Here I Am

VIII. HOME

In the long aftermath of the destruction of Israel, Jacob moved into his new house. It was a nice, if slightly less nice, version of his old house: slightly lower ceilings; slightly less old and less wide planked floors; a kitchen with hardware that if it was called bespoke was called that by Home Depot; a bathtub that probably leached BPA, and was probably from Home Depot, but held water; melamine closets with nearly level shelves that performed their function and were nice enough; a faint, not-pleasant attic smell filling the atticless house; Home Depot doorknobs; middle-aged, rotting sub-Marvin windows that served as visual thresholds rather than as barriers against the elements or sound; walls wavy with uncharming trapped moisture; ominous peeling at the corners; subtly sadistic wall colors; unflush light switch plates; a faux-porcelain Home Depot vanity with wood-grained melamine drawers, in a bathroom the color of discharge, whose toilet paper roll was out of reach of anyone who wasn’t imported from Africa to dunk without jumping; ominous separation everywhere: between the molding components, between the crown molding and the ceiling, the floor molding and the floor, separation of the sink from the wall, the mantel of the nonfunctioning fireplace from the wall, the unflush electrical plates from the wall, the doorframes from the wall, the more-plastic-than-plastic Home Depot rosettes from the jaundiced ceiling, the floorboards from one another. It didn’t really matter, but it didn’t go unnoticed. He had to admit that he was more bourgeois than he’d have liked to admit, but he knew what was important. Those things were separating, too.

There was time, there was suddenly a life of it, and Jacob’s needs were taking the shape of his needs, rather than his ability to fulfill them. He was declaring his independence, and all of it — from the interminable wait for the hot-water Messiah to the unflush plate through which not enough threads of the cable nipple were exposed — filled him with hope. Or a version of hope. Jacob might have forced her hand, but it was Julia who chose the separation. And while his return from Islip could be understood as the claiming of an identity, it could at least as easily be understood as the forfeiture of one. So maybe he didn’t write his declaration of independence, but he was happy to sign it. It was a version of happiness.

Forty-two is young, he kept telling himself, like an idiot. He could hear his own idiocy loud and clear, and yet he couldn’t stop announcing it. He would remind himself of advances in medical technology, of his own efforts to eat less unhealthily, of the gym to which he had a membership (albeit ceremonial), and of that fact Sam had once shared: with each passing year, life expectancy increases by a year. Everyone who didn’t smoke would live to be one hundred. Practitioners of yoga would outlive Moses.

In time, his house would resemble his home — some rugs, better hardware, wall colors in keeping with the Geneva Convention, paintings and photos and lithos, calming lamplight, art books stacked on surfaces, throws not thrown but crisply folded and laid over sofas and chairs, maybe a wood-burning stove in the corner. And in time, everything that was possible would be actual. He’d get a girlfriend, or not. Buy an unexpected car, or probably not. Finally do something with the television show he’d been emptying his soul into for more than a decade. (The soul being the only thing that requires dispersal to accumulate.) Now that he no longer needed to protect his grandfather, he’d stop writing the bible and get back to the show itself. He’d take it to one of those producers who used to be interested in what he was doing, back when he was doing things that could be shared. A lot of time had passed, but they’d still remember him.

There had been more than one reason to keep the pages in a drawer — he wasn’t only protecting others. But once there was nothing left to lose, even Julia would see that the show wasn’t an escape from the challenges of family life, but a redemption of his family’s destruction.

Israel wasn’t destroyed—at least not in the literal sense. It remained a Jewish country, with a Jewish army, and borders only negligibly different from before the earthquake. Infinite debate corkscrewed the question of whether those new borders were good for the Jews. Although, tellingly, the expression most often used by American Jews was good for the Israelis. And that, the Israelis thought, was bad for the Jews.

Israel had been made weaker, but its enemies were made weaker still. Not much comfort can be taken, when sifting through your rubble with a bulldozer, in the knowledge that your enemy is sifting through his rubble by hand. But some comfort can be taken. As Isaac would have said, “It could be worse.” No, he would have said, “It is worse.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe it was worse to have survived, if continuing to be required destroying the reason to be. It’s not as if American Jews stopped caring. They continued to vacation and bar mitzvah and find themselves in Israel. They winced as their small cuts were first touched by Dead Sea water, winced as their hearts were first touched by “Hatikvah,” crammed folded wishes between the rubble of the Wailing Wall, recounted back-alley hummus spots, recounted the thrill of distant rocket strikes, winced as their eyes were first touched by the sun at Masada, recounted the perpetual thrill of seeing Jewish garbagemen, and Jewish firefighters, and Jewish homeless. But the feeling of having arrived, of finally finding a place of comfort, of being home, was disappearing.

For some, it was the inability to forgive Israel’s actions during the war — even a massacre or two would have been easier to accept than the complete and explicit abdication of responsibility for non-Jews — the withdrawal of security forces and emergency personnel, the stockpiling of medical supplies that had urgent use elsewhere, the withholding of utilities, the rationing of food even amid a surplus, the blockade of aid shipments to Gaza and the West Bank. Irv — whose once-daily, occasionally inflammatory blog had become a rushing river of provocation — defended Israel at every step: “If it were a family in a time of emergency, and not a country, no one would judge parents for keeping food in the fridge and Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet. Things happen, especially when your death-loving neighbors hate you to death, and it is not unethical to care more about your own children.”

“If the family lived only in its own house, you might almost be right,” Jacob said. “And you might almost be right if every family were equally able to give preferential treatment to its own. But that’s not the world we live in, and you know it.”

“It’s the world they created.”

“When you look at that girl, Adia, your heart doesn’t go out to her?”

“Of course it does. But like every heart, mine is of limited size, and if it came down to Adia or Benjy, I would pull the food from her hands to put into his. I’m not even arguing that that’s right or good. I’m just saying it isn’t bad, because it isn’t a choice. ‘Ought implies can,’ right? To be morally obliged to do something, you have to be able to do it. I love Noam, Yael, and Barak, but I cannot love them as much as I love Sam, Max, and Benjy. It’s impossible. And I love my friends, but I can’t love them as much as I love my family. And believe it or not, I am fully capable of loving Arabs, but not of loving them as much as I love Jews. These are not choices.”

Irv genuinely and forcefully advocated for every Jewish American of fighting age going to Israel. Categorically. With the exception of the one he couldn’t not love more than the others. He was a hypocrite, a father.

“And yet some people can choose otherwise,” Jacob said.

“Like?”

“Well, the first example that comes to mind is the first Jew: Abraham.”

“Senator, I served with Abraham. I knew Abraham. Abraham was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Abraham.”

“I’m not saying I could choose otherwise. Obviously I couldn’t.”

Was that obvious? Irv had collapsed the circle of concern to the youngest in his family, but was that the center? What about oneself? Julia had asked Jacob if it made him sad that they loved the kids more than each other. But did Jacob love his children more than he loved himself? He ought to, but could he?

For other American Jews, it wasn’t Israel’s actions that created an emotional distance, but how those actions were perceived — those whose good faith in Israel could always be counted on either switched sides or fell silent, and left American Jews feeling more alone than indignantly righteous.

For others, it was the discomfort of Israel being neither a scrappy underdog nor a bitty superpower capable of bombing its Stone Age neighbors back into the pre — Stone Age. David was good. Goliath was good. But you’d better be one or the other.

