My Beautiful Failure by Janet Ruth Young Page A

been trying to tell me?
    I thought I was going to have a big life. Be different from other people. You and Linda and your mom are great, but—
    What would he have said if I hadn’t interrupted him?
    I’m going to have the big life. I’ll make the opportunities.
    Maybe he’d been about to ask for my help: I’ll make the opportunities. And I want the three of you to be part of it. Or maybe he was saying we were in his way. Maybe he was saying he was going to leave us.
    I knew what he meant by a “big life.” He and Mom and Linda and even Jodie were great, but they weren’t enough for me, either. When I became a psychologist, I wanted a big life too.
    Line 3 rang, and I rested my hand on the receiver for a second before answering. The heck with my CFM. I wasn’t doing this for him. I was doing it for me.

28.
call 1
    L isteners. Can I help you?”
    I don’t feel safe.
    “Why are you not feeling safe, ma’am?”
    You better whisper. They’ll hear us.
    “Who’ll hear us?”
    The CIA.
    “The CIA is bugging your phone?”
    Richie glanced over and nodded. He’d had this Incoming before.
    No, my bathtub.
    “That sounds really upsetting. My name is Billy. Would you like to tell me your first name?”
    Debra. Last week I couldn’t take a bath because they were in there.
    “And you say this started a week ago?”
    Approximately.
    “How did they get in?”
    Through the water pipes.
    “You sound pretty calm about what’s going on.”
    Oh, well. That’s life. Can’t fight City Hall, right?
    “You’re a very brave person, Debra.” I stretched the cord and twirled it around my finger.
    What else can I do? I have to live with it.
    “Do you have any idea why the CIA would do this to you?”
    Am I being recorded?
    “Absolutely not. This line is confidential.”
    I’ll tell you, then: Because my parents were spies.
    “How did you find out?”
    When they died I found a book about Cuba. Something inside the cover was erased.
    “That must have been a shock.”
    No one knows but the CIA. I barely talk to my neighbors.
    “It must be hard to trust people when you have a secret like that.”
    I asked Debra, since she rarely left the house, if she was buying food, if she was eating okay. I tried to focus on Debra’s well-being. It wasn’t my job to separate fact from fiction. I could let go and surf on the untruth of everything she said.

29.
calls 2–4
    A fter Debra, I got two nearly identical calls from teenagers who had been dumped, and one from an elderly man who seemed to be drunk.
    It’s my birthday, he kept saying.
    “Happy birthday,” I said three times.
    He asked me to sing, but I didn’t. With hardly a bobble, I made all three Incomings feel a little better. None was suicidal.

30.
call 12
    L isteners. Can I help you?”
    It’s me. I’m having a really bad night.
    Jenney. I remembered her, but I couldn’t say so.
    “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want to tell me your first name?”
    You don’t know who I am?
    “No, I don’t. My name’s Billy. Would you like to tell me your name?”
    It’s Jenney. Don’t you remember? We talked a few nights ago.
    “I’m sorry,” I said again.
    It’s okay, Billy. I know you have to do that.
    “You said you’re having a bad night. What’s going on?”
    I just came from a really rough session with Melinda.
    “Melinda?” Start from scratch. Clean slate. Every time.
    My therapist. She’s helping me to go back into my childhood and dig stuff up.
    “Are you feeling suicidal?”
    No.
    “How does your therapist dig this stuff up? And what kind of stuff do you mean?”
    One night, during the summer I graduated from high school, I woke up to this feeling of something pressing into my neck. It seemed so real, as if it were actually happening. But I woke up and I saw that I was alone in my room as usual. I’m an only child, see—I didn’t share my room with anyone. Then I walked down the hall and stuck my head in the door of my parents’ room, and they were