Sounds Like Crazy

by Mahaffey, Shana

  “Oh.” She nodded her head.“The audition was canceled.” Her words echoed off the walls of the now noiseless waiting room.

  Canceled, my ass, I thought. I blinked back angry tears and I told myself to maintain dignity, get out of here without making a spectacle.“Okay,” I said to the receptionist.“I wasn’t told.Thanks.”

  I turned and walked to the door, hoping my clenched teeth and fake smile would hold back the bile that had reached my tonsils as the waiting room occupants whispered to one another behind their hands.

  A woman stopped me at the elevator. “Do you know where the auditions for the Palmolive commercial are?”

  I looked down at her hand on my arm, hoping she would remove it immediately. “No. Sorry,” I said. I pulled my arm away and pushed the button for the elevator.

  Going down.

  Another week, a missing boyfriend, a vacationing shrink, and ten humiliating auditions later, I finally faced the truth—this was not one of Betty Jane’s intermissions.

  I’d spent almost a thousand dollars on transportation to and from my auditions, because that was the only way to avoid people and get there, and in between I spent the rest of the time chain-smoking and watching the Emmy award show video.All this had done nothing except produce dust bunnies as large as tumble-weeds rolling across the floor of the Committee’s living room until they started feeling like boulders pounding inside the walls of my head, reminding me that Betty Jane was gone. Ruffles was gone.They were all gone.

  I wrapped my mind around this realization. Then I crushed the thought like a piece of paper in my hand and decided to get revenge.

  I walked with purpose all forty blocks to my destination in Midtown. It was almost the middle of September.The city streets remained thick with heat and crowded with people who bumped me on all sides. I didn’t care.

  I stopped only once, to tip my head sideways toward the skyscrapers enclosing the pale white sky like sandwich bread over a thick slice of cheese. Then my stomach contracted against the wave of dizzying longing. Since Betty Jane had kidnapped Ruffles, my head no longer tilted to the left. My neck ached from the change, and I didn’t like the way the world appeared from my new perspective.

  I shook it off and walked faster, knowing I should walk slower so I wouldn’t be sweat-drenched when I arrived. But I was on a mission and nothing was going to stop me.As I neared Midtown, I noticed the brightly dressed people moved languidly, as if held back by the heat of the day. Barneys loomed large down the street. I had a half block to go.

  I arrived at the front entrance, gripped the handle, and opened the door with a flourish.The biting blast of air-conditioning almost knocked me over. My body temperature immediately switched from too hot to too cold. The dried sweat left salty gravel on my skin. I strode in and went straight to the escalator. Once in the shoe department, I picked up the first pair of sandals that caught my eye. I held up one of them to the suited salesman over by the register. He walked over to me.

  “I would like to try this in a size seven please.”

  “Of course. Have a seat and I will be out in a moment.”

  He returned a few minutes later carrying four boxes. “I brought some other sandals similar to the style you selected, just in case. . . .” He smiled. Just in case I wanted to spend more money, I thought.

  I had no funds coming in and no business buying anything. But I still had my emergency credit card.The expiration date on the first card had coincided with the month I shifted my tassel. I had graduated thinking the charge train had reached the credit station and resigned myself to living hand-to-mouth in NewYork City, figuring I had plenty of company.Then a new card, accompanied by a note from my mother that said, For emergencies only, had arrived. I used the card for everything except emergencies. It was never declined. When that card expired, another one appeared in my mailbox, this time with a note from my mother saying she blamed herself for how I turned out; and she apologized to me for being distracted during most of my childhood. The latter comment almost compelled me to write back and tell her she could add the four years I was in college and the few years after it to her timetable. She hadn’t returned to New York City since she left me on the NYU dormitory steps my freshman year, and I hadn’t been home to California.

  I viewed the two postgraduation credit cards as my mother’s way of saying, “I am paying attention now.” I knew she wasn’t, though, because Sarah reviewed the bill and my father paid it.

