Sounds Like Crazy

by Mahaffey, Shana

  “Of course they were,” I said.

  “Sarah is the keeper of your family history, Holly,” said Milton.

  I always thought he’d hatched these harebrained recipes out of the sky. Turned out my sister provided the ingredients. I wanted to be angry, but how could I? It had worked.

  “How did you know that Betty Jane would come to group therapy?” I said to Milton.

  “Even though you were unaware of them, I suspected the Committee wasn’t completely gone. I thought instead that Betty Jane, as ruler of the Committee, had forced them to hide with her. Do you recall the deal I made with Betty Jane? The one that enabled you to start working as a voice-over artist? She agreed to resolve conflicts in therapy if I requested it.” I nodded my head. “I knew that despite her flaws, Betty Jane was a woman of her word.”

  Milton shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands, palms up. “I had a hunch that she’d come to group therapy, so I played it.”

  “But Ruffles didn’t come back with her,” I said. Then I felt as if all the air were being sucked out of my lungs. I closed my eyes. Ruffles’s pillow lay empty over in the corner.

  “Ruffles isn’t here, Milton. She’s not here.”

  I felt sick. How did I miss her? I know seeing Aiden was traumatic, but how did I miss her? Then I noticed Betty Jane’s chalky face and I knew that Ruffles’s absence wasn’t one of her tricks.

  “Interesting,” said Milton.

  “Interesting!” I screamed. “Ruffles is missing.”

  “Holly, yelling is not productive,” said Milton. I wondered if strangling him would be. He leaned forward. “Remember the first session, when I made you state that you wanted to resolve the conflicts with the Committee through group?” That’s right. He’d made me say the words. “The Committee has been with you the whole time. But because Betty Jane is the ruler, she had the power to decide if they were visible or not. Because she agreed to remain your equal, you had the power to order them back at any time. Inside or outside therapy,” said Milton.

  It was a new dawn every ten minutes with Milton today. This one didn’t include sunshine.“So I could have asked Betty Jane to come back and bring the Committee?”

  “It had to be an order, Holly, not a request.You had to exert your power. Remember when you ordered her to bring Ruffles back? She did it.”

  As I considered the past few months of my life, I wanted to throw something at him.“We waste so much time on examining things, why didn’t we examine that moment? Why didn’t you tell me I could order her to come back full-time? You had the means to give me back my Committee and you didn’t do it.”

  “No,” said Milton, “I did not do it.”

  “How could you do that to me? I was miserable.” And now I was angry.

  “Yes,” said Milton quietly, “I know you were miserable, but no more so than when you had Betty Jane.”

  I turned toward the window. Outside it looked like a down pillow had broken over the city as featherlike snowflakes floated from the sky. Milton was sort of right and he was also wrong. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of examining the complexities of his statement at the moment. I needed to find Ruffles.

  My eyebrows met in the middle as I concentrated on all of this. I didn’t care if I was etching the Grand Canyon between my eyes. “I don’t think Betty Jane knows where Ruffles is,” I said. “Does it work the same way? Can I order Ruffles back?”

  “You can try, but I suspect not,” said Milton.

  “Ruffles, come back now!” I said. Nothing happened. After the fifth time, I couldn’t stand the pained look on all the faces inside my head and sitting across from me.

  “How could she abandon me like that? Just leave without saying good-bye?” I whispered.

  “Holly, didn’t you tell me once you hated it when someone said good-bye because it meant that you would never see them again?”

  “So you think I’ll see her again? She’s hiding like she did when she felt bad about making Betty Jane go crazy and kidnap the Committee?”

  “Ruffles is here, Holly,” said Milton. “We’ll find her in due time.” I swear I heard hatching sounds and waited for another one of Milton’s barmy plans to surface.

  When he didn’t elaborate, I said, “So, what happens now?” I didn’t know what felt worse, seeing Aiden’s mangled face or not feeling Ruffles’s bulk in the corner of my head. I felt so dead and exhausted I wanted to sleep for ten years.

