A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

  “No,” he says. “He was a very smart guy.” He opens his mouth to say something else—what, he doesn’t know—but he can’t continue, and he shuts it, and the two of them lie there in silence.

  Finally, Willem prompts him again. “Then what happened?” he asks.

  He waits, and Willem waits with him. He can hear them breathing in tandem, and it is as if they are bringing all the air from the room, from the apartment, from the world, into their lungs and then releasing it, just the two of them, all by themselves. He counts their breaths: five, ten, fifteen. At twenty, he says, “If I tell you, Willem, do you promise you won’t get mad?” and he feels Willem shift again.

  “I promise,” Willem says, his voice low.

  He takes a deep breath. “Do you remember the car accident I was in?”

  “Yes,” says Willem. He sounds uncertain, strangled. His breathing is quick. “I do.”

  “It wasn’t a car accident,” he says, and as if on cue, his hands begin to shake, and he plunges them beneath the covers.

  “What do you mean?” Willem asks, but he remains silent, and eventually he feels, rather than sees, Willem realize what he’s saying. And then Willem is flopping onto his side, facing him, and reaching beneath the covers for his hands. “Jude,” Willem says, “did someone do that to you? Did someone”—he can’t say the words—“did someone beat you?”

  He nods, barely, thankful that he’s not crying, although he feels like he’s going to explode: he imagines bits of flesh bursting like shrapnel from his skeleton, smacking themselves against the wall, dangling from the chandelier, bloodying the sheets.

  “Oh god,” Willem says, and drops his hands, and he watches as Willem hurries out of bed.

  “Willem,” he calls after him, and then gets up and follows him into the bathroom, where Willem is bent over the sink, breathing hard, but when he tries to touch his shoulder, Willem shrugs his hand off.

  He goes back to their room and waits on the edge of the bed, and when Willem comes out, he can tell he’s been crying.

  For several long minutes they sit next to each other, their arms touching, but not saying anything. “Was there an obituary?” Willem asks, finally, and he nods. “Show me,” Willem says, and they go to the computer in his study and he stands back and watches Willem read it. He watches as Willem reads it twice, three times. And then Willem stands and holds him, very tightly, and he holds Willem back.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Willem says into his ear.

  “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he says, and Willem steps back and looks at him, holding him by the shoulders.

  He can see Willem trying to control himself, and he watches as he holds his long mouth firm, his jaw muscles moving against themselves. “I want you to tell me everything,” Willem says. He takes his hand and walks him to the sofa in his study and sits him down. “I’m going to make myself a drink in the kitchen, and then I’m coming back,” Willem says. He looks at him. “I’ll make you one, too.” He can do nothing but nod.

  As he waits, he thinks of Caleb. He never heard from Caleb after that night, but every few months, he would look him up. There he was, for anyone to see: pictures of Caleb smiling at parties, at openings, at shows. An article about Rothko’s first freestanding boutique, with Caleb talking about the challenges a young label encounters when trying to break out in a crowded market. A magazine piece about the reemergence of the Flower District, with a quote from Caleb about living in a neighborhood that, despite its hotels and boutiques, still felt appealingly rough-edged. Now, he thinks: Did Caleb ever look him up as well? Did he show a picture of him to Nicholas? Did he say, “I once went out with him; he was grotesque”? Did he demonstrate to Nicholas—whom he imagines as blond and neat and confident—how he had walked, did they laugh with each other about how terrible, how lifeless, he had been in bed? Did he say, “He disgusted me”? Or did he say nothing at all? Did Caleb forget him, or at least choose never to consider him—was he a mistake, a brief sordid moment, an aberration to be wrapped in plastic and shoved to the far corner of Caleb’s mind, with broken toys from childhood and long-ago embarrassments? He wishes he too could forget, that he too could choose never to consider Caleb again. Always, he wonders why and how he has let four months—months increasingly distant from him—so affect him, so alter his life. But then, he might as well ask—as he often does—why he has let the first fifteen years of his life so dictate the past twenty-eight. He has been lucky beyond measure; he has an adulthood that people dream about: Why, then, does he insist on revisiting and replaying events that happened so long ago? Why can he not simply take pleasure in his present? Why must he so honor his past? Why does it become more vivid, not less, the further he moves from it?

