Page 28 - A Little Life: A Novel

his parents at all. Was this normal? Wasn’t there something just a bit
pathetic about it? He was twenty-seven, after all! Was this what happened
when you lived at home? Or was it just him? Surely this was the best

possible argument for moving out: so he’d somehow cease to be such a
child. At night, as beneath him his parents completed their routines, the
banging of the old pipes as they washed their faces and the sudden thunk
into silence as they turned down the living-room radiators better than any
clock at indicating that it was eleven, eleven thirty, midnight, he made lists
of what he needed to resolve, and fast, in the following year: his work (at a
standstill), his love life (nonexistent), his sexuality (unresolved), his future

(uncertain). The four items were always the same, although sometimes their
order of priority changed. Also consistent was his ability to precisely
diagnose their status, coupled with his utter inability to provide any
solutions.
The next morning he’d wake determined: today he was going to move
out and tell his parents to leave him alone. But when he’d get downstairs,

there would be his mother, making him breakfast (his father long gone for
work) and telling him that she was buying the tickets for their annual trip to
St. Barts today, and could he let her know how many days he wanted to join
them for? (His parents still paid for his vacations. He knew better than to
ever mention this to his friends.)
“Yes, Ma,” he’d say. And then he’d eat his breakfast and leave for the
day, stepping out into the world in which no one knew him, and in which he

could be anyone.