Page 104 - A Little Life: A Novel

confident enough around her now to start issuing orders; the first adult he’d
done so to. “You’re right,” she’d said, and squinted her eyes at him while
inhaling deeply, grinning at him when he sighed at her.

Even then, she didn’t give up. “Jude, we should talk about it,” she’d say
every few days, and when he shook his head, she’d be silent. “Tomorrow,
then,” she’d say. “Do you promise me? Tomorrow we’ll talk about it.”
“I don’t see why I have to talk about it at all,” he muttered at her once.
He knew she had read his records from Montana; he knew she knew what
he was.
She was quiet. “One thing I’ve learned,” she said, “you have to talk about

these things while they’re fresh. Or you’ll never talk about them. I’m going
to teach you how to talk about them, because it’s going to get harder and
harder the longer you wait, and it’s going to fester inside you, and you’re
always going to think you’re to blame. You’ll be wrong, of course, but
you’ll always think it.” He didn’t know how to respond to that, but the next
day, when she brought it up again, he shook his head and turned away from

her, even though she called after him. “Jude,” she said, once, “I’ve let you
go on for too long without addressing this. This is my fault.”
“Do it for me, Jude,” she said at another point. But he couldn’t; he
couldn’t find the language to talk about it, not even to her. Besides, he
didn’t want to relive those years. He wanted to forget them, to pretend they
belonged to someone else.
By June she was so weak she couldn’t sit. Fourteen months after they’d

met, she was the one in bed, and he was the one next to her. Leslie worked
the day shift at the hospital, and so often, it was just the two of them in the
house. “Listen,” she said. Her throat was dry from one of her medications,
and she winced as she spoke. He reached for the jug of water, but she
waved her hand, impatiently. “Leslie’s going to take you shopping before
you leave; I made a list for her of things you’ll need.” He started to protest,

but she stopped him. “Don’t argue, Jude. I don’t have the energy.”
She swallowed. He waited. “You’re going to be great at college,” she
said. She shut her eyes. “The other kids are going to ask you about how you
grew up, have you thought about that?”
“Sort of,” he said. It was all he thought about.
“Mmph,” she grunted. She didn’t believe him either. “What are you
going to tell them?” And then she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.