  Willem returns with two glasses of ice and whiskey. He has put on a shirt. For a while, they sit on the sofa, sipping at their drinks, and he feels his veins fill with warmth. “I’m going to tell you,” he says to Willem, and Willem nods, but before he does, he leans over and kisses Willem. It is the first time in his life that he has ever initiated a kiss, and he hopes that with it he is conveying to Willem everything he cannot say, not even in the dark, not even in the early-morning gray: everything he is ashamed of, everything he is grateful for. This time, he keeps his eyes closed, imagining that soon, he too will be able to go wherever people go when they kiss, when they have sex: that land he has never visited, that place he wants to see, that world he hopes is not forbidden to him forever.

  When Kit was in town, they met either for lunch or dinner or at the agency’s New York offices, but when he came to the city in early December, Willem suggested they meet instead at Greene Street. “I’ll make you lunch,” he told Kit.

  “Why?” asked Kit, instantly wary: although the two of them were close in their own way, they weren’t friends, and Willem had never invited him over to Greene Street before.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” he said, and he could hear Kit making his breaths long and slow.

  “Okay,” said Kit. He knew better than to ask what that something might be, and whether something was wrong; he just assumed it. “I need to talk to you about something” was not, in Kit’s universe, a prelude to good news.

  He knew this, of course, and although he could have reassured Kit, the slightly diabolical part of him decided not to. “Okay!” he said, brightly. “See you next week!” On the other hand, he thought after he hung up, maybe his refusal to reassure Kit wasn’t just childishness: he thought what he had to tell Kit—that he and Jude were now together—wasn’t bad news, but he wasn’t sure Kit would see it the same way.

  They had decided to tell just a few people about their relationship. First they told Harold and Julia, which was the most rewarding and enjoyable reveal, although Jude had been very nervous for some reason. This had been just a couple of weeks ago, at Thanksgiving, and they had both been so happy, so excited, and they had both hugged him and Harold had cried, a little, while Jude sat on the sofa and watched the three of them, a small smile on his face.

  Then they told Richard, who hadn’t been as surprised as they’d anticipated. “I think this is a fantastic idea,” he’d said, firmly, as if they’d announced they were investing in a piece of property together. He hugged them both. “Good job,” he said. “Good job, Willem,” and he knew what Richard was trying to communicate to him: the same thing he had tried to communicate to Richard when he told him, years ago, that Jude needed somewhere safe to live, when really, he was asking Richard to look over Jude when he could not.

  Then they told Malcolm and JB, separately. First, Malcolm, who they thought would either be shocked or sanguine, and who had turned out to be the latter. “I’m so happy for you guys,” he said, beaming at them both. “This is so great. I love the idea of you two together.” He asked them how it had happened, and how long ago, and, teasingly, what they’d discovered about the other that they hadn’t known before. (The two of them had glanced at each other then—if only Malcolm k
new!—and had said nothing, which Malcolm had smiled at, as if it was evidence of a rich cache of sordid secrets that he would someday unearth.) And then he’d sighed. “I’m just sad about one thing, though,” he’d said, and they had asked him what it was. “Your apartment, Willem,” he said. “It’s so beautiful. It must be so lonely by itself.” Somehow, they had managed not to laugh, and he had reassured Malcolm that he was actually renting it to a friend of his, an actor from Spain who had been shooting a project in Manhattan and had decided to stay on for another year or so.

