Page 51 - A Little Life: A Novel
P. 51

the idea of putting the money directly into Malcolm’s wallet, and so every
                two weeks after he’d cashed his check from the restaurant where he worked
                on the weekends, he’d stuff two or three twenties into it while Malcolm was

                asleep. He never quite knew if Malcolm noticed—he spent it so quickly,
                and  often  on  the  three  of  them—but  Willem  took  some  satisfaction  and
                pride in doing it.
                   In  the  meantime,  though,  there  was  Hemming.  He  was  glad  he  went
                home (his mother had only sighed when he told her he was coming), and
                glad to see Hemming, although alarmed by how thin he had become, how
                he groaned and cried as the nurses prodded the area around his sutures; he’d

                had to grab the sides of his chair to keep himself from shouting at them. At
                nights,  he  and  his  parents  would  have  silent  meals;  he  could  almost  feel
                them pulling away, as if they were unpeeling themselves from their lives as
                parents  of  two  children  and  readying  themselves  to  drift  toward  a  new
                identity elsewhere.
                   On his third night, he took the keys to the truck to drive to the hospital.

                Back east, it was early spring, but here the dark air seemed to glitter with
                frost, and in the morning the grass was capped with a thin skin of crystals.
                   His father came onto the porch as he was walking down the steps. “He’ll
                be asleep,” he said.
                   “I just thought I’d go,” Willem told him.
                   His  father  looked  at  him.  “Willem,”  he  said,  “he  won’t  know  whether
                you’re there or not.”

                   He felt his face go hot. “I know you don’t fucking care about him,” he
                snapped  at  him,  “but  I  do.”  It  was  the  first  time  he’d  ever  sworn  at  his
                father, and he was unable to move for a moment, fearful and half excited
                that his father might react, that they might have an argument. But his father
                just took a sip from his coffee and then turned and went inside, the screen
                door smacking softly shut behind him.

                   For the rest of his visit they were all the same as they always were; they
                went  in  shifts  to  sit  with  Hemming,  and  when  he  wasn’t  at  the  hospital,
                Willem helped his mother with the ledgers, or his father as he oversaw the
                reshodding  of  the  horses.  At  nights  he  returned  to  the  hospital  and  did
                schoolwork. He read aloud from The Decameron to Hemming, who stared
                at  the  ceiling  and  blinked,  and  struggled  through  his  calculus,  which  he
                finally  finished  with  the  unhappy  certainty  that  he  had  gotten  all  of  it

                wrong. The three of them had gotten used to Jude doing their calculus for
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