A Little Life (30 page)

At least he knew that nothing was wrong with them—it was the first thing he had asked, and Harold had assured him that he and Julia were both fine. But what, then, could it be?

“Maybe he thinks I’m hanging around them too much,” he suggested to Willem. Maybe Harold was, simply, sick of him.

“Not possible,” Willem said, so quickly and declaratively that he
was relieved. They were quiet. “Maybe one of them got a job offer somewhere and they’re moving?”

“I thought of that, too. But I don’t think Harold would ever leave Boston. Julia, either.”

There weren’t, in the end, many options, at least many that would make a conversation with him necessary: maybe they were selling the house in Truro (but why would they need to talk to him about that, as much as he loved the house). Maybe Harold and Julia were splitting up (but they seemed the same as they always did around each other). Maybe they were selling the New York apartment and wanted to know if he wanted to buy it from them (unlikely: he was certain they would never sell the apartment). Maybe they were
renovating
the apartment and needed him to oversee the renovation.

And then their speculations grew more specific and improbable: maybe Julia was coming out (maybe Harold was). Maybe Harold was being born again (maybe Julia was). Maybe they were quitting their jobs, moving to an ashram in upstate New York. Maybe they were becoming ascetics who would live in a remote Kashmiri valley. Maybe they were having his-and-hers plastic surgery. Maybe Harold was becoming a Republican. Maybe Julia had found God. Maybe Harold had been nominated to be the attorney general. Maybe Julia had been identified by the Tibetan government in exile as the next reincarnation of the Panchen Lama and was moving to Dharamsala. Maybe Harold was running for president as a Socialist candidate. Maybe they were opening a restaurant on the square that served only turkey stuffed with other kinds of meat. By this time they were both laughing so hard, as much from the nervous, self-soothing helplessness of not knowing as from the absurdity of their guesses, that they were bent over in their chairs, pressing their coat collars to their mouths to muffle the noise, their tears freezing pinchingly on their cheeks.

In bed, though, he returned to the thought that had crept, tendril-like, from some dark space of his mind and had insinuated itself into his consciousness like a thin green vine: maybe one of them had discovered something about the person he once was. Maybe he would be presented with evidence—a doctor’s report, a photograph, a (this was the nightmare scenario) film still. He had already decided he wouldn’t deny it, he wouldn’t argue against it, he wouldn’t defend himself. He would acknowledge its veracity, he would apologize, he would explain
that he never meant to deceive them, he would offer not to contact them again, and then he would leave. He would ask them only to keep his secret, to not tell anyone else. He practiced saying the words:
I’m so sorry, Harold. I’m so sorry, Julia. I never meant to embarrass you
. But of course it was such a useless apology. He might not have meant to, but it wouldn’t make a difference: he would have; he had.

Willem left the next morning; he had a show that night. “Call me as soon as you know, okay?” he asked, and he nodded. “It’s going to be fine, Jude,” he promised. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Don’t worry, all right?”

“You know I will anyway,” he said, and tried to smile back at Willem.

“Yeah, I know,” said Willem. “But try. And call me.”

The rest of the day he kept himself busy cleaning—there was always plenty to clean at the house, as both Harold and Julia were unenthusiastic tidiers—and by the time they sat down to an early dinner he’d made of turkey stew and a beet salad, he felt almost aloft from nervousness and could only pretend to eat, moving the food around his plate like a compass point, hoping Harold and Julia wouldn’t notice. After, he began stacking the plates to take them to the kitchen, but Harold stopped him. “Leave them, Jude,” he said. “Maybe we should have our talk now?”

He felt himself go fluttery with panic. “I should really rinse them off, or everything’s going to congeal,” he protested, lamely, hearing how stupid he sounded.

“Fuck the plates,” said Harold, and although he knew that Harold genuinely didn’t care what did or didn’t congeal on his plates, for a moment he wondered if his casualness was
too
casual, a simulacrum of ease rather than the real thing. But finally, he could do nothing but put the dishes down and trudge after Harold into the living room, where Julia was pouring coffee for herself and Harold, and had poured tea for him.

