ALSO BY HANYA YANAGIHARA The People in the Trees OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com This book is a work of fiction Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental Copyright © 2015 by Hanya Yanagihara All rights reserved Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies www.doubleday.com DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC Jacket design by Cardon Webb Jacket photograph: Orgasmic Man by Peter Hujar © 1987 The Peter Hujar Archive LLC Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yanagihara, Hanya A little life : a novel / Hanya Yanagihara — First edition pages; cm ISBN 978-0-385-53925-8 (hardcover) —ISBN 978-0-385-53926-5 (eBook) Families—Fiction Domestic fiction I Title PS3625.A674L58 2015 813′.6—dc23 2014027379 v3.1 OceanofPDF.com To Jared Hohlt in friendship; with love OceanofPDF.com Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication I LISPENARD STREET Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 II THE POSTMAN Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 III VANITIES Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 IV THE AXIOM OF EQUALITY Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 V THE HAPPY YEARS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 VI DEAR COMRADE Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 VII LISPENARD STREET Acknowledgments About the Author OceanofPDF.com [ I ] Lispenard Street OceanofPDF.com THE ELEVENTH APARTMENT had only one closet, but it did have a sliding glass door that opened onto a small balcony, from which he could see a man sitting across the way, outdoors in only a T-shirt and shorts even though it was October, smoking Willem held up a hand in greeting to him, but the man didn’t wave back In the bedroom, Jude was accordioning the closet door, opening and shutting it, when Willem came in “There’s only one closet,” he said “That’s okay,” Willem said “I have nothing to put in it anyway.” “Neither I.” They smiled at each other The agent from the building wandered in after them “We’ll take it,” Jude told her But back at the agent’s office, they were told they couldn’t rent the apartment after all “Why not?” Jude asked her “You don’t make enough to cover six months’ rent, and you don’t have anything in savings,” said the agent, suddenly terse She had checked their credit and their bank accounts and had at last realized that there was something amiss about two men in their twenties who were not a couple and yet were trying to rent a one-bedroom apartment on a dull (but still expensive) stretch of Twenty-fifth Street “Do you have anyone who can sign on as your guarantor? A boss? Parents?” “Our parents are dead,” said Willem, swiftly The agent sighed “Then I suggest you lower your expectations No one who manages a well-run building is going to rent to candidates with your financial profile.” And then she stood, with an air of finality, and looked pointedly at the door When they told JB and Malcolm this, however, they made it into a comedy: the apartment floor became tattooed with mouse droppings, the man across the way had almost exposed himself, the agent was upset because she had been flirting with Willem and he hadn’t reciprocated “Who wants to live on Twenty-fifth and Second anyway,” asked JB They were at Pho Viet Huong in Chinatown, where they met twice a month for dinner Pho Viet Huong wasn’t very good—the was curiously sugary, the lime juice was soapy, and at least one of them got sick after every meal—but they kept coming, both out of habit and necessity You could get a bowl of soup or a sandwich at Pho Viet Huong for five dollars, or you could get an entrée, which were eight to ten dollars but much larger, so you could save half of it for the next day or for a snack later that night Only Malcolm never ate the whole of his entrée and never saved the other half either, and when he was finished eating, he put his plate in the center of the table so Willem and JB—who were always hungry—could eat the rest “Of course we don’t want to live at Twenty-fifth and Second, JB,” said Willem, patiently, “but we don’t really have a choice We don’t have any money, remember?” “I don’t understand why you don’t stay where you are,” said Malcolm, who was now pushing his mushrooms and tofu—he always ordered the same dish: oyster mushrooms and braised tofu in a treacly brown sauce—around his plate, as Willem and JB eyed it “Well, I can’t,” Willem said “Remember?” He had to have explained this to Malcolm a dozen times in the last three months “Merritt’s boyfriend’s moving in, so I have to move out.” “But why do you have to move out?” “Because it’s Merritt’s name on the lease, Malcolm!” said JB “Oh,” Malcolm said He was quiet He often forgot what he considered inconsequential details, but he also never seemed to mind when people grew impatient with him for forgetting “Right.” He moved the mushrooms to the center of the table “But you, Jude—” “I can’t stay at your place forever, Malcolm Your parents are going to kill me at some point.” “My parents love you.” “That’s nice of you to say But they won’t if I don’t move out, and soon.” Malcolm was the only one of the four of them who lived at home, and as JB liked to say, if he had Malcolm’s home, he would