My Beautiful Failure Read online

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  It’s okay, Billy. I know you have to do that.

  “You said you’re having a bad night. What’s going on?”

  I just came from a really rough session with Melinda.

  “Melinda?” Start from scratch. Clean slate. Every time.

  My therapist. She’s helping me to go back into my childhood and dig stuff up.

  “Are you feeling suicidal?”

  No.

  “How does your therapist dig this stuff up? And what kind of stuff do you mean?”

  One night, during the summer I graduated from high school, I woke up to this feeling of something pressing into my neck. It seemed so real, as if it were actually happening. But I woke up and I saw that I was alone in my room as usual. I’m an only child, see—I didn’t share my room with anyone. Then I walked down the hall and stuck my head in the door of my parents’ room, and they were both sound asleep. No one had broken into the house; no one had touched me. So, though it felt real, I figured it was just a nightmare.

  “That seems really upsetting. What was that feeling?”

  It started to happen more often—waking up at night with the distinct feeling that something was pressing around my neck. I came to expect it, that I would wake up every night in a panic and not be able to get back to sleep. I wasn’t sleeping all that well. Maybe three hours a night.

  “You must have been exhausted.”

  Yeah, I was. The tiredness didn’t hit me all at once, but after a week or so it started taking a toll on me. And I didn’t feel like staying out late anymore, and my friends stopped calling me. You assume that people like you for yourself, but then something changes and you see that they only liked you for some other reason. Like that you have a car and can drive them around. Or what you look like. Or who your parents are. You know?

  “Uh-huh.” No one had ever liked me for those reasons. But I could relate.

  I’m supposed to be in school right now, you know, a really good school. I already told you that last time, but you probably don’t remember.

  I remembered. That really good selective school in New Hampshire. “Do you want to be in school?”

  Yes and no. Anyway, I tried to drag myself along at that level, living day to day, but I had this weird feeling, like dread, that was building up inside me, and on one of the rare occasions when I discussed anything important with my mom she sent me to a counselor who specialized in anxiety disorders. That doctor, who I saw only once, said it looked like I needed to see someone who deals with repressed memories. And that was how I found Melinda.

  “Did she help you?”

  She changed my whole life. The first time I went into her office she asked if there was any possibility that I’d been abused as a kid and didn’t remember. I got really quiet—it was like time was standing still—and then I felt this huge sadness come up from somewhere inside me that I hadn’t even known was there, and I couldn’t talk for about ten minutes . . . and then Melinda said, not in an accusing way, but in a kind of gentle, all-accepting way, because she’s a very gentle person, she said, “Why are you protecting them, Jenney?”

  Margaret and Richie whispered about her last call, but I was barely aware of them. “‘Why are you protecting them?’” I asked Jenney. “Meaning who?”

  Meaning my parents.

  The parents were abusive. “She meant that your parents had hurt you in some way. Had abused you.”

  Exactly.

  Mirror. Reflect. “I’m so sorry, Jenney. It must have been really awful to find that out.”

  Believe me, it was. My parents were having a dinner that night for two couples they had known since college, and I almost didn’t want to go home. After I left Melinda’s I called my parents and made an excuse about needing to go to the library, and I didn’t go home until after nine when the library closed, and I shut myself in my room and shut out the laughter and the dishes clinking and the music and everything else from the dinner party, and I just emptied myself out and allowed myself to feel nothing, just the way I did at Melinda’s. Because it was easier to feel nothing than to feel the pain of what had really happened, the pain of the betrayal. And then something else happened.

  “What was that?”

  After the whole neck thing, I started getting another feeling that seemed real. On my face. The feeling of something cold and hard on my cheek. Like stone. And I worked really hard in my sessions with Melinda. She regressed me and took me back through all the years and all the pain—oh, God, I nearly turned myself inside out—and we figured out what it meant.

  “The feeling on your face? What was it?”

  Melinda kept saying, “Where are you, Jenney? Where are you when your face feels so cold?” It was the floor of the basement of our house. We figured out that when I misbehaved my parents would take me to the basement and choke me with a cord until I passed out. And that my body had never forgotten that feeling. The pressure of the cord around my neck and the coldness of the floor under my face. And then she said it again: “Why are you protecting them, Jenney?”

  “Why were you protecting them?”

  Jenney’s clicking started again. My own throat tightened when I heard it.

  Because I was a child, and every child needs her parents.

  Get her to pull back. To look at the big picture.

  “With everything you have going on, Jenney, what do you think bothers you most about your situation?”

  Not being in school. Seeing other kids at school and knowing that’s supposed to be me. Knowing that I’m not moving forward in my life. It bothered my mom, too, maybe even more. When I started having my meltdown, she hardly cared about me as a person. She would watch me sleeping too much and eating too much and coming out of my room with my eyes red from crying and she would say, “What’s going to happen with St. Angus’s?” The two of them—all they care about is status.

  But Melinda says I need to delay college for a while and keep working on the abuse. Yes, I should be in school, but that has to wait until I get myself straightened out. I mean, what kind of shape am I in to be starting anything new? How could I study? How could I concentrate? How could I meet people?