  I removed the lid of the box on the top of the pile and didn’t glance at the price. I hadn’t spent my father’s money in the two and a half years since I’d begun voice-over work. He owed me this one, and if he didn’t agree, he could take it out of my inheritance.

  “Do you have any of those little stocking things?” I said.

  The salesperson reached under the chair next to me and pulled out a box filled with stocking caps, removed two of them, and dropped them in my hand. I untied my running shoes and put my right toe to my left heel and forced off my shoe. I waited for a rank smell to fill the air-conditioned air. Nothing. Phew. I repeated the process on the opposite foot. Then I removed my socks, straightened my legs before me, and flexed my feet.

  I have a scar in the form of a question mark that starts on the top of my foot and ends right between my big and second toe. I got this when I was six and a half years old on a family picnic. My mother hoped it would fade because I got it at such a young age. Instead of fading, though, the scar grew with my foot, and because of this disfigurement, I was never allowed to wear sandals. The first thing I had intended to do when I arrived in New York was buy a pair of sandals, which was funny, because when I was growing up, shopping was a mother-daughter adventure that never lived up to its promise. Shopping with Betty Jane had managed to transform the memories of shopping with my mother into fond ones. And she also thought scarred feet should not be in plain view, so I never got that pair of sandals I’d promised myself fifteen years ago.

  I noticed the salesman watching me. I held up my foot, daring him to recoil in horror at the sight of its wrecked top. He didn’t even notice. I put the branded foot in the sandal and admired it. The strap of the sandal cut straight across the scar as if belting a question. I put on the other sandal and walked around.

  “I’ll take them,” I said as I looked down at the shoe mirror that was angled just perfectly for me to appreciate my feet from the side.

  “Do you want to try the others?” said the salesman hopefully.

  “No, just these today.”

  “Very well,” he said with obvious disappointment. “I’ll take them up to the register.”

  “Actually, can you just drop my running shoes in the box? I want to wear them.”

  “Of course.”

  I turned to the front. My scar sat proudly on my foot, making an ugly face. I turned to the opposite side and then the back. A frisson of joy coursed through my body. I was wearing sandals for the first time in twenty-six years, and Betty Jane wasn’t there to stop me. I went to the register and pointed to the box on the back counter.

  A different salesperson picked up the box, scanned the price, looked up, and said, “Four hundred seventy-nine dollars and eighty-four cents.” I felt a small jolt in my midsection.That was a lot of money for skimpy straps sewn to a leather foot bed. Oh, well, like I said, my father owed me.

  I exited Barneys thinking about what Peter had said to me last week when I’d told him it hadn’t occurred to me to finagle an extra ticket to the Emmy awards ceremony. “After all I’ve done for you, you’re not taking me to L.A,” were his exact words.Then he had walked out on me without saying good-bye. I didn’t read between the lines of his departure, because these exits were de rigueur. I’d thought he’d be back after a few days and we’d tuck one more ugly incident in the Do Not Discuss file and pick up where we’d left off.

  But standing there on Madison Avenue, I suddenly knew that what Peter really wanted was for me to give more of myself. He wanted to stop the come-close
, stay-away dance and take our relationship to another level. And, when I realized this, I knew I wanted to meet him halfway. I wanted to put my hand down and beckon him all the way forward. I’d start by apologizing for not taking him to the Emmys and promise to always put him first from now on. Then I’d tell him I was finally ready to give him everything.

  Armed with this new awareness, I wanted to find him immediately and tell him. I reached out my hand for a cab.This was too urgent for the subway. When I slid across the bench seat, I said, “Do you take credit cards?”

  “Yes.”

  I asked the cabdriver to drop me at the Fifth Avenue entrance of Washington Square Park. My heart pounded in my chest, but I knew everything would be fine as soon as I found Peter.When I was about fifty feet from the front door of Bobst Library, the front door opened. I skidded to a stop. It’s him. I opened my mouth to call out his name. Peter stepped back against the door. A smiling blonde appeared. I choked back the words about to spill forth. My blood froze in my veins.All color drained from my surroundings.

