Sounds Like Crazy

by Mahaffey, Shana

  “A nun?” I scrunched up my face.This was the last thing I’d ever expect anyone to ask me. I’d made my break with the Church years ago.

  “Why are you so interested in Christianity?” Turned out Peter chose to focus on Western religion in graduate school because the concept of religion interested him.The rules didn’t.

  At the end of our date, Peter said he’d like to see me again. “Why me?” I said.The girls he’d brought into the diner were not less than five-foot-ten and definitely didn’t reach triple digits on the scale.

  “Why not?” said Peter. I didn’t have an answer for him.

  Sometimes brains do trump beauty.

  Even though I’d worn the tread on Peter and me down to threads, it still felt good to talk about him. So, at the start of the fifth session after Peter declared a relationship vacation, I waited politely for one minute after the check-ins to see if someone else wanted the floor. Nobody said a word, so I spent most of the hour retracing Peter’s departure. Occasionally, one of the group members asked a question or made a comment.

  When Milton announced we had five minutes remaining, Betty Jane said, “You have only yourself to blame for the predicament you are in. I snagged that man for fun. I never expected to have to endure him for three years. I for one am glad you are rid of him.” My mouth dropped in shock. “And,” she said, “if I have to hear one more word about that man, I will not return.”

  “Oh, yes, you will return,” said Ruffles to Betty Jane. Before Betty Jane could retort, she said to me, “But, Holly, seriously, come on, enough already about Peter.”

  “Wow, if I turned around, you’d be able to see the tire tracks you just left on my back,” I said to Ruffles.

  “Karma sucks,” she said. I knew this was residual resentment from the post-Emmy awards argument with Betty Jane, when Ruffles wouldn’t let up about who won the award.

  Inside my head, Ruffles smiled to indicate she knew I got the message. Even though I marveled at her ability to avoid a battle with Betty Jane, I hoped she got the message that I wasn’t finding any fair play in this turnabout.

  Before I left, Milton said, “Holly, you may want to consider Ruffles’s remarks and think about a new topic for the next hour. Perhaps the other significant male in your life?”

  “Et tu, Milton?” I stalked out, declaring to never return.

  On Thursday, just like the hands on a clock, I turned up again at the appointed time. Milton opened the door. I walked into his office, relieved that he wasn’t one to remind me that I rarely backed up my threats with action.

  Everyone appeared in their usual spots, Betty Jane on the pink commode, the Silent One kneeling on his prayer altar, Sarge and Little Bean on the couch, Ruffles on her pillow. After I settled in, we all waited for someone to begin the check-in. Sarge finally started things off and we zigzagged around until we reached Betty Jane.

  She pointed and said with a sniff of distaste, “You smell like cigarettes.”

  “It’s my new perfume,” I said.

  “You might want to consider exchanging it for something with a more pleasing bouquet.”

  “I’ll make a note to drop by Barneys on my way home.”

  Betty Jane and I stared like two cats unwilling to be the one who blinks, thereby surrendering dominance to the other. Then Milton said, “Holly, do you remember the first time you smoked?”

  Do I remember, I thought. Another pleasant trip down memory lane. But Peter had a fork in him, he was done, and the other option was a silent standoff with Betty Jane. So, I figured, why not?

  My father rejected whiskey and hopped on the fast track to godliness when I was fourteen. Enlightenment, Dean Miller- style, happened the day after he crashed his sports car into a creek overflowing from an abundant winter in the mountains.The rescue team found him strapped in, unhurt and babbling, with the water reaching up to his neck. Almost drowning in cold runoff rerouted something in his brain. Up to that point in my life, my father could always be counted on for a steady stream of something different. The something different was usually the latest secretary or assistant at the office.When I heard he’d sobered up and found God, I finally believed that God was a woman.

