“Yes,” said Milton, as he leaned back waiting for me to say more. I sat mute. “So you felt anxious?” Milton presented the word to me as if on a platter in his open hands.
I considered this for a second.“Sort of. But in a way it is like my cats.”
“How so?”
“They are simultaneously intrigued and frightened by the possibility that exists beyond the window. Cat Two is satisfied in his minimum-security prison with three hots and a cot.”
Milton smiled.
“He has no desire to leave.” I raised my eyebrow in a go-figure kind of way. “Cat One always has an eye out for every opportunity of escape.”
“Where do you think Cat One would go if he could get out?” said Milton.
“Where he always goes—to the neighbor’s roof garden. And then I have to catch him and bring him back. Usually with him demanding a writ of habeas corpus. I think he enrolled in online law courses.”
This got another smile from Milton.“Why do you bring him back?” His face went serious again.
“Because it is not safe out there on the roof.”
“And?”
“And because I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want to wake up one day and find him gone. Just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “The connection severed as if it was never there. All that is left is the fading memories and feelings.”
We sat for a moment. I contemplated the paneling in his office.
It was ugly. Kind of that rough, knotty pine with the holes. It belonged in a cabin somewhere in the woods and not in an office in New York City.Turning back to Milton, I said, “That is how I felt that day. I wanted to stay and I wanted to escape.”
“But nobody came to get you.”
“No. And the quiet closed in on me while I waited.”
“Like now?”
“Like now,” I whispered. “All my connections severed as if they were never there.”
“And this is what is frightening you now?”
“Yes,” I said, taking a pillow and pressing it to my stomach. “You can’t know the quiet, Milton.”
“Tell me about what I can’t know then.”
“It is filled with questions I can’t answer.”
“What are the questions?”
“Where do we go? What happens to us? I can’t stand not knowing,” I said. I heard a siren. I wondered if it was a fire truck or a police car. “That day was the first time I felt that feeling I have described to you ad nauseam,” I said,“where my body starts to almost recoil inside and I am pushing to get out of it. I feel like if could just cross that big expanse of nothingness, I would have an understanding. So I push at it. But then it becomes a black hole inside me. I try to ignore it but it is always there,” I said, flattening my hands and pressing them into the pillow while my foot did a
rat-a-tat-tat
on the floor. “Looming over me. Wrapped around me.” I dropped the pillow and slid to the edge of the couch. I breathed rapidly.
“Stay with this as long as you can,” said Milton.
“I’m trying.” I jumped up and walked in circles, waving my arms, trying to protect myself from the dread cutting off my air. I thought if I went around fast enough I could get away. But I knew that wasn’t true.This feeling was a constant ride-along.
“Breathe, Holly,” Milton said, on the edge of his chair now.
“I can’t talk about this anymore,” I said, facing him. “I can’t talk about this.”
“Why don’t you sit back down, Holly?” Milton gestured to the couch.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I sat in the chair with the big pink cushion.
“That’s fine.”
Milton gave me a moment and then said,“What do you want to talk about then?”
“I don’t know.”
Milton paused for a second again and then said, “How do you feel about losing your job?”
“Relieved.” It rushed out of me, and I realized I did feel oddly relieved. “I feel relieved. I shouldn’t feel relieved because I am one royalty check away from welfare.” Milton gave me the look that said,
Continue.
“I know I should feel panicked about this right now, but I feel numb. Like the proverbial lamb being led to a slaughter. Why do we say that anyway? It is a sick analogy. I wonder if animals are really numb when being led to the slaughter. I don’t think they are.Today I read about a pig on the way to a slaughterhouse that made a run for it at a red light. It took several people to subdue and catch it. I guess it was pretty fat.”This last word stuck in my throat.
We were both quiet.
“You are thinking of your own porcine friend taken against her will?”
“Ruffles.” As soon as I said her name, grief, the unwelcome visitor, pounded at the door of my chest. Turned out that grief had scheduled the visit days ago and I had conveniently forgotten. Now grief’s arrival was an unwanted surprise and I was caught
without the Committee’s house clean or the laundry done or even the guest bed made. And I couldn’t let grief sleep in the Committee’s beds.
