Page 442 - A Little Life: A Novel

your shirt on.”
He looked at Willem, who took a breath. “At the hospital,” he said.
“They were changing your dressings, and giving you a bath.”

His eyes turned hot, and he looked back up at the ceiling. “How much
did you see?” he asked.
“I didn’t see everything,” Willem reassured him. “But I know you have
scars on your back. And I’ve seen your arms before.” Willem waited, and
then, when he didn’t say anything, sighed. “Jude, I promise you it’s not
what you think it is.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to be disgusted by me,” he was finally able to

say. Caleb’s words floated back to him: You really are deformed; you really
are. “I don’t suppose I could just never take my clothes off at all, right?” he
asked, trying to laugh, to turn it into a joke.
“Well, no,” Willem said. “Because I think—although it’s not going to
feel like it, initially—it’ll be a good thing for you, Judy.”
And so the next night, he did it. As soon as Willem came to bed, he

undressed quickly, under the covers, and then flung the blanket away and
rolled onto his side, so his back was facing Willem. He kept his eyes shut
the entire time, but when he felt Willem place his palm on his back, just
between his shoulder blades, he began to cry, savagely, the kind of bitter,
angry weeping he hadn’t done in years, tucking into himself with shame. He
kept remembering the night with Caleb, the last time he had been so
exposed, the last time he had cried this hard, and he knew that Willem

would only understand part of the reason he was so upset, that he didn’t
know that the shame of this very moment—of being naked, of being at
another’s mercy—was almost as great as his shame for what he had
revealed. He heard, more from the tone than the words themselves, that
Willem was being kind to him, that he was dismayed and was trying to
make him feel better, but he was so distraught that he couldn’t even

comprehend what Willem was saying. He tried to get out of the bed so he
could go to the bathroom and cut himself, but Willem caught him and held
him so tightly that he couldn’t move, and eventually he somehow calmed
himself.
When he woke the following morning—late: it was a Sunday—Willem
was staring at him. He looked tired. “How are you?” he asked.
The night returned to him. “Willem,” he said, “I’m so, so sorry. I’m so

sorry. I don’t know what happened.” He realized, then, that he still wasn’t