Sounds Like Crazy

by Mahaffey, Shana

  “Maybe even trade-show announcements,” I said. Betty Jane exploded inside my head. “She’s upending furniture. At least the pieces she can lift.” I rolled my eyes upward.

  “Holly, think about what you are doing!” shouted Betty Jane inside my head. She stumbled across the room with her arms outstretched. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that she had been drinking again. I pitied her at that moment.

  “I don’t care if I ever do voice acting again.”

  “You don’t mean that!” cried Betty Jane. The motion picture of my career as a voice-over artist played behind her. I was unmoved.

  “I am not willing to sell my soul a second time,” I said.

  The “this is your career” movie stopped abruptly.

  Sarge and Aiden grabbed Betty Jane by the wrists and dragged her toward the door inside my head. Her hair was in disarray. Her shirttail untucked. Nail polish chipped. She dug her spiked heels into the hardwood floor. Sarge and Aiden tugged her arms and continued forward. Her right heel snapped and then the left heel snapped. Betty Jane struggled. She scratched and spit at them. They dragged her to the door.The Silent One stood and opened it. A waterfall as big as the Niagara flowed outside.

  Sarge and Aiden swung Betty Jane back and yelled, “One.”

  Betty Jane screamed.

  Back again. “Two.”

  Betty Jane howled.

  Back again, and then on the final big swing Sarge and Aiden cried, “Three!” And they let go.

  Betty Jane hurtled out the door.

  She managed to hook her fingers around the doorjamb and then she gripped it like a barnacle on the hull of a ship.The tips of her fingers whitened around her chipped nails as she clutched at the wood. The water rushed right up to the doorway. The strong current loosened Betty Jane’s hold. One hand slipped off.

  She cried out inside my head, “Holly, please.”

  My resolve weakened.

  Betty Jane dug her remaining hand all the way into the wall. The other hand came around and reattached itself. Her head appeared in the doorway. Two mascara-marked trails extended from the eyes to the jawline.

  “No!” I said.

  Betty Jane cried out again inside my head, “Please!”

  Compassion and pity welled up.

  She smiled. It was that old evil, crafty smile.

  “No!” I said again with conviction.

  The smile vanished and, for the first time, Betty Jane looked stricken.

  I wanted to be free of her.

  “I want to be free.” I closed my eyes. “I want to be free.”

  I was in the Committee’s room. The Silent One bowed his head. I motioned to Sarge and Aiden for help. The Silent One stopped them with his hand. Betty Jane had pulled herself halfway back into the house. I strode with purpose across the room, passing the heels of her shoes still lodged in the wood. I reached the front door. Betty Jane and I stared at each other the same way we did in group therapy. Betty Jane’s face was fierce with determination, her makeup smeared.

  I pried one hand loose from the doorjamb. Her arm flew back. She looked down at her body. I pried the other hand loose. Then I kicked her with my foot. And just as I had imagined so many times during group therapy when Betty Jane sat on the pink commode, I heard a loud flushing sound and Betty Jane swirled away.The echoes of her scream lasted quite a while after she disappeared.

  I turned to Sarge, Aiden, and the Silent One. I smiled. I hugged them. I wanted to dance. We were free now. Then the scene in my head transformed to the driveway, and sitting there was Sarge’s sparkling-clean ’57 Chevy. “Wait a minute!” I said, alarmed.

  “Holly, it’s time for me to go,” said Sarge.

  Tears filled my eyes. I told myself I didn’t mean for him to go too, but deep down in that place I ignored, I knew his departure was inevitable if I made the choice I had just made. Still, I said to him, “You don’t have to leave.”

  “But I do, Holly,” he said gently. Betty Jane was right: I always chose wrong.

  Sarge lifted my chin with his finger and said, “You made the right choice, soldier. This is the right choice. HUA?”

  “HUA,” I said through my tears.

