“I’ll see you in five days,” I told him, and he nodded.

“Have a good time,” he said. “Have a wonderful time. I’ll see you soon.”

He waved as we were driven away in the car; we turned in our seats to wave back at him. I remember hoping my wave was somehow telegraphing what I couldn’t say: Don’t you dare. The night before, as he and Julia were talking to JB, I asked Richard if he would feel comfortable sending me updates while we were away, and Richard said he would. He had gained almost all the weight Andy wanted, but he’d had two setbacks—one in May, one in July—and so we were all still watching him.

It sometimes felt as if we were living our relationship in reverse, and instead of worrying for him less, I worried for him more; with each year I became more aware of his fragility, less convinced of my competence. When Jacob was a baby, I would find myself feeling more assured with each month he lived, as if the longer he stayed in this world, the more deeply he would become anchored to it, as if by being alive, he was staking claim to life itself. It was a preposterous notion, of course, and it was proven wrong in the most horrible way. But I couldn’t stop thinking this: that life tethered life. And yet at some point in his life—after Caleb, if I had to date it—I had the sense that he was in a hot-air balloon, one that was staked to the earth with a long twisted rope, but each year the balloon strained and strained against its cords, tugging itself away, trying to drift into the skies. And down below, there was a knot of us trying to pull the balloon back to the ground, back to safety. And so I was always frightened for him, and I was always frightened of him, as well.

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 do what he wants to do 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.