A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

  “I’m not asking you to destroy them, JB,” he’d said, so furious and dizzied by JB’s bizarre logic and almost offensive intractability that he wanted to scream. “I’m asking you to apologize.”

  But JB couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and finally he had gotten up and left, and JB hadn’t tried to stop him.

  After that, he simply stopped speaking to JB. Willem had made his own approach, and the two of them (as Willem told him) had actually begun shouting at each other in the street, and then Willem, too, had stopped speaking to JB, and so from then on, they had to rely primarily on Malcolm for news of JB. Malcolm, typically noncommittal, had admitted to them that he thought JB was totally in the wrong, while at the same time suggesting that they were both being unrealistic: “You know he’s not going to apologize, Judy,” he said. “This is JB we’re talking about. You’re wasting your time.”

  “Am I being unreasonable?” he asked Willem after this conversation.

  “No,” Willem said, immediately. “It’s fucked up, Jude. He fucked up, and he needs to apologize.”

  The show sold out. Willem and the Girl was delivered to him at work, as was Willem and Jude, Lispenard Street, II, which Willem had bought. Jude, After Sickness (the title, when he learned it, had made him so newly angry and humiliated that for a moment he experienced what the saying “blind with rage” meant) was sold to a collector whose purchases were considered benedictions and predictive of future success: he only bought from artists’ debut shows, and almost every artist whose work he had bought had gone on to have a major career. Only the show’s centerpiece, Jude with Cigarette, remained unplaced, and this was due to a shockingly amateurish error, in which the director of the gallery had sold it to an important British collector and the owner of the gallery had sold it to the Museum of Modern Art.

  “So, perfect,” Willem said to Malcolm, knowing Malcolm would ferry his words back to JB. “JB should tell the gallery that he’s keeping the painting, and he should just give it to Jude.”

  “He can’t do that,” Malcolm said, as appalled as if Willem had suggested simply tossing the canvas into a trash can. “It’s MoMA.”

  “Who cares?” Willem asked. “If he’s that fucking good, he’ll have another shot at MoMA. But I’m telling you, Malcolm, this is really the only solution he has left if he wants to keep Jude as a friend.” He paused. “And me, too.”

  So Malcolm conveyed that message, and the prospect of losing Willem as a friend had been enough to make JB call Willem and demand a meeting, at which JB had cried and accused Willem of betraying him, and always taking Jude’s side, and obviously not giving a shit about his, JB’s, career, when he, JB, had always supported Willem’s.

  All of this had taken place over months, as spring turned into summer, and he and Willem had gone to Truro without JB (and without Malcolm, who told them he was afraid of leaving JB on his own), and JB had gone to the Irvines’ in Aquinnah over Memorial Day and they had gone over the Fourth of July, and he and Willem had taken the long-planned trip to Croatia and Turkey by themselves.

  And then it was fall, and by the time Willem and JB had their second meeting, Willem had suddenly and unexpectedly booked his first film role, playing the king in an adaptation of The Girl with the Silver Hands and was leaving to shoot in Sofia in January, and he had gotten a promotion at work and had been approached by a partner at Cromwell Thurman Grayson and Ross, one of the best corporate firms in the city, and was having to use the wheelchair Andy had gotten him that May more often than not, and Willem had broken up with his girlfriend of a year and was dating a costume designer named Philippa, and his former fellow law clerk, Kerrigan, had written a mass e-mail to everyone he had ever worked with in which he simultaneously came out and denounced conservatism, and Harold had been asking him who was coming over for Thanksgiving this year, and if he could stay a night after whoever he invited had left, because he and Julia needed to talk about something with him, and he had seen plays with Malcolm and gallery shows with Willem and had read novels that he would have argued about with JB, as the two of them were the novel-readers of the group: a whole list of things the four of them would have once picked over together that they now instead discussed in twos or threes. At first, it had been disorienting, after so many years of operating as a foursome, but he had gotten used to it, and although he missed JB—his witty self-involvement, the way he could see everything the world had to offer only as it might affect him—he also found himself unable to forgive him and, simultaneously, able to see his life without him.

