Page 396 - A Little Life: A Novel

He thought about this. “So if my attempt had been less serious, I could
have gone home earlier?” It seemed too logical to be an effective policy.
The doctor smiled. “Probably,” he said. “But I’m not completely opposed

to letting you go home, Jude, although I think we have to put some
protective measures in place.” He stopped. “It troubles me, however, that
you’ve been so unwilling to discuss why you made the attempt in the first
place. Dr. Contractor—I’m sorry: Andy—tells me that you’ve always
resisted therapy, can you tell me why?” He said nothing, and neither did the
doctor. “Your father tells me that you were in an abusive relationship last
year, and that it’s had long-term reverberations,” said the doctor, and he felt

himself go cold. But he willed himself not to answer, and closed his eyes,
and finally he could hear Dr. Solomon get up to leave. “I’ll be back
tomorrow, Jude,” he said as he left.
Eventually, once it was clear that he wasn’t going to speak to any of them
and that he was in no state to hurt himself again, they let him go, with
stipulations: He was to be released into Julia and Harold’s care. It was

strongly recommended that he remain on a milder course of the drugs that
he’d been given in the hospital. It was very strongly recommended that he
see a therapist twice a week. He was to see Andy once a week. He was to
take a sabbatical from work, which had already been arranged. He agreed to
everything. He signed his name—the pen wobbly in his grip—on the
discharge papers, under Andy’s and Dr. Solomon’s and Harold’s.
Harold and Julia took him to Truro, where Willem was already waiting

for him. Every night he slept, extravagantly, and during the day he and
Willem walked slowly down the hill to the ocean. It was early October and
too cold to get into the water, but they would sit on the sand and look out at
the horizon line, and sometimes Willem would talk to him and sometimes
he wouldn’t. He dreamed that the sea had turned into a solid block of ice, its
waves frozen in mid-crest, and that Willem was at a far shore, beckoning to

him, and he was making his way slowly across its wide expanse to him, his
hands and face numb from the wind.
They ate dinner early, because he went to bed so early. The meals were
always something simple, easy to digest, and if there was meat, one of the
three of them would cut it up for him in advance so he wouldn’t have to try
to wield a knife. Harold poured him a glass of milk every dinner, as if he
was a child, and he drank it. He wasn’t allowed to leave the table until he