  “That depends on you.”

  “The rest of the Committee . . . I can take them back, or leave them here in group therapy?”

  “No,” said Milton.“Now that the group therapy has exposed the underlying cause, the Committee can no longer stay here. What you do with them next is up to you.”

  “Is it? If I say I don’t want them back, then they just disappear?” I knew this was what I should do. They were in the hallway between wherever they had been and their house that sat inside my head. I was almost free.

  “If I let them come back, will Ruffles be with them?” I said.

  “I think you know the answer to that, Holly,” said Milton.

  I felt as if I were in the crush box my vet used when he examined Cat Two. He’d place him in a Plexiglas rectangle and push against him with a panel until he was hemmed in on all sides, trapped like I was now.

  The Committee pressed against me like the panel. Even if I resisted, I’d be pushed to the wall, because saying good-bye brought about the result I feared most—I would never see them again. Saying good-bye meant letting go of Aiden. Like Cat Two, though, even faced with the obvious conclusion, I still searched for a different ending.

  “You said the Committee was there to shield me. Protect me. Right?”

  Milton nodded his head.

  “But Betty Jane didn’t let them. She kidnapped them. I was abandoned and alone.”

  “You were not alone. And you protected yourself with my help and the help of the Committee at our sessions until you were ready to know the truth.When you were ready, you allowed the truth to come forward.” I opened my mouth to protest. Milton held up his hand to stop me.“Holly, each member was a part of a complex system. Each had a part to play and they played it. It is time now to let the remaining ones go.”

  We balanced there on the teeter-totter of silence. It wasn’t like I didn’t know he was going to say that, but when it finally registered, I felt as if Milton had just let go of a slingshot band and I was the item flung into an airless abyss. A muscle spasm rippled from inside my stomach through my neck like a sonic boom and I coughed out the word, “No.”

  “No!” I said it this time with the fierceness of a mother bear protecting her cubs.“I have to find Ruffles. She might still come back. And I don’t want to let go of, well, you know . . .” I didn’t want to let go of Sarge, the Silent One, and Aiden. Betty Jane could move along, as far as I was concerned.

  “Very well,” said Milton. Disappointment skittered across his face.

  Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, the expanse of the Committee’s house pressed hard at my skull once more. My head didn’t move, and even though I felt the weight of having the Committee back in their house, the heaviness that accompanied Ruffles was missing.An aftershock of defeat washed over me and a new torrent of tears started.

  “What are you crying for?” snapped Betty Jane. “We have been looking at that bloody mess for years.”

  Then she stood, arms akimbo, and walked to the middle of the Committee’s living room. “Well,” she said with the right touch of Southern drama, “I must say, it is good to be back.”

  She pointed a red fingernail over at the console table and remarked,“The place is dusty and the plants are dead.And someone remove that pillow.” She curled her mouth in disdain.

  “Shut up,” I said. I quickly put my hand to my mouth as if to push back what had just come out, as shock registered on Betty Jane’s face. “I want it to stay,” I said half apologetically, half defiantly. She rolled her
eyes.

  “Everyone back where they belong, I presume?” said Milton.

  “No, not everyone,” I said sadly.

  Milton nodded.

  “One last question,” I said. “The Committee still doesn’t know what has been going on in my life outside of these four walls, right?”

  “I suspect that they know only what you have talked about in group,” Milton said, smiling.

  “Well, that’s at least an early birthday present.”

  “Tomorrow, isn’t it?” said Milton. I nodded.“Happy birthday.”

  Yeah, a dead brother, no Ruffles, and the bitch is back. Happy birthday indeed.

  When I got home, I saw I had a message on my machine. I sighed. I hung up my coat, fished my pack of Marlboros out of my bag, and went to my bedroom.

  Betty Jane sniffed loudly inside my head.

  I opened the box. I had one cigarette left.

  “This is my last cigarette. I would like to enjoy it in peace. If you talk to me while I’m doing that, I will go out and buy another pack and keep smoking. Understand?”

