Sounds Like Crazy (29 page)

As an adult, when I hung a picture, I still glanced over my shoulder to see if my mother was there. Then I used really big nails and didn’t measure. I usually made quite a mess before hanging a picture just right.

The wall in front of me at that moment certainly was quite a mess.
Maybe I should paint. I wonder how much that will cost. Oh, who cares? Next week that’s what I’ll do during my free time.

 

I was in the middle of a short story in the
New Yorker
when Milton opened the door.

“Just let me get to the break.” I held up a finger.

Milton cleared his throat. I closed the magazine and placed it back on the table and stood up.

“You shouldn’t have magazines in your waiting room if you don’t want people reading them.”

I walked into the room, sat down, and closed my eyes. Betty Jane reclined on the couch. Sarge and Little Bean were left to stand.

“Slide over,” I said to her. She didn’t budge. I wished I’d smoked more before coming in. Betty Jane would probably move if I reeked like a Parisian, but since the session when I had discovered how I started smoking, my stomach had soured before I was halfway through with a cigarette.

Finally, Sarge and Little Bean dropped to the floor. “You don’t have to sit on the floor,” said Ruffles. “You can share my pillow.”

Betty Jane sat up, but they still went over and sat with Ruffles on her pillow. Then she pulled out her nail file, but the scraping had an antsy quality about it.

“Do they know what I think about outside here?” I said to Milton.

“Why? Were you thinking about something significant?” he said.

I wanted to tell him no, but the rest of the memory I’d unearthed while staring at my holey wall came rushing toward me.

“My mother never let things go very easily,” I said,“especially not holes in her walls. I’d made a few, so I skipped dinner. I knew I would pay for my civil disobedience, but I hoped to delay punishment as long as I could.”

 

I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to my stomach growl. Dinner was hours ago and my afternoon snack
had long been digested. After eleven, headlights from the driveway shone through my window. A car door slammed and the front door followed suit shortly after. I expected the shouting to start any moment. That would come only from my father. My mother’s voice always lowered in direct proportion to her anger and my father’s rose with his.

I crawled out of bed, inched down the hallway, and stopped short of the entrance. My parents’ bedroom was off to the left.

“. . . what time . . . and drunk,” was all I could hear my mother say.

“Lay off, will you?” demanded my father. “Christ, it’s always the same with you.”

More muffled words followed; then I heard, “Holly . . . disobedient . . . had it with her.”

I ran back to my room, slipped through the slightly ajar doorway, and dove into my bed. I was afraid of the dark. I wanted a light on at night. My parents compromised by leaving the laundry room light on and my door open just enough so a friendly beam of light offered a sliver of hope.

The light disappeared. The darkness closed in on me. My bedroom door slid across the carpet. I smelled whiskey and stale cigarette smoke. I heard my father unbuckling his belt. “Holly,” he whispered as he drew back the covers. I turned and scuttled away from him, hitting the wall on the side of my bed opposite my father. He couldn’t even wait until morning to deliver the beating my mother had goaded him into giving me.

I shut my eyes and saw Sarge dressed in camouflage creeping along a dark trench. His helmet and face were blackened as usual to help him blend in with the scenery. Back in the fox-hole the Boy huddled next to the Silent One, who sat calmly praying.

“Holly,” commanded Sarge, motioning me to follow. My eyes rolled back in my head.

“You stay and keep watch,” Sarge said fiercely to the Silent One. “I’ll get them to safety. Signal when it’s time to return.”

The Silent One, his face a grave mask, bowed his head.

Sarge held me and the Boy against his body as he moved stealthily toward a dim light in the distance.The darkness propelled us forward. I looked back. I couldn’t see the Silent One.

“All clear,” said Sarge, putting us down in front of his ’57 Chevy. I looked back at a blank wall. “Holly, face forward,” ordered Sarge, pointing at the car. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt again. He opened the driver’s door and we all got in the front.

The Boy and I rode along quietly. My eyes followed the yellow line on the road as Sarge drove. After about a mile, we pulled into a parking lot. In front of us was a well-lit playground with a large swing set in a sandpit. Everything surrounding it was dim and gray, as if a stage light were concentrated on this one area in the playground.