The prime minister had set the goal of bringing one million American Jews to Israel with Operation Arms of Moses. Twenty thousand went on the first day of flights — if not in the same ballpark as the hoped-for fifty thousand, at least playing the same sport. But instead of reaching three hundred thousand by the end of the third day, the numbers kept halving, like box office receipts. The Times estimated that fewer than thirty-five thousand American Jews ultimately went, and that three-quarters of those were forty-five or older. Israel survived without them — the army pulled back to its defensible borders and allowed disease to do the work of killing; the tragedy lasted five hundred televised hours. But neither Israelis nor American Jews could deny what was exposed.

Jacob still thought of Tel Aviv as vibrant and cultured, and Jerusalem as irresistibly spiritual. He still felt an almost sexual delight when he recalled the actual places where almost-make-believe things actually happened to almost-make-believe people. The women with guns still gave him an actual sexual delight. The ultra-Orthodox still disgusted him, and he still couldn’t repress the misplaced gratitude he felt for them. But something had changed.

What was Israel to him? What were Israelis? They were his more aggressive, more obnoxious, more crazed, more hairy, more muscular brothers … over there. They were ridiculous, and they were his. They were more brave, more beautiful, more piggish and delusional, less self-conscious, more reckless, more themselves. Over there. That’s where they were those things. And they were his.

After the near-destruction, they were still over there, but they were no longer his.

At each step, Jacob had made efforts to rationalize Israel’s actions — to defend, or at least excuse, them. And at each step, he believed what he said. Was it right to regulate incoming aid shipments if it slowed down their delivery? It was necessary, in order to maintain order and security. Was it right to take the Temple Mount? It was necessary, in order to protect it. Was it right to withhold equal medical care from anyone with equal needs? It was necessary, in order to fully care for Israel’s citizens, who, unlike its Arab neighbors, had nowhere else to turn. “Ought implies can.” And yet the destination to which those defensible, or at least excusable, steps led was an Israel that sat on urgently needed aid, conquered the most contentious Muslim territory in the world, and forced the mothers of children who didn’t need to die to pound on locked hospital doors. Even if there couldn’t have been another way, there ought to have been.

Would anyone notice, the next morning, if the ocean widened by a foot overnight? If it widened by a mile? By half? The horizon conceals the distance, as does the distance itself. American Jews didn’t think of themselves as having pulled back, and would never have described their relationship to Israel that way — not to others, not to themselves. But even as they claimed relief and joy that Israel had triumphed, even as they marched in parades and sent uncomfortably large checks to the rebuilding effort, the Israeli waves took longer to reach the American shore.

Unexpectedly, the distance between Irv and Jacob closed. For a year, they went to shul together and said Kaddish for Isaac, three times a day every day — or at least once, most days. And on the days they didn’t go, they threw minyan to the wind and mourned in Irv’s living room, facing the bookshelves, whatever their compass direction. They found a new language — not free of jokes, irony, and argument, but no longer dependent on them. Maybe it was a rediscovered language.

No one was less qualified than Irv to help Jacob move — he didn’t know a fitted sheet from a slotted spoon — but no one helped him more. They made trips to IKEA together, to Pottery Barn, and Home Depot, and Gap Kids. They bought two brooms and talked about transitions, and beginnings, and impermanence, while brushing at what felt like infinite dust. Or they brushed in silence.

“It isn’t good to be alone,” Irv said, trying to figure out the vacuum cleaner.

“I’ll try again,” Jacob said. “I’m just not ready yet.”

“I meant me.”

“Did something happen with Mom?”

“No, your mother’s the best of them all. I’m just thinking about the people I’ve pushed away.”

Packing up his things had been emotionally easier than Jacob had imagined, but the logistics were surprisingly fraught. The problem wasn’t the volume of things — despite having accumulated things for sixteen years, there was a surprising scarcity of things. The problem — at the end of the day, at the end of the end of their marriage — was addressing the question of what makes something yours and not someone else’s. How did life reach the point where that question mattered? And what took life so long?

If he’d known that he was going to get divorced, he would have better set the table for the end — bought one of those old-fashioned “Library of Jacob Bloch” embossers and marked the title page of every book; perhaps stashed away money in small, unnoticeable increments; started moving things whose absence would never be noticed, but whose presence in his new home would make a real difference.

It was scary how quickly and completely his past could be rewritten, or overwritten. All those years felt worthwhile while they were happening, but only a few months on the other side of them and they were a gigantic waste of time. Of a life. It was an almost irrepressible urge of his brain to see the worst in that which had failed. To see it as something that had failed, rather than something that had succeeded until the end. Was he protecting himself from the loss by denying anything was lost? Or simply achieving some pathetic emotional nonvictory by not caring?

When a friend would express sympathy, why did Jacob insist on opposing it? Why did he have to turn his decade and a half of marriage into stupid puns and ironic observations? Why couldn’t he express to a single person — to himself — that even if he understood that divorce was the right thing to do, even if he was hopeful about the future, even if there was happiness ahead, it was sad? Things can be for the best and the worst at the same time.

* * *

Three days after returning to Israel, Tamir e-mailed Jacob from an outpost in the Negev, where his tank unit was awaiting its next order: “Today I fired a gun, and my son fired a gun. I never doubted the rightness of my firing a weapon to defend my home, or of Noam doing so. But the fact of us both doing it on the same day cannot be right. Can you understand that?”

“You drive the tank?” Jacob asked.

“Did you read what I wrote?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“I reload the ammunition.”

Five days later, as they turned to the bookshelves to say Kaddish, Irv said, “So listen,” and Jacob knew something had happened. And more, he knew it was Noam. He hadn’t seen it coming, but like someone watching the tracks from the back of a train, he saw that it couldn’t have been any other way.

Noam had been injured. Critically, but not fatally. Rivka was with him. Tamir was on his way.

“How did you find out?” Jacob asked.

“Tamir called me last night.”

“Did he ask you to tell me?”

“I think I’m a kind of father figure to him.”

Jacob’s first instinct was to suggest they go to Israel. He wouldn’t get on the plane to fight beside his cousin, but he would go to sit at his cousin’s son’s bedside and offer the kind of strength that involves only heart muscle.

Tamir’s first instinct was to cling to Rivka. If someone had told him, a month or year or decade earlier, that Noam would be wounded in a war, he would have predicted the end of his marriage. And yet when the unimaginable happened, it was just the opposite of what he’d imagined.

When the house shook with the middle-of-the-night knocking against the door, Tamir was at a forward operating base near Dimona; his commander woke him with the news. Later, he and Rivka would try to pinpoint the exact moment that each learned of what happened, as if something profound depended on who knew first, and what the amount of time was that one parent knew and the other still believed Noam to be OK. For those first five or thirty minutes, there would have existed a greater distance between them than the one that separated them before they met. Perhaps if Tamir had been home, the shared experience would have driven them apart, into competitive suffering, misplaced fury, blame. But the apartness drew them together.

How many times, in those first weeks, did he enter the room and stand by the door, unable to speak? How many times did she ask, “Do you need anything?”

And he would say, “No.”

And she would say, “Are you sure?”

And he would say, “Yes,” but think, Ask again.

And she would say, “I know,” but think, Come to me.

And he would say, “Ask again.”

And she would say, “Come to me.”

And saying nothing, he would.

There they would be, side by side, her hand on his thigh, his head resting on her chest. If they had been teenagers, it would have looked like the beginning of love, but they’d been married for twenty years, and it was the exhumation of love.

