Page 76 - A Little Life: A Novel

punishments? But again (again!), he did nothing, and when he passed Jude
(feigning sleep or actually asleep?) on the sofa in the living room, he said
nothing, and the next day, he again said nothing, and the days unfurled

before him as clean as paper, and with each day he said nothing, and
nothing, and nothing.
And now there was this. If he had done something (what?) three years
ago, eight years ago, would this have happened? And what exactly was
this?
But this time he would say something, because this time he had proof.
This time, to let Jude slip away and evade him would mean that he himself

would be culpable if anything happened.
After he had resolved this, he felt the fatigue overwhelm him, felt it erase
the worry and anxiety and frustration of the night. It was the last day of the
year, and as he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, the last thing he
remembered feeling was surprise that he should be falling asleep so fast.

It was almost two in the afternoon when Willem finally woke, and the
first thing he remembered was his resolve from earlier that morning.

Certainly things had been realigned to discourage his sense of initiative:
Jude’s bed was clean. Jude was not in it. The bathroom, when he visited it,
smelled eggily of bleach. And at the card table, there was Jude himself,
stamping circles into dough with a stoicism that made Willem both annoyed
and relieved. If he was to confront Jude, it seemed, it would be without the
benefit of disarray, of evidence of disaster.
He slouched into the chair across from him. “What’re you doing?”

Jude didn’t look up. “Making more gougères,” he said, calmly. “One of
the batches I made yesterday isn’t quite right.”
“No one’s going to fucking care, Jude,” he said meanly, and then,
barreling helplessly forward, “We could just give them cheese sticks and
it’d be the same thing.”
Jude shrugged, and Willem felt his annoyance quicken into anger. Here

Jude sat after what was, he could now admit, a terrifying night, acting as if
nothing had happened, even as his bandage-wrapped hand lay uselessly on
the table. He was about to speak when Jude put down the water glass he’d
been using as a pastry cutter and looked at him. “I’m really sorry, Willem,”
he said, so softly that Willem almost couldn’t hear him. He saw Willem