A Little Life

  “Or what?” he’d asked, teasing him.

  “Or—this!” Harold had said, and had leaped at him, and before he could recognize that Harold was just being playful, he had recoiled so violently, torquing his body to avoid contact, that he had bumped into the bookcase and had knocked against a lumpy ceramic mug that Harold’s son, Jacob, had made, which fell to the ground and broke into three neat pieces. Harold had stepped back from him then, and there was a sudden, horrible silence, into which he had nearly wept.

  “Harold,” he said, crouching to the ground, picking up the pieces, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” He wanted to beat himself against the floor; he knew this was the last thing Jacob had made Harold before he got sick. Above him, he could hear only Harold’s breathing.

  “Harold, please forgive me,” he repeated, cupping the pieces in his palms. “I think I can fix this, though—I can make it better.” He couldn’t look up from the mug, its shiny buttered glaze.

  He felt Harold crouch beside him. “Jude,” Harold said, “it’s all right. It was an accident.” His voice was very quiet. “Give me the pieces,” he said, but he was gentle, and he didn’t sound angry.

  He did. “I can leave,” he offered.

  “Of course you’re not going to leave,” Harold said. “It’s okay, Jude.”

  “But it was Jacob’s,” he heard himself say.

  “Yes,” said Harold. “And it still is.” He stood. “Look at me, Jude,” he said, and he finally did. “It’s okay. Come on,” and Harold held out his hand, and he took it, and let Harold pull him to his feet. He wanted to howl, then, that after everything Harold had given him, he had repaid him by destroying something precious created by someone who had been most precious.

  Harold went upstairs to his study with the mug in his hands, and he finished his cleaning in silence, the lovely day graying around him. When Julia came home, he waited for Harold to tell her how stupid and clumsy he’d been, but he didn’t. That night at dinner, Harold was the same as he always was, but when he returned to Lispenard Street, he wrote Harold a real, proper letter, apologizing properly, and sent it to him.

  And a few days later, he got a reply, also in the form of a real letter, which he would keep for the rest of his life.

  “Dear Jude,” Harold wrote, “thank you for your beautiful (if unnecessary) note. I appreciate everything in it. You’re right; that mug means a lot to me. But you mean more. So please stop torturing yourself.

  “If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.

  “Actually—maybe I am that kind of person after all.

  “Love, Harold.”

  It was not so many years ago—despite the fact that he knew otherwise, despite what Andy had been telling him since he was seventeen—that he was still maintaining a sort of small, steady hope that he might get better. On especially bad days, he would repeat the Philadelphia surgeon’s words to himself—“the spine has wonderful reparative qualities”—almost like a chant. A few years after meeting Andy, when he was in law school, he had finally summoned the courage to suggest this to him, had said aloud the prediction he had treasured and clung to, hoping that Andy might nod and say, “That’s exactly right. It’ll just take time.”

  But Andy had snorted. “He told you that?” he asked. “It’s not going to get better, Jude; as you get older, it’ll get worse.” Andy had been looking down at his ankle as he spoke, using tweezers to pick out shreds of dead flesh from a wound he’d developed, when he suddenly froze, and even without seeing Andy’s face, he could tell he was chagrined. “I’m sorry, Jude,” he said, looking up, still cupping his foot in his hand. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you differently.” And when he couldn’t answer, he sighed. “You’re upset.”

  He was, of course. “I’m fine,” he managed to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Andy.

  “I’m sorry, Jude,” Andy repeated, quietly. He had two settings, even then: brusque and gentle, and he had experienced both of them often, sometimes in a single appointment.

  “But one thing I promise,” he said, returning to the ankle, “I’ll always be here to take care of you.”

  And he had. Of all the people in his life, it was in some ways Andy who knew the most about him: Andy was the only person he’d been naked in front of as an adult, the only person who was familiar with every physical dimension of his body. Andy had been a resident when they met, and he had stayed in Boston for his fellowship, and his postfellowship, and then the two of them had moved to New York within months of each other. He was an orthopedic surgeon, but he treated him for everything, from chest colds to his back and leg problems.

  “Wow,” Andy said dryly, as he sat in his examining room one day hacking up phlegm (this had been the previous spring, shortly before he had turned twenty-nine, when a bout of bronchitis had been snaking its way through the office), “I’m so glad I specialized in orthopedics. This is such good practice for me. This is exactly what I thought I’d do with my training.”

  He had started to laugh, but then his coughing had begun again and Andy had thumped him on the back. “Maybe if someone recommended a real internist to me, I wouldn’t have to keep going to a chiropractor for all my medical needs,” he said.

  “Mmm,” Andy said. “You know, maybe you should start seeing an internist. God knows it’d save me a lot of time, and a shitload of headaches as well.” But he would never go to see anyone but Andy, and he thought—although they had never discussed it—that Andy wouldn’t want him to, either.

  For all Andy knew about him, he knew relatively little about Andy. He knew that he and Andy had gone to the same college, and that Andy was a decade older than he, and that Andy’s father was Gujarati and his mother was Welsh, and that he had grown up in Ohio. Three years ago, Andy had gotten married, and he had been surprised to be invited to the wedding, which was small and held at Andy’s in-laws’ house on the Upper West Side. He had made Willem come with him, and was even more surprised when Andy’s new wife, Jane, had thrown her arms around him when they were introduced and said, “The famous Jude St. Francis! I’ve heard so much about you!”