I didn’t answer the door. I sat there willing grief to go away. If I switched off the lights and stereo and crouched on the floor in the Committee’s living room, would grief think nobody was home and go away?
The banging on my chest intensified.
I sat there in the uncomfortable pink chair feeling the same way I had at the lake that day.
The banging on my chest intensified.
Go away,
I wanted to scream. It didn’t. I slid off the chair and crouched on Milton’s Oriental rug. My hands covered my ears like protective wear. I remembered how many times I had tried this over the years before I left the family nest. It never worked then and it wasn’t working now.
The unwelcome visitor finally broke the Committee’s door down and a grief stampede rushed in right over the top of me. Fanning out through the house.Touching the Committee’s things. Turning them over. Asking the price with a complete disregard for the history and feelings, for what was at stake. Opening drawers and cupboards, using the bathroom, unpacking, and finally moving in.Then grief, wanting a little fresh air, opened the windows wide and the cold winter of reality blew, with a full-force gale, across me sitting there in Milton’s office.
I had lost my Committee.
I had lost my job.
I had lost my boyfriend.
I . . . was . . . lost.
Milton handed me a box of Kleenex. When I was all cried out, I had a hillock of soggy tissues on my lap and we had about
ten minutes remaining in the hour. I sat there feeling like a deer that had just gone through the windshield of some errant SUV. But the genie was not going back in the proverbial bottle.
“I have an idea about how to proceed,” said Milton.
“Will it bring them back?”
“Do you want them back?” said Milton.
“I do. Oh, God, I do.”A fresh round of pain spasms kicked off in my gut.
“We’ll start Thursday then.” Milton’s eyes sparkled.
{ 15 }
G
roup therapy. Milton’s idea was group therapy. I was not thrilled. Not even close. I hated that touchy-feely let’s-all-love-each-other kind of crap. Milton knew this and yet he suggested that we try group therapy. And as much as I hated the idea of doing what was sure to be an exercise in exposing new-age bullshit like reflecting back what people said, I obediently sat in an empty waiting room, having arrived several minutes before the appointed time.That I was alone struck me as odd.
Where’s the group? They should be here.
I thumbed through last week’s
New Yorker
looking for any of the cartoons I’d missed. By my watch, it was two minutes to the hour. Not even enough for “Shouts & Murmurs.” I wondered if Milton had different waiting rooms and doors for groups. He could have a garage-door-opener type of device and push the button so all the doors sprang open at once. Inviting everyone in at the same time eliminated any hint of favoritism. We’d all charge right over the top of him to get to the most comfortable
furniture. Or maybe not, since floorboards were more comfortable than Milton’s antique furniture. I laughed at the thought.
“Holly.” Milton’s voice interrupted my amusement. I looked up. He appeared slightly amused himself. Did he know what the source of my mirth was? Then I thought it was funny how people always think they know what is on the other person’s mind. And even funnier how it almost never works out to be what you thought they were thinking.
“Yep.” I dropped the
New Yorker
back on the end table as I stood. I paused for a moment, nodded, and followed him into his office. It was empty.
“Where is everyone?” I said.
“Have a seat, Holly,” said Milton.
I sat on the couch.
“Close your eyes, Holly,” said Milton.
I did.
“Do you want to resolve your issues with the Committee through therapy?” said Milton.
I wanted to bolt from the room.
“This is weird.” I opened my eyes. “I expected people and a group setting. Not that I want that, mind you. That seems weird too.”
“Holly, please just trust me and answer the question,” said Milton.
“Okay. I guess so.” I closed my eyes again.
“You guess what?” said Milton.
“I guess. I mean, yes, I want to resolve my issues with the Committee in therapy.”
They appeared.
My Committee.
The sight of them was dizzying. Goose bumps erupted across my body. I wanted to hug them all.Touch each one of their faces,
even the Boy’s blurry one. I clapped my hands and laughed. I waved at Betty Jane’s sunflower doing what appeared to be a dance of joy before me. I’d have danced too if my feet were steady enough. “They’re here, Milton,” I cried. “They’re back. Oh, they’re back.”
