My Beautiful Failure

by Janet Ruth Young

  “I’ve officially sent photos to twenty galleries and museums,” Dad said. “And I haven’t heard a word back from anybody.” I cringed when I heard this. I hated the idea of Dad making a fool of himself. I pictured someone at the Peabody Essex Museum pulling up a JPEG of the fish painting and getting everybody in the office to gawk at it. Dad’s activities could be especially harmful to Mom, because she worked in a museum and was supposed to know better. “I’m no longer waiting for life to act on me. I have to act on life.”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “I’m giving myself a show.”

  “Wow,” Linda said, sitting up and moving closer to Dad.

  “Where? Here?”

  “In the garage. On December fourth.”

  “This December fourth?” I asked.

  “I want to make the most of my time on this earth. Not sit around taking up space and valuable oxygen. I feel a need to justify my existence, you know?”

  I felt like a hand had slipped between my ribs. It reached into my chest and started squeezing my heart. “What would be involved? It sounds like a huge deal.”

  “The biggest part is getting my work done—making the paintings. But I’ll also have to get the garage ready, frame the paintings, display each piece, and—last but maybe most important—get the word out. Get the right people to show up.” His legs stretched out on the ottoman, and his feet moved like puppets while he talked.

  “I don’t think this is a good move, Dad,” I told him.

  “Why not?”

  “You’re not allowing enough time,” I said. “If you want to do a big project like this, why don’t you wait till next summer and have everything just the way you want it?” I sat on the edge of the ottoman, next to Dad’s feet. I wished I could grab them and do something funny with his toes that would lighten up my message. Mom and Linda both communicated with Dad in playful ways. Guys couldn’t do that, other than punching.

  “That will be part of it. The race to finish will be part of the process. The name of my show will be Bill Morrison: Forty Paintings in Forty Days.”

  “That’s a good gimmick,” Linda said. “It almost sounds like a reality show.”

  “That’s right. I hope curiosity will bring people in. Maybe I could get national media attention.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “No one can paint forty paintings in forty days.”

  “Van Gogh did it. At the end of his life he painted seventy paintings in seventy days.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He shot himself.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  How could Dad even joke about that? Did he think that because I was with Listeners I took a casual view of any mention of suicide? Or that because he was recovered, joking about it was okay?

  “I assume you’ll help me. You two, Mom, and Jodie. Am I wrong?”

  “We’d love to help,” Linda said. She jumped up from the couch, already halfway to calling Jodie. “Just tell me what you need us to do.”

  Dad leaned forward the way a football coach might in the locker room before a big game (not that I’ve ever seen this). “You two can be my apprentices. I’ll outsource some of the basics to you so I can save myself for the creative work. And you’ll learn enough in the process that someday you can turn seriously to painting too.”

  I stood in front of Dad with my hands in my pockets. I realized that I liked taking stands. I felt as definitive now as I had when I signed the Listeners confidentiality contract. No exceptions, ever, period. “I will not be helping, because I don’t support this.”

  Dad shook his head. “Is this what passes in your world as your rebellious adolescent stage?”

  “Look. I don’t want you to get worn out. You should have a normal routine. No stress, no worries, no late nights.”

  But there was more: more stuff I would never say to Dad. I told him only the edge of what I was thinking, the acceptable edge. I hoped he knew the rest without my saying it. I hoped he knew how scary it had been for us to watch him get sick.

  And to watch him get treated. But no way could I say that to Dad. I could only hint around.

  35.

  last winter: night terrors

  Someone in the house screams. They’re being murdered.

  It’s Dad. Someone is murdering Dad.

  I run into his room with my bicycle pump. I will clobber the person killing Dad. If they start to kill me, too, I’ll use my last ounce of strength to save my favorite parent. Dad cannot die this year. Dad must live.

  My room is dark, but the lights are on where Dad is. Mom kneels beside the bed, pulling on his shoulder. “Stop screaming, Bill! Stop!”

  I drop the tire pump. “Dad, what’s wrong? Mom, what is he screaming for?”

  “He’s having a nightmare and I can’t wake him up. Oh, God, if he doesn’t calm down, he’s going to give himself a heart attack.” Mom looks scared. I’ve rarely seen a scared Mom or heard a screaming Dad. Aaaaaaah, aaaaaaah! The sound climbs from low to high, then drops down and starts again, the way an opera singer would warm up his or her voice, if he or she were also terrified. It doesn’t sound like when he’s angry or when he sings. It’s Dad’s voice in a freakish, distorted mirror.

  I climb on the bed beside him, holding his other shoulder, whispering fast, like someone praying in a foreign language—Dadpleasewakeup, you’rescaringMom, you’rescaringmetoo, pleasewakeupandbenormalagain, pleasebewellagain.

  “That’s it,” Mom says, trying to look calm. “I’m calling 911.”

  “Aaaaaaah, aaaaaaah!”

  Linda peers into the room and looks around to see who is screaming. The unaccustomed noise coming from someone she knows well throws her into a panic. Her back and arms go rigid and she starts screaming too. “Aaaaah!” But then she fights off the panic and crawls onto the bed with me.

