Free My Beautiful Failure by Janet Ruth Young

were after her.
    Actually, I was glad to be stuck at school for so many hours of the week. The only places I wanted to be were at school, on my bike, or, preferably, at Listeners. I didn’t like being at home anymore, since Dad started painting again. I felt like he didn’t even want me there.

PART 2

34.
crock or van gogh?
    E ach day, Dad became more inspired. He went to the town dump and scavenged wooden panels that had been ripped out of shelves or bookcases. He got worked up over political issues he had never mentioned before, particularly immigration law, the Federal Reserve Bank, gay rights, and drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge. Strangest of all, he was working on a group of paintings that looked just . . .
    There was only one word for them: bizarre. At least two of them showed sad, bodiless heads, with faces of different colors, arranged in fruit bowls. Another was an orange largemouth bass jumping over a rainbow in which the colors were only black, white, and gray. I hoped he wasn’t planning to show them to anyone.
    Without indicating that I supported or liked Dad’s work, I found an excuse to check on him every day. This time I found him not in his studio but in the conversation area, where he cursed over his notebook computerand deleted e-mails one after the other. Linda was lying on the other couch with her feet over the end, reading a dystopian novel.
    “I’ve officially sent photos to twenty galleries and museums,” Dad said. “And I haven’t heard a word back from anybody.” I cringed when I heard this. I hated the idea of Dad making a fool of himself. I pictured someone at the Peabody Essex Museum pulling up a JPEG of the fish painting and getting everybody in the office to gawk at it. Dad’s activities could be especially harmful to Mom, because she worked in a museum and was supposed to know better. “I’m no longer waiting for life to act on me. I have to act on life.”
    “Meaning?” I asked.
    “I’m giving myself a show.”
    “Wow,” Linda said, sitting up and moving closer to Dad.
    “Where? Here?”
    “In the garage. On December fourth.”
    “ This December fourth?” I asked.
    “I want to make the most of my time on this earth. Not sit around taking up space and valuable oxygen. I feel a need to justify my existence, you know?”
    I felt like a hand had slipped between my ribs. It reached into my chest and started squeezing my heart. “What would be involved? It sounds like a huge deal.”
    “The biggest part is getting my work done—making the paintings. But I’ll also have to get the garage ready, frame the paintings, display each piece, and—last but maybe most important—get the word out. Get the right people to show up.” His legs stretched out on the ottoman,and his feet moved like puppets while he talked.
    “I don’t think this is a good move, Dad,” I told him.
    “Why not?”
    “You’re not allowing enough time,” I said. “If you want to do a big project like this, why don’t you wait till next summer and have everything just the way you want it?” I sat on the edge of the ottoman, next to Dad’s feet. I wished I could grab them and do something funny with his toes that would lighten up my message. Mom and Linda both communicated with Dad in playful ways. Guys couldn’t do that, other than punching.
    “That will be part of it. The race to finish will be part of the process. The name of my show will be Bill Morrison: Forty Paintings in Forty Days .”
    “That’s a good gimmick,” Linda said. “It almost sounds like a reality show.”
    “That’s right. I hope curiosity will bring people in. Maybe I could get national media attention.”
    “Whoa,” I said. “No one can paint forty paintings in forty days.”
    “Van Gogh did it. At the end of his life he painted seventy paintings in seventy days.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “He shot himself.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “No, I’m serious.”
    How could Dad even joke about