After being informed of Noam’s injury, Tamir was given a week’s leave. He was with Rivka at the hospital three hours later, and when darkness fell, they were told they had to go home. Rivka instinctively went to sleep in the guest room. In the middle of the night, Tamir entered and stood by the door.

“Do you need anything?” she asked.

And he said, “No.”

And she said, “Are you sure?”

And he said, “Yes.”

And she said, “I know.”

And he said, “Ask again.”

And she said, “Come to me,” and saying nothing, he went to her.

He needed the distance to traverse. So she gave it to him. Every night she would go to the guest room. Every night he would come to her.

When Tamir sat with his son’s body, he thought of what Jacob had told him about sitting with Isaac’s body, Max’s desire to be close to it. Noam’s face was misshapen, shades of a purple that appeared nowhere in nature, his cheeks and brow forced together by the swelling. Why isn’t health as shocking as illness, as demanding of prayer? Tamir had been capable of going weeks without speaking to his son, but he wouldn’t willingly leave his son’s unconscious body.

Noam emerged from his coma the day before the cease-fire. It would take time to learn the extent of his injuries: the ways his body would never function as it once did, the psychological damage. He hadn’t been buried alive or burned to death. But he had been broken.

When the cease-fire was signed, there was no celebrating in the streets. There were no fireworks, or passed bottles, or singing from windows. Rivka slept in the bedroom that night. The loving distance they’d found in crisis had closed with peace. Across the country and the world, Jews were already writing editorials blaming other Jews — for lack of preparedness, of wisdom, of ethics, of sufficient force, of help. The prime minister’s coalition collapsed and elections were scheduled. Unable to sleep, Tamir took his phone from the bedside table and wrote a one-sentence text to Jacob: We’ve won, but we’ve lost.

It was nine in the evening in D.C. Jacob was in the Airbnb one-bedroom that he had been renting by the week, three blocks from his sleeping children. He went after putting the kids down and returned before they awoke. They knew he didn’t spend the night at home, and he knew they knew it, but the charade felt necessary. Nothing would be harder for Jacob than this period between houses, which lasted half a year. Everything that was necessary was punishing: the pretending, the extreme early rising, the aloneness.

Jacob’s thumb was constantly pushing his list of contacts, as if some new person might materialize with whom he could share the sadness he couldn’t confess. He wanted to reach out to Tamir, but it was impossible: not after Islip, not after Noam’s injury. So when the text from Tamir came through—We’ve won, but we’ve lost—Jacob was relieved and grateful, but careful about expanding his shame by revealing it.

Won what? Lost what?

Won the war. Lost peace.

But it sounds like everyone is accepting

the conditions of the armistice?

Peace with ourselves.

How is Noam?

He will be OK.

I’m so relieved to hear that.

When we were at your kitchen table,

stoned, you told me something

about a daytime hole in a nighttime sky.

What was that?

The dinosaur thing?

Yes, that.

So it was actually a nighttime hole in a daytime sky.

And how?

Imagine shooting a bullet through water.

That’s all you had to say. Now I remember.

What made you think of it?

I can’t sleep. So instead I think.

I haven’t been sleeping too much, either.

For people who talk about being tired

as much as we do, we don’t do a lot of sleeping.

We’re not going to move.

I didn’t think you were.

We were.

Rivka was coming around.

But not anymore.

What changed?

Everything. Nothing.

Right.

We are who we are.

Admitting that is what changed.

I’m working on that myself.

What if it had been night?

When?

When the asteroid came.

Then they would have

become extinct at night.

But what would they have seen?

A nighttime hole in a nighttime sky?

And what do you think that would look like?

Maybe like nothing?

Over the next few years, they would exchange brief texts and e-mails, all matter-of-fact updates, mostly about the kids, never with any tone or tangents. Tamir didn’t come for Max’s bar mitzvah, or Benjy’s, or Julia’s wedding (despite her kind invitation, and Jacob’s appeal), or either Deborah’s or Irv’s funeral.

After the kids’ first visit to his new house — the first and worst day of the rest of his life — Jacob closed the door, lay with Argus for half an hour, telling him what a good dog he was, the best dog, then sat with a cup of coffee that gave its heat to the room as he wrote a long, never-to-be-sent e-mail to Tamir, then stood up, keys in hand, finally ready to go to the veterinarian. The e-mail began: “We’ve lost, but we’ve lost.”

Some of the losing was giving away. Some was having things taken. Jacob was often surprised by what he found himself clutching, and what he freely released — what he felt was his, what he felt he needed.

What about that copy of Disgrace? He’d bought it — he remembered finding it at the used bookstore in Great Barrington one summer; he even remembered the beautiful set of Tennessee Williams plays he didn’t buy because Julia was there, and he didn’t want to be forced to confront his desire to own books he had no intention of reading.

Julia had taken Disgrace from his bedside table, on the grounds of it having sat there untouched for more than a year. (Untouched was her word. Unread would have been his.) Did his having bought it entitle him to it? Did her having read — touched — it? Did her having touched and read it forfeit her claim to it, as it was now his to touch and read? Such thoughts felt disgraceful. The only way to be spared them was to give away everything, but only a more enlightened or stupid person would rub his palms together and think, They’re only things.

What about the blue vase on the mantel? Her parents had given it to him as a gift. Not to them, but to him. It was a birthday present. Or Father’s Day. He could remember, at least, that it was a gift placed in his hands, with an attached card addressed to him, that it had been carefully chosen for him, because they prided themselves on knowing him, which, to their credit, they did.

Was it somehow ungenerous to assume ownership of something paid for by her parents, which, while undeniably given to him, was clearly intended for their shared home? And beautiful as the vase was, did he want that psychic energy in his sanctuary and symbol of new beginnings? Would it really give his flowers the best chance of blooming?

Most things he could let go of:

He loved the Big Red Chair, curled into whose corduroy he’d done virtually all his reading in the last dozen years. Hadn’t it absorbed something? Taken on qualities beyond chairness? Was the sweat stain on the back the only remnant of all that experience? What was trapped in the wide wales? Let it go, he thought.

The silverware. It had brought food to his mouth, to his children’s mouths. The most fundamental of all human activities, that which we can’t live without. He had washed them in the sink before positioning them in the dishwasher. He had unbent the spoons after Sam’s clumsy psychokinesis; used knives to pry off the lids of paint cans and scrape hardened who-knows-what from the sink; guided forks down the back of his shirt to scratch an out-of-reach itch. Let them go. Let it all go until it’s all gone.

The photo albums. He’d have liked some of those. But they shouldn’t be separated any more than the volumes of the Grove Encyclopedia of Art. And there was no way around the fact that Julia had taken almost all the pictures: observe her absence among them. Was her absence her claim to ownership?

The growth chart, inscribed on the kitchen doorframe. On New Year’s and Jewish New Year’s, Jacob would make a production of calling everyone to be measured. They stood facing out, backs flat as surfboards, never on tiptoes but always willing tallness. Jacob pressed a black Sharpie flush with the tops of their heads and drew a two-inch line. Then the initials and date. The first measurement was SB 01/01/05. The last was BB 01/01/16. Between them, a couple dozen lines. What did it look like? A tiny ladder for tiny angels to ascend and descend? The frets on the instrument playing the sound of life passing?