My smile split wider across my face. Milton nodded impassively. “Betty Jane, the Silent One, Sarge, the Boy, and . . .” I pushed myself forward on the couch. The Committee’s therapy room mirrored Milton’s.There was nowhere for Ruffles to hide. “And . . . her pillow . . .” I turned to Betty Jane, teeth bared, and said out loud, “Where is
she
?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” said Betty Jane inside my head.
“Ruffles is missing,” I said to Milton. “Ruffles isn’t here. Where is Ruffles?” I said to him and Betty Jane.
“Holly,” said Milton, “before we proceed I am going to ask you to do something you might consider unorthodox.” That jolted me out of my upset. What could possibly be unorthodox at this point in our work?
“Okay,” I said, “what?”
“I would like to ask you to allow all the voices to speak out loud while we are here doing our work. All responses should come from your mouth. It is the only way we can make sure nothing is kept from me.”
“Shuffle like a deck of cards, you mean?” The Silent One, the Boy, Sarge, Ruffles, and I used to do this when I was a teenager. Before Betty Jane arrived there was never an issue of control. Ruffles figured out pretty quickly that with her, you couldn’t give a fraction of an inch, so we stopped shuffling. “Are you sure it’s safe?” I said.
“Perfectly safe,” said Milton. Betty Jane’s face looked just like it did in the hotel after the Emmys. I blanched.“She cannot harm
you, Holly. Remember the rules we agreed upon? The ones that made it possible for you to become a voice-over artist?”
“Vaguely,” I said. I thought back to that day in therapy when Milton and Betty Jane negotiated, him for my sanity and her for fame.
“Please trust me.”
“Will it help find Ruffles?”
“I’m not sure, Holly, but it will help regardless.”
“This is what you meant by group therapy?” I said. Milton nodded.
I alternated between Milton’s and Betty Jane’s faces. Her caution about my choices felt prescient at that moment. But I didn’t know if that was good or bad. If Ruffles were there, I’d choose group therapy, shuffling personalities, and Betty Jane’s presence without looking back. But Ruffles wasn’t there. I didn’t know why but I suspected it had to do with Betty Jane.
Is four better than five? Will I be able to find Ruffles if I agree to do this?
I thought I saw Sarge nod. Maybe I wanted him to. I don’t know. All I know is I finally said, “Okay, I’ll do that,” and then I said to Betty Jane, “Now tell us what you’ve done with Ruffles.”
“You know exactly where she is,” said Betty Jane out of my mouth. But instead of being in the Committee’s room, I hovered near her like in the old days. I relaxed.
“I don’t know where she is,” I said.
“Well, that’s your loss, then,” said Betty Jane.
“Okay,” interrupted Milton, “all in good time. Now, here is how we are going to work.We will meet two days a week during your regular sessions, Holly—”
“But what about—”
“Why don’t you let him finish,” said Betty Jane. Sarge sat forward as if he were going to get up and throttle her. The Boy hid his face in the back cushion.
“Betty Jane, please refrain from interrupting.” My eyebrows shot up. I didn’t expect this much support. “We will start each session by checking in. A check-in is how we indicate our general mood for the day. It should be fairly short.And since you seem so intent on speaking, why don’t we start with you, Betty Jane?”
“Well . . .” She held up my hand and inspected my manicure. I expected that to stop her cold, because I hadn’t attended to my nails since she left.“To tell the truth, I am feeling inconvenienced by this whole thing. Coerced is more like it. But I agreed to do it, and a Southern woman always keeps her word.” She didn’t comment on the state of my nails. In the Committee’s therapy room, she was seated on the pink chair that always reminded me of an old-fashioned commode. I heard the flushing sound that always accompanied the sight of that chair. I smiled.
“Sarge?” said Milton.
“Doin’ okay,” said Sarge. My heart ached at the sound of his voice. I didn’t know who I missed more, him or Ruffles.
The Silent One came forth to bow his head, and then he drifted backward. Nobody said a word. Inside my head, Betty Jane arched her eyebrow at me.