  The phone call came at about nine thirty on a Tuesday night. Ruffles and I were doing homework and making sure Sarah and her boyfriend, watching TV, were not alone. When the phone rang, I looked over to see that Sarah and that guy had disappeared over the back of the couch. It rang again. I knew my mother wouldn’t answer it. I picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

  “This is the Palo Alto Police Department; to whom am I speaking?”

  “Police,” said Sarge. He stood up in a protective stance inside my head.

  I held out the phone to the couch. “Uh, Sarah, it’s the police on the phone.”

  My sister’s head popped up. “Get Mom,” she said. She took the phone from me and started speaking. I went upstairs to rouse my mother.

  My mother left the house about five minutes later. Her last words were to tell Sarah to make sure I was in bed by ten.

  “Dad’s been in an accident,” said Sarah.

  Having suffered under my father’s indifference for the past two years, I found myself ambivalent about his predicament. Sarge remained standing, ready to act. Ruffles paused in eating her chips. I felt her pull me backward and take over.

  She opened my mouth and said to Sarah, “Did he die?”

  “Your ‘I don’t care’ voice,” said Sarah. “No, he didn’t die. He’s not even hurt.”

  “Too bad,” said Ruffles. She drifted backward and let me have control again.

  “More like luckily, or I might not be going to college in a couple of months,” said Sarah. “If you’re done with your homework, why don’t you go to bed?”

  The next night I woke up a few hours later to the sound of raised voices and I knew my father had been released from the hospital. Inside my head Sarge wore green fatigues and a helmet, and his face was darkened. Ruffles sat wide-eyed. I noticed the Boy sleeping. The Silent One held his finger to his lips to indicate no talking. I knew it must be bad.

  “It is your fault I drink so much. Living with you is like spending every day in hell.” The walls and hallway did nothing to muffle my father’s angry words.

  My mother’s response was, as usual, too quiet for me to hear through the walls. I pushed back my covers.

  “Do not move from your position,” barked Sarge.

  I froze.

  “Don’t even start that shit with me. I am so sick of it,” yelled my father.

  I pressed my ear against the wall.

  “What do you think she said?” whispered Ruffles inside my head.

  Sarge made a cutting movement with his hand across his throat and mouthed, Silence.We didn’t want to wake the Boy.

  I heard my parents’ bedroom door open. My father pounded down the hallway. I shrank back against my pillows. Another door opened.The hall closet.

  “Where are you going?” cried my mother.

  Her voice scared me. I had never heard my mother plead like that before.

  “I have a trip,” was my father’s cold reply.

  “You don’t have a trip.”The venom was back in her voice.

  More noise. It sounded like things toppling out of the closet.

  “You think I don’t know?” My mother’s voice cracked. “If you like her so much, why don’t you just stay with her?” She screamed this.

  “Maybe I will,” said my father.

  “You don’t mean that,” shrieked my mother.

  I sat in the dark, reeling. Stay with who? And who is this woman on the other side of the wall?

  “I can’t stand this anymore.”

  “But the girls?”

  “The girls will be fine.”

  “Heartless bastard,” said Ruffles from her pillow inside my head.The Boy stirred.

  “If you leave me,” said my mother, “I will divorce you and take you for every penny you have.”

&n
bsp; “That’s the woman we know and love,” said Ruffles inside my head.

  “You made a promise to me and the girls after—”

  “Holly,” said Sarge inside my head. The Silent One stood. The Boy sat, frightened, clutching his blanket.

  I hovered between my body and the living room inside my head as a sense of foreboding crawled straight up my spine. I knew Sarge wanted to leave, but I also knew he wouldn’t go until I was there with him in my head. I fought hard to stay in control.

  The shouting from the other side of the wall had stopped. I hovered in black silence for several minutes.

  “Holly?” Sarah whispered as she shook me. Even in the dark, I could see my sister’s stabbing eyes as they probed deeply into mine. The hallway on the other side of the wall remained silent. Sarah sat back against my pillows, crowding me into the corner.

  “Dean, please.” My mother was pleading again.“Please don’t leave me. I don’t know what I was saying. Please don’t leave. We can make this work if we try.”