  And now, he supposed, their fight was over, and the painting was his. Willem came down with him to the office that Saturday and he unwrapped it and leaned it against the wall and the two of them regarded it in silence, as if it were a rare and inert zoo animal. This was the painting that had been reproduced in the Times review and, later, the Artforum story, but it wasn’t until now, in the safety of his office, that he was able to truly appreciate it—if he could forget it was him, he could almost see how lovely an image it was, and why JB would have been attracted to it: for the strange person in it who looked so frightened and watchful, who was discernibly neither female nor male, whose clothes looked borrowed, who was mimicking the gestures and postures of adulthood while clearly understanding nothing of them. He no longer felt anything for that person, but not feeling anything for that person had been a conscious act of will, like turning away from someone in the street even though you saw them constantly, and pretending you couldn’t see them day after day until one day, you actually couldn’t—or so you could make yourself believe.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” he admitted to Willem, regretfully, because he didn’t want the painting, and yet felt guilty that Willem had axed JB out of his life on his behalf, and for something he knew he would never look at again.

  “Well,” said Willem, and there was a silence. “You could always give it to Harold; I’m sure he’d love it.” And he knew then that Willem had perhaps always known that he didn’t want the painting, and that it hadn’t mattered to him, that he hadn’t regretted choosing him over JB, that he didn’t blame him for having to make that decision.

  “I could,” he said slowly, although he knew he wouldn’t: Harold would indeed love it (he had when he had seen the show) and would hang it somewhere prominent, and whenever he went to visit him, he would have to look at it. “I’m sorry, Willem,” he said at last, “I’m sorry to drag you down here. I think I’ll leave it here until I figure out what to do.”

  “It’s okay,” Willem said, and the two of them wrapped it up again and replaced it under his desk.

  After Willem left, he turned on his phone and this time, he did write JB a message. “JB,” he began, “Thanks very much for the painting, and for your apology, both of which mean a lot.” He paused, thinking about what to say next. “I’ve missed you, and want to hear what’s been going on in your life,” he continued. “Call me when you have some time to hang out.” It was all true.

  And suddenly, he knew what he should do with the painting. He looked up the address for JB’s registrar and wrote her a note, thanking her for sending him Jude with Cigarette and telling her that he wanted to donate it to MoMA, and could she help facilitate the transaction?

  Later, he would look back on this episode as a sort of fulcrum, the hinge between a relationship that was one thing and then became something else: his friendship with JB, of course, but also his friendship with Willem. There had been periods in his twenties when he would look at his friends and feel such a pure, deep contentment that he would wish the world around them would simply cease, that none of them would have to move from that moment, when everything was in equilibrium and his affection for them was perfect. But, of course, that was never to be: a beat later, and everything shifted, and the moment quietly vanished.

  It would have been too melodramatic, too final, to say that after this JB was forever diminished for him. But it was true that for the first time, he was able to c
omprehend that the people he had grown to trust might someday betray him anyway, and that as disappointing as it might be, it was inevitable as well, and that life would keep propelling him steadily forward, because for everyone who might fail him in some way, there was at least one person who never would.

  It was his opinion (shared by Julia) that Harold had a tendency to make Thanksgiving more complicated than it needed to be. Every year since he’d first been invited to Harold and Julia’s for the holiday, Harold promised him—usually in early November, when he was still full of enthusiasm for the project—that this year he was going to blow his mind by upending the lamest of American culinary traditions. Harold always began with big ambitions: their first Thanksgiving together, nine years ago, when he was in his second year of law school, Harold had announced he was going to make duck à l’orange, with kumquats standing in for the oranges.

  But when he arrived at Harold’s house with the walnut cake he’d baked the night before, Julia was standing alone in the doorway to greet him. “Don’t mention the duck,” she whispered as she kissed him hello. In the kitchen, a harassed-looking Harold was lifting a large turkey out of the oven.

