Or was it the day that they were passing through Utah to Idaho, on their way to Washington? They rarely ventured into actual towns—their America was denuded of trees, of flowers, theirs was just long stretches of roadway, the only green thing Brother Luke’s lone surviving cattleya, which continued to live and leaf, though not bud—but this time they had, because Brother Luke had a doctor friend in one of the towns, and he wanted him to be examined because it was clear he had picked up some sort of disease from one of the clients, despite the precautions Brother Luke made them take. He didn’t know the name of the town, but he was startled at the signs of normalcy, of life around him, and he stared out of his window in silence, looking at these scenes that he had always imagined but rarely saw: women standing on the street with strollers, talking and laughing with one another; a jogger panting by; families with dogs; a world made of not just men but also of children and women. Normally on these drives he would close his eyes—he slept all the time now, waiting for each day to end—but this day, he felt unusually alert, as if the world was trying to tell him something, and all he had to do was listen to its message.
Brother Luke was trying to read the map and drive at the same time, and finally he pulled over, studying the map and muttering. Luke had stopped across the street from a baseball field, and he watched as, if at once, it began to fill with people: women, mostly, and then, running and shouting, boys. The boys wore uniforms, white with red stripes, but despite that, they all looked different—different hair, different eyes, different skin. Some were skinny, like he was, and some were fat. He had never seen so many boys his own age at one time, and he looked and looked at them. And then he noticed that although they were different, they were actually the same: they were all smiling, and laughing, excited to be outside, in the dry, hot air, the sun bright above them, their mothers unloading cans of soda and bottles of water and juice from plastic carrying containers.
“Aha! We’re back on track!” he heard Luke saying, and heard him fold up the map. But before he started the engine again, he felt Luke follow his gaze, and for a moment the two of them sat staring at the boys in silence, until at last Luke stroked his hair. “I love you, Jude,” he said, and after a moment, he replied as he always did—“I love you, too, Brother Luke”—and they drove away.
He was the same as those boys, but he was really not: he was different. He would never be one of them. He would never be someone who would run across a field while his mother called after him to come have a snack before he played so he wouldn’t get tired. He would never have his bed in the cabin. He would never be clean again. The boys were playing on the field, and he was driving with Brother Luke to the doctor, the kind of doctor he knew from his previous visits to other doctors would be somehow wrong, somehow not a good person. He was as far away from them as he was from the monastery. He was so far gone from himself, from who he had hoped to be, that it was as if he was no longer a boy at all but something else entirely. This was his life now, and there was nothing he could do about it.
At the doctor’s office, Luke leaned over and held him. “We’re going to have fun tonight, just you and me,” he said, and he nodded, because there was nothing else he could do. “Let’s go,” said Luke, releasing him, and he got out of the car, and followed Brother Luke across the parking lot and toward the brown door that was already opening to let them inside.
The first memory: a hospital room. He knew it was a hospital room even before he opened his eyes because he could smell it, because its quality of silence—a silence that wasn’t really silent—was familiar. Next to him: Willem, asleep in a chair. Then he had been confused—why was Willem here? He was supposed to be away, somewhere. He remembered: Sri Lanka. But he wasn’t. He was here. How strange, he thought. I wonder why he’s here? That was the first memory.
The second memory: the same hospital room. He turned and saw Andy sitting on the side of his bed, Andy, unshaven and awful-looking, giving him a strange, unconvincing smile. He felt Andy squeeze his hand—he hadn’t realized he had a hand until he felt Andy squeeze it—and had tried to squeeze back, but couldn’t. Andy had looked up at someone. “Nerve damage?” he heard Andy ask. “Maybe,” said this other person, the person he couldn’t see, “but if we’re lucky, it’s more likely it’s—” And he had closed his eyes and fallen back asleep. That was the second memory.
The third and fourth and fifth and sixth memories weren’t really memories at all: they were people’s faces, their hands, their voices, leaning into his face, holding his hand, talking to him—they were Harold and Julia and Richard and Lucien. Same for the seventh and eighth: Malcolm, JB.
The ninth memory was Willem again, sitting next to him, telling him he was so sorry, but he had to leave. Just for a little while, and then he’d be back. He was crying, and he wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t seem so unusual—they all cried, they cried and apologized to him, which he found perplexing, as none of them had done anything wrong: he knew that much, at least. He tried to tell Willem not to cry, that he was fine, but his tongue was so thick in his mouth, a great useless slab, and he couldn’t make it operate. Willem was already holding one of his hands, but he didn’t have the energy to lift the other so he could put it on Willem’s arm and reassure him, and finally he had given up.
In the tenth memory, he was still in the hospital, but in a different room, and he was still so tired. His arms ached. He had two foam balls, one cupped in each palm, and he was supposed to squeeze them for five seconds and then release them for five. Then squeeze them for five, and release them for five. He couldn’t remember who had told him this, or who had given him the balls, but he did so anyway, although whenever he did, his arms hurt more, a burning, raw pain, and he couldn’t do more than three or four repetitions before he was exhausted and had to stop.
