My Beautiful Failure Page 3

  I flinched as if I’d been paintballed in the face. This I could not believe. Nothing we could do? A suicidal person is on the line and we’re supposed to just hang up? I asked if this was because we had no addresses or phone numbers. Margaret said that was right: We had no records, no last names, no nothing. Just a voice on the phone.

  10.

  rule number 4

  Margaret asked if I was all right. She said I looked like I had stopped breathing.

  I told her I’d felt fine until rule number 4. I rested my hand on one of the phones as if to test myself. The job was monumental, the ultimate responsibility. The way the rules were written, someday someone might call and mine would be the last voice that person would ever hear. In a few days I would start saving lives. But only if they wanted to be saved.

  I talked with my teen mentors for a few more minutes. Then I rode home with the booklet in one hand, curled around the handlebars. As I reached the driveway I stashed the booklet in my pack. I liked having a booklet no one in my family was allowed to read. It was my book of secrets.

  11.

  in my corner

  Back home, Mom was working on the high-end laptop she inherited when she became Brooksbie director.

  “How was it?” she asked as I walked into the all-white living room.

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “Did you save anyone?”

  “Not yet,” I told her. I carried my bike, Triumph, across the carpet and into my room. Rolling the bike across the white rug was definitely verboten.

  “I know you, Billy,” Mom called. She had closed her laptop on the big square coffee table and curled her bare feet up into the chair. “You don’t look happy. What’s wrong?”

  “The place seems great. It’s just that even though I have real-life experience they grouped me with the other high school students rather than the older volunteers.”

  “This is an important life lesson, Billy,” she said. “Do you know what you’re going to have to do?”

  “Threaten to quit?” I asked, stuffing the manual into my back pocket.

  “Au contraire, my friend. This is no time to be a hothead.” She took off her reading glasses. I’ve been planning to hole up in my room, but this show of interest made me stop.

  “But I already know I’m good at helping people. I don’t deserve this treatment.”

  “You’re going to have to check that attitude at the door.”

  “How can I?”

  Mom laughed. She reached up and poked me. For a self-described bohemian, she had an oddly cheerleaderish side.

  “Because of your age, you’re going to have to work twice as hard as the others to prove yourself. It’s the same way for women and people of color. Now that I have Pudge’s files I have some inkling as to how much work he had to do to stay where he was.”

  “Half?” I asked, pulling up an ottoman to sit closer to Mom. This arrangement of couches and chairs Mom called the “conversation area,” and here Mom and I were, having our own conversation.

  “That’s right. Half as much as I did as assistant director, even when I worked a reduced schedule last winter.

  “Pudge had a lot of great ideas,” Mom continued, “but he left things half finished. It’s like some deity came along, plucked him from his desk at the Brooksbie, and lifted him, with clouds and angel choirs, to a perfect job at the Museum of New England Heritage. And did he worry about leaving a mess? No, he just declared victory and moved on. But some people are like that, never dotting the i’s or crossing the t’s. Our family has the opposite problem: We try too hard sometimes.”

  Mom was right. We tried everything to make Dad better, from antidepressants to nutritional supplements to light therapy. It had been a winter of dotting all our vowels.

  “Gggggg!”

  Linda stood in the hall, listening to our conversation.

  “Get out of here, Linda,” I say. “Mom and I are having a serious conversation about work.”

  “Linda, this isn’t the time,” Mom said.

  “Gggggg,” Linda warbled.

  “That’s enough, Linda,” said Mom, raking the earpiece of her glasses through her hair, a sign that she was annoyed. “Ignore your sister, Billy. Remember that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Every kick is a boost.”

  “Did they work you too hard at the Listerines?” Linda threw her head forward. “Guuuuuuuuugggh.”

  “Gigigigigig.” Jodie was beside her, gargling at a high pitch, so that they made harmony. They wore matching Justin Bieber nightshirts.

