Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  I think about how she would have a freaking cow over this.

  And then?

  “I’ll do it,” I say. “No big deal.”

  And that is how I end up with Tavik and Peace-Bob for tentmates.

  Awesome.

  CURTAIN

  (Age Ten)

  Pop stars and rockers get nodes—calluses on the vocal cords, usually from overuse, usually because they are not paying attention and/or think they can push through. Opera singers do not push through.

  Opera singers know that, unless they are superstars, they can be replaced in two seconds flat, and therefore have their throats scoped regularly to make sure they are not developing nodes or polyps, and at the slightest hint of them, everything stops. All singing, all talking, all sound, dunzo. Out come the extra humidifiers, the cups of tea, the voice therapists.

  Opera singers work hard, work tirelessly, but when it comes to their voices, they do not push through.

  Except . . .

  Maybe . . .

  When they are in the middle of a career breakthrough run at Covent Garden, and they get a little hoarse, just a little tiny bit hoarse . . .

  And, because they can’t bear the thought of taking time off in the middle of such an important role, tell themselves it’s just a cold, and fail to go to the ENT, and keep going to the theater and singing because not performing might mean losing all the momentum, months and years of building to this, all to be shoved back down to the bottom of the heap. . . .

  I was in the audience on the night it happened. At first, it was just a pause where there wasn’t supposed to be one. Only someone who’d heard her rehearsing this part thousands of times would have heard it. Still, I squirmed in my seat.

  Then there were a couple of funny notes. I whipped out my opera glasses, zoomed in on her, and stared. Up close she still seemed . . . fine . . . but normally she was better than fine. I started to sweat, my heart beating too quickly. She could get booed for this. Opera audiences are passionate, vocal, and unforgiving.

  Then, during the second aria, her voice went crazy, zooming from the notes she was supposed to be singing to other notes way up or down the scale. Wrong notes. Screechingly, undeniably wrong notes that rose and fell in what felt like slow motion, each long second worse than the last.

  The final time she opened her mouth to sing, nothing came out.

  I sat there in the dark, insides shredded. It was just her voice, but it seemed to me like she was literally dying up there.

  Everything stopped for a long, excruciating moment as hundreds of people held their breath at the same time. Even the orchestra paused. And then my mom, Margot-Sophia Lalonde, face flushed, eyes bright with terrified, unshed tears, made a dramatic, in-character gesture with her arms, and the conductor sprang back into action. The music started back up, faster than before, and Mom moved to the marks she was supposed to and did all her choreographed actions, and essentially mimed the rest of the piece, finishing on her knees in the spotlight, agony streaming down her face.

  And then the curtain, blood red and edged with gold, fell.

  Mom’s friends converged upon us in London.

  Everyone had heard; the drama of Margot-Sophia Lalonde losing her voice partway through a performance had even made the papers. Her cover, which is what they call understudies in opera, had arrived at the theater within the fifteen minutes specified by her contract (that’s how fast you can actually be replaced in opera—fifteen minutes) and sung from the wings while Mom walked the rest of the part. I had watched in anguish from the back, unable to stay in my seat, equally unable to turn away.

  Now our flat was full, with doctors coming and going, visitors arriving with gifts of specialty teas, honey cakes, scentless bouquets of flowers, bits of amusing gossip. Mom communicated via signals and signs, or with paper and pen, in a pretty silk-covered notebook someone had brought her.

  There were trips to the hospital, examinations, consultations, and always Mom told me everything would be fine, but that she needed more rest. She did not get sad and go to bed; she continued to take obsessively good care of herself and stayed positive.

  The run of the show ended.

  The tour began . . . without us.

  Mom remained positive.

  But fewer and fewer people came to visit as the weeks turned into months, and those who did come started to seem awkward, apologetic. Pretty soon no one came except the vocal therapists, yoga teacher, and ENT.

  I went between hovering over my mother and hiding out at my friend Emily’s.