He would have been happy enough to take nothing and simply start again at the beginning. They’re only things. But that wouldn’t be fair. More, it would be unfair. Very quickly, the fairness and unfairness took on more importance than the things themselves. That feeling of aggrievement reached its peak when they started talking about amounts of money that simply didn’t matter. One spring afternoon, cherry blossoms stuck to the window, Dr. Silvers told him, “Whatever the conditions of your life, you’re never going to be happy if you use the word unfair as often as you do.” So he tried to let it all go — the things, and the ideas he imbued them with. He would begin again.

The first purchases for the new house were beds for the kids. Because Benjy’s room was on the small side, he needed a bed with storage drawers. Perhaps those were actually hard to find, or perhaps Jacob made the task hard. He spent three full days researching online and visiting stores, and ended up with something quite nice (from the offensively misnamed Design Within Reach), made of solid oak, which cost more than three thousand dollars. Plus tax, plus delivery.

The bed obviously needed a mattress — talk about obvious — and the mattress obviously had to be organic — talk about unobvious — because Julia would ask if it was, and then, not trusting his answer, would peel back the sheets and have a look. Would it kill him simply to say, “I went with something easy?” Yes, it would. But why? For fear of disappointing her? For fear of her? Because she was right, and it mattered what chemicals children spend nearly half of their lives pressed up against? Another thousand dollars.

The mattress needed sheets, obviously, but first it needed a mattress cover, because even though Benjy was on the verge of the end of nighttime accidents, he was still on the wrong side of that verge — it occurred to Jacob that the divorce might even inspire regression — and one such accident could effectively ruin the thousand-dollar organic mattress. So another hundred and fifty dollars. And then those sheets. The plural is not only for the various kinds of sheet necessary to define a sheet set, but for the second sheet set, because that’s what people get. He often found himself at the mercy of such logic: this has to be done in such and such way because it has to, because it’s what people do. People get two pieces of silverware for every one they will ever use. People buy esoteric vinegars for salads that they might make once, if ever. And why is the functionality of the fork so underrecognized? With a simple fork, one doesn’t need a whisk, a spatula, salad tongs (two forks for that), a “masher,” or pretty much any other highly specialized kitchen utensil whose real function is to be bought. He found his share of peace by resolving that if he was going to buy things he didn’t need, at least he was going to get crummy versions of them.

Imagine arriving in the afterlife and not knowing if you were in heaven or hell.

“Excuse me,” you ask a passing angel, “where am I?”

“You’re gonna wanna ask the angel at the information desk.”

“And where would that be?”

But he’s gone.

You look around. A strong case could be made for it being heaven. A strong case could be made for it being hell. That is what IKEA is like.

By the time he was finished preparing his new house for the boys, Jacob had made half a dozen trips to IKEA, and even then he couldn’t discern if, on balance, he loved or loathed it.

He loathed the particleboard, the bookcases that needed books to keep them from floating away.

He loved imagining the scrutiny that had to be applied to every detail — the shortest functional length of a dowel that will be reproduced eighty million times — in order to sell things for prices that verged on magical.

He loathed the experience of passing someone whose cart’s contents were not only identical to his, but identically stacked. And he loathed the carts: three mortal enemies and one palsy case for wheels, and turning radiuses like rainbows — not the shape, but actual rainbows.

He loved the unexpected object — beautifully designed, perfectly named, and actually made from materials denser than shaving cream. That black marble Ädelsten mortar and pestle. Was it a loss leader? An act of love?

He loathed the machine that punched that poor chair over and over, punched it all day every day and probably through the night, confirming both the resilience of the chair and the existence of evil.

Jacob sat himself on a sofa — green velvet-like upholstery holding in whatever is the opposite of kelp and pony hair — and closed his eyes. He’d been having a hard time falling asleep. For a long time. But this felt OK. Despite the river of strangers passing in front of him, and occasionally sitting beside him to test the comfort, this felt safe. He was in his own world in that world that was in its own world in the world. Everyone was looking for something, but there was an endless supply, so no one’s gratification had to come at anyone else’s expense — there was no need to fight, no need even to disagree. So what that it was utterly soulless? Maybe heaven wasn’t populated by souls, but emptied of them? Maybe this was fairness?

He was awoken by what he at first thought was the punching of that depraved machine, as if his resiliency were being violently challenged again and again and again. But it was just the tapping of a friendly angel.

“We’re closing in ten,” she said.

“Oh, I’m really sorry,” he said.

She asked, “For what?”

* * *

By the time of the earthquake, Jacob would walk downstairs every morning not wondering if Argus had pooped, but where and with what solidity. It was a horrible way to start a day, and Jacob knew it wasn’t Argus’s fault, but when time was of the essence and kids weren’t cooperating robotically, poop in four places could force a meltdown.

“Jesus Christ, Argus!”

And then one of the kids would come to Argus’s rescue: “He can’t help it.”

And then Jacob would feel miserable.

Argus made Rorschachs of persians and orientals, relocated the stuffing of upholstered furniture to closets and his stomach, and scratched wood floors like Grand Wizard Theodore. But he was theirs.

Everything would have been so much easier if Argus were suffering — not just uncomfortable, but in deep pain. Or if a vet could find cancer, or heart disease, even kidney failure.

When Jacob told Julia he was going to Israel to fight, she told him he had to put down Argus first. He didn’t, and she didn’t mention it again. But when he came home from not leaving, it was an open, if invisible, wound.

In the following months, Argus’s condition worsened along with everything else. He started whining for no obvious reason, paced before sitting down, ate less and less until he hardly ate at all.

* * *

Julia and the boys would be there any minute. Jacob wandered through the house, noticing the imperfections, adding to the infinite mental punch list of things that should be taken care of: the cracked grout in the dripping shower; the sloppy bit of overpainting where the hallway wall met the floor; the torqued vent in the dining room ceiling; the fussy bedroom window.

The doorbell rang. Then rang again. Then rang again.

“Coming! Coming!”

He opened the door to smiles.

“Your doorbell sounds weird,” Max said.

Your doorbell.

“It does sound a little weird. Weird good? Or weird bad?”

“Maybe weird good?” Max said, and that might have been his opinion, but it might have been kindness.

“Come in,” Jacob said. “Come. I have some great snacks — Cheddar Bunnies; the truffle cheese you like, Benjy; those lime tortilla chips, Max. And the whole line of Italian sodas: aranciata, limonata, pompelmo, clementine.”

“We’re good,” Sam said, smiling as if for a family photo.

“I’ve never even heard of pompelmo,” Max said.

“Neither had I,” Jacob said. “But we’ve got it.”

“I love this place,” Julia said, quite sincerely and convincingly, despite it being a scripted line. They’d rehearsed the visit, just as they’d rehearsed the divorce conversation, and how to share the new schedule of moving between houses, and so many other experiences too painful to have only once.

“So do you guys want a tour? Or do you want to just explore it yourselves?”

“Maybe explore?” Sam said.

“Go on. Your names are on the doors of your rooms, so you can’t miss them.”

He heard himself.

The boys went upstairs, slowly, deliberately. They didn’t speak, but Jacob could hear them touching things.

Julia hung back, and waited until the kids were on the third floor before saying, “So far, so good.”

“You think?”

“I do,” she said. “But it’ll take time.”

Jacob wondered what Tamir would have to say about the house, should he ever see it. What would Isaac have said? He spared himself the move to the Jewish Home, unaware that he was also sparing himself Jacob’s move — and sparing Jacob.