Sarge parked the car and turned off the engine.

I opened the passenger door.

“Holly, I am afraid,” said the Boy.

“Why?” I asked. “This’ll be fun.”

Sarge sat on a picnic table, his feet on the bench, watching me and the Boy. I waved at him.Then I gripped the swing chains, dropped into the leather seat, and turned to the Boy.“Follow me,” I said as I kicked off and started swinging back and forth.

On each ascent I stretched out my legs and then swept them back so I’d go faster and higher. Darkness and light became confused. Finally I pushed the swing up so high I was almost horizontal. Momentum rushed through my body and pressed me
forward. Then a bolt of fear shot through my chest. My hands slipped on the chains. I sailed backward. The Boy screamed. I dragged my feet across the ground to slow myself. The Boy sat motionless, clutching his swing chains and crying. When I started moving forward, I dug in my heels, angled my body toward him, and pitched off my seat. In the next motion, I put my arms protectively around the Boy, shielding his back with my body.

“Don’t cry,” I whispered as I hugged him tighter. “I’m sorry. You’re okay.You’re okay.”

Sarge nodded his head, stood up, and motioned to us.

“Come on.”

I led the Boy over to the car. My lower body ached and throbbed against the leather seat. We sat in there for a few minutes.

“Holly,” Sarge said, holding my face in both hands, “time to go home now.”

I wanted to get out of the car and run as fast as I could. Run past the swings and into the dark night beyond. Sarge patted my head.

When we pulled out of the parking lot, I whispered to Sarge, “Let’s keep going. Just drive until we reach the other side of the world. Never come back.”

Sarge shook his head sadly and parked in the driveway. I started to feel more solid. I got out of the car, slowly made my way up the walk, and then opened the front door.The Silent One bowed. As I stepped in, my knees gave way under me. I heard the crackling sound of a burning cigarette. I opened my eyes and saw a glowing orange tip over in the corner on my rocking chair. It moved toward me. I smelled stale whiskey and burned tobacco. Then I saw the silhouette of my father moving away.

“Holly, go to sleep now,” he whispered as he pulled my bedroom door all the way shut.

 

I sat on Milton’s couch weeping.

“Holly, do you think she knew your father would beat you if she told him about the tacks?” said Milton quietly.

“She knew,” said Little Bean. “She always knew.”

B
y Thanksgiving day the postcard encounters with the Committee had transformed the loneliness I felt into a distant ache, proving that patience does pay dividends, even if they were not the ones I’d waited patiently for. But because it was Thursday, I found myself at loose ends and longing for some sort of company. So I was out walking in sandals despite all the grief they’d caused. For some reason, after my feet tasted freedom, they refused to go back into closed shoes. What was I going to do when it started snowing?

On holidays, Manhattan streets provided an anonymous comfort the usual frenzied pace vitiated and gave unusual sounds a chance to breathe. Or maybe it seemed so on that particular Thursday because all the street sounds were new to me. Maybe that was why the familiar rattle of a Volkswagen Beetle from the sixties, the one that sounded like a bag of rocks and sand shaking, stood out as it approached me from behind. When I heard that sound, my surroundings dimmed and I felt as if I were back in second grade waiting for Uncle Dan to pick me up from school.

My uncle said to me once, “Routine is the momentum that keeps a man going.” Our routine started when I entered second grade. It consisted of Uncle Dan transporting me to and from school every day in his powder blue VW Beetle.We called it the School Bug.That School Bug departed our home every morning at precisely seven thirty-five, and it approached the school entrance every day at precisely five minutes past three in the afternoon, which was the exact moment I’d walk through the front door of the building.

He never left me waiting. Not once, and that year those rides were the highlight of my day. In the mornings we’d load up and listen to Bruce Springsteen on the way to school.We usually got through two songs before I exited the car. But the afternoon ride was my favorite, because I got to stand and sing the whole way home.

The following year, when I started third grade, we settled right back in as if only a weekend instead of a whole summer had passed.

