Page 142 - A Little Life: A Novel

smooth as frosting, what would he be to Andy? What would he be to any of
them? Would they like him less? More? Or would he discover—as he often
feared—that what he understood as friendship was really motivated by their

pity of him? How much of who he was was inextricable from what he was
unable to do? Who would he have been, who would he be, without the
scars, the cuts, the hurts, the sores, the fractures, the infections, the splints,
and the discharges?
But of course he would never know. Six months ago, they had managed
to get the wound under control, and Andy had examined it, checking and
rechecking, before issuing a fleet of warnings about what he should do if it

reopened.
He had been only half listening. He was feeling light that day for some
reason, but Andy was querulous, and along with a lecture about his leg, he
had also endured another about his cutting (too much, Andy thought), and
his general appearance (too thin, Andy thought).
He had admired his leg, pivoting it and examining the place where the

wound had at last closed over, as Andy talked and talked. “Are you
listening to me, Jude?” he had finally demanded.
“It looks good,” he told Andy, not answering him, but wanting his
reassurance. “Doesn’t it?”
Andy sighed. “It looks—” And then he stopped, and was quiet, and he
had looked up, had watched Andy shut his eyes, as if refocusing himself,
and then open them again. “It looks good, Jude,” he’d said, quietly. “It

does.”
He had felt, then, a great surge of gratitude, because he knew Andy didn’t
think it looked good, would never think it looked good. To Andy, his body
was an onslaught of terrors, one against which the two of them had to be
constantly attentive. He knew Andy thought he was self-destructive, or
delusional, or in denial.

But what Andy never understood about him was this: he was an optimist.
Every month, every week, he chose to open his eyes, to live another day in
the world. He did it when he was feeling so awful that sometimes the pain
seemed to transport him to another state, one in which everything, even the
past that he worked so hard to forget, seemed to fade into a gray watercolor
wash. He did it when his memories crowded out all other thoughts, when it
took real effort, real concentration, to tether himself to his current life, to

keep himself from raging with despair and shame. He did it when he was so