Page 405 - A Little Life: A Novel

He could see Willem leaning back in his chair and staring at him, trying
to determine which to choose of the hundreds of questions that one friend
should be able to ask another and yet he had never been allowed to do.

Tears came to his eyes, then, for how lopsided he had let their friendship
become, and for how long Willem had stayed with him, year after year,
even when he had fled from him, even when he had asked him for help with
problems whose origins he wouldn’t reveal. In his new life, he promised
himself, he would be less demanding of his friends; he would be more
generous. Whatever they wanted, he would give them. If Willem wanted
information, he could have it, and it was up to him to figure out how to give

it to him. He would be hurt again and again—everyone was—but if he was
going to try, if he was going to be alive, he had to be tougher, he had to
prepare himself, he had to accept that this was part of the bargain of life
itself.
“Okay, I’ve got one,” Willem said, and he sat up straighter, readying
himself. “How did you get the scar on the back of your hand?”

He blinked, surprised. He wasn’t sure what the question was going to be,
but now that it had come, he was relieved. He rarely thought of the scar
these days, and now he looked at it, its taffeta gleam, and as he ran his
fingertips across it, he thought of how this scar led to so many other
problems, and then to Brother Luke, and then to the home, and to
Philadelphia, to all of it.
But what in life wasn’t connected to some greater, sadder story? All

Willem was asking for was this one story; he didn’t need to drag everything
else behind it, a huge ugly snarl of difficulties.
He thought about how he could start, and plotted what he’d say in his
head before he opened his mouth. Finally, he was ready. “I was always a
greedy kid,” he began, and across the table, he watched Willem lean
forward on his elbows, as for the first time in their friendship, he was the

listener, and he was being told a story.

He was ten, he was eleven. His hair grew long again, longer even than it
had been at the monastery. He grew taller, and Brother Luke took him to a
thrift store, where you could buy a sack of clothes and pay by the pound.
“Slow down!” Brother Luke would joke with him, pushing down on the top