My Beautiful Failure

by Janet Ruth Young

  Gordy circled some notes with a red marker. “What else?”

  “That the harmonica is being used as therapy for people with respiratory problems. And that Abraham Lincoln carried one in his pocket.”

  “What music do you want to use?”

  From Gordy’s CDs on the table I picked out Harmonica Masters: Classic Recordings from the 1920s and 1930s.

  Gordy started the disc in the player above the bookcase. “Let’s start pulling it together. Why don’t you make up an outline?”

  “You outline your papers?”

  “Usually.”

  “Do you ever get tired of being so perfect?”

  “I’m not perfect.”

  “My dad thinks you and I should start a band.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. I can play lead. Who would we get for the drummer and bass player?”

  “I have no interest in starting a band. I don’t consider myself a musician anymore. I’ve decided that my real strength is helping people. I’m a helper first and a musician second.”

  On the opposite wall from where I was sitting were two large oil paintings. One showed a bare tree from across a salt marsh, the other a grove of straight, identical trees with falling leaves. I didn’t know much about art, but I thought the paintings were between abstract and realistic. And that these seemed to have a personality or vision or uniqueness without being actually weird.

  “My dad knows that artist from Maine,” Gordy said. “She lives on Little Cranberry Island, and we’ve visited her a couple of times.”

  “I love those,” I said. “I wish Dad could paint like that.”

  “How is the show going?”

  “Not well. Maybe my dad would be better off if he hadn’t lost touch with his art school friends. If he had some other painters to bounce things off of. Sort of like me with you and this paper.”

  “Someone whose opinion he trusted,” Gordy said.

  “My mom thinks Dad might be an unrecognized genius.” I stared at Gordy until he got the idea. “Not likely.”

  “So you’re still worried about him?” Gordon asked.

  “More every day. My mom and Linda are acting sort of nuts too. If I didn’t have Listeners to go to, I’d probably be nuts myself.” And Jenney. I’d be nuts without Jenney.

  “Should we get to work?” Gordy asked, picking up the music history research.

  I took the papers from him and put them in my pack. “No, I need to go. It’s only four o’clock. I want to go into his studio and see what he’s working on. If I rush, I’ll have enough time to get in and out before Dad gets home.”

  I rode home, past the stone wall and twisted trees of Beauport Beach, the copper-colored granite ledges, and the wall inscribed with the names of fishermen lost at sea. My legs and my mind worked equally hard—one fed the other.

  A solution. Something to do. It’s good to do something. It’s torture to do nothing when there’s something you can do.

  67.

  last winter: the sharp objects

  We’ve spent three months taking care of Dad at home. We’ve tried fish oil, calisthenics, sunlight, and affirmations. Meditation, vitamin B, and aromatherapy. But Dad has gotten worse instead of better. He says that we don’t really care about him, that we are just pretending. He says “I’m so tired” and “It’s the beginning of the end.” From the little he says, I believe he’s thinking of killing himself.

  Linda, Jodie, and I form a suicide-prevention team. Without disturbing Dad, we move from room to room collecting all the sharp objects: razors, scissors, Grandpa Eddie’s fishing knife. We drop them in a metal box that we plan to hide in this very room, in the crawl space above what is now Dad’s studio.

  Mom comes home and finds me in the kitchen, testing the edges of the carrot peeler and the cheese slicer.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  I’m the oldest, so I should explain. “We’re hiding the sharp objects so Dad can’t kill himself.” Linda and Jodie are brave. They don’t cry or hold on to each other, so neither do I.

  Mom finds Dad sitting in front of the TV. She says his name over and over, even though he says nothing back.

  She comes back to the kitchen and takes her phone out of her purse. She calls the therapist we rejected months ago and says Dad needs to start seeing him again.

  Everything we tried has been a failure.

  68.

  catalogue

  I threw Triumph on the front lawn, her front wheel still spinning. No cars. No Linda—she must be at Jodie’s. I went into Dad’s “studio.” I locked the outside door and wedged a paint-spattered stool under the knob of the door leading into the house. Still sweating from the ride, I spun around and came face-to-face with my father’s insanity. I imagined the reporters and the TV teams and the gallery and museum people. All of them armed with cameras. All eager to show the world the contents of this room.

  The fruit with faces. Click.

  The skydiving fish. Click.

  The marauding tree. Click.

  The perverted sunsets. Click, click.

  And I found more. A Child and Madonna with a huge Baby Jesus holding a tiny Mary. A toilet that doubled as an electric chair. A giant fetus with Dad’s face. A dollar bill with George Washington as a transvestite. An aerial view of a platoon of soldiers carrying a casket. The flag on the casket said DON’T ASK, DON’T KILL.

  No one would understand. No one would get what he was saying. Everyone would know what we tried so long to hide. Everyone would know.

  PART 3

  69.

  freckled

  Goddamn it, Jodie! If you don’t know what you’re doing, why do you even pick up the tools?” I heard the commotion and raced from my room toward Dad’s studio.

