Page 351 - A Little Life: A Novel

I was so stunned that I was angry—that hadn’t even occurred to me. I
was about to bark something back when I looked at him, at how he was
trying to be brave, and saw that he was terrified: He really did think this

was something I might want to do. He really would understand if I said I
did. He was expecting it. Later, I realized that in those years just after the
adoption, he was always wondering how permanent it was, always
wondering what he would eventually do that would make me disown him.
“I would never,” I said, as firmly as I could.
That night, I tried to talk to him. He was ashamed of what he did, I could
see that, but he genuinely couldn’t understand why I cared so much, why it

so upset you and me and Andy. “It’s not fatal,” he kept saying, as if that
were the concern, “I know how to control it.” He wouldn’t see a shrink, but
he couldn’t tell me why. He hated doing it, I could tell, but he also couldn’t
conceive of a life without it. “I need it,” he kept saying. “I need it. It makes
things right.” But surely, I told him, there was a time in your life when you
didn’t have it?, and he shook his head. “I need it,” he repeated. “It helps me,

Harold, you have to believe me on this one.”
“Why do you need it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It helps me control my life,” he said, finally.
At the end, there was nothing more I could say. “I’m keeping this,” I
said, holding the bag up, and he winced, and nodded. “Jude,” I said, and he
looked back at me. “If I throw this away, are you going to make another
one?”

He was very quiet, then, looking at his plate. “Yes,” he said.
I threw it out anyway, of course, stuffing it deep into a garbage bag that I
carried to the Dumpster at the end of the road. We cleaned the kitchen in
silence—we were both exhausted, and neither of us had eaten anything—
and then he went to bed, and I did as well. In those days I was still trying to
be respectful of his personal space, or I’d have grabbed him and held him,

but I didn’t.
But as I was lying awake in bed, I thought of him, his long fingers
craving the slice of the razor between them, and went downstairs to the
kitchen. I got the big mixing bowl from the drawer beneath the oven, and
began loading it with everything sharp I could find: knives and scissors and
corkscrews and lobster picks. And then I took it with me to the living room,
where I sat in my chair, the one facing the sea, clasping the bowl in my

arms.