  “Oh, really,” he’d said, his mind filling with fear, like a flock of flapping bats.

  “Nothing like that,” Jane had said, smiling (she was a doctor as well: a gynecologist). “But he adores you, Jude; I’m so glad you came.” He had met Andy’s parents as well, and at the end of the evening, Andy had slung an arm around his neck and given him a hard, awkward kiss on the cheek, which he now did every time they saw each other. Andy always looked uncomfortable doing it, but also seemed compelled to keep doing it, which he found both funny and touching.

  He appreciated Andy in many ways, but he appreciated most his unflappability. After they had met, after Andy had made it difficult not to continue seeing him by showing up at Hood, banging on their door after he had missed two follow-up appointments (he hadn’t forgotten; he had just decided not to go) and ignored three phone calls and four e-mails, he had resigned himself to the fact that it might not be bad to have a doctor—it seemed, after all, inevitable—and that Andy might be someone he could trust. The third time they met, Andy took his history, or what he would provide of it, and wrote down the facts he would tell him without comment or reaction.

  And indeed, it was only years later—a little less than four years ago—that Andy had directly mentioned his childhood. This had been during his and Andy’s first big fight. They’d had skirmishes, of course, and disagreements, and once or twice a year Andy would deliver a long lecture to him (he saw Andy every six weeks—though more frequently these days—and could always anticipate which appointment would be the Lecture Appointment by the terseness with which Andy would greet him and conduct his examination) that covered
what Andy considered his perplexing and infuriating unwillingness to take proper care of himself, his maddening refusal to see a therapist, and his bizarre reluctance to take pain medication that would probably improve his quality of life.

  The fight had concerned what Andy had retroactively come to consider a botched suicide attempt. This had been right before New Year’s, and he had been cutting himself, and he had cut too close to a vein, and it had resulted in a great, sloppy, bloody mess into which he had been forced to involve Willem. In the examining room that night, Andy had refused to speak to him, he was so angry, and had actually muttered to himself as he made his stitches, each as neat and tiny as if he were embroidering them.

  Even before Andy had opened his mouth at his next appointment, he had known that he was furious. He had actually considered not coming in for his checkup at all, except he knew if he didn’t, Andy would simply keep calling him—or worse, calling Willem, or worse yet, Harold—until he showed up.

  “I should fucking have had you hospitalized,” were Andy’s first words to him, followed by, “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” he’d begun, but Andy ignored him.

  “I happen to believe you weren’t trying to kill yourself, or I’d’ve had you committed so fast your head would’ve spun,” he said. “It’s only because statistically, anyone who cuts themselves as much as you do, and for as many years as you have, is in less immediate danger of suicide than someone who’s less consistently self-injurious.” (Andy was fond of statistics. He sometimes suspected he made them up.) “But Jude, this is crazy, and that was way too close. Either you start seeing a shrink immediately or I’m going to commit you.”

  “You can’t do that,” he’d said, furious himself now, although he knew Andy could: he had looked up the laws of involuntary commitment in New York State, and they were not in his favor.

  “You know I can,” Andy had said. He was almost shouting at this point. Their appointments were always after office hours, because they sometimes chatted afterward if Andy had time and was in a good mood.

  “I’ll sue you,” he’d said, absurdly, and Andy had yelled back at him, “Go right ahead! Do you know how fucked up this is, Jude? Do you have any idea what kind of position you’re putting me in?”

  “Don’t worry,” he’d said, sarcastically, “I don’t have any family. No one’s going to sue you for wrongful death.”

  Andy had stepped back, then, as if he had tried to hit him. “How dare you,” he’d said, slowly. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  And of course he did. But “Whatever,” he said. “I’m leaving.” And he slid off the table (fortunately, he hadn’t changed out of his clothes; Andy had started lecturing him before he’d had a chance) and tried to leave the room, although leaving the room at his pace was hardly dramatic, and Andy scooted over to stand in the doorway.

  “Jude,” he said, in one of his sudden mood changes, “I know you don’t want to go. But this is getting scary.” He took a breath. “Have you ever even talked to anyone about what happened when you were a kid?”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” he’d said, feeling cold. Andy had never alluded to what he’d told him, and he found himself feeling betrayed that he should do so now.

  “Like hell it doesn’t,” Andy had said, and the self-conscious theatricality of the phrase—did anyone really say that outside of the movies?—made him smile despite himself, and Andy, mistaking his smile for mockery, changed directions again. “There’s something incredibly arrogant about your stubbornness, Jude,” he continued. “Your utter refusal to listen to anyone about anything that concerns your health or well-being is either a pathological case of self-destructiveness or it’s a huge fuck-you to the rest of us.”

  He was hurt by this. “And there’s something incredibly manipulative about you threatening to commit me whenever I disagree with you, and especially in this case, when I’ve told you it was a stupid accident,” he hurled back at Andy. “Andy, I appreciate you, I really do. I don’t know what I’d do without you. But I’m an adult and you can’t dictate what I do or don’t do.”

