Sounds Like Crazy (16 page)

“Unfortunately,” continued Betty Jane, “we did all of the Emmy nominee’s lines this morning.Violet has the afternoon.” She was the only one I knew who veiled threats in the same voice she would use to offer you pie.

I sighed out a cloud of smoke. My shoulders sagged. I felt like a speck of dust on the coffee table of the universe. If the afternoon went like the morning, I’d be back in some diner by the end of the week. “Can you please . . .” My voice trailed off.

“Can I what?” Betty Jane had a cruel smile just at the edges of her mouth. Her python voice strangled my insides.

I dropped my intended plea on the ground with my cigarette and stubbed it out with the toe of my shoe. Then I rubbed my fingers with the slices of lemon I had in my purse. This morning when I was packing my bag of water, juice, and apples, and all the things I carried to keep my voice sharp, I had grabbed some lemon slices as an afterthought. It must have been a premonition. I took a swish of water, sprayed perfume into the air, and walked
into the sprinkling scent. I’d read somewhere that this was the best way to wear perfume without seeming like you were trying to. I just wanted it to waft over the incriminating smell of Marlboro Reds.

On the way back I stopped the guard, held up my hands, and said, “Can you smell any smoke on me?”

He leaned in, sniffed, then shook his head. The lemons and perfume had worked.

 

I slipped back into the booth before the rest of the cast. Inside my head, Betty Jane stood in front of her music stand, wearing her expensive headset with extra padding so as not to mess up her hair. She had added this particular affectation when Ruffles became part of
The Neighborhood
cast.This unnecessary grandstanding had annoyed me in the past. Her only audience was the other Committee members, and they certainly didn’t care. At that moment, I was relieved to see her in place. I hoped this meant she was willing to cooperate.

Things were fine for about five minutes.Then Betty Jane had lines.When she opened my mouth to speak for the first time, she caught the dialogue in her throat.Almost like a muscle spasm.An evil chuckle escaped from my mouth, followed by a perfect delivery. Screwing up the lines was one thing. We all did it from time to time. But it seemed as if I had been doing it all day. The laughing made it appear as if I were playing games.

I noticed through the glass Walter and Mike arguing with each other. Every few seconds they both looked up at me.Walter’s face turned a darker shade of red with each subsequent giggle.
How can Betty Jane be so stupid as to do this on a day that Walter is visiting? I need to stop this.

Ruffles stood up inside my head and my body swayed. I steadied myself against the wall. “Knock it off,” she said.

“Fine,” said Betty Jane.And she disappeared. I rushed forward and managed to take over before my body fell to the ground.

“That’s not in the script, Holly,” said Mike, his voice sharp with frustration, through the talkback.

Oh, crap.
I looked frantically around the sound booth. The other voice actors glanced knowingly at one another while avoiding me altogether. Inside my head, Ruffles looked stricken.

“Holly?” said Mike through the talkback.

“Call for Sarge,” said Ruffles. Betty Jane had excused him and the Boy for following her earlier orders.

“Uh, I need a break,” I said.Without waiting for permission, I grabbed my bag and quickly left the booth, speed-walking toward the exit.

“Holly, time is money.” Walter tapped his watch with his forefinger. Studio time was a valuable commodity. Sweat formed like little pinpricks on the back of my neck.

“I need a quick trip to the bathroom.”

“Make it really quick.”

When I got to the bathroom, I locked the door behind me.

“Sarge!” I said in a harsh, hushed voice.

The front door to the Committee’s house opened into my skull. Sarge held it ajar and the Boy trotted through. His red Converse sneakers were dusty. His face was a blur, as always. Sarge stepped into the living room and closed the door. His baseball glove was still on his hand with the ball clutched in the middle. They both stood ready to respond to whatever I needed.

“Betty Jane. She’s gone. Please go find her,” I said.

Sarge motioned to the Boy and then they went out the front door without putting down their gloves. I counted the blue tiles as I paced, hoping this would calm me down. It didn’t. Ruffles sat on her pillows munching chips in time to my pacing.The Silent
One knelt in prayer, which never provided any help in a crisis. I thought about putting on another nicotine patch, but I knew that would just make my heart race more. Sarge and the Boy came back through the front door.They were alone.

“Shit,” I said, exasperated.

I pulled my cell phone out and called Milton. I knew he wouldn’t answer. What was the use of having a shrink if you always got voice mail during an emergency? But I was desperate and I hoped that the threat of him would bring Betty Jane back.

I heard a knock on the door.

“Holly?” It was Rhonda, Mike’s PA. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Sorry. I’ll just be a minute.” I looked at myself in the mirror. The dark circles under my blue eyes were so pronounced it looked like I was peering out of two fresh shiners. My hair looked like a long brown haystack. Maybe I should put on a little makeup. I never bothered with makeup at work. It was hard enough to get there on time. I picked a cat hair off my black sweater and looked at it. Cat Two, I thought.

“A makeover would be more appropriate.” Betty Jane sniffed inside my head. She and her vanity, which had more makeup than the cosmetic counter at Barneys, appeared out of nowhere.

“Thank God!”

“The good Lord had nothing to do with it.” Betty Jane casually applied red lipstick. “But I have told you a thousand times a hairbrush and makeup are essential accoutrements for a lady.”

“More like a million.We need to go back,” I snapped, trying to head off the makeup monologue.

“Only if you put on some lipstick,” said Betty Jane inside my head.

“I’m not—”

She arched her eyebrow.“I tell you truly that that is the reason
why you and your Northern sisters do not have husbands. We Southern women—”

“Yes.” I cut her off. I knew Walter would make me feel that I had cost him personally at least a hundred dollars a minute in production time. We had to get back fast. I dug my hand in my bag and pulled out what felt like lipstick and quickly dragged it across my lips.