  “Don’t say a word,” Harold warned him.

  “What would I say?” he asked.

  This year, Harold asked how he felt about trout. “Trout stuffed with other stuff,” he added.

  “I like trout,” he’d answered, cautiously. “But you know, Harold, I actually like turkey.” They had a variation on this conversation every year, with Harold proposing various animals and proteins—steamed black-footed Chinese chicken, filet mignon, tofu with wood ear fungus, smoked whitefish salad on homemade rye—as turkey improvements.

  “No one likes turkey, Jude,” Harold said, impatiently. “I know what you’re doing. Don’t insult me by pretending you do because you don’t think I’m actually capable of making anything else. We’re having trout, and that’s it. Also, can you make that cake you made last year? I think it’d go well with this wine I got. Just send me a list of what you need me to get.”

  The perplexing thing, he always thought, was that in general, Harold wasn’t that interested in food (or wine). In fact, he had terrible taste, and was often taking him to restaurants that were overpriced yet mediocre, where Harold would happily devour dull plates of blackened meat and unimaginative sides of gloppy pasta. He and Julia (who also had little interest in food) discussed Harold’s strange fixation every year: Harold had numerous obsessions, some of them inexplicable, but this one seemed particularly so, and more so for its endurance.

  Willem thought that Harold’s Thanksgiving quest had begun partly as shtick, but over the years, it had morphed into something more serious, and now he was truly unable to stop himself, even as he knew he’d never succeed.

  “But you know,” Willem said, “it’s really all about you.”

  “What do you mean?” he’d asked.

  “It’s a performance for you,” Willem had said. “It’s his way of telling you he cares about you enough to try to impress you, without actually saying he cares about you.”

  He’d dismissed this right away: “I don’t think so, Willem.” But sometimes, he pretended to himself that Willem might be right, feeling silly and a little pathetic because of how happy the thought made him.

  Willem was the only one coming to Thanksgiving this year: by the time he and JB had reconciled, JB had already made plans to go to his aunts’ with Malcolm; when he’d tried to cancel, they had apparently been so irked that he’d decided not to antagonize them further.

  “What’s it going to be this year?” asked Willem. They were taking the train up on Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving. “Elk? Venison? Turtle?”

  “Trout,” he said.

  “Trout!” Willem replied. “Well, trout’s easy. We may actually end up with trout this year.”

  “He said he was going to stuff it with something, though.”

  “Oh. I take it back.”

  There were eight of them at dinner: Harold and Julia, Laurence and Gillian, Julia’s friend James and his boyfriend Carey, and he and Willem.

  “This is dynamite trout, Harold,” Willem said, cutting into his second piece of turkey, and everyone laughed.

  What was the point, he wondered, at which he had stopped feeling so nervous and out of place at Harold’s dinners? Certainly, his friends had helped. Harold liked sparring with them, liked trying to provoke JB into making outrageous and borderline racist statements, liked teasing Willem about when he was going to settle down, liked debating structural and aesthetic trends with Malcolm. He knew Harold enjoyed engaging with them, and that they enjoyed it too, and it gave him the chance to simply listen to them being who they were without feeling the need to participate; they were a fleet of parrots shaking their bright-colored feathers at one another, presenting themselves to their peers without fear or guile.

  The dinner was dominated by talk of James’s daughter, who was getting married in the summer. “I’m an old man,” James moaned, and Laurence and Gillian, whose daughters were still in college and spending the holiday at their friend’s house in Carmel, made sympathetic noises.

  “This reminds me,” said Harold, looking at him and Willem, “when are you two ever going to settle down?”

  “I think he means you,” he smiled at Willem.

  “Harold, I’m thirty-two!” Willem protested, and everyone laughed again as Harold spluttered: “What is that, Willem? Is that an explanation? Is that a defense? It’s not like you’re sixteen!”

