Page 547 - A Little Life: A Novel

wraps his arms around Jude, who wakes and turns to him. “Willem,” he
says, “you’re home,” and Willem kisses him to cover the guilt and sorrow
he always feels when he hears the relief and happiness in Jude’s voice.

“Of course,” he says. He always comes home; he has never not. “I’m
sorry it’s so late.”
It is a hot night, humid and still, and yet he presses against Jude as if he is
trying to warm himself, threading their legs together. Tomorrow, he tells
himself, he will end it with Claudine.
They have never discussed it, but he knows Jude knows he is having sex
with other people. He has even given Willem his permission. This was after

that terrible Thanksgiving, when after years of obfuscation, Jude was
revealed to him completely, the shreds of cloud that had always obscured
him from view abruptly wiped away. For many days, he hadn’t known what
to do (other than run back into therapy himself; he had called his shrink the
day after Jude had made his first appointment with Dr. Loehmann), and
whenever he looked at Jude, scraps of his narrative would return to him,

and he would study him covertly, wondering how he had gotten from where
he had been to where he was, wondering how he had become the person he
had when everything in his life had argued that he shouldn’t be. The awe he
had felt for him, then, the despair and horror, was something one felt for
idols, not for other humans, at least no other humans he knew.
“I know how you feel, Willem,” Andy had said in one of their secret
conversations, “but he doesn’t want you to admire him; he wants you to see

him as he is. He wants you to tell him that his life, as inconceivable as it is,
is still a life.” He paused. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I do know,” he said.
In the first bleary days after Jude’s story, he could feel Jude being very
quiet around him, as if he was trying not to call attention to himself, as if he
didn’t want to remind Willem of what he now knew. One night a week or so

later, they were eating a muted dinner at the apartment, and Jude had said,
softly, “You can’t even look at me anymore.” He had looked up then and
had seen his pale, frightened face, and had dragged his chair close to Jude’s
and sat there, looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I’m going to say something
stupid.”
“Willem,” Jude said, and was quiet. “I think I turned out pretty normal,

all things considered, don’t you?” and Willem had heard the strain, and the