  JB was trickier, as they’d known he would be: they knew he would feel betrayed, and neglected, and possessive, and that all of these feelings would be exacerbated by the fact that he and Oliver had recently split up after more than four years. They took him out to dinner, where there was less of a chance (though, as Jude pointed out, no guarantee) that he would make a scene, and Jude—around whom JB was still slightly careful and to whom JB was less likely to say something inappropriate—delivered the news. They watched as JB put his fork down and put his head in his hands. “I feel sick,” he said, and they waited until he looked up and said, “But I’m really happy for you guys,” before they exhaled. JB forked into his burrata. “I mean, I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me earlier, but happy.” The entrées came, and JB stabbed at his sea bass. “I mean, I’m actually really pissed. But. I. Am. Happy.” By the time dessert arrived, it was clear that JB—who was frantically spooning up his guava soufflé—was highly agitated, and they kicked each other under the table, half on the verge of hysterics, half genuinely concerned that JB might erupt right there in the restaurant.

  After dinner they stood outside and Willem and JB had a smoke and they discussed JB’s upcoming show, his fifth, and his students at Yale, where JB had been teaching for the past few years: a momentary truce that was ruined by some girl coming up to him (“Can I get a picture with you?”), at which JB made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a groan. Later, back at Greene Street, he and Jude did laugh: at JB’s befuddlement, at his attempts at graciousness, which had clearly cost him, at his consistent and consistently applied self-absorption. “Poor JB,” Jude said. “I thought his head was going to blow off.” He sighed. “But I understand it. He’s always been in love with you, Willem.”

  “Not like that,” he said.

  Jude looked at him. “Now who can’t see themselves for who they are?” he asked, because that was what Willem was always telling him: that Jude’s vision, his version of himself was singular to the point of being delusional.

  He sighed, too. “I should call him,” he said.

  “Leave him alone tonight,” Jude said. “He’ll call you when he’s ready.”

  And so he had. That Sunday, JB had come over to Greene Street, and Jude had let him in and then had excused himself, saying he had work to do, and closed himself in his study so Willem and JB could be alone. For the next two hours, Willem had sat and listened as JB delivered a disorganized roundelay whose many accusations and questions were punctuated by his refrain of “But I really am happy for you.” JB was angry: that Willem hadn’t told him earlier, that he hadn’t even consulted him, that they had told Malcolm and Richard—Richard!—before him. JB was upset: Willem could tell him the truth; he’d always liked Jude more, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t he just admit it? Also, had he always felt this way? Were his years of fucking women just some colossal lie that Willem had created to distract them? JB was jealous: he got the attraction to Jude, he did, and he knew it was illogical and maybe a tiny bit self-involved, but it wouldn’t be truthful if he didn’t tell Willem that part of him was miffed that Willem had picked Jude and not him.

  “JB,” he said, again and again, “it was very organic. I didn’t tell you because I needed time to figure it out in my own head. And as for being attracted to you, what can I say? I’m not. And you aren’t attracted to me, either! We made out once, remember? You said it was a huge turnoff for you, remember?”

  JB ignored all this, however. “I still don’t understand why you told Malcolm and Richard first,” he said, sullenly, to which Willem had no response. “Anyway,” JB said, after a silence, “I really am happy for you two. I am.”

  He sighed. “Thank you, JB,” he said. “That means a lot.” They were both quiet again.

  “JB,” said Jude, coming out of his study, looking surprised that JB was still there. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

  “What’re you having?”

  “Cod. And I’ll roast some potatoes the way you like them.”

  “I guess,” JB said, sulkily, and Willem grinned at Jude over JB’s head.

  He joined Jude in the kitchen and began making a salad, and JB slumped to the dining-room table and started flipping through a novel Jude had left there. “I read this,” he called over to him. “Do you want to know what happens in the end?”

  “No, JB,” said Jude. “I’m only halfway through.”

  “The minister character dies after all.”

  “JB!”

  After that, JB’s mood seemed to improve. Even his final salvos were somewhat listless, as if he were delivering them out of obligation rather than true depth of feeling. “In ten years, I’ll bet you two will have made the full transition to lesbiandom. I predict cats,” was one, and “Watching you two in the kitchen is like watching a slightly more racially ambiguous version of that John Currin painting. Do you know what I’m talking about? Look it up,” was another.

  “Are you going to come out or keep it quiet?” JB asked over dinner.

