Page 228 - A Little Life: A Novel

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ONE SATURDAY MORNING shortly after he turns thirty-six, he opens his eyes and
experiences that strange, lovely sensation he sometimes has, the one in
which he realizes that his life is cloudless. He imagines Harold and Julia in
Cambridge, the two of them moving dozily through the kitchen, pouring
coffee into their stained and chipped mugs and shaking the dew off of the
plastic newspaper bags, and, in the air, Willem flying toward him from
Cape Town. He pictures Malcolm pressed against Sophie in bed in

Brooklyn, and then, because he feels hopeful, JB safe and snoring in his bed
on the Lower East Side. Here, on Greene Street, the radiator releases its
sibilant sigh. The sheets smell like soap and sky. Above him is the tubular
steel chandelier Malcolm installed a month ago. Beneath him is a gleaming
black wood floor. The apartment—still impossible in its vastness and

possibilities and potential—is silent, and his.
He points his toes toward the bottom of the bed and then flexes them
toward his shins: nothing. He shifts his back against the mattress: nothing.
He draws his knees toward his chest: nothing. Nothing hurts, nothing even
threatens to hurt: his body is his again, something that will perform for him
whatever he can imagine, without complaint or sabotage. He closes his
eyes, not because he’s tired but because it is a perfect moment, and he

knows how to enjoy them.
These moments never last for long—sometimes, all he has to do is sit up,
and he will be reminded, as if slapped across the face, that his body owns
him, not the other way around—but in recent years, as things have gotten
worse, he has worked very hard to give up the idea that he will ever
improve, and has instead tried to concentrate on and be grateful for the

minutes of reprieve, whenever and wherever his body chooses to bestow
them. Finally he sits, slowly, and then stands, just as slowly. And still, he
feels wonderful. A good day, he decides, and walks to the bathroom, past
the wheelchair that sulks, a sullen ogre, in a corner of his bedroom.
He gets ready and then sits down with some papers from the office to
wait. Generally, he spends most of Saturday at work—that at least hasn’t
changed from the days he used to take his walks: oh, his walks! Was that