A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

  “You don’t look great,” Harold tells him.

  “I’m not,” he says. “Harold, I’m really sorry. Kit texted late last night, and this director I thought I was going to meet up with this week is leaving town tonight; I have to get back to the city today.”

  “Oh no, Willem, really?” Harold begins, and then Jude walks in, and Harold says, “Willem says you guys have to go back to the city this morning.”

  “You can stay,” he says to Jude, but doesn’t lift his eyes from the toast he’s buttering. “Keep the car. But I need to get back.”

  “No,” says Jude, after a short silence. “I should get back, too.”

  “What the hell kind of Thanksgiving is this? You guys just eat and run? What am I going to do with all that turkey?” Harold says, but his theatrical outrage is muted, and Willem can feel him looking at both of them in turn, trying to figure out what’s happening, what’s gone wrong.

  He waits for Jude to get ready, trying to make small talk with Julia and ignore Harold’s unspoken questions. He goes to the car first to make it clear he’s driving, and as he’s saying goodbye, Harold looks at him and opens his mouth, and then shuts it, and hugs him instead. “Drive safely,” he says.

  In the car he seethes, keeps accelerating and then reminding himself to slow down. It’s not even eight in the morning, and it’s Thanksgiving Day, and the highway is empty. Next to him, Jude is turned away from him, his face against the glass: Willem still hasn’t looked at him, doesn’t know what expression he wears, can’t see the smudges under his eyes that Andy had told him in the hospital were a telltale sign that Jude has been cutting himself too much. His anger quickens and recedes by the mile: sometimes he sees Jude lying to him—he is always lying to him, he realizes—and the fury fills him like hot oil. And sometimes he thinks of what he said, and the way he behaved, and the entire situation, that the person he loves is so terrible to himself, and feels such a sense of remorse that he has to grip the steering wheel to make himself focus. He thinks: Is he right? Do I see him as Hemming? And then he thinks: No. That’s Jude’s delusion, because he can’t understand why anyone would want to be with him. It’s not the truth. But the explanation doesn’t comfort him, and indeed makes him more wretched.

  Just past New Haven, he stops. Normally, the passage through New Haven is the opportunity for him to recount their favorite stories from when he and JB were roommates in grad school: The time he was made to help JB and Asian Henry Young mount their guerrilla exhibition of swaying carcasses of meat outside of the medical college. The time JB cut off all his dreads and left them in the sink until Willem finally cleaned them up two weeks later. The time he and JB danced to techno music for forty straight minutes so JB’s friend Greig, a video artist, could record them. “Tell me the one when JB filled Richard’s tub with tadpoles,” Jude would say, grinning in anticipation. “Tell me the one about the time you dated that lesbian.” “Tell me the one when JB crashed that feminist orgy.” But today neither of them says anything, and they roll past New Haven in silence.

  He gets out of the car to gas up and go to the bathroom. “I’m not stopping again,” he tells Jude, who hasn’t moved, but Jude only shakes his head, and Willem slams the door shut, his anger returning.

  They are at Greene Street before noon, and they get out of the car in silence, into the elevator in silence, into the apartment in silence. He takes their bag to the bedroom; behind him, he can hear Jude sit down and begin playing something on the piano—Schumann, he recognizes, Fantasy in C: a pretty vigorous number for someone who’s so wan and helpless, he thinks sourly—and realizes he has to get out of the apartment.

  He doesn’t even take his coat off, just heads back into the living room with his keys. “I’m going out,” he says, but Jude doesn’t stop playing. “Do you hear me?” he shouts. “I’m leaving.”

  Then Jude looks up, stops playing. “When are you coming back?” he asks, quietly, and Willem feels his resolve weaken.

  But then he remembers how angry he is. “I don’t know,” he says. “Don’t wait up.” He punches the button for the elevator. There is a pause, and then Jude resumes playing.

  And then he is out in the world, and all the stores are closed, and SoHo is quiet. He walks to the West Side Highway, walks up it in silence, his sunglasses on, his scarf, which he bought in Jaipur (a gray for Jude, a blue for him), and which is of such soft cashmere that it snags on even the slightest of stubble, wrapped around his stubbly neck. He walks and walks; later, he won’t even remember what he thought about, if he thought about anything. When he is hungry, he veers east to buy a slice of pizza, which he eats on the street, hardly tasting it, before returning to the highway. This is my world, he thinks, as he stands at the river and looks across it toward New Jersey. This is my little world, and I don’t know what to do in it. He feels trapped, and yet how can he feel trapped when he can’t even negotiate the small place he occupies? How can he hope for more when he can’t comprehend what he thought he did?

  Nightfall is abrupt and brief, and the wind more intense, and still he walks. He wants warmth, food, a room with people laughing. But he can’t bear to go into a restaurant, not by himself on Thanksgiving, not in the mood he’s in: he’ll be recognized, and he doesn’t have the energy for the small talk, the bonhomie, the graciousness, that such encounters will necessitate. His friends have always teased him about his invisibility claim, his idea that he can somehow manipulate his own visibility, his own recognizability, but he had really believed it, even when evidence kept disproving him. Now he sees this belief as yet more proof of his self-deception, his way of constantly pretending that the world will align itself to his vision of it: That Jude will get better because he wants him to. That he understands him because he likes to think he does. That he can walk through SoHo and no one will know who he is. But really, he is a prisoner: of his job, of his relationship, and mostly, of his own willful naïveté.