“All right?”

“Hairbrush.” Betty Jane smiled and patted her sunflower pin. I fished in my bag again, located the brush, and raked it across my hair, pulling out more than I smoothed down. “Very nice,” she said, satisfied.

I walked through the studio door with a straight back, trying to project confidence.

“Now that Holly has her lipstick on.” Walter ushered me in and then stood over me, glowering. I felt like a flea in front of a burning redwood tree.

“Head up,” hissed Betty Jane inside my head. I ignored her and let my head droop lower.

“Sorry,” I said, taking my place in front of my music stand and putting on my headset. “Female problems.” This was not exactly a lie.

Even though Betty Jane nailed her lines, she gave a few well-timed glances that unnerved some of the more junior performers and caused them to flub their turns. She emitted a couple of impossible-to-hold-back sneezes; and, for her final act, she claimed light-headedness right before swooning in the sound booth, causing three music stands to topple to the ground.

Nobody said a word to me a few hours later when Mike called it a day. I scanned the booth for any exit other than the only one, as if a wish could make trapdoor magically open under
me. Neither Mike nor Walter had moved from the other side of the glass. No surprise that Betty Jane ceded control and left me to face the music.

As I walked out of the booth, the sound engineer said, “We got through the recording, but there’s a lot of cleanup work to do. We might want to retake the whole day.” His words bit me like fangs. I continued forward, my finish line the door out of the studio.

“Holly!” I stopped so fast my body jerked forward. Inside my head, Sarge stood up. The Boy crawled under the couch. Walter towered over me like the Empire State Building. The tip of his nose flashed a red warning. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he said. Flecks of his angry spit landed on my cheek. I focused on his clenched teeth.

Sarge held his arms out straight so that his body made a T. Everyone except Betty Jane cowered behind him. “Disgusting,” she said, wiping her face with a tissue.

Stepping back, I said,“I’m just . . .” I could feel myself floating backward as I willed Sarge to take over. I knew he wouldn’t. He never broke a rule.

“You’re just . . .” Walter said, moving his head back and forth like a metronome. “In Walt’s World everyone listens. Are you listening to me now?”

I squeezed my toes. “Now I’m listening. I’m sorry. I was just surprised that my work as Harriet got nominated so fast. It kind of left me off balance today.”

“Who said the award is for Harriet?” snapped Walter.

“Oh,” I said, “I thought since you said—”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Walter, “and in Walt’s World, nobody should assume.”

“Sorry.”

“You just don’t know what you just don’t know, Holly.”

“So it could be—”

“But in Walt’s World, this diva shit doesn’t fly.”

“Diva shit!” exclaimed Betty Jane inside my head.

“He is talking about you, of course,” snapped Ruffles.

“You’re not that hard to replace,” Walter said, already walking away.

B
y late May, the second televised season of
The Neighborhood
ended and I couldn’t tell who was the most popular character on the show—Betty Jane’s Violet or Ruffles’s Harriet. And that was the problem. The only solution I had remaining up my sleeve was to start arriving to work early. My show of punctuality seemed to alleviate some of the acrimony between me and the crew, and even though internal stress was at an all-time high, we had what I considered to be an almost peaceful week. The next Monday I arrived at eight forty-five feeling confident. I opened the front door to the studio and found a standing-room-only waiting area. When I entered, all talking abruptly ceased. I looked down to make sure I’d remembered my pants. I had.

I slowly passed the sitting and standing women.Their furious mutterings sounded like rustling leaves on a late-fall day. “Morning,” I said brightly to the receptionist. She looked away. I glanced back at the whispering women. Suddenly, every one of them found something interesting on the floor or in her lap.

In the hallway, I ran into Rhonda walking with two women.

“Have you seen Mike?” I said.

“He’s in the conference room,” said one of the women.

Rhonda’s face paled.

“Thanks,” I said, brushing past them.

“Holly, I wouldn’t—”

Too late
,
I thought, as I turned the knob and opened the door.

Mike,Walter, one of the suits, and the casting director for
The Neighborhood
were all seated at one end of the conference table. They didn’t notice me standing in the doorway.

“Oh, my stars,” said a very Southern voice.

“Violet is breathier than that,” said Mike.

What does he mean, Violet is breathier than that?
I felt like I’d been rear-ended hard by a car I hadn’t seen coming.
Those bastards are auditioning people for my part. My part!

“Play the recording of Holly for her again,” said Mike.

I heard Betty Jane’s voice exclaim, “Oh, my stars.”

“You need to make your voice sound like that,” said Mike. Now I felt as if the car had backed up, then careened forward and flattened me.

 

Betty Jane heard Walter’s audition message loud and clear and diverted us from our collision course with the unemployment office of New York State by putting her studio behavior into spontaneous remission. She became the picture of professionalism. Away from the studio, I paid the price by trying to meet Betty Jane’s constant demands. By July I felt close to collapse. Then Walter dropped in to let me know that I would be at this year’s Emmy awards show if they had to wheel me in on a gurney. Betty Jane told me she was going to be there even if she had to break all the rules and invent some new ones to break. I ignored the whole thing, hoping it would somehow resolve itself.

By the third week in August, Milton had gone on vacation, so I did the only thing I could do. I called Sarah.

She wasn’t home.

I sat in bed staring at my phone, willing my sister to call me back. After two hours, the phone finally rang.

“Holly, is everything okay?” said Sarah. “Your message sounded panicked.”