Friday, October 2nd was the last day Uncle Dan picked me up from school. The night before, Sarah and I had heard my mother and my uncle arguing.The yelling started after my bedtime. When we heard the raised voices, Sarah turned up her record player. I crawled out of bed, crept up the stairs, and crouched just below the landing, where I could hear but not be seen.

“Sneaking around the house at night imagining things.” My mother spoke in a loud tone. I sat up, surprised. She always said a lady never yelled. I ducked back down. My uncle did ghost around the house. We would find him in the oddest places. Usually crouched behind furniture. Sitting at the kitchen table staring at the wall. One morning I woke up in my father’s closet and there he was sitting next to me. My eyelids were crusty and I had to pull hard to peel them apart.When I did, the first thing I saw was
his arm with the freckles dancing in the curly red hairs. I rubbed the grit out of my eyes and saw the whole of him. Back against the wall. Knees up. His eyes wide open, vacant, staring.

“Elizabeth.” My uncle sighed.“I don’t deny that I have problems, and I am grateful for all you’ve done for me. But you, the girls . . . I am concerned for your safety. Holly told me—”

“Holly is a liar,” snapped my mother. “She lives in her own little world.You of all people know about that.”

“Elizabeth, she showed me the bruises on the backs of her legs.” I bit my knee to keep from making any noise. After a visit from my father the night before, I had always tried to sit on the car seat with force to get the first wave of pain out of the way. The act of doing so had a numbing effect, and each sitting down thereafter hurt less and less. By the end of the day I almost didn’t notice it. But this worked only if there was a break between the beatings.After I got one, I would make an effort to stay quiet and out of the way, but I didn’t manage it that week. Uncle Dan had noticed me grimace as I had tried to gingerly sit on the bench seat of the car. He clenched his teeth and slapped the seat next to me with his hand. I flinched. He apologized and pulled me close. As he hugged me, he checked the backs of my legs. Then he promised that he’d make sure this didn’t happen again.

“She misbehaves. She provokes her father. She provokes me. And tell me, is she going to work to put food on the table? Is she going to take care of us? How does she think we will survive? I cannot work. I will not work,” snapped my mother.

“I know that life as a single mother, with no education, raising children, having to work, not having money, is a scary thought,” he continued. “But isn’t the safety of your children, your freedom, your pride, worth more than Dean’s money?”

“It is not a question of that. Holly needs to start behaving. Simple as that.”

“You know that’s not true. My God, Elizabeth, are you so afraid to be poor and on your own that you’d rather hold a man hostage and condone his brutal behavior toward his children? Toward you?”

“How dare you,” said my mother.

“I do dare, because I care about what happens to you.To the girls.To Dean. He needs to be free of all of this.You know that. If you had let him leave . . .”

“What are you talking about? You and your crazy notions. You need to be free, not Dean.You need freedom because you cannot cope with what you did.”
What’s she talking about? What did he do?
My parents always said he was strange because of “The Vietnam.” Was “The Vietnam” making my mother angry? I didn’t understand.

“I—”

“I think it’s time you found a new place to live.You are no longer welcome in this house,” my mother said quietly.

I gasped.This was my fault. I should have laughed at the pain when I sat down. I should have been disciplined like Sarah, like my mother, like my father.When my uncle let me slide, I should have refused. But I didn’t want to. I had felt safe with him and I wanted that more. But at that moment, hunkered down there on the landing, I wished I had not given in. I wished I had not been the lazy and selfish daughter my mother always said I was. The annoying troublemaker my father always said I was. Had I tried harder, everything would be different. But I didn’t, and now, because of this, my uncle had to leave.

“Elizabeth—”

“I would like you to be gone by the weekend.” I recognized the finality in her voice. Not even my father could get her to change her mind when she used that tone.

Nobody said a word about him leaving at breakfast the next
morning. That day he strayed from our routine and we drove to school in silence. The Boy wept softly. I wanted to cry too. I wanted to shove the Bruce Springsteen tape into the stereo and turn the volume knob until the music was loud enough to sing away the knot tying in my gut. Instead I rode quietly belted in the backseat.