My Beautiful Failure Read online

  I pretended to help organize until the girls were gone.

  ——

  “A studio,” I said, pressing my back against the door as Dad cleared out some beach toys that could go into the attic. “How about just doing one or two paintings to see whether you still like it? A few months ago you were just getting back into normal life. You couldn’t even . . .”

  Dad froze. I didn’t know how to talk to him without being offensive. I hoped he’d see that I was trying to help, just like Linda and Jodie had been. I stuffed my hands into the cuffs of my sweater, as if they were the words I needed to take back. How could I say it? There was a past him and a present him, and he didn’t agree with me on which him he was.

  When he spoke again he didn’t look angry. He seemed understanding—tender almost, the kind of understanding that makes you feel small and stupid.

  “You were a big help last year, Billy. We both know you and Mom and Linda nearly saved my life. But please don’t treat me like I’m still sick. Because if you treat me like I’m sick, I’ll start acting like I’m sick, and then the next thing you know I will be sick. And I don’t ever want to be sick again.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t want, Dad.” I should touch him, I thought. Just go ahead and do it, the way Linda does. I pulled my hand out and aimed it toward Dad’s shoulder.

  He caught my hand in midair, like I was high-fiving him. He clasped my fingers and pressed them back to me.

  “Here’s an idea, Billy,” Dad said, pulling out some rags to wipe the plaster dust from his old portfolio. The way he touched that old stuff. As if he could feel the years dried up inside it. As if he could add water and his college days would spring back to life. “You have a lot of talent. Why don’t you find a project of your own?”

  7.

  private beach

  Choose your poison,” Gordon said, leading me to the wicker papasan chairs on his deck overlooking a private beach. Gordy’s father was a lawyer and they were rich, but Gordy would never lord it over anyone. He held out two pints of ice cream: pistachio and peanut butter cup. Premium, of course. I liked both and would have preferred to share, but not knowing if rich people shared ice cream, I took pistachio. He transferred his to a bowl, so I did the same.

  “He thinks I need a project,” I explained. We’d started this conversation on the phone, but I wanted some privacy and would use any excuse to visit.

  “What did your mom say?”

  “She agreed with him.”

  “Ouch. I can see why you’re ticked off.”

  I watched an airplane drop expertly over the Boston skyline and into Logan Airport.

  “But you know, it’s kind of reasonable,” Gordy said.

  “It is?”

  “Well, maybe he means not that you’re in the way, which is how you’re taking it, but that you should have something you’re really excited about. Because he’s excited about something, and it’s cool to be excited. Do you want to try the peanut butter cup, too? I have a couple of extra spoons.”

  We switched flavors, but I was too distracted to form an opinion on which I liked better.

  “You must have good parents to want to put that kind of spin on what parents say. I mean, you must have had—” I felt awkward around Gordy every time I said “parents,” plural. His mother died of cystic fibrosis shortly after they came to town. The main thing people knew about Gordy, for months and months, was that his mom had coughed blood into a handkerchief in the administrative office when she registered him for school.

  “Tell me this,” Gordy said after swallowing what was in his mouth and wiping his lips with a napkin. “What do you like to do?”

  “You know. Ride my bike, listen to music.” I tick-tocked the spoon to show how monotonous I was.

  “What about your songwriting? Are you still doing that?”

  “Yeah, but it feels empty. Everything is flat. I mean, last year—last year felt so important. I saved somebody’s life, you know? What could be more important than that? I don’t know what to do other than take longer and longer bike rides.” I put down my ice cream and slouched in the chair, arms folded across my chest. “I’m only sixteen, and I feel like my life is over.

  “I guess it’s different for you,” I continued. “You have Brenda. Someone you can tell your hopes and dreams to. Someone who knows everything about you and thinks you’re amazing.”

  “Whoa! Let’s not go overboard. She thinks I’m okay. I don’t remember her using the word ‘amazing.’”

  “She’s a great catch,” I insisted.

  Gordon chuckled. “Remember when Brenda and I went to the Roomful of Blues concert? Mitchell was in line waiting for their tickets. Andy was out on the sidewalk trying to chat up some girl, and every time he looked at Brenda and me he would say, ‘Nice work’ or ‘Major score’ or ‘You the man.’ I had to tell him to cut it out because he was making Brenda uncomfortable.”

  “The other girl too, probably. What a jerk.”

  Gordy wagged his spoon at me. “I know what your project should be,” he said.

  “What?”

  He looked into his ice cream to make his suggestion seem nonchalant. “Why don’t you join the Listeners?”

  “The people with that big sign over the bridge?” I sat upright and Gordy laughed. I hadn’t expected this at all.

  “The suicide hotline. According to the sign, they’re always looking for people. They even want people our age. Actually, I’ve thought of you every time I’ve seen that sign.”

  I had seen the sign, of course, but never connected it to myself. Never connected it to any real person. But certainly there were people on the other end, taking the calls. Gordy was even more exceptional than I had given him credit for. “That seems like it would be important. Talking somebody off a ledge.”

  “You’d be great at it,” Gordy said, piling all that remained of both flavors into my bowl. “And you have the experience to back it up. If I ever got so low I wanted to off myself, you’d be the first person I’d call.”

