A Little Life (67 page)

He and Willem left early, and that evening he cut himself for the second time since he was released from the hospital. This was another thing the drugs had dampened: his need to cut, to feel that bright, startling slap of pain. The first time he did it, he was shocked by how much it hurt, and had actually wondered why he had been doing this to himself for so long—what had he been thinking? But then he felt everything within him slow, felt himself relax, felt his memories dim, and had remembered how it helped him, remembered why he had begun doing it at all. The scars from his attempt were three vertical lines on both arms, from the base of his palm to just below the inside of his elbow, and they hadn’t healed well; it looked as if he had shoved pencils just beneath the skin. They had a strange, pearly shine, almost as if the skin had been burned, and now he made a fist, watching them tighten in response.

That night he woke screaming, which had been happening as he readjusted to life, to an existence with dreams; on the drugs, there were no dreams, not really, or if there were, they were so strange and pointless and meandering that he soon forgot them. But in this dream he was in one of the motel rooms, and there was a group of men, and they were grabbing at him, and he was desperate, trying to fight them. But they kept multiplying, and he knew he would lose, he knew he would be destroyed.

One of the men kept calling his name, and then put his hand on his cheek, and for some reason that made him more terrified, and he pushed his hand away, and then the man poured water on him and he woke, gasping, to see Willem next to him, his face pale, holding a glass in his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Willem said, “I couldn’t get you out of it, Jude, I’m sorry. I’m going to get you a towel,” and came back with a towel and the glass filled with water, but he was shaking too badly to
hold it. He apologized again and again to Willem, who shook his head and told him not to worry, that it was all right, that it was just a dream. Willem got him a new shirt, and turned around as he changed and then took the wet one to the bathroom.

“Who’s Brother Luke?” asked Willem, as they sat there together in silence and waited for his breathing to return to normal. And then, when he didn’t answer, “You kept screaming ‘Help me, Brother Luke, help me.’ ” He was quiet. “Who is he, Jude? Was he someone from the monastery?”

“I can’t, Willem,” he said, and he yearned for Ana.
Ask me one more time, Ana
, he said to her,
and I’ll tell you. Teach me how to do it. This time I’ll listen. This time I’ll talk
.

That weekend they went to Richard’s house upstate and took a long walk through the woods that backed the property. Later, he successfully completed the first meal he’d cooked since he was released. He made Willem’s favorite, lamb chops, and although he’d needed Willem’s help carving the chop itself—he still wasn’t agile enough to do it on his own—he did everything else by himself. That night he woke again, screaming, and again there was Willem (though without the glass of water this time), and him asking about Brother Luke, and why he kept begging for his help, and again, he wasn’t able to answer.

The next day he was tired, and his arms ached, and his body ached as well, and on their walk, he said very little, and Willem didn’t say much himself. In the afternoon they reviewed their plans for Morocco: they would begin in Fez, and then drive through the desert, where they’d stay near Ouarzazate, and end in Marrakech. On their way back, they’d stop in Paris to visit Citizen and a friend of Willem’s for a few days; they’d be home just before the new year.

As they were eating dinner, Willem said, “You know, I thought of what you could give me for my birthday.”

“Oh?” he said, relieved to be able to concentrate on something he could give Willem, rather than having to ask Willem for yet more help, thinking of all the time he had stolen from him. “Let’s hear it.”

“Well,” said Willem, “it’s kind of a big thing.”

“Anything,” he said. “I mean it,” and Willem gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. “Really,” he assured him. “Anything.”

Willem put down his lamb sandwich and took a breath. “Okay,” he said. “What I really want for my birthday is for you to tell me who
Brother Luke is. And not just who he is, but what your—your relationship with him was, and why you think you keep calling out his name at night.” He looked at him. “I want you to be honest, and thorough, and tell me the whole story. That’s what I want.”

