“Did you know that chandelier up there is crystal? Weighs four tons and has over five hundred lightbulbs that use forty-eight thousand watts of power,” I said.
“Good thing we’re not sitting under it. What if it fell?” said Ruffles.
“Now, that would hurt,” I said.
“Would you both stop your incessant blathering,” snapped Betty Jane inside my head. Ruffles hissed at her. They’d already had a big fight back at the hotel room. Ruffles hadn’t seen why she should change her outfit for the occasion. But I confess that I secretly appreciated Betty Jane’s insistence that we all dress up, because elegant attire portrayed an image of élan and sophistication, which was what I wanted for the awards ceremony.
“Take a deep breath, Holly. You’re being careless,” said Sarah.
“It’s nerves. Nerves and no cigarettes.” I pressed my forefinger, middle finger, and ring finger on the three patches that were stuck to my rib cage. “I wish it would start.”
“Just a little while longer. People are already coming in. Let’s be quiet for a bit,” said Sarah.
“How rude!” exclaimed Betty Jane.
“Always have to have the last word,” said Ruffles.
Betty Jane pursed her lips so they looked like she had just
eaten a lemon, and then dramatically covered them with her forefinger to indicate silence. Sarge unbuttoned his jacket. Even though he didn’t put up a fuss, it was the first time I’d seen Sarge out of his regular blue jeans and white T-shirt. The familiar scar that always looked like it was diving off his ear down the neck band of his T-shirt glowed an eerie white against the red of his neck. He’d complained earlier that the shirt collar was too tight.
After a while, the lights dimmed and the announcer came onstage. As the awards were presented, I did my best to ignore the sensation that I needed to go to the bathroom. The bathrooms at the Shrine were not exempt from Betty Jane’s toilet paper rule, and my dollar-sized purse could fit only a few squares of Charmin.
“Now the juried awards,” said the Emmy announcer.
Someone told me to pay attention.
The orchestra played a few notes.
The applause was deafening.
“. . . as Harriet.”
Ruffles’s eyes widened.
Sarah elbowed me. I didn’t move. Sarah elbowed me again.
Betty Jane’s jaw dropped.
“Oh.” I opened my eyes with alarm.
“Holly, get up,” said Sarah. “Go,” she whispered urgently.
The music rose in decibels. My head wobbled. I gripped the seat back in front of me. Inside my head, Ruffles waddled after Betty Jane, who was already sailing down the aisle while she waved at the cheering crowd. “What?”
I swayed. Sarah put her hands on my hips. I turned and, hanging on to the seat backs in front of me, I sidestepped as if between two panes of glass past everyone seated between me and the aisle. I didn’t want to be remembered as the voice-over artist who
bumped her big butt across patrons’ necks and laps. At least, not more than once.
A whispered
ouch
told me that my heel dug into a foot as I exited the row. A backward glance showed me it was one of those shiny tuxedo shoes and not a bare, sandaled foot. Luckily.
Sarah shooed me onward like a fly. Once on the runway, I attempted to walk gracefully to the stage. The orchestra mixed with applause jumbled into an earsplitting cacophony.
My vision was divided between the events happening inside my head and the events happening in reality. In the head frame, Betty Jane advanced, waving like a homecoming queen—fingers together and hand tilting back and forth—with Ruffles closing in.
Horns bellowed and cymbals crashed.
I felt as if I were peering through a kaleidoscope.To my left and right, the auditorium of people looked like a giant box full of tiny puzzle pieces. Even with my fractured vision, I was pretty sure the stage lay dead ahead. I continued forward.
I saw Betty Jane seductively lift the sides of her dress and float up the stairs. My shin smacked a sharp angle. I fell to my knees. Ruffles toppled inside my head. The weight of her landing sent my cheek hard against the stage floor. I tasted blood in my mouth. I sat back on my heels, stunned. Then a pair of hands reached under my armpits and pulled me to my feet.
I have on a sleeveless dress,
I thought, mortified.
I’ve just sweated all over someone’s fingers.
I whispered, “Thank you,” and stepped forward onto the Shrine stage as the music hit another crescendo. By now I couldn’t distinguish between the band in my head and the band at the foot of the stage.