  “I don’t think you would have any trouble making friends.” Find traits to compliment.

  My friends don’t want to be around me anymore. I invited my two friends to the movies and they said they were busy. That’s what I really miss, you know?

  “What do you miss?” Exact words.

  Being normal. Having a normal day or a normal night. Going to the movies with my friends. Walking across the parking lot. You know how you feel on a weekend night, like everybody’s more alive, like everybody’s looking at you. Like people expect something exciting or funny or unusual to happen, even if you’re just in the mall. Deciding what to get for snacks—pizza or Dibs? And then forgetting everything and watching a whole movie beginning to end, munching my snack, without having an attack or a flashback. . . . It would be, like, There’s a whole world out here, you know? Are you still there?

  “A whole world.”

  Yeah. Jenney got quiet for a moment.

  Melinda says to put everything on hold. She says getting to the bottom of my memories has to be my number one priority in life.

  Jenney had said she repressed the memories because they were too painful. While she spoke, I tried imagining what it would be like to be afraid of your own memories. I had bad memories too, of last winter and other times, but I didn’t have trouble remembering them, because they were not as bad as Jenney’s. They were tolerable. I tried to imagine memories that lurked at the edge of other memories, ready to pounce like something from a horror movie.

  “You must be very strong to get through something like this. Did you ever confront your parents?”

  Of course.

  “And what did they say?”

  They said none of it was true. They said I was making it up. And then they blamed Melinda for ruining our relationship. Of
course they’re not going to admit it.

  I felt Margaret’s touch on my arm. It got more insistent, a strong pinch on my elbow. She had leaned across Richie’s station to signal me. I kept my cell phone on the table to time my calls. Six minutes had gone by, but Jenney seemed so upset that I couldn’t hang up now.

  Have you ever been through a crisis?

  “Well . . .”

  You have. I can tell. Maybe you can talk about it sometime. And it’ll be my turn to listen.

  “I hope you get your movie soon. It sounds like it’ll be fun.”

  I hope so too.

  “I have to go.”

  You helped me a lot, you know, just by being there.

  “I’m really happy you called. And I hope you keep feeling better today. And the day after that, and the day after that.” When I heard a smile in her voice, I would know it was time to stop.

  You sound like a greeting card.

  “I really meant it.”

  Maybe I’ll call you Hallmark.

  Margaret tapped me and pointed to the wall clock.

  You’re actually cheering me up, you know that? I just laughed for the first time in a long time.

  “I’m glad I could help. I’ve got to go now, Jenney. It’s been really good talking to you.”

  Okay, but . . . Billy, I’m sorry for what I said.

  “Meaning what?”

  That you were a greeting card.

  “That’s okay.”

  If you are a Hallmark card, you’re one of the expensive ones. On the upper shelves. Four dollars.

  “I’d like to think that’s true. I’m sorry you’re feeling down. Better days ahead, I hope.”

  Maybe. Bye, Billy.

  31.

  burgers and fries

  Margaret and Richie put their phones on hold.

  Margaret asked if that had been Jenney on the phone. I told her it was.

  Jenney was a sweet person who got sort of down sometimes, Margaret said. But it wasn’t our job to entertain Jenney or cheer her up. The Incomings would make themselves feel better, she told me, if I let them take the lead.

  I understood, I said, but I had to tell them something else. Something emotional.

  Richie encouraged me to spill.

  I said I felt bad that I couldn’t let on I remembered Jenney. I knew her feelings were hurt. And she had been through so much. I loved that I could put a smile on her face.

  Richie thought that Jenney was playing me a little.

  Jenney was pleasant and even fun, Margaret said. That was why I remembered our conversation. But what if I got someone who wasn’t fun? Or what if I remembered part of Jenney’s story but not all? Someone’s feelings were bound to be hurt. Better to appear to remember nothing.

  Besides, Richie said, the program only worked when it was consistent. The Incoming had to have the same experience whether she got me, Richie, or Margaret.

  I reached for the hold button. I would be consistent, I announced. Like fast-food burgers.

  Richie bumped my fist. He joked that next week we’d install the drive-through window.

  32.

  self-evaluation

  At the end of my shift I popped into the front room to say good night to Pep. I was starting to get comfortable on the phones, I told her. I sat on the edge of her table while she kept the phone on hold.

  Pep agreed. She had lurked in the doorway once or twice and thought I sounded good. But I had to limit myself to five minutes per call. Each phone had a device that counted how many calls we took, and Richie and Margaret each handled about twice my volume.

  Didn’t the booklet say we could make a judgment call in some cases and allow ten? Only if it was a true cry for help, Pep said. If the Incoming was just de-stressing from the day or wanted company, I could accomplish plenty in five.

  Pep squeezed my forearm and said good night. She probably meant to be encouraging, but the fact that she felt free to touch me accentuated the difference in our ages and reminded me again of June Melman.

  I looked at the poster of an undercaffeinated man staring out the window. He seemed to be wondering when he would get a more visible modeling job.