live at home too It wasn’t as if Malcolm’s house was particularly grand—it was, in fact, creaky and ill-kept, and Willem had once gotten a splinter simply by running his hand up its banister—but it was large: a real Upper East Side town house Malcolm’s sister, Flora, who was three years older than him, had moved out of the basement apartment recently, and Jude had taken her place as a short-term solution: Eventually, Malcolm’s parents would want to reclaim the unit to convert it into offices for his mother’s literary agency, which meant Jude (who was finding the flight of stairs that led down to it too difficult to navigate anyway) had to look for his own apartment And it was natural that he would live with Willem; they had been Can you have a real relationship with someone you are frightened of? Of course you can But he still scared me, because he was the powerful one and I was not: if he killed himself, if he took himself away from me, I knew I would survive, but I knew as well that survival would be a chore; I knew that forever after I would be hunting for explanations, sifting through the past to examine my mistakes And of course I knew how badly I would miss him, because although there had been trial runs for his eventual departure, I had never been able to get any better at dealing with them, and I was never able to get used to them But then we came home, and everything was the same: Mr Ahmed met us at the airport and drove us back to the apartment, and waiting for us with the doorman were bags of food so we wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store The next day was a Thursday and he came over and we had dinner, and he asked what we had seen and done and we told him That night we were washing the dishes, and as he was handing me a bowl to put in the dishwasher, it slipped through his fingers and broke against the floor “Goddammit,” he shouted “I’m so sorry, Harold I’m so stupid, I’m so clumsy,” and although we told him it wasn’t a problem, that it was fine, he only grew more and more upset, so upset that his hands started to shake, that his nose started to bleed “Jude,” I told him, “it’s okay It happens,” but he shook his head “No,” he said, “it’s me I mess up everything Everything I touch I ruin.” Julia and I had looked at each other over his head as he was picking up the pieces, unsure what to say or do: the reaction was so out of proportion to what had happened But there had been a few incidents in the preceding months, ever since he had thrown that plate across the room, that made me realize, for the first time in my life with him, how truly angry he was, how hard he must work every day at controlling it After that first incident with the plate there had been another, a few weeks later This was up at Lantern House, where he hadn’t been in months It was morning, just after breakfast, and Julia and I were leaving to go to the store, and I went to find him to ask what he wanted He was in his bedroom, and the door was slightly ajar, and when I saw what he was doing, I for some reason didn’t call his name, didn’t walk away, but stood just outside the frame, silent and watching He had one prosthesis on and was putting on the other—I had never seen him without them—and I watched as he sank his left leg into the socket, drawing the elastic sleeve up around his knee and thigh, and then pushed his pants leg down over it As you know, these prostheses had feet with paneling that resembled the shape of a toe box and a heel, and I watched as he pulled on his socks, and then his shoes And then he took a breath and stood, and I watched as he took a step, and then another But even I could tell something was wrong— they were still too big; he was still too thin—and before I could call out, he had lost his balance and pitched forward onto the bed, where he lay still for a moment And then he reached down and tore off both legs, one and then the other, and for a second—they were still wearing their socks and shoes —it appeared as if they were his real legs, and he had just yanked away a piece of himself, and I half expected to see an arcing splash of blood But instead he picked one up and slammed it against the bed, again and again and again, grunting with the effort, and then he threw it to the ground and sat on the edge of the mattress, his face in his hands, his elbows on his thighs, rocking himself and not making a sound “Please,” I heard him say, “please.” But he didn’t say anything else, and I, to my shame, crept away and went to our bedroom, where I sat in a posture that mimicked his own, and waited as well for something I didn’t know In those months I thought often of what I was trying to do, of how hard it is to keep alive someone who doesn’t want to stay alive First you try logic (You have so much to live for), and then you try guilt (You owe me), and then you try anger, and threats, and pleading (I’m old; don’t do this to an old man) But then, once they agree, it is necessary that you, the cajoler, move into the realm of self-deception, because you can see that it is costing them, you can see how much they don’t want to be here, you can see that the mere act of existing is depleting for them, and then you have to tell yourself every day: I am doing the