Hank Azaria handed me an Emmy statuette. The applause rattled against my skull like a seven-point earthquake. Mesmerized, I watched the scene inside my head. Betty Jane turned like
a supermodel, fanning arms down to her sides like a giant sunflower opening in perfect time with the dwindling music. Her smile radiated. Ruffles rushed her and took her down with a tackle.The last thing I remember was Sarge grabbing Betty Jane by the shoulders.
I opened my eyes. My room glowed with gray darkness from the fluorescent streetlights outside.
I’m in a hospital?
I searched the sides of the bed for a call button and found something that resembled the remote usually sitting on the airplane armrest. I pressed what appeared to be a green button. It turned on the TV.
I scanned the buttons again and was about to press when I heard, “Quite a scene at the Emmy awards tonight, Chuck.”
“I’ll say.”
On a news program, Chuck and a blond woman with snow-white teeth, whose facial expressions had been all but erased by too much Botox, both turned to the monitor behind them. The screen filled with my big purple ass sticking straight up in the air.
The camera retreated and I watched myself, Emmy in hand, manage to sit back on my knees, and then stand all the way up. I swayed slightly, reaching out my free hand for something to stabilize me.Then my other hand started waving the Emmy statuette around like a proud citizen with a flag would as I took off, zigzagging across the stage in a sharp outfighting style that would have made Ali proud. Hank Azaria was right behind me, like a swarmer or “pressure fighter,” attempting to stay close but not so close as to get hit by the statue in my hand.
“What exactly is going on here, Chuck?” The screen zoomed out to the two of them at the news desk.
“Well, according to the studio publicist, this was a skit put together between Holly and Hank.”
If Botox Blonde had an expression, it would have conveyed
unconvinced.
“Watch,” said Chuck.
They both turned back to the screen as it zoomed in again.
Hank reached.
I feinted left.
An animallike snarl issued from my wide-open mouth.
I raised my right arm, bent my elbow, and brought the Emmy smack down on the top of my head.
Hank immediately put a hand to the side of his mouth and yelled, “Timber,” as I landed face-first and out cold on the stage.
“Oh!” exclaimed the Botox Blonde.
“‘Oh’ is right!” said Chuck. “And that’s all the time we have tonight. Stay tuned for more on Comedy Central’s Stewart and Colbert.”
The credits rolled as Hank gripped the heels of my designer cowgirl boots and dragged my body off the stage.
I sat in my hospital bed wishing I were the proverbial tree alone in the woods.
“Holly?” said Sarah, standing in the doorway.
“Tonight at the Emmys,” blared from the TV.
“Turn that off,” said Sarah gently. I switched my gaze back to the TV and pressed the mute button.
Sarah sat on the side of the bed, but instead of looking at her, I continued to watch the video of me knocking myself out and falling over, playing in a continuous loop in a little box above and to the left of Jon Stewart’s head. Every ten seconds or so, he’d look up, cover his eyes and shake his head.
Finally, I said, “Betty Jane was fighting with Ruffles. She bit her. Sarge tried to break it up.”
Suddenly, Walter towered at the foot of my bed, in a red-faced rage. “You knock yourself out with the Emmy statue? You
have to be dragged off the stage by your ugly fucking boots? You’re damn lucky I managed to get you out of the Shrine and into this hospital, where nobody can see you! This is a fucking disaster,” he screamed.
“Betty Jane wouldn’t let Ruffles have the award. They were fighting; then Sarge—”
“Shushhh.” Sarah reached over and covered my mouth.
“What the hell are you babbling about? There’s nobody fucking here but you, me, and your girlfriend,” shouted Walter.
“I’m her sister, and you need to leave her alone,” said Sarah.
“Sweetheart, I don’t give a good goddamn who you are. There’s nobody else in this room except you, me, and Crazy there in the bed,”Walter yelled. His nostrils flared like a fire-breathing dragon’s.
I pressed back against my bed. Not that it made any difference.
He pulled me to a sitting position.“You were fucking drunk.” Walter spit the words at me.The tip of his red nose was purple, as if an errant ounce of blood had rushed to that spot to serve as an exclamation point. And at that moment, facing him, I wished I were blackout drunk.
