Page 372 - A Little Life: A Novel

quiet and polite, which made him anxious. He examined his legs, he
counted his cuts, he asked all the questions he always did, he checked his
reflexes. And every time he got home, when he was emptying his pockets

of change, he found that Andy had slipped in a card for a doctor, a
psychologist named Sam Loehmann, and on it had written FIRST VISIT’S
ON ME. There was always one of these cards, each time with a different
note: DO IT FOR ME, JUDE, or ONE TIME. THAT’S IT. They were like
annoying fortune cookies, and he always threw them away. He was touched
by the gesture but also weary of it, of its pointlessness; it was the same
feeling he had whenever he had to replace the bag under the sink after

Harold’s visits. He’d go to the corner of his closet where he kept a box
filled with hundreds of alcohol wipes and bandages, stacks and stacks of
gauze, and dozens of packets of razors, and make a new bag, and tape it
back in its proper place. People had always decided how his body would be
used, and although he knew that Harold and Andy were trying to help him,
the childish, obdurate part of him resisted: he would decide. He had such

little control of his body anyway—how could they begrudge him this?
He told himself he was fine, that he had recovered, that he had regained
his equilibrium, but really, he knew something was wrong, that he had been
changed, that he was slipping. Willem was home, and even though he
hadn’t been there to witness what had happened, even though he didn’t
know about Caleb, about his humiliation—he had made certain of this,
telling Harold and Julia and Andy that he’d never speak to them again if

they said anything to anyone—he was still somehow ashamed to be seen by
him. “Jude, I’m so sorry,” Willem had said when he had returned and seen
his cast. “Are you sure you’re okay?” But the cast was nothing, the cast was
the least shameful part, and for a minute, he had been tempted to tell
Willem the truth, to collapse against him the way he never had and start
crying, to confess everything to Willem and ask him to make him feel

better, to tell him that he still loved him in spite of who he was. But he
didn’t, of course. He had already written Willem a long e-mail full of
elaborate lies detailing his car accident, and the first night they were
reunited, they had stayed up so late talking about everything but that e-mail
that Willem had slept over, the two of them falling asleep on the living-
room sofa.
But he kept his life moving along. He got up, he went to work. He

simultaneously craved company, so he wouldn’t think of Caleb, and