Page 564 - A Little Life: A Novel

about him. The investigation had taken a month, but at its end, there was
nothing conclusive, or at least nothing that could conclusively identify him
as who he had been. It was only then that he allowed himself to relax, to

believe, finally, that Ana had been right, to accept that, for the most part, his
past had been erased so completely that it was as if it had never existed. The
people who knew the most about it, who had witnessed and made it—
Brother Luke; Dr. Traylor; even Ana—were dead, and the dead can speak to
no one. You’re safe, he would remind himself. And although he was, it
didn’t mean he wasn’t still cautious; it didn’t mean that he should want to
have his photograph in magazines and newspapers.

He accepted that this was what his life with Willem would be, of course,
but sometimes he wished it could be different, that he could be less
circumspect about claiming Willem in public the way Willem had claimed
him. In idle moments, he played the clip of Willem making his speech over
and over, feeling that same giddiness he had when Harold had first named
him as his son to another person. This has really happened, he had thought

at the time. This isn’t something I’ve made up. And now, the same delirium:
he really was Willem’s. He had said so himself.
In March, at the end of awards season, he and Richard had thrown
Willem a party at Greene Street. A large shipment of carved-teak doorways
and benches had just been moved out of the fifth floor, and Richard had
strung the ceiling with ropes of lights and had lined every wall with glass
jars containing candles. Richard’s studio manager had brought two of their

largest worktables upstairs, and he had called the caterers and a bartender.
They had invited everyone they could think of: all of their friends in
common, and all of Willem’s as well. Harold and Julia, James and Carey,
Laurence and Gillian, Lionel and Sinclair had come down from Boston; Kit
had come out from L.A., Carolina from Yountville, Phaedra and Citizen
from Paris, Willem’s friends Cressy and Susannah from London, Miguel

from Madrid. He made himself stand and walk through that party, at which
people he knew only from Willem’s stories—directors and actors and
playwrights—approached him and said they’d been hearing about him for
years, and that it was so nice to finally meet him, that they’d been thinking
that Willem had invented him, and although he had laughed, he had been
sad as well, as if he should have ignored his fears and involved himself
more in Willem’s life.