right thing To let him what he wants to is abhorrent to the laws of nature, to the laws of love You pounce upon the happy moments, you hold them up as proof—See? This is why it’s worth living This is why I’ve been making him try—even though that one moment cannot compensate for all the other moments, the majority of moments You think, as I had thought with Jacob, what is a child for? Is he to give me comfort? Is he for me to give comfort to? And if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave? And then you think again: But that is abominable I can’t So I tried, of course I tried and tried But every month I could feel him receding It wasn’t so much a physical disappearance: by November, he was back at his weight, the low side of it anyway, and looked better than he had perhaps ever But he was quieter, much quieter, and he had always been quiet anyway But now he spoke very little, and when we were together, I would sometimes see him looking at something I couldn’t see, and then he would twitch his head, very slightly, like a horse does its ears, and come back to himself Once I saw him for our Thursday dinner and he had bruises on his face and neck, just on one side, as if he was standing near a building in the late afternoon and the sun had cast a shadow against him The bruises were a dark rusty brown, like dried blood, and I had gasped “What happened?” I asked “I fell,” he said, shortly “Don’t worry,” he said, although of course I did And when I saw him with bruises again, I tried to hold him “Tell me,” I said, and he worked himself free “There’s nothing to tell,” he said I still don’t know what had happened: Had he done something to himself? Had he let someone do something to him? I didn’t know which was worse I didn’t know what to do He missed you I missed you, too We all did I think you should know that, that I didn’t just miss you because you made him better: I missed you for you I missed watching the pleasure you took in doing the things you enjoyed, whether it was eating or running after a tennis ball or flinging yourself into the pool I missed talking with you, missed watching you move through a room, missed watching you fall to the lawn under a passel of Laurence’s grandchildren, pretending that you couldn’t get up from under their weight (That same day, Laurence’s youngest grandchild, the one who had a crush on you, had made you a bracelet of knotted-together dandelion flowers, and you had thanked her and worn it all day, and every time she had spotted it on your wrist, she had run over and buried her face in her father’s back: I missed that, too.) But mostly, I missed watching you two together; I missed watching you watch him, and him watch you; I missed how thoughtful you were with each other, missed how thoughtlessly, sincerely affectionate you were with him; missed watching you listen to each other, the way you both did so intently That painting JB did—Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story—was so true, the expression so right: I knew what was happening in the painting even before I read its title And I don’t want you to think that there weren’t happy moments as well, happy days, after you left They were fewer, of course They were harder to find, harder to make But they existed After we came home from Italy, I began teaching a seminar at Columbia, one open to both law school students and graduate students from the general population The course was called “The Philosophy of Law, the Law of Philosophy,” and I co-taught it with an old friend of mine, and in it we discussed the fairness of law, the moral underpinnings of the legal system and how they sometimes contradicted our national sense of morality: Drayman 241, after all these years! In the afternoon, I saw friends Julia took a life-drawing class We volunteered at a nonprofit that helped professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers) from other countries (Sudan, Afghanistan, Nepal) find new jobs in their fields, even if these jobs bore only a tangential resemblance to what they had done before: nurses became medical assistants; judges became clerks A few of them I helped apply to law school, and when I saw them, we would talk about what they were learning, how different this law was from the law they had known “I think we should work on a project together,” I told him that fall (he was still doing pro bono work with the artist nonprofit, which— when I went to volunteer there myself—was actually more moving than I had thought it would be: I had thought it would just be a bunch of untalented hacks trying to make creative lives for themselves when it was clear they never would, and although that was in fact what it was, I found myself admiring them, much as he did—their perseverance, their dumb, hardy faith These were people no one and nothing could ever dissuade from life, from claiming it as theirs) “Like what?” he asked “You could teach me to cook,” I told him, as he gave me that look he had, in which he was almost smiling but not quite, amused but not ready to show it “I’m serious Really cook Six or seven dishes I could have in my arsenal.” And so he did Saturday afternoons, after he’d finished work or visiting with Lucien and the Irvines, we’d drive to