Jacob led Julia into what would become the living room — emptier now than if it had never been enclosed by walls. They sat on the only piece of furniture, the green sofa that Jacob had fallen asleep on a few weeks before. Not that exact sofa, but one of its two million identical siblings.

“Dusty,” she said. And then: “Sorry.”

“No, it is. Horribly.”

“You have a vacuum?”

“I got the kind we have,” Jacob said. “We had? You have? And I mop it, too. All the time, it feels like.”

“There’s dust in the air, from the work. It keeps settling.”

“How does one get dust out of the air?”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” she said.

“And expect a different result? Isn’t that the definition of insanity?”

“Do you have a Swiffer duster?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll get you one. They’re really useful.”

“I can get it if you send me the link.”

“At that point it’s easier for me to just get it.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you feel OK about Argus?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“My feelings have never once cared about what they should be.”

“You’re good, Jacob.”

“Compared to what?”

“Compared to other men.”

“I feel like I’m bailing water with a colander.”

“If life were easy, everyone would do it.”

“Everyone does.”

“Think about how many trillions of trillions of people are never born for every one who is.”

“Or just think about my grandfather.”

“I often do,” she said. Her eyes raised, and scanned the room. “I don’t know if it’s annoying or helpful when I mention things—”

“Why so binary?”

“Right. Well. The walls are rather dark.”

“I know. They are, right?”

“Disconsolate.”

“I hired a colorist.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I used that paint you like. Farrow whatever.”

“Farrow and Ball.”

“And they offered a colorist’s services, I assumed as a courtesy because I was buying so much of their overpriced paint. And then I got a bill for twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“No.”

“Yes. Two thousand five hundred. And I feel like I’m living underneath a Union kepi.”

“Excuse me?”

“Those Civil War hats. I’ve been listening to this history of—”

“You should have asked me.”

“I can’t afford you.”

“Would have been pro bono.”

“Didn’t my father teach you there’s no such thing as a free colorist?”

“There’s paper everywhere,” Benjy said, coming down the stairs. He seemed buoyant, unfazed.

“It’s just protecting the floor while they finish the work,” Jacob said.

“I’m going to trip a lot.”

“It’ll be long gone by the time you live here. The paper on the floor, the ladders, the dust. All of it will be gone.”

Max and Sam came back down.

“Can I have a mini-fridge in my room?” Max asked.

“Definitely,” Jacob said.

“For what?” Julia asked.

“Don’t you think there’s too much paper on the floors?” Benjy asked his brothers.

“For all those Italian sodas.”

“I think Dad intended those as something special for your first time here.”

“Dad?”

“They would definitely not be an everyday beverage.”

“Sam, don’t you think the paper on the floor is bad?”

“Fine, so I could keep the dead rats.”

“Dead rats?”

“I gave the OK for a python,” Jacob said, “and that’s what they eat.”

“Actually, they’d probably have to be frozen,” Max said. “And I don’t think those mini-fridges have little freezer sections in them.”

“Why would you want a python?” Julia asked.

“Because I’ve wanted a python forever, because they’re amazing, and Dad said now that we had the new house we could finally get one.”

“Why doesn’t anybody care that I’m going to trip all the time?” Benjy asked.

And then Sam, who had been quiet for an uncharacteristically long time, said, “My room seems nice. Thanks, Dad.”

And that was the hardest thing for Jacob to hear. Julia saw that he needed help, and stepped in.

“So,” she said, clapping her hands once, inadvertently raising more dust, “Dad and I were thinking it would be nice to give this house a name.”

“Isn’t it just Dad’s House?”

“Right,” Jacob said, composing himself with an imitation of optimism. “But we all want to think of it as one of our family’s two houses.”

“Yeah, the one that you live in. As opposed to the one that Mom lives in.”

“I don’t like this house,” Benjy said, verbally cutting the lines of Jacob’s emotional brakes.

“You will,” Julia said.

“I don’t like this house.”

“I promise you will.”

Jacob felt himself skidding out. It was unfair that he had to move, unfair that he was perceived as the one who left; that all this dust was his was unfair. But he also felt his dependency on Julia’s efforts. He couldn’t do this without her. He couldn’t live without her without her.

“It’s going to be great,” she said, as if she could keep blowing her optimism into the punctured balloon of Benjy’s happiness and it would keep its shape. “Dad said there’s even room for a Ping-Pong table upstairs.”

“Totally,” Jacob said. “And I’ve been trolling eBay for an old Skee-Ball machine.”

“You don’t mean trolling,” Max said. “You mean trawling.”

“Although,” Sam said, suddenly enlivened, “did you know that trolling actually comes from trawling. Not from, like, trolls?”

“I didn’t,” Max said, grateful for that little bit of knowledge. “I’d always assumed trolls.”

“Right?”

The moment of normality suggested a normal life.

“What’s Skee-Ball?” Benjy asked.

“It’s kind of a combination of bowling and darts,” Sam said.

“That’s hard for me to imagine.”

“Like at Chuck E. Cheese’s.”

“Ah, right.”

A normal life? Was all this upheaval justified by that ambition?

“How about Arcade House?” Max suggested.

“Too much like Arcade Fire,” Sam said.

“It’s very dusty,” Benjy said.

“The dust won’t be here.”

“How about Davenport House?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s on Davenport Street.”

“That sounds like an old-age home.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong about calling it Dad’s House,” Sam said. “We can pretend it’s something else, but that’s what it is.”

“Paper House,” Benjy said, a bit to himself, a bit to no one.

“What?”

“Because there’s so much paper everywhere.”

“But the paper will be gone by the time you move in,” Jacob said.

“And paper is what you write on, and you’re a writer.”

“He writes on a computer,” Sam said.

“And paper rips and burns easily.”

“Why would you want to name a house after something that rips and burns easily?”

“Give him a break, Max.”

“What did I say?”

“Forget it,” Jacob said. “We can just call it 2328, after the address.”

“No,” Julia said, “don’t forget it. It’s a nice idea, and we’re five intelligent people. We can do it.”

The five intelligent people thought. They applied their intelligence to what was ultimately not a question of intelligence, like applying a Phillips-head screwdriver to a crossword puzzle.

Some religions emphasize inner peace, some the avoidance of sin, some praise. Judaism emphasizes intelligence — textually, ritualistically, and culturally. Everything is learning, everything preparation, perpetually filling the mental toolbox until we are prepared for any situation (and it is too heavy to carry). Jews make up 0.2 percent of the world’s population, but have been awarded 22 percent of all Nobel Prizes—24 percent if you don’t include the Peace Prize. And with no Nobel for Being Exterminated, there was a decade when Jews wouldn’t have had much of a chance, so the practical percentage is yet higher. Why? It’s not because Jews are any smarter than anyone else; it’s because Jews put their emphasis on the kinds of things Stockholm rewards. Jews have been training for Nobel Prizes for thousands of years. But if there were Nobel Prizes for Contentment, for Feeling Safe, or for the Ability to Let Go, that 22 percent—24 percent without Peace — would need a parachute.

“I still think we should call it Dad’s House,” Sam said.

“But it’s not just my house. It’s our house.”

“We can’t call it Our House,” Sam said, “because the other house is our house, too.”

“Clock House?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pompelmo House?”

“Anonymous House?”

“Dusty House?”

“To be continued,” Julia said as she checked her phone for the time. “I’ve got to get these guys to haircuts.”

