Page 199 - A Little Life: A Novel

branches and paperwhite bulbs, with their sweet, faintly fecal fragrance—
and the books in their cases had been straightened and even the nap on the
sofa had been repaired.

“And look at this, Jude,” Julia had said, linking her arm through his, and
showing him the celadon-glazed dish on the hallway table, which had been
broken for as long as he’d known them, the shards that had snapped off its
side permanently nested in the bowl and furred with dust. But now it had
been fixed, and washed and polished.
“Wow,” he said when presented with each new thing, grinning idiotically,
happy because they were so happy. He didn’t care, he never had, whether

their place was clean or not—they could’ve lived surrounded by Ionic
columns of old New York Times, with colonies of rats squeaking plumply
underfoot for all he cared—but he knew they thought he minded, and had
mistaken his incessant, tedious cleaning of everything as a rebuke, as much
as he’d tried, and tried, to assure them it wasn’t. He cleaned now to stop
himself, to distract himself, from doing other things, but when he was in

college, he had cleaned for the others to express his gratitude: it was
something he could do and had always done, and they gave him so much
and he gave them so little. JB, who enjoyed living in squalor, never noticed.
Malcolm, who had grown up with a housekeeper, always noticed and
always thanked him. Only Willem hadn’t liked it. “Stop it, Jude,” he’d said
one day, grabbing his wrist as he picked JB’s dirty shirts off the floor,
“you’re not our maid.” But he hadn’t been able to stop, not then, and not

now.
By the time he wipes off the countertops a final time, it’s almost four
thirty, and he staggers to his room, texts Willem not to call him, and falls
into a brief, brutal sleep. When he wakes, he makes the bed and showers
and dresses and returns to the kitchen, where Harold is standing at the
counter, reading the paper and drinking coffee.

“Well,” Harold says, looking up at him. “Don’t you look handsome.”
He shakes his head, reflexively, but the truth is that he’d bought a new
tie, and had his hair cut the day before, and he feels, if not handsome, then
at least neat and presentable, which he always tries to be. He rarely sees
Harold in a suit, but he’s wearing one as well, and the solemnity of the
occasion makes him suddenly shy.
Harold smiles at him. “You were busy last night, clearly. Did you sleep at

all?”