Sounds Like Crazy (11 page)

“Got it,” said the engineer.

Mike turned and walked me out the door.

“Not bad for your first day.We got through about six hours of work in four hours, thanks to you.”

“How much did we actually do?” I said.

“Fifteen minutes’ worth of dialogue, I’d say.”

“That’s all?”

Mike laughed. “You’ll get used to the pace.”

What pace? After my first day, it felt like an exhausting crawl.

“Hey, sorry about the script. I mean, uh, I knew, but, uh—”

“Rookie mistake.” Mike held up his hand to stop my rambling apology.

My cell phone rang. I opened my bag, exposing my rolls of Charmin. We both looked down and then at each other. Mike knitted his brow.The ringing stopped.Then it started again.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Probably Brenda.”

I smiled. Mike winked at me. The chemistry between us buzzed. He pointed at my bag. I fished out my phone. Peter. It stopped ringing.

“I have to go.”

His smile dropped. “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

I watched Mike return to the control room. My phone started ringing again. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned.Walter stood in front of me. “Listen, Little Waitress, you’d better learn how to fix your script yourself or you won’t last long.”

He turned and walked away.When he was halfway down the hall, he yelled, “And answer your goddamn phone.”

Later, when I was safely behind the rolled-up glass in the Town Car, I said, “What the hell were you doing today?”

Betty Jane’s answer? “Why, Holly.” She paused. “I was just exercising my rights.”

 

One episode of
The Neighborhood
took six to eight months from start to finish. This included writing, rewriting, voice recording, storyboards, animatics, coloring, music scoring, and postproduction. Since the show was on the fall calendar, we juggled several episodes at the same time to meet the schedule.This meant we would be doing voice recording for one show, while one or two were in storyboards, another one or two in black-and-white animation, and others already in the coloring, scoring, or post-production phase.

The schedule for the taping was intense. Betty Jane added fuel to the fire by finding numerous little ways to remind everyone
in the studio, daily, about the ever rising height of her pedestal.At the end of June, Mike asked me to come in a little earlier than the rest of the cast and crew to discuss my unsportsmanlike behavior, as he called it.

We sat in the large conference room sipping coffee.

“Holly, what is going on with you?” said Mike.“You’re a different person when we’re taping. And not a very nice one.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

“Listen, we are under a lot of pressure to get the fall episodes in the can.Your, uh, how shall I say it . . . sense of entitlement”—he paused and I smiled weakly—“will get less notice once we secure ratings. I believe in you and this show. We’re going to get those ratings.We just need to get there.”

I looked down at my fingernails.

“How can I help you?” Mike leaned forward. The concern in his eyes was so genuine, I wanted to spill all the beans right there on the spot. “How, Holly?”

How indeed?
Even if I told him about Betty Jane, it wouldn’t do anything to adjust her attitude. I sat arms akimbo and looked out the window at the thick humidity pulsating over the Hudson.

“Okay, I have an idea,” said Mike. I turned and looked him in the eye. “Are you up for more work? I can tell Walter you might be a pain, but you’re doing your part to become more recognizable.” Inside my head, Betty Jane smiled.

“Sure,” I said. “We can do that.”

“I’ll talk to Brenda.” Even though Mike let the
we
pass, I knew he hadn’t missed it.

 

Brenda used all her contacts to find me off-hours work using Betty Jane’s voice. But Betty Jane did not go willingly into that good night, as it were. When we were on our way to the first
commercial booking, she said, “I will do this work on only one condition.”

“Condition?” I said. “We are booked for this job, and negotiations have to take place with Milton.” I didn’t bother to hide the panic in my voice. The Committee had their hands on my pulse anyway.

“Holly, dear, when will you ever learn?”

I wanted to strangle her. I wanted to scream at her,
Stop pushing the envelope
. I wanted to remind her that we were racing to this booking and then the next because she couldn’t play well with others.

“Holly?” Betty Jane smoothed her hair.

“Yes, Betty Jane,” I said, “what is your condition?” I sat back and waited.

“I would like a domicile improvement.”

The Boy gasped. Sarge and Ruffles looked at each other, while the Silent One dropped to his knees to pray.

The Committee had been living in cramped quarters ever since I’d moved from my parents’ home in Palo Alto. I’d have to move for them to get a bigger house.

“Is that easy enough?” she said spitefully. The driver’s glance in the rearview mirror stalled my intended retort.

Betty Jane, of course, wanted a change of neighborhood along with a new apartment. I wouldn’t leave the EastVillage, and the other four supported me.

Two weeks after she made the request, we moved to a compromise large top-floor flat on Second Street and Avenue A with a view, more than enough space to allow the Committee’s matching apartment to include a separate room for Betty Jane, and, best of all, four closets and a storage locker in the basement for all the stuff Betty Jane made me buy.

The next three months passed in a blur of taping
The Neighborhood
in the mornings, running from one recording studio to another on most afternoons, reviewing scripts at night, and, on the weekends in between, the occasional social obligation. By the time
The Neighborhood
aired in the fall, Betty Jane’s Southern lilt was recognizable to millions.

At the studio Christmas party,Walter raised his glass in a toast and said, “Everyone, we’ve had the highest Nielsen rating each week since
The Neighborhood
aired. To the hottest new show on television and our Little Waitress as the voice of Violet Dupree.”

“I told you that your antics would become annoying eccentricities if you did your part,” whispered Mike. I elbowed him lightly in response. He and I were sandwiched together next to our respective partners—Peter and what’s her name. Flirting was not an option.

