Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

The first time Caleb hit him, he was both surprised and not. This was at the end of July, and he had gone over to Caleb’s at midnight, after leaving the office. He had used his wheelchair that day — lately, something had been going wrong with his feet; he didn’t know what it was, but he could barely feel them, and had the dislocating sense that he would topple over if he tried to walk — but at Caleb’s, he had left the chair in the car and had instead walked very slowly to the front door, lifting each foot unnaturally high as he went so he wouldn’t trip.

He knew from the moment he entered the apartment that he shouldn’t have come — he could see that Caleb was in a terrible mood and could feel how the very air was hot and stagnant with his anger. Caleb had finally moved into a building in the Flower District, but he hadn’t unpacked much, and he was edgy and tense, his teeth squeaking against themselves as he tightened his jaw. But he had brought food, and he moved his way slowly over to the counter to set it down, talking brightly to try to distract Caleb from his gait, trying, desperately, to make things better.

“Why are you walking like that?” Caleb interrupted him.

He hated admitting to Caleb that something else was wrong with him; he couldn’t bring himself to do it once again. “ Am I walking strangely?” he asked.

“Yeah — you look like Frankenstein’s monster.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Leave , said the voice inside him. Leave now . “I wasn’t aware of it.”

“Well, stop it. It looks ridiculous.”

“All right,” he said, quietly, and spooned some curry into a bowl for Caleb. “Here,” he said, but as he was heading toward Caleb, trying to walk normally, he tripped, his right foot over his left, and dropped the bowl, the green curry splattering against the carpet.

Later, he will remember how Caleb didn’t say anything, just whirled around and struck him with the back of his hand, and he had fallen back, his head bouncing against the carpeted floor. “Just get out of here, Jude,” he heard Caleb say, not even yelling, even before his vision returned. “Get out; I can’t look at you right now.” And so he had, bringing himself to his feet and walking his ridiculous monster’s walk out of the apartment, leaving Caleb to clean up the mess he had made.

The next day his face began to turn colors, the area around his left eye shading into improbably lovely tones: violets and ambers and bottle greens. By the end of the week, when he went uptown for his appointment with Andy, his cheek was the color of moss, and his eye was swollen nearly shut, the upper lid a puffed, tender, shiny red.

“Jesus Christ, Jude,” said Andy, when he saw him. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Wheelchair tennis,” he said, and even grinned, a grin he had practiced in the mirror the night before, his cheek twitching with pain. He had researched everything: where the matches were played, and how frequently, and how many people were in the club. He had made up a story, recited it to himself and to people at the office until it sounded natural, even comic: a forehand from the opposing player, who had played in college, he not turning quickly enough, the thwack the ball had made when it hit his face.

He told all this to Andy as Andy listened, shaking his head. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad you’re trying something new. But Christ, Jude. Is this such a good idea?”

“You’re the one who’s always telling me to stay off my feet,” he reminded Andy.

“I know, I know,” said Andy. “But you have the pool; isn’t that enough? And at any rate, you should’ve come to me after this happened.”

“It’s just a bruise, Andy,” he said.

“It’s a pretty fucking bad bruise, Jude. I mean, Jesus.”

“Well, anyway,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned, even a little defiant. “I need to talk to you about my feet.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s such a strange sensation; they feel like they’re encased in cement coffins. I can’t feel where they are in space — I can’t control them. I lift one leg up and when I put it back down, I can feel in my calf that I’ve placed the foot, but I can’t feel it in the foot itself.”

“Oh, Jude,” Andy said. “It’s a sign of nerve damage.” He sighed. “The good news, besides the fact that you’ve been spared it all this time, is that it’s not going to be a permanent condition. The bad news is that I can’t tell you when it’ll end, or when it might start again. And the other bad news is that the only thing we can do — besides wait — is treat it with pain medication, which I know you won’t take.” He paused. “Jude, I know you don’t like the way they make you feel,” Andy said, “but there are some better ones on the market now than when you were twenty, or even thirty. Do you want to try? At least let me give you something mild for your face: Isn’t it killing you?”

“It’s not so bad,” he lied. But he did accept a prescription from Andy in the end.

“And stay off your feet,” Andy said, after he had examined his face. “And stay off the courts, too, for god’s sake.” And, as he was leaving, “And don’t think we’re not going to discuss your cutting!” because he was cutting himself more since he had begun seeing Caleb.

Back on Greene Street, he parked in the short driveway preceding the building’s garage and was fitting his key into the front door when he heard someone call his name, and then saw Caleb climbing out of his car. He was in his wheelchair, and he tried to get inside quickly. But Caleb was faster than he, and grabbed the door as it was closing, and then the two of them were in the lobby again, alone.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said to Caleb, at whom he couldn’t look.

“Jude, listen,” Caleb said. “I’m so sorry. I really am. I was just — it’s been a terrible time at work, everything’s such shit there — I’d have come over earlier this week, but it’s been so bad that I couldn’t even get away — and I completely took it out on you. I’m really sorry.” He crouched beside him. “Jude. Look at me.” He sighed. “I’m so sorry.” He took his face in his hands and turned it toward him. “Your poor face,” he said quietly.

He still can’t quite understand why he let Caleb come up that night. If he is to admit it to himself, he feels there was something inevitable, even, in a small way, a relief, about Caleb’s hitting him: all along, he had been waiting for some sort of punishment for his arrogance, for thinking he could have what everyone else has, and here — at last — it was. This is what you get , said the voice inside his head. This is what you get for pretending to be someone you know you’re not, for thinking you’re as good as other people . He remembers how JB had been so terrified of Jackson, and how he had understood his fear, how he had understood how you could get trapped by another human being, how what seemed so easy — the act of walking away from them — could feel so difficult. He feels about Caleb the way he once felt about Brother Luke: someone in whom he had, rashly, entrusted himself, someone in whom he had placed such hopes, someone he hoped could save him. But even when it became clear that they would not, even when his hopes turned rancid, he was unable to disentangle himself from them, he was unable to leave. There is a sort of symmetry to his pairing with Caleb that makes sense: they are the damaged and the damager, the sliding heap of garbage and the jackal sniffing through it. They exist only to themselves — he has met no one in Caleb’s life, and he has not introduced Caleb to anyone in his. They both know that something about what they are doing is shameful. They are bound to each other by their mutual disgust and discomfort: Caleb tolerates his body, and he tolerates Caleb’s revulsion.