Page 373 - A Little Life: A Novel

dreaded it, because Caleb had reminded him how inhuman he was, how
deficient, how disgusting, and he was too embarrassed to be around other
people, normal people. He thought of his days the way he thought of taking

steps when he was experiencing the pain and numbness in his feet: he
would get through one, and then the next, and then the next, and eventually
things would get better. Eventually he would learn how to fold those
months into his life and accept them and keep going. He always had.
The court case came, and he won. It was a huge win, Lucien kept telling
him, and he knew it was, but mostly he felt panic: Now what was he going
to do? He had a new client, a bank, but the work there was of the long,

tedious, fact-gathering sort, not the kind of frantic work that required
twenty-hour days. He would be at home, by himself, with nothing but the
Caleb incident to occupy his mind. Tremain congratulated him, and he
knew he should be happy, but when he asked the chairman for more work,
Tremain had laughed. “No, St. Francis,” he said. “You’re going on vacation.
That’s an order.”

He didn’t go on vacation. He promised first Lucien, and then Tremain, he
would, but that he couldn’t at the moment. But it was as he had feared: he
would be at home, making himself dinner, or at a movie with Willem, and
suddenly a scene from his months with Caleb would appear. And then there
would be a scene from the home, and a scene from his years with Brother
Luke, and then a scene from his months with Dr. Traylor, and then a scene
from the injury, the headlights’ white glare, his head jerking to the side.

And then his mind would fill with images, banshees demanding his
attention, snatching and tearing at him with their long, needley fingers.
Caleb had unleashed something within him, and he was unable to coax the
beasts back into their dungeon—he was made aware of how much time he
actually spent controlling his memories, how much concentration it took,
how fragile his command over them had been all along.

“Are you all right?” Willem asked him one night. They had seen a play,
which he had barely registered, and then had gone out to dinner, where he
had half listened to Willem, hoping he was making the correct responses as
he moved his food around his plate and tried to act normal.
“Yes,” he said.
Things were getting worse; he knew it and didn’t know how to make it
better. It was eight months after the incident, and every day he thought

about it more, not less. He felt sometimes as if his months with Caleb were