“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.”
“Tha
nks 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 voi
ce.
“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?”