There was a long silence. He realized he still had a mouthful of food, and he somehow swallowed it, and put down his sandwich as well, which he was still holding aloft. “Willem,” he said at last, because he knew that Willem was serious, and that he wouldn’t be able to dissuade him, to convince him to wish for something else, “part of me
does
want to tell you. But if I do—” He stopped. “But if I do, I’m afraid you’re going to be disgusted by me. Wait,” he said, as Willem began to speak. He looked at Willem’s face. “I promise you I will. I promise you. But—but you’re going to have to give me some time. I’ve never really discussed it before, and I need to figure out how to say the words.”

“Okay,” Willem said at last. “Well.” He paused. “How about if we work up to it, then? I ask you about something easier, and you answer that, and you’ll see that it’s not so bad, talking about it? And if it is, we’ll discuss that, too.”

He inhaled; exhaled.
This is Willem
, he reminded himself.
He would never hurt you, not ever. It’s time. It’s time
. “Okay,” he said, finally. “Okay. Ask me.”

He could see Willem leaning back in his chair and staring at him, trying to determine which to choose of the hundreds of questions that one friend should be able to ask another and yet he had never been allowed to do. Tears came to his eyes, then, for how lopsided he had let their friendship become, and for how long Willem had stayed with him, year after year, even when he had fled from him, even when he had asked him for help with problems whose origins he wouldn’t reveal. In his new life, he promised himself, he would be less demanding of his friends; he would be more generous. Whatever they wanted, he would give them. If Willem wanted information, he could have it, and it was up to him to figure out how to give it to him. He would be hurt again and again—everyone was—but if he was going to try, if he was going to be alive, he had to be tougher, he had to prepare himself, he had to accept that this was part of the bargain of life itself.

“Okay, I’ve got one,” Willem said, and he sat up straighter, readying himself. “How did you get the scar on the back of your hand?”

He blinked, surprised. He wasn’t sure what the question was going
to be, but now that it had come, he was relieved. He rarely thought of the scar these days, and now he looked at it, its taffeta gleam, and as he ran his fingertips across it, he thought of how this scar led to so many other problems, and then to Brother Luke, and then to the home, and to Philadelphia, to all of it.

But what in life wasn’t connected to some greater, sadder story? All Willem was asking for was this one story; he didn’t need to drag everything else behind it, a huge ugly snarl of difficulties.

He thought about how he could start, and plotted what he’d say in his head before he opened his mouth. Finally, he was ready. “I was always a greedy kid,” he began, and across the table, he watched Willem lean forward on his elbows, as for the first time in their friendship, he was the listener, and he was being told a story.

He was ten, he was eleven. His hair grew long again, longer even than it had been at the monastery. He grew taller, and Brother Luke took him to a thrift store, where you could buy a sack of clothes and pay by the pound. “Slow down!” Brother Luke would joke with him, pushing down on the top of his head as if he were squashing him back to a smaller size. “You’re growing up too fast for me!”

He slept all the time now. In his lessons, he was awake, but as the day turned to late afternoon, he would feel something descend upon him, and would begin yawning, unable to keep his eyes open. At first Brother Luke joked about this as well—“My sleepyhead,” he said, “my dreamer”—but one night, he sat down with him after the client had left. For months, years, he had struggled with the clients, more out of reflex than because he thought he was capable of making them stop, but recently, he had begun to simply lie there, inert, waiting for whatever was going to happen to be over. “I know you’re tired,” Brother Luke had said. “It’s normal; you’re growing. It’s tiring work, growing. And I know you work hard. But Jude, when you’re with your clients, you have to show a little life; they’re paying to be with you, you know—you have to show them you’re enjoying it.” When he said nothing, the brother added, “Of course, I know it’s not
enjoyable
for you, not the way it is with just us, but you have to show a little energy, all right?” He leaned over, tucked his hair behind his ear. “All right?” He nodded.