  I asked Pep if she had really ever gotten a Likely. She said she had had several. But how did she know whether they lived or died, I asked.

  Pep stepped away from the table so the Incomings wouldn’t hear us. If the Likelies called back on another day, she said, they were still alive. And if they didn’t call back . . . Her upper body straightened like a coat going over a coathanger. If they were local, she explained, we might see something in the newspaper and put two and two together. Suicide was rarely listed as the cause of death. A family would rather say just that the deceased died suddenly than that he killed himself. And if an Incoming was from out of state, as they occasionally were, we would probably never know what happened.

  Pep told me to head home. She hit her hold button and went back to womanning the phones.

  33.

  plan to fail

  It was good for someone like me to have someone like Mr. Gabler around. I was not chic or stylish, but Mr. Gabler was even less so. His clothes were thin and cheap-looking, and he was the last balding middle-aged man in America to comb his remaining hair in a long arc from ear to ear rather than shaving his head. When people made fun of him, I had the luxury of making fun too.

  Despite his timid appearance, Gabler had taught music in prisons, and the classroom displayed posters of his single-sex productions of Chicago, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and The Threepenny Opera.

  Today he walked from desk to desk collecting the first phase of our music history paper. People seemed psyched as they handed in their ideas. Gordy had selected the Dobro, a guitar with a built-in resonater that functioned as an amp. Part of his research would be an e-mail interview with B. B. King. Nathan Brandifield was researching the theremin, an eerie-sounding electronic instrument that’s played without being touched. Brenda Mason would write about handbells, since she played in her church bell choir.

  “Oh, man,” I said, holding my notebook in front of my face. I had meant to do this last night, but I did my shift at Listeners and then fell asleep on the couch.

  I saw fingertips pry my notebook away, and Mr. Gabler appeared in front of my desk.

  “Forget something?” he asked.

  “I don’t have my phase-one ideas. I’m sorry, Mr. Gabler.”

  “Can you e-mail them to me at the end of class?”

  “I don’t have them at all. It completely slipped my mind.”

  “What instrument are you writing about?”

  “The harmonica.”

  “What sources?”

  “The Hohner website, the Smithsonian CD series, a music encyclopedia, the guy at the music store, and an old recording on YouTube,” Gordy suggested.

  “That’s right,” I said. I wrote them on a piece of paper and tore it out for Mr. Gabler.

  “No handwritten assignments,” he said, laying the paper on my desk. “Get some specifics down and make sure you have your paper finished next Friday with everyone else.” He propped my notebook up again to block my face.

  ——

  “School success is so random,” I said to Gordon on the way to lunch. We had passed a poster saying IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL. “What difference does it make in the long run? It seems more about generating status for your parents than about genuinely helping you create a happy future.” I was thinking about Jenney, how her mother had only seemed to care whether Jenney moved like a robot through the stages laid out for her.

  “It doesn’t help at all to look at school that way,” Gordon said, stopping inside the door of the cafeteria.

  “Then how should I look at it?” I shifted my books from one side to the other.

  Gordon lowered his voice so a group of Generic Laughing Guys headed to the food line wouldn’t hear. “You’re smart, right? So am I. So how hard is it to do the work they’re asking for? This stuff
is easy. Just finish it and save the rest of your brain for something else.”

  “But all the time they’re asking us to put into it,” I argued. “What if you spent your time on stuff like school assignments and in the meantime life—real life—was passing you by? How do we know that our real life, the big life we were meant to have, isn’t now rather than in the future? What if nobody realized that about you? And what if you never got a chance at a big life again?”

  Mitchell had sneaked up behind me. He stuck his face between mine and Gordon’s. “They stick us here to isolate us from the rest of society,” he whispered. “Because they’re afraid of us. And no matter what they say, there is no other reason.” He nodded at Gordon and me like he had figured out a big conspiracy, then he slid along the wall like he was escaping from someone. I couldn’t help thinking about CIA Debra and the people she thought were after her.

  Actually, I was glad to be stuck at school for so many hours of the week. The only places I wanted to be were at school, on my bike, or, preferably, at Listeners. I didn’t like being at home anymore, since Dad started painting again. I felt like he didn’t even want me there.

  PART 2

  34.

  crock or van gogh?

  Each day, Dad became more inspired. He went to the town dump and scavenged wooden panels that had been ripped out of shelves or bookcases. He got worked up over political issues he had never mentioned before, particularly immigration law, the Federal Reserve Bank, gay rights, and drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge. Strangest of all, he was working on a group of paintings that looked just . . .

  There was only one word for them: bizarre. At least two of them showed sad, bodiless heads, with faces of different colors, arranged in fruit bowls. Another was an orange largemouth bass jumping over a rainbow in which the colors were only black, white, and gray. I hoped he wasn’t planning to show them to anyone.

  Without indicating that I supported or liked Dad’s work, I found an excuse to check on him every day. This time I found him not in his studio but in the conversation area, where he cursed over his notebook computer and deleted e-mails one after the other. Linda was lying on the other couch with her feet over the end, reading a dystopian novel.