Here I Am (59 page)

“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 10
²⁴
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.