 

The best part of my new life was the crazy amounts of money I earned for letting Betty Jane speak. In addition to the regular pay for
The Neighborhood
, every time a commercial we did aired, we got paid. Flush with cash for the first time ever, Betty Jane helped me spend large sums of money on a lot of stupid things, like seventy-five-dollar lipstick, a five-hundred-dollar robot vacuum, and an eight-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Gucci yoga mat with a matching three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar leather carrying case. FYI, I’ve never set foot in a yoga class.

At one point in the spending frenzy I bought a car and rented a garage space so Sarge could have his Chevy back. Right after that purchase, I walked into a Buddhist specialty store. When I saw the four-hundred-dollar fleece meditation cushion I said, “Shall I buy this?”

The Silent One indicated no with a shake of his head.

I was surprised. If the pope had closets full of fancy robes and miters, the Silent One didn’t have to sit on his threadbare old thing. But a few weeks later, when Betty Jane was working and I was waiting in the Committee’s living room, I noticed that the Silent One had upgraded his prayer altar. Even ascetics secretly desired something comfy for their bony knees.

 

By the time we started taping the second season of
The Neighborhood
in March, the servant-master dynamic between Betty Jane and the rest of us had become that of benevolent chairwoman and complacent helpers. By June, I found myself believing people really could change. I’d started to trust and appreciate Betty Jane.

On the first Thursday in July, all the actors from
The Neighborhood
were gathered in a large room with chairs and couches around three walls and a large movie screen on the fourth. We were adding lines to the animation, which really meant recording dialogue for places called lip flaps. These were spots marked by the animators where there was no actual dialogue taking place or where a line was garbled or unclear sound-wise and needed to be rerecorded for clarity. We took turns standing in front of a copy stand and recording new lines to drop over the animation. Mike sat at a console with a small microphone and a TV monitor in the back of the room and the engineers sat in a studio above and behind us.

We’d been at it for three hours when Mike’s PA came in and tapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, let’s take fifteen,” said Mike.

At that moment Sarge and the Boy entered the Committee’s house.The Boy removed his baseball glove as Sarge shut the front door.They usually played catch while Betty Jane recorded Violet. She had referred to child labor laws and suggested the Boy not have to work at such a young age. At first I worried, because
playtime for the Boy absented Sarge as well. But Betty Jane had behaved like a well-trained pet, and after a few months, I had replaced my concern with the belief that she had the Boy’s best interests in mind. Ruffles and the Silent One were still not convinced, and always stayed in the room during taping. I wondered if they’d go if I excused them, but I never thought to actually do it.

“Holly?”

“Oh,” I said, shaking my head. I hated being caught “somewhere” else. Drifting between the present and what was going on in the Committee’s living room was something I did without noticing. I’d heard snatches of enough whispers to know that everyone else had noticed, though.

“What?” I felt a hand on my left shoulder. I opened my eyes. Walter’s. I jerked my head straight. Ruffles tumbled off her pillow. The muscle on the right side of my head cramped from the strain.

The benefit of recording in New York City was that Walter lived in Los Angeles and dropped in only about once a month. I still hadn’t gotten used to his visits, because he liked to vary the days and times so nobody ever knew when to expect him. Some of the cast and crew flourished when Walter visited. Others battened down the hatches and held on until he departed.The rest, including me, cowered and flailed. Discomposure only energized him and caused people to whisper, “Walter Torment,” when he left a room.

“What did you say?” said Walter. He lingered close enough for me to smell his breath.

I recoiled. “Nothing.” I slid out of my chair away from him. “I want you to come to the front of the room with me.” He held out his hand.

“Wh-what did—” I stammered.

“I didn’t know I was that frightening.” Walter laughed. He knew he was that frightening, and he liked it.

I sighed and followed him. No use resisting or the public put-down would be that much worse.

“Everyone.” Walter clapped his hands. “Can I have your attention?”

May I please
, I thought.
Everyone, may I please
. But when would he ever say
may
or
please
to anyone? In Walt’s World, there were no such words.

“Our Little Waitress has been nominated for the Outstanding Voice-over Performance Emmy award for the first season.”

Betty Jane stood up in the middle of the Committee’s living room and waved to a cheering crowd that had appeared out of nowhere. She commanded Sarge to open champagne. Confetti fell to the floor. I heard whoops and celebration around me.

“An Emmy,” said the Boy, jumping up and down.
Does he even know what an Emmy is? I don’t even know.

“I guess she’s overcome,” said Walter.

“Oh.” I smiled with embarrassment. Everyone waited. I kept smiling. It was hard to hear over all the noise inside and out.

“Okay, then. Since Holly wants to keep her thoughts to herself, let’s get back to work,” said Walter. Then to me, “Plan to be there, Holly.”

How could I tell Walter that I might not know what an Emmy was, but I did know that awards ceremonies equaled crowds and large parties, and those filled me with blood-pressure-dropping fear? Especially when he chastised me repeatedly for being such a party dud. Walter had gone so far as to say that he preferred the diva Violet in the sound booth to the shrinking violet who clung to her social-climbing boyfriend.

“Award show’s late August in Los Angeles,” said Walter.

I hated the month of August, the end of it in particular. Not just because of its sunny dog days of last picnics or other activities before the frenzied preparation for fall, but for other reasons. Reasons that lay hidden behind the door of the closet in the Committee’s living room. And I would do anything necessary to keep those reasons behind that door.