  I could see this was a real dilemma for her. But I knew that in the end she would capitulate, and she did.

  I shut the bedroom door so I wouldn’t have to hassle with prying Cat One away from the window. I kicked off my shoes, pushed up the glass frame, and then sat down on the sill with my feet on my bed. I shook my last cigarette from the box, brought it to my lips, flicked the lighter, and inhaled.

  Who was responsible for Aiden’s death? Sarah claimed the right to own the responsibility. I claimed the responsibility and added the guilt Sarah had let go of a long time ago. My mother overruled both of us and claimed the burden for herself. Uncle Dan said maybe nobody was responsible. It was just one of those events set into motion when nobody considered the possible consequences of their actions. In the end, we had to have faith that the world works in ways that we don’t understand.That was easy for him to say. My faith bounced off the hood of a car and then shattered on the asphalt twenty-seven years ago.

  My mother said that when she saw how badly Aiden’s head was injured, she prayed that he would die.When I realized that it was Aiden lying mangled on the street, I prayed that he stay with me. My mother’s request was granted. I guess God answers the easy prayers.

  My fingertips burned. I was at the filter. I stubbed out what was left of the cigarette and closed the window. May as well see who had called.

  I pressed the play button on the answering machine.

  “Hi, Holly, it’s Rhonda.” Mike Davey’s assistant.“I wanted to let you know I heard on the QT that last week, when they were coming up with show ideas, your name was mentioned. A lot. Ratings are down.The two people who replaced you aren’t cutting it. I think they’re going to ask for you back. Hope this is good news for you?”

  “Well,” said Betty Jane inside my head. She sat at her vanity in a silk robe with a powder puff in her hand.

  “Well, what?” I snapped.“You’re ready to go back to work?”

  “Of course!” She smoothed her hair inside my head.

  “Good, because we start first thing Monday,” I said.

  Betty Jane’s face registered confusion.

  { 26 }

  The alarm clock sounded. I rolled over and slapped it hard without even opening my eyes. Already half risen from my bed, I pushed myself all the way up and sat there with my head hanging forward and my legs dangling over the side. My eyes remained closed to the outside world. The inside world was as clear as glass.The Committee waited, lined up on the couch, dressed and ready to go.

  “Uh,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.“We don’t have to leave for an hour.”

  Sarge jerked a thumb at Betty Jane. Of course. She expected me to sleep beyond the last possible minute and then be running late. I stood up and shuffled off to the shower.

  An hour later, I tugged my hat over my ears and said, “Let’s go.” Sarge and Aiden simultaneously pulled their red plaid duck-hunting hats on their heads and tied the leather strings under their chins. The color of the hats mirrored Aiden’s sneakers and his bloody face. I cringed when I thought about the fake-fur earflaps against his injured skin. Aiden smiled inside my head. I knew it was meant to comfort me, but the holes, where his teeth had been, filled me with unspeakable sorrow.

  “Focus, Holly,” I whispered. The Silent One appeared with his blanket draped across his shoulders, and Betty Jane donned her cashmere coat.

  I opened the front door to my building.

  “Where’s the car?” said Betty Jane inside my head.

  “No car,” I said.

  “We are calling a taxi then?” Betty Jane emphasized are like it was a command.

  “No,” I said in a voice I hoped conveyed steely nonchalance.“We are taking the subway.” I accentuated are in the same way she did.

  She narrowed her eyes and replaced shock with chagrin.“The subway!” Betty Jane shouted inside my head as she angrily unbuttoned her coat, yanked it off her shoulders, and threw it on the Committee’s couch.

  I put my hands over my ears as a reflex, even though it wouldn’t abrogate the screaming in between them. Breathe. Focus. Relax the shoulders. I’m better than the Silent One now. With assistance in the form of the two nicotine patches I applied this morning, that is.

  “I refuse,” said Betty Jane inside my head.

  “Good for you.” I walked down First Avenue.

