Sounds Like Crazy (27 page)

I
started the next group therapy session talking about my relationship with Peter. When I saw how much Betty Jane loathed talking about him, I spent four more sessions discussing only my failed relationship, with Ruffles encouraging every word. It was amusing to note that Betty Jane hated talking about Peter when she was the one responsible for the start of relationship in the first place.

Betty Jane had been working the morning Peter came into my diner with three girls and another guy, all of whom had varying shades of flaxen hair and wore nondescript clothing. They were obviously banking on the notion that a greasy breakfast staved off the inevitable hangover brought on from a night of too many cocktails. When I asked if the group wanted coffee, Peter turned and I felt that unexplained jolt of recognition that happens between two people. But I stared because I’d never seen eyes that blue. When I told Betty Jane the group looked like a lot of effort for very little tip, she said, “Not necessarily,” and I knew she’d picked up on my instant crush. I expected her to torment
me over it, but when he appeared on a Monday morning, alone, she surprised me.

Around midmorning Peter made a motioning gesture when Betty Jane was in control. I sat inside my head holding my breath as she sauntered my body over.Whoever said time moves slowly for those who wait had no idea how slowly. Finally we were in front of him.

“You’re pretty funny,” said Peter.The words were casual, but his eyes sparkled flirtatiously.

“And you”—Betty Jane pointed my finger at him—“are fresh.”

“That sounds like something my mom would say,” said Peter.

“Well, your mom must be a very refined woman,” said Betty Jane. Peter nodded his head and laughed. While they bantered back and forth, I felt suspended over a million tiny pins.

Toward the end of my shift, Peter beckoned again.This time I was in control. I wore clogs, and still my unsteady gait to his table reached back all the way to the first time I wore a pair of three-inch heels. My face burned cherry red when I stood in front of him.

“Can I bum a smoke?” said Peter.

How does he know I smoke?
“Sure,” I whispered, “follow me.”

I felt his eyes on me as we walked through the kitchen and out to the back alley, and I expected him not to be there when I turned around, because he’d had a close-up of my backside. Peter held the door to the outside open for me. I opened the cigarette box, willing my hands not to shake. “I only have one left.” I held it up for him to see. I didn’t tell him I had another pack in my bag.

“We can share.” He removed the cigarette.

“You have beautiful hands,” I said.The kind that should play a
piano. Or me, I thought. Peter tapped me on the nose with his forefinger. We laughed and shared the cigarette. When I made a reference to Kierkegaard while bantering with him, he kissed me.

He asked to meet me the following afternoon. I was surprised and thrilled when he took me to Bobst Library. Betty Jane was disgusted and uninterested. But it was too late. Then Peter was more surprised when he found out how much I knew about religion, and he asked me, “Are you a nun?”

“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.”

“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.