Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

“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.