Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  Mom looked up at me with haunted, exhausted eyes, and didn’t answer.

  Andreas cleared his throat.

  Mom turned away and muttered, “I am not the one starting.”

  “I’m sorry,” Andreas said, to her and to me.

  I left them like that, fraught and unresolved, and stomped my way out of the house, then shoved it to the back of my mind and told it to stay there.

  Dress rehearsal went how they supposedly always go; it was terrifying, exhilarating, and awkward in places because of missed cues, nerves, prop malfunctions, line flubs, et cetera. Rhea and Isaac gave copious notes but sent us straight home after, with the rationale that a solid night’s sleep would do more good than anything.

  While everyone else was packing up, and Isaac was resetting the props and chatting with Rhea, I got back on the stage with my script and started quietly and carefully working through my entrances and exits, checking my marks, whispering my lines, singing the songs in my head. I remembered Margot-Sophia’s work ethic, and mine would be as good, if not better.

  After a few minutes Rhea appeared stage left, and I paused.

  “Go home, Dorothy,” she said. “Sleep.”

  “Oh, that’s funny,” I said.

  “It’s not meant to be funny.”

  “Are you going to be able to sleep?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said, then relented. “But I suppose that’s because I’m older than you and can’t do without it. Also, I don’t have to perform.”

  “I’ll go soon. I wanted to practice the songs one more time,” I said, my eyes going to the door, where the rest of the cast and crew had congregated and were joking and laughing.

  I wished I could laugh, but I didn’t feel like it.

  “I can lock up, Rhea,” Isaac said, coming up beside her. “And I need five or ten, so that should give Ingrid the time she needs.”

  Rhea looked from him to me, and back to him, raised an eyebrow in a way that made me think she’d read our situation with perfect clarity, and then shrugged. “All right.”

  The rest of the cast cleared out along with her.

  Isaac rummaged around in the wings while I stood on the dimly lit stage and sang “Over the Rainbow” six times. My voice was getting tired, but I was thinking about Mom and Andreas again, and I just didn’t want to go home. Personal revolution aside, the fact was that anytime Mom wasn’t stable, I was freaked. The only solution was to fully immerse myself in what I was doing.

  I was ready to start going through all the other songs, just at a hum, when Isaac stepped onto the stage.

  “Time,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, not moving.

  “What’s wrong? Are you nervous?”

  “Sure. But. It’s more . . .” I looked out into the dark space. “I just want to stand here. I just want this to be my life.”

  “You want to be Dorothy?” he said, cocking his head to the side.

  “No. I want to be in this theater. Playing Dorothy. Rehearsing being Dorothy. This . . . what’s happening here, even with a messy dress rehearsal, it’s . . .”

  “A world.”

  “Yes,” I said with a sigh. “And most things in this world are simpler than in the real one.”

  Isaac went to sit on the edge of the stage, legs dangling off the front, and patted a space next to him.

  “What’s not simple, Ingrid?” he said once I’d sat down. “Do you mean . . .” He gestured from me to him.

  “No, not that,” I said with a smile. “I just mean . . . putting on a show, the job is very clear. And in the show, the problems Dorothy faces . . . Yes, she has to learn the whole ‘no place like home’ thing. But her obstacles and what she has to do and how she needs to feel about it all—that’s clear. She wants to go home. She needs to get to the wizard. She needs to stay alive. She needs to kill the witch.”

  Isaac nodded. Waited.

  “Sometimes you can’t kill the witch,” I said. “You know, in life.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there is no witch? Or because the wicked witch is also the good witch, or because the witch is inside someone you love, or inside you. Or the witch is an unsolvable problem between two people you love. And then . . . you can throw as much water as you want to, but you can’t kill that witch because she’s not yours to kill and even if you did, she just comes back.”

  “Ingrid . . .” he said, covering my hand with his, “what’s going on?”

  “Oh, I’m . . .” I could have talked to him. I knew he’d have understood, grasped the depths and the difficulties, cared. But I couldn’t talk—not with him, not with Juno either, because if I talked about it, I would be the one melting. And I needed everything I had, to do what I needed to do tomorrow and the next day and the day after. And anyway, I rationalized, Andreas and Mom and I had been through the wringer before. It would pass. And pass faster and less painfully for my keeping it to myself.

  “Just some stupid family stuff,” I said to Isaac. “Too long a story for tonight. It’s fine.”

  I kept hold of his hand while sliding off the stage, and tried not to see the hurt in his eyes.

  At the door, right after he flipped the last light switch, I pulled him close and got on my tiptoes to kiss him.

  My backpack slid to the floor, then his.

  “You know it’s not just about this,” he said, breathing between kisses. “You can talk to me.”

  “I know.” I pulled him closer, pressed myself tight against him, feeling better by the second. . . . “We’ve been talking. Lots. There’s time for more of that later. But we’re busy right now, right?”

  All the way home I carried the feel of him on my lips and the warmth of his arms around me, the push of our bodies against each other.

  And in my mind the music played and the stage lights shone.

