A Little Life

JB, now a successful painter, finds out that a recent series he has completed will be showcased at a prestigious New York City gallery. The series features the paintings based on photographs of his friends that JB was working on in Part 1. When he began taking photographs for this series, Jude only agreed to be photographed on the condition that JB would ask him for final approval of each planned painting of him. Because JB brought Jude many photos for approval, Jude assumed JB was keeping his word about this condition. When Jude attends the gallery show, however, he sees two paintings based on photos he never approved, including one that depicts him right after one of his pain episodes. He feels betrayed, especially considering the vulnerable position in which this painting shows him.

Jude confronts JB with his feelings of betrayal after the show, but JB refuses to apologize or admit fault. As a result, the friend group splinters: Willem, whose acting career has now taken off and led to film roles, takes Jude’s side completely and cuts JB out of his life, while Malcolm thinks Jude has reason to be angry but is unwilling to sever ties with JB. After many months, JB relents and sends one of the paintings of Jude to Jude as an apology. Jude contacts him and accepts the apology, but he is distressed to have learned that even people who he thought had earned his trust could one day betray him.

That Thanksgiving, Willem and Jude go to Harold and Julia’s house as usual, and Jude is stunned when Harold and Julia tell him that they would like to adopt him. Although Jude is already an adult, they can pass their inheritance to him if he is their adopted son. More importantly, they recognize what the gesture would mean to Jude. Although Jude is initially overwhelmed with happiness, he falls into a state of acute anxiety over the next several weeks as he waits for the day the adoption will be legally finalized in court. He is consumed with fear that Harold and Julia will somehow find out about his past and react with revulsion, feeling they were tricked by a false version of him. To cope with his anxiety, he cuts himself “so much that even he knew how crazy, how destructive he was being” (192).

Jude remembers an earlier time he thought he was going to be adopted when a couple took him from the home for parentless children he was living in for a one-week trial adoption. Jude was on his best behavior, and Mrs. Leary hinted that the adoption was a likely outcome, but after the couple dropped him off at the home when the week ended, he never saw them or heard from them again. Jude becomes so anxious about the adoption that he goes to Harold and Julia’s house with the intention of confessing his past but loses his nerve at the last minute.

The day of the adoption arrives, and to Jude’s astonishment everything goes smoothly. All of his and the Steins’ closest friends attend the courtroom ceremony and a party afterwards at Harold and Julia’s house. As an adoption gift to Harold and Julia, Jude records himself singing some of their favorite classical music, but when the time comes to present the CD, he feels too self-conscious about the gift so he hides the disc, along with a handwritten letter, between some of Harold’s books on a shelf.

Part 2 concludes with a brief scene of Jude tutoring Felix, who is depressed about not having any friends. Jude comforts him by explaining how he, too, grew up with no friends but was able to find wonderful friends later in life: “You won’t have to work as hard at finding them as you will at keeping them,” he tells the young boy, “but I promise, it’ll be work worth doing” (210).