  Finally he buys a sandwich and catches a taxi south to Perry Street, to his apartment that is barely his anymore: in a few weeks, in fact, it no longer will be, because he has sold it to Miguel, his friend from Spain, who is spending more time in the States. But tonight, it still is, and he lets himself in, cautiously, as if the apartment may have deteriorated, may have started breeding monsters, since he was last there. It is early, but he takes off his clothes anyway, and picks Miguel’s clothes off Miguel’s chaise longue and takes Miguel’s blanket off Miguel’s bed and lies down on the chaise, letting the helplessness and tumult of the day—only a day, and so much has happened!—descend, and cries.

  As he’s crying, his phone rings, and he gets up, thinking it might be Jude, but it’s not: it’s Andy.

  “Andy,” he cries, “I fucked up, I really fucked up. I did something horrible.”

  “Willem,” Andy says gently. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think it is. I’m sure you’re being too hard on yourself.”

  So he tells Andy, haltingly, explaining what has happened, and after he is finished, Andy is silent. “Oh, Willem,” he sighs, but he doesn’t sound angry, only sad. “Okay. It is as bad as you think it is,” and for some reason, this makes him laugh a little, but then also moan.

  “What should I do?” he asks, and Andy sighs again.

  “If you want to stay with him, I’d go home and talk to him,” he says, slowly. “And if you don’t want to stay with him—I’d go home and talk to him anyway.” He pauses. “Willem, I’m really sorry.”

  “I know,” he says. And then, as Andy’s saying goodbye, he stops him. “Andy,” he says, “tell me honestly: Is he mentally ill?”

  There’s a very long silence, until Andy says, “I don’t think so, Willem. Or rather: I don’t think there’s anything chemically wrong with him. I think his craziness is all man-made.” He is silent. “Make him talk to you, Willem,” he says. “If he talks to you, I think you’ll—I think you’ll understand why he is the way he is.” And suddenly, he needs to get home, and he is dressing
and hurrying out the door, hailing a cab and getting into it, getting out and getting into the elevator, opening the door and letting himself into the apartment, which is silent, disconcertingly silent. On the way over, he had a sudden image, one that felt like a premonition, that Jude had died, that he had killed himself, and he runs through the apartment shouting his name.

  “Willem?” he hears, and he runs through their bedroom, with their bed still made, and then sees Jude in the far left corner of their closet, curled up on the ground, facing the wall. But he doesn’t think about why he’s there, he just drops to the floor next to him. He doesn’t know if he has permission to touch him, but he does so anyway, wrapping his arms around him. “I’m sorry,” he says to the back of Jude’s head. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean what I said—I would be distraught if you hurt yourself. I am distraught.” He exhales. “And I never, ever should have gotten physical with you. Jude, I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Jude whispers, and they are silent. “I’m sorry about what I said. I’m sorry I lied to you, Willem.”

  They are quiet for a long time. “Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?” he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. “You aren’t,” he tells him. “You aren’t. But being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,” he continues, slowly. “You think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map, and you don’t understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don’t know when the next transition will arrive, and you don’t have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.”

  They’re silent. “So basically,” Jude says at last, “basically, you’re saying I’m New Zealand.”

  It takes him a second to realize Jude is joking, and when he does he begins to laugh, unhingedly, with relief and sorrow, and he turns Jude toward him and kisses him. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’re New Zealand.”

  Then they are quiet again, and serious, but at least they are looking at each other.

  “Are you going to leave?” Jude asks, so quietly that Willem can barely hear him.

  He opens his mouth; shuts it. Oddly, even with everything he has thought and not thought over the last day and night, he has not considered leaving, and now he thinks about it. “No,” he says. And then, “I don’t think so,” and he watches Jude shut his eyes and then open them, and nod. “Jude,” he says, and the words come to his mouth as he says them, and as he speaks, he knows he is doing the right thing, “I do think you need help—help I don’t know how to give you.” He takes a breath. “I either want you to voluntarily commit yourself, or I want you to start seeing Dr. Loehmann twice a week.” He watches Jude for a long time; he can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  “And what if I don’t want to do either?” Jude asks. “Are you going to leave?”

  He shakes his head. “Jude, I love you,” he says. “But I can’t—I can’t condone this kind of behavior. I won’t be able to stick around and watch you do this to yourself if I thought you’d interpret my presence as some sort of tacit approval. So. Yes. I guess I would.”

  Again they are quiet, and Jude turns over and lies on his back. “If I tell you what happened to me,” he begins, falteringly, “if I tell you everything I can’t discuss—if I tell you, Willem, do I still have to go?”

  He looks at him, shakes his head again. “Oh, Jude,” he says. “Yes. Yes, you still have to. But I hope you’ll tell me anyway, I really do. Whatever it is; whatever it is.”