  “It’s nine thirty,” I complained. “What’s she doing here? Mom, don’t tell me she’s sleeping over.”

  “No wonder you’re so exhausted,” Linda said, widening her eyes and sounding like a sympathetic adult. “How many life-threatening cases of bad breath did you cure today?”

  Jodie tried to look serious but then crumpled. She laughed so hard, she couldn’t even gargle.

  “Cut it out! Both of you!” I pushed the ottoman back to the wall. My great private moment with Mom was shattered.

  “I’m sorry, Billy,” Jodie said. “But Linda’s so funny. She cracks me up and I can’t help it.”

  “Do you need to borrow a toothbrush, Jodie?” Linda put a hand on Jodie’s shoulder like she was showing her around the house. “Do you want a glass or some mouthwash?”

  “What brand do you have?” Jodie asked as they left.

  “So what do people say when they call?” Mom asked.

  “I haven’t started on the phones yet. But when I do I won’t tell you anything.” I mimed zipping my lip. I would stop there and leave her hanging. I went into my room with the handbook and closed the door.

  12.

  wrong with you

  I leaned against my headboard, under my two Escher prints, and looked again at the Listeners handbook. In addition to the four rules, they had provided sample conversations I could practice with. It seemed like a good organization. They had thought through every possibility, and aside from seating me with Margaret and Richie, they showed a lot of trust by putting me on the phones.

  I pulled out my copy of Your Mental Health: A Layman’s Guide to the Psychiatrist’s Bible, by Allen Frances and Michael B. First. It was like a big catalogue of all the things that can go wrong with a person’s mind. Mom had bought it for me for my last birthday, after I decided I would eventually become a psychologist. Mom hated doctors because when Grandma Pearl got cancer, the doctors kept treating her for way too long and wouldn’t let her die. So you might have thought she would shun my ambition. But she liked knowing that this subject would place me on a rigorous university track. And she was big on prestige. She would like seeing my name with two, three, even five letters after it. She would fondle my letters like jewels on a Mom necklace.

  For now I just enjoyed browsing and matching people I knew with the illnesses explained in the book. Mom’s uncle Jack, for instance, who hid from everybody when he returned from World War II: post-traumatic stress disorder. Dad’s old tennis partner, Richard Bramble, who did time for stealing from a sporting-goods store and then set up a fictional investment company to rip off old people: kleptomania and antisocial personality disorder. Uncle Marty’s former business partner at his bar/restaurant, who got so mad during an argument over the bookkeeping that he broke every glass in the place: intermittent explosive disorder. I also read the descriptions of the illnesses we heard about most in high school: substance abuse, substance dependence, substance-induced delirium, and the fat and thin eating disorders. The pages about Dad’s illness, major depressive disorder with psychotic features, were full of my notes and underlinings.

  It would have been tempting to use this book at Listeners, even to show it to Margaret and Richie. But the booklet said to think of our Incomings as individuals: living, breathing people with unique sets of problems, who were almost friends but not our friends, and never an agglomeration of illnesses.

  13.

  they are your friendsr />
  I found a roll of Life Savers on my school lunch tray.

  “For you,” my friend Mitchell said, bowing slightly at the waist, enough to dent his rotund shape. “Gordy told us that you are a Life Saver now. Life Savers: The Candy with the Hole, Registered Trademark.”

  “Or,” Andy said, “just call him Hole for short.”

  “I am not going to call him Hole for short,” Mitchell replied. “For short I will call him Registered Trademark, or R.”

  I was pleased at first, but now it was clear I was being laughed at. “I don’t want your candy,” I told Mitchell. “Not if you’re not being serious.”

