Page 519 - A Little Life: A Novel

adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often
you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.”
They’re silent. “So basically,” Jude says at last, “basically, you’re saying

I’m New Zealand.”
It takes him a second to realize Jude is joking, and when he does he
begins to laugh, unhingedly, with relief and sorrow, and he turns Jude
toward him and kisses him. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’re New Zealand.”
Then they are quiet again, and serious, but at least they are looking at
each other.
“Are you going to leave?” Jude asks, so quietly that Willem can barely

hear him.
He opens his mouth; shuts it. Oddly, even with everything he has thought
and not thought over the last day and night, he has not considered leaving,
and now he thinks about it. “No,” he says. And then, “I don’t think so,” and
he watches Jude shut his eyes and then open them, and nod. “Jude,” he
says, and the words come to his mouth as he says them, and as he speaks,

he knows he is doing the right thing, “I do think you need help—help I
don’t know how to give you.” He takes a breath. “I either want you to
voluntarily commit yourself, or I want you to start seeing Dr. Loehmann
twice a week.” He watches Jude for a long time; he can’t tell what he’s
thinking.
“And what if I don’t want to do either?” Jude asks. “Are you going to
leave?”

He shakes his head. “Jude, I love you,” he says. “But I can’t—I can’t
condone this kind of behavior. I won’t be able to stick around and watch
you do this to yourself if I thought you’d interpret my presence as some sort
of tacit approval. So. Yes. I guess I would.”
Again they are quiet, and Jude turns over and lies on his back. “If I tell
you what happened to me,” he begins, falteringly, “if I tell you everything I

can’t discuss—if I tell you, Willem, do I still have to go?”
He looks at him, shakes his head again. “Oh, Jude,” he says. “Yes. Yes,
you still have to. But I hope you’ll tell me anyway, I really do. Whatever it
is; whatever it is.”
They are quiet once more, and this time, their quiet turns to sleep, and the
two of them fit into each other and sleep and sleep until Willem hears
Jude’s voice speaking to him, and then he wakes, and he listens as Jude

talks. It will take hours, because Jude is sometimes unable to continue, and