“In Walt’s World this kind of shit doesn’t happen. Not anymore. Holly Miller, Midtown waitress, has just had her last day in Walt’s World.”
{ 11 }
M
y mother once told me that Scarlett O’Hara was right to be more concerned about her expanding waistline than her failing marriage. I thought they both had their priorities backward. But standing there facing Walter’s rage-mottled visage, I had an ill-timed
aha
experience, which told me my mother was right. At least the
aha
worked like adrenaline on pain and I knew exactly what to do—act first for appearances and damage control, and then deal with that which should remain hidden.
Act one, I reached for Walter’s hand with the idea that I’d make like what had just happened hadn’t happened.
Act two, he stepped back.The flash of his eyes told me physical contact not initiated or invited by him also didn’t happen in his world.
Act three, I realized that I didn’t have my mother’s sense of how to right a wrong situation when Walter said, “You’re through.”
“Does he always refer to his world?” said Sarah. I watched her
as she watched Walter’s back disappear behind the closing door. Then I shut my eyes.
Ruffles sat on her pillow nursing her head with an ice pack. Her hair was tangled and matted and her face full of scratches. Betty Jane, on the other hand, sat on the couch casually flipping through a gossip magazine, her lipstick on and her hair brushed. The angry imprint of Ruffles’s teeth on her arm, which had already begun to bruise, was the only marker that remained from their stage fight inside my head. It didn’t matter.The sight of those two reality-checked the last bit of hope that I’d imagined everything.
Then my own headache served as the waking pinch, and all I could think was:
I need to get out of here, get home, and find a way to fix this with Mike. Right now.
“We have to—”
“Get out of here.” I finished Sarah’s sentence. She nodded at me.
“Stay here. I’ll get you checked out and manage a discreet exit,” she said.
I closed my eyes again. Nothing had changed, and the hush inside my head fanned the spark of apprehension smoldering in my gut.
We exited through a side door at the hospital.The cab Sarah had called idled curbside.We got in and he pulled away without a word. Sarah must have told him where we were going. By the time we reached the hotel, my apprehension had developed into a five-alarm fire of horror-soaked foreboding.
Sarah stood staring out the window at the Los Angeles skyline. “Holly?” she said without looking at me. I knew she wanted to comfort me, but I also knew she couldn’t grasp what it felt like to be exposed in such a public way. I hadn’t walked down the street talking to myself. I had knocked myself out on national
television. This carried Monica Lewinsky-caliber shame. Sarah was too perfect even to be in the same universe with that kind of discomposure. And she knew I knew this. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
“Uh, okay,” I replied in a tiny voice. I felt way too small to handle what Sarah was leaving me to handle on my own, and at that moment, I didn’t need the reminder that we were so different. But instead of saying that, I said,“You don’t have to leave the door open.” She didn’t, and I sat on the bed wishing I too could just rinse off the whole night with a shower.
The muted sound of running water told me Sarah had begun. I planned to sit there and stare until she emerged; then Betty Jane stood up inside my head and said, “Get in here; I want to speak to you.”
“But who will—”
“Don’t ‘who will’ me. You think I don’t know about your late-night trips to visit Ruffles and conspire against me?” I felt stricken. Lately, Betty Jane had taken to downing a Vicodin and a glass of wine after a hard day. I always thought the combination knocked her out, making it safe for me to come in and visit on the nights Peter wasn’t over.“Nobody will be in control. But you come in here. You just have to trust me.” Her smoldering rage made her face alternate between different shades of red.
“Where’s Sarge?”
“Get in here,” commanded Betty Jane.
I sat against the headboard and closed my eyes. My feet were not yet on the Committee’s hardwood floors when Betty Jane said, “I am an award-winning voice on a successful television show. It is my efforts that bring in the money that finances our life. Do I get thanks? Do I get respect? Do I get appreciation? Do I get credit?
No!
I get grief and heartache. I get recalcitrance. I get obstinacy. I get cheap shampoo and skin-drying soap.”
I exhaled
. All I am going to get is a lecture.
I nodded my head just like I did as a child when my mother went on one of her crazy rants, usually because she had done something too embarrassing to face.