Garrison, either alone or with Richard and India or JB or one of the Henry Youngs and their wives, and on Sunday we’d cook something My main problem, it emerged, was a lack of patience, my inability to accept tedium I’d wander away to look for something to read and forget that I was leaving the risotto to glue itself into a sticky glop, or I’d forget to turn the carrots in their puddle of olive oil and come back to find them seared to the bottom of the pan (So much of cooking, it seemed, was petting and bathing and monitoring and flipping and turning and soothing: demands I associated with human infancy.) My other problem, I was told, was my insistence on innovating, which is apparently a guarantee of failure in baking “It’s chemistry, Harold, not philosophy,” he kept saying, with that same half smile “You can’t cheat the specifed amounts and hope it’s going to come out the way it should.” “Maybe it’ll come out better,” I said, mostly to entertain him—I was always happy to play the fool if I thought it might give him some pleasure—and now he smiled, really smiled “It won’t,” he said But finally, I actually did learn how to make some things: I learned how to roast a chicken and poach an egg and broil halibut I learned how to make carrot cake, and a bread with lots of different nuts that I had liked to buy at the bakery he used to work at in Cambridge: his version was uncanny, and for weeks I made loaf after loaf “Excellent, Harold,” he said one day, after tasting a slice “See? Now you’ll be able to cook for yourself when you’re a hundred.” “What do you mean, cook for myself?” I asked him “You’ll have to cook for me,” and he smiled back at me, a sad, strange smile, and didn’t say anything, and I quickly changed the subject before he said something that I would have to pretend he didn’t I was always trying to allude to the future, to make plans for years away, so that he’d commit to them and I could make him honor his commitment But he was careful: he never promised “We should take a music class, you and I,” I told him, not really knowing what I meant by that He smiled, a little “Maybe,” he said “Sure We’ll discuss it.” But that was the most he’d allow After our cooking lesson, we walked When we were at the house upstate, we walked the path Malcolm had made: past the spot in the woods where I had once had to leave him propped against a tree, jolting with pain, past the first bench, past the second, past the third At the second bench we’d always sit and rest He didn’t need to rest, not like he used to, and we walked so slowly that I didn’t need to, either But we always made a ceremonial stop, because it was from here that you had the clearest view of the back of the house, do you remember? Malcolm had cut away some of the trees here so that from the bench, you were facing the house straight on, and if you were on the back deck of the house, you were facing the bench straight on “It’s such a beautiful house,” I said, as I always did, and as I always did, I hoped he was hearing me say that I was proud of him: for the house he built, and for the life he had built within it Once, a month or so after we all returned home from Italy, we were sitting on this bench, and he said to me, “Do you think he was happy with me?” He was so quiet I thought I had imagined it, but then he looked at me and I saw I hadn’t “Of course he was,” I told him “I know he was.” He shook his head “There were so many things I didn’t do,” he said at last I didn’t know what he meant by this, but it didn’t change my mind “Whatever it was, I know it didn’t matter,” I told him “I know he was happy with you He told me.” He looked at me, then “I know it,” I repeated “I know it.” (You had never said this to me, not explicitly, but I know you will forgive me; I know you will I know you would have wanted me to say this.) Another time, he said, “Dr Loehmann thinks I should tell you things.” “What things?” I asked, careful not to look at him “Things about what I am,” he said, and then paused “Who I am,” he corrected himself “Well,” I said, finally, “I’d like that I’d like to know more about you.” Then he smiled “That sounds strange, doesn’t it?” he asked “ ‘More about you.’ We’ve known each other so long now.” I always had the sense, during these exchanges, that although there might not be a single correct answer, there was in fact a single incorrect one, after which he would never say anything again, and I was forever trying to calculate what that answer might be so I would never say it “That’s true,” I said “But I always want to know more, where you’re concerned.” He looked at me quickly, and then back at the house “Well,” he said “Maybe I’ll try Maybe I’ll write something down.” “I’d love that,” I said “Whenever you’re ready.” “It might take me a while,” he said “That’s fine,” I said “You’ll take as long as you need.” A long time was a good thing, I thought: it meant years, years of him trying to figure out what he wanted to say, and although they would be difficult, torturous years, at least he would be alive That was what I thought: that I would rather have him suffering and alive—than dead But in the end, it didn’t take him much time at all It was February, about a year after our intervention If he could keep his