Page 507 - A Little Life: A Novel

continues. “But sometimes—sometimes I might not be able to control
myself.”
“I know,” he says. “I know you’re trying. I know how hard it is for you.”

Jude turns from him then, and Willem rolls over and wraps his arms
around him. “I just want you to understand if I make a mistake,” Jude says,
and his voice is muffled.
“Of course I will,” he says. “Jude—of course I will.” There is a long
silence, and he waits to see if Jude will say anything else. He is thin, with a
marathon runner’s long muscles, but in the past six months, he has become
thinner still, almost as thin as when he was released from the hospital, and

Willem holds him a little tighter. “You’ve lost more weight,” he tells him.
“Work,” Jude says, and they are quiet again.
“I think you should eat more,” he says. He had to gain weight to play
Turing, and although he’s lost some of it, he feels massive beside Jude,
something puffed and expansive. “Andy’s going to think I’m not doing a
good job taking care of you and he’s going to yell at me,” he adds, and Jude

makes a sound he thinks is a laugh.
The next morning, the day before Thanksgiving, they are both cheery—
they both like driving—and load their bag and the boxes of cookies and pies
and breads that Jude has baked for Harold and Julia into the car and set off
early, the car bouncing east over the cobble-stoned streets of SoHo, and
then whooshing up the FDR Drive, singing along to the Duets soundtrack.
Outside Worcester they stop at a gas station and Jude goes in to buy them

mints and water. He waits in the car, leafing through the paper, and when
Jude’s phone rings, he reaches over and sees who it is and answers it.
“Have you told Willem yet?” he hears Andy’s voice saying even before
he can say hello. “You have three more days after today, Jude, and then I’m
telling him myself. I mean it.”
“Andy?” he says, and there is a sudden, sharp silence.

“Willem,” Andy says. “Fuck.” In the background, he can hear a small
child’s delighted voice trill out—“Uncle Andy said a bad word!”—and then
Andy swears again, and he can hear a door sliding shut. “Why’re you
answering Jude’s phone?” Andy asks. “Where is he?”
“We’re driving up to Harold and Julia’s,” he says. “He’s getting water.”
On the other end, there is silence. “Tell me what, Andy?” he asks.
“Willem,” Andy says, and stops. “I can’t. I told him I’d let him do it.”