A Little Life (48 page)

This is the last time he will see Willem for what will likely be more than six months. On Tuesday, he leaves for Cyprus to begin work on
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
; he will play Odysseus in both. The two films will be shot consecutively and released consecutively, but they will have the same cast and the same director, too. The shoot will take him all across southern Europe and northern Africa before moving to Australia, where some of the battle scenes are being shot, and because the pace is so intense and the distances he has to travel so far, it’s unclear whether he’ll have much time, if any, to come home on breaks. It is the
most elaborate and ambitious shoot Willem has been on, and he is nervous. “It’s going to be incredible, Willem,” he reassures him.

“Or an incredible disaster,” Willem says. He isn’t glum, he never is, but he can tell Willem is anxious, and eager to do well, and worried that he will somehow disappoint. But he is worried before every film, and yet—as he reminds Willem—every one has turned out fine, better than fine. However, he thinks, this is one of the reasons that Willem will always have work, and good work: because he does take it seriously, because he does feel so responsible.

He, though, is dreading the next six months, especially because Willem has been so present for the last year and a half. First he was shooting a small project, one based in Brooklyn, that lasted just a few weeks. And then he was in a play, a production called
The Maldivian Dodo
, about two brothers, both ornithologists, one of whom is slowly tipping into an uncategorizable madness. The two of them had a late dinner every Thursday night for the entire run of the play, which he saw—as he has with all of Willem’s plays—multiple times. On his third viewing, he spotted JB with Oliver, just a few rows ahead of him but on the left side of the theater, and throughout the show he kept glancing over at JB to see if he was laughing at or concentrating on the same lines, aware that this was the first of Willem’s productions that the three of them hadn’t seen together, as a group, at least once.

“So, listen,” Willem says as they move down Fifth Avenue, which is empty of people, just bright-lit windows and stray bits of garbage twirling in the light, soft breeze—plastic bags, puffed up with air into jellyfish, and twists of newspaper—“I told Robin I’d talk to you about something.”

He waits. He has been conscious of not making the same mistake with Robin and Willem that he made with Philippa and Willem—when Willem asks him to accompany them anywhere, he makes sure that he’s cleared it with Robin first (finally Willem had told him to stop asking, that Robin knew how much he meant to him and she was fine with it, and if she wasn’t fine with it, she’d have to get fine with it), and he has tried to present himself to Robin as someone independent and not likely to move in with them when he’s old. (He’s not sure exactly how to communicate this message, however, and so is therefore unsure if he’s been successful or not.) But he likes Robin—she’s a classics professor at Columbia who was hired to serve as a consultant on the films
two years ago, and she has a spiky sense of humor that reminds him of JB, somehow.

“Okay,” says Willem, and takes a deep breath, and he steadies himself. Oh no, he thinks. “Do you remember Robin’s friend Clara?”

“Sure,” he says. “The one I met at Clementine.”

“Yes!” says Willem, triumphantly. “That’s her!”

“God, Willem, give me some credit; it was just last week.”

“I know, I know. Well, anyway, here’s the thing—she’s interested in you.”

He is perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“She asked Robin if you were single.” He pauses. “I told her I didn’t think you were interested in seeing anyone, but I’d ask. So. I’m asking.”

The idea is so preposterous that it takes him a while to understand what Willem’s saying, and when he does, he stops, and laughs, embarrassed and disbelieving. “You’ve got to be kidding, Willem,” he says. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Why is it ridiculous?” asks Willem, suddenly serious. “Jude, why?”

“Willem,” he says, recovering himself. “It’s very flattering. But—” He winces and laughs again. “It’s absurd.”

“What is?” Willem says, and he can feel the conversation turn. “That someone should be attracted to you? This isn’t the first time this has happened, you know. You just can’t see it because you won’t let yourself.”

He shakes his head. “Let’s talk about something else, Willem.”

“No,” says Willem. “You’re not getting out of this one, Jude. Why is it ridiculous? Why is it absurd?”

He is suddenly so uncomfortable that he actually does stop, right on the corner of Fifth and Forty-fifth, and starts scanning the avenue for a cab. But of course, there are no cabs.