  “You say that now, but you’ll be singing a different tune when we arrive and you discover how much you need me,” said Betty Jane inside my head. “You are nothing without me,” she added with a sharp point in the air.

  I continued toward the Second Avenue subway stop. The Committee’s house hovered over my head like a cowl.

  “I don’t need you,” I said.

  “We’ll see about that!” Betty Jane stormed out of the Committee’s living room, slamming the door.The pictures on the wall rattled and I felt the corners of the frames poking at the inside of my head. Finally some peace. I straightened my shoulders and quickened my pace.

  On the subway, I sat across from a mother and her toddler. The child stood on the orange plastic seat with one hand on his mother’s shoulder and the other one on the silver hand bar that ran floor to ceiling.A group of teenage boys opened the door and came through talking loudly.The mother turned her head toward them. The child leaned away from his mother, stuck out his tongue, and licked the silver bar like it was a giant ice-cream cone. Sickened, I moved forward in my seat. At the same time, the mother turned around and cried out in horror as she yanked her child back against her body.

  The child, now in his mother’s grip, grinned impishly at me as the train drove into the Fourteenth Street station. The doors opened. The mother jumped up, scooped the laughing child off the seat, and made a quick exit out the door. As the train pulled away, I watched her leap the stairs two at a time.The child’s legs moved back and forth as if he were swimming sideways.

  “On her way to the nearest emergency room for sure,” I muttered to myself.

  I switched at Forty-second Street and hopped the seven to Times Square. I disembarked there and read the ticker as I made my way over to Fiftieth Street.

  The waiting area was shabbier than Al’s last studio.When he’d told me he’d downsized the office to save money, I had expected something more compact, not something less luxurious. I didn’t think you could do less than the bare-bones decor he used to have. Clearly I was wrong.

  I sat in a folding chair while Al’s assistant searched for him. I wondered what was taking so long, because the office size definitely didn’t require a search party. I glanced at the script to pass the time. I can do this standing on my head.

  “I can’t believe they got a star to do this for them,” said the guy manning the counter.

  “A dim star. Or shall we say a star that’s gone out.” I laughed while digging in my bag for my highlighters.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “What happened anyw
ay?”

  It amazed me how people felt entitled to know my business. Besides, anything I told him would land on Page Six the next slow gossip day. I forced my mouth into a friendly smile and said lightly, “I am sure you read about it.”

  He looked disappointed. “So, you’re doing this now?”

  “It’s a favor for a friend,” I said.

  Al’s assistant returned.

  “Did you know that she’s the voice of Violet and Harriet from The Neighborhood?” he said to her.

  “I used to be the voice behind them,” I said, reading the script. “They have a couple of other women doing them now.” I ran the neon green felt tip across a sentence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Al’s assistant mouthing, You weren’t supposed to say anything. I smirked. Good old Al. After I had booked the gig Mike had recommended I take, he’d probably covered every inch of the scandal with anyone who’d listen and then said, “But keep it to yourself.” I certainly heard plenty of gossip when I was a regular in his studio. Oh, well.

  “The show sucks without you,” said Al’s assistant.

  “I’ve heard. Shall we get started then?” I was tired of this exchange.

  The booth in the new place reminded me of a standard office cubicle. It was much smaller and far less hospitable than the last one, and a broom closet compared to the booth we used to record The Neighborhood. I’d recently read that the inventor of the cubicle lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called “monolithic insanity.” This was a fact only Ruffles would appreciate. The thought brought with it the weight of her absence.

  I shook my head, hoping the feeling of sadness would fall off me as I stepped into the booth.When I had booked this gig, the Committee was still absent, at least to me. I planned to rely on my own voice and training as I did the recording. Even though I could probably make a deal with Betty Jane, I decided to stick to my plan and go it alone.

  First, I got into character by visualizing myself as a teacher in my late forties. Knowledgeable, honest, someone you trust to give you the right information. Aiden put on a pair of glasses.