Page 655 - A Little Life: A Novel
P. 655

of stairs—he couldn’t help but see what his life too was and might have
                been. It was precisely these scenes he missed the most from his own life
                with Willem, the forgettable, in-between moments in which nothing seemed

                to be happening but whose absence was singularly unfillable.
                   Interspersing  the  portraits  were  still  lifes  of  the  objects  that  had  made
                JB’s parents’ lives together: two pillows on a bed, both slightly depressed as
                if  someone  had  dragged  the  back  of  a  spoon  through  a  bowl  of  clotted
                cream;  two  coffee  cups,  one’s  edge  faintly  pinked  with  lipstick;  a  single
                picture frame containing a photograph of a teenaged JB with his father: the
                only appearance JB made in these paintings. And seeing these images, he

                once  again  marveled  at  how  perfect  JB’s  understanding  was  of  a  life
                together,  of  his  life,  of  how  everything  in  his  apartment—Willem’s
                sweatpants,  still  slung  over  the  edge  of  the  laundry  hamper;  Willem’s
                toothbrush, still waiting in the glass on the bathroom sink; Willem’s watch,
                its  face  splintered  from  the  accident,  still  sitting  untouched  on  his
                nightstand—had become totemic, a series of runes only he could read. The

                table next to Willem’s side of the bed at Lantern House had become a sort
                of unintentional shrine to him: there was the mug he had last drunk from,
                and the black-framed glasses he’d recently started wearing, and the book he
                was reading, still splayed, facedown, in the position he’d left it.
                   “Oh, JB,” he had sighed, and although he had wanted to say something
                else,  he  couldn’t.  But  JB  had  thanked  him  anyway.  They  were  quieter
                around each other now, and he didn’t know if this was who JB had become

                or if this was who JB had become around him.
                   Now he knocks on the museum’s doors and is let in by one of JB’s studio
                assistants, who is waiting for him and who tells him that JB is overseeing
                the installation on the top floor, but says he should start on the sixth floor
                and work his way up to meet him, and so he does.
                   The galleries on this floor are dedicated to JB’s early works, including

                juvenilia; there is a whole grid of framed drawings from JB’s childhood,
                including a math test over which JB had drawn lovely little pencil portraits
                of,  presumably,  his  classmates:  eight-  and  nine-year-olds  bent  over  their
                desks, eating candy bars, feeding birds. He had neglected to solve any of
                the problems, and at the top of the page was a bright red “F,” along with a
                note: “Dear Mrs. Marion—you see what the problem is here. Please come
                see me. Sincerely, Jamie Greenberg. P.S. Your son is an immense talent.”

                He smiles looking at this, the first time he can feel himself smiling in a long
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