It was also around then that he began throwing himself into walls. The motel they were staying in—this was in Washington—had a second floor, and once he had gone upstairs to refill their bucket of ice. It had been a wet, slippery day, and as he was walking back, he had tripped and fallen, bouncing the entire way downstairs. Brother Luke had heard the noise his fall made and had run out. Nothing had been broken, but he had been scraped and was bleeding, and Brother Luke had canceled the appointment he had for that evening. That night, the brother had been careful with him, and had brought him tea, but he had felt more alive than he had in weeks. Something about the fall, the freshness of the pain, had been restorative. It was honest pain, clean pain, a pain without shame or filth, and it was a different sensation than he had felt in years. The next week, he went to get ice again, but this time, on his way back to the room, he stopped in the little triangle of space beneath the stairwell, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he was tossing himself against the brick wall, and as he did so, he imagined he was knocking out of himself every piece of dirt, every trace of liquid, every memory of the past few years. He was resetting himself; he was returning himself to something pure; he was punishing himself for what he had done. After that, he felt better, energized, as if he had run a very long race and then had vomited, and he had been able to return to the room.

Eventually, however, Brother Luke realized what he was doing, and there had been another talk. “I understand you get frustrated,” Brother Luke said, “but Jude, what you’re doing isn’t good for you. I’m worried about you. And the clients don’t like seeing you all bruised.” They were silent. A month ago, after a very bad night—there had been a group of men, and after they had left, he had sobbed, wailed, coming as close to a tantrum as he had in years, while Luke sat next to him and rubbed his sore stomach and held a pillow over his mouth to muffle the sound—he had begged Luke to let him stop. And the brother had cried and said he would, that there was nothing more he’d like than for it to be just the two of them, but he had long ago spent all his money taking care of him. “I don’t regret it for an instant, Jude,” said the brother, “but we don’t have any money now. You’re all I’ve got. I’m so sorry. But I’m really saving now; eventually, you’ll be able to stop, I promise.”

“When?” he had sobbed.

“Soon,” said Luke, “soon. A year. I promise,” and he had nodded,
although he had long since learned that the brother’s promises were meaningless.

But then the brother said that he would teach him a secret, something that would help him relieve his frustrations, and the next day he had taught him to cut himself, and had given him a bag already packed with razors and alcohol wipes and cotton and bandages. “You’ll have to experiment to see what feels best,” the brother had said, and had shown him how to clean and bandage the cut once he had finished. “So this is yours,” he said, giving him the bag. “You let me know when you need more supplies, and I’ll get them for you.” He had at first missed the theatrics, the force and weight, of his falls and his slams, but he soon grew to appreciate the secrecy, the control of the cuts. Brother Luke was right: the cutting was better. When he did it, it was as if he was draining away the poison, the filth, the rage inside him. It was as if his old dream of leeches had come to life and had the same effect, the effect he had always hoped it would. He wished he was made of metal, of plastic: something that could be hosed down and scrubbed clean. He had a vision of himself being pumped full of water and detergent and bleach and then blasted dry, everything inside him made hygienic again. Now, after the final client of the night had left, he took Brother Luke’s place in the bathroom, and until he heard the brother telling him it was time to come to bed, his body was his to do with what he chose.

He was so dependent on Luke: for his food, for his protection, and now for his razors. When he needed to be taken to the doctor because he was sick—he got infections from the clients, no matter how hard Brother Luke tried, and sometimes he didn’t properly clean his cuts and they became infected as well—Brother Luke took him, and got him the antibiotics he needed. He grew accustomed to Brother Luke’s body, his mouth, his hands: he didn’t like them, but he no longer jolted when Luke began to kiss him, and when the brother put his arms around him, he obediently returned the embrace. He knew there was no one else who would ever treat him as well as Luke did: even when he did something wrong, Luke never yelled at him, and even after all these years, he had still never hit him. Earlier, he had thought he might someday have a client who would be better, who might want to take him away, but now he knew that would never be the case. Once, he had started getting undressed before the client was ready, and the man had slapped his face and snapped at him. “Jesus,” he’d said, “slow down,
you little slut. How many times have you done this, anyway?” And as he always did whenever the clients hit him, Luke had come out of the bathroom to yell at the man, and had made the man promise to behave better if he was going to stay. The clients called him names: he was a slut, a whore, filthy, disgusting, a nympho (he had to look that one up), a slave, garbage, trash, dirty, worthless, a nothing. But Luke never said any of those things to him. He was perfect, said Luke, he was smart, he was good at what he did and there was nothing wrong with what he did.