  Isaac and Oz, like touchstones.

  I tried, as I walked the last half block toward home, to pull all of that into me, as if I were a bottle and could keep these feelings, to be taken back out whenever I needed them, like an antidote, or a buffer.

  But nothing could buffer me from the awfulness of finding Andreas sitting in his car, windows down, in front of the house while Mom shoved armloads of his clothes through the back window.

  She was not crazed or screaming, but silent, hair in a severe ponytail, and decked out in dangerous-looking high-heeled black boots over black leggings, with a beaded black tunic. In the brief moment when I saw her face, I glimpsed red lipstick. The look was opera singer/ballerina/ninja/vampire, and all diva. Like she had dressed for drama.

  Then the front door closed and she was gone and I ran to the car.

  “Andreas . . .”

  Oh God, why had I ignored this? Why hadn’t I tried to help?

  “Ingrid,” he said. His cheeks were wet, and the backseat of the car was full. “I wanted to . . . talk to you . . . calmly . . .”

  “No. No, no, no . . .” I said, insides roiling, reaching down to open the door and pushing more clothing out of my way so I could sit in the passenger seat. “You can’t leave.”

  “I wouldn’t, but she says she needs me to,” he said in a ragged voice.

  “What she says and what she needs are— How could she do this?”

  “I have made mistakes.”

  “You? What? What mistakes?”

  He dropped his head for a moment, then looked back up at me.

  “She told me, very clearly, that she did not want me searching for a cure for her voice.”

  “And?”

  “I did not believe her.”

  I groaned, unfortunately not surprised, and getting a sense of where this was going.

  “I thought . . . if I could find someone,” he continued, “if we could fix it and she could sing again, she would be . . . Things would be . . . eas
ier for her.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I found a specialist,” he said softly. “I thought, in the time since it happened . . . there must have been medical advances. And there have been, which means maybe she could get her singing voice back—some of it, anyway. Maybe all. I know . . . she told me she did not want this, but I thought I was bringing her the greatest gift, this possibility. I thought she would change her mind. Instead she’s furious. She feels betrayed somehow. She doesn’t want to try, and she thinks it means I don’t love her as she is, which is obviously not the case.”

  I gripped the windowsill of the car, wanting to hit something, wanting to smash my head against a wall in frustration.

  “You always want to help people,” I said to him. “You want to help them, solve them . . . but she doesn’t want to be solved.”

  “I understand that now. I was . . . foolish.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, yes, you sometimes go overboard wanting to fix things, and you are guilty of . . . not listening, or not believing what she told you. But she . . . Honestly it pisses me off that she would rather hang on to her misery, that she would choose it over hope. And then blame you for it. She is the foolish one, to lose you—the best thing that’s happened to us.”

  “Perhaps she is just too frightened,” he said. “Too scared to hope.”

  “That’s fucking stupid.”

  Andreas gasped.

  “It is. And it’s so depressing,” I said, anger moving in and pushing aside my shock and despair. “Seriously, I’m sick of it. Let me come with you. Or you come in with me and I’ll fight for you.”

  “She has changed the locks, Ingrid.”

  “What?”

  “And right now trying to fight will only make her more resolute. Trust me. For now I have to leave, and you need to go inside.”

  He pulled me in for a hug and squeezed me hard.

  “You’re supposed to be my dad,” I said, blinking back tears.

  Four months ago, he’d filed the papers to adopt me. We were waiting on the next step. But how could it possibly go through, if he and Mom were broken up? Why would he even want it to?

  “I am,” he said. “Sweetheart, I will be at the play tomorrow and I am always going to be there. I promise. But you must stay with your mother tonight. Even if she won’t say it, she needs you.”

  “What about what I need?”

  Mom had seen me after all, and left the door partially open.

  Inside I found her at the dining-room table, spine erect, a glass of red wine in front of her, the open bottle in front of it.

  “Mom.” I wiped at my eyes. “What the hell?”

  Her gaze stayed on the glass.

  “Is he gone?” she asked.

  “Yes. And that’s about the shittiest news I’ve had, ever.”

  “Watch your language.” She swallowed, pushed forward a key. “Here is your new key. Have you done your homework?”

  “My homework? Are you kidding?”

  Finally her gaze sliced up to meet mine. “I am never kidding about your education.”

  “I don’t have any tonight. All the teachers, unlike you, are sympathetic to the fact that we have a show opening tomorrow night. Half the population of the school is involved one way or another, Mom.”

  “Ah yes. The show,” she said wearily.

  “But forget that. This thing with Andreas—”

  “There’s no happily ever after, Ingrid,” she snapped, then took a sip of her wine, swallowed. “It’s better to know that. Expect pain. Expect disappointment. And then, once in a while you will be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Wow. Is that really the parental wisdom you want to pass on to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s really warm and fuzzy, really reassuring, in the middle of our life here falling apart. Thanks.”

  “I think you should be reassured that I don’t lie to you.”

