Page 464 - A Little Life: A Novel

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THE FIRST TIME Willem left him—this was some twenty months ago, two
Januarys ago—everything went wrong. Within two weeks of Willem’s
departure to Texas to begin filming Duets, he’d had three episodes with his
back (including one at the office, and another, this one at home, that had
lasted a full two hours). The pain in his feet returned. A cut (from what, he
had no idea) opened up on his right calf. And yet it had all been fine.
“You’re so damn cheerful about all of this,” Andy had said, when he was

forced to make his second appointment with him in a week. “I’m
suspicious.”
“Oh, well,” he’d said, even though he could hardly speak because the
pain was so intense. “It happens, right?” That night, though, as he lay in
bed, he thanked his body for keeping itself in check, for controlling itself

for so long. For those months he secretly thought of as his and Willem’s
courtship, he hadn’t used his wheelchair once. His episodes had been
seldom, and brief, and never in Willem’s presence. He knew it was silly—
Willem knew what was wrong with him, he had seen him at his worst—but
he was grateful that as the two of them were beginning to view each other
in a different way, he had been allowed a period of reinvention, a spell of
being able to impersonate an able-bodied person. So when he was returned

to his normal state, he didn’t tell Willem about what had been happening to
him—he was so bored by the subject that he couldn’t imagine anyone else
wouldn’t be as well—and by the time Willem came home in March, he was
more or less better, walking again, the wound once again mostly under
control.
Since that first time, Willem has been gone for extended periods four

additional times—twice for shooting, twice for publicity tours—and each
time, sometimes the very day Willem left, his body had broken itself
somehow. But he had appreciated its sense of timing, its courtesy: it was as
if his body, before his mind, had decided for him that he should pursue this
relationship, and had done its part by removing as many obstacles and
embarrassments as possible.