Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “What—you want to listen to the trees? Or, you know, the voices in your head?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “That’s cool,” he says, like he totally doesn’t care.

  But I can tell he’s offended, because when we set off again, he goes way to the back of the line, and that makes me feel like crap. More like crap, that is.

  The good news is that this final hike is only four hours, and we therefore arrive at camp in the afternoon. Even better, neither Bonnie nor Pat forces us into any organized group activity, which means we finally have the day I’ve been wishing for—one in which I can wash my stuff, lay it out in the sun, and try to regroup.

  Harvey lends/gives me his bar of soap—he’s clearly doing his best to go feral, though not in a creepy, Peace-Bob sort of way—and it takes me over an hour to get everything lathered up, scrubbed, rinsed, and wrung out to my satisfaction. When I’m finished, I climb onto one of the heaping stretches of orange, pink, and gray granite that surrounds our beach, where I lay each piece of clothing out, and anchor it carefully with stones I collected and set out in advance. The rock is warm, the sun is hot, there’s a gentle breeze . . .

  And I am screwed if it rains, because I washed everything except the bikini I’m wearing.

  As it is, getting the sleeping bag completely dry is a dodgy proposition.

  Below me, a few other people are also washing clothing or airing it out; others are playing cards, swimming, or sitting around having earnest-looking conversations.

  I consider joining them.

  But then I’ll be expected to talk, and Tavik is only biding his time before coming after me again for my life story. I should never have started telling it to him. What is it with people anyway, expecting me to want to talk about things, as if talking will make them better?

  So, instead of rejoining the group, I lie back on the warm stone, my clean clothes drying around me, close my eyes, and stare at the inside of my eyelids, pretending to be asleep so no one will bother me.

  Seven more days. I only have to survive seven more days of this.

  Serve them, more like.

  And then, everything will be perfect.

  Sure.

  TRY TO KEEP IT ALIVE

  (Age Fifteen)

  The night of the Isaac breakup, the second night of Oz performances, I woke in the wee hours to something I hadn’t heard in many years: Margot-Sophia, singing.

  She was singing low, really just above a hum, rich and full and beautiful.

  It wasn’t a song; it was a vocal warm-up—a string of ascending arpeggios, like scales, but prettier and more complicated. I remembered it well. And for a few moments, there under the covers in the dark, I was filled with warmth and wonder and a longing that made me ache, but ache so sweetly.

  I had lost that voice too. I never knew until that moment how much I’d missed it, how much I needed to hear it.

  But lest I be transported all the way back in time and forget reality, Mom stopped midway up the scale, not venturing into the higher notes—the ones she couldn’t sing, or couldn’t sing well anymore, and went back down the scale instead.

  I lay there, afraid if I got out of bed, she would hear me and stop. And I wondered why—why she was singing now, after all this time? Of course it had something to do with me, and The Wizard of Oz. But was it also because she was reconsidering going to Andreas’s specialist? Or did she just miss it, like I did? Or was she trying to let it go?

  Or was she drinking again? It wasn’t a great sign, her being up all night like this.

  But whatever the reason, the sound was soothing to my aching soul and brought back such a palpable happiness, I could barely contain it. I squeezed my eyes shut and listened with everything I had, trying to take it in and hold it, until finally she stopped, and I drifted off to sleep.

  By Saturday morning I’d received fifteen texts from Isaac, which I refused to read. Mostly refused. They were all variations of “let’s talk” and “please listen” and I couldn’t. It hurt so much, but many other things were hurting too, and I needed to just slam the door on Isaac and lock it behind me. I didn’t want to sort through what was fair and not fair about my reaction, what was ego and jealousy on my part versus what was real and unforgivable. It all felt unforgiveable. And his weakness and confusion were deeply disappointing, because if I were ever going to be in a serious relationship, it would have to be with someone strong, someone honest, someone who knew how to make decisions. Not someone who kinda-sorta-accidentally fell in and out of relationships—or beds, for that matter.

  I drank coffee with Mom, who must have taken my extra-miserable mood to be about her breakup with Andreas.

  We spent a quiet day in the house, not talking. I didn’t mention the middle-of-the-night singing. She seemed weary, fragile, and closed off. I knew from experience that trying to make her talk about anything she didn’t want to was foolhardy.

  She wasn’t coming to the show that night—her plan was to come for opening and closing only, so I got ready, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and headed for the door.

  “You were very good,” she said to me when I was halfway out.

  I froze for a moment, hearing it, then turned around and went back.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said you were very good. That’s twice I’ve said it and I’m not in the habit of giving out praise like it’s nothing. It’s something.”

  “Oh, I know it is,” I said, then reached out to hug her, throat tight. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome.” She hugged back, hard, and I could feel, despite the bite in her voice, that she was shaky. “Now you must go and do it again.”

  “I will.”

  “Better this time. Always better.”

  “Yes.”

  “For me.”

  “All right.”

  “I love you.”

  “You too.”

  “Merde.”

