Here I Am (16 page)

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, anti-misogynist, 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.