Page 626 - A Little Life: A Novel

Now it is becoming difficult to breathe, but he keeps going. In the
“Boston” file, in the “New Haven” file, are reviews from the college
newspapers of plays Willem had been in; there is the story about JB’s Lee

Lozano–inspired performance art piece. There is, touchingly, the one
calculus exam on which Willem had made a B, an exam he had coached
him on for months.
And then he reaches into the drawer again, most of which is occupied not
by a hanging file but by a large, accordion-shaped one, the kind they use at
the firm. He hefts it out and sees that it is marked only with his name, and
slowly opens it.

Inside it is everything: every letter he had ever written Willem, every
substantial e-mail printed out. There are birthday cards he’d given Willem.
There are photographs of him, some of which he has never seen. There is
the Artforum issue with Jude with Cigarette on the cover. There is a card
from Harold written shortly after the adoption, thanking Willem for coming
and for the gift. There is an article about him winning a prize in law school,

which he certainly hadn’t sent Willem but someone clearly had. He hadn’t
needed to catalog his life after all—Willem had been doing it for him all
along.
But why had Willem cared about him so much? Why had he wanted to
spend so much time around him? He had never been able to understand this,
and now he never will.
I sometimes think I care more about your being alive than you do, he

remembers Willem saying, and he takes a long, shuddering breath.
On and on it goes, this detailing of his life, and when he looks in the sixth
drawer, there is another accordion file, the same as the first, marked “Jude
II,” and behind it, “Jude III” and “Jude IV.” But by this point he can no
longer look. He gently replaces the files, closes the drawers, relocks the
cabinets. He puts Willem’s and his parents’ letters into an envelope, and

then another envelope, for protection. He removes the plum branches,
wraps their cut ends in a plastic bag, dumps the water from their vase into
the sink, locks up the house, and drives home, the branches on the seat next
to him. Before he goes up to his apartment, he lets himself into Richard’s
studio, fills one of the empty coffee cans with water and inserts the
branches, leaves it on his worktable for him to find in the morning.
Then it is the end of March; he is at the office. A Friday night, or rather, a

Saturday morning. He turns away from his computer and looks out the