“If I broke my promises to you, Holly, I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of what I did when I was drinking,” he said.
Inside my head, Ruffles almost choked on her chips.Then I felt as though a hook wrapped around my waist. I fell backward. Ruffles had never acted like this before. I tried to reorient myself as she turned my tilting head and looked at my father’s rigid jawline. “Yeah, well,” Ruffles said out of my mouth, “if I heard any promises, broken or otherwise, I don’t remember.”
I watched my hand pick up the pack of Marlboro Reds that was lying between the two seats. Then it pushed in the lighter, opened the box, and pulled out a cigarette. A pop interrupted the thick silence in the car. My hand raised the lighter to the end of the cigarette and lit it. Smoke blew out of my mouth at my father.
“I don’t remember a lot of conversations I have with you,” said Ruffles out of my mouth.
The car shot forward as my father savagely shifted gears. “I don’t know why I bother. You’re a miserable bitch like your mother.”
He started traveling again the next week.
“Thoughts, Holly?” said Milton.
“Karma sucks, right?” Then I saw Ruffles’s wan face and I immediately regretted my spite.
“Now, how about we have a discussion about ‘much-needed authority’?” said Betty Jane. Anyone who didn’t see that coming had to be blind.
“You shut up,” I said.
“Careful who you choose, Holly,” said Betty Jane.
“I’ll choose Ruffles any day over you,” I snapped. Ruffles looked up with a gleam in her eye. I felt a rush of warmth and protectiveness.
“Let’s get back to the memory, shall we?” said Milton.
“What more can I say? My father was a duplicitous jerk who did only what the moment required for the advancement of the most important person in his life—himself. He cheated on his wife. He took all his rage and frustration out on the smallest and weakest person in front of him. That was me, in case you didn’t know. And, yes, with the exception of rage and frustration, I pretty much choose men who are like my father.And I’m hanging
on to the very incarnation of the man right now. I’m not stupid, you know.”
Milton and I sat in silence for five minutes. I know because I followed the second hand on my watch the entire time.We had five more minutes and the hour would be over. I hunkered down to wait Milton out.
He cleared his throat. “Holly, I’ve been thinking that you might want to add some activities to your daily routine.”
“Like what,” I said, “the library?”
“What about the theater thing Peter’s friend called you about?” said Milton.
“Do you think I’ve suddenly become Maria von Trapp?” I said. “I’m going to strum a guitar, embrace children, and sing about the hills being alive?”
“Holly,” said Little Bean. His voice caught all of us off guard. Since we had started group therapy, Sarge and Little Bean seemed to have taken the Silent One’s vow.“You know, you really do have a way with children; you just have to find it.” His words reminded me of something I’d heard a long time ago, and I immediately shoved them under the door of the closet in the Committee’s living room, where I still never went under any circumstances.
“I’m not looking for it,” I said.
{ 18 }
I
checked the piece of paper to confirm the address: 52 Water Street; that was what it said on the side of the building. I reached for the door. My hand hanging in the air appeared disembodied. I gripped the handle. It felt warm. I was a bit surprised by this, because it was early November.The smoky blue sky held on, refusing to give way to nighttime. A faint star blinked off in the distance over a rooftop. The first star of the night. At least, it was the first one I saw. Pushing the door open, I glanced back, thinking that I should make a wish. Next time maybe. My wishes never seemed to come true and I was already late.
The place was funky, as advertised. I couldn’t tell if the carpet was red or black, or red and black, or just dirty.The lights looked like glowing spiders suspended on their silken webs, ready to bite any prey that strayed underneath. I steered clear of the lamps and made my way over to what I thought must be the entrance. I heard muted laughter.
Here goes nothing.
I clutched the long metal bar with both hands.
There were about twenty rows of faded red velvet seats. I had read that this place was originally a burlesque theater from 1920. The seats certainly looked to be from that era. I saw different faces up on the stage, and in the middle of them the back of a woman who, judging from the medium-length brown hair, had to be Pam.
The woman turned. “Holly.” She leaped from the stage and walked toward me. “I was so surprised when you called.”
