Page 657 - A Little Life: A Novel

angrier. There is one drawing of him that is very small, on a postcard-size
piece of paper, and when he examines it more closely, he sees that
something had been written on it, and then erased: “Dear Jude,” he makes

out, “please”—but there is nothing more after that word. He turns away, his
breathing quick, and sees the watercolor of a camellia bush that JB had sent
him when he was in the hospital, after he had tried to kill himself.
The next floor: “The Narcissist’s Guide to Self-Hatred.” This had been
JB’s least commercially successful show, and he can understand why—to
look at these works, their insistent anger and self-loathing, was to be both
awed and made almost unbearably uncomfortable. The Coon, one painting

was called; The Buffoon; The Bojangler; The Steppin Fetchit. In each, JB,
his skin shined and dark, his eyes bulging and yellowed, dances or howls or
cackles, his gums awful and huge and fish-flesh pink, while in the
background, Jackson and his friends emerge half formed from a gloom of
Goyan browns and grays, all crowing at him, clapping their hands and
pointing and laughing. The last painting in this series was called Even

Monkeys Get the Blues, and it was of JB wearing a pert red fez and a
shrunken red epauletted jacket, pantsless, hopping on one leg in an empty
warehouse. He lingers on this floor, staring at these paintings, blinking, his
throat shutting, and then slowly moves to the stairs a final time.
Then he is on the top floor, and here there are more people, and for a
while he stands to the side, watching JB talking to the curators and his
gallerist, laughing and gesturing. These galleries are hung, mostly, with

images from “Frog and Toad,” and he moves from each to each, not really
seeing them but rather remembering the experience of viewing them for the
first time, in JB’s studio, when he and Willem were new to each other, when
he felt as if he was growing new body parts—a second heart, a second brain
—to accommodate this excess of feeling, the wonder of his life.
He is staring at one of the paintings when JB finally sees him and comes

over, and he hugs JB tightly and congratulates him. “JB,” he says. “I’m so
proud of you.”
“Thanks, Judy,” JB says, smiling. “I’m proud of me too, goddammit.”
And then he stops smiling. “I wish they were here,” he says.
He shakes his head. “I do too,” he manages to say.
For a while they are silent. Then, “Come here,” JB says, and grabs his
hand and pulls him to the far side of the floor, past JB’s gallerist, who

waves at him, past a final crate of framed drawings that are being unboxed,