The Story of Beautiful Girl (42 page)

But this day was no different from any other: The group—sixty or so, probably fifth graders—just chatted and goofed around as the adults herded them inside the elegant lobby. A few kids did notice they were being urged across a marble floor toward yet another landmark. And one boy in particular, with a mop of curly blond hair, even stopped before it. Otherwise they were just another group of noisy kids. “Face forward, guys, we’ve only got a few minutes!” one chaperone called out. As usual, the other chaperones lined up the kids so the mosaic—prominently noted in Google searches as a great backdrop for photo ops—was behind them.

It still took the students a few moments to settle down. Finally, everyone was smiling dutifully except for the curly-haired boy. A kid of average height, at one end of the middle row, he kept turning back to the mosaic. Only the shout “You too, Ryan!” got him to face forward.

The cameras snapped at the sixty smiles. “Okay. Move on out,” bellowed a teacher.

The students, breaking immediately into conversation, surged back toward the lobby doors. Two adults shooed along the stragglers.

“What’s gotten into you, Ryan?” one of the chaperones asked.

“Look at this mural,” Ryan said, still drawn to its allure as the lobby emptied out. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s so cool.”

“Yes, it’s a very pretty piece of art,” the chaperone agreed, her voice as smooth and no-nonsense as her bobbed hair. Wearing a tailored suit, she was the only chaperone not displaying the sweatshirt that read, “Best School in Chapel Hill.” She looked as impeccable as an anchorwoman. “We have to stick to the schedule,” she said.

“I know, but Mom—”

“No slowing everyone down.”

He let out a groan of preadolescent exasperation but allowed her to push him forward. The guard noticed the mother’s smile as she walked out with her son, her face turning from severe to loving. The automatic doors opened and the two of them were gone.

The guard turned his concentration to the security monitors on his desk. Parking garage fine. Elevators fine.

Only when he heard the click of high heels did he look up again. It was the same woman, this time without her son.

No one ever came back in after the school groups posed for
their pictures. Yet there she was, walking right past him, slowing as she neared the giant scene of the mosaic. She seemed to be drawn to the center of the mosaic, a complex landscape of opalescent sea and land stretching deep into the distance, filled with Victorian houses and mighty trains and carousel horses and gnarled woods and a sunlit farm. Then the woman drifted to the left, the side that was colored with dusk. The side with the silvery jetty and the lighthouse that wore a man’s face.

She studied the glow cast from the lighthouse man, shaking her head. “Just like the one Grammy always talked about…,” the guard heard her say quietly. Then she looked to the side, apparently seeking a plaque. What she found instead was the exhibit screen, and as she came close, the image of a man appeared with a voice-over in the background—because the man was using sign language. The work was called
Dreams of Home
, it explained, a collaboration of artists of many abilities and disabilities who created art that could be appreciated by all people. “Visual transcriptions,” the voice said, “are available for visitors who align themselves with the textured strip at their feet. You can follow it by moving from one side of the artwork to the other.”

The woman glanced down at the grooves cut into the marble floor. Then she looked at the guard and asked, “Is there anyone here who could tell me more about this?”

“Let me call Public Relations for you,” the guard said.

“No,” the woman said. “Not that. I’d like to speak with whoever’s in charge of bringing this here.”

Oh, he thought, she was one of those who had to go to the top. “You mean the curator,” he said. He wrote down the name and address, crossed the floor, and pressed the paper into her hands.

So as Ryan Campbell looked at rockets in the National Air and Space Museum, Julia Campbell called him on his cell phone
and said he should keep looking at the exhibit with the rest of the class. She’d catch up with him within an hour, just as soon as she made a quick visit to an art academy she needed to see on the other side of the Mall.

The curator, Edith, was wiry and spiky-haired, in hip red glasses, and she greeted Julia warmly. The academy, she explained as they stood in the reception area, featured exhibitions of outsider art a few times a year. The mosaic was one of their most prominent acquisitions, but it was too large for their galleries. That’s why it was in the lobby across the Mall.