  8.

  research

  Back in my room, I looked up the Listeners’ website. A video on their homepage showed cars driving over the Joseph E. Garland Bridge, under the Listeners sign. Someone got out of his car and walked to the railing. He saw the Listeners sign that said FEELING DESPERATE? CALL US NOW. Steady piano chords, ominous, like the tolling of a bell, played over the scene. Then the video switched to a youngish woman. She said she had lost her job and apartment and her kids were about to be taken from her, and she had been in so much pain that it hurt her to live each day. She’d put on a parka with big pockets and driven to the beach to fill those pockets with rocks. She’d been about to walk into the water and drown herself, but as she pulled into the beach parking lot she called the Listeners number and they talked her out of it.

  “Without Listeners I wouldn’t be here,” she said, “and my kids wouldn’t have a mother.”

  Another guy talked about how his sister had killed herself and he had felt helpless to stop it. I was glad I had my earbuds on. I wouldn’t want Mom and Dad to hear.

  A college student came on next. The caption beneath her picture said “Volunteer Coordinator.” “This is a life-saving service,” she said. “People call us who can’t talk to anyone else. When they call here, they can break out of their isolation and be themselves. Finally they have a connection to someone and something.” As the music got louder, she looked directly at the camera—at me, I felt—and said, “We save lives every day.”

  The last shot was a line from the sign: VOLUNTEERS WANTED.

  Gordy was right. This organization was perfect for me. I had so much saving to give. I only needed someone who wanted to be saved.

  I went into the living room, where Dad was studying his art books in happy silence, with not even an opera CD to distract him. I felt completely invisible compared with his revived interest in painting.

  The living room was all white, accented by Mom’s humorous t
hrow pillows with sayings like WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY and WHAT WOULD LADY GODIVA DO? In fact, in its own way, our living room resembled a book.

  “I found my project,” I said. It sounded like I was throwing that at him, accusing him of something. “Dad, I found my project,” I said again. I clapped my hand over my chest. I had a project. Even I.

  “What are you going to do?” He closed the book, with one finger inside to hold his page.

  “I’m going to volunteer on a hotline.”

  “Like a phone line?” Dad asked. “Where?”

  “The Listeners. You’ve seen their sign on the bridge.” I might have said more, but I couldn’t say “depression” or “suicide” in front of Dad. Maybe because those words made Dad look weak, and maybe because hearing those words might give Dad ideas and he might off himself. It would be good, anyway, to work in a place where those words could be said out loud.

  “Where would you do this? Here at the house?”

  “In their office downtown.”

  “They take sixteen-year-olds as volunteers?”

  “Most of their volunteers are high school and college students.” I liked the college-student angle. If I worked with Hawthorne State students, I would be more mature than other high school guys, a sort of tweener.

  Dad closed his book and folded his hands over it. He smiled, and because I hadn’t seen him smile a lot lately, I felt like he was laughing at me.

  “Billy,” he said, “when I said you should have a project, I thought maybe you and Gordy might form a band.”

  “Meaning?” I hooked my hands on the loops of my jeans to make me stand prouder, although I didn’t feel it.

  “That job sounds like a huge responsibility.”

  “That’s why I want it,” I said. “Because it’s more important than starting a band. Besides, a French horn and a harmonica are not much of a band.”

  Mom came in with her reading glasses and New England Journal of History. “What’s important?”

  “Billy wants to get involved with the Listeners,” Dad told her. “The hotline people.”

  “They’re—” I began to explain.

  “I know who they are,” Mom said, sitting down. “That doesn’t seem like a great idea. I’m not saying you wouldn’t be good at it—I know you would—but it seems a little morbid. I don’t know that I’d want to be listening to people’s problems hour after hour. Plus, they’re kind of a rival of ours.”

  “In what sense?” Dad asked. They enjoyed this kind of conversation—the kind that started with me, then drifted away from me.

  “They and the museum tend to go after the same money.”

  Parents have a way of getting calmer and calmer that makes you more and more upset. I spoke so emphatically now that I leaned forward with each word. “I want to help people! I want to do something that isn’t a waste of time!” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I wondered if Dad thought this was a dig at his painting. If he thought so, he didn’t react.

  “Will you have adult supervision?” Mom asked. “I wouldn’t have a clue what to say if someone called up and said they were, uh . . .”

  I would beat them at their own game. I made my voice sound bored, as if I were working at Listeners already. “They have a trainer there all the time. They have a program that you follow. You don’t just make up what you say. Look, their website says they’re desperate for people. I should at least go meet them and see what they say.”

  “Give it a try,” Dad said finally. “But don’t let it get to you, okay? Don’t be a hero. If it gets too stressful, tell Mom and me. And don’t hesitate to walk out of there and do something that someone your age would consider fun.”

  9.

  headquarters

  Command Central for the Listeners was in a secret location in downtown Hawthorne, on the third floor of Cabot Hall, home of the Cabot Insurance Company, which lent two rooms to the organization rent free. Despite the big billboard on the bridge, no sign on Cabot Hall betrayed what went on here. When I arrived for my training I found a dingy office with sticky floors, cockroaches that darted around in my peripheral vision, and the stale aroma of forgotten falafel. The college guy who opened the door for me said the grit made the place more authentic. Maybe he believed all the suicidal callers must live with sticky floors too. But I assumed Cabot Insurance used the secrecy as an excuse not to send their cleaning people upstairs.