  “He is our family, Mom. Do you get that at all? All he did was try to help you, because he loves you. And you kick him out? Change the locks?”

  “Are you taking his side, then?”

  “Side? I am on the side of ‘we have a family and I want it to stay together.’ That’s my side.”

  She snorted, took another drink. Her arm was shaking, and I knew she was a mess behind that brittle mask. She was being honest with me? Fine. Maybe I could get through to her with my own honesty.

  “Okay,” I said, putting my hands on the table and leaning toward her. “Maybe I am on his side, because his side is reasonable. Compassionate. Generous. He loves you and wants to help you.”

  “He doesn’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand either. It seems to me you’d rather just be miserable, and make everyone else miserable too. Live your little safe half life, and encourage me to do the same,” I said, standing up, volume rising. “God forbid anyone should hope or think big or try something scary. Better to hide in a freaking hole the rest of your life. Better to ruin everything good that happens to you and do the same for your daughter, just in advance, in case she starts to be happy. You know what? That is hard to understand, Mom.”

  “Now this is about you, is it? I am here, reeling from this betrayal, and it’s all about how I’m trying to prevent you from becoming a star. Forgive me for wanting you to have solidity in your future, for not wanting you to live a sordid, heartbreaking life of poverty.”

  “A sordid, heartbreaking life of poverty? Do you hear yourself?”

  She turned pale, gripped the edge of the table, pushed herself up to face me.

  “You know nothing,” she said. “You know nothing of what I’ve been through. What I struggle with.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m not the one who’s been here by your side my entire life. None of that has affected me whatsoever, and I don’t know anything. And solidity? Really?”

  Mom pressed her lips together, breathed in and out through her nose, and just when I thought she was going to start screaming, a single tear slid from her eye and down her cheek.

  “I don’t want to hear another word from you,” she whispered. “Go to bed.”

  “And what are you going to do?” I said, torn now between fury and concern.

  “I’m going to sit here and get drunk.”

  “Great. Enjoy,” I said, starting toward the stairs, then pausing.

  Part of me wanted to stay, wanted to apologize and comfort her. To be there to catch her in case she fell, especially because it was unusual for her to be drinking, much less getting drunk, and at the best of times she was very delicately balanced. But she had done this on the eve of my opening night, and no, their argument wasn’t about me, but it would affect me.

  If I’d hurt her, fine. She had hurt me too.

  And I was tired of this, tired of being hurt, tired of walking on eggshells, worried that any little thing I did might send her into a downward spiral. It was too much responsibility. Too much worry, too much putting her before me, and all the while leaving her the power to just . . . ruin my life, dismantle everything, and stop me from doing things I loved.

  Yes, right at this moment she looked like a strong wind might blow her over.

  Like a bucket of water would melt her.

  Like she was going to drown herself in that bottle of wine.

  But I had my own problems.

  And so I went to bed and tried to open my own bottle, that bottle where I’d trapped the feeling of Isaac and the dream of Oz. . . .

  Too few hours of sleep, and then the early hours brought thunder and pummeling rain, and I realized I must have been sleeping through some of it, because Margot-Sophia had climbed into bed with me and wrapped her body tightly around mine.

  For a few minutes I just lay there, imagining I was a little girl whose mommy had crawled into bed with h
er to banish the bad dreams, instead of the girl whose mom had basically told her to expect life to be shit.

  I cuddled closer, she tightened her arm around me, and I fell back to sleep.

  She was still there when my alarm sounded. I turned it off, disentangled myself, and slid out of bed. Mom moaned, rolled the other way, and kept sleeping. She wasn’t much of a drinker, so she was going to have a rough day.

  I gently kissed her cheek. She reached up sleepily, with the saddest eyes, and touched my face.

  “I love you no matter what,” she murmured softly, and in that moment I just wanted to crawl back into the bed with her, because I loved her no matter what too. Loved her with everything I had. It was something I couldn’t block, couldn’t shut out.

  “Sure,” I said, instead. “Me too.”

  “See you tonight.”

  “You’re still coming?”

  “I am Margot-Sophia Lalonde,” she muttered, a hint of her regular, fierce self showing through. “Of course I’m coming.”

  My phone buzzed: a text from Isaac.

  Look outside. East.

  I headed to the window, pulled back the curtain, and saw it . . . After a terrible night and in the face of no sleep and a life full of uncertainty on this day in particular, there it was: a rainbow.

  TRY NOT TO KILL IT

  (Age Fifteen)

  All day I felt like I was balanced on a wire.

  People patted me on the back in the halls between classes, wished me luck, asked if I was nervous. Nervous, yes. If only that were all.

  Autumn showed up at my locker after French.

  “Juno told me you were looking unwell,” she said. “She’s right.”

  “Oh, thanks. I’m not going to keel over, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

  A look of wounded surprise came over her face and she took a step back.

  “I was just going to offer you some aromatherapy, Ingrid,” she said. “And I bought you a smoothie because I noticed you didn’t eat lunch and you look like hell and you happen to be our Dorothy. And a good one, too. But never mind.”