  “That’s right,” Gordy added. “You guys aren’t funny. I think what Billy is doing is admirable. I didn’t want to set him up to be ridiculed.” This was a perfect example of why I wasn’t close to Mitchell anymore. Only Gordy knew anything about last winter. Mitchell I never told, and Andy was Mitchell’s friend, not mine. I’d known Mitchell all my life (we were born on the same day) and I once valued his knack for making anything seem funny or stupid. When Dad got sick that knack held no value for me. Now Andy had become Mitchell’s acolyte. Andy was a short wrestler with a head shaped like a fire hydrant. He also loved ridiculing people but wasn’t quite as good at it as Mitchell.

  “Thanks, Gord,” I said.

  I moved down the table, leaving two seats between Mitchell and me. I focused on my lunch, the cafeteria’s signature dish of American chop suey. The class of 2005, spearheaded by a group of vegetarians, had decorated the cafeteria with murals of fruits and vegetables, Godzilla-like bananas and gargantuan heads of romaine, but the caf didn’t serve many of those things. What they did dish up was some form of ground beef, every day.

  “All right, then. If you don’t want them.” Andy peeled back the foil wrapper.

  “Hey!” I jumped up and knocked Andy’s arm.

  “You’re not gonna share?” he asked.

  “I’ll share. I just want to be the one to open it.”

  “That’s mature,” Mitchell said, toasting me with a bottle of chocolate milk.

  Maybe I had no sense of humor. But I had volunteered. I went to the training and I studied the handbook. And now I wasn’t entitled to all fourteen pieces of candy?

  “Thank you, R,” Mitchell said, taking a pineapple Life Saver. He nudged Andy with his elbow. “Can you stop that?”

  Andy was licking his index finger to pick up the shreds of cheese that had fallen off his burrito. “I think I’d get sick of helping people,” he said. “I’d be, like, can’t you help yourselves?”

  “I don’t get this whole offing-yourself business,” Mitchell said after belching soundlessly. “I’m planning to hang on for as long as possible. I think it’s entirely likely that during our lifetime the technology will be developed that will allow us to live forever. Maybe in the next ten, twenty years. Why miss out on that just because—what, you lost your money in the stock market or something?”

  I tilted my head and stared at Mitchell. People who’ve never suffered have a young-seeming stupidity that makes them all alike. Mitchell didn’t know how little it took to start someone on the path Dad walked last winter. In fact, although Dad’s doctor offered some theories, we were never entirely sure why Dad became depressed. I confided in Gordy about Dad all along because I knew Gordy had also suffered. Gordy was one of the few people my age who could understand me. People who’ve suffered can think alike, even if their sufferings are different.

  “Those people will be sorry,” Andy said. “May I have my dessert now?”

  “Sure,” I said, because Andy had so little going for him.

  “Don’t pick through them, Andy,” Mitchell said. “Just take the first one in the roll.”

  “I don’t entirely get it either,” Gordy added. He had finished his sandwich and was balling up the foil. He brought his lunch every day, and it was better than what the cafeteria served. He didn’t stint on the flourishes and extras. Today it had been turkey on a bulkie roll with stuffing and cranberry sauce. “Not that I’m the happiest person in the world. I just put a lot of faith in getting out of bed every morning.”

  “If you ask me, a lot of suicidal people are only being dramatic,” said Mitchell. He nodded toward the corner of the cafeteria where Heidi Destino was sitting. She swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin after Rick Byers dumped her for Melissa Foley, and then Heidi called everybody in town saying that she was going to die and Rick was the only one who could save her. He rushed to her house and drove her to the emergency room—carried her through the automatic door in his arms, someone said—and sat beside her, crying, while her stomach was pumped. Then they got back together, and Melissa Foley, though cuter, became the odd man out, because Heidi almost acted as though she had a weird power over Rick. Now Rick looked upset all the time, and I heard he had started praying a lot and had even gone back to church. And Melissa, she just looked baffled, as if to say, How do you compete with that?

  “Was your old school as drama infested as this?” I asked Gordy.

  “Not really.” He took a blackberry Life Saver. “At my old school all anyone cared about was getting into the right college. I think the suicide attempts came later.”