  Finally there was surgery. She’d hoped to avoid it, because of cost, because of the recovery time, and because there was no guarantee it would work. But now it was time to try. She didn’t say it, didn’t act it, but I felt it: this was the last chance.

  Recovery was slow, more days and weeks passing and then came the attempts to sing, carefully at first and supervised by the doctor. Her lower register was fine, sounded beautiful. But the upper register . . . didn’t sound good.

  And it didn’t improve with further attempts.

  I will never forget the sorrowful face of Mom’s handsome ENT when he told us what we already suspected: Mom’s singing voice was destroyed. It was over.

  “The good news,” he said, “is your speaking voice, and the lower part of your register . . . both are fine. And you may use them as much as you like.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” She was so dignified, so strong, her speaking voice still so rich and nuanced, her articulation clear and perfect from all the years of classical training.

  He could be wrong, I thought. This was too painful to be real. We’ll keep trying. We’ll try again tomorrow.

  But tomorrow came, and Margot-Sophia Lalonde, grim-faced but with perfect composure, began to sell the furniture.

  She never cried, so neither did I.

  The curtain was falling. Had fallen.

  And we were out of magic.

  AT RISK

  (Peak Wilderness, Day One, Continued)

  Dear Mom,

  Here’s a quick fact I’m sure you’ll enjoy: if you cook on a campfire in the dark or semidark, bugs, lots of bugs, especially mosquitoes, will fly into the food. And when you go to eat, it will be so dark, you cannot see the bugs well enough to pick them out of your bowl.

  Apparently this is no problem, because the boiling sterilizes the bugs.

  And they are a good source of protein.

  While they are fresh bugs, and certainly local, I am not the only person who was disgusted. Ally cried. Seth and I barely ate, both of us determined to pick as many out of our bowls as possible, which meant there wasn’t much actual food left. Meanwhile, Melissa surprised me by shrugging it off and eating everything, and Peace ate with relish and talked about how eating bugs is the way of the future because the beef industry isn’t sustainable.

  (Dead mosquito count: 438, not including the ones we cooked and ate.)

  Love,

  Ingrid

  After the mosquito dinner comes something called “circle.” I figure we’re going to hold hands and sing “Danny Boy” or “The Wheels on the Bus.”

  We convene on a rocky outcrop above the lake, our faces lit by moonlight and flashlights. Pat gives us a big welcome, and Bonnie echoes it, and then we’re instructed to introduce ourselves and talk about why we chose to sign up for the trip and what our goals are.

  Chose. Ha. I can’t wait for my turn.

  Pat and Bonnie begin. Pat’s background is in social work. Bonnie is a psychotherapist.

  “I see this as an opportunity to marry two of the things I’m passionate about—the great outdoors and today’s youth,” Pat says, “particularly at-risk youth. My goal is to help empower you as individuals and to foster a sense of connectedness, of responsibility to ourselves and the earth.”

  On one hand, I’
m almost moved.

  On the other, I’m trying not to barf.

  And on another hand, if I had a third hand, I’m wondering about the word “at-risk.”

  Bonnie is next with more of the same—nature and leadership, troubled youth and learning to work as a team, blah, blah, blah.

  If I wasn’t “troubled” before, I am now.

  Seth, whom I am fervently wishing were my tentmate, if I have to stay with boys, is first.

  He clears his throat. “I’m from a very . . . traditional family. And I’m here to get tougher. Mentally, physically, spiritually. I’m here to get closer to God and to strengthen myself against . . . temptation and sin.”

  He says “temptation and sin” like he wants to swallow the words.

  “What sort of sin?” Bonnie asks, face neutral.

  “All of them,” Seth says, looking at the ground in front of him, his shoulders slumped. “My dad . . . that is . . . let’s just say I’m not acceptable to God. And if I’m not acceptable to God, I’m not going to have a family anymore and I love my family, so . . . I have to change. I have twenty-one days to change. That’s my goal.”