weight on through May, we’d stop monitoring him, and he’d be able to stop seeing Dr Loehmann if he wanted, although both Andy and I thought he should keep going But it would no longer be our decision That Sunday, we had stayed in the city, and after a cooking lesson at Greene Street (an asparagus-and-artichoke terrine) we went out for our walk It was a chilly day, but windless, and we walked south on Greene until it changed into Church, and then down and down, through TriBeCa, through Wall Street, and almost to the very tip of the island, where we stood and watched the river, its splashing gray water And then we turned and walked north, back up the same street: Trinity to Church, Church to Greene He had been quiet all day, still and silent, and I prattled on about a middle-aged man I had met at the career placement center, a refugee from Tibet a year or so older than he, a doctor, who was applying to American medical schools “That’s admirable,” he said “It’s difficult to start over.” “It is,” I said “But you’ve started over too, Jude You’re admirable, too.” He glanced at me, then looked away “I mean it,” I said I was reminded of a day a year or so after he had been discharged from the hospital after his suicide attempt, and he was staying with us in Truro We had taken a walk then as well “I want you to tell me three things you think you do better than anyone else,” I had told him as we sat on the sand, and he made a weary puffing noise, filling his cheeks with air and blowing it out through his mouth “Not now, Harold,” he had said “Come on,” I said “Three things Three things you better than anyone, and then I’ll stop bothering you.” But he thought and thought and still couldn’t think of anything, and hearing his silence, something in me began to panic “Three things you well, then,” I revised “Three things you like about yourself.” By this time I was almost begging “Anything,” I told him “Anything.” “I’m tall,” he finally said “Tallish, anyway.” “Tall is good,” I said, although I had been hoping for something different, something more qualitative But I would accept it as an answer, I decided: it had taken him so long to come up with even that “Two more.” But he couldn’t think of anything else I could see he was getting frustrated and embarrassed, and finally I let the subject drop Now, as we moved through TriBeCa, he mentioned, very casually, that he had been asked to be the firm’s chairman “My god,” I said, “that’s amazing, Jude My god Congratulations.” He nodded, once “But I’m not going to accept,” he said, and I was thunderstruck After all he had given fucking Rosen Pritchard—all those hours, all those years—he wasn’t going to take it? He looked at me “I’d have thought you’d be happy,” he said, and I shook my head “No,” I told him “I know how much—how much satisfaction you get from your job I don’t want you to think that I don’t approve of you, that I’m not proud of you.” He didn’t say anything “Why aren’t you going to take it?” I asked him “You’d be great at it You were born for it.” And then he winced—I wasn’t sure why—and looked away “No,” he said “I don’t think I would be It was a controversial decision anyway, as I understand it Besides,” he began, and then stopped Somehow we had stopped walking as well, as if speech and movement were oppositional activities, and we stood there in the cold for a while “Besides,” he continued, “I thought I’d leave the firm in a year or so.” He looked at me, as if to see how I was reacting, and then looked up, at the sky “I thought maybe I’d travel,” he said, but his voice was hollow and joyless, as if he were being conscripted into a faraway life he didn’t much want “I could go away,” he said, almost to himself “There are places I should see.” I didn’t know what to say I stared and stared at him “I could come with you,” I whispered, and he came back to himself and looked at me “Yes,” he said, and he sounded so declarative I felt comforted “Yes, you could come with me Or you two could come meet me in certain places.” We started moving again “Not that I want to unduly delay your second act as a world traveler,” I said, “but I think you should reconsider Rosen Pritchard’s offer Maybe it for a few years, and then jet off to the Balearics or Mozambique or wherever it is you want to go.” I knew that if he accepted the chairmanship offer, then he wouldn’t kill himself; he was too responsible to leave with unfinished business “Okay?” I prompted him He smiled, then, his old, bright, beautiful smile “Okay, Harold,” he said “I promise I’ll reconsider.” Then we were just a few blocks from home, and I realized we were coming upon Lispenard Street “Oh god,” I said, seeking to capitalize on his good mood, to keep us both aloft “Here we are at the site of all my nightmares: The Worst Apartment in the World,” and he laughed, and we veered right off of Church and walked half a block down Lispenard Street until we were standing in front of your old building For a while I ranted on and on about the place, about how horrible it was, exaggerating and embroidering for effect, to hear him laugh and protest “I was always afraid a fire was going to go ripping through that place and you’d both end up dead,” I said “I had dreams of getting phoned by the emergency