Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “Anyway!” I chirped. “You don’t have to worry; we’re not being robbed and I’m not running away, just getting organized, and I wanted to follow through and . . . get it out the door! I’ll just chuck the rest of this junk and we can all go get a good night’s sleep, okay?”

  I started giggling like a lunatic and felt my cheeks hot in the cool night air and wanted to run but instead hoisted the second bag. It was rather heavy and required two hands, and unbeknownst to me had begun to rip.

  “Please, Ingrid, allow me to help,” Andreas said, and reached for the bag.

  “No, no! It’s fine!” I jerked it away.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Ingrid, it’s—oh!”

  I saw it in slow motion: the tear, the sharp edges of Mom’s photos, the soft, fast sliding of the newspaper clippings, all of it cascading out; the way everything landed and settled faceup, laid out perfectly for Andreas to see when he turned his flashlight on it. Which he did.

  I had not been able to let these things go, and now I was going to pay the price.

  For there was Margot-Sophia Lalonde in her publicity shot for La Bohème, a review with the headline “Soprano Margot-Sophia Lalonde stuns in La Traviata” and then another similar for Troilus and Cressida, a beautiful card from a fellow singer, and finally, one of the autographed head shots she used to give to fans.

  Perhaps I could have scrambled to pick it all up before Andreas had the chance to really look. Or I could have thrown myself bodily onto the pile to block his view.

  But it was too late and I knew it.

  And so I sank to my knees beside him, gazing into the beam of light . . .

  And let him see.

  And died a little, in the long silence of his looking.

  “Lalonde?” he said finally, his velvet voice coming out as a rasp. “Is Burke . . . not her last name?”

  “Lalonde was her stage name.”

  “But . . . why? Why hide this?”

  I braved a look at him but quickly turned away, the confusion and pain too hot on his face to bear.

  “Please . . .” I said. “Please . . .” But somehow I could not manage anything else, because all I could see, all I could feel and imagine, was him leaving and how we would be gutted by his absence. And how it would be all my fault, for being such a sentimental fool.

  “Please, what? What the hell? I always knew there was something, but I didn’t think . . . She is a . . . not just a so-so singer . . .” He picked up a photo. “An opera singer?”

  “Was,” I said. “Yes. But please . . . she . . .”

  “What?” He was in my face now, the anger taking over.

  “Can’t,” I whispered. “Can’t sing. She had . . . They’re called nodes. Like blisters on the vocal cords. Her voice went crazy, then disappeared. After that . . . the singer part of her voice didn’t come back. Not well enough, even with surgery. And so our whole life just . . .” My arms lifted to the side, palms up, as if to show life falling away like sand through my fingers.

  Like it was about to again.

  “Surely something can be done. For her voice.”

  “No. Trust me, we tried.”

  I started to cry and tried to hide it by crouching down to clean up the mess, but he got down to help me and I couldn’t contain the telltale sniffles or the shaking of my shoulders.

  “It’s painful for you,” he said gently. “I see it must have been.”

  “N-no,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, yes, but that’s not why I’m . . .”

  He was studying me with intensity, open like always, waiting for the rest of my sentence.

  “That’s not why you’re crying?” he said. “Ingrid, talk to me. Why?”

  “B-because n-now . . .” My lower lip was quivering and I felt about five years old, but what did I have to lose? What more? “N-now you’re going to leave us. Leave me. And I don’t blame you. But I wanted . . . Maybe it’s stupid but I wanted . . .”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  “I so wanted you to be my dad,” I said, voice coming out a tiny wail, and then broke down completely. “I never missed having one, never wanted one until I met you. But now, especially since we talked about it . . .”

  “Oh,” he said, and it was more of a sound than a word. “Oh, Ingrid. Sweetheart.” And the next thing I knew, he’d scooped me up into the tightest hug.

  We sat there in the driveway on the pile of splayed-out memorabilia, in the middle of the night, hugging each other as he let me cry, all the while making reassuring sounds and telling me everything would be okay. I didn’t believe it, but I knew for sure then, that he really loved me. It was the best feeling in the worst moment. I was glad to have felt it. When I was finally cried out, I tried to soothe myself with the thought that maybe he would still agree to be my friend—come and take me to movies now and then, act like a kind of uncle.

  “Come,” he said finally, and we finished picking up the mess.

  I started toward the recycling bins to put everything in there with the first bag, but he said, “No,” and instead pulled out the unopened bag that was in there, and led the way to the front porch, and then inside, where he laid it all out on the dining-room table.

  “I wanted to tell you,” I said, speaking in a hushed voice so as not to wake my mom, even though I was sure he was going to do it soon enough. “But I promised her. I’m sorry.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I am sorry that you should be asked to keep such secrets.”

  “I’ll tell you now,” I said. “I can tell you the whole story.”

  “No,” he said, with a grim glance toward the stairs. “Your mother is the person who will tell me.”

  “Andreas, she might not be . . . very into talking about it. I just mean . . .” I reached for him, then dropped my hand. “She might freak. But also . . . she’s fragile. About this, she’s fragile.”

