Page 553 - A Little Life: A Novel

used for India or the Henry Youngs? And so they had chosen another, more
familiar form of relationship, one that hadn’t worked. But now they were
inventing their own type of relationship, one that wasn’t officially

recognized by history or immortalized in poetry or song, but which felt
truer and less constraining.
He didn’t, however, mention his growing skepticism about therapy to
Jude, because some part of him did still believe in it for people who were
truly ill, and Jude—he was finally able to admit to himself—was truly ill.
He knew that Jude hated going to the therapist; after the first few sessions
he had come home so quiet, so withdrawn, that Willem had to remind

himself that he was making Jude go for his own good.
Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. “How’s it been with Dr.
Loehmann?” he asked one night about a month after Jude had begun.
Jude sighed. “Willem,” he said, “how much longer do you want me to
go?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

Jude had studied him. “So you were thinking I’d go forever,” he said.
“Well,” he said. (He actually had been thinking that.) “Is it really so
awful?” He paused. “Is it Loehmann? Should we get you someone else?”
“No, it’s not Loehmann,” Jude said. “It’s the process itself.”
He sighed, too. “Look,” he said. “I know this is hard for you. I know it is.
But—give it a year, Jude, okay? A year. And try hard. And then we’ll see.”
Jude had promised.

And then in the spring he had been away, filming, and he and Jude had
been talking one night when Jude said, “Willem, in the interest of full
disclosure, I have something I have to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said, gripping the phone tighter. He had been in London,
shooting Henry & Edith. He was playing—twelve years too early and sixty
pounds too thin, Kit pointed out, but who was counting?—Henry James, at

the beginning of his friendship with Edith Wharton. The film was actually
something of a road-trip movie, shot mostly in France and southern
England, and he was working his way through his final scenes.
“I’m not proud of this,” he heard Jude say. “But I’ve missed my last four
sessions with Dr. Loehmann. Or rather—I’ve been going, but not going.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, I go,” Jude said, “but then—then I sit outside in the car and read

through the session, and then when the session’s over, I drive back to the