“Right,” Jacob said, knowing the inevitable, and wanting to defer it, if only for another few minutes. “Does anyone want a snack or drink first?”

“We’re going to be late,” Julia said. And then: “Everybody say ’bye to Argus.”

“Later, Argus.”

“Ciao, Argo.”

“A good goodbye,” she said.

“Why?”

“It’s his first night in the new house,” Jacob said.

“New House?” Sam suggested.

“Maybe,” Jacob said. “Although it won’t be new for long.”

“We can change the name at that point,” Sam said.

“Like the Old-New Synagogue in Prague,” Julia said.

“Or move,” Benjy said.

“No more moving,” Jacob said.

“Gotta go,” Julia said to the kids.

The kids said good goodbyes to Argus, and then Julia knelt down to be face-to-face with him. “Take care, hairy man.”

She showed nothing, nothing that anyone but Jacob could see. But he could see. He couldn’t describe the giveaway — her face revealed nothing, her body revealed nothing, and there was nothing in her voice — but she gave it all away. He could only ever manage repression. She was capable of composure. And he was in awe of it. She did it for the kids. She did it for Argus. But how did she do it?

“OK,” Jacob said.

“OK,” Julia said.

“I know what we should do,” Benjy said.

“We should go,” Julia said.

“No. We should walk around the house with our eyes closed. Like we used to do on Shabbat.”

“How about next time you’re here?” Jacob said.

Sam stepped forward, into the space of his adulthood: “Dad, we can do this for him.”

And with that, Julia put down her bag. And Jacob took his hands from his pockets. No one watched anyone close their eyes, because that would have betrayed the spirit of the ritual. And no one peeked, because there was an instinct stronger than that instinct.

It was fun at first; it was funny. The nostalgia was sweet and untinged. The kids bumped into things on purpose, and made boy noises, and laughed a lot. But then, without anyone intending it, or noticing the shift, a silence bloomed. No one stopped talking, but there was no more talking. No one suppressed a laugh, but there was no more laughing. It went on for a long time — it felt like a different amount of time to each — the five of them like ghosts, or explorers, or newborns. No one knew if anyone’s arms were extended for protection. No one knew if anyone crawled, or did leg sweeps for obstacles, or ran a finger against a wall that he kept to his right at all times. Julia’s foot touched the leg of a folding chair. Sam found a light switch, pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, searched for the place between off and on. Max felt a thrill as his hands explored the stovetop. Julia opened her eyes; they were greeted by Jacob’s open eyes.

“I figured it out,” Benjy said, old enough to know that the world doesn’t disappear when you aren’t looking at it.

“What did you figure out?” Julia asked from across the room, not betraying him by looking at him.

“Wailing House.”

* * *

Jacob didn’t need anything when he made his final visit to IKEA. He’d just become so accustomed to IKEA satisfying his needs — hand towels for the top bathroom, a pot of lamb’s ears, freestanding acrylic picture frames — that he came to believe IKEA knew his needs better than he did, in the same way that he scheduled physicals because the doctor knew better than Jacob if Jacob was sick.

He picked up a bright red step stool, a garlic press, three toilet brushes, a drying rack for laundry, a drying rack for dishes, half a dozen felt storage boxes that would be perfect for some still-unknown purpose, a level (despite never once, in the previous forty-two years, having had need of a level), a doormat, two letter trays, oven mitts, several glass jars with airtight seals for the storage (and attractive display) of things like beans and lentils and split peas and popcorn and quinoa and rice, more hangers, LED light strings to connect the corners of Benjy’s room, pedal bins for each bathroom, a crappy umbrella that wouldn’t survive two storms but would survive one. He was among the textiles, spreading his fingers in a faux sheepskin, when he heard his name.

“Jacob?”

He turned to face a quite beautiful woman: warm brown eyes like old leather; a gold locket that drew his gaze to the top of her tight, unmottled cleavage; bracelets halfway down her hands as if she’d once been bigger. What was in that locket? He knew her, or had known her.

“Maggie,” she said. “Silliman.”

“Hi, Maggie.”

She smiled a smile to bring a thousand ships to harbor.

“Dylan and Sam went to nursery school together. Leah and Melissa’s class.”

“Right. Of course.”

“It’s been a decade,” she said kindly.

“No, I remember.”

“I thought I saw you. Way back in living rooms. But I lost you in the shuffle. And I wasn’t sure. But when I saw you here, I knew.”

“Ah.”

“I’m so relieved you’re home.”

“Oh, I don’t live here,” Jacob said, his reflexive flirtatiousness stimulating the thought that maybe she was the one whose husband had an aneurysm in the middle of the school year. “Just purchasing a few things for my actual home.”

She didn’t laugh. She was visibly moved. Was she the one for whom Julia brought over all those dinners?

“There was a list of everyone who went.”

“Went?”

“To Israel. They hung it outside the sanctuary.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I never used to pray. Never. But I started going. A lot of people did. Most mornings the sanctuary was full. Anyway, I looked at it every day.”

He thought, I can still tell the truth, but only now. After this, an awkward misunderstanding will be a lie that is worse than what it is concealing.

“I had no idea,” he said.

And there are smaller lies available (that I was turned back at the airport), and even half-truths (that there was a crisis at home that needed me even more than the crisis abroad).

“There were two lists, actually: one with the names of those who went to fight, and one with the names of those who died. Everyone on the second list was on the first list, obviously.”

“Well, it’s really nice to see you again,” Jacob said, hating the truth, hating the lie, and knowing nothing between.

“They never took them down. Maybe they’re supposed to be some kind of memorial? Or maybe even though the war is over, it somehow isn’t?”

“Hard to say.”

“What did you do?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“In Israel. Were you in logistics? Infantry? I don’t know the terminology.”

“I was in a tank unit.”

Her eyes widened.

“Being in a tank must have been terrifying.”

“Not as terrifying as being outside of one.”

She didn’t laugh. She brought her fingers to her mouth and said, “You didn’t drive it, did you?”

“No. That requires a lot of training and experience. I reloaded the ammunition.”

“Sounds grueling.”

“I guess it was.”

“And did you see battle? Is that the right way to put it? See battle?”

“I don’t know how to put things, either. I was just a body. But yes, I saw battle. I imagine everyone did.”

The sentence advanced, but his mind stayed back with I was just a body.

“Did you ever feel that you were in grave danger?”

“I don’t know that I was feeling much of anything. It might sound clichéd, but there wasn’t time to be afraid.”

Without looking down, she took the locket between her thumb and forefinger. Her hand knew exactly where it would be.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m asking too much.”

“No, that’s not it,” he said, seizing her offer of regret as an escape route. “I just have to get out of here in time to pick up Sam.”

“Is he well?”

“He’s doing great. Thank you for asking. And—?”

“Dylan.”

“Of course.”

“Dylan is having a hard time.”

“Oh no. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Maybe,” she began, but then shook the thought away.

“What?”

“I was just going to say, maybe if it’s not too much to ask, you could come by sometime.”

“I’m sure Sam would like that.”

“No,” she said, a vein in her neck suddenly visible, or suddenly noticed. “You. I meant you.”

Jacob no longer understood. Could she be as brazen as she sounded? Or was she mistaking him for a parent who was a child psychologist, as he’d mistaken her for the wife of an aneurysm victim? He was attracted to her, he wanted her, but this couldn’t go any further.

“Sure,” he said. “I could come by.”