  “I’m not sending out a press release, if that’s what you mean,” Willem said. “But I’m not going to hide it, either.”

  “I think it’s a mistake,” Jude added, quickly. Willem didn’t bother answering; they had been having this argument for a month.

  After dinner, he and JB lounged on the sofa and drank tea and Jude loaded the dishwasher. By this time, JB seemed almost appeased, and he recalled that this was the arc of most dinners with JB, even back at Lispenard Street: he began the evening as something sharp and tart, and ended it as something soothed and gentled.

  “How’s the sex?” JB asked him.

  “Amazing,” he said, immediately.

  JB looked glum. “Dammit,” he said.

  But of course, this was a lie. He had no idea if the sex was amazing, because they hadn’t had sex. The previous Friday, Andy had come over, and they’d told him, and Andy had stood and hugged them both very solemnly, as if he was Jude’s father and they had told him that they had just gotten engaged. Willem had walked him to the door, and as they were waiting for the elevator, Andy said to him, quietly, “How’s it going?”

  He paused. “Okay,” he said at last, and Andy, as if he could discern everything he wasn’t saying, squeezed his shoulder. “I know it’s not easy, Willem,” he said. “But you must be doing something right—I’ve never seen him more relaxed or happier, not ever.” He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but what could he say? He couldn’t say, Call me if you want to talk about him, or Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with, and so instead he left, giving Willem a little salute as the elevator sank out of sight.

  That night, after JB had gone home, he thought of the conversation he and Andy had had in the café that day, and how even as Andy had been warning him how difficult it would be, he hadn’t fully believed him. In retrospect, he was glad he hadn’t: because believing Andy might have intimidated him, because he might have been too scared to try.

  He turned and looked at Jude, who was asleep. This was one of the nights he’d taken off his clothes, and he was lying on his back, one of his arms crooked near his head, and Willem, as he often did, ran his fingers down the inside of this arm, its scars rendering it into a miserable terrain, a place of mountains and valleys singed by fire. Sometimes, when he was certain Jude was very deeply asleep, he would switch on the light near his side of the bed and study his body more closely, because Jude refused to let himself be exa
mined in daylight. He would uncover him and move his palms over his arms, his legs, his back, feeling the texture of the skin change from rough to glossy, marveling at all the permutations flesh could take, at all the ways the body healed itself, even when attempts had been made to destroy it. He had once shot a film on the Big Island of Hawaii, and on their day off, he and the rest of the cast had trekked across the lava fields, watching the land change from rock as porous and dry as petrified bone into a gleaming black landscape, the lava frozen into exuberant swirls of frosting. Jude’s skin was as diverse, as wondrous, and in places so unlike skin as he had felt or understood it that it too seemed something otherworldly and futuristic, a prototype of what flesh might look like ten thousand years from now.

  “You’re repulsed,” Jude had said, quietly, the second time he had taken his clothes off, and he had shaken his head. And he hadn’t been: Jude had always been so secretive, so protective of his body that to see it for real was somehow anticlimactic; it was so normal, finally, so less dramatic than what he had imagined. But the scars were difficult for him to see not because they were aesthetically offensive, but because each one was evidence of something withstood or inflicted. Jude’s arms were for that reason the part of his body that upset him the most. At nights, as Jude slept, he would turn them over in his hands, counting the cuts, trying to imagine himself in a state in which he would willingly inflict pain on himself, in which he would actively try to erode his own being. Sometimes there were new cuts—he always knew when Jude had cut himself, because he slept in his shirt on those nights, and he would have to push up his sleeves as he slept and feel for the bandages—and he would wonder when Jude had made them, and why he hadn’t noticed. When he had moved in with Jude after the suicide attempt, Harold had told him where Jude hid his bag of razors, and he, like Harold, had begun throwing them away. But then they had disappeared entirely, and he couldn’t figure out where Jude was keeping them.

  Other times, he would feel not curiosity, but awe: he was so much more damaged than Willem had comprehended. How could I have not known this? he would ask himself. How could I not have seen this?