  “I understand.” He picked up a program with her picture on it, then met my gaze. “Go to bed now, Ingrid. Try to sleep.”

  “But what . . .” I swallowed. “What are you going to do?”

  I was used to him being decisive, leaping into action. But I could tell that this had shaken him too deeply for any of that.

  “I am going to talk to her,” he said. “And then we’ll see.”

  And then we’ll see . . . was not an Andreas kind of phrase, but at least it was honest.

  “What else can I do?” he said, the question and his uncertainty piercing my heart.

  “Okay . . .” I started toward the stairs, then looked back.

  The fear and desperation must have been right there in my eyes, because he came to hug me one more time. “I won’t disappear,” he said into my hair. “No matter what happens, I promise you that.”

  I swallowed, nodded, tore myself away, and then tiptoed up the stairs into my room, shut the door, and lay, barely breathing, on the bed, waiting for the domestic apocalypse that was obviously coming.

  It didn’t take long. Footsteps on the stairs and then in the hall, the sound of their door opening and closing, murmured voices, quiet at first, which lulled me into a false sense of relief, and then . . . boom.

  Not a physical crash; a wail, a roar.

  I sat up fast, grabbed my pillow and clutched it.

  “Get those out of my face!” came Mom’s holler, crystal clear through the walls of the bedroom.

  “I want to talk about it.” (Andreas.)

  “No.”

  “If we are to be together, we must. Listen to me: we have to trust each other, Margot-Sophia!”

  The sound of paper ripping, of sobbing . . .

  “I cannot be that person. That person is dead and I have moved on. You understand nothing—”

  “Because you have not let me understand, because you have lied to me and shut me out and because you don’t trust me—�
��

  “Don’t talk to me about trust.” She sounded like she was spitting.

  “And you haven’t really moved on if you feel you have to keep it a secret. You’ve only buried it. Buried it alive, Margot-Sophia Lalonde.”

  “You didn’t lose everything—not just your way to make a living, your way to say something to the world, to be connected to something better, to access joy . . .”

  “I—”

  “You didn’t lose the one thing that made you sane, or the only thing that made you special!”

  “That’s not true, Margot-Sophia; you must—”

  “I must nothing! I will not be lectured about what I must or must not. I’ll have you out of my house, instead! You think you are going to tell me who I am and what to feel, and dictate what I must disclose to you about my past, and force me to take out my scars for you to drop salty tears onto? I will not.”

  “Margot-Sophia, please—”

  “Out. Outoutoutout out of my house!”

  “You don’t get to just turn this around on me, Margot-Sophia.”

  And then there was shuffling and stomping, and I, oh so still with my heart crashing, hiding in my bed, heard their bedroom door flying open, and imagined Margot-Sophia standing there, all fire and wildness, commanding this very good, dear, beautiful man to leave us.

  Because of me. Because of her, too, but most directly because of me.

  I would have moved if I could, but I couldn’t; I was braced too hard against what was coming, despite what he promised me. How could he stay in my life at all after this?

  “You see here is the door, open!” Margot-Sophia shouted. “Now, go.”

  A beat, two . . . and then . . .

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You won’t . . . ?” The incredulity was apparent in her voice. “What do you mean, you won’t? You just want to stay here and fight?”

  “Yes, if that’s what we have to do. Or I could stay here and . . . not fight.”

  Andreas stayed.

  There were tears. There was more yelling, and then, finally, they talked. They talked and talked. I heard enough of it to know that Andreas was relentless in his need to know everything, that he was furious and hurt, but once again working toward solutions. In the predawn hours their voices softened and slowed, and finally I slept.

  All of this was good, was great.

  Except after their big talk, Mom went to bed.

  Days passed.

  Seeing Mom spiral down brought back the old fear, and the old fury. Here we were with this fantastic man who wanted to be part of our family, and she goes off to bed. Like some overly delicate Victorian woman in a too-tight corset, with vapors and smelling salts. Nothing wrong with her except what was in her head.

  Although, of course, what was in her head was real, and serious.

  At first I reverted to my former behavioral mode from the last time this had happened—tiptoeing, whispering, wringing my hands, begging her to eat, standing silent in her doorway watching her breathe. It felt awful—like the time that had passed between then and now had been a dream, a bittersweet, fairy-tale daydream. I felt eleven, not fourteen.

  But this time I wasn’t so alone. Andreas and I had numerous hushed conversations, in the kitchen or out on the front porch.

  “Why won’t she just . . . get up? I can’t do this again. I can’t handle it.”

  “Ingrid . . .” Andreas leaned forward. “You must be patient, and you must understand . . . there is a sickness of the soul, a grief, perhaps, over the loss that cannot completely be processed, because she doesn’t know how, and maybe doesn’t want to. Because to process is to forever give up on it. And I think it is obvious your mother suffers from depression. From what you’ve told me recently, she’s battled this her entire life. And music is what she used to battle it. Now she needs to find something else. And all of this is horribly tangled up and entwined, and it is not so easy to just ‘get up’ as you say.”

