Willem made a sound that he later realized was a laugh. “Then why are you cutting yourself so much?” he asked. “Why has it gotten so bad?”
“I don’t know,” he said, softly. He swallowed. “I guess I’m afraid you’re going to leave.” It wasn’t the entire story—the entire story he couldn’t say—but it was part of it.
“Why am I going to leave?” Willem asked, and then, when he couldn’t answer, “So is this a test, then? Are you trying to see how far you can push me and whether I’ll stay with you?” He looked up, wiping his eyes. “Is that it?”
He shook his head. “Maybe,” he said, to the marble floor. “I mean, not consciously. But—maybe. I don’t know.”
Willem sighed. “I don’t know what I can say to convince you I’m not going to leave, that you don’t need to test me,” he said. They were quiet again, and then Willem took a deep breath. “Jude,” he said, “do you think you should maybe go back to the hospital for a while? Just to, I don’t know, sort things out?”
“No,” he said, his throat tightening with panic. “Willem, no—you won’t make me, will you?”
Willem looked at him. “No,” he said. “No, I won’t make you.” He paused. “But I wish I could.”
Somehow, the night ended, and somehow, the next day began. He was so tired he was tipsy, but he went to work. Their fight had never ended in any conclusive way—there were no promises extracted, there were no ultimatums given—but for the next few days, Willem didn’t speak to him. Or rather: Willem spoke, but he spoke about nothing. “Have a good day,” he’d say when he left in the morning, and “How was your day?” when he came home at night.
“Fine,” he’d say. He knew Willem was wondering what to do and how he felt about the situation, and he tried to be as unobtrusive as possible in the meantime. At night they lay in bed, and where they usually talked, they were both quiet, and their silence was like a third creature in bed between them, huge and furred and ferocious when prodded.
On the fourth night, he couldn’t tolerate it any longer, and after lying there for an hour or so, both of them silent, he rolled over the creature and wrapped his arms around Willem. “Willem,” he whispered, “I love you. Forgive me.” Willem didn’t answer him, but he plowed on. “I’m trying,” he told him. “I really am. I slipped up; I’ll try harder.” Willem still didn’t say anything, and he held him tighter. “Please, Willem,” he said. “I know it bothers you. Please give me another chance. Please don’t be mad at me.”
He could feel Willem sigh. “I’m not mad at you, Jude,” he said. “And I know you’re trying. I just wish you didn’t have to try; I wish this weren’t something you had to fight against so hard.”
Now it was his turn to be quiet. “Me too,” he said, at last.
Since that night, he has tried different methods: the swimming, of course, but also baking, late at night. He makes sure there’s always flour in the kitchen, and sugar, and eggs and yeast, and as he waits for whatever’s in the oven to finish, he sits at the dining-room table working, and by the time the bread or cake or cookies (which he has Willem’s assistant send to Harold and Julia) are done, it’s almost daylight, and he slips back into bed for an hour or two of sleep before his alarm wakes him. For the rest of the day, his eyes burn with exhaustion. He knows that Willem doesn’t like his late-night baking, but he also knows he prefers it to the alternative, which is why he says nothing. Cleaning is no longer an option: since moving to Greene Street, he has had a housekeeper, a Mrs. Zhou, who now comes four times a week and is depressingly thorough, so thorough that he is sometimes tempted to dirty things up intentionally, only so he can clean them. But he knows this is silly, and so he doesn’t.
“Let’s try something,” Willem says one evening. “When you wake up and want to cut yourself, you wake me up, too, all right? Whatever time it is.” He looks at him. “Let’s try it, okay? Just humor me.”
So he does, mostly because he is curious to see what Willem will do. One night, very late, he rubs Willem’s shoulder and when Willem opens his eyes, he apologizes to him. But Willem shakes his head, and then moves on top of him, and holds him so tightly that he finds it difficult to breathe. “You hold me back,” Willem tells him. “Pretend we’re falling and we’re clinging together from fear.”