  But as much as he enjoyed the evening, a part of his mind remained abuzz and anxious, worrying about the conversation Harold and Julia wanted to have with him the next day. He had finally mentioned it to Willem on the ride up, and in moments, when the two of them were working together (stuffing the turkey, blanching the potatoes, setting the table), they would try to figure out what Harold might have to say to him. After dinner, they put on their coats and sat in the back garden, puzzling over it again.

  At least he knew that nothing was wrong with them—it was the first thing he had asked, and Harold had assured him that he and Julia were both fine. But what, then, could it be?

  “Maybe he thinks I’m hanging around them too much,” he suggested to Willem. Maybe Harold was, simply, sick of him.

  “Not possible,” Willem said, so quickly and declaratively that he was relieved. They were quiet. “Maybe one of them got a job offer somewhere and they’re moving?”

  “I thought of that, too. But I don’t think Harold would ever leave Boston. Julia, either.”

  There weren’t, in the end, many options, at least many that would make a conversation with him necessary: maybe they were selling the house in Truro (but why would they need to talk to him about that, as much as he loved the house). Maybe Harold and Julia were splitting up (but they seemed the same as they always did around each other). Maybe they were selling the New York apartment and wanted to know if he wanted to buy it from them (unlikely: he was certain they would never sell the apartment). Maybe they were renovating the apartment and needed him to oversee the renovation.

  And then their speculations grew more specific and improbable: maybe Julia was coming out (maybe Harold was). Maybe Harold was being born again (maybe Julia was). Maybe they were quitting their jobs, moving to an ashram in upstate New York. Maybe they were becoming ascetics who would live in a remote Kashmiri valley. Maybe they were having his-and-hers plastic surgery. Maybe Harold was becoming a Republican. Maybe Julia had found God. Maybe Harold had been nominated to be the attorney general. Maybe Julia had been identified by the Tibetan government in exile as the next reincarnation of the Panchen Lama and was moving to Dharamsala. Maybe Harold was running for president as a Socialist candidate. Maybe they were opening a restaurant on the square that served only turkey stuffed with other kinds of meat. By this time they were both laughing so hard, as much from the nervous, self-soothing helplessness of not knowing as from the absurdity of their guesses, that
they were bent over in their chairs, pressing their coat collars to their mouths to muffle the noise, their tears freezing pinchingly on their cheeks.

  In bed, though, he returned to the thought that had crept, tendril-like, from some dark space of his mind and had insinuated itself into his consciousness like a thin green vine: maybe one of them had discovered something about the person he once was. Maybe he would be presented with evidence—a doctor’s report, a photograph, a (this was the nightmare scenario) film still. He had already decided he wouldn’t deny it, he wouldn’t argue against it, he wouldn’t defend himself. He would acknowledge its veracity, he would apologize, he would explain that he never meant to deceive them, he would offer not to contact them again, and then he would leave. He would ask them only to keep his secret, to not tell anyone else. He practiced saying the words: I’m so sorry, Harold. I’m so sorry, Julia. I never meant to embarrass you. But of course it was such a useless apology. He might not have meant to, but it wouldn’t make a difference: he would have; he had.

  Willem left the next morning; he had a show that night. “Call me as soon as you know, okay?” he asked, and he nodded. “It’s going to be fine, Jude,” he promised. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Don’t worry, all right?”

  “You know I will anyway,” he said, and tried to smile back at Willem.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Willem. “But try. And call me.”

  The rest of the day he kept himself busy cleaning—there was always plenty to clean at the house, as both Harold and Julia were unenthusiastic tidiers—and by the time they sat down to an early dinner he’d made of turkey stew and a beet salad, he felt almost aloft from nervousness and could only pretend to eat, moving the food around his plate like a compass point, hoping Harold and Julia wouldn’t notice. After, he began stacking the plates to take them to the kitchen, but Harold stopped him. “Leave them, Jude,” he said. “Maybe we should have our talk now?”