My Beautiful Failure Read online

  Stays at Listeners. Along with my badge, my key, and my procedures manual. The rest of the meeting was an avalanche of nots. I stopped fighting.

  102.

  blackout

  I stood on the Common with my bike and waited for them to end the tribunal, gather their papers, and turn out the lights. When that last yellow square was extinguished, the top floor of Cabot Hall blended into the surrounding darkness as if it had never existed. As if I’d never been there at all.

  103.

  in the cemetery (my painting)

  Black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black and black, with two bright dots that could be Stacey and Rebecca.

  104.

  coda

  Officially, I didn’t know her.

  So I didn’t attend the funeral. But I did wait two blocks from the funeral home for the procession to go by. Ten cars, five limo and five civilian, with magnetic flags on the hoods saying FUNERAL. I allowed several nonfuneral cars that had waited respectfully at the intersections to join the flow of traffic. Then I made a distant, unofficial end to Jenney’s parade. When the limos stopped in the cemetery, I rode past. I pretended to be someone who was riding through recreationally, which is forbidden in the cemetery but which I’ve done before. One or two mourners glared at me, and I looked away, pretending ignorance. But I saw two girls who hid their bright dresses under black coats and their bright hair under hats and sunglasses, and who howled and hung on to each other like they were going to collapse. So maybe they did care about her more than she thought, or maybe they were calling attention to themselves, or maybe their central nervous systems were stimulated by the drama. Spiraling away from where the mourners would leave Jenney, I had an aerial view of myself as a peripheral detail, a small, mechanical figure. Someone who rides in circles while others are living their lives.

  105.

  deadline

  The day after the funeral I said nothing to my parents and Linda. I felt dry and hollow, like a gourd. I had seeds instead of guts, and if someone had shaken me, I would have rattled. But I went to school as usual.

  In music history class I sat beside Gordon. Dani Solomon, a tennis player with red hair, got up to do her presentation on Klezmer music. She wore a white skirt with fringe that swung as she walked.

  “Ooh,” Gordy whispered as she passed, “there she is.”

  Dani talked about how this type of music began at Jewish weddings and borrowed tunes from Roma (Gypsy) bands. How the instruments were meant to sound like human voices laughing and crying. How Klezmer clarinet had influenced the first note in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. After hitting the play button for each music sample on her CD player, Dani twisted her hands and waited for the music to end.

  Mr. Gabler walked toward my desk. Naturally, I hadn’t done anything about my paper since Dad’s show. How could I? I tried to figure out what to tell him. I wouldn’t say that someone I loved had died. I would say that although Mr. Gabler thought school was my big life or a stepping stone to it, my big life was actually elsewhere.

  Just as Gabler arrived at my desk there was a knock at the door. A police officer came into the classroom and spoke to Gabler, then asked me to come with him and removed me from the class.

  106.

  the story of emma p. braumann

  We rode in Officer Novello’s cruiser, with no siren, to a coffee shop opposite the state fish pier.

  “Let’s grab some breakfast,” Novello said.

  When the waitress came, Novello held the menu in front of his face without reading it. I saw him watch a park next to the pier where drug deals were reputed to go down.

  After two cars left the park he lowered his menu and eyed me with his head tilted, the way people express thoughts like, You’re putting me on or Now tell me something I don’t know.

  “Unbelievable,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “You’re exactly like your portrait.”

  I shrugged. “My portrait is exactly like me.”

  “You know, every person who comes into that bar, Marty walks them around your portrait in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc. ‘Do you see it yet?’ he says. ‘Do you see it?’”

  “He sure seems to get a kick out of it,” I said. I was glad Dad had decided to give Marty the painting for free.

  “Do you know the story of Emma P. Braumann?” he asked me once we’d ordered our food.

  “No idea.” I hadn’t really thought of the person behind the snack cabinet.

  “I’ll tell you. Emma P. Braumann was a very nice lady, about my mother’s age. She would have been. If she had lived. But she didn’t live. Which was the whole thing. She was a jumper. Right off the bridge there, before the chain-link fence went up.

  “Not many people know the whole story. The story is that Emma P. Braumann’s dear friend Mary Alice was engaged to someone in the service. They had been childhood sweethearts. In fact, the boy lived right across the street. Hale Street. He was only a month or so from the end of his tour of duty. And then he would return home and they would be married. So Mary Alice is at home, idly looking out the window. She sees an official car pull up across the street. A soldier in uniform gets out and for a minute she’s excited, thinking it’s him. But then she sees it’s a dress uniform. Not the fatigues he would wear for a visit home. So who is it?