  On the walls I saw more versions of the Listeners poster, each one with a black-and-white photo of a face turned three-quarters away from the camera. These people were supposed to represent our core constituency: depressed, distraught, discouraged, and in some cases ready to throw in the towel. But the faces looked like professional models, and they didn’t seem all that depressed to me. One looked like he was waiting for the mail. Another looked like she could use a forty-four-ounce cola. If Listeners wanted a true representation of mental anguish, they should bring in some paintings. Dad once told me the most anguished paintings were Edvard Munch’s The Scream and Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows.

  The person in charge of training was named Pep; her full name was Amalia “Pepper” Salton. I was impressed that her nickname had a nickname. Pep’s father was a congressman and a Listeners trustee. He raised piles of money for the organization. Pep was a junior in college, and she looked like a tennis player, along the lines of Dad’s work friend June Melman, except that June’s posture was exemplary and Pep had a to-hell-with-it slouch. She wore a white blouse with the collar turned up and a navy headband. Seeing Pep reminded me of all I liked about June, whom I had a crush on last year—her white-blond hair, her cream-colored warmup suit, her scent of expensive lotions, but most of all, that she jogged the whole route beside our runaway bus of last winter. In another time and place, I would have done anything for June.

  In the front room of Listeners, two guys with beards discussed a hockey game, and a girl with heavy black-framed glasses read a thick chemistry book. Pep explained that although many of the Listeners were college students who needed to fulfill a community-service requirement in order to graduate, I wouldn’t be working the phone bank with them. College kids like these were fairly independent, she said. They were allowed to work the phones alone if necessary, and sometimes they stayed on and took calls right through the night. But since I was in high school, I would be in the teen room, working limited hours with two ListMates who would show me the ropes.

  She led me to one end of a long table with three telephones and three metal chairs. At the other end was Margaret, a girl in a plaid school uniform who might have been sixteen like me. In the middle was Richie, who looked fourteen. Who was he qualified to counsel? My sister, Linda?

  Right away, I was irritated by the age segregation. So the two bearded guys and the chem major were in college. What did age really mean in the grand scheme of things? After all, I had been through what I’d been through. My application included a short essay about all the ways I helped Dad last winter. The other three had—what, taken the SATs, been rejected by a few schools, and learned to operate the juicer at Orange Julius? I smiled collegially at my teen peers, but I kept getting stuck on that fourteen-year-old.

  Pep told me I needed to learn the ground rules. She handed me my training booklet, The Four Pillars of Listening.

  1. WHAT HAPPENS AT LISTENERS STAYS AT LISTENERS. All phone calls that come in are confidential. We discuss them only with other Listeners, not with anyone outside. No exceptions, ever, period. We exchange first names with the people who call, and because we don’t use caller ID or track calls, we’ll never know their full names, phone numbers, or where they live, and they will never know ours. We’re not their friend, and we don’t develop any kind of ongoing relationship with them. Your involvement with the person begins with the call and ends with the call. In fact, if someone you know calls, you should not acknowledge that you recognize them. That would be a violation of the Incoming’s privacy.

  I asked what an Incomin
g was, and Richie, a blond curl bobbing knowledgeably on his forehead, told me an Incoming is the person who calls.

  Pep pushed up her sleeve to reveal a thick gold watch. She explained that Listeners had special terms for certain things and that I would have to learn the lingo.

  I felt stupid, because I should have been able to figure out what an Incoming was. I decided not to ask many questions, in case they thought I wasn’t bright enough to do the job.

  2. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. Always keep the conversation focused on the Incoming. Do not reveal any personal information about yourself. Don’t tell the Incomings anything about your experiences, problems, or preferences. Do not give advice. You don’t necessarily know any more about solving their problems than they do. Just listen to them and reflect what they’re saying.

  Margaret waved her hand between us as if we were role-playing a phone conversation. She told me that the best way to respond to the Incoming was to be like a mirror: Repeat what they’ve already said, even using the same words. She said that this might feel awkward, but it would let the Incoming know that I was really listening.

  3. ENTER THEIR WORLD. Never question the reality of your Incomings. If they say they’re royalty, believe them. If they say they’re the leader of special forces in Afghanistan, believe them. If they say they woke up this morning and discovered they were living in the middle of a spiderweb, believe them.

  Margaret told me that one Incoming actually did believe he was living in a spiderweb.

  Richie chimed in that it helped to think of each person as a different planet. For instance, if Jason called with the spiderweb thing, I should tell myself that I was living on the Jason Planet and that was okay.

  4. ALWAYS ASK (ALWAYS!). Listeners is in the business of suicide prevention. You must ask each Incoming whether he or she is feeling suicidal. If the Incoming says yes, follow the procedure for urging the Incoming to call the police or a hospital. But if the Incoming doesn’t give you permission to call emergency services, there is nothing you can do.