A Little Life

Although Part 4 begins years after the end of Part 3 and Jude is now almost 40, Jude and JB’s friendship is still broken. JB begged Jude for forgiveness in the days and weeks after his hospitalization, but Jude told him he could not forgive him, explaining that he could not look at JB without remembering the impression and feeling tormented at the thought that others perceive him that away. As with the previous rift between the two, Willem takes Jude’s side and refuses contact with JB, while Malcolm considers Jude in the right but maintains his friendship with JB.

After Willem and Jude eat at a restaurant together one day, Willem broaches the topic of setting Jude up with one of his current girlfriend’s friends. Jude, who has always considered himself too broken for romantic love, scoffs at the idea and refuses to discuss it. Days later, however, he finds himself in a pleasant conversation with a fashion executive named Caleb at a dinner party. Caleb gives Jude a ride home, comes in the lobby with him, and kisses him suddenly. Jude’s former experience with sexual abuse renders him unable to enjoy this kind of physical contact, especially when it comes suddenly, but because he is also worried about being alone forever, he accepts Caleb’s advances.

Caleb and Jude begin a sexual relationship, although Jude endures the sex rather than enjoying it and does not tell anyone in his life about Caleb. At this point in Jude’s life, he needs to use his wheelchair intermittently but not every day. The first time that Caleb sees it, he tells Jude he might not have instigated anything with him had he known that Jude was a person with a disability. Caleb watched his parents’ health deteriorate from illness and tells Jude he always thought they died because they gave up trying to fight; for this reason, he says, he abhors “accessories to weakness” (321).

Soon, Caleb’s behavior escalates from disrespect and callousness to outright abuse. He hits Jude for dropping a plate, which Jude only did because he was attempting to walk without his wheelchair to appease Caleb. Jude invents a story about joining a wheelchair tennis league to explain his bruises to Andy and, later, Harold. The second time Caleb hits Jude, he not only beats him much more severely but also rapes him.

Jude resolves to try to forget he ever met Caleb after this incident, but when he is out to lunch with Harold one day, Caleb saunters in drunk and begins insulting him. Harold, confused and incensed, almost physically attacks Caleb, but Jude prevents him. Jude reluctantly confesses the abusive relationship to Harold in the car on the way home, and Harold tries desperately to make him understand he does not deserve such treatment.

When Jude gets home, Caleb is there waiting for him, having stolen the spare set of keys to the apartment before leaving last time. He beats him horrifically, at one point stripping him naked, marching him down the elevator, and making him stand outside in the rain and beg to be let back in. The beating culminates in Caleb throwing Jude’s wheelchair down the loft’s fire stairwell and then kicking Jude himself there. As the beating rages on, Jude thinks about how Caleb is the only person who sees the true him and recognizes him for what he is: “a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated” (340).