“It tells a story, doesn’t it?” Julia asked.

“Oh, yes.” Edith’s eyes lit up. “Quite a story.”

“And is it… is it a real story?”

“It is.”

“So you mean the lighthouse is real, too?”

“Very.”

“Oh. Oh, wow. I never would have guessed…” She cleared her throat. “Can you tell the story to me?”

“It’s long. To do it justice, I’d need to take you to my office. I have something there that’s part of the story but isn’t on display.”

“But I need to catch up with my group.”

Edith smiled. “You might want to let them know you’ll be awhile.”

The office Julia entered was teeming with art. Portraits, landscapes, abstract paintings, sculpture, textiles, furniture, ceramics. In the center of the room was a large oak desk, its surface buried beneath origami figures, wire designs, hand-carved musical instruments.

Julia walked in slowly. She’d always loved art and was even on the board of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke, although her
husband had little patience for it. She’d in fact been considering greater involvement once the divorce was over, maybe completing her bachelor’s in art history. But she’d never seen art like this.

Trying to absorb it all, she was taken aback when her eyes lit upon something she recognized. Behind a cluster of crane-shaped lamps, beneath an assortment of papier-mâché globes, she could see a wooden box. A wooden box with carved flowers and animals and plants.

“What’s that?”

“Why, that’s what I was going to show you,” Edith said with surprise. “When the mosaic was donated to us, the collective included this box for us to keep in our archives. It has a lot of documents and other material. They provide an interesting background on the story the mosaic is telling.”

“May I touch it?”

Julia pushed aside the papier-mâché globes on top of the box to lift the hinged lid.

There it all was. Rodney’s collar. The twigs that spelled
l u v
. The photos of Ivamae and Betty. The envelope of her baby hair. The brown wool cap, the one Grammy said had belonged to Julia’s father. It was all she’d ever known about him, except that he was handsome.

And there, beneath all the objects, was a packet of letters tied with a yellow ribbon.

That very afternoon, sitting on the floor beside the box, Julia began reading the letters and discovered that the world she’d always believed herself to be in—the world that had so confounded and frustrated her—was only a part of a much larger picture. As she submerged deeper and deeper into memory and realization, learning the story she’d never guessed, she came to feel an admiration she could not have imagined. Julia had never
before seen Grammy as a hero. But here she learned that on a single night, that’s exactly what Grammy had become. She’d made a commitment from which she’d never wavered, even as Julia grew into a sensitive young girl. Grammy had still listened no matter how distraught or self-involved Julia was. She’d held Julia’s hand when friends got her into trouble or a boy she liked didn’t know she existed. And when Grammy died, Pete carried on, giving her fatherly advice, warning her against marrying Brian Campbell, walking her down the aisle just the same, before he too passed away.

She pored over each letter, too suffused with emotion to look up. As she neatly returned the last letter to the packet, she saw, in the bottom of the box, a folder. She opened it to find magazine clippings that Grammy must have collected over Julia’s life. There were articles about John-Michael Malone’s exposé and the battle to close the School. There was a magazine photograph of a parade on the day the School shut down, with two smiling female residents holding a banner high in the air. And the last piece was Grammy’s obituary.

Julia bit back her lips. She lifted up the yellowed newspaper, thinking of how much the words did not say. She ran her finger over the grainy photo, then placed the obituary back in the folder.

There was one more item inside: a small, sealed envelope. On the outside were the words “To my beloved Julia.” It was Grammy’s familiar penmanship, but with the jagged look that her script had taken on at the end. Julia opened the envelope with trembling hands, and the scent of Grammy’s hand lotion came into the air.

“My sweet Ju-Ju,” the letter began. Julia heard herself sigh at the sight of Grammy’s name for her. “One night, two strangers gave me a child I love with all my heart, and our life together has taught me so much I never knew I was missing. Now I realize that our bond has taken me one step further: Although for a long time
I only called myself your grandmother, I now understand that in my soul, I truly am, and will always be, your grandmother. Even after I have passed away, you have only to look in the face of anyone you love and you will see me. I am here for you always.”