  “Dad, please stop scaring me. I know you don’t want to scare me like this.” She touches his eyelid and slides his eyes open. Dad’s noise gradually subsides, and then he becomes aware of us. He wraps an arm around Linda and looks like he’s going to fall asleep again.

  “I made you stop screaming,” Linda whispers. “I saved you. I’m the hero.”

  “What the heck was that?” I ask Mom. Now that Dad’s quiet you can hear the highway traffic behind the fence. When I slept in their bed as a little kid, that sound was incessant and put me to sleep.

  Dad’s T-shirt is soggy with sweat.

  “That’s it,” Mom tells Dad, helping him into a dry shirt. Her voice pulses with anger and disappointment. “No more antidepressants.”

  36.

  apprentice

  In the studio, Linda primed Dad’s canvases for a new group of sunset paintings. She covered each canvas with a layer of tinted gesso so that the paint would stand out better and the backgrounds would have depth. A puddle of newsprint protected the floor. The assembly-line process was interesting, and I felt furtively comfortable watching Linda in this room rather than watching Dad.

  “So Linda’s been abandoned,” I said, leaning in the doorway. “How will she get anything done without someone to discuss it with every nanosecond?”

  “Dad’s at the beach with his camera while the light is still good.” She wore an old dress shirt of Dad’s, black-and-white-striped socks, some stretchy red pants that had belonged to our grandmother, Mom’s holey Keds, and a beret. Paint spots flecked her whole outfit, even the hat, which made me believe she had put them there intentionally. I could picture her in her room with those clothes spread on the bed, talking to her stuffed Garfield and flecking furiously like Jackson Pollock.

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant, where is Jodie? I can’t believe she’s making you do this by yourself.”

  Linda frowned at the canvas. Nothing could distract her from this important and potentially profitable work.

  “How will you cope?” I needled.

  She evened out the coat of paint with a rag. “That’s
the first time you’ve missed having Jodie around. I’ll have to tell her your feelings about her have changed.”

  “Really, where is she? I hope she hasn’t found another family to glom on to like a barnacle.” I laughed a wicked laugh that I’ve used to torture Linda since she was four and I was seven. This made her look up.

  “If you don’t like her, why are you even asking?”

  “I thought maybe she was smarter than I gave her credit for. That she realized what a disaster this was going to be.”

  “She’ll be here later. We’re a team.”

  “Of courth,” I said, imitating Jodie’s noodlelike lisp.

  That did it. She shot me a cold and withering look. “Why are you still here? Don’t you have a class to fail?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “You’re supposed to be getting your grades up. I don’t have to improve my grades, so I can do whatever I want.”

  “What an honor. What a big whoop.”

  “All right, if you have no real reason to be here, just stay where you are, be quiet, and watch the master.”

  Linda placed the first canvas near an open window to dry. She took a second canvas from the stack against the wall. Dad had already titled each canvas on the back. A note on the front said which tint he wanted for the background. She placed the next canvas on the easel, shook a jar of blue-green gesso, and spread it in one corner with a sponge brush.

  “That’s actually a nice color,” I said.

  “Of course it is.”

  “But getting back to the reason I’m here.”

  Using a clean rag, Linda wiped a clump from the brush tip.

  “Notice my concentration,” she said, working into the middle of the canvas.

  “What Dad really needs is to be normal. Go to work, come home. Watch TV while eating Fiddle Faddle. Take a walk. Do normal things.” What bothered me most about this painting craze was that I had lost my father a second time. After last winter I thought I was getting him back. But when Dr. Fritz suggested painting, Dad slipped away again. I could count on one hand the number of days since then that I considered him normal.

  “Dad’s a very strong person. You have to be to go through what he did.”

  “I know that, but this seems so extreme. Can’t he be average, even for a little while?”

  Linda nodded toward the jar, and without thinking I held it up for her. The apprentice’s apprentice. “Nobody wants to be average,” she told me.

  “But someone has to be. In fact, most people have to. Statistically.”

  “Only one-third have to be. The others are above average and—cloth, please.”

  Cloth. “Okay. But you see my point.”

  The canvas was covered. Linda moved it to the window, beside the first coated one.

  “I know exactly what your problem is,” she continued, looking straight at me.

  “What?”

  “You’re ticked off because you can’t paint. Painting is a talent. I inherited it. That’s why Dad needs me as his helper.”

  “I could if I wanted to.” I pointed to the pencil notations on the canvas. “Where’s the talent in following instructions? This is like paint-by-numbers.”

  Linda pointed the brush at me as if she wanted to Pollock my face.

  I backed off. “Forget it. I don’t want to be on your dumb team.” On the way to my room, I ignored how dumb that sounded.

  37.

  team dumb

  Dad, Linda, and Jodie seemed happy. Inseparable. A clot, a club, a dizzy beehive.

  Dad started calling Linda “Linda-Lou” and Jodie “Ponytail.”

