Sounds Like Crazy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

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  EPILOGUE

  conversation guide

  Praise for Sounds Like Crazy

  “Author Shana Mahaffey emerges as a talent with a voice all her own in her remarkable debut novel, Sounds Like Crazy. Holly is an Emmy-winning voice-over actress who walks around with voices in her head ... and they’re not following the script! It’s an inventive, eccentric, and ultimately healing tale of what happens when we keep secrets too close.”

  —Kemble Scott, author of SoMa

  “Superbly crafted, Sounds Like Crazy is an achingly beautiful study in grief and the harrowing process of finding one’s true voice in the midst of overwhelming loss. Mahaffey mesmerizes with her ability to bring depth to each voice while skillfully revealing the sources of Holly’s anguish. Surprising, compassionate, and heartbreaking, Sounds Like Crazy is