Page 90 - A Little Life: A Novel

He had expected impatience from Mr. Baker, perhaps anger, even though
Felix was doing quantifiably better in school, and he was ready to defend
himself if he needed—Mr. Baker paid far more than he had anticipated, and

he had plans for the money he was earning there—but he was instead
nodded toward the chair in front of the desk.
“What do you think’s wrong with Felix?” Mr. Baker had demanded.
He hadn’t been expecting the question, so he had to think before he
answered. “I don’t think anything’s wrong with him, sir,” he’d said,
carefully. “I just think he’s not—” Happy, he nearly said. But what was
happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly

because it was so difficult to articulate? He couldn’t remember being a child
and being able to define happiness: there was only misery, or fear, and the
absence of misery or fear, and the latter state was all he had needed or
wanted. “I think he’s shy,” he finished.
Mr. Baker grunted (this was obviously not the answer he was looking
for). “But you like him, right?” he’d asked him, with such an odd,

vulnerable desperation that he experienced a sudden deep sadness, both for
Felix and for Mr. Baker. Was this what being a parent was like? Was this
what being a child with a parent was like? Such unhappinesses, such
disappointments, such expectations that would go unexpressed and unmet!
“Of course,” he had said, and Mr. Baker had sighed and given him his
check, which the maid usually handed to him on his way out.
The next week, Felix hadn’t wanted to play his assignment. He was more

listless than usual. “Shall we play something else?” he’d asked. Felix had
shrugged. He thought. “Do you want me to play something for you?” Felix
had shrugged again. But he did anyway, because it was a beautiful piano
and sometimes, as he watched Felix inch his fingers across its lovely
smooth keys, he longed to be alone with the instrument and let his hands
move over its surface as fast as he could.

He played Haydn, Sonata No. 50 in D Major, one of his favorite pieces
and so bright and likable that he thought it might cheer them both up. But
when he was finished, and there was only the quiet boy sitting next to him,
he was ashamed, both of the braggy, emphatic optimism of the Haydn and
of his own burst of self-indulgence.
“Felix,” he’d begun, and then stopped. Beside him, Felix waited. “What’s
wrong?”