Julia held back her tears. Finally, when she lifted her eyes, she saw Edith working across the room. “Who made the mosaic?” was the only thing Julia could think to say.

“An artist designed it,” Edith said. “Her husband did the acoustic technology. Then the collective put it together.”

“And this wife and her husband—what were their names?”

Edith lowered her gaze to the box.

“The man’s name was Homan Wilson. And the artist was Lynnie Goldberg.”

“That was my mother,” Julia said with a sob she couldn’t hold back. “So Homan must have been my father.”

“Actually, they still
are
your mother and father,” Edith said. “Would you like to have their address?”

Lynnie woke in the morning, inhaling the salty ocean air as she always did, feeling the warmth of Homan’s body as he slept beside her. They often told each other how much they loved these waking-up moments, when they would snuggle beneath their soft sheets, deciding whether to have eggs or cereal for breakfast, watching the sunlight on their ceiling as it reflected the sea like diamonds. But he was not awake just yet, so while Lynnie waited for him to stir, she passed her gaze over the room. Every sight gave her pleasure. The cabinets, which he’d built and she’d painted. Her framed drawings on the walls, his computer on the desk. And the window, with its curtains blowing in the breeze and its view of the lighthouse tower.

Later today, when she looks out the front windows onto the beach, she will see a woman and a young boy emerge from the
dunes. They will walk across the sand toward the keeper’s house, their curly hair catching t keeper’s house, their curly hair catching the rays from the sun. They will ring the doorbell, and the colored lights will flash.

But the day began just like the most ordinary of mornings.

Lynnie felt her husband rest his arm on her waist, letting her know he was awake. Smiling, she rolled over to face him.
Hi,
she signed.

His lips parted wide, and he broke into a smile, too.
Good morning, Beautiful Girl,
he signed back. Then he reached out and touched what had once been her dream self, but was now solid and real before him. He shook his head, still amazed that they were together, and brushed her hair off her face. And then he added, as he always did,
Can you imagine a better day than this?

Like many siblings of people with disabilities, I first heard about institutions as a young child. My sister, Beth, had an intellectual disability, and my parents would talk about how some children like Beth were “put away” in institutions. They didn’t elaborate but were emphatic that Beth would not live in one. Their reasons were personal: When my father was a child during the Great Depression, and his widowed father grew too poor to support his sons, my father and his brother were put in an orphanage. Though they were reasonably well treated, my father told us, over and over, “When you live in an institution, you know at the bottom of your heart that you’re not really loved.” So my sister was raised at home, and I knew nothing about the alternative.

My first awakening came when Beth and I were entering adolescence. It was 1972, and one day when we were watching TV and the evening news came on, we saw a special report by a young Geraldo Rivera. With the help of a stolen key and hidden camera, he’d entered the Willowbrook State School. The images he smuggled out horrified us—and the nation.

Twenty-seven years later, as I was writing a book about my life with Beth, I learned that media exposés like Rivera’s had led to the closing of many institutions, which in turn led to a movement to create an inclusive society. It also led to a major civil rights
development known as self-determination: the idea that people with disabilities have a right to make choices about their own lives. Not until my book
Riding the Bus with My Sister
came out, and I was invited to give talks around the country, did I begin to learn about institutions. At almost every talk, people came up to me who’d lived in, worked at, or were related to someone who’d been in an institution, or who’d fought to get an institution to close. I was deeply moved by their stories, which were often about struggle, sorrow, and frustration, and I came to feel remorse that institutional tragedies had unfolded in a parallel universe that even I, a sibling, hadn’t known about. Finally understanding that there was a secret history in our country that had been kept out of sight for so long, it was essentially out of mind, I began reading whatever I could find on the subject, though I found disappointingly little.