  As in “Could you get that, Linda-Lou?” and “What do you think, Ponytail?”

  Linda and Jodie crawled over each other for a chance to paint.

  Paint in the bathroom, on the rugs, and everywhere.

  38.

  shift 3, november 11. call 18

  Listeners. Can I help you?”

  Yeah, hi. Just called to talk.

  “How are you doing tonight?”

  Okay, I guess. A little down.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like to tell me your first name?”

  Jenney.

  “Hi, Jenney. So, what’s going on?”

  Margaret caught my eye. She knew I had trouble terminating Jenney’s calls. I would have to keep this one short.

  I’m having problems with my school situation.

  “Sorry to hear that. What’s been happening?”

  I’m pretty sure I told you before.

  “You may have.”

  But I guess I have to tell you again, so here goes. I was all set with a great college scholarship and getting ready to start school. I was going to study marine biology. But then I had kind of a nervous breakdown and decided that I should take it easy and focus on my emotional issues instead. So I put my plans on hold. In fact, I’ve put my whole life on hold while I deal with this crisis. And some days are better than others and some are worse. Much worse.

  “Wow. It seems like you’re dealing with an awful lot there. I’m sorry it’s so stressful.”

  Thanks. Oh, God, I just dumped so much on you. Ugh.

  “That’s okay. Hey, take a deep breath. That’s what we’re here for. I’m glad you called.”

  How glad can you be?

  “So, out of all you just told me, what’s bothering you the most?”

  It’s hard to pick out one strand. . . .

  “It does sound hard.”

  Usually I don’t think about it much. Usually I live minute to minute, just trying to survive, but it’s only when it’s quiet that I really have a chance to think, and that’s when it hits me: This isn’t the way I wanted to live.

  “This isn’t the way you wanted to live.”

  That’s right.

  “How do you want to live?” Funny how the Incomings hardly ever noticed that we repeated their exact words. You would think they would get weirded out and stop talking.

  I thought I’d be in school. I gave up my scholarship when I had my breakdown. Now I’m not sure I had to. I know people do it, start school even when they’re dealing with emotional problems. And they’re living their life at the same time. They find a counselor at school or near school, or they get into a support group. Maybe I don’t have to keep seeing Melinda over the next couple of years.

  “So you think maybe you didn’t have to give up the scholarship.”

  Not necessarily. But those people—they’re superhuman. They’re laser-focused go-getters. Bopping into class every day with their homework done and their clothes just right and their hair looking great and all their problems put aside.

  The Generic Laughing People. She meant they had them in college, too.

  “And you’re not a go-getter?” I asked, checking the clock. Only two minutes so far. I would impress Margaret by bringing this baby in under four.

  Not really. I was once. In high school. The whole package. Have you ever looked back on something you’ve accomplished and said, “How did I do that?”

  “Sure,” I told Jenney. When I saved my father’s life, I thought.

  You have?

  I caught myself. “I mean, sure, I understand what you’re saying.”

  How did I do the academics and the student government and the music—

  “What kind of music?”

  Clarinet—

  “Go on.”

  —and the swimming and . . . You know, I have a trophy and everything. You can see it right there in the lobby. And I think, “How did I do all that? Was I some kind of robot?”

  “Is it possible that you’re being a little hard on yourself?”

  Maybe.

  “Are you feeling suicidal, Jenney?” The question came much easier now. It was standard, like asking supermarket customers if they wanted a receipt or hamburger purchasers if they wanted fries.

  No.

  “So, you were a swimmer?”

  Yep.

  “Do you swim anymo
re?”

  Not in a pool, not to train. I don’t even belong to the Y anymore. I swim back and forth at the beach as much as I can. From May to October, anyway.

  “It must be cold this time of year.”

  I wear a wetsuit.

  “I admire how you’ve kept your life together, Jenney.”

  I haven’t, though.

  “From the outside it looks like you have.”

  That’s funny. From the inside it looks like there’s no life for Jenney.

  “What would you most like to change?” It was time to get her thinking positively, solving her own problems. End the call on an up note.

  Get started with school. But I won’t talk about that now. That’s a plan for another day. A go-getter day.

  “Speaking of going, I should go in a minute. Jenney.”

  I feel better having talked to you.

  “Good.”

  I don’t know why, though. She laughed a little there.

  “It’s the Listeners Magic,” I said.

  It is magic, isn’t it?

  “Yes, it is. Good-bye, Jenney.”

  Good-bye. Billy.

  Three minutes and forty-eight seconds. Margaret put her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone. That had been a beautiful call on my end, she said. It could be used in a training video, because I had been nearly perfect.

  39.

  self-evaluation

  Margaret was wrong—I hadn’t been perfect. Because I forgot to say my name. Let me state my feeling about that: bad. But Jenney said my name, my important name, without my telling her. Let me state my feeling about that: good. Out of all the volunteers she’s talked to here, she recognized my voice. And she could have pretended to forget me the way I pretended to forget her, but she decided not to.