Here I Am Read Online Free PDF

‘never again.’ ”
    “Well, what do you say you leave this one to me?”
    “Because you’re doing such a great job?”
    “Because he’s Sam’s father,” Deborah said. “And you’re not.”
    “Because it’s one thing to pick up your dog’s shits,” Jacob said, “and it’s another to pick up your dad’s.”
    “Shits,” Benjy echoed.
    “Mom, could you go read to Benjy upstairs?”
    “I want to be with the adults,” Benjy said.
    “I’m the only adult here,” Deborah said.
    “Before I blow my top,” Irv said, “I want to be sure I’m understanding. You’re suggesting that there’s a line to be drawn from my misread blog to Sam’s First Amendment problem?”
    “No one misread your blog.”
    “Radically misconstrued.”
    “You wrote that Arabs hate their children.”
    “Incorrect. I wrote that Arab hatred for Jews has transcended their love for their own children.”
    “And that they are animals.”
    “Yes. I wrote that, too. They’re animals. Humans are animals. This is definitional stuff.”
    “Jews are animals?”
    “It’s not that simple, no.”
    “What’s the n-word?” Benjy whispered to Deborah.
    “Noodle,” she whispered back.
    “No it’s not.” She lifted Benjy in her arms and carried him out of the room. “The n-word is
no
,” he said, “isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “No it’s not.”
    “One Dr. Phil is already one too many,” Irv said. “What Sammy needs is a fixer. This is a bone-dry freedom of speech issue, and as you do or should know, I am not only on the national board of the ACLU, its members tell my story every Passover. If you were
me—
”
    “I’d kill myself to spare my family.”
    “—you’d chum the Adas Israel waters for an insanely smart, autistically monomaniacal lawyer who has sacrificed worldly rewards for the pleasure of defending civil liberties. Look, I appreciate the pleasure of bitching about injustice as much as anyone, but you’re capable, Jacob, and he’s your son. No one would condemn you for not helping yourself, but no one would forgive you for not helping your son.”
    “You’re romanticizing racism, misogyny, and homophobia.”
    “Have you even
read
Caro’s—”
    “I saw the movie.”
    “I’m trying to get my grandson out of a bind. That’s so wrong?”
    “If he shouldn’t get out of it.”
    Benjy trotted back into the room: “Is it
married
?”
    “Is what married?”
    “The n-word.”
    “That begins with an
m
.”
    Benjy turned and trotted back out.
    “What your mother said before, about you and Julia needing to approach this together? That was wrong. You need to defend Sam. Let everyone else worry about what actually happened.”
    “I believe him.”
    And then, as if noticing her absence for the first time: “Where is Julia, anyway?”
    “Taking the day off.”
    “Off from what?”
    “Off.”
    “Thank you, Anne Sullivan, but in fact I heard you. Off from
what
?”
    “From
on
. Can you just let it be?”
    “Sure,” Irv said, nodding. “That’s an option. But let me speak some words of wisdom that not even Mother Mary knows.”
    “Can’t wait.”
    “Nothing goes away. Not on its own. You deal with it, or it deals with you.”
    “This too shall—?”
    “Solomon wasn’t perfect. In all of human history, nothing has ever gone away on its own.”
    “Farts do,” Jacob said, as if to honor Sam’s absence.
    “Your house stinks, Jacob. You just can’t smell it, because it’s yours.”
    Jacob could have pointed out that there was Argus shit somewhere within a three-room radius. He’d known it as soon as he opened the front door.
    Benjy came back into the room. “I remembered my question,” he said, despite having given no indication of trying to remember anything.
    “Yes?”
    “The sound of time. What happened to it?”

A HAND THE SIZE OF YOURS, A HOUSE THE SIZE OF THIS ONE
    Julia liked the eye being led where the body can’t go. She liked irregular brickwork, when one can’t tell if the