  We did the show, and again, despite everything in my real life really sucking, or maybe because of everything sucking, I loved it. And I was distinctly aware that without the necessity of performing, all I would be doing was wallowing in self-pity. Instead I had something to throw my emotions into.

  I ignored Isaac, in the sense that I was perfectly civil and met his eyes when we needed to communicate, but that was all. Juno tried to get me to talk about him—she’d been texting me all day too—but I deflected her questions by asking for an update on her life.

  “I see what you’re doing,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But okay, I’m not a masochist, to keep coming after you to get you to talk when you’re like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “The original Fort Knox.”

  “Juno, I’m sorry, I just—”

  “’S okay,” she said. “I accept you. Of course you do realize that by never, ever talking about yourself, you give me carte blanche to be totally self-absorbed?”

  I shook my head, and laughed, and she took me by the elbow and led me over to where the Tin Man and the Lion were still in their costumes, making a hilarious behind-the-scenes movie on somebody’s iPhone.

  I hung out for a while after, needing the time to come down from the stage high, but Autumn was sulky and weird, and Isaac was doubly weird, and I quickly realized I couldn’t be in the same room with either of them without feeling like I was going to either burst into tears or start throwing things. I couldn’t stop myself from picturing them together, naked and probably bathed in an organic, kale-infused aphrodisiac.

  Finally I decided to head home, where I could maybe take a page out of my mother’s book and just hide in my bed.

  Except I didn’t get to.

  I came trudging home, heart brooding over Andreas, over Isaac, over Mom’s singing in the middle of the night and what it meant, and trying, with all this swirling aro
und, to find a place of solidity inside myself—my Kansas, or my Oz; either would do.

  I let myself in, took off my backpack and coat, put them on hooks, slid my shoes off and set them neatly side by side.

  Even after only two steps in, there was no way to deny the house felt different without Andreas, with him not just on a business trip, but gone. Sitting awake in some executive rental apartment, or maybe a hotel, big heart undeniably broken, blaming himself.

  I tiptoed upstairs, looked at my tired, over-made-up eyes and braid-kinked hair in the bathroom mirror, and gave myself a wan smile.

  Padding across the carpeted hall to my room, my foot came down on a cold, wet spot. I looked down, then got on my knees, down close to it, and sniffed.

  Wine. White wine. Spilled and just . . . left there?

  That wasn’t like Mom.

  Then I was in front of Mom’s bedroom door, knocking, and then trying the knob, and realizing it was locked.

  “Mom?”

  There was no answer and she wasn’t okay—somehow I knew it.

  “Mom, Mom, Margot-Sophia!”

  Nothing.

  A louder nothing than I’d ever heard.

  The loudest nothing.

  I panicked. Suddenly I was screaming, and kicking the door, pounding, throwing my body against it.

  Maybe it was illogical, maybe I was acting like a crazy person, but since I couldn’t get through the door, I ran through the house, looking for something to break it down with. On my way I grabbed a phone and called Andreas and told him, in a hysterical rush, that something was wrong, and he didn’t act like I was crazy at all, but said he’d be right over, and to leave the front door unlocked for him.

  I checked the rest of the house and didn’t find her, then my eyes landed on a fire poker and I took it upstairs and knocked again and when nothing happened, I swung the fire poker at the door until there were holes and gashes in it, but it was such an old and solid door, I still couldn’t get in.

  Then I thought I heard something from the inside of the room, so I begged and cried and shouted through the door, willing myself to be through the damned door or for it to open and for everything to be okay, even if it meant all of this was just my overactive imagination. I would be happy to play that particular fool all day long, if she would only be okay.

  But the door didn’t open.

  I had to do something.

  I ran down the stairs and outside and turned on the porch lights and pulled a recycling bin—the massive ones with the lids—under the porch and climbed up on it, and jumped from it onto the porch roof. I landed, but couldn’t gain purchase on the roof tiles, and therefore slid all the way back down and fell onto the front steps.

  It hurt, but nothing was broken. I moved the bin closer and managed to make the leap the second time, with only a small amount of sliding and scrambling, and soon I was standing at her bay window.

  The curtains were closed. I decided not to bother knocking, because why would she let me in the window when she hadn’t let me in the door?

  There were three casement-style windows, each with screens on the bottom. I soon managed to pull off the one on the far left. I then tested the window, which was locked. Could not catch a break. Could have used the damned fire poker at this point, but of course I’d left it inside.

  I had to break the window.

  I tried first with my elbow, thinking it would be the sharpest, but I didn’t have enough force, especially balanced precariously as I was on the roof.

  Next I tried my fist.

  Bruises only.

  Then I kicked the window, and kicked it again, and finally threw my whole self into the kick, which meant my foot and much of my leg went halfway through, with a magnificent smash.

  I pulled my leg and foot carefully back out so as to avoid further wounds (there were wounds by now, but I still couldn’t really feel anything—I was in my socks, more poor planning), and then I punched the remaining shards of the window through.

  Andreas pulled up in his car as I was wriggling my body through the broken window, legs first.

  “Ingrid!” He ran up the path. I told him to go in and I’d let him in the bedroom from the other side.