technicians that they’d found you both gnawed to death by a swarm of rats.” “It wasn’t that bad, Harold,” he smiled “I have very fond memories of this place, actually.” And then the mood turned again, and we both stood there staring at the building and thinking of you, and him, and all the years between this moment and the one in which I had met him, so young, so terribly young, and at that time just another student, terrifically smart and intellectually nimble, but nothing more, not the person I could have ever imagined him becoming for me And then he said—he was trying to make me feel better, too; we were each performing for the other—“Did I ever tell you about the time we jumped off the roof to the fire escape outside our bedroom?” “What?” I asked, genuinely appalled “No, you never did I think I would have remembered that.” But although I could never have imagined the person he would become for me, I knew how he would leave me: despite all my hopes, and pleas, and insinuations, and threats, and magical thoughts, I knew And five months later—June twelfth, a day with no significant anniversaries associated with it, a nothing day—he did My phone rang, and although it wasn’t a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew And on the other end was JB, and he was breathing oddly, in rapid bursts, and even before he spoke, I knew He was fiftythree, fifty-three for not even two months He had injected an artery with air, and had given himself a stroke, and although Andy had told me his death would have been quick, and painless, I later looked it up online and found he had lied to me: it would have meant sticking himself at least twice, with a needle whose gauge was as thick as a hummingbird’s beak; it would have been agonizing When I went to his apartment, finally, it was so neat, with his office boxed up and the refrigerator emptied and everything—his will, letters—tiered on the dining-room table, like place cards at a wedding Richard, JB, Andy, all of your and his old friends: they were all around, constantly, all of us moving about and around one another, shocked but not shocked, surprised only that we were so surprised, devastated and beaten and mostly, helpless Had we missed something? Could we have done something different? After his service —which was crowded, with his friends and your friends and their parents and families, with his law school classmates, with his clients, with the staff and patrons of the arts nonprofit, with the board of the food kitchen, with a huge population of Rosen Pritchard employees, past and present, including Meredith, who came with an almost completely discombobulated Lucien (who lives, cruelly, to this day, although in a nursing home in Connecticut), with our friends, with people I wouldn’t have expected: Kit and Emil and Philippa and Robin —Andy came to me, crying, and confessed that he thought things had started really going wrong for him after he’d told him he was leaving his practice, and that it was his fault I hadn’t even known Andy was leaving—he had never mentioned it to me—but I comforted him, and told him it wasn’t his fault, not at all, that he had always been good to him, that I had always trusted him “At least Willem isn’t here,” we said to one another “At least Willem isn’t here to see this.” Though, of course—if you were here, wouldn’t he still be as well? But if I cannot say that I didn’t know how he would die, I can say that there was much I didn’t know, not at all, not after all I didn’t know that Andy would be dead three years later of a heart attack, or Richard two years after that of brain cancer You all died so young: you, Malcolm, him Elijah, of a stroke, when he was sixty; Citizen, when he was sixty as well, of pneumonia In the end there was, and is, only JB, to whom he left the house in Garrison, and whom we see often—there, or in the city, or in Cambridge JB has a serious boyfriend now, a very good man named Tomasz, a specialist in Japanese medieval art at Sotheby’s, whom we like very much; I know both you and he would have as well And although I feel bad for myself, for us—of course—I feel most bad most often for JB, deprived of you all, left to live the beginnings of old age by himself, with new friends, certainly, but without most of his friends who had known him since he was a child At least I have known him since he was twentytwo; off and on, perhaps, but neither of us count the off years And now JB is sixty-one and I am eighty-four, and he has been dead for six years and you have been dead for nine JB’s most recent show was called “Jude, Alone,” and was of fifteen paintings of just him, depicting imagined moments from the years after you died, from those nearly three years he managed to hang on without you I have tried, but I cannot look at them: I try, and try, but I cannot And there were still more things I didn’t know He was right: we had only moved to New York for him, and after we had settled his estate—Richard was his executor, though I helped him—we went home to Cambridge, to be near the people who had known us for so long I’d had enough of cleaning and sorting—we had, along with Richard and JB and Andy, gone through all of his personal papers (there weren’t many), and clothes (a heartbreak