  They are quiet once more, and this time, their quiet turns to sleep, and the two of them fit into each other and sleep and sleep until Willem hears Jude’s voice speaking to him, and then he wakes, and he listens as Jude talks. It will take hours, because Jude is sometimes unable to continue, and Willem will wait and hold him so tightly that Jude won’t be able to breathe. Twice he will try to wrench himself away, and Willem will pin him to the ground and hold him there until he calms himself. Because they are in the closet, they won’t know what time it is, only that there has been a day that has arrived and departed, because they will have seen flat carpets of sun unroll themselves into the closet’s doorways from the bedroom, from the bathroom. He will listen to stories that are unimaginable, that are abominable; he will excuse himself, three times, to go to the bathroom and study his face in the mirror and remind himself that he has only to find the courage to listen, although he will want to cover his ears and cover Jude’s mouth to make the stories cease. He will study the back of Jude’s head, because Jude can’t face him, and imagine the person he thinks he knows collapsing into rubble, clouds of dust gusting around him, as nearby, teams of artisans try to rebuild him in another material, in another shape, as a different person than the person who had stood for years and years. On and on and on the stories will go, and in their path will lie squalor: blood and bones and dirt and disease and misery. After Jude has finished telling him about his time with Brother Luke, Willem will ask him, again, if he enjoys having sex at all, even a little, even occasionally, and he will wait the many long minutes until Jude says he doesn’t, that he hates it, that he always has, and he will nod, devastated, but relieved to have the real answer. And then he will ask him, not even knowing where the question has been hiding, if he’s even attracted to men, and Jude will tell him, after a silence, that he’s not certain, that he had always had sex with men, and so assumed he always would. “Are you interested in having sex with women?” he’ll ask him, and he’ll watch as, after another long silence, Jude shakes his head. “No,” he’ll say. “It’s too late for me, Willem,” and he will tell him it’s not, that there are things they can do to help him, but Jude will shake his head again. “No,” he’ll say. “No, Willem, I’ve had enough. No more,” and he will realize, as if slapped, the truth of this, and will stop. They will sleep again, and this time, his dreams will be terrible. He will dream he is one of the men in the motel rooms, he will realize that he has behaved like one of them; he will wake with nightmares, and it will be Jude who has to calm him. Finally they will heave themselves from the floor—it will be Saturday afternoon, and they will have been lying in the closet since Thursday night—and shower and eat something, something hot and comforting, and then they will go directly from the kitchen into the study, where he will listen as Jude leaves a message for Dr. Loehmann, whose card Willem has kept in his wallet all these years and produces, magician-like, within seconds, and from there to bed, and they will lie there, looking at each other, each afraid to ask the other: he to ask Jude to finish his story; Jude to ask him when he is leaving, because his leaving now seems an inevitability, a matter of logistics.

  On and on they stare, until Jude’s face becomes almost meaningless as a face to him: it is a series of colors, of planes, of shapes that have been arranged in such a way to give other people pleasure, but to give its owner nothing. He doesn’t know what he is going to do. He is dizzy with what he has heard, with comprehending the enormity of his misconceptions, with stretching his understanding past what is imaginable, with the knowledge that all of his carefully maintained edifices are now destroyed beyond repair.

  But for now, they are in their bed, in their room, in their apartment, and he reaches over and takes Jude’s hand, holds it gently in his own.

  “You’ve told me about how you got to Montana,” he hears himself saying. “So tell me: What happened next?”

  It was a time he rarely thought about, his flight to Philadelphia, because it was a period in which he had been so afloat from himself that even as he had lived his life, it had felt dreamlike and not quite real; there had been times in those weeks when he had opened his eyes and was genuinely unable to discern wheth
er what had just happened had actually happened, or whether he had imagined it. It had been a useful skill, this persistent and unshatterable somnambulism, and it had protected him, but then that ability, like his ability to forget, had abandoned him as well and he was never to acquire it again.

  He had first noticed this suspension at the home. At nights, he would sometimes be awakened by one of the counselors, and he would follow them down to the office where one of them was always on duty, and he would do whatever they wanted. After they were done, he would be escorted back to his room—a small space with a bunk bed that he shared with a mentally disabled boy, slow and fat and frightened-looking and prone to rages, whom he knew the counselors also sometimes took with them at night—and locked in again. There were a few of them the counselors used, but aside from his roommate, he didn’t know who the other boys were, only that they existed. He was nearly mute in those sessions, and as he knelt or squatted or lay, he thought of a round clock face, its second hand gliding impassively around it, counting the revolutions until it ended. But he never begged, he never pled. He never bargained or made promises or cried. He didn’t have the energy; he didn’t have the conviction—not any longer, not anymore.

  It was a few months after his weekend with the Learys that he tried to run away. He had classes at the community college on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and on those days, one of the counselors would wait for him in the parking lot and drive him back to the home. He dreaded the end of classes, he dreaded the ride home: he never knew which counselor would be waiting for him, and when he reached the parking lot and saw who it was, his footsteps would sometimes slow, but it was as if he was a magnet, something controlled by ions, not will, and into the car he would be drawn.