Page 484 - A Little Life: A Novel

lake and its own forest—three years ago, and for three years it had sat
empty. Malcolm had drawn plans, and Willem had approved them, but he
had never actually told Malcolm he could begin. But one morning, about

eighteen months ago, he had found Willem at the dining-room table,
looking at Malcolm’s drawings.
Willem held out his hand to him, not lifting his eyes from the papers, and
he took it and allowed Willem to pull him to his side. “I think we should do
this,” Willem said.
And so they had met with Malcolm again, and Malcolm had drawn new
plans: the original house had been two stories, a modernist saltbox, but the

new house was a single level and mostly glass. He had offered to pay for it,
but Willem had refused. They argued back and forth, Willem pointing out
that he wasn’t contributing anything toward the maintenance of Greene
Street, and he pointing out that he didn’t care. “Jude,” Willem said at last,
“we’ve never fought about money. Let’s not start now.” And he knew
Willem was right: their friendship had never been measured by money.

They had never talked about money when they hadn’t had any—he had
always considered whatever he earned Willem’s as well—and now that they
had it, he felt the same way.
Eight months ago, when Malcolm was breaking ground, he and Willem
had gone up to the property and had wandered around it. He had been
feeling unusually well that day, and had even allowed Willem to hold his
hand as they walked down the gentle hill that sloped from where the house

would sit, and then left, toward the forest that held the lake in its embrace.
The forest was denser than they had imagined, the ground so thick with
pine needles that their every footfall sank, as if the earth beneath them was
made of something rubbery and squashy and pumped half full of air. It was
difficult terrain for him, and he grasped Willem’s hand in earnest, but when
Willem asked him if he wanted to stop, he shook his head. About twenty

minutes later, when they were almost halfway around the lake, they came to
a clearing that looked like something out of a fairy tale, the sky above them
all dark green fir tops, the floor beneath them that same soft pelt of the
trees’ leavings. They stopped then, looking around them, quiet until Willem
said, “We should just build it here,” and he smiled, but inside him
something wrenched, a feeling like his entire nervous system was being
tugged out of his navel, because he was remembering that other forest he

had once thought he’d live in, and was realizing that he was to finally have