  My father replied, but for once I couldn’t hear what he said.

  “Do you think they will get a divorce?”

  “Go to sleep, Holly,” Sarah said wearily.

  The next night my father was home for dinner. My mother declared that he had stopped drinking and we all had to support him. Then she took a sip from the glass of wine sitting in front of her.

  The following day, my father came home with a stack of books on spirituality.Within a week, he was doing yoga and talking about Noble Truths, while Ruffles and I remarked about the noble untruth of this latest incarnation of dear old Dean. Six months later, he still had not left town, had not eaten meat, and he was able to touch his toes for the first time in years.

  “Who needs booze when the God high is so much better?” Ruffles remarked inside my head midway through his metamorphosis. Even she had to admit that my father’s already rakish good looks and smooth charm had gone supernova during his change.

  In line with his transformative euphoria, my father tried to do whatever my mother wanted. But it seemed as if every time he cleared a hoop, another one, smaller and higher, appeared. In July, he got a big bonus at work and suggested we go on a trip before Sarah left for college. My mother bought a fancy new car instead.

  After Sarah left in August, my father picked me up one day from a friend’s house.

  “Holly?” said my father.

  I looked out the window as he shifted the gears of his sports car and drove too fast. As always, I figured speed was the fifth Noble Truth nobody talked about. Finally I said in a snotty tone, “What?” Downward-facing Dog, lettuce, and green tea aside, I knew the same old rage was still boiling right below the lid Dad held on tight. I didn’t trust this new man.

  “If I broke my promises to you, Holly, I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of what I did when I was drinking,” he said.

  Inside my head, Ruffles almost choked on her chips.Then I felt as though a hook wrapped around my waist. I fell backward. Ruffles had never acted like this before. I tried to reorient myself as she turned my tilting head and looked at my father’s rigid jawline. “Yeah, well,” Ruffles said out of my mouth, “if I heard any promises, broken or otherwise, I don’t remember.”

  I watched my hand pick up the pack of Marlboro Reds that was lying between the two seats. Then it pushed in the lighter, opened the box, and pulled out a cigarette. A pop interrupted the thick silence in the car. My hand raised the lighter to the end of the cigarette and lit it. Smoke blew out of my mouth at my father.

  “I don’t remember a lot of conversations I have with you,” said Ruffles out of my mouth.

  The car shot forward as my father savagely shifted gears. “I don’t know why I bother. You’re a miserable bitch like your mother.”

  He started traveling again the next week.

  “Thoughts, Holly?” said Milton.

  “Karma sucks, right?” Then I saw Ruffles’s wan face and I immediately regretted my spite.

  “Now, how about we have a discussion about ‘much-needed authority’?” said Betty Jane. Anyone who didn’t see that coming had to be blind.

  “You shut up,” I said.

  “Careful who you choose, Holly,” said Betty Jane.

  “I’ll choose Ruffles any day over you,” I snapped. Ruffles looked up with a gleam in her eye. I felt a rush of warmth and protectiveness.

  “Let’s get back to the memory, shall we?” said Milton.

  “What more can I say? My father was a duplicitous jerk who did only what the moment required for the advancement of the most important person in his life—himself. He cheated on his wife. He took all his rage and frustration out on the smallest and weakest person in front of him. That was me, in case you didn’t know. And, yes, with the exception of rage and frustration, I pretty much choose men who are like my father.And I’m hanging on to the very incarnation of the man right now. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  Milton and I sat in silence for five minutes. I know because I followed the second hand on my watch the entire time.We had five more minutes and the hour would be over. I hunkered down to wait Milton out.

  He cleared his throat. “Holly, I’ve been thinking that you might want to add some activities to your daily routine.”

  “Like what,” I said, “the library?”

  “What about the theater thing Peter’s friend called you about?” said Milton.

  “Do you think I’ve suddenly become Maria von Trapp?” I said. “I’m going to strum a guitar, embrace children, and sing about the hills being alive?”