  In the studio, Dad grabbed a hammer and a frame from Jodie’s hands. He threw them in her direction, and they clattered to the floor. Beside her, a box of tacks toppled off the old kitchen table and spilled around her feet.

  Jodie’s eyes got as big as the eyes on Dad’s fetus painting. She gasped and held her breath. She was afraid of either breaking something or having something else thrown at her.

  Linda leaped between Jodie and Dad. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

  I rushed to Dad and stopped his arm. “You’re gonna hurt somebody!” I whispered, “That was out of line, Dad.”

  I had to give Jodie credit. It took her a full minute to start crying. At first her face got red and she looked like she smelled a bad smell. But she looked Dad right in the eye.

  “I was only trying to help,” she said. Dad should have apologized right there, but he just kicked the loose tacks into a corner so no one would step on them.

  “Well,” he said, “why don’t we get back to work?”

  “I should go home,” Jodie told Linda. She walked out of the studio with her shoulders shaking.

  Jodie called her mother from the wall phone in our kitchen, asking to be picked up. Her mother asked some question on the other end, and Jodie said, “I’ll tell you later.”

  As Jodie stood by the front door, her bangs stuck to her face and her nose ran. I heard gray, mouselike hiccups. I got a paper towel for her nose.

  Linda had stayed behind with Dad. Once Jodie’s mom picked her up, I went back to the studio.

  “How could you do that?” Linda demanded. “Now she won’t want to come back!” Her voice was wild, like something was being torn from her.

  Dad’s voice was eerily calm as he picked up the thrown items. “The specific personnel is not important, Linda-Lou. The work itself is what’s important.”

  “But it was good before when all of us worked together.” She tore off her beret and hung it on a hook by the door.

  “You should be honored to be chosen for a project like this,” Dad said. “It may be the greatest honor you ever receive.”

  Linda and I looked at each other. I knew we were both thinking the same thing: that whatever had been happening for the past several weeks was abou
t to come to an end.

  70.

  lost horizon

  How much more proof do you need, Mom?” I thrust the NIMH printout under her face as soon as she got home from work. “He’s jumpy and wired, he’s talking too fast, he hardly sleeps, he spends too much money, he thinks he has genius-level abilities, he’s taken on an impossible new project. . . . He could be the poster boy. He has nearly every symptom!”

  “That man is not Dad,” Linda said, pointing toward the studio. Her voice had been breaking in ragged bursts since Jodie’s departure. “Give me Dad back.”

  “I don’t know,” Mom said. She waved away my list from the website. She stalked around the room, peering through the curtains at the street, moving throw pillows, straightening magazines. I could see how hard this was for her to accept. She had been glad Dad was busy. She had been working all the time herself. She was one of the people who believed that high productivity was a sign of, if not mental health, then something else really good that there was no name for.

  “All right,” she said. She took a few steps in that direction, then came back to us. “I’ll talk to him. Not tonight. Tomorrow morning, when he’s had some rest. And if I have to talk to Dr. Fritz and Dr. Gupta, I’ll do that, too.”

  “And you have to call off the art show,” I said.

  Mom moved back to the window. She looked outside like someone with stage fright checking out the audience. “I’m not ready to do that yet,” she said. “I’ll talk to the doctors about it. I’ll tell them everything you said.”

  I went up close behind Mom. “You remind me of Dad right now,” I told her. “The way he used to walk around as if he was looking for something.”

  “I am looking for something,” Mom said. “I’m looking for a dream your father and I had and we lost and I thought we had found again. I guess I’m having trouble accepting that what we had wasn’t real.”

  71.

  last winter: treatment

  Mr. Misuraca, my history teacher from last year, moves up and down the rows, handing out a quiz. He moves hulkingly, like a circus bear trained to stand on his hind legs. Brenda Mason is here, stroking the soft mohair of her sweater sleeve while she starts filling in her quiz. I write my name, but nothing more.

  Mom and Uncle Marty are taking Dad to the hospital for his first treatment. She tells me the plan in detail, so I’ll know where they are every minute. The traffic is light on Route 128 so early in the morning but grows heavier on Route 1. The car stops at the Dunkin Donuts on Route 1. Then it continues past the Christmas Tree Shop and the Salvation Army and the minigolf course with the dinosaur. Soon Mom and Marty see buildings of the Boston skyline, jagged and official, stalagmites in a cave they won’t be able to get out of.

  They continue onto Storrow Drive and along the Charles River to the Longwood Medical Area. Uncle Marty drops off Mom and Dad at Building G and parks the car on the fourth floor of the Coolidge Hospital garage.

  Mom takes Dad to the basement and helps him sign in with the receptionist. Dad is wearing a new sweater and a pair of my pants. A nurse calls Dad’s name and walks him through a set of swinging doors. He meets a doctor he’s never seen before.

  The doctor has Dad lie on a cot with restraints. A nurse straps him down and injects him with muscle relaxant. Once all the muscles in Dad’s body have let go, the nurse rubs something like Vaseline on Dad’s head and fits an oxygen mask over Dad’s face. The doctor attaches a wire with two contacts to Dad’s forehead. Dad appears to be sleeping, and the doctor pulls a lever like a giant light switch.