As he considers how to respond, he thinks back to a time a few days after that night in JB’s apartment, when he had asked Willem if JB had been correct, at least in some part:
Did
Willem resent him? Did he not tell them enough?

Willem had been silent for such a long time that he knew the answer even before he heard it. “Look, Jude,” Willem had said, slowly, “JB was—JB was out of his mind. I could never be sick of you. You don’t
owe
me your secrets.” He paused. “But, yes, I do wish you’d share more
of yourself with me. Not so I could have the information but so, maybe, I could be of some help.” He stopped and looked at him. “That’s all.”

Since then, he has tried to tell Willem more things. But there are so many topics that he has never discussed with anyone since Ana, now twenty-five years ago, that he finds he literally doesn’t have the language to do so. His past, his fears, what was done to him, what he has done to himself—they are subjects that can only be discussed in tongues he doesn’t speak: Farsi, Urdu, Mandarin, Portuguese. Once, he tried to write some things down, thinking that it might be easier, but it wasn’t—he is unclear how to explain himself to himself.

“You’ll find your own way to discuss what happened to you,” he remembers Ana saying. “You’ll have to, if you ever want to be close to anyone.” He wishes, as he often does, that he had let her talk to him, that he had let her teach him how to do it. His silence had begun as something protective, but over the years it has transformed into something near oppressive, something that manages him rather than the other way around. Now he cannot find a way out of it, even when he wants to. He imagines he is floating in a small bubble of water, encased on all sides by walls and ceilings and floors of ice, all many feet thick. He knows there is a way out, but he is unequipped; he has no tools to begin his work, and his hands scrabble uselessly against the ice’s slick. He had thought that by not saying who he was, he was making himself more palatable, less strange. But now, what he doesn’t say makes him stranger, an object of pity and even suspicion.

“Jude?” Willem prompts him. “Why is it absurd?”

He shakes his head. “It just is.” He starts walking again.

For a block, they say nothing. Then Willem asks, “Jude, do you ever want to be with someone?”

“I never thought I would.”

“But that’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know, Willem,” he says, unable to look at Willem’s face. “I guess I just don’t think that sort of thing is for someone like me.”

“What does that mean?”

He shakes his head again, not saying anything, but Willem persists. “Because you have some health problems? Is that why?”

Health problems
, says something sour and sardonic inside him.
Now
, that’s
a euphemism
. But he doesn’t say this out loud. “Willem,”
he pleads. “I’m begging you to stop talking about this. We’ve had such a good night. It’s our last night, and then I’m not going to see you. Can we please change the subject? Please?”

Willem doesn’t say anything for another block, and he thinks the moment has passed, but then Willem says, “You know, when we first started going out, Robin asked me whether you were gay or straight and I had to tell her I didn’t know.” He pauses. “She was shocked. She kept saying, ‘This is your best friend since you guys were teenagers and you don’t know?’ Philippa used to ask me about you as well. And I’d tell her the same thing I told Robin: that you’re a private person and I’ve always tried to respect your privacy.

“But I guess this is the kind of stuff I wish you’d tell me, Jude. Not so I can do anything with the information, but just because it gives me a better sense of who you are. I mean, maybe you’re neither. Maybe you’re both. Maybe you’re just not interested. It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

He doesn’t, he can’t say anything in response, and they walk another two blocks: Thirty-eighth Street, Thirty-seventh Street. He is conscious of his right foot dragging against the pavement the way it does when he is tired or dispirited, too tired or dispirited to make a greater effort, and is grateful that Willem is on his left, and therefore less likely to notice it.

“I worry sometimes that you’ve decided to convince yourself that you’re somehow unattractive or unlovable, and that you’ve decided that certain experiences are off-limits for you. But they’re not, Jude: anyone would be lucky to be with you,” says Willem a block later. Enough of this, he thinks; he can tell by Willem’s tone that he is building up to a longer speech and he is now actively anxious, his heart beating a funny rhythm.

“Willem,” he says, turning to him. “I think I’d better take a taxi after all; I’m getting tired—I’d better get to bed.”

“Jude, come on,” says Willem, with enough impatience in his voice that he flinches. “Look, I’m sorry. But really, Jude. You can’t just
leave
when I’m trying to talk to you about something important.”

