“I called too late,” Andy guessed. He didn’t say anything. “Listen, Jude,” Andy continued, “you don’t stop this and I really am going to have you committed. And I’ll call Harold and tell him why. You can count on it.” He paused. “And besides which,” he added, “aren’t you tired, Jude? You don’t have to do this to yourself, you know. You don’t need to.”
He didn’t know what it was—maybe it was just the calmness of Andy’s voice, the steadiness with which he made his promise that made him realize that he was serious this time in a way he hadn’t been before; or maybe it was just the realization that yes, he was tired, so tired that he was willing, finally, to accept someone else’s orders—but over the next week, he did as he was told. He ate his meals, even as the food transformed itself by some strange alchemy to mud, to offal: he made himself chew and swallow, chew and swallow. They weren’t big meals, but they were meals. Andy called every night at midnight, and Willem called every morning at six (he couldn’t bring himself to ask, and Willem never volunteered, whether Andy had contacted him). The hours in between were the most difficult, and although he couldn’t cease cutting himself entirely, he did limit it: two cuts, and he stopped. In the absence of cutting, he felt himself being tugged toward earlier punishments—before he had been taught to cut himself, there was a period in which he would toss himself against the wall outside the motel room he shared with Brother Luke again and again until he sagged, exhausted, to the ground, and his left side was permanently stained blue and purple and brown with bruises. He didn’t do that now, but he remembered the sensation, the satisfying slam of his body against the wall, the awful pleasure of hurling himself against something so immovable.
On Friday he saw Andy, who wasn’t approving (he hadn’t gained any weight), but also didn’t lecture him (nor had he lost any), and the next day he flew to Boston. He didn’t tell anyone he was going, not even Harold. Julia, he knew, was at a conference in Costa Rica; but Harold, he knew, would be home.
Julia had given him a set of keys six years ago, when he was arriving for Thanksgiving at a time when both she and Harold happened to have department meetings, so he let himself into the house and poured a glass of water, looking out at the back garden as he drank. It was just before noon, and Harold would still be at his tennis game, so he went to the living room to wait for him. But he fell asleep, and when he woke, it was to Harold shaking his shoulder and urgently repeating his name.
“Harold,” he said, sitting up, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; I should’ve called.”
“Jesus,” Harold said, panting; he smelled cold and sharp. “Are you all right, Jude? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he said, hearing before he said it how absurd his explanation was, “I just thought I’d stop by.”
“Well,” said Harold, momentarily silent. “It’s good to see you.” He sat in his chair and looked at him. “You’ve been something of a stranger these past few weeks.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Harold shrugged. “No apologies necessary. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m okay.”
Harold tilted his head. “You don’t look too good.”
He smiled. “I’ve had the flu.” He gazed up at the ceiling, as if his lines might be written there. “The forsythia’s falling down, you know.”
“I know. It’s been a windy winter.”
“I’ll help you stake it, if you want.”
Harold looked at him for a long moment then, his mouth slightly moving, as if he was both trying and not trying to speak. Finally he said, “Yeah. Let’s go do that.”
Outside it was abruptly, insultingly cold, and both of them began sniffling. He positioned the stake and Harold hammered it into the ground, although the earth was frozen and chipped up into pottery-like shards as he did. After they’d gotten it deep enough, Harold handed him lengths of twine, and he tied the center stalks of the bush to the stake, snugly enough so they’d be secure, but not so snug that they’d be constricted. He worked slowly, making sure the knots were tight, snapping off a few branches that were too bent to recover.
“Harold,” he said, when he was halfway down the bush, “I wanted to talk to you about something, but—I don’t know where to begin.” Stupid, he told himself. This is such a stupid idea. You were so stupid to think any of this could ever happen. He opened his mouth to continue and then shut it, and then opened it again: he was a fish, dumbly blowing bubbles, and he wished he had never come, had never begun speaking.
“Jude,” said Harold, “tell me. Whatever it is.” He stopped. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No,” he said. “No, nothing like that.” They were silent. “Are you?”
“No, of course not.”
He finished the last tie and brought himself to his feet, Harold deliberately not helping him. “I don’t want to tell you this,” he said, and looked down at the forsythia, its bare twiggy ugliness. “But I have to because—because I don’t want to be deceitful with you. But Harold—I think you think I’m one kind of person, and I’m not.”
Harold was quiet. “What kind of person do I think you are?”
“A good person,” he said. “Someone decent.”
“Well,” said Harold, “you’re right. I do.”
“But—I’m not,” he said, and could feel his eyes grow hot, despite the cold. “I’ve done things that—that good people don’t do,” he continued, lamely. “And I just think you should know that about me. That I’ve done terrible things, things I’m ashamed of, and if you knew, you’d be ashamed to know me, much less be related to me.”
“Jude,” Harold said at last. “I can’t imagine anything you might have done that would change the way I feel about you. I don’t care what you did before. Or rather—I do care; I would love to hear about your life before we met. But I’ve always had the feeling, the very strong feeling, that you never wanted to discuss it.” He stopped and waited. “Do you want to discuss it now? Do you want to tell me?”
He shook his head. He wanted to and didn’t want to, both. “I can’t,” he said. Beneath the small of his back, he felt the first unfurlings of discomfort, a blackened seed spreading its thorned branches. Not now, he begged himself, not now, a plea as impossible as the plea he really meant: Not now, not ever.
“Well,” Harold sighed, “in the absence of specifics, I won’t be able to reassure you specifically, so I’m just going to give you a blanket, all-encompassing reassurance, which I hope you’ll believe. Jude: whatever it is, whatever you did, I promise you, whether you someday tell me or not, that it will never make me regret wanting or having you as a member of my family.” He took a deep breath, held his right hand before him. “Jude St. Francis, as your future parent, I hereby absolve you of—of everything for which you seek absolution.”
And was this what he in fact wanted? Absolution? He looked at Harold’s face, so familiar he could remember its every furrow when he closed his eyes, and which, despite the flourishes and formality of his declaration, was serious and unsmiling. Could he believe Harold? The hardest thing is not finding the knowledge, Brother Luke once said to him after he’d confessed he was having difficulty believing in God. The hardest thing is believing it. He felt he had failed once again: failed to confess properly, failed to determine in advance what he wanted to hear in response. Wouldn’t it have been easier in a way if Harold had told him that he was right, that they should perhaps rethink the adoption? He would have been devastated, of course, but it would have been an old sensation, something he understood. In Harold’s refusal to let him go lay a future he couldn’t imagine, one in which someone might really want him for good, and that was a reality that he had never experienced before, for which he had no preparation, no signposts. Harold would lead and he would follow, until one day he would wake and Harold would be gone, and he would be left vulnerable and stranded in a foreign land, with no one there to guide him home.