And then one night he had awoken, swimming up through layers of dreams he couldn’t remember, and had realized where he was, and why. He had gone back to sleep then, but the next day he turned his head and saw a man sitting in a chair next to his bed: he didn’t know who the man was, but he had seen him before. He would come and sit and stare at him and sometimes he would talk to him, but he could never concentrate on what the man was saying, and would eventually close his eyes.
“I’m in a mental institution,” he told the man now, and his voice sounded wrong to him, reedy and hoarse.
The man smiled. “You’re in the psychiatric wing of a hospital, yes,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
“No,” he said, “but I recognize you.”
“I’m Dr. Solomon. I’m a psychiatrist here at the hospital.” There was a silence. “Do you know why you’re here?”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Where’s Willem?” he asked. “Where’s Harold?”
“Willem had to go back to Sri Lanka to finish shooting,” said the doctor. “He’ll be back”—he heard the sound of paper flipping—“October ninth. So in ten days. Harold’s coming at noon; it’s when he’s been coming, do you remember?” He shook his head. “Jude,” the doctor said, “can you tell me why you’re here?”
“Because,” he began, swallowing. “Because of what I did in the shower.”
There was another silence. “That’s right,” said the doctor, softly. “Jude, can you tell me why—” But that was all he heard, because he had fallen asleep again.
The next time he woke, the man was gone, but Harold was in his place. “Harold,” he said, in his strange new voice, and Harold, who had been sitting with his elbows on his thighs and his face in his hands, looked up as suddenly as if he’d shouted.
“Jude,” he said, and sat next to him on the bed. He took the ball out of his right hand and replaced it with his own hand.
He thought that Harold looked terrible. “I’m sorry, Harold,” he said, and Harold began to cry. “Don’t cry,” he told him, “please don’t cry,” and Harold got up and went to the bathroom and he could hear him blowing his nose.
That night, once he was alone, he
cried as well: not because of what he had done but because he hadn’t been successful, because he had lived after all.
His mind grew a little clearer with every day. Every day, he was awake a little longer. Mostly, he felt nothing. People came to see him and cried and he looked at them and could register only the strangeness of their faces, the way everyone looked the same when they cried, their noses hoggy, rarely used muscles pulling their mouths in unnatural directions, into unnatural shapes.
He thought of nothing, his mind was a clean sheet of paper. He learned little pieces of what had happened: how Richard’s studio manager had thought the plumber was coming at nine that night, not nine the following morning (even in his haze, he wondered how anyone could think a plumber would come at nine in the evening); how Richard had found him and called an ambulance and had ridden with him to the hospital; how Richard had called Andy and Harold and Willem; how Willem had flown back from Colombo to be with him. He did feel sorry that it had been Richard who’d had to discover him—that was always the part of the plan that had made him uncomfortable, although at the time he had remembered thinking that Richard had a high tolerance for blood, having once made sculptures with it, and so was the least likely among his friends to be traumatized—and had apologized to Richard, who had stroked the back of his hand and told him it was fine, it was okay.
Dr. Solomon came every day and tried to talk to him, but he didn’t have much to say. Most of the time, people didn’t talk to him at all. They came and sat and did work of their own, or spoke to him without seeming to expect a reply, which he appreciated. Lucien came often, usually with a gift, once with a large card that everyone in the office had signed—“I’m sure this is just the thing to make you feel better,” he’d said, dryly, “but here it is, anyway”—and Malcolm made him one of his imaginary houses, its windows crisp vellum, which he placed on his bedside table. Willem called him every morning and every night. Harold read The Hobbit to him, which he had never read, and when Harold couldn’t come, Julia came, and picked up where Harold had left off: those were his favorite visits. Andy arrived every evening, after visiting hours had ended, and had dinner with him; he was concerned that he wasn’t eating enough, and brought him a serving of whatever he was having. He brought him a container of beef barley soup, but his hands were still too weak to hold the spoon, and Andy had to feed him, one slow spoonful after the next. Once, this would have embarrassed him, but now he simply didn’t care: he opened his mouth and accepted the food, which was flavorless, and chewed and swallowed.
“I want to go home,” he told Andy one evening, as he watched Andy eat his turkey club sandwich.
Andy finished his bite and looked at him. “Oh, do you?”
“Yes,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I want to leave.” He thought Andy would say something sarcastic, but he only nodded, slowly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll talk to Solomon.” He grimaced. “Eat your sandwich.”
The next day Dr. Solomon said, “I hear you want to go home.”
“I feel like I’ve been here a long time,” he said.
Dr. Solomon was quiet. “You have been here a little while,” he said. “But given your history of self-injury and the seriousness of your attempt, your doctor—Andy—and parents thought it was for the best.”
He thought about this. “So if my attempt had been less serious, I could have gone home earlier?” It seemed too logical to be an effective policy.
The doctor smiled. “Probably,” he said. “But I’m not completely opposed to letting you go home, Jude, although I think we have to put some protective measures in place.” He stopped. “It troubles me, however, that you’ve been so unwilling to discuss why you made the attempt in the first place. Dr. Contractor—I’m sorry: Andy—tells me that you’ve always resisted therapy, can you tell me why?” He said nothing, and neither did the doctor. “Your father tells me that you were in an abusive relationship last year, and that it’s had long-term reverberations,” said the doctor, and he felt himself go cold. But he willed himself not to answer, and closed his eyes, and finally he could hear Dr. Solomon get up to leave. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Jude,” he said as he left.