“Well, like I said on the phone, I thought about it and concluded, Why not? Why not?” I hadn’t told her the truth on the phone and I’d leave before I spilled it now. Little Bean’s words haunted me, but the real motivating factor was that Peter and Pam were best friends. Working with her made me feel as if I were near Peter. He’d become a habit, albeit a bad one, like smoking. I couldn’t tell you why I loved to smoke; I could only tell you I couldn’t imagine life without cigarettes.
“Why not indeed!” said Pam.
She’s making it hard for me to dislike her.
She threw her arms around me and delivered quite an embracing hug from someone who was so short.
Then again, maybe not.
“I think I just heard a rib crack.” I backed away.
“We are just getting started. I was going over the play with the kids.
Cyrano de Bergerac
. Did I tell you?”
I checked the ceiling to see if that last word was lodged up in the rafters. I was going to have to say something to her about the exuberance. See if she would be willing to take it down a notch or twenty.
“Great,” I said. “So, I should . . . uh . . .”
“Everyone.” Pam rapidly clapped her hands. “This is Holly Miller. She is helping us.And”—she put her hands on her hips—“we are going to help her get here on time.”
I started to roll my eyes and then remembered that I was an
adult and these were impressionable kids. One of them stifled a laugh with her hand, elbowed the person next to her, and whispered. Too late.
“Sorry, kids,” I said, embarrassed, and then to Pam, “So what should I do?”
“Just sit there in the second row. We’re about to start auditions. Did you bring a clipboard and pen? I have an extra one for you.”
“I actually did bring those along, as instructed,” I said, patting my book bag.
I walked to the second row, sidled past a few chairs, and sat in one that seemed almost sturdy. As my butt met the skinny, stiff springs, I realized I was right—these chairs probably had been here since the twenties.
The auditions started. I had to admit the kids were pretty good.They took this acting stuff very seriously. After the second reading, I started taking my job as casting director, amongst other things to be determined, very seriously, and was making extensive notes about each tryout. Pam whispered to me when the first standout took the stage to read. I agreed with her that this was definitely a candidate for the lead role. Halfway through the auditions, I was whispering to Pam my thoughts about whoever was currently onstage. I started giving direction toward the end.
I had theater practice three nights a week and therapy two days a week. Even though the total number of hours for both was about eight hours, I was more exhausted than when I had a full voice-over schedule or a packed diner.That didn’t stop me from having panic attacks about my finances, but Milton was adamant that I continue to focus all my energy on our work.To make do, I returned the forms for the credit card applications that had now replaced the surprise checks in my mailbox and waited for the anxiety tide to go from low to high.
The thought of Thanksgiving one week away transformed my financial panic into free-time panic, because there would be no theater practice Thursday night, and if Milton wouldn’t cut France short, he certainly wasn’t cutting out turkey. Add to that that Thanksgiving always marked the end of the season for
The Neighborhood
. I hadn’t watched the episodes with the new voices. I couldn’t for so many reasons. But I heard they were not as good as mine. Either way, I needed to find something to do for six days that made me forget about everything, including the TV show I was no longer on.
I collapsed in the overstuffed chair in my living room and stared at the wall opposite me, hoping it would answer.The wall was a mishmash of pictures, disorganization to the extreme.Worse, there were marks here and there, along with the occasional hole from where I had mistakenly hammered a nail. These marks resembled the scars I carried when I was ten years old and I’d committed the serious offense of using tacks to hang things on my bedroom wall.
On my tenth birthday, I got my first posters.They were pictures of animals with pithy sayings. The Boy loved to read them to me in the afternoon when I did my homework. After a few months, I had dozens of these poetic posters taped all over my room.The posters were taped because my mother never let us use tacks. Tacks left holes in her walls. But those damn posters were always falling off the walls, and finally I decided to buy my own poster tacks with the money she paid me for helping her clean the house. Guilt money, because I stayed home from summer camp one morning when I woke up scared and didn’t want to face the sunshine and noisy camp kids.