This stops him. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry. And I’m grateful, Willem, I really am. But this is just too difficult for me to discuss.”

“
Everything’s
too difficult for you to discuss,” says Willem, and he flinches again. Willem sighs. “I’m sorry. I always keep thinking that someday I’m going to talk to you, really talk to you, and then I never do,
because I’m afraid you’re going to shut down and then you won’t talk to me at all.” They are silent, and he is chastened, because he knows Willem is right—that is exactly what he’d do. A few years ago, Willem had tried to talk to him about his cutting. They had been walking then too, and after a certain point the conversation had become so intolerable that he had hailed a cab and frantically pulled himself in, leaving Willem standing on the sidewalk, calling his name in disbelief; he had cursed himself even as the car sped south. Willem had been furious; he had apologized; they had made up. But Willem has never initiated that conversation again, and neither has he. “But tell me this, Jude: Are you ever lonely?”

“No,” he says, finally. A couple walks by, laughing, and he thinks of the beginning of their walk, when they too were laughing. How has he managed to ruin this night, the last time he will see Willem for months? “You don’t need to worry about me, Willem. I’ll always be fine. I’ll always be able to take care of myself.”

And then Willem sighs, and sags, and looks so defeated that he feels a twist of guilt. But he is also relieved, because he senses that Willem doesn’t know how to continue the conversation, and he will soon be able to redirect him, and end the evening pleasantly, and escape. “You always say that.”

“Because it’s always true.”

There is a long, long silence. They are standing in front of a Korean barbeque restaurant, and the air is dense and fragrant with steam and smoke and roasting meat. “Can I go?” he asks finally, and Willem nods. He goes to the curb and raises his arm, and a cab glides to his side.

Willem opens the door for him and then, as he’s getting in, puts his arms around him and holds him, and he finally does the same. “I’m going to miss you,” Willem says into the back of his neck. “Are you going to take care of yourself while I’m gone?”

“Yes,” he says. “I promise.” He steps back and looks at him. “Until November, then.”

Willem makes a face that’s not quite a smile. “November,” he echoes.

In the cab, he finds he really is tired, and he leans his forehead against the greased window and closes his eyes. By the time he reaches home, he feels as leaden as a corpse, and in the apartment, he starts taking off his clothes—shoes, sweater, shirt, undershirt, pants—as soon
as he’s locked the door behind him, leaving them littering the floor in a trail as he makes his way to the bathroom. His hands tremor as he unsticks the bag from beneath the sink, and although he hadn’t thought he’d need to cut himself that night—nothing that day or early evening had indicated he might—he is almost ravenous for it now. He has long ago run out of blank skin on his forearms, and he now recuts over old cuts, using the edge of the razor to saw through the tough, webby scar tissue: when the new cuts heal, they do so in warty furrows, and he is disgusted and dismayed and fascinated all at once by how severely he has deformed himself. Lately he has begun using the cream that Andy gave him for his back on his arms, and he thinks it helps, a bit: the skin feels looser, the scars a little softer and more supple.

The shower area Malcolm has created in this bathroom is enormous, so large he now sits within it when he’s cutting, his legs stretched out before him, and after he’s done, he’s careful to wash away the blood because the floor is a great plain of marble, and as Malcolm has told him again and again, once you stain marble, there’s nothing that can be done. And then he is in bed, light-headed but not quite sleepy, staring at the dark, mercury-like gleam the chandelier makes in the shadowy room.

“I’m lonely,” he says aloud, and the silence of the apartment absorbs the words like blood soaking into cotton.

This loneliness is a recent discovery, and is different from the other lonelinesses he has experienced: it is not the childhood loneliness of not having parents; or of lying awake in a motel room with Brother Luke, trying not to move, not to rouse him, while the moon threw hard white stripes of light across the bed; or of the time he ran away from the home, the successful time, and spent the night wedged into the cleft of an oak tree’s buckling roots that spread open like a pair of legs, making himself as small as he could. He had thought he was lonely then, but now he realizes that what he was feeling was not loneliness but fear. But now he has nothing to fear. Now he has protected himself: he has this apartment with its triple-locked doors, and he has money. He has parents, he has friends. He will never again have to do anything he doesn’t want to for food, or transportation, or shelter, or escape.