  “Okay, Dr. Billy,” Mitchell said, adjusting his suspenders, as he always did after lunch. “I can’t wait until you’re a real psychiatrist and pulling down the big bucks. I’ll be your first patient. If I can afford you.”

  “What about me?” Andy asked. “I won’t have to pay you, right? You’ll see me for free, right? If I need to discuss my dreams or girls or anything.”

  “I believe those two subjects will always be discussed in close conjunction,” Mitchell said, standing up.

  The bell rang. “Speaking of two subjects in close conjunction,” Andy said, “Bren-Bren has a new sweater.” Gordy frowned at Andy so hard that his chin dimpled, then pretended to dump him out of his chair. Brenda Mason was waving from the other side of the caf.

  “Actually, Mitchell and Andy both think it’s pretty cool what you’re doing,” Gordy said as he and I walked toward Brenda. “Though Andy’s thinking of calling the line and pretending to be standing on a ledge when you answer the phone. He’s been practicing a different voice and everything. People just find it easier to make fun of things like death.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. When Gordy’s mother died, for a while it made him seem holy, like he had entered and exited a private chamber few people our age have visited. Since I saw no flaws in his personality or the way he behaved toward people, I wouldn’t diagnose him with anything but missing his mother: maybe adjustment disorder or PTSD. Mitchell thought he was smarter than everyone around him, which could be a form of narcissistic personality disorder. Andy had trouble forming his own opinions and relied on Mitchell for everything he knew, which sounded like dependent personality disorder.

  Brenda said hi to me before taking off with Gordy. She had wavy dark hair and indoor-pale skin. She was one of the smartest and nicest girls in school, but some of her pants were so tight I thought her skeleton might start complaining. (Overemphasis on physical appearance: histrionic personality disorder?)

  I offered Brenda a Life Saver. Five gone, nine left for me. I slid the roll deep in my pocket and gave it a protective pat.

  14.

  the art world

  That night Dad tried another take on the sunset theme he’d had success with thirty years ago. At nine o’clock Mom and Linda went into the utility room, now called the studio, to check on his progress. At eleven thirty the rest of us went to bed. At one o’clock I got up for a drink of apple juice and saw the light still on in Dad’s studio.

  I tapped on the door, then pushed. Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman played softly on a paint-spattered CD player. In front of his easel, Dad swayed to “Barcarolle.”

  “I forgot how good I was at this,” he told me. His smile was one of a younger time. I had never seen it in person, only in his wedding picture. The small window to the dri
veway was partly open, but I wondered if the fumes of oil paint and solvents might have been having an effect on his brain. I also wondered if, with all the chemicals filling the room, our furnace might explode.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” I said. Dad didn’t hear me, so I popped my head farther into the room. “Not too late, okay, Dad?” I urged again.

  “I never knew you had this bossy streak, Billy,” Dad said. “You’re making me feel like I’m the kid, not you.” He rubbed a rag against a corner of the canvas. “How would you like to see a sample of the second stage of Bill Morrison’s career?”

  Dad grabbed the canvas’s bottom edge with two hands and turned it toward me. He had painted a glorious, exuberant sunset, with piercing bright rays and layers of tinted clouds—but where you would expect to see orange, gold, red, and purple, Dad’s painting was only gray and black. I didn’t know much about art. I thought only that this painting was a big disappointment. Dad waited, but I didn’t want to break his heart by saying what I felt.

  “I’m glad you’re having fun with this,” I said, hoping he hadn’t read my expression as I pulled the door closed.

  15.

  breakfast with champions

  That was intense,” Dad said, standing at the kitchen counter with a huge mug of black coffee. He hadn’t showered or shaved, and he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes.

  From the kitchen, I looked out over the low brick divider and through the living room’s picture window. A school bus picked up some first graders across the street. “How late were you up last night?” Mom asked. “I never heard you come into the bedroom.”