I thought if I stayed home, my mother would bring me juice like she used to do for Sarah. I thought my mother and I could have a girls’ day, and I imagined we’d take our beach blankets, lie
on the deck, and enjoy the languid warmth of the sun. I’d read books to her.We’d eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After a while, I’d rub Hawaiian Tropic on the backs of her stubbly legs and we’d laugh when I said her legs felt like Daddy’s cheeks late at night. But I stayed home, forgetting that Sarah hadn’t done this for a long time and my mother didn’t bring anyone juice anymore.
My holiday from summer camp was spent cleaning shutters with an old dishrag because my fingers were small enough to glide along each slat, wiping away the dust that had accumulated in the past forty-eight hours. After the shutters, I pushed the vacuum canister while Mother sucked the shag out of the carpet that hadn’t had time to gather dirt since the last pasting she had given it. She gave me a few bucks for my sore fingers and aching back—that and the pleasure of a ride to Lucky Supermarket, where she shopped for dinner.
While my mother pushed her cart up and down the alleys of food, I wandered off to the stationery section, where I located the poster tacks. She noticed me only enough to tell me to use my two dollars if I was going to buy something. And not to slip anything into her cart.
I went to another register and bought the tacks.
When I got home, I went down the dark hallway to my room. My mother’s room really. I was just a guest. The decor echoed her personality. It was the same for every room in our house.They were all meat-locker cold, spare. My room was Antarctica, with powder blue walls and white trim around the windows and doors that enclosed the closet when they weren’t leaning against the wall, resting after one of my tantrums that resulted in the demise of not too strong hinges. In the family food chain I could feed only on the furniture, the perky little girl’s furniture that belonged to someone who vacillated between
being a tomboy and a princess. A little girl who played in the mud, wore ripped jeans, and never bathed except when she was thrown, clothes and all, into the steaming water screaming,“Boys don’t wash their hair.” A little girl who wore frilly dresses and bows in brushed hair pulled into an eye-slanting bun.
My room was filled with my mother’s choice of furniture: white little girl’s dresser, nightstand, and trundle bed for guests. Furniture with gold trim painted around the edges, perfect like my mother’s lipstick. I taped the posters of praying children and Donny Osmond on the walls. She hung the white chiffon curtains that framed the idyllic window offering a view of the wood-pile. From the outside all so perfect; from the inside rotten like a bowl of fruit that had been left out for days.
“A grateful girl would love this room,” she had said to me once.
Well, not me. I wanted my Hot Wheels tracks snaking about the floor so my cars could drive me away. I wanted my horses grazing freely in their blue shag pastures. I wanted my dented yellow Tonka truck sitting in a prime location, ready to take away the debris that had accumulated in my little city, ready to run over Barbie when she moseyed into my room trying to entice G.I. Joe away from his cowboy adventures in the pillow mountains over in the corner. But my things stayed safely hidden away in my closet sanctuary, peeking out only when the doors came down.
I sat on my bed and ripped the plastic off those tacks.Then I ran my fingers over the cardboard backing, scratching the tips and finally pushing my forefinger down on a tack.
“Ow,” I said, sticking my finger in my mouth.
I grabbed the first tack with what little fingernails I had. Then I caught the corner of my Donny Osmond poster and determinedly pushed that tack into the wall. I hoped I made a big
hole. I did the same with the other three corners. Donny wasn’t falling on my body again.
I reclined on my bed, satisfied. Donny was pierced to the wall. The praying children would no longer slip and turn, their entreaties pointing to hell instead of heaven.
My mother walked in.
I sat up and kicked the cardboard holding the few remaining tacks to the floor. Her eyes followed its descent. Her hands swooped and fingernail fangs caught the cardboard prey. She passed a fleeting glance across each picture on the wall; the red periods of each corner shone like beacons.
“How dare you,” she exclaimed.
“I—”
“Who do you think you are?”
She came at me. I recoiled. She slapped me with the cardboard. I covered my face. She caught my wrists, pressing the cardboard that still held tacks against the right one, piercing my skin in her fury. I went limp, retreating into my head. Nobody shifted to take over. I lay there like a rag doll. She let go, tossed the cardboard on the mattress, and left the room.