Page 568 - A Little Life: A Novel

guilty about his eighteen months with Dr. Loehmann, in which he had
revealed almost nothing, had spent most of his time childishly protecting
his privacy, trying not to say anything, wasting both his and the doctor’s

time. But one of the few subjects they had discussed was his legs—not how
they had been damaged but the logistics of caring for them—and in his final
session, Dr. Loehmann had asked what would happen if he didn’t get better.
“Amputation, I guess,” he had said, trying to sound casual, although of
course he wasn’t casual, and there was nothing to guess: he knew that as
surely as he would someday die, he would do so without his legs. He just
had to hope it wouldn’t be soon. Please, he would sometimes beg his legs

as he lay in the glass chamber. Please. Give me just a few more years. Give
me another decade. Let me get through my forties, my fifties, intact. I’ll take
care of you, I promise.
By late summer, his new bout of sicknesses, of treatments had become so
commonplace to him that he hadn’t realized how affected Willem might be
by them. Early that August, they were discussing what to do (something?

nothing?) for Willem’s forty-ninth birthday, and Willem had said he thought
they should just do something low-key this year.
“Well, we’ll do something big next year, for your fiftieth,” he said. “If
I’m still alive by then, that is,” and it wasn’t until he heard Willem’s silence
that he had looked up from the stove and seen Willem’s expression and had
recognized his mistake. “Willem, I’m sorry,” he said, turning off the burner
and making his slow, painful way over to him. “I’m sorry.”

“You can’t joke like that, Jude,” Willem said, and he put his arms around
him.
“I know,” he said. “Forgive me. I was being stupid. Of course I’m going
to be around next year.”
“And for many years to come.”
“And for many years to come.”

Now it is September, and he is lying on the examining table in Andy’s
office, his wounds uncovered and still split open like pomegranates, and at
nights he is lying in bed next to Willem. He is often conscious of the
unlikeliness of their relationship, and often guilty at his unwillingness to
fulfill one of the core duties of couplehood. Every once in a while, he thinks
he will try again, and then, just as he is trying to say the words to Willem,
he stops, and another opportunity quietly slides away. But his guilt, as great

as it is, cannot overwhelm his sense of relief, nor his sense of gratitude: that