  “You still love her?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said fiercely.

  I believed him. In fact, I would almost say he loved her more. This crisis seemed to bring out the best in Andreas, and maybe knowing the whole story also made him feel more connected, more invested, more useful, even. It brought out the best in him, and called on his skill set. He quickly rearranged his schedule so he could work from home while I went to school, hung out in bed with her in the evenings, watching Netflix or coaxing her to talk. He gently harassed her until she ate/showered/sat up, and in the meantime he got on the phone and convinced her doctor to make a house call, which led to getting Mom onto an antidepressant much sooner than the last time this happened.

  Still, I was angry, and scared. I wanted to say, Get up! Nobody did anything to you. You lie to this amazing guy and he still wants to be with you, and then you huddle in the dark like the world is ending. Get. Up.

  I thought it, but I didn’t say it. I got myself up instead, and went to school every day, stayed late at the library, and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Juno did notice something was wrong and asked me about it, but all I told her was that I was fighting with my mom. She could relate to that, since she fought with her parents constantly, mostly about things like her curfew and how much time she spent with Toff, who had become her boyfriend, when they weren’t fighting.

  “I’ll bet you’ve been setting her expectations too high,” Juno said, with a sage nod.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re too well behaved, obviously,” she said, and then threw an arm around me. “I’ll bet you sit around the dining-room table talking about world events and stuff, and I already know you hardly go out. Here’s my new strategy: I am setting the expectations low. I’m never on time, even if I have to wait outside an extra twenty minutes to make sure I’m late. Plus, every time I have Toff over, I make out with him constantly, right in front of them. That way they don’t dare come down to the basement when we’re watching a movie. They’re terrified of walking in on us fooling around. And just generally, I don’t talk to them, don’t tell them anything or warn them about my plans ahead of time, and I throw a few dramatic crying fits per week, slam my door, shout about them not understanding me—the works.”

  “How . . . does this make anything better?”

  “You have to make them grateful for every crumb! At least that’s my theory. And honestly, this is what they expect.”

  “What?”

  She laughed at my confusion. “My mom has read at least eight books about teenage behavior, the teenage psyche, et cetera, and even earmarked sections that I’m guessing she’s read to my father. I just had to read those sections to see what she was expecting.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Seriously. They’re anticipating problems, and they’ll be looking for them even if I act totally civilized. So instead, I’m training them to expect the worst from me, which means when I’m not the worst, they’ll be happy. Already, they’re so relieved when I act normal that they’ve stopped interrogating me about every little thing. And if I actually ask them nicely for something? Bam—they’re all over it.”

  “Wow,” I said, “that sounds . . . tiring.”

  “But I’m not going to ask them for much, because I’m saving it for something big,” she said. “I’m being like that character in the Shakespeare play we saw on the school trip. Remember the dude that was actually a prince?”

  “Oh, you mean Prince Hal from Henry IV.”

  “Yeah, him. He inspired me, the way he was hanging out and drinking and robbing people, and he made that speech—the one we had to study beforehand about how he was basically being a shit so he’d look all the better in comparison, once he reformed.”

  “‘Yet herein will I imitate the sun,’” I said, starting to laugh.

  “Yes, exactly! I’m going to imitate the sun coming out from th
e clouds, and then my parents will be right where I want them.”

  “I’m not sure that was the lesson we were supposed to take away from the play.”

  “You should try it.”

  “Er, my situation is a little different,” I said, but she had moved on to talking about Toff, which was just as well. Juno would have tried to help if I’d told her—I knew she would— but talking about my problems wouldn’t have solved them, and it was much more fun to let her entertain me, most of the time.

  Within a month, Mom was back to normal. Everything Andreas had done had worked, except that she’d refused to go to a therapist.

  We packed the opera memorabilia away in storage boxes in the garage, and promised her we wouldn’t talk about it.

  Still, she seemed to have let him in more, after that. They held hands all the time, she would lean her head on his shoulder, and when she wasn’t looking at him, his eyes followed her with adoration, relief, and a tinge of sorrow.

  “Someday I will find her a doctor,” he said to me. “A specialist who can fix her voice.”

  “Been there,” I said. “Don’t bother.”

  “New technologies and methods are invented all the time,” he said. “Even if it didn’t bring her voice all the way back to the professional level . . .”

  “Andreas, trust me: leave it,” I said.

  But I wasn’t sure he would.

  In the midst of her recovery, Andreas once again did the opposite of what I expected, and proposed.

  She cried, and said yes.

  Two months after that, the three of us went to City Hall, where they got married.

  She wore a long Japanese-inspired dress, in black, red, and blue, hair up, as stunning as she had ever been on any stage. He wore a tux. I wore a crazy vintage orange and sky-blue Lilly Pulitzer that I found in her closet, and threw a belt on with it. We took a helicopter to wine country and had a private dinner in the cellar of a famed vineyard.

  I had a dad. An extravagant, sweet, determined one.

  And obviously a crazy one, if we were what he wanted.