  And then I was slipping down onto broken glass, squinting in the dim light of one candle she had lit at her bedside, its flame almost out.

  Mom was crumpled on the floor in front of the bed, two empty bottles of wine lying on their sides nearby. And in her hand was a bottle of pills, open.

  I’d had lots of practice looking at her to see if she was alive, but this time she was so pale, and I couldn’t see her breathing.

  I came closer, cautious now despite having tried to break the door down and subsequently smashing the window. I was thinking of all the nights she’d been awake recently, pacing, drinking, singing, about how fragile she’d seemed, how strange. Thinking about how certain medications were not supposed to be mixed with alcohol.

  I clicked on the overhead lamp . . . saw her chest rise, ever so slightly. Breathing, thank God, but barely.

  Something was pounding, and at first I assumed it was coming from inside me, but then I remembered Andreas, and heard his shouts in the hallway—I’d forgotten to let him in.

  I ran to the door, opened it. “Ambulance!” I shouted, running back to her. “Call an ambulance. She’s breathing but she’s passed out. And I think she took something.”

  He came forward, cell in hand, already dialing. I slid the bottle of pills from her grip and looked at the label. She had a few ongoing prescriptions, and these ones were for anxiety, and to help her sleep. Which meant, in combination with the alcohol, if I understood it correctly, taking too many could make everything just . . . stop.

  ON THE WATER

  (Peak Wilderness, Day Fourteen)

  Duncan arrives on the morning of Day Fourteen, pulling a flotilla of canoes and bringing new food rations.

  “Just when the backpacks were starting to lighten,” Ally groans.

  “If they get too light, Pat and Bonnie will probably load us up with bricks,” I say dully. “You ever canoe before?”

  “Nope. I’ll probably suck.”

  “Not with all the push-ups and stuff you’ve been doing with Seth,” I say. “You’ll be great.”

  “At least we’ll be off our feet,” she says, obviously unconvinced. “And hey, maybe it’ll be easier. . . .”

  Ally’s feet have recovered somewhat, in the sense that her first round of blisters healed, and the second and the third set are sitting on top of tougher skin, and therefore not hurting her as much. But her boots are just a tiny bit too small, so they keep coming. She even walked barefoot one day.

  Before we can speculate further, Duncan calls us over—apparently he’s giving us a canoe lesson.

  Our first collective discovery is that it’s easy to tip a canoe. Dead easy.

  Second discovery? Getting back into it is hellishly difficult.

  We start by learning (the hard way, of course) what, exactly, will cause a canoe to tip. Duncan doesn’t relent until every one of us has taken at least one massive spill and managed to climb back into the boat—which often causes a second spill.

  There is a lot of shrieking and laughing, and even Duncan cracks a few smiles.

  I am pretty worried about drowning, though. Or about having the canoe capsize, along with everything in it, sometime when it’s for real and there’s no Duncan to help fish us out of the water. The life jackets make sense, but I’m trying to figure out why we need helmets, and instead of being excited, I feel skeptical and ill at ease. I have always been a bit like this—heavy when other people are light, trapped when other people feel free, and just . . . unable to catch the mood.

  I’m not crying, though, so that’s something.

  When we come back onshore, most of us shivering and exhauste
d, a miracle awaits us: Pat and Bonnie have done most of the work breaking camp—the tents are down, the fire extinguished, and all we have to do is get our packs and divide the pile of fresh food supplies.

  For this portion of the trip we’re no longer each carrying food. Instead it’s going in food barrels—waterproof barrels made of light, hard plastic—one barrel for every canoe. Apparently we can send the barrel down the river if we get into a “situation” and need to lighten our load. A twinge of anxiety lodges in my gut as I wonder what sort of “situation” would call for such an extreme measure, but I try to ignore it.

  In addition to the barrels, we now have “dry bags,” which are exactly what they sound like—waterproof bags to store our clothing and sleeping bags in, within our packs, so nothing crucial gets wet if the pack goes in the water.

  “This is helpful,” I say to the leaders, refraining from commenting that I could have used a dry bag the very first day. “Are you guys okay?”

  Bonnie smiles. Pat kind of smiles.

  I wonder if I’ve gotten through to them with my objections to the bullshit tactics.

  Maybe this part of the trip will actually be enjoyable. . . .

  I try to lift myself with a bit of optimism. The hike is over, and this is going to be a great new adventure. I have clean(ish), dry clothing and a waterproof bag to keep things in, and I never have to see Peace-Bob’s ass again. Canoeing might not be better than the hiking, but it can’t be worse. And I’m tougher than I was two weeks ago. Much tougher.

  And maybe all that practice falling in the water was over-preparation and what we’ll actually be doing is paddling peacefully along the shores of the lake, early morning mist rising, fish jumping, loons calling, all of us wearing preppy sweaters from outdoorsy catalogs.

  Okay, we don’t have the preppy sweaters, but I didn’t actually hate the canoeing we did with Duncan.

  I begin the afternoon feeling better, and even looking forward to starting out.