Page 77 - A Little Life: A Novel

looking at his hand and pulled it into his lap. “I should never—” He paused.
“I’m sorry. Don’t be mad at me.”
His anger dissolved. “Jude,” he asked, “what were you doing?”

“Not what you think. I promise you, Willem.”
Years later, Willem would recount this conversation—its contours, if not
its actual, literal content—for Malcolm as proof of his own incompetence,
his own failure. How might things have been different if he spoke only one
sentence? And that sentence could have been “Jude, are you trying to kill
yourself?” or “Jude, you need to tell me what’s going on,” or “Jude, why do
you do this to yourself?” Any of those would have been acceptable; any of

those would have led to a larger conversation that would have been
reparative, or at the very least preventative.
Wouldn’t it?
But there, in the moment, he instead only mumbled, “Okay.”
They sat in silence for what felt like a long time, listening to the murmur
of one of their neighbors’ televisions, and it was only much later that

Willem would wonder whether Jude had been saddened or relieved that he
had been so readily believed.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. And he wasn’t. Or, at least, mad was not the
word he would have chosen, but he couldn’t then articulate what word
would be correct. “But we obviously have to cancel the party.”
At this, Jude looked alarmed. “Why?”

“Why? Are you kidding me?”
“Willem,” Jude said, adopting what Willem thought of as his litigatory
tone, “we can’t cancel. People are going to be showing up in seven hours—
less. And we really have no clue who JB’s invited. They’re going to show
up anyway, even if we let everyone else know. And besides”—he inhaled
sharply, as if he’d had a lung infection and was trying to prove it had

resolved itself—“I’m perfectly fine. It’ll be more difficult if we cancel than
if we just go forward.”
Oh, how and why did he always listen to Jude? But he did, once again,
and soon it was eight, and the windows were once again open, and the
kitchen was once again hot with pastry—as if the previous night had never
happened, as if those hours had been an illusion—and Malcolm and JB
were arriving. Willem stood in the door of their bedroom, buttoning up his