred to you requires me making twenty-four hundred. You know this, right?”

“I do not set the prices, sir.”

“Is anyone not the messenger?”

“Would you like to process a complete rebirth, or has the price made this option unappealing?”

“Unappealing? Leukemia is unappealing. This is fucking criminal. And you should be ashamed.”

“I take it that you no longer want to purchase a complete rebirth.”

“Take it as a class-action suit I’m going to bring against your depraved company. I know people that your people should be very afraid of. I know serious lawyers who would do this for me as a favor. And I’m going to write about this for The Washington Post—Style section, or maybe Outlook — and they’ll publish it, you’ll see, and then you’ll be sorry. You have fucked with the wrong guy!”

Jacob smelled Argus shit, but then he often smelled Argus shit when raging.

“Before ending this call, Jacob, would you say that I have responded to your needs in a satisfactory manner?”

Mr. Bloch hung up the phone, then growled, “Fuck my needs.”

He took a breath that he hated, picked the phone back up, but didn’t dial any number.

“Help…,” he said to no one. “Help…”

A COMPLETE REBIRTH

Julia was sitting on the edge of her bed. The TV was set to an advertisement for the hotel in which she was already captive. The lithograph on the wall was in an edition of five thousand — five thousand perfectly identical, perfectly unique, utterly corny snowflakes. She started to dial Jacob. She considered looking for Sam. There were always too many things to do when she had no time. But in need of a way to fill minutes, she never knew how.

The wilderness was interrupted by a knock.

“Thank you for opening the door,” Mark said when it was only cracked.

“The peephole was smudgy,” Julia said, opening it farther.

“I was out of line.”

“You were off the map.”

“I’m trying to apologize here.”

“You found your interior monologue, and it told you you were being an asshole?”

“That’s exactly what happened.”

“Well, allow my exterior monologue to echo the sentiment.”

“Duly noted.”

“Now isn’t a good time.”

“I know.”

“I just had a terrible fight with Sam.”

“I know.”

“You know everything.”

“I wasn’t lying when I told the kids I’m omniscient.”

Julia rubbed her temple and turned, creating a space for Mark to enter.

“Whenever Sam would cry as a baby, we’d say, ‘I know, I know,’ and give him his pacifier. So he started calling it his ‘I-know.’ Your omniscience just reminded me of that. I haven’t thought about it for years.” And with a disbelieving shake of the head: “Was that even this life?”

“Same life, different person.”

With a voice like a window that knows it’s about to be broken, she said, “I’m a good mother, Mark.”

“You are. I know.”

“I’m a really good mother. It’s not just that I try hard. I’m good.”

The distance between them closed by a step, and Mark said, “You’re a good wife, and good mother, and good friend.”

“I try so hard.”

When Jacob brought Argus home, Julia felt betrayed — she showed fury to Jacob, and delight to the boys. And yet it was she who actually bothered to read a book on dog training and care. Most of it was intuitively obvious, but one thing that struck her was the advice that one shouldn’t say no to a dog, as it would process the no as an existential assessment — a negation of the animal’s worth. It would hear no as its name: “You are No.” Instead, you should make a little clicking sound, or say, “Uh-uh,” or clap your hands. How anyone could know this much about a dog’s mental life, or why it would be so much better to be named “Uh-uh,” was beyond Julia, but something about it seemed plausible, even significant.

Julia needed an existential assessment of goodness. She needed to be renamed, to hear: “You are Good.”

Mark put his hand on her cheek.

She took a half step back.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry. Did that feel wrong?”

“Of course it did. You know Jacob.”

“Yes.”

“And you know my kids.”

“I do.”

“And you know that I’m going through something very difficult. And you know that Sam and I had a terrible fight.”

“Yes.”

“And your response is to try to kiss me?”

“I didn’t try to kiss you.”

Could she have misinterpreted? She couldn’t have. But neither could she prove that he was trying to kiss her. Which made her feel small enough to go hide in the closet by walking under its closed door.

“OK, so what were you trying to do?”

“I wasn’t trying to do anything. You obviously needed comforting, and reaching for you felt natural.”

“Natural to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I don’t need comforting.”

“I thought it would be welcomed. And everyone needs comforting.”

“You thought touching my face would be welcomed?”

“I did. The way you angled your body to suggest I enter the room. How you looked at me. When you said, ‘I’m good,’ and took a step closer.”

Had she done that? She remembered the moment, but felt certain that he had stepped toward her.

“Boy, was I asking for it.”

Was it possible she’d been too hard on Jacob, simply because he’d been first to express what she knew she’d been first to feel? There was no balance to be found in cruelty — only in cheating on him, which she wasn’t going to do.

“I’m not full of shit, Julia. You think I am—”

“I do.”

“—but I’m not. I’m sorry if I put you in an uncomfortable position. That’s not at all what I had in mind.”

“You’re lonely, and I look like a Band-Aid.”

“I’m not lonely, and you don’t—”

“You’re the one who needed comforting.”

“We both did. We both do.”

“You need to leave.”

“OK.”

“So why aren’t you going?”

“Because I believe you don’t want me to go.”

“How could I prove it?”

“You could push me.”

“I’m not going to push you, Mark.”

“Why do you think you just used my name?”

“Because it’s yours.”

“What were you emphasizing? You didn’t use my name when telling me to go. Only when telling me what you weren’t going to do.”

“Jesus. Just go, Mark.”

“OK,” he said, and turned for the door.

She didn’t know what the emergency was, only that the trauma center of her brain was consuming everything. At the margin, still safe, remained the strange joy of finding and removing ticks in Connecticut. But the trauma smelled the pleasure, and attacked it. At the end of every night, she sat in a dry bathtub and checked herself, because if she didn’t, no one would.

“No, wait,” Julia said. Mark turned back to face her. “I did need comforting.”

“Still, I—”

“I’m not finished. I did need comforting, and I’m sure I communicated as much, even if I didn’t intend to, or realize it.”

“Thank you for telling me that. And while we’re in the business of full disclosure: I stepped toward you.”

“You lied to me.”

“No, I just couldn’t find a way to—”

“You lied to me, and made me question myself.”

“I couldn’t find a way—”

“I knew I was right.” She paused. A small memory displaced a small laugh: “Kisses. I just remembered what Sam used to call kisses.”

“What?”

“He had a few different names for them, depending on the situation. A ‘make-it-better’ was a kiss given in response to an injury. A ‘sheyna boychick’ was a kiss from his great-grandfather. A ‘that-face’ was from his grandmother. A ‘you’ was one of those spontaneous, I-need-to-kiss-you-right-now kisses. I guess we’d always say ‘You’ when going in for one of those.”

“Kids are wonderful.”

“Before they know anything, they really are.”

Mark folded his arms and said, “So, here’s the thing, Julia—”

“Uh-oh, emphasis.”

“I was trying to kiss you.”

“You were?” She felt not only relieved of the earlier embarrassment, but, for the first time in her selectively edited memory, wanted.

“Truth be told.”

“Why were you trying to kiss me?”

“Why?”

“To make-it-better me?”

“To you you.”

“I see.”

“So you’ve chosen not to close your eyes?”

“What?”

“You see.”

She stepped toward him, open-eyed, and asked, “Are things about to become bad?”

“No.”

She took another half step toward him, and asked, “You promise?”

“No.”

There was no more distance to cross.

She asked: “What can you promise?”

He promised: “Things are about to be different.”