  He got in his car. Turned the key. Gunned the motor. Put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. He idled in the street for a moment. Then he shifted the car into drive. Flipped on the stereo. Winked at me. Waved. Hit the gas. The powerful engine roared and the car shot forward. The song “Badlands” by Bruce Springsteen mingled with the motor. I stood until Sarge and his car completely disappeared.

  Aiden. My stomach lurched. I felt his hand slip into mine. I turned. Aiden’s face was completely healed. He smiled. All his teeth were back in place.

  “Not yet!” I cried.

  “Holly, it is time.You don’t need me anymore.”

  “I do need you. You can’t leave me. Oh, Aiden. You can’t leave.”

  “You don’t need me anymore, Holly,” said Aiden. “You have Sarah.You’ve had her since the day I died.” I did have Sarah. At that moment, I felt overwhelmed at how much of my burden my sister had carried all these years. How much I never knew.

  He led me back into the house.We sat on the couch. Aiden leaned against me; I pressed my cheek lightly on his head. I wept. Aiden’s hand became lighter and lighter until I was holding nothing. Aiden was gone. I could still feel the softness of his hair on my cheek. I clutched at the blanket he always carried, buried my face in it, and sobbed.

  After a while I felt a hand on my back. The Silent One. I looked up. He bowed his head.

  “Holly,” the Silent One’s voice sounded like all the notes on a musical scale. I had heard it only once, but I never forgot the melodious sound.

  When the Silent One said my name, I knew I’d reached the second-to-last page in this chapter of my life. I used it as a respite, just like I did when I was reading a book I didn’t want to finish. I needed to come to terms with this ending because it meant acceptance that I had no power and no control over many things in life.

  “Holly,” he said again.The sound of his voice made me realize that it was time to read the last page and close the book.

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You can’t be who I think you are because I stopped believing in you the day Aiden died.”

  “Do you know who I am?” repeated the Silent One.

  I remembered Mr. Rhode telling me that God is whatever we need him to be. It is just a matter of faith.Then I reflected on the day in the closet when I had tried to get to Narnia. I had pleaded for Aiden to stay with me. And at that moment I knew that I had gotten an answer to my prayer. It just took me twenty-seven years to see it.“If you were answering prayers,” I said to the Silent One, “why didn’t I get to Narnia?”

  “How do you know you didn’t?” He winked.

  Am I there? Nah. Narnia was too big to carry around in my head. Besides, I felt ready to live in the real world.

  The Silent One nodded. Then he picked something up off the floor and handed it to me. I opened my palm and received the gift. As I closed my fingers around it, the Committee’s room disappeared.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.This time I knew they were truly gone.

  I opened my eyes. Milton sat there contemplating me.

  “They’re gone,” I said. “The Committee, the house, all of it.”

  Milton nodded his head.

  “I made Betty Jane leave.” I wiped my eyes.

  “How do you think you were able to banish Betty Jane?”

  “I am Ruffles,” I said.

  Milton smiled and said, “Yes, you are, and then some.”

  “Hang on there. Ruffles minus about three hundred pounds,” I said. Milton laughed, and I appreciated his giving me a way to cover the awkward moment. “How?”

  “Psychic weight,” said Milton.“You buffered Ruffles with so much fat that you couldn’t see who or what was hidden underneath the surface.”


  The only thing people got wrong when they said I walked around with my head in the clouds was the clouds part. My head was in the Committee’s house, sitting on a large pillow in the left corner of the room.

  “At the theater, they asked me to do Harriet and it all came together,” I said. “I did her voice.”

  “Your voice was always a close match to Ruffles’s,” said Milton. “Her weight reflected confidence, which you did not have until you integrated her into your core self. Once you did that, her voice became your voice.”

  “But she did the integration by not returning after I’d unearthed the memory of Aiden’s death.”

  “Yes, somehow having your history intact enabled you and her to integrate without your being aware of doing so,” said Milton.

  “Has my voice changed?” I said. I hadn’t noticed, but my lack of awareness didn’t surprise me anymore.