  “You know what, Jude?” Andy had asked (now he was yelling again). “You’re right. I can’t dictate your decisions. But I don’t have to accept them, either. Go find some other asshole to be your doctor. I’m not going to do it any longer.”

  “Fine,” he’d snapped, and left.

  He couldn’t remember when he had been angrier on his own behalf. Lots of things made him angry—general injustice, incompetence, directors who didn’t give Willem a part he wanted—but he rarely got angry about things that happened or had happened to him: his pains, past and present, were things he tried not to brood about, were not questions to which he spent his days searching for meaning. He already knew why they had happened: they had happened because he had deserved them.

  But he knew too that his anger was unjustified. And as much as he resented his dependence upon Andy, he was grateful for him as well, and he knew Andy found his behavior illogical. But Andy’s job was to make people better: Andy saw him the way he saw a mangled tax law, as something to be untangled and repaired—whether he thought he could be repaired was almost incidental. The thing he was trying to fix—the scars that raised his back into an awful, unnatural topography, the skin stretched as glossy and taut as a roasted duck’s: the reason he was trying to save money—was not, he knew, something Andy would approve of. “Jude,” Andy would say if he ever heard what he was planning, “I promise you it’s not going to work, and you’re going to have wasted all that money. Don’t do it.”

  “But they’re hideous,” he would mumble.

  “They’re not, Jude,” Andy would say. “I swear to god they’re not.”

  (But he wasn’t going to tell Andy anyway, so he would never have to have that particular conversation.)

  The days passed and he didn’t call Andy and Andy didn’t call him. As if in punishment, his wrist throbbed at night when he was trying to sleep, and at work he forgot and banged it rhythmically against the side of his desk as he read, a longtime bad tic he’d not managed to erase. The stitches had seeped blood then, and he’d had to clean them, clumsily, in the bathroom sink.

  “What’s wrong?” Willem asked him one night.

  “Nothing,” he said. He could tell Willem, of course, who would listen and say “Hmm” in his Willem-ish way, but he knew he would agree with Andy.

  A week after their fight, he came home to Lispenard Street—it was a Sunday, and he had been walking through west Chelsea—and Andy was waiting on the steps before their front door.

  He was surprised to see him. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” Andy had replied. They stood there. “I wasn’t sure if you’d take my call.”

  “Of course I would’ve.”

  “Listen,” Andy said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. I’m sorry, Andy.”

  “But I really do think you should see someone.”

  “I know you do.”

  And somehow they managed to leave it at that: a fragile and mutually unsatisfying cease-fire, with the question of the therapist the vast gray demilitarized zone between them. The compromise (though how this had been agreed upon as such was unclear to him now) was that at the end of every visit, he had to show Andy his arms, and Andy would examine them for new cuts. Whenever he found one, he would log it in his chart. He was never sure what might provoke another outburst from Andy: sometimes there were many new cuts, and Andy would merely groan and write them down, and sometimes there were only a few new cuts and Andy would get agitated anyway. “You’ve fucking ruined your arms, you know that, right?” he would ask him. But he would say nothing, and let Andy’s lecture wash over him. Part of him understood that by not letting Andy do his job—which was, after all, to heal him—he was being disrespectful, and was to some degree making Andy into a joke in his own office. Andy’s tallies—sometimes he wanted to ask Andy if he would
get a prize once he reached a certain number, but he knew it would make him angry—were a way for him to at least pretend he could manage the situation, even if he couldn’t: it was the accrual of data as a small compensation for actual treatment.

  And then, two years later, another wound had opened on his left leg, which had always been the more troublesome one, and his cuttings were set aside for the more urgent matter of his leg. He had first developed one of these wounds less than a year after the injury, and it had healed quickly. “But it won’t be the last,” the Philadelphia surgeon had said. “With an injury like yours, everything—the vascular system, the dermal system—has been so compromised that you should expect you might get these now and again.”

  This was the eleventh he’d had, so although he was prepared for the sensation of it, he was never to know its cause (An insect bite? A brush against the edge of a metal filing cabinet? It was always something so gallingly small, but still capable of tearing his skin as easily as if it had been made of paper), and he was never to cease being disgusted by it: the suppuration, the sick, fishy scent, the little gash, like a fetus’s mouth, that would appear, burbling viscous, unidentifiable fluids. It was unnatural, the stuff of monster movies and myths, to walk about with an opening that wouldn’t, couldn’t be closed. He began seeing Andy every Friday night so he could debride the wound, cleaning it and removing the dead tissue and examining the area around it, looking for new skin growth, as he held his breath and gripped the side of the table and tried not to scream.

  “You have to tell me when it’s painful, Jude,” Andy had said, as he breathed and sweated and counted in his head. “It’s a good thing if you can feel this, not a bad thing. It means the nerves are still alive and still doing what they’re supposed to.”

  “It’s painful,” he managed to choke out.

  “Scale of one to ten?”

  “Seven. Eight.”

  “I’m sorry,” Andy replied. “I’m almost done, I promise. Five more minutes.”