Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

They are all there: Harold and Julia, of course, but Andy and JB and Richard and India and the Henry Youngs and Rhodes and Elijah and Sanjay and the Irvines as well, all posed and perched on different pieces of furniture as if they’re at a photo shoot, and for a second he fears he will start laughing. And then he wonders: Am I dreaming this? Am I awake? He remembers the vision of himself as a sagging mattress and thinks: Am I still real? Am I still conscious?

“Christ,” he says, when he is able to speak at last. “What the hell is this?”

“Exactly what you think it is,” he hears Andy say.

“I’m not staying for this,” he tries to say, but can’t. He can’t move. He can’t look at any of them: he looks instead at his hands — his scarred left hand, his normal right — as above him Andy speaks. They have been watching him for weeks — Sanjay has been keeping track of the days he’s seen him eat at the office, Richard has been entering his apartment to check his refrigerator for food. “We measure weight loss in grades,” he hears Andy saying. “A loss of one to ten percent of your body weight is Grade One. A loss of eleven to twenty percent is Grade Two. Grade Two is when we consider putting you on a feeding tube. You know this, Jude, because it’s happened to you before. And I can tell by looking at you that you’re at Grade Two — at least.” Andy talks and talks, and he thinks he begins to cry, but he is unable to produce tears. Everything has gone so wrong, he thinks; how did everything go so wrong? How has he forgotten so completely who he was when he was with Willem? It is as if that person has died along with Willem, and what he is left with is his elemental self, someone he has never liked, someone so incapable of occupying the life he has, the life he has somehow made for himself, in spite of himself.

Finally he lifts his head and sees Harold staring at him, sees that Harold is actually crying, silently, looking and looking at him. “Harold,” he says, although Andy is still talking, “release me. Release me from my promise to you. Don’t make me do this anymore. Don’t make me go on.”

But no one releases him: not Harold, not anyone. He is instead captured and taken to the hospital, and there, at the hospital, he begins to fight. My last fight, he thinks, and he fights harder than he ever has, as hard as he had as a child in the monastery, becoming the monster they always told him he was, yowling and spitting in Harold’s and Andy’s faces, ripping the IV from his hand, thrashing his body on the bed, trying to scratch at Richard’s arms, until finally a nurse, cursing, sticks him with a needle and he is sedated.

He wakes with his wrists strapped to the bed, with his prostheses gone, with his clothes gone as well, with a press of cotton against his collarbone under which he knows a catheter has been inserted. The same thing all over again, he thinks, the same, the same, the same.

But this time it isn’t the same. This time he is given no choices. This time, he is put on a feeding tube, which punctures through his abdomen and into his stomach. This time, he is made to go back and see Dr. Loehmann. This time, he is going to be watched, every mealtime: Richard will watch him eat breakfast. Sanjay will watch him eat lunch and, if he’s at the office late, dinner. Harold will watch him on the weekends. He isn’t allowed to go to the bathroom until an hour after he’s finished each meal. He must see Andy every Friday. He must see JB every Saturday. He must see Richard every Sunday. He must see Harold whenever Harold says he must. If he is caught skipping a meal, or a session, or disposing of food in any way, he will be hospitalized, and this hospitalization won’t be a matter of weeks; it will be a matter of months. He will gain a minimum of thirty pounds, and he will be allowed to stop only when he has maintained that weight for six months.

And so begins his new life, a life in which he has moved past humiliation, past sorrow, past hope. This is a life in which his weary friends’ weary faces watch him as he eats omelets, sandwiches, salads. Who sit across from him and watch as he twirls pasta around his fork, as he plows his spoon through polenta, as he slides flesh off bones. Who look at his plate, at his bowl, and either nod at him — yes, he can go — or shake their heads: No, Jude, you have to eat more than that . At work he makes decisions and people follow them, but then at one p.m., lunch is delivered to his office, and for the next half hour — although no one else in the firm knows this — his decisions mean nothing, because Sanjay has absolute power, and he must obey whatever he says. Sanjay, with one text to Andy, can send him to the hospital, where they will tie him down again and force food into him. They all can. No one seems to care that this isn’t what he wants.

Have you all forgotten? he yearns to ask. Have you forgotten him? Have you forgotten how much I need him? Have you forgotten I don’t know how to be alive without him? Who can teach me? Who can tell me what I should do now?

It was an ultimatum that sent him to Dr. Loehmann the first time; it is an ultimatum that brings him back. He had always been cordial with Dr. Loehmann, cordial and remote, but now he is hostile and churlish. “I don’t want to be here,” he says, when the doctor says he’s happy to see him again and asks him what he would like to discuss. “And don’t lie to me: you’re not happy to see me, and I’m not happy to be here. This is a waste of time — yours and mine. I’m here under duress.”

“We don’t have to discuss why you’re here, Jude, not if you don’t want to,” Dr. Loehmann says. “What would you like to talk about?”

“Nothing,” he snaps, and there is a silence.

“Tell me about Harold,” Dr. Loehmann suggests, and he sighs, impatiently.

“There’s nothing to say,” he says.

He sees Dr. Loehmann every Monday and Thursday. On Monday nights, he returns to work after his appointment. But on Thursdays he is made to see Harold and Julia, and with them he is horrifically rude as well: and not just rude but nasty, spiteful. He behaves in ways that astonish him, in ways he has never dared before in his life, not even when he was a child, in ways that he would have been beaten for by anyone else. But not by Harold and Julia. They never rebuke him, they never discipline him.

“This is disgusting,” he says that night, pushing away the chicken stew Harold has made. “I won’t eat this.”

“I’ll get you something else,” Julia says quickly, getting up. “What do you want, Jude? Do you want a sandwich? Some eggs?”

“Anything else,” he says. “This tastes like dog food.” But he is speaking to Harold, staring at him, daring him to flinch, to break. His pulse leaps in his throat with anticipation: He can see Harold springing from his chair and hitting him in the face. He can see Harold crumpling with tears. He can see Harold ordering him out of his house. “Get the fuck out of here, Jude,” Harold will say. “Get out of our lives and never come back.”

“Fine,” he’ll say. “Fine, fine. I don’t need you anyway, Harold. I don’t need any of you.” What a relief it will be to learn that Harold had never really wanted him after all, that his adoption was a whim, a folly whose novelty tarnished long ago.

But Harold does none of those things, just looks at him. “Jude,” he says at last, very quietly.

“Jude, Jude,” he mocks him, squawking his own name back to Harold like a jay. “Jude, Jude.” He is so angry, so furious: there is no word for what he is. Hatred sizzles through his veins. Harold wants him to live, and now Harold is getting his wish. Now Harold is seeing him as he is.

Do you know how badly I could hurt you? he wants to ask Harold. Do you know I could say things that you would never forget, that you would never forgive me for? Do you know I have that power? Do you know that every day I have known you I have been lying to you? Do you know what I really am? Do you know how many men I have been with, what I have let them do to me, the things that have been inside me, the noises I have made? His life, the only thing that is his, is being possessed: By Harold, who wants to keep him alive, by the demons who scrabble through his body, dangling off his ribs, puncturing his lungs with their talons. By Brother Luke, by Dr. Traylor. What is life for? he asks himself. What is my life for?