  “It has, yes,” said Milton. “A couple of weeks ago I noticed the difference, and then I knew you had integrated her.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I said. Milton shook his head and I was grateful for the pass he’d given me on this rather large detail. But after what I’d been through, I had earned it.

  “So, I guess I am not going to get my job back now that Betty Jane is gone,” I said. And at that moment, I felt the full weight of their departure.They were all gone.

  “Good-bye,” I whispered.

  A heavy sorrow spread throughout my body. I felt small. Fragile. Alone.

  “Holly.” Milton leaned forward.“Remember, we always keep the best parts of the ones we love.”

  { 31 }

  Who was the Committee and how did I end up with it? This was what Milton and I would spend our time on now. I thought after I let them go, I would graduate, or something, from analysis. But instead of handing me a diploma, Milton told me the real work would now begin.After what I’d just gone through, I admit to a feeling of unease over what the “real work” journey looked like. Especially since I still had an aversion to introspection. But fear didn’t stop me from taking the first step and on Tuesday afternoon I sat, alone, in Milton’s waiting room. Waiting, because that was what one did in a place like this.

  I reached over for the NewYorker. My hand paused in surprise. Car and Driver? As I thumbed through the stack, I noticed that Milton had added most of the Committee’s magazine selections. He still drew the line at the unrealistic women’s magazines. I guess because he had patients—me included—who obsessed about ass size.

  The doorknob turned. I felt a jolt of anticipation. Milton peered through that doorway. “Holly,” he said softly.

  I nodded my head. Checked my nicotine patch—I was down to one—then stood and followed him.

  “So here we are,” he said as I took a seat on the pink commode.

  “Here we are.”

  “Any thoughts since our last session?”

  I had let go of my Committee and he asked me a question analogous to, “Did you enjoy your breakfast cereal?” Then I realized there really was no right question to convey what had happened. “You took an awful risk giving Betty Jane more power.” Arching my eyebrows I added,“What if it hadn’t worked?”

  “Well, worst case, your life would be ruled by a vacuous, entitled self who floated through life without responsibility or conscience,” said Milton.“You would be employed and hoarding Charmin.” He smiled.

  I laughed. “But it could have backfired.”

  “I agree. It could have,” said Milton. “We were not making progress.The voice acting gave me an opportunity to understand Betty Jane’s power. I knew that you were stronger than she, and the other Committee members were benevolent.You had chosen people who represented different aspects of comfort and security.” Before I could say it, Milton held up his hand. “Even Betty Jane. At any rate, once you recognized that you ultimately had control, I knew you would be able to integrate them. In time,” he added.

  “In time? Funny how you are so nonchalant about time. It was hell.”

  “Remember I told you when we began our work that it would get far worse before it got better?” said Milton.

  “Yeah. But I had no idea what I was agreeing to. Had I known, I don’t know that I would have done it. But”—I nodded my head—“being on the other side of it, I am glad I did.”

  “Holly,” said Milton,“you should commend yourself on your effort to take on the hardest task any human being can face.”

  “What is that?” I said.

  “Most people form a fragmented life in an effort to escape boredom.They pursue things that are elusive, emptily self-serving and escapist possibilities instead of self-knowledge.The Committee was that for you.”

  This must be the start of the real work.

  “The fragmented life is a despairing means of avoiding commitment and responsibility. In order to raise oneself beyond the merely aesthetic life, a life of drifting in imagination, possibility, and sensation, one needs to make a commitment,” said Milton.

  “What have I committed to?”

  “You have to ask?” He sat back.

  “I guess not,” I said. My gaze drifted to the window.

  “Then the answer is . . .”

  I turned back, looked Milton straight in the eye, and said, “Myself. I have committed to myself.”

  “And that, Holly”—Milton maintained the eye contact—“is quite an achievement.”

  We shared an embarrassed silence.

  “And how do you feel now?” he asked.