  “Holly,” said Little Bean. His voice caught all of us off guard. Since we had started group therapy, Sarge and Little Bean seemed to have taken the Silent One’s vow.“You know, you really do have a way with children; you just have to find it.” His words reminded me of something I’d heard a long time ago, and I immediately shoved them under the door of the closet in the Committee’s living room, where I still never went under any circumstances.

  “I’m not looking for it,” I said.

  { 18 }

  I checked the piece of paper to confirm the address: 52 Water Street; that was what it said on the side of the building. I reached for the door. My hand hanging in the air appeared disembodied. I gripped the handle. It felt warm. I was a bit surprised by this, because it was early November.The smoky blue sky held on, refusing to give way to nighttime. A faint star blinked off in the distance over a rooftop. The first star of the night. At least, it was the first one I saw. Pushing the door open, I glanced back, thinking that I should make a wish. Next time maybe. My wishes never seemed to come true and I was already late.

  The place was funky, as advertised. I couldn’t tell if the carpet was red or black, or red and black, or just dirty.The lights looked like glowing spiders suspended on their silken webs, ready to bite any prey that strayed underneath. I steered clear of the lamps and made my way over to what I thought must be the entrance. I heard muted laughter. Here goes nothing. I clutched the long metal bar with both hands.

  There were about twenty rows of faded red velvet seats. I had read that this place was originally a burlesque theater from 1920. The seats certainly looked to be from that era. I saw different faces up on the stage, and in the middle of them the back of a woman who, judging from the medium-length brown hair, had to be Pam.

  The woman turned. “Holly.” She leaped from the stage and walked toward me. “I was so surprised when you called.”

  “Well, like I said on the phone, I thought about it and concluded, Why not? Why not?” I hadn’t told her the truth on the phone and I’d leave before I spilled it now. Little Bean’s words haunted me, but the real motivating factor was that Peter and Pam were best friends. Working with her made me feel as if I were near Peter. He’d become a habit, albeit a bad one, like smoking. I couldn’t tell you why I loved to smoke; I could only tell you I couldn’t imagine life without cigarettes.

  “Why not indeed!” said Pam. She’s making i
t hard for me to dislike her. She threw her arms around me and delivered quite an embracing hug from someone who was so short. Then again, maybe not.

  “I think I just heard a rib crack.” I backed away.

  “We are just getting started. I was going over the play with the kids. Cyrano de Bergerac. Did I tell you?”

  I checked the ceiling to see if that last word was lodged up in the rafters. I was going to have to say something to her about the exuberance. See if she would be willing to take it down a notch or twenty.

  “Great,” I said. “So, I should . . . uh . . .”

  “Everyone.” Pam rapidly clapped her hands. “This is Holly Miller. She is helping us.And”—she put her hands on her hips—“we are going to help her get here on time.”

  I started to roll my eyes and then remembered that I was an adult and these were impressionable kids. One of them stifled a laugh with her hand, elbowed the person next to her, and whispered. Too late.

  “Sorry, kids,” I said, embarrassed, and then to Pam, “So what should I do?”

  “Just sit there in the second row. We’re about to start auditions. Did you bring a clipboard and pen? I have an extra one for you.”

  “I actually did bring those along, as instructed,” I said, patting my book bag.

  I walked to the second row, sidled past a few chairs, and sat in one that seemed almost sturdy. As my butt met the skinny, stiff springs, I realized I was right—these chairs probably had been here since the twenties.

  The auditions started. I had to admit the kids were pretty good.They took this acting stuff very seriously. After the second reading, I started taking my job as casting director, amongst other things to be determined, very seriously, and was making extensive notes about each tryout. Pam whispered to me when the first standout took the stage to read. I agreed with her that this was definitely a candidate for the lead role. Halfway through the auditions, I was whispering to Pam my thoughts about whoever was currently onstage. I started giving direction toward the end.