  I had spent most of my life receiving guidance from the Committee inside my head, and most of the time I didn’t want it. But right then I would have given anything to go on autopilot and let one of the Committee members take over. I wanted opinions. I wanted options. I wanted things with Peter to be the way I had imagined them ten minutes ago, before he paused in the doorway of Bobst Library to share a secret with an unfamiliar blonde.

  My voice hammered in my lonely head, echoing as if from a distance. Focus, Holly. Focus. I shook it off the way a dog shakes off the ocean when it first comes out of the water. It didn’t work. The waterlogged thought pounded louder in my head; nobody was in my mind to slap me back to my senses. I stood there feeling confused, like I’d missed the punch line.

  Peter ushered the woman ahead of him. I leaned forward to get a better glimpse of her. From where I stood she looked like the perfect woman—tall, thin, pretty, radiant smile. My nose and my ass at that moment grew to ten times their normal size.

  Peter said something to her. She smiled. He smiled. Their shiny white teeth snapped around my heart like a bear trap and a new wave of pressure closed in on me.

  At that moment, I knew I should turn around and walk away, but I was in the fourth ring of the ninth circle and Virgil was in the library. I knew I should walk away but I didn’t. I didn’t. Instead I stepped back just out of sight and watched them.

  She flirtatiously flipped her blond hair back. Peter put his arm around her waist and they started walking up the street and away from me.

  “Walk away,” I kept telling myself. Then God turned down his celestial dial, muting car horns, voices in the street, the sound of acceleration from the passing buses until everywhere was silence. People and cars slowed to a stop. All color was subdued to neutral tones. And I walked forward toward Peter and the girl.

  I followed them as they strolled along West Fourth Street.The quicksand sidewalk pulled at my feet. Each foot was encased in sludge. Each step was wrenched from the curb. Only Peter’s blond hair blazed like a beacon guiding me down the street. In slow motion, I dodged and weaved around pedestrians, always maintaining a safe distance behind Peter and the woman, but close enough to see them lean toward each other every other second to share a secret or a laugh.

  The perfect blonde stopped to regard something in a window. I skidded to a halt and waited behind a plant. I thought for sure that the glare from my pearly white feet would give me away. When I looked down now all I felt was remorse. I curled my toes under to try to hide them.This just stretched out the scar more, and then I wanted to take off those sandals and throw them at Peter. But the thought of hurling five-hundred-dollar shoes at Peter struck me as absurd.

  When they reached Astor Place, I knew he was taking her to East Village Books on St. Marks. That bookstore is mine, I fumed as I crept behind them.Taking that blonde to my bookstore felt like Peter had brought her home and fucked her in my bed.

  They stopped. Maybe they weren’t going there, I told myself. The sun glared at me through the black lenses of my sunglasses. It blotted out everything but their matching hair. They started strolling again at an accelerated pace. I wondered if he’d seen me. I moved quickly behind them now.

  “What should I do?” I asked myself. I wanted to put my hand down and beckon him forward.This had to be a mistake.They’re just friends. He can’t have seen me. If he had, he’d be thrilled. He’d explain this. What would I say? “I’m ready to give you everything”? And if I did, he’d welcome me with open arms, right?

  Wrong.What if this isn’t a mistake? What if I’ve lost him too?

  My world went dark. I felt like I’d fallen out of a hundred-story building and was descending fast.“Anyone,” I whispered,“if you are there, please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do.”

  I pushed my belly button back against my spine, hoping to squeeze the helplessness up through my torso and out my mouth. My chest collapsed into my lungs. I hit my toe on a raised piece of the sidewalk and tripped forward, catching myself awkwardly with my left foot. I swayed.The skin on the top of my toe hung back like a box top attached at one side. The blood made my sandal slippery. They crossed Fourth Avenue. I stepped off the curb in pursuit.

