My Beautiful Failure (11 page)

Dad mixed a bronzy color on his palette. It might have contained some actual metal flakes. “How is your project going?” he asked. “I’ll bet you’re good at it.”

This surprised me. In a way I thought Dad had forgotten. “People say I’m good. A couple of the callers say I’m the best Listener they’ve spoken to.” Oops. That was actually a breach of confidentiality.

“It’s not too depressing, is it? I worry about you getting depressed. Because”—he looked from the canvas to me—“you know, it could be in the genes. Something undesirable I’ve given you. At least Linda got my painting ability as a trade.”

I wanted a positive souvenir gene too. People always said we looked alike, and both Dad and I bounced when we walked. I wished that for one day I could be not myself but an observer, so I could see it.

“Listeners isn’t depressing,” I assured him. “The whole
environment is very upbeat. We make jokes and eat snacks and stuff. I’ve made a couple of friends there.”

“Do you feel like you’re developing your skills?” Dad asked, squinting at me from under his hat. I noticed that he applied the paint thickly, in pasty waves, where I would have obsessively painted every leaf.

“It’s amazing,” I said, watching his hands move over the canvas. “I’ve learned so much about sympathy and about communication. And the secret lives people lead, that otherwise I would know nothing about. I learn something new every time I step through the door.”

“Then how would you feel if I did to you what you’ve been doing to me?”

“Meaning?”

“If I suggested you wait a year before trying to save someone.”

“Touché,” I said. “I did not see that coming.”

Dad was smiling the semi-angry smile of someone with a lot more to say. I ambled back to the house with my head down, acting more wounded than I felt. And I slammed the screen door loudly. This had worked when I was little to convey sulking and hurt feelings. But now when I looked over my shoulder, Dad hadn’t seemed to notice.

I continued to watch Dad through the tiny metal squares. Working below the tree, Dad bent his head back like he was drinking from a goblet, filling his eyes and mouth with the colors and textures of the tree bark and sky. He scrutinized the canvas on his easel and turned it upside down. This surprised me. He thought checking
a composition by upending it was pretentious. That was one of the reasons he left art school.

Dad turned the canvas upright. He waved and laughed. He had done that for my benefit. Caught me looking, I guess.

P
aint in the bathroom, on the rugs, and everywhere.

But Mom didn’t seem to mind.

Last year she needed tons of time off. Now it seemed she was making up that time and determined, like Dad, never to be average again. In the evenings, while Dad worked in the studio, Mom fanned out her spreadsheets and binders. Her museum was devoted to the leather industry, but the way she acted you’d think she ran the Louvre. She told me not to interrupt her, and once, after I bothered her three times in a row, she came home wearing earbuds. Earbuds on my mother. She always told me to take mine off. Hers lasted one evening and then disappeared, but they drove the point home. No interruptions: this means you, Billy.

I decided to take my homework in there, sit beside her, and wait for a chance to catch her without the headphones.

“The painting Dad’s working on looks mental,” I said, just to open up the topic.

“I know you’re against the show,” she said.

“I’m not against the show. I’m just against this format. Don’t you think it’s too much?”

Mom raked the arm of her eyeglasses through her hair. Sometimes this meant she was thoughtful. Other times it meant she was mad. Which would it be?

“All art is too much,” she said in the tone of someone who had a master’s degree in American studies.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Mom touched her hair. She had been wearing it up lately, with a fancy clip, and she wore Mom jeans tucked into a pair of suede boots she was proud of. She looked nice, but I didn’t want to change the subject by saying so. She tilted her head and paused, as if she was giving a press conference.

“Any artist who creates something takes a risk,” she said. “Of being laughed at or of making something no one else will value. So if that happens to your father, it will be the same as with any other artist. I’m sure that, having a formal art education, he’s well aware of the risk and has decided to proceed anyway. Maybe he’s even enjoying that aspect of it, because it’s like the good old days when he pursued his art against the odds.”

Having stated her point, to her mind, perfectly, Mom started inspecting a set of slides. She wanted to expand the museum’s scope from the merely local. She hoped to display, in an unprecedented coup, a collection of traditional Plains Indian leather pipe bags from a museum in South Dakota. She held each slide toward the lamp, unconsciously drawing her mouth into an upside-down U.

“So you don’t think that if his show bombs or doesn’t happen, he’ll be crushed?”

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.”

I
t 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.

L
isteners. 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.

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.

R
ichie 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 change 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.