  Right, so he’s gay/bi/trans, or something, and he’s from one of those ignorant, asshole families that will disown him for it. Now I really wish he were my tentmate. And I want to throttle his parents.

  Harvey and Henry, who are fraternal twins but still look very much alike, go next. Well, technically it’s Harvey first, then Henry, but they basically speak together, and they’re here because they thought it would be “totally extreme,” and they want to kick each other’s asses in a variety of nature-related challenges.

  “Plus—” says Harvey.

  “Dude,” says Henry, “no.”

  “Who cares, man?” Harvey says to him, then turns back to the circle. “Plus we had a party and, uh, trashed the house.”

  “Half the house.”

  “Yeah, half the house,” Harvey amends. “Totally by accident, though, and the really bad part wasn’t even us. Someone drove their car through the living-room window.”

  “So our parents . . . Well, they almost canceled this trip, they’re so pissed, but on the other hand, they don’t want to see us for a few weeks.”

  “Time to get out of Dodge.”

  “So here we are,” Henry finishes.

  “Do you have a history with this type of incident, Henry?” Bonnie asks.

  “Well, not exactly,” Henry says, just as Harvey says, “Oh, totally!”

  “I asked Henry,” Bonnie says, with a hard look at Harvey.

  “Same difference,” Harvey says.

  “But you are not, in fact, the same person,” Bonnie says.

  “Okay, sure,” Harvey says. “Floor’s yours, bro.”

  Henry, who wears his medium brown hair shorter than Harvey, looks annoyed, but I can’t tell whom he’s annoyed with—Bonnie, or his brother.

  “We get into a bit of trouble sometimes,” he says. “But nothing too serious.”

  “Are you kidding?” Harvey practically shouts. “We are epic! We’re legendary!”

  “Sure, okay,” Henry says, looking distinctly un-legendary. “But it’s all in fun.”

  “Potato guns! Smoke bombs! And there was that time we took Principal Carter’s phone and—”

  “Dude, shut up!” Henry says, punching his twin in the shoulder. “Be cool, okay?”

  “Right,” Harvey says, and subsides. “We’re Boy Scouts. That’s all we’ve got to say.”

  “Hmm,” Bonnie says, studying them. “We’ll come back to this another time. How about you, Jin?”

  Jin throws her cigarette into the fire and sweeps the circle with a glare, meeting each person’s eyes with defiance. “I was on the street,” she says. “I was making my way all right, then one night a few months ago, I got thrown into jail for . . .”

  “Yes . . . ?” Pat says when Jin fails to continue, and suddenly I get the feeling that he knows—whatever she’s about to say or not say, he already knows.

  “Solicitation,” Jin says, glaring steadily at Pat.

  He nods, cool as a cucumber.

  “Right, well. My parents refused to come for me. I’m a humiliation. But they called my aunt. Probably because she’s richer than they are and cares less about the opinions of everyone in our community. Plus they don’t want to spend any more money on me. Unstable investment.”

  Bitterness oozes from her with this statement.

  “Anyway, she offered to take me in,” Jin continues. “I was . . . tired. And so I accepted. But she’s strict and she had conditions—no drugs, which sucks because I’m really only a recreational user—and I have to catch up in school, and she thought I should do this, too. Get as far away from the ‘bad influences’ as possible. Definitely no chance to call a dealer from out here anyway.”

  Harvey laughs.

  Bonnie and Pat gaze at Jin with dead-serious listening faces, and Harvey stops laughing.

  “Anyway, I figured if I can survive on the street, this is child’s play,” she says with a shrug.

  “How long have you been clean?” Pat asks.

  “I’m not an addict. I just like to have fun. But as far as being clean, technically . . . except for a few weak moments, I’ve been clean, including from nicotine,” she says with a nod toward her herbal cigarette, “for . . . two months.”

  A few weak moments within the last two months does not sound particularly clean to me, but what do I know? Her smoking suddenly bothers me a lot less, though.