“Maybe if you shared some of your experiences, it would make things less abstract for him. Less scary. I think part of what’s so hard right now is not having any details.”

“That makes sense.”

Although it didn’t.

“It wouldn’t have to take a lot of your time. I’m not asking you to take him on or anything.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

“You’re a good man,” she said.

“I’m not,” he said.

And then, finally, she laughed. “Well, I suppose only you know for sure. But you seem good.”

Once, Benjy called Jacob back into his room after tuck-in and asked, “Are there things that don’t have names?”

“Sure,” Jacob said, “lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like this headboard.”

“It’s called headboard.”

“Headboard is what it is. But it doesn’t have its own name.”

“True.”

“Good night, love.”

“Let’s give them names.”

“That was the first man’s first job, you know.”

“Huh?”

“Adam. From Adam and Eve. God told him to name the animals.”

“We named Argus.”

“That’s right.”

“But the first man was a monkey, right? So did he name himself?”

“Could be.”

“I want to name everything.”

“That would be a lot of work.”

“So?”

“OK. But starting tomorrow.”

“OK.”

Jacob went to the threshold and waited, as he always did, and Benjy called him back, as he always did.

“Yes?”

“Are there names that don’t have things?”

Names like the names on the gravestones in the suicide ghetto. Names like the names on the memorial wall, which Jacob had rearranged into words. Names like the names in his never-to-be-shared show. Jacob had written thousands and thousands of pages about his life, but it wasn’t until that moment, her pulse visible in her neck, his choice finally visible, that he questioned if he was worthy of a word.

“OK,” she said, and smiled, and nodded, and took a half step away. “Please say hello to Julia for me.”

“I will,” Jacob said.

He left the overflowing cartful of things where it was, followed the arrows back through LIVING ROOM, WORK SPACE, KITCHEN, DINING, and BEDROOM to the parking lot. He drove straight to the synagogue. Indeed, the lists were still there. But his name wasn’t among those who had gone. He double- and triple-checked.

So what had just happened?

Had she misremembered?

Or maybe she had seen the Islip photograph in the newspaper and was remembering his image when she thought she was remembering his name?

Maybe she was giving Jacob the benefit of the doubt?

Maybe she knew everything and was destroying the life he’d saved?

With the hand that had cut three umbilical cords, he touched the names of the dead.

“Only you know for sure,” she had said.

* * *

There were dozens of veterinarians far closer than Gaithersburg, Maryland, that he hadn’t consulted — it felt essential to go to someone they hadn’t seen, for both Argus’s sake and Jacob’s — but he needed to create some distance from home.

On the way there, he took Argus to a rest-stop McDonald’s. He brought the food to a grassy hill beside the lot, and tried to feed Argus McNuggets, but Argus just turned away. Jacob kept stroking him under the chin, as he liked.

Life is precious, Jacob thought. It is the most important of all thoughts, and the most obvious, and the most difficult to remember to have. He thought: How different my life would have been if I could have had that thought before I was forced to.

They drove with the windows halfway down, Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History: Blueprint for Armageddon II” blaring. In the context of an argument Carlin was making about the significance of World War I, he spoke about a concept called the Great Filter — the moment at which a civilization becomes capable of destroying itself. Many mark 1945, and the use of nuclear weapons, as humanity’s Great Filter. Carlin argued it was 1914, with the worldwide proliferation of mechanized warfare. He then digressed a bit, as was his genius, to Fermi’s paradox. During a lunch break at Los Alamos, in 1950, a handful of the world’s greatest physicists were joking about a recent spate of UFO sightings. Taking the matter ironically-seriously, they unfolded a paper napkin and tried to calculate the probability of intelligent life existing elsewhere. Assume there are 1024 stars in the observable universe — ten thousand stars for every grain of sand on Earth. Using the most conservative estimates, there are approximately one hundred billion billion Earth-like planets — one hundred for each grain of sand on Earth. If, after billions of years in existence, one percent of those developed life, and one percent of those developed intelligent life, there should be ten million billion intelligent civilizations in the universe — one hundred thousand just in our galaxy. Clearly we are not alone.

But then Enrico Fermi, the most celebrated and brilliant physicist at the table, spoke for the first time: “So where is everybody?” If they ought to be there, and they aren’t there, why aren’t they there? Clearly we are alone.

There are many responses to this paradox: that there’s plenty of intelligent life in the universe, just no way of knowing about it because we’re too far from one another for any messages to reach; that humans aren’t listening properly; that other life is too alien to recognize, or to recognize us; that everyone is listening and no one adequately transmitting. Each of these struck Jacob as unbearably poetic: we’re too far for messages to reach; we aren’t listening properly; no one is adequately transmitting. Then Carlin returned to the notion of the Great Filter. At a certain point, every civilization will become capable of destroying itself (on purpose, or by accident), and face a kind of pass/fail test — whether it is possible to have the ability to commit suicide, and not commit suicide.

When did Isaac reach his Great Filter?

When did Israel?

When did Jacob and Julia’s marriage?

When did Jacob?

He parked the car and walked Argus to the clinic door. No leash necessary anymore. Argus wasn’t going anywhere. And yet Jacob wished he’d had a leash then, so it wouldn’t feel like Argus was unknowingly walking himself to his own end. It would have been horrible to lead him there, but less horrible.

The place was called Hope Clinic. Somehow Jacob had forgotten that, or never bothered to know it. It reminded him of a Kafka quote: “Oh, there is hope, an infinite amount of hope, just not for us.” Just not for you, Argus.

They went to the reception desk.

“This is a checkup?” the secretary asked.

“Yes,” Jacob responded.

He just couldn’t. He wasn’t ready. He’d have another chance with the vet.

Jacob browsed a magazine without focusing his eyes. He remembered the first time one of his kids called him out for looking at his phone instead of at them.

“That’s my boy,” he said to Argus, scratching under his chin. Had he ever called him his boy before?

The tech came and led them to an examination room in the back. The vet took forever, and Jacob offered Argus treats from the glass jar on the counter. But Argus just turned away.

“You’re good,” Jacob told him, trying to be as calming as Max had been. “You’re so good.”

We live in the world, Jacob thought. That thought always seemed to insert itself, usually in opposition to the word ideally. Ideally, we would make sandwiches at homeless shelters every weekend, and learn instruments late in life, and stop thinking about the middle of life as late in life, and use some mental resource other than Google, and some physical resource other than Amazon, and permanently retire mac and cheese, and give at least a quarter of the time and attention to aging relatives that they deserve, and never put a child in front of a screen. But we live in the world, and in the world there’s soccer practice, and speech therapy, and grocery shopping, and homework, and keeping the house respectably clean, and money, and moods, and fatigue, and also we’re only human, and humans not only need but deserve things like time with a coffee and the paper, and seeing friends, and taking breathers, so as nice as that idea is, there’s just no way we can make it happen. Ought to, but can’t.

Over and over and over: We live in the world.

Finally, the vet came. He was an old man, maybe eighty. Old and old-fashioned: a pocket square in his white coat, a stethoscope around his neck. His handshake was arresting: so much softness to get through before the bone.

“What brings you here today?”

“They didn’t explain?”

“Who?”

“I’d called.”

“Why don’t you tell me yourself.”

Was this a ploy? Like when they make a young woman listen to a fetal heartbeat before she can get an abortion?

He wasn’t ready.

“So, my dog has been suffering for a long time.”

