Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

“He said he was going to stuff it with something, though.”

“Oh. I take it back.”

There were eight of them at dinner: Harold and Julia, Laurence and Gillian, Julia’s friend James and his boyfriend Carey, and he and Willem.

“This is dynamite trout, Harold,” Willem said, cutting into his second piece of turkey, and everyone laughed.

What was the point, he wondered, at which he had stopped feeling so nervous and out of place at Harold’s dinners? Certainly, his friends had helped. Harold liked sparring with them, liked trying to provoke JB into making outrageous and borderline racist statements, liked teasing Willem about when he was going to settle down, liked debating structural and aesthetic trends with Malcolm. He knew Harold enjoyed engaging with them, and that they enjoyed it too, and it gave him the chance to simply listen to them being who they were without feeling the need to participate; they were a fleet of parrots shaking their bright-colored feathers at one another, presenting themselves to their peers without fear or guile.

The dinner was dominated by talk of James’s daughter, who was getting married in the summer. “I’m an old man,” James moaned, and Laurence and Gillian, whose daughters were still in college and spending the holiday at their friend’s house in Carmel, made sympathetic noises.

“This reminds me,” said Harold, looking at him and Willem, “when are you two ever going to settle down?”

“I think he means you,” he smiled at Willem.

“Harold, I’m thirty-two!” Willem protested, and everyone laughed again as Harold spluttered: “What is that, Willem? Is that an explanation? Is that a defense? It’s not like you’re sixteen!”

But as much as he enjoyed the evening, a part of his mind remained abuzz and anxious, worrying about the conversation Harold and Julia wanted to have with him the next day. He had finally mentioned it to Willem on the ride up, and in moments, when the two of them were working together (stuffing the turkey, blanching the potatoes, setting the table), they would try to figure out what Harold might have to say to him. After dinner, they put on their coats and sat in the back garden, puzzling over it again.

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.