  I heard a honking horn mimicking the desperate pounding in my heart. I stopped short and jerked my head to the right.The source of the bleating horn inched closer. I smelled burned rubber. I heard the squealing of brakes as they scraped across the asphalt like nails on a chalkboard.

  A woman on the sidewalk raised her hands to her mouth. I saw Peter in the distance walking away from me.

  I turned back and watched the Yellow Cab move turtlelike in its forward trajectory. I wished it would hurry up and hit me. People yelled on either side of the street.Then the ground gripped me. I saw a phone number written horizontally down the front of the hood. I could read every digit. I slowly lowered my eyelids. The last flash I saw was the sharp teeth of the front grille of the car. I swayed Gumby-like into a C curve to catch the front bumper as it met my knees.

  { 14 }

  I stood with my palms flat against the hood of the car as I tried to figure out how I had ended up in the middle of Fourth Street with a bumper kissing my knees. I heaved the air out of my lungs as I stared at the horizontal phone number jailed by my splayed fingers.Then the ground rushed up and met my feet. The noises of the street began to swell a half a beat behind the movement on the street.The returning noise propelled me back to the curb I had just stepped off. I felt the chill of someone walking over my grave. The cabdriver splattered me with a string of profanities. I stared stupidly. All that was missing was the drool. The crowd started moving again.

  The cab drove slowly by me.The driver punctuated his rain of expletives with a gesture. I turned and saw Peter and the blonde disappearing up the next block. But not without a backward glance.

  I told myself Peter didn’t know it was me who’d almost been hit by a car. Had he known, he would have left that woman and rushed to my side.

  As my surroundings and the noise synchronized, I turned, quickened my pace, and ignored the palpable pull from behind as I repeated, “Peter didn’t know it was me” until it became fact. After walking half a block, I glanced back to see if Peter had stopped, to see if he was following me. He wasn’t. And I started repeating again, “Peter didn’t know it was me.”

  I need to call Sarah, I thought. My shaking hands dug around in my bag until I remembered I didn’t have my cell phone with me. Since I’d been fired, the phone didn’t ring, the pager didn’t beep, and there were no messages. So I’d stopped carrying all mobile modes of communication.There were still phone boxes dotting the city streets. And one happened to be right in front of me.

  Ignoring the decades of dirt surely coating the handset, I gingerly picked it up. Holding the handset so it hovered next to my ear, I dialed my sister. She wasn’t home. I dropped the phone back in the cradle, pressed my forehead against the handset, and
whispered, “Please. Please come back.”

  Nobody spoke to me; nothing happened.The house I carried around in my head remained a ghost town. Still, I had been whispering this for days. Sometimes yelling it when I was alone.The response was an iron door of silence.

  I backed away, stepped off the curb, and then sat down for I don’t know how long. I hunched over and cried, unnoticed by the passing pedestrians.The cold concrete crept through my jeans, turning my bones into an arctic loneliness that came only in the deadest of winter. After a while, I noticed the garbage scattered around my feet: a Reese’s wrapper, a coffee-stained paper cup, a silver gum paper. I wished one of those street-sweeping trucks would come and brush me away. I finally accepted that wasn’t going to happen and I got up and walked home.

  The message light on my answering machine was blinking. I hit the play button.

  “Holly, it’s Milton. I am back in the office and look forward to seeing you today at our regular hour.”

  He’s back.

  I’m not going.

  He’s back.

  I’m not going.

  For the four hours between Milton’s message and our appointment, I alternated between vowing not to show up and relief that he’d returned. On one hand I thought: Let him see what it feels like to open the door and find an empty waiting room. I told myself this would convey my feelings much better than I ever could anyway.Then I remembered I had done this in the early days of seeing him. It hadn’t had the effect I’d hoped for. Relief finally won out and I arrived fifteen minutes early for my appointment. I didn’t know what I resented more—that I was there, or that Milton didn’t look surprised to see me when he opened the door.