Page 350 - A Little Life: A Novel

“This looks wonderful,” I told him. “Thank you for making it.” He
nodded. We both looked at our plates, at his lovely meal that neither of us
would eat.

“Jude,” I said, “I have to apologize. I’m really sorry—I never should
have run out on you like that.”
“It’s all right,” he said, “I understand.”
“No,” I told him. “It was wrong of me. I was just so upset.”
He looked back down. “Do you know why I was upset?” I asked him.
“Because,” he began, “because I brought that into your house.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not why. Jude, this house isn’t just my house, or

Julia’s: it’s yours, too. I want you to feel you can bring anything you’d have
at home here.
“I’m upset because you’re doing this terrible thing to yourself.” He didn’t
look up. “Do your friends know you do this? Does Andy?”
He nodded, slightly. “Willem knows,” he said, in a low voice. “And
Andy.”

“And what does Andy say about this?” I asked, thinking, Goddammit,
Andy.
“He says—he says I should see a therapist.”
“And have you?” He shook his head, and I felt rage build up in me again.
“Why not?” I asked him, but he didn’t say anything. “Is there a bag like this
in Cambridge?” I said, and after a silence, he looked up at me and nodded
again.

“Jude,” I said, “why do you do this to yourself?”
For a long time, he was quiet, and I was quiet too. I listened to the sea.
Finally, he said, “A few reasons.”
“Like what?”
“Sometimes it’s because I feel so awful, or ashamed, and I need to make
physical what I feel,” he began, and glanced at me before looking down

again. “And sometimes it’s because I feel so many things and I need to feel
nothing at all—it helps clear them away. And sometimes it’s because I feel
happy, and I have to remind myself that I shouldn’t.”
“Why?” I asked him once I could speak again, but he only shook his head
and didn’t answer, and I too went silent.
He took a breath. “Look,” he said, suddenly, decisively, looking at me
directly, “if you want to dissolve the adoption, I’ll understand.”