He lowered himself to the sofa, and Harold to the chair to his left, and Julia to the squashed suzani-covered ottoman facing him: the places they always sat, the low table between them, and he wished the moment would hold itself, for what if this was the last one he would have here, the last time he would sit in this warm dark room, with its books and tart, sweet scent of cloudy apple juice and the navy-and-scarlet Turkish carpet that had buckled itself into pleats under the coffee
table, and the patch on the sofa cushion where the fabric had worn thin and he could see the white muslin skin beneath—all the things that he’d allowed to grow so dear to him, because they were Harold and Julia’s, and because he had allowed himself to think of their house as his.

For a while they all sipped at their drinks, and none of them looked at the other, and he tried to pretend that this was just a normal evening, although if it had been a normal evening, none of them would be so silent.

“Well,” Harold began at last, and he set his cup down on the table, readying himself.
Whatever he says
, he reminded himself,
don’t start making excuses for yourself. Whatever he says, accept it, and thank him for everything
.

There was another long silence. “This is hard to say,” Harold continued, and shifted his mug in his hand, and he made himself wait through Harold’s next pause. “I really did have a script prepared, didn’t I?” he asked Julia, and she nodded. “But I’m more nervous than I thought I would be.”

“I know,” she said. “But you’re doing great.”

“Ha!” Harold replied. “It’s sweet of you to lie to me, though,” and smiled at her, and he had the sense that it was only the two of them in the room, and that for a moment, they had forgotten he was there at all. But then Harold was quiet again, trying to say what he’d say next.

“Jude, I’ve—we’ve—known you for almost a decade now,” Harold said at last, and he watched as Harold’s eyes moved to him and then moved away, to somewhere above Julia’s head. “And over those years, you’ve grown very dear to us; both of us. You’re our friend, of course, but we think of you as more than a friend to us; as someone more special than that.” He looked at Julia, and she nodded at him once more. “So I hope you won’t think this is too—presumptuous, I suppose—but we’ve been wondering if you might consider letting us, well, adopt you.” Now he turned to him again, and smiled. “You’d be our legal son, and our legal heir, and someday all this”—he tossed his free arm into the air in a parodic gesture of expansiveness—“will be yours, if you want it.”

He was silent. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t react; he couldn’t even feel his face, couldn’t sense what his expression might be, and Julia hurried in. “Jude,” she said, “if you don’t want to, for whatever reason, we understand completely. It’s a lot to ask. If you say no, it won’t
change how we feel about you, right, Harold? You’ll always, always be welcome here, and we hope you’ll always be part of our lives. Honestly, Jude—we won’t be angry, and you shouldn’t feel bad.” She looked at him. “Do you want some time to think about it?”

And then he could feel the numbness receding, although as if in compensation, his hands began shaking, and he grabbed one of the throw pillows and wrapped his arms around it to hide them. It took him a few tries before he was able to speak, but when he did, he couldn’t look at either of them. “I don’t need to think about it,” he said, and his voice sounded strange and thin to him. “Harold, Julia—are you kidding? There’s nothing—nothing—I’ve ever wanted more. My whole life. I just never thought—” He stopped; he was speaking in fragments. For a minute they were all quiet, and he was finally able to look at both of them. “I thought you were going to tell me you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

“Oh, Jude,” said Julia, and Harold looked perplexed. “Why would you ever think that?” he asked.

But he shook his head, unable to explain it to them.

They were silent again, and then all of them were smiling—Julia at Harold, Harold at him, he into the pillow—unsure how to end the moment, unsure where to go next. Finally, Julia clapped her hands together and stood. “Champagne!” she said, and left the room.

He and Harold stood as well and looked at each other. “Are you sure?” Harold asked him, quietly.

“I’m as sure as you are,” he answered, just as quietly. There was an uncreative and obvious joke to be made, about how much like a marriage proposal the event seemed, but he didn’t have the heart to make it.

“You realize you’re going to be bound to us for life,” Harold smiled, and put his hand on his shoulder, and he nodded. He hoped Harold wouldn’t say one more word, because if he did, he would cry, or vomit, or pass out, or scream, or combust. He was aware, suddenly, of how exhausted, how utterly depleted he was, as much by the past few weeks of anxiety as well as the past thirty years of craving, of wanting, of wishing so intensely even as he told himself he didn’t care, that by the time they had toasted one another and first Julia and then Harold had hugged him—the sensation of being held by Harold so unfamiliar and intimate that he had nearly squirmed—he was relieved when Harold told him to leave the damn dishes and go to bed.