“Oh, OK,” the vet said, clicking shut the pen with which he was about to start filling out a form. “And what’s the name of your dog?”

“Argus.”

“‘This is the dog of a man who died far away,’” the vet bellowed.

“Impressive.”

“I was a classics professor in another life.”

“With a photographic memory?”

“There’s actually no such thing. But I did love Homer.” He slowly lowered himself onto a knee. “Hello, Argus.” He held the sides of Argus’s face and looked into his eyes. “It’s not my favorite expression,” he said, still looking at Argus. “Putting down. I prefer letting go.”

“I prefer that, too,” Jacob said, as grateful as he’d ever been.

“Are you in pain, Argus?”

“He whines a lot, sometimes through the night. And he has a hard time getting up and down.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s been going on for quite a while, but it’s gotten worse in the last half a year. He’s barely eating. And he’s incontinent.”

“None of that is good news.”

News. It was the first time since the earthquake he’d heard anything else referred to as news.

“Our vet, back in D.C., gave him a couple of months, but it’s been almost half a year.”

“You’re a fighter,” the vet said to Argus, “aren’t you?”

Jacob didn’t like that. He didn’t like thinking of Argus fighting for the life that was about to be taken from him. And while he knew that age and illness were what Argus was fighting against, there they were: Argus and Jacob, and a vet to carry out Jacob’s wishes at the expense of Argus’s. It wasn’t that simple. Jacob knew it wasn’t. But he also knew there was a sense in which it was exactly that simple. There is no way to communicate to a dog that one is sorry that we live in the world but it is the only place that one can live. Or maybe there is no way not to communicate that.

The vet looked into Argus’s eyes for another few moments, now in silence.

“What do you think?” Jacob asked.

“What do I think?”

“About this situation?”

“I think you know this dog better than anyone, and certainly better than some old vet who’s spent a total of five minutes with him.”

“Right,” Jacob said.

“In my experience, and I’ve had a lot of it, people know when it’s time.”

“I can’t imagine ever knowing. But I think that just says something about me, rather than Argus’s condition.”

“Might be.”

“I feel that it’s time. But I don’t know that it’s time.”

“OK,” the vet said, rising. “OK.”

He took a syringe from a glass jar on the counter — a jar directly beside the treats — and a small vial from a cabinet.

“This is a very simple procedure, and I can assure you that Argus will neither anticipate it nor feel any pain whatsoever, other than the pinch of the needle, although I’m pretty good at concealing that. Within a second or two, he’ll pass. I’ll just warn you that the moment of death can be unpleasant. Usually it’s just like falling asleep, and most owners describe their animals as appearing relieved. But each dog is different. It’s not uncommon for a dog to empty its bowels, or for its eyes to roll into its head. Sometimes muscles seize. But it’s all perfectly normal, and wouldn’t suggest that Argus was feeling anything. For Argus it will be going to sleep.”

“OK,” Jacob said, but he thought, I don’t want this to happen. I’m not ready for this to happen. This cannot happen. He’d had that feeling two other times: when holding down Sam as he got his hand stitched back together, and the moment before he and Julia told the kids they were separating. It was the feeling of not wanting to live in the world, even if it was the only place to live.

“It would be best if we can get Argus to lie down here on the floor. Perhaps you can get him to rest his head on your lap. Something comforting for him.”

He filled the syringe while he spoke, always keeping it out of Argus’s view. Argus went right to the floor, as if he knew what was expected of him, if not why. It was all happening so quickly, and Jacob couldn’t suppress the panicked feeling that he wasn’t ready. He gave Argus the sleep-inducing belly rub he’d learned in their one and only dog-training class, but Argus wouldn’t sleep.

“Argus is old,” Jacob said. There was no reason to say it, other than to slow things down.

“An old man,” the vet said. “Must be why we get along so well. Try to keep him looking at you.”

“One second,” Jacob said as he stroked the length of Argus’s side, his fingers slipping over and between his ribs. “I didn’t know it was going to happen this quickly.”

“Would you like another few minutes alone?”

“What happens to the body?”

“Unless you have other plans, we cremate it.”

“What kind of plans might one have?”

“Burial.”

“No.”

“So then that’s what we’ll do.”

“Immediately?”

“What’s that?”

“You cremate him immediately?”

“Twice a week. There’s a facility about twenty minutes from here.”

Argus gave a small whine and Jacob told him, “You’re good. You’re good.” And then he asked the vet, “Where are we in that cycle?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“I know it shouldn’t matter, but I don’t like the idea of Argus’s body sitting around for four whole days.”

Do people sit shmira for dogs? No one should be left alone.

“Today is Thursday,” the vet said. “So it would be this afternoon.”

“OK,” Jacob said. “I’m relieved to know that.”

“Would you like another few minutes? It’s no problem at all.”

“No, it’s OK.”

“You’ll see me put some pressure on Argus’s vein, so as to be sure the needle enters properly. You can hold him. Within a few seconds, Argus will take a deeper breath, then appear to sleep.”

Jacob was disturbed by the vet’s repeated use of Argus’s name, his seeming unwillingness to refer to Argus as him or he. It felt cruel, the constant reminder of Argus’s specific personhood, or of Jacob’s identity as Argus’s namer.

“Though completely unconscious, Argus might take a few more breaths. I’ve found that, for whatever reason, the older the dog, the longer the unconscious breathing goes on.”

“That’s interesting,” Jacob said, and in an instant, as the g freed itself from the back of his hard palate, his discomfort with the vet’s use of Argus’s name morphed into anger at himself — the anger that was often deeply buried, and often projected, but was always there. That’s interesting. What a stupid thing to say right then. What an unimportant, cheapening, disgusting remark. That’s interesting. All day he’d been experiencing fear, and sadness, and guilt about not being able to give Argus a little longer, and pride at having given him this long, but now, at the arrival of the moment, he was only angry.

“You’re ready to let him go?” the vet asked.

“Sorry. Not yet.”

“Of course.”

“You’re good,” Jacob said, pulling at the excess skin between Argus’s shoulders, just as Argus liked.

Jacob must have given the vet a suggestive look, because he once again asked, “Are you ready?”

“You’re not going to give him some sort of sedative or, I don’t know, painkiller so he doesn’t feel the shot?”

“Some vets do. I don’t. It can just as often make them more anxious.”

“Oh.”

“Some people like to be left alone for a few minutes first.”

Jacob gestured at the vial in the vet’s hand and asked, “Why is that fluid so bright?”

“So it’s never mistaken for something else.”

“That makes sense.”

He needed to let go, of the anger and everything else, but he needed help to do so, but he needed to do it alone.

“Could I stay with the body? Until the cremation?”

“I’m sure we could arrange that.”

Jacob said, “Argus,” naming him for the second time — once in the beginning, once at the end.

Argus’s eyes rose to meet Jacob’s. There was no acceptance to be found in them. No forgiveness. There was no knowledge that all that had happened was all that would happen. As it had to be, and as it should be. Their relationship was defined not by what they could share, but what they couldn’t. Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.

“OK,” Jacob said to the vet, still looking into Argus’s eyes.

“Don’t forget how it ends,” the vet said, readying the needle. “Argus dies fulfilled. His master has finally come home.”

“But after so much suffering.”

“He has peace.”

Jacob didn’t tell Argus, “It’s OK.”

He told him: “Look at me.”

He told himself: Life is precious, and I live in the world.

He told the vet: “I’m ready.”