Here I Am (54 page)

“I would never, in a million years, remarry,” she told the mediator.

“This doesn't concern remarriage, but rather having children.”

“If I were to have more children, which I will not, it would be in the context of a marriage, which is not going to happen.”

“Life is long,” he said.

“And the universe is even bigger, but we don't seem to be getting a lot of visits from intelligent life.”

“That's only because we're not in the Jewish Home yet,” I said, trying at once to calm her and to create a bit of innocent camaraderie with the mediator, who shot me a confused look.

“And it's not long,” Julia said. “If life were long, I wouldn't be halfway through it.”

“We aren't halfway through it,” I said.

“
You
aren't, because you're a man.”

“Women live longer than men.”

“Only technically.”

As ever, the mediator wouldn't take the bait. He cleared his throat, as if swinging a machete to clear a path through our overgrown history, and said, “This clause, which I should say is entirely standard for agreements like yours, won't affect you in the event that you don't have any more children. It merely protects you and your children if Jacob does.”

“I don't want it in there,” she said.

“Can we move on to something genuinely contentious?” I suggested.

“No,” she said. “I don't want it in there.”

“Even if that means forfeiting your legal protection?” the mediator asked.

“I trust Jacob not to treat other children more favorably than ours.”

“Life is long,” I said, winking at the mediator without moving an eyelid.

“Is that some kind of joke?” she asked.

“Obviously.”

The mediator cleared his throat again and drew a line through the clause.

Julia wouldn't let it go, not even after we'd removed what wasn't there to begin with. In the middle of a discussion of something entirely unrelated—how to handle Thanksgiving, Halloween, and birthdays; whether it was necessary to legally forbid the presence of a Christmas tree in either's home—she might say, “Divorce gets an unfair rap; it was marriage that did this.” Such out-of-context statements became part of the routine—at once impossible to anticipate and unsurprising. The mediator showed an almost autistic patience for her Tourettic eruptions, until one afternoon, when splitting the hairs of medical decision-making in the event that one parent couldn't be reached, she said, “I will literally die before I remarry,” and, without clearing his throat or missing a beat, he asked, “Do you want me to put in some language legally codifying that?”

She started dating Daniel about three years after the divorce. To my knowledge, which was greatly limited by the kindness of kids who were trying to protect me, she didn't date very much before him. She seemed to relish the quiet and aloneness, just as she'd always said, and I'd never believed, she would. Her architecture practice flowered: two of her houses were built (one in Bethesda, one on the shore), and she got a commission to convert a grand Dupont Circle mansion into a museum showcasing the contemporary art collection of a local supermarket oligarch. Benjy—who was no less kind than his brothers, but far less psychologically sophisticated—would increasingly mention Daniel, usually in the context of his ability to edit movies on his laptop. That humble skill, which could be learned in an afternoon by someone willing to devote an afternoon to learning it, dramatically changed Benjy's life. All the “babyish” movies he had been making on the waterproof digital camera I got him two Hanukkahs before were suddenly brought to life as fully realized “adult films.” (I never suggested that the camera should stay at my house, and we never corrected his terminology.) Once, when I was dropping the boys
back at Julia's after a particularly fun weekend of adventures I'd spent the previous two weeks planning, Benjy grabbed at my leg and said, “You have to go?” I told him I did, but that he was going to have a great time and we'd see each other again in just a couple of days. He turned to Julia and asked, “Is Daniel here?” “He's at a meeting,” she said, “but he'll be back any minute.” “Aw,
another
meeting? I wanna make an adult film.” When my car rounded the corner, I saw a man, about my age, in clothing I might wear, sitting on a bench, no reading material, no purpose but to wait.

I knew he went on the safari with them.

I knew he took Max to Wizards games.

At some point he moved in. I don't know when; it was never presented to me as news.

“What does Daniel do?” I asked the boys one night over Indian. We ate out a lot in those days, because it was hard for me to find the necessary time to grocery shop and cook, but more because I was obsessed with proving to them that we could still have “fun.” And eating out is fun. Until someone asks, “Where are we having dinner tonight?” At which point it begins to feel depressing.

“He's a scientist,” Sam said.

“But not a Nobel Prize winner or anything,” Max said. “Just a scientist.”

“What kind of scientist?”

“Dunno,” Sam and Max said at the same time, but no one said “Jinx.”

“He's an astrophysicist,” Benjy said. And then: “Are you sad?”

“That he's an astrophysicist?”

“Yeah.”

Julia asked a few times if I would go out for a drink with him, get to know him. She said it would mean a lot to her, and to Daniel, and that it could only be good for the boys. I told her, “Of course.” I told her, “That sounds great.” And I believed myself as I said it. But it never happened.

As we were saying goodbye after one of Max's teacher conferences, she told me that she and Daniel were going to get married.

“Does this mean you're dead?”

“Excuse me?”

“You would sooner die than remarry.”

She laughed. “No, not dead. Reincarnated.”

“As yourself?”

“As myself plus time.”

“Myself plus time is my father.”

She laughed again. Was her laugh spontaneous or generous? “The nice thing about reincarnation is that life becomes a process rather than an event.”

“Wait, you're serious?”

“Just stuff from yoga.”

“Well, it flies in the face of stuff from science.”

“As I was saying. Life becomes a process rather than an event. Like that thing the magician told you, about tricks and outcomes. You don't need to achieve enlightenment, only move yourself closer to it. Only become a bit more accepting.”

“Most things shouldn't be accepted.”

“Accepting of the world—”

“Yes, I live in the world.”

“Of yourself.”

“That's more complicated.”

“One life is too much pressure.”

“So is the Marianas Trench, but such is reality. And by the way, what was all that shit about Max being too conscientious?”

“Staying in at recess to go over his homework?”