  “The soldier goes up the walk. Removes his hat and rings the bell. The fiancé’s mother answers the door. And then of course Mary Alice realizes. The army has sent someone to tell the family that the fiancé is dead. They wouldn’t come to Mary Alice’s, house of course. They would go to the mother’s because the mother is the next of kin. Mary Alice runs across the street to her fiancé’s family, wild with grief. She spends the afternoon attempting to comfort the mother, and then Emma comes over and sits with the two of them and suddenly Mary Alice says she doesn’t want to live anymore and she’s going to throw herself off the bridge. She gets in the car, parks on the near side of the bridge. Emma had insisted on following her on foot and saw her climb the railing. Mary Alice jumped, and the river started carrying her along. The sun was just setting and she was being pulled along, waving her arms, still quite visible because of her pale yellow blouse. Emma, without even thinking, jumped in right after her. She was a strong swimmer, after all; she came from a line of fishermen. It was a long drop, but in she went. But she hit the water at the wrong angle and was instantly killed.”

  “What a shame.” That explained Emma’s Listeners connection. I piled pieces of egg yolk onto an English muffin.

  “She was a true hero. But you’re right, what a shame.”

  “So she tried to rescue her friend. And that’s why her family is so proud? Her nieces and nephews?”

  “Very proud. And rightly so.”

  “But I have a question.” Preparing to talk, I sipped some juice and wiped my mouth.

  “What’s that?” He opened his hands toward me as if I were a witness in the box.

  “You mentioned the sight of Mary Alice riding the current in a pale yellow blouse. That was Emma’s viewpoint. If Emma drowned, how does anyone know that’s what she saw? How do we know that the pale yellow was still visible? How do we know she was waving? How did all that get into the police notes?”

  I resumed eating. So much for this urban, or suburban, legend.

  “It didn’t.”

  “How do we know, then?”

  “Because that’s how Mary Alice told it.”

  “Mary Alice lived?” I popped my head back in surprise, just the response he was looking for.

  “Yes, she did live. She thought better of it and allowed herself to be carried toward shore, behind a house with a private dock downstream near the railroad br
idge. She pulled herself onto the pilings and lay there until help arrived. She was taken to the hospital for emotional exhaustion but was physically fine. In fact, after a few hours in the hospital and a change into dry clothes, she walked home and went directly across the street to help the woman who was supposed to become her mother-in-law. People were tough in those days. And they walked a lot more.”

  “That’s unbelievable.”

  “And after an appropriate interval of paying respect to the fallen, she met someone else and married and had children. And she’s my mother.” He slapped the table.

  “Mary Alice is your mother?”

  “That’s right. You know the Mary Alice of Mary Alice’s Variety?”

  “Next to the hospital?” I pointed with my thumb.

  “That’s my mother.”

  Novello finished his coffee and handed me a slice of bacon without using utensils. “There’s a lot to learn in a small town. You can never get to the end of it.”

  I nibbled the bacon. The waitress refilled his coffee and left the check.

  “There’s one other version of the story,” Officer Novello continued.

  “What’s that?” I wondered if he always told stories or if he knew I would be receptive because I had been a Listener.

  “There’s a version that says that Emma wasn’t trying to rescue Mary Alice. That Emma was in love with the same guy. Mary Alice’s boyfriend. It was my mother’s fiancé who got killed, but Emma loved him too. So even though she had no prospects along that line, when she heard about the death, she took her own life. Because, you know, there had been some kind of long-term fantasy there. Which now was not going to be realized.”

  “She wasn’t a hero?” How complicated people’s motivations could be.

  “Everybody’s a hero. Is what I’m learning.”

  “Is everybody a villain, too?”

  “Too neat.”

  I still had one egg left, so I ordered another English muffin and more jelly. Someone in a jacket and tie walked by the window and looked at the cop, then at me. Officer Novello waved to him: Move along.

  “You know,” he said, putting away his wallet, “I’ve gone to calls like your friend’s half a dozen times, and I still have the same reaction. I can’t fathom what could be so bad that someone would want to leave this earth.”

  “I guess not.” I almost could, though. I heard what Jenney’s voice was like when she lost Melinda. Maybe those of us who couldn’t fathom it were the lucky ones.

  “Should we tell your mom and dad what happened?” he asked, leaning toward me as if he were my new friend.

  I mimed lip-zipping, then folded my arms on the table. “I’m not telling anybody anything. Besides, my parents are riding high right now. I wouldn’t want to ruin everything by giving them bad news.”

  We got up. Officer Novello patted his thighs, checking for all the paraphernalia he had to carry. There must be stuff there that people have no idea of. High-tech, secret, spy-type stuff. Like me, and maybe like others in our town, he was a carrier of secrets.

  “All right, well, if you don’t want to talk to your parents, just talk to somebody. Okay?”

  107.

  macaroni yet again

  Andy and I tucked into our plates of American chop suey. Mitchell had a meatball sub and two containers of milk. Gordy had brought corned beef with sauerkraut and Russian dressing.

  “How’s it going at Life Savers, R?” Mitchell asked in between milks.

  “We parted ways,” I said casually. “You know, philosophical differences.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” Andy said, looking earnest, like I was an adult he had to impress.

  “What friend?” My spine stiffened. Had they heard about Jenney?

  “Margaret,” he explained. “The Listener. I’m sorry about what I did to Margaret.” The apology was a long time in coming. I wondered if Gordy or Mitchell had put him up to it.