Eventually, once it was clear that he wasn’t going to speak to any of them and that he was in no state to hurt himself again, they let him go, with stipulations: He was to be released into Julia and Harold’s care. It was strongly recommended that he remain on a milder course of the drugs that he’d been given in the hospital. It was very strongly recommended that he see a therapist twice a week. He was to see Andy once a week. He was to take a sabbatical from work, which had already been arranged. He agreed to everything. He signed his name—the pen wobbly in his grip—on the discharge papers, under Andy’s and Dr. Solomon’s and Harold’s.
Harold and Julia took him to Truro, where Willem was already waiting for him. Every night he slept, extravagantly, and during the day he and Willem walked slowly down the hill to the ocean. It was early October and too cold to get into the water, but they would sit on the sand and look out at the horizon line, and sometimes Willem would talk to him and sometimes he wouldn’t. He dreamed that the sea had turned into a solid block of ice, its waves frozen in mid-crest, and that Willem was at a far shore, beckoning to him, and he was making his way slowly across its wide expanse to him, his hands and face numb from the wind.
They ate dinner early, because he went to bed so early. The meals were always something simple, easy to digest, and if there was meat, one of the three of them would cut it up for him in advance so he wouldn’t have to try to wield a knife. Harold poured him a glass of milk every dinner, as if he was a child, and he drank it. He wasn’t allowed to leave the table until he had eaten at least half of what was on his plate, and he wasn’t allowed to serve himself, either. He was too tired to fight this; he did the best he could.
He was always cold, and sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, shivering despite the covers heaped on top of him, and he would lie there, watching Willem, who was sharing his room, breathing on the couch opposite him, watching clouds drift across the slice of moon he could see between the edge of the window frame and the blind, until he was able to sleep again.
Sometimes he thought about what he had done and felt that same sorrow he had felt in the hospital: the sorrow that he had failed, that he was still alive. And sometimes he thought about it and felt dread: now everyone really would treat him differently. Now he really was a freak, a bigger freak than he’d been before. Now he would have to begin anew in his attempts to convince people he was normal. He thought of the office, the one place where what he had been hadn’t mattered. But now there would always be another, competing story about him. Now he wouldn’t just be the youngest equity partner in the firm’s history (as Tremain sometimes introduced him); now he would be the partner who had tried to kill himself. They must be furious with him, he thought. He thought of his work there, and wondered who was handling it. They probably didn’t even need him to come back. Who would want to work with him again? Who would trust him again?
And it wasn’t just Rosen Pritchard who would see him differently—it was everyone. All the autonomy he had spent years accumulating, trying to prove to everyone that he deserved: now it was gone. Now he couldn’t even cut his own food. The day before, Willem had had to help him tie his shoes. “It’ll get better, Judy,” he said to him, “it’ll get better. The doctor said it’s just going to take time.” In the mornings, Harold or Willem had to shave him because his hands were still too unsteady; he looked at his unfamiliar face in the mirror as they dragged the razor down his cheeks and under his chin. He had taught himself to shave in Philadelphia when he was living with the Douglasses, but Willem had retaught him their freshman year, alarmed, he later told him, by his tentative, hacking movements, as if he was clearing brush with a scythe. “Good at calculus, bad at shaving,” he’d said then, and had smiled at him so he wouldn’t feel more self-conscious.
Then he would t
ell himself, You can always try again, and just thinking that made him feel stronger, although perversely, he was somehow less inclined to try again. He was too exhausted. Trying again meant preparation. It meant finding something sharp, finding some time alone, and he was never alone. Of course, he knew there were other methods, but he remained stubbornly fixated on the one he had chosen, even though it hadn’t worked.
Mostly, though, he felt nothing. Harold and Julia and Willem asked him what he wanted for breakfast, but the choices were impossible and overwhelming—pancakes? Waffles? Cereal? Eggs? What kind of eggs? Soft-boiled? Hard? Scrambled? Sunny-side? Fried? Over easy? Poached?—and he’d shake his head, and they eventually stopped asking. They stopped asking his opinion on anything, which he found restful. After lunch (also absurdly early), he napped on the living-room sofa in front of the fire, falling asleep to the sound of their murmurs, the slosh of water as they did the dishes. In the afternoons, Harold read to him; sometimes Willem and Julia stayed to listen as well.
After ten days or so, he and Willem went home to Greene Street. He had been dreading his return, but when he went to his bathroom, the marble was clean and stainless. “Malcolm,” said Willem, before he had to ask. “He finished last week. It’s all new.” Willem helped him into bed, and gave him a manila envelope with his name on it, which he opened after Willem left. Inside were the letters he had written everyone, still sealed, and the sealed copy of his will, and a note from Richard: “I thought you would want these. Love, R.” He slid them back into the envelope, his hands shaking; the next day he put them in his safe.
A Little Life Page 50