  “I am scared,” I said, “but I also feel excited. Kind of like Bambi starting out with wobbly legs hoping to become strong enough to run. Sappy, I know. Especially from me, but that is how I feel.”

  Milton considered this. “It’s an apt analogy.”

  We talked for the remainder of the hour. Ironically, I didn’t feel an urgency about the time. For once, it felt as if there was enough. And I knew that from now on, there would always be enough.

  When I left Milton’s building, I decided to walk. I wanted to appreciate these last moments. Imprint them in my mind. I wasn’t ready to share them with the noise and jostling of the subway, and I didn’t take cabs or use a car service anymore on principle.

  I ambled along slowly until my wobbling legs felt strong.

  EPILOGUE

  At the end of February, my phone rang right as I turned the corner of First Avenue. Peter. I hadn’t programmed his number into my new cell phone, but I still recognized it. I reflected on how the thought of not speaking to him for more than two months had been unbearable to me a year ago. The phone rang for the third time. After one more ring it would go to voice mail.

  I pressed answer. “Hello.”

  “Hey, it’s me.” I waited for the familiar lurch, like someone had dropped a cannonball in my gut.

  “I know,” I said. I felt nothing. Time and distance really do work if given the chance, I thought. I tucked away this insight for the next time I found myself facing a possibility I couldn’t or didn’t want to accept.

  “How are you?” Peter’s voice was tentative. I finally understood that in his own way, Peter had loved the image I projected to him. But that image required a monumental effort to maintain. How could he really know me when I had only recently met myself? I wish there were a way to truly see and know yourself as another does. But there isn’t.

  “Pam gave me your number,” said Peter.

  Pam and I had talked about Peter after we split up. She had told me I should take comfort in the fact that Peter genuinely loved the woman I had made him think I was.

  “I wondered.” Even though she had given him my number, my friendship with Pam was one of the good things to come out of my failed relationship with Peter.Who would have thought?

  “So, I am defending my dissertation next week,” Peter said awkwardly.

  “Good luck with that,” I said. I meant it. Peter had languished as a student when we were together. Our separation appeared to have had a positive ou
tcome for him too.

  “I’d like to see you, Holly. How about tonight?” I listened to his breathing. I used to love to do that at night while he slept. I told myself it was because I loved him, but really I was trying to find the clue to what gave him such peace. Now I would never know.

  “Tonight’s not good,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

  We both knew I wouldn’t call. I probably should have just told him the truth. But I had learned that a lady lets a man down easily.

  When I arrived at my front door, I saw two large envelopes and one brown paper-wrapped parcel. I picked them up in a stack. I recognized the envelope on the top, so I transferred it to the bottom of the pile. The next one was from my mother. I had told Sarah what had happened in Milton’s office and left it to her to fill in my mother. Facts were Sarah’s job. I didn’t know if my mother and I would ever talk about the years after Aiden had died. But for my part, I preferred to move on and see what the future held.The only depth in our relationship was the ugly scars from the past. No point in building a bridge over those. Still, I hoped that somehow we’d finally find a common ground in the vast expanse of superficiality.

  I tore at the envelope with my teeth as I turned the key in the dead bolt. The contents inside made me laugh. Sarah must have been thorough in her telling, and even with her faults, my mother’s gesture showed me that she understood—or that she at least had a sense of humor.

  I dropped both envelopes on the side table and looked at the parcel. The handwriting on the paper was Sarah’s. Sort of heavy, I thought. I tossed my keys on the table, lifted the strap of my bag over my head, and dropped it on the floor.

  I went into the living room. I removed the brown paper from the package Sarah had sent. Underneath it, I found a box neatly taped shut. Smiling, I thought about how Sarah was so meticulous about the littlest details. I pushed my finger in between the box flaps and slid it around all four sides.With the box bottom on my lap, I wiggled the top off.The contents inside were wrapped in pink tissue paper secured with a little gold sticker. I parted the paper. On top was something in bubble wrap. I caught my breath. Then I carefully lifted out the item underneath.