Page 205 - A Little Life: A Novel

“I know,” he winces. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Willem says. “But Jude—was it really awful?”
He understands then that Andy did tell Willem at least some of what had

happened, and so he decides to answer honestly. “It wasn’t great,” he
allows, and then, because he doesn’t want Willem to feel guilty, “but it
wasn’t horrible.”
They are both quiet. “I wish I could’ve been there,” Willem says.
“You were,” he assures him. “But Willem—I missed you.”
Very quietly, Willem says, “I missed you, too.”
“Thank you for coming,” he says.

“Of course I was going to come, Judy,” Willem says from across the
room. “I would’ve no matter what.”
He is silent, savoring this promise and committing it to memory so he
can think about it in moments when he needs it most. “Do you think it went
all right?” he asks.
“Are you serious?” Willem says, and he can hear him sit up. “Did you

see Harold’s face? He looked like the Green Party just elected its first
president and the Second Amendment was eliminated and the Red Sox were
canonized, all in the same day.”
He laughs. “You really think so?”
“I know so. He was really, really happy, Jude. He loves you.”
He smiles into the dark. He wants to hear Willem say such things over
and over, an endless loop of promises and avowals, but he knows such

wishes are self-indulgent, and so he changes the subject, and they talk of
little things, nothings, until first Willem, and then he, fall asleep.
A week later, his giddiness has mellowed into something else: a
contentment, a stillness. For the past week, his nights have been unbroken
stretches of sleep in which he dreams not of the past but of the present: silly
dreams about work, sunnily absurd dreams about his friends. It is the first

complete week in the now almost two decades since he began cutting
himself that he hasn’t woken in the middle of the night, since he’s felt no
need for the razor. Maybe he is cured, he dares to think. Maybe this is what
he needed all along, and now that it’s happened, he is better. He feels
wonderful, like a different person: whole and healthy and calm. He is
someone’s son, and at times the knowledge of that is so overwhelming that
he imagines it is manifesting itself physically, as if it’s been written in

something shining and gold across his chest.