Page 475 - A Little Life: A Novel

bed in his long-sleeved T-shirt and Willem will say nothing, or when
Willem will begin interrogating him. He has explained to Willem so many
times that he needs it, that it helps him, that he is unable to stop, but Willem

cannot or will not comprehend him.
“Don’t you understand why this upsets me so much?” Willem asks him.
“No, Willem,” he says. “I know what I’m doing. You have to trust me.”
“I do trust you, Jude,” Willem says. “But trust is not the issue here. The
issue is you hurting yourself.” And then the conversation deadends itself.
Or there is the conversation that leads to Willem saying, “Jude, how
would you feel if I did this to myself?” and him saying, “It’s not the same

thing, Willem,” and Willem saying, “Why?” and him saying, “Because,
Willem—it’s you. You don’t deserve it,” and Willem saying, “And you do?”
and him being unable to answer, or at least not able to provide an answer
that Willem would find adequate.
About a month before the fight, they’d had a different fight. Willem had,
of course, noticed that he was cutting himself more, but he hadn’t known

why, only that he was, and one night, after he was certain Willem was
asleep, he was creeping toward the bathroom, when suddenly, Willem had
grabbed him hard around the wrist, and he had gasped from fright. “Jesus,
Willem,” he’d said. “You scared me.”
“Where are you going, Jude?” Willem had asked, his voice tense.
He’d tried to pull his arm free, but Willem’s grip was too strong. “I have
to go to the bathroom,” he said. “Let go, Willem, I’m serious.” They had

stared at each other in the dark until finally Willem had released him, and
then had gotten out of bed as well.
“Let’s go, then,” he’d said. “I’m going to watch you.”
They had quarreled, then, hissing at each other, each of them furious at
the other, each of them feeling betrayed, he accusing Willem of treating him
like a child, Willem accusing him of keeping secrets from him, each as

close as they had ever been to yelling at the other. It had ended with him
wrenching out of Willem’s grasp and trying to run toward his study so he
could lock himself in and cut himself with a pair of scissors, but in his panic
he had stumbled and fallen and split his lip, and Willem had hurried over
with a bag of ice and they had sat there on the living-room floor, halfway
between their bedroom and his study, their arms around each other,
apologizing.

“I can’t have you doing this to yourself,” Willem had said the next day.