“He's diligent.”

“He wants to control what is possible to control.”

“Stuff from yoga?”

“I actually got myself a Dr. Silvers.”

Why did that trigger my jealousy? Because my feelings about her marriage were too extreme to be felt directly?

“Well,” I said, “I believe in a lot of things. But at the very top of the list of things I don't believe in is reincarnation.”

“You're constantly coming back, Jacob. Just always as yourself.”

I didn't ask if the kids knew before me, and if so, for how long. She didn't tell me when it was going to happen, or if I was going to be invited.

I asked, “Does this mean I'm going to be treated less favorably?” She laughed. I hugged her, told her how happy I was for her, and went home and ordered a video game system, as we'd always agreed we wouldn't.

The wedding was three months later, and I was invited, and the kids did know before me, but only by a day. I told them not to mention the video game system to her, and that was the actual missing of the mark.

I can't help but compare it to our wedding. There were fewer people, but many of the same people. What did they think when they saw me?
Those who had the guts to approach either pretended there was nothing remotely awkward going on, that we were simply making small talk at the wedding of a mutual friend, or they put their hands on my shoulder.

Julia and I were always good at catching eyes, even after the divorce. We just had a way of finding each other. It was a joke between us. “How will I find you in the theater?” “By being you.” But it didn't happen once all afternoon. She was preoccupied, but she must also have been keeping track of where I was. I thought about slipping out at various points, but that was not to be done.

The boys gave a charming speech together.

I asked for red.

Daniel spoke thoughtfully, and lovingly. He thanked me for being there, for welcoming him. I nodded, I smiled. He moved on.

I asked for red.

I remembered my mother's speech at my wedding: “In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.” Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it?

I watched the horah from my table, watched the boys lift their mother in the chair. She was laughing so hard, and I was sure that with her up at that vantage we would catch eyes, but we didn't.

A salad was placed in front of me.

Julia and Daniel went from table to table to make sure they said hello to every guest, and for pictures. I saw it approaching, like the wave at a Nats game, and there was nothing to do but participate.

I stood at the margin. The photographer said, “Say
mocha,”
which I did not. He took it three times to be sure. Julia whispered to Daniel, gave him a kiss. He walked off, and she took the seat beside me.

“I'm glad you came.”

“Of course.”

“Not of course. It was a choice you made, and I know it's not uncomplicated.”

“I'm glad you wanted me here.”

“Are you OK?” she asked.

“Very much so.”

“OK.”

I looked around the room: the doomed flowers, sweating water glasses, lipstick in purses left on chairs, guitars becoming detuned against speakers, knives that had attended thousands of unions.

“You want to hear something sad?” I said. “I always thought I was the happy one. The happier one, I should say. I never thought of myself as happy.”

“You want to hear something even sadder? I thought I was the unhappy one.”

“I guess we were both wrong.”

“No,” she said, “we were both right. But only in the context of our marriage.”

I put my hands on my knees, as if to further ground myself.

“Were you there when my dad said that thing? ‘Without context, we'd all be monsters'?”

“I don't think so. Or I don't remember it.”

“Our context made monsters of us.”

“No, not monsters,” she said. “We were good, and we raised three amazing kids.”

“And now you're happy, and I'm still me.”

“Life is long,” she said, trusting me to remember.

“The universe is bigger,” I said, proving myself.

Sea bass was placed in front of me.

I picked up my fork, so as to touch something, and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What do you tell people when they ask why we got divorced?”

“It's been a long time since anyone has.”

“What did you used to tell them?”

“That we realized we were just really good friends, good co-parents.”

“Aren't those reasons not to get divorced?”

She smiled and said, “I had a hard time explaining it.”

“Me, too. I always sounded like I was hiding something. Or guilty about something. Or just fickle.”

“It's not really anyone else's business.”

“What do you tell yourself?”

“It's been a long time since I asked myself.”

“What did you used to tell yourself?”

She picked up my spoon and said, “We got divorced because that's what we did. It's not a tautology.”

While the waiters were bringing dinner to the final tables, the first tables were being brought dessert.

“And the boys?” I asked. “How did you explain it to them?”

“They never really asked me. Sometimes they'd trace the outline, but they'd never enter. With you?”

“Never once. Isn't that odd?”

“No,” she said, a bride in her dress. “It's not.”

I looked at my boys being silly children on the dance floor and said, “Why did we put them in the position of having to ask?”

“Our love for them got in the way of being good parents.”

I ran my finger around the rim of my glass, but no music came.

“I'd be a much better father if I could do it again.”

“You can,” she said.

“I'm not going to have any more kids.”

“I know.”

“And I don't have a time machine.”

“I know.”

“And I don't believe in reincarnation.”

“I know.”

“Think we could have made it?” I asked. “If we'd tried harder? Gone back into things?”

“Made what?”

“Life.”

“We made three lives,” she said.

“Could we have made one?”

“Is that the question?”

“Why not?”

“Making it
. Not failing. There are more ambitious things to do with life.”

“Are there?”

“I hope so.”

On the drive to the party, I'd listened to a podcast about asteroids, and how unprepared we are for the possibility of one heading toward us. The physicist being interviewed explained why none of the possible contingencies would work: nuking it would just turn a cosmic cannonball into cosmic buckshot (and the debris would likely re-form in a few hours due
to gravity); robotic landers could deflect the asteroid with mounted thrusters, if such things existed, which they don't and won't; similarly implausible would be sending up an enormous spacecraft as a “gravity tractor,” using its own mass to pull the asteroid away from Earth. “So what
would
we do?” the host asked. “Probably nuke it,” the physicist said. “But you said it would only break it into lots of asteroids that would hit us.” “That's right.” “So it wouldn't work.” “Almost certainly not,” the physicist said, “but it would be our best hope.”