Page 319 - A Little Life: A Novel

you know? This is what I meant with my parents: it was always such a
succumbing to their every pain, their every twinge.
“So I think you should tough it out. I think if you can walk, you should. I

just don’t think you should get into this habit of babying yourself when
you’re capable of doing better.”
“Oh,” he says. “Right. I understand.” He feels a profound shame, as if he
has just asked for something filthy and illicit.
“I’m going to shower,” says Caleb, after a silence, and leaves.
For the rest of the day, he tries to move very little, and Caleb, as if not
wanting to find reason to get angry with him, doesn’t ask him to do

anything. Caleb makes lunch, which they both eat on the sofa, both working
on their computers. The kitchen and living room are one large sunlit space,
with full-length windows that open onto the lawn overlooking the beach,
and when Caleb is in the kitchen making dinner, he takes advantage of his
turned back to inch, wormlike, to the hallway bathroom. He wants to go to
the bedroom to get more aspirin out of his bag, but it’s too far, and he

instead waits in the doorway on his knees until Caleb turns toward the stove
again before crawling back to the sofa, where he has spent the entire day.
“Dinner,” Caleb announces, and he takes a breath and brings himself to
his feet, which are cinder blocks, they are so heavy and clunky, and,
watching them, begins to make his way to the table. It feels like it takes
minutes, hours, to walk to his chair, and at one point he looks up and sees
Caleb, his jaw moving, watching him with what looks like hate.

“Hurry up,” Caleb says.
They eat in silence. He can barely stand it. The scrape of the knife
against the plate: unbearable. The crunch of Caleb biting down,
unnecessarily hard, on a green bean: unbearable. The feel of food in his
mouth, all of it becoming a fleshy nameless beast: unbearable.
“Caleb,” he begins, very quietly, but Caleb doesn’t answer him, just

pushes back his chair and stands and goes to the sink.
“Bring me your plate,” Caleb says, and then watches him. He stands,
slowly, and begins his trek to the sink, eyeing each footfall before he begins
a new step.
He will wonder, later, if he forced the moment, if he could have in fact
made the twenty steps without falling had he just concentrated harder. But
that isn’t what happens. He moves his right foot just half a second before

his left one has landed, and he falls, and the plate falls before him, the china