My Beautiful Failure

by Janet Ruth Young

  She laughed. “Of course not. He’ll be happy.”

  “What if he doesn’t get the forty paintings done? He’ll be happy with failure?”

  “Happy at having made an attempt.” She grimaced at another slide. “He’s busy and he’s happy. That’s what we wanted, right? End of story.”

  46.

  soaring

  It seemed that every time I tried to get closer to Dad I was rebuffed. I had to put my personal feelings aside, though. What was more important was to follow up on my suspicion: that Dad was getting sick in the opposite direction of last year. Last year he was down and hopeless and had no energy. This year he was up and energetic and had too much hope. There had to be a relation between the two. The not eating or sleeping, the constant working, and especially the complete lack of judgment on the quality of his work.

  I looked in Your Mental Health for something that matched Dad’s symptoms and found Chapter 2, “Euphoric or Irritable Mood.” The authors said that anyone taking antidepressants had to be careful of irrational happiness (“hypomania”) because it could lead to bipolar disorder and a lifetime of cycling up and down. Had Dr. Gupta and Dr. Fritz warned Dad about this? The hell with the doctors. Mom had been stupid to trust them again.

  Too impatient to read the entire chapter, I Googled “bipolar disorder” and found the National Institute of Mental Health website listing “symptoms of a manic episode”:

  MOOD CHANGES

  • A long period of feeling “high,” or an overly happy or outgoing mood

  • Extremely irritable mood, agitation, feeling “jumpy” or “wired”

  BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

  • Talking very fast, jumping from one idea to another, having racing thoughts

  • Being easily distracted

  • Increasing goal-directed activities, such as taking on new projects

  • Being restless

  • Sleeping little

  • Having an unrealistic belief in one’s abilities

  • Behaving impulsively and taking part in a lot of pleasurable, high-risk behaviors, such as spending sprees, impulsive sex, and impulsive business investments

  Dad had them all, except maybe irritability. And I didn’t know, or want to know, about his sex life.

  So Mom, Dad, Linda, and Jodie all thought what Dad was doing was fine. Maybe I couldn’t get in the way of Dad’s forty days. But I could be his guardian. I could hover over Dad and the show.

  47.

  shift 5, november 18. call 29

  Listeners. Can I help you?”

  “Hello . . . Hello?”

  No response from the other end, but no dial tone either. The caller was still on the line.

  “Hello? This is Listeners.”

  Uh.

  A strangled, grunting sound. Why wasn’t the caller speaking? My heart pounded. Oh my God, was this a Likely? Margaret and Richie were both on calls. I grabbed my manual and my list of emergency numbers, which, like everything else on the table, suddenly looked unreal and faraway. I tugged Richie’s sleeve. I made my eyes huge and pointed at my handset. Richie mouthed the word Likely? and I raised my eyebrows and nodded. Richie touched Margaret’s arm, but she raised a finger to put him off.

  “Are you all right?” I asked the caller.

  Uh. Sorry. Swallowing the tail end of my sandwich.

  “How’re you doing this evening?”

  Not too great. My girlfriend dumped me.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  No, actually it was good news.

  “Oh, why’s that?”

  I kinda pushed her into it. By, you know, stepping out with other ladies.

  “But you weren’t happy in this relationship, it sounds like.”

  Not at all.

  “So you said you weren’t feeling great.”

  I have some dental problems too.

  “That sounds rough.”

  I’m on painkillers.

  “Do they help?”

  Pretty well. You know, I talked to you before.

  “Really?”

  Yeah. I recognize your voice.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  No, I’m sure I do. We talked last week. I’m Matt. It’s Billy, right?

  “Yes.”

  We just talked, like, a few days ago.

  “We get a lot of calls here. So, tell me more about your dental pain. How long have you had it?”

  I told you that last time. Don’t you remember?

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  Do you have early Alzheimer’s or something?

  “Are you feeling suicidal?”

  No. Ha! You asked me that last time.

  “So how are you coping, with the pain and all?”

  Matt needed oral surgery, but it was expensive and his dad’s insurance policy wouldn’t pay for it. So he kept taking higher doses of painkillers, which made him logy, and he had fallen asleep at the wheel today. Rather than offer advice, I encouraged him to tell me his options and decide for himself which sounded best. I added heaps of reflective listening about the pain. I was good at this. I was very good.

  48.

  on hold

  I pressed hold.

  I slid the manual to the table’s edge and let it fall on the floor.

  One of the college kids came in from the front room to raid the snack cabinet. He found a bag of trail mix and did an end-zone dance with the bag on his way out.

  I wish I would get a Likely, I told Richie. The words sounded morbid coming out of my mouth, but they were true. If all I did was listen and never take action, I was no better than a Listerine.

  Richie pointed his thumb at the front room. Those guys got the Likelies, he told me. Mostly on the weekends, during overnights. The overnights were grueling, he said. Around two in the morning the Listeners in that room would do anything to stay awake. Last Saturday they had ended up having races in the chairs.

  That sounded fun, I said. I realized I sounded both pathetic and young, but Richie was probably thinking the same thing. I yearned to roll my office chair across the room, from end to end of the phone bank, spinning in circles and making a thundering noise.

