Page 183 - A Little Life: A Novel

was handling the paperwork, and sent him forms to sign—the petition for
adoption, an affidavit to change his birth certificate, a request for
information about his potential criminal record—which he took to the bank

at lunch to have notarized; he didn’t want anyone at work to know beyond
the few people he told: Marshall, and Citizen, and Rhodes. He told JB and
Malcolm, who on the one hand reacted exactly as he’d anticipated—JB
making a lot of unfunny jokes at an almost tic-like pace, as if he might
eventually land on one that worked; Malcolm asking increasingly granular
questions about various hypotheticals that he couldn’t answer—and on the
other had been genuinely thrilled for him. He told Black Henry Young, who

had taken two classes with Harold when he was in law school and had
admired him, and JB’s friend Richard, to whom he’d grown close after one
particularly long and tedious party at Ezra’s a year ago when the two of
them had had a conversation that had begun with the French welfare state
and then had moved on to various other topics, the only two semi-sober
people in the room. He told Phaedra, who had started screaming, and

another old college friend, Elijah, who had screamed as well.
And, of course, he told Andy, who at first had just stared at him and then
nodded, as if he had asked if Andy had an extra bandage he could give him
before he left for the night. But then he began making a series of bizarre
seal-like sounds, half bark, half sneeze, and he realized that Andy was
crying. The sight of it made him both horrified and slightly hysterical,
unsure of what to do. “Get out of here,” Andy commanded him between

sounds. “I mean it, Jude, get the fuck out,” and so he did. The next day at
work, he received an arrangement of roses the size of a gardenia bush, with
a note in Andy’s angry blocky handwriting that read:

JUDE—I’M SO FUCKING EMBARRASSED I CAN BARELY WRITE THIS NOTE.
PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR YESTERDAY. I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER FOR YOU
AND THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHAT TOOK HAROLD SO FUCKING LONG. I
HOPE YOU’LL TAKE THIS AS A SIGN THAT YOU NEED TO TAKE BETTER
CARE OF YOURSELF SO SOMEDAY YOU’LL HAVE THE STRENGTH TO
CHANGE HAROLD’S ADULT DIAPERS WHEN HE’S A THOUSAND YEARS OLD
AND INCONTINENT, BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE’S NOT GOING TO MAKE IT
EASY FOR YOU BY DYING AT A RESPECTABLE AGE LIKE A NORMAL
PERSON. BELIEVE ME, PARENTS ARE PAINS IN THE ASS LIKE THAT. (BUT
GREAT TOO, OF COURSE.) LOVE, ANDY

It was, he and Willem agreed, one of the best letters they’d ever read.
But then the ecstatic month passed, and it was January, and Willem left

for Bulgaria to film, and the old fears returned, accompanied now by new