  “All right. Good for you,” Pat says.

  “And now, Peace?” Bonnie says.

  Peace-Bob stretches his legs out, looks around the circle.

  “I reject the way we live,” he says.

  Here we go.

  “I reject the commercialism, the waste, the selfishness. I reject Western relationship boundaries, organized religion, war. I reject my former self.”

  It’s not quite in the spirit of things, but I reject his current self.

  “My mission in life, starting with this trip, is to be peaceful, to live as one with nature, to be authentic. Someday I hope to find a group of like-minded individuals and band together to live off the land. . . .”

  I work very hard not to roll my eyes as he goes on.

  Bonnie finally (tactfully) hastens him along, and Melissa is next. Other than her intense reluctance to share a tent with anyone male, she’s been pretty quiet. I’m expecting, due to her looking so fit, to hear she’s in training to climb Everest or something.

  “I just escaped from a cult,” she says.

  Wow. Not Everest.

  “I disappeared. Until six months ago I hadn’t seen the sun for over a year. That’s how long I was gone. Anyway. I’m a mess, and it’s been hard trying to . . . relate . . . to my family, to my old friends. No one knows what to say to me, and I don’t easily . . . trust people. Or myself. So when my mom and dad suggested this, I figured it might help. My goal is just to get stronger, feel better, and maybe figure out . . . how this happened to me.”

  We are all silent for a few moments, and again I get the sense that neither Bonnie nor Pat is shocked, or even surprised.

  “That’s it for me,” she says, her voice suddenly chipper. “Ally?”

  Ally is still weepy about the bugs-for-dinner situation, but pulls herself together enough to tell us she goes to a “special” high school that’s going to give her a credit for this. Plus she’d like to lose weight. Plus she’d like to get back custody of her one-year-old girl, who is currently in foster care due to Ally not being able to provide a stable environment. This is partly because Ally’s own parents are raging partiers in both senses—they are wild and loud when they’re having fun, and wilder and louder when they’re fighting, causing most of the neighbors to have the police on speed dial.

/>   Some government grant is covering Ally’s fee to be here.

  She can’t be older than sixteen.

  My shin is aching, and I’m starting to feel sick inside and wondering where the genuine nature enthusiasts are (I refuse to count Peace-Bob), because that’s who the brochure said this trip was for, and that’s the type of people Ella met when she did Peak Wilderness. Nature enthusiasts.

  Tavik (my other tentmate) is next, and though he’s not exactly rocking that vibe, I’m hoping he’s a nature guy. Like maybe he’s a snowboarding, dirt-biking, ATV-riding, rock-climbing nature guy.

  I’m envisioning this when he says, “I just got out of jail.”

  I haven’t said a word thus far, but at this I find myself blurting, “What?”

  “Ingrid, you may speak when it’s your turn,” Bonnie says in a level tone.

  “Sorry,” I mutter.

  “Yes, I was recently incarcerated,” Tavik continues, eyes now on mine. “Not that it’s anyone’s business. My parents are dead. I’m on parole. Some genius of a social worker thought this would be good for my rehabilitation and got me in as a charity case.”

  “And what are your personal goals for your time here, Tavik?” Bonnie asks, all serene and unfazed.

  The impression I keep getting is that neither she nor Pat is fazed by any of it. This fits with the luggage search and Duncan’s lack of surprise about finding alcohol and drugs. Maybe the more messed-up campers come with a file, or the leaders have been briefed in advance about all of us. If so, what would they have been told about me? That I’m a wuss of a city girl who needs her ass kicked by the wilderness in order to . . . what? Build character? I certainly have no behavior or incidents on the scale of these people—nothing of significance, anyway. But still, Bonnie and Pat might know I’ve had a hard time lately.

  Tavik looks at Bonnie and laughs at her question. It’s not an unkind laugh or even a bitter one. He sounds genuinely amused, and for a second he reminds me of Isaac again.