  Someday that would be us, Richie said.

  49.

  life saver

  Richie checked the cabinet to see if the large foraging primate had left us anything. Margaret looked a little zoned out. Richie asked why she was so quiet.

  A Likely, she said.

  While Richie and I were talking. Goddamn it! It was fate, the spin of the roulette wheel. Because she was line 1 and I was line 3, she had gotten a Likely while I’d gotten a guy with bad teeth. How long would it be now, how many weeks or months, before another Likely called?

  Richie asked if the caller was one of our regulars.

  It was a brand-new Incoming, Margaret told us. An elderly man named Hagrid.

  What was the suicide plan? I asked.

  Hagrid had been about to jump off a building. He had been standing right on the ledge, talking to her on his cell phone. She could hear the wind and the cars. He was four stories up and described the people on the ground shouting. The whole scene.

  Hagrid was certainly an unusual name, I said.

  Richie’s lips moved during Margaret’s recap. He repeated almost every word Margaret said, as if it was his own call. The scene seemed real to him, even though he had only heard it from Margaret, who heard it from the Incoming.

  Margaret said she felt like she had just done the special job she was put on earth to do. She felt almost a little high.

  The call would have been pretty convincing except for the stupid name. Too bad for Margaret. She didn’t get my Likely after all. But I didn’t want to burst Margaret’s bubble. She looked illuminated, like she’d just stepped out of church.

  I asked her what else happened in the call, and Margaret said she had talked him off the ledge. Richie repeated her words again, passing a bag of trail mix.

  Right at the end, Hagrid had a chan
ge of heart. When he said he was intent on killing himself, she asked him if he could wait until tomorrow. And then he said it was all too much trouble and he had changed his mind. And he made this little jumping sound—a sound of exertion, and she didn’t know if he was on his way to the pavement or what—but he said he had jumped back inside the building. Margaret felt so proud. She wished she could tell her parents what she did. Or at least her cousin who was a priest.

  But she couldn’t because of confidentiality, I said. That’s a shame.

  Margaret sat perfectly still, as if having saved someone’s life, she saw no need to ever move again. The phones were flashing, but none of us felt ready to take a call.

  I said finally that it seemed kind of weird, that a ninety-year-old man would be so nimble, jumping on and off ledges.

  That wasn’t so unusual, Richie explained. Plenty of eighty-five- and ninety-year-olds climbed mountains and ran marathons.

  Margaret raised her head, and I realized she had been praying. She went to the front room so Pep could debrief her about the call.

  50.

  fractured

  When I got home Dad was finishing another painting in the fruit-bowl series. The new painting showed the earth split in two like a coconut. The pieces sat in what looked like a woven basket, but when you looked closely the strands were human fingers. The title was Who Will Re-pair? Jodie and Linda oohed over the details. Jodie’s barrette dangled from two strands of hair like an oversize zipper.

  I pictured people coming in to the show and trying to make sense of this. I didn’t want Dad to be judged. By anyone. He was foolish to get his opinions from two silly girls.

  Nor did I want him judged for what happened in the winter. It was one thing for me to know something was wrong with Dad—that was necessary for getting the problem solved. It was another thing for people outside to know.

  He was my dad, after all. He was Bill Senior. And I was Bill Junior.

  51.

  muses

  Mr. Gabler stopped by my desk, waiting. But I had nothing.

  “What is the problem this week?” he asked. “I gave you some leeway. This is a real failure to execute.”

  How could I muff that assignment again? It wasn’t even that difficult. I could have done it in fifteen minutes. But for the second class in a row I’d spaced out.

  “What was that all about?” Gordon asked me after class. He gets superb grades without appearing to try. He hardly ever mentions the work, but he never misses an assignment.

  Of all the people in the world, Gordy was definitely someone who could be trusted with the truth. “My dad wants to have an art show,” I told him.

  “Why are you telling me this like it’s bad news?”

  “It seems unrealistic,” I said. “I think he might be”—I turned around to face him so I can speak in a lower voice—“getting sick again.”

  “Sick how?” Gordon asked. His expression: face very straightforward, almost at military attention, and lips kind of pursed together to make sure no sound of his own squeaked out. It was the visual equivalent of Richie’s listening voice, and I felt for that minute like I was the most important person in Gordy’s world.

  “Do you know what bipolar disorder is?” We were at his locker, number 217, and I stared at the front of 219 while I said those words. That Gordy would know something about Dad that Dad didn’t know himself—it was like one of those hospital gowns that open in the back, so everyone but you knows that your rear end is showing. It was humiliating.

  “I know some people who’ve been diagnosed with it,” Gordy said, digging out his lunch bag and a five-dollar bill. I wondered if he meant Brenda. But I didn’t push.

  “I’ve been reading up on it,” I said. I turned my head and met Gordy’s eyes. “Some people don’t start out bipolar, but if they’re depressed and start taking antidepressants in too high a dosage, they can become manic. Then they spend the rest of their lives swinging from one extreme to the other.”

