Page 131 - A Little Life: A Novel

able to make it upstairs), he had turned off the stove, where he had been
sauteeing some spinach, and pulled himself into the pantry, where he had
shut the door and laid down on the floor to wait—they had rearranged the

house, so that the next time he visited, he found the spare bedroom had
been moved to the ground-floor suite behind the living room where
Harold’s study had been, and Harold’s desk and chair and books moved to
the second floor.
But even after all of this, a part of him was always waiting for the day
he’d come to a door and try the knob and it wouldn’t move. He didn’t mind
that, necessarily; there was something scary and anxiety-inducing about

being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where
everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return. He tried to
give them what he could; he was aware it wasn’t much. And the things
Harold gave him so easily—answers, affection—he couldn’t reciprocate.
One day after he’d known them for almost seven years, he was at the
house in springtime. It was Julia’s birthday; she was turning fifty-one, and

because she had been at a conference in Oslo for her fiftieth birthday, she’d
decided that this would be her big celebration. He and Harold were cleaning
the living room—or rather, he was cleaning, and Harold was plucking
books at random from the shelves and telling him stories about how he’d
gotten each one, or flipping back the covers so he could see other people’s
names written inside, including a copy of The Leopard on whose flyleaf
was scrawled: “Property of Laurence V. Raleigh. Do not take. Harold Stein,

this means you!!”
He had threatened to tell Laurence, and Harold had threatened him back.
“You’d better not, Jude, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Or what?” he’d asked, teasing him.
“Or—this!” Harold had said, and had leaped at him, and before he could
recognize that Harold was just being playful, he had recoiled so violently,

torquing his body to avoid contact, that he had bumped into the bookcase
and had knocked against a lumpy ceramic mug that Harold’s son, Jacob,
had made, which fell to the ground and broke into three neat pieces. Harold
had stepped back from him then, and there was a sudden, horrible silence,
into which he had nearly wept.
“Harold,” he said, crouching to the ground, picking up the pieces, “I’m
so sorry, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” He wanted to beat himself