  I stare at my history quiz while an electric current is sent through my father’s body. This must never happen again.

  72.

  last winter: puzzle

  Dad sits beside me on the couch the day after his first shock treatment. He wants to know when his mother is coming to get him. His mother has been dead for ten years. I distract him by starting a crossword puzzle, but he doesn’t know how to spell “knee.” He is wearing my pants. I am wearing my pants. I don’t know where he ends and I begin. This must never happen again.

  73.

  shift 8, november 29. call 57

  Listeners. Can I help you?”

  It’s me.

  “Thank God you called, Jenney. There’s nobody here. I really need to talk to you.”

  You’re not going to believe what happened.

  “My dad totally lost it today. He really is manic. He started yelling at my sister’s friend.”

  Oh, no, Billy. That’s awful.

  “He’s had a total personality change. He used to be this funny, cool, low-key guy, and now he’s turned into an egomaniac no one can stand. At least, I can’t stand. He has this idea that he’s a tremendous painter. He’s inviting all these museum and media people to this art show that he’s having on December fourth, and it’s going to be an absolute fiasco.”

  Are you sure?

  “Yes. Because his work is really bad. Like, embarrassingly bad.”

  That must make you so sad. Does your mom know about this? What does she think?

  “My mom doesn’t entirely accept a realistic interpretation of what’s going on. She’s in it with him, like a mutual delusion. I’m just dreading it. Every day that goes by brings me closer to being humiliated.”

  Why do you have to be humiliated? I told you before. You’re not the one who’s a bad artist.

  “You’re right. But I hate the idea of even being there. I should make a point of being far, far away. Listen, what’s going on with you? You sound really anxious.”

  I’m in a state of panic. It’s been the worst day. I wish I hadn’t even gotten out of bed this morning.

  “You had a crappy day too?”

  Crappy doesn’t begin to describe it.

  “Take a deep breath. What’s going on?”

  My parents.

  “Oh, no. What are they trying to pull this time?”

  It was awful. And I feel bad but I don’t, because I think it was my fault. Wait. That didn’t make sense.

  “They contacted you?”

  They sent me a letter. And then my mom called.

  “What did she want?”

  They’re doing it. They’re taking action against Melinda. Just like they threatened to.

  “No! What reason could they possibly have?”

  We had another argument about it. They said they’re giving me one more chance to stop treatment with her and take back the accusations, and if I don’t, they’re going to sue Melinda and have her license taken away.

  “They would really do that?”

  How can they blame me? They’re the ones who ruined our relationship. They’re the ones who couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t ask to remember these things.

  “Did they say they blamed you?”

  Sorry, I can hardly talk. It’s too much sometimes. Sometimes the feelings are overwhelming. The soft clicking noise returned.

  “Don’t worry. Your parents can’t defeat you, not on your good days. You’re going to do fine.”

  I am not going to worry about them. I am not going to protect them. I can only worry about myself. I need to cut all ties with my parents. That’s all I can do at this point if I want to keep my sanity.

  “My mom’s that way too. It’s like she’s blind with anything that has to do with my dad. She wants to believe I’m the one who’s wrong. Jenney, are you feeling suicidal?”

  No. Just hopeless. Billy, are you feeling suicidal?

  “No. Just completely demoralized.”

  That was a joke. Not a very good one, I admit. Look, I should go. I would talk longer, but I want to check in with Melinda again before I go to bed. She said if I could catch her before eleven, we could talk about what to do next. I wonder if there’s some way I can go before a judge and tell him how great Melinda has been to me. How much she’s helped me.

  “Can we talk again soon? Things at my house will probably keep getting worse.”

  Save some time for me on your nex
t shift. I want to know everything that’s going on. For now you hang in, all right? Be strong for me.

  “You remember what an incredible person you are. You don’t have to feel sorry about anything you’ve done. Remember that, okay?”

  I will. Let’s check in soon, Hallmark.

  ——

  I had looked forward to this call all day. The fact that it was so short was the worst event of the day, worse than Dad acting sicker, worse than Mom not acknowledging how bad he was. But I had to be strong, like Jenney was strong. As long as I had Jenney, I would survive.

  74.

  original

  First thing the next morning I texted Gordon: “Can you meet me before my first class? I need you to do something for me.”

  “Sure,” he sent back. “Anything.”

  We met outside my homeroom and started walking. I stopped in front of the health bulletin board and looked up and down the hall.

  “Can you and your dad come to the show a little early and he can let me know what he thinks?” I asked. “Then, if the paintings are as crazy as I think they are, I’m going to shut the place down and ask everyone to leave.”

  Gordy pressed his lips together and glanced to one side. He looked like someone at a dinner table who has begun to chew something bad and is deciding how to secretly get rid of it.

  “Is that really what you want?” he asked.

  “I think it’s the most sensible course of action.”

  “I would never want to hurt his feelings unless it was a real emergency. How would your dad feel if you did what you said you were going to do? Shut down his art show?”

  “He would probably be ticked off, but I hope he would thank me later.”