  “I can’t talk to you about her,” I said.

  Andy stopped eating and pressed his head against the back of his wrist. His fork, in this awkward position, protruded from his forehead like a cockatiel crest.

  “But did you ever stop to think that maybe I called because I needed to call?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it. Why does someone call a suicide hotline, even as a prank? Doesn’t it have to be a cry for help, even if they’re covering up?”

  He had a point, actually. I had assumed that his call was just to make fun of us, but I shouldn’t have assumed anything at all. To be truly compassionate I would have to try living on the Andy-as-Hagrid Planet. I put down my fork. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He whispered, “No.”

  “Andy? Were you having a bad day the day you called? It’s all right, Andy. You can talk to me.”

  Andy’s face started to redden, and his mouth crumpled into a crooked line.

  “I always seem to push people away,” he said. “Even you guys. Even the people I really like.”

  “You think you push people away sometimes.” I reached across the table and rested one hand on his shoulder.

  Andy stabbed my arm with his fork. “Gotcha!”

  Mitchell and Gordy laughed, or maybe just made sounds of astonishment.

  “I wasn’t in the mood for that,” I told them.

  “Tasteless, yes,” Mitchell said. “But you have to admit, funny.”

  “I’m an idiot,” I said. “I should have known you guys were pulling my chain. Andy would never be serious about calling a help line.”

  “Sure I would,” Andy said. He stopped eating and folded his arms in front of his tray.

  “Oh, yeah? What would you call about?”

  Andy looked right into my eyes. “That of all your friends you like me the least. And you remind me of that every single day.”

  The edges of the caf seemed to dissolve until nothing existed but Andy and me staring at each other. I wished I could stab him with a fork to break the mood.

  “What would you call about, Mitchell?” Andy asked.

  “He wouldn’t,” I said. The tomato sauce tasted sweet against the soggy, chewy elbows of pasta.

  Mitchell sat back and ran one thumb under his suspenders. “I’m not suicidal over it,” he said, “but my dad just moved out.”

  “No way.” Mitchell’s parents and my parents had been in and out of each other’s houses for my whole childhood. “Wow, Mitchell, that’s huge. I’m really sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You seemed preoccupied,” he said.

  “I’m not anymore,” I told him.

  The four of us sat there, tearing bread, gulping soda, and watching the parade of girls and guys and their sometimes knowable, sometimes mysterious lives.

  108.

  bearings

  I signed a piece of paper.

  But maybe I could tell one person, someone I knew would keep it a secret.

  “So you know I’m not at Listeners anymore,” I began on the way home from school. Gordon was walking while I rode really slowly on my bike. I didn’t know how much I would say. I hated burdening other people with my problems.

  “Because of the girl?” he asked.

  “Yeah. But it’s not what you think.”

  “What’s going on? Are you two together?”

  “No, we’re not together. She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “She’s dead. She died.”

  Gordy glanced at me, then looked out at the water and nodded. I felt Jenney separating from me and joining the ranks of all the other people who had died. She had more in common with Gordy’s mom now than she had with me.

  The wind along the boulevard made goose bumps on the surface of the gray water, then whistled past our ears. I smelled damp pavement and beer from the yuppie microbrewery nearby. I stopped my bike at the wall that listed the names of Hawthorne’s fishermen who had died at sea, and Gordon and I climbed up and sat on the wall.

&nb
sp; “The girl you liked died,” he said, “and you weren’t going to tell me?”

  “I signed a confidentiality agreement. Like you said, I had to play by the rules. I wasn’t allowed to discuss her. I wanted to do things right. I shouldn’t even have told you her name.”

  Gordy hopped down from the wall and stood close enough to me that he blocked my entire view.

  “I know she died, Billy,” he said. “It was in the newspaper. A girl named Jennefer, a few years older than us, who was a swimmer. I’ve been waiting for you to say something.”

  “I’m sorry. I . . .” Maybe I told myself I had a knack for dealing with people, but in fact I was totally inadequate. Maybe I had what Andy described: I was always pushing away the people I liked.

  Gordy turned his back and looked out at the harbor, which already was almost dark. The lighthouse at the end of the stone breakwater that enclosed the harbor had begun its sweep, sending a ray of light around in a circle, over and over, the visual equivalent of the tolling of a bell.

  “No,” said Gordon. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I have no right to be mad. I know she was really important to you. I just don’t understand the way you think sometimes.”

  I banged my heels against the monument. The darkness gave us privacy and connected me to the nights with Jenney. It made me want to talk.

  “I don’t know if I was thinking or not. But I’m starting to realize that I feel really bad now. I mean . . . I almost feel bad enough to call Listeners myself.”

  The captain of a fishing boat told me once that seasickness climbs up your back, and you can stop it at different points along the way. But once it reaches the back of your neck you’re a goner. I realized now that the same was true of crying.

  Gordy stood beside me at the wall. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” he asked when I was done. “I mean, as much as you think you should say?”