When he reached his room, he had to lie on the bed for half an hour before he could even think of retrieving his phone. He needed to feel the solidity of the bed beneath him, the silk of the cotton blanket against his cheek, the familiar yield of the mattress as he moved against it. He needed to assure himself that this was his world, and he was still in it, and that what had happened had really happened. He thought, suddenly, of a conversation he’d once had with Brother Peter, in which he’d asked the brother if he thought he’d ever be adopted, and the brother had laughed. “No,” he’d said, so decisively that he had never asked again. And although he must have been very young, he remembered, very clearly, that the brother’s dismissal had only hardened his resolve, although of course it wasn’t an outcome that was his to control in the slightest.

He was so discombobulated that he forgot that Willem was already onstage when he called, but when Willem called him back at intermission, he was still in the same place on the bed, in the same comma-like shape, the phone still cupped beneath his palm.

“Jude,” Willem breathed when he told him, and he could hear how purely happy Willem was for him. Only Willem—and Andy, and to some extent Harold—knew the outlines of how he had grown up: the monastery, the home, his time with the Douglasses. With everyone else, he tried to be evasive for as long as he could, until finally he would say that his parents had died when he was little, and that he had grown up in foster care, which usually stopped their questions. But Willem knew more of the truth, and he knew Willem knew that this was his most impossible, his most fervent desire. “Jude, that’s amazing. How do you feel?”

He tried to laugh. “Like I’m going to mess it up.”

“You won’t.” They were both quiet. “I didn’t even know you could adopt someone who’s a legal adult.”

“I mean, it’s not common, but you can. As long as both parties consent. It’s mostly done for purposes of inheritance.” He made another attempt at a laugh. (
Stop trying to laugh
, he scolded himself.) “I don’t remember much from when I studied this in family law, but I do know that I get a new birth certificate with their names on it.”

“Wow,” said Willem.

“I know,” he said.

He heard someone calling Willem’s name, commandingly, in the background. “You have to go,” he told Willem.

“Shit,” said Willem. “But Jude? Congratulations. No one deserves it more.” He called back at whoever was yelling for him. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Do you mind if I write Harold and Julia?”

“Sure,” he said. “But Willem, don’t tell the others, okay? I just want to sit with it for a while.”

“I won’t say a word. I’ll see you tomorrow. And Jude—” But he didn’t, or couldn’t, say anything else.

“I know,” he said. “I know, Willem. I feel the same way.”

“I love you,” said Willem, and then he was gone before he had to respond. He never knew what to say when Willem said that to him, and yet he always longed for him to say it. It was a night of impossible things, and he fought to stay awake, to be conscious and alert for as long as possible, to enjoy and repeat to himself everything that had happened to him, a lifetime’s worth of wishes coming true in a few brief hours.

Back in the apartment the next day, there was a note from Willem telling him to wait up, and when Willem came home, he had ice cream and a carrot cake, which the two of them ate even though neither of them particularly liked sweets, and champagne, which they drank even though he had to wake up early the following morning. The next few weeks slid by: Harold was handling the paperwork, and sent him forms to sign—the petition for adoption, an affidavit to change his birth certificate, a request for information about his potential criminal record—which he took to the bank at lunch to have notarized; he didn’t want anyone at work to know beyond the few people he told: Marshall, and Citizen, and Rhodes. He told JB and Malcolm, who on the one hand reacted exactly as he’d anticipated—JB making a lot of unfunny jokes at an almost tic-like pace, as if he might eventually land on one that worked; Malcolm asking increasingly granular questions about various hypotheticals that he couldn’t answer—and on the other had been genuinely thrilled for him. He told Black Henry Young, who had taken two classes with Harold when he was in law school and had admired him, and JB’s friend Richard, to whom he’d grown close after one particularly long and tedious party at Ezra’s a year ago when the two of them had had a conversation that had begun with the French welfare state and then had moved on to various other topics, the only two semi-sober
people in the room. He told Phaedra, who had started screaming, and another old college friend, Elijah, who had screamed as well.