  “You think that’s happening to your dad?” We walked into the courtyard. Some of the granite slabs in the ground around the school were so huge that the builders decided to just leave them there, creating an open space in the middle of the buildings. On sunny days the stone got warm by lunchtime. It felt rewarding to sit on, the way a stone summit felt when you reached it during a summer hike. There were benches, too, but we sat on a rock to finish our conversation.

  “It might be. My mom isn’t picking up on it. I’m a little surprised, because she’s usually really skeptical about drugs.”

  “Does he need the drugs?”

  “I think so. He dropped them last winter, and it was a bad scene. You remember.”

  Yes, he did. If I was Dad’s caregiver, Gordy had been mine. It was Gordy who bought me a cheese-steak sub when my whole family was undernourished, Gordy who covered me with a blanket while I napped or cried on his living room couch, and Gordy who took me to a Buddy Guy concert in Boston when I needed to run away from home.

  “What makes you think he’s manic?” We both watched the tennis courts now, and that made it easier to talk. A girl from music history class was walking onto the court with her friend. The stood at the net, deciding who would serve. The red-haired one passed the balls to the dark one, and they linked pinkies for a few seconds before starting the game.

  The facts sounded innocuous. I dropped my voice to make the point. “He’s painting all the time.”

  Gordy waited.

  “Okay, and there’s more to it than that. He’s spending too much money and has an unrealistic sense of his own abilities. And when I say he’s painting all the time, I mean with every free minute and giving up sleep to do it. He’s going to make forty paintings in forty days and then display them and invite, I don’t know, the MFA or Channel 7 News.”

  “You care about your dad a lot, don’t you?” Gordy said.

  I nodded. I couldn’t say anymore, so I squeezed Gordy’s arm. We heard the thwop-thwop of the tennis ball, like a metronome, and the girls’ laughter after each point.

  52.

  meter

  Andy was waiting for me in the lunch line.

  “’S’up, Hagrid?” I asked, knocking him on the shoulder. He almost fell into the tray caddy, and I was surprised by my own force.

  Andy pressed his back against the wall. “I see cars down there,” he said in an ancient, wheezing voice. “I see little tiny people. I’m just going to jump and end it all!”

  “Stop laughing, Andy. She’s my friend, and you hurt her.”

  “She’s an acquaintance. I’m your friend.” He smiled as if he had grappled me, or perhaps Margaret, into submission.

  “The meter could be running out on that.” The lunch line took three steps forward.

  “I didn’t hurt anyone,” he said, still teetering and talking in his old-man voice. “It was funny.”

  I grabbed a tray. I wanted to shove him into the tray caddy and bash my tray over his head. “She’s my friend, and you made a fool of her,” I said. My voice got conspicuously loud, and I had to remind myself that this business was confidential. “I can’t say too much, but you should have seen how happy she was after that call.”

  “Okay. I made someone happy.” Andy walked up to the food lady and ordered the sloppy joe. “And it was still funny,” he added.

  “It was not funny.”

  Being short, Andy usually had excellent posture. It was only tall guys who had the luxury of slouching. I felt myself straighten up. Adrenaline charged into my shoulders and upper arms. Andy’s gaze fell to my chest. Ray, the guy who set up the steam tables, was looking there too. I realized that I was making a fist.

  “Are you planning to hit me?” Andy asked, talking in his own voice again.

  “Of course not. I don’t hit people. You want to be a fool, be a fool.” I pushed him ahead in the line and ordered a sloppy joe for myself. “But don’t make a fool of other people.”

  53.

  the g word
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  A bright November day. Through the screen door, I saw Mom and Dad taking a break in Mom’s rose garden. Mom had neglected the garden last year, so this year she made the most of it. Everything was raked and deadheaded and pruned. Each rosebush had its own square, cut into the grass and lavished with manure. A statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom, presided in the middle, and two or three flowers had lasted into November. Although the neighbor’s leaf blower sounded like a burping machine gun, Mom and Dad, in their white plastic stackable chairs, drinking store-brand diet cola, apparently thought they were in paradise. When the blower stopped you could hear the Asianlike tone of a wind chime.

  Dad removed his straw hat and leaned over Mom’s chair, hiding both their faces with the hat while he kissed her. When he had disappeared to the front of the house, I approached her.

  “Mom,” I asked in a low voice, “how many of the paintings have you actually seen?”

  “Two or three,” Mom said. She leaned back in her chair to get the sun on her face. Disturbingly, she was still smiling from Dad’s kiss.

  I moved Dad’s chair so my mouth would be close to Mom’s ear. “Have you seen the one of the whale trying to swallow another whale headfirst, so they both get stuck and have to stay that way forever? Don’t tell me that’s not the product of a fevered imagination.”

  Mom’s red lipstick stretched in a laugh. “I didn’t quite get that one either.”

  “Does anyone get it, other than Dad? I think he has a secret system of meanings that’s all in his head.”

  Mom squeezed my hand, and I felt some of the affection from Dad squickily transfer to me. “Maybe he’s an unrecognized genius. Not everyone will get or like what he’s doing. How do you think most middle-class Spaniards reacted when they first saw Dalí’s Persistence of Memory?”