Page 195 - A Little Life: A Novel

discomfort, a blackened seed spreading its thorned branches. Not now, he
begged himself, not now, a plea as impossible as the plea he really meant:
Not now, not ever.

“Well,” Harold sighed, “in the absence of specifics, I won’t be able to
reassure you specifically, so I’m just going to give you a blanket, all-
encompassing reassurance, which I hope you’ll believe. Jude: whatever it
is, whatever you did, I promise you, whether you someday tell me or not,
that it will never make me regret wanting or having you as a member of my
family.” He took a deep breath, held his right hand before him. “Jude St.
Francis, as your future parent, I hereby absolve you of—of everything for

which you seek absolution.”
And was this what he in fact wanted? Absolution? He looked at Harold’s
face, so familiar he could remember its every furrow when he closed his
eyes, and which, despite the flourishes and formality of his declaration, was
serious and unsmiling. Could he believe Harold? The hardest thing is not
finding the knowledge, Brother Luke once said to him after he’d confessed

he was having difficulty believing in God. The hardest thing is believing it.
He felt he had failed once again: failed to confess properly, failed to
determine in advance what he wanted to hear in response. Wouldn’t it have
been easier in a way if Harold had told him that he was right, that they
should perhaps rethink the adoption? He would have been devastated, of
course, but it would have been an old sensation, something he understood.
In Harold’s refusal to let him go lay a future he couldn’t imagine, one in

which someone might really want him for good, and that was a reality that
he had never experienced before, for which he had no preparation, no
signposts. Harold would lead and he would follow, until one day he would
wake and Harold would be gone, and he would be left vulnerable and
stranded in a foreign land, with no one there to guide him home.
Harold was waiting for his reply, but the pain was now unignorable, and

he knew he had to rest. “Harold,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I think—I think
I’d better go lie down for a while.”
“Go,” said Harold, unoffended, “go.”
In his room, he lies down atop the comforter and closes his eyes, but
even after the episode ends, he’s exhausted, and tells himself he’ll nap for
just a few minutes and then get up again and see what Harold has in the
house: if he has brown sugar, he’ll bake something—there was a bowl of

persimmons in the kitchen, and maybe he’ll make a persimmon cake.