itself, watching his suits get narrower and narrower) and your clothes; we had looked through your files at Lantern House together, which took many days because we kept stopping to cry or exclaim or pass around a picture none of us had seen before—but when we were back home, back in Cambridge, the very movement of organizing had become reflexive, and I sat down one Saturday to clean out the bookcases, an ambitious project that I soon lost interest in, when I found, tucked between two books, two envelopes, our names in his handwriting I opened my envelope, my heart thrumming, and saw my name—Dear Harold—and read his note from decades ago, from the day of his adoption, and cried, sobbed, really, and then I slipped the disc into the computer and heard his voice, and although I would have cried anyway for its beauty, I cried more because it was his And then Julia came home and found me and read her note and we cried all over again And it wasn’t until a few weeks after that that I was able to open the letter he had left us on his table I hadn’t been able to bear it earlier; I wasn’t sure I would be able to bear it now But I did It was eight pages long, and typed, and it was a confession: of Brother Luke, and Dr Traylor, and what had happened to him It took us several days to read, because although it was brief, it was also endless, and we had to keep putting the pages down and walking away from them, and then bracing each other—Ready?—and sitting down and reading some more “I’m sorry,” he wrote “Please forgive me I never meant to deceive you.” I still don’t know what to say about that letter, I still cannot think of it All those answers I had wanted about who and why he was, and now those answers only torment That he died so alone is more than I can think of; that he died thinking that he owed us an apology is worse; that he died still stubbornly believing everything he was taught about himself—after you, after me, after all of us who loved him— makes me think that my life has been a failure after all, that I have failed at the one thing that counted It is then that I talk to you the most, that I go downstairs late at night and stand before Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story, which now hangs above our dining-room table: “Willem,” I ask you, “do you feel like I do? Do you think he was happy with me?” Because he deserved happiness We aren’t guaranteed it, none of us are, but he deserved it But you only smile, not at me but just past me, and you never have an answer It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to is open one’s mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor’s house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor’s leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist It isn’t only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him But back then, back on Lispenard Street, I didn’t know so much of this Then, we were only standing and looking up at that red-brick building, and I was pretending that I never had to fear for him, and he was letting me pretend this: that all the dangerous things he could have done, all the ways he could have broken my heart, were in the past, the stuff of stories, that the time that lay behind us was scary, but the time that lay ahead of us was not “You jumped off the roof?” I repeated “Why on earth would you have done such a thing?” “It’s a good story,” he said He even grinned at me “I’ll tell you.” “Please,” I said And then he did OceanofPDF.com Acknowledgments For their expertise on matters of architecture, law, medicine, and filmmaking, my great thanks to Matthew Baiotto, Janet Nezhad Band, Steve Blatz, Karen Cinorre, Michael Gooen, Peter Kostant, Sam Levy, Dermot Lynch, and Barry Tuch Special thanks to Douglas Eakeley for his erudition and patience, and to Priscilla Eakeley, Drew Lee, Eimear Lynch, Seth Mnookin, Russell Perreault, Whitney Robinson, Marysue Rucci, and Ronald and Susan Yanagihara for their unstinting support My deepest thanks to the brilliant Michael “Bitter” Dykes, Kate Maxwell, and Kaja Perina for bringing my life joy, and to Kerry Lauerman for bringing it comfort I have long thought Yossi Milo and Evan Smoak and Stephen Morrison and Chris Upton role models for how to behave in a loving relationship; I appreciate and admire them for many reasons I’m grateful to the devoted and faithful Gerry Howard and to the inimitable Ravi Mirchandani, who gave themselves over to the life of this book with such generosity and dedication, and to Andrew Kidd for his belief, and to Anna Stein O’Sullivan for her indulgence, equanimity, and constancy Thank you too to everyone who helped make this book happen, in particular Lexy Bloom, Alex Hoyt, Jeremy Medina, Bill Thomas, and the Estate of Peter Hujar Finally and essentially: I not only never could have, but never would have, written this book without the conversations with—and the kindness, grace, empathy, forgiveness, and wisdom of—Jared Hohlt, my first and favorite reader, secret keeper, and North Star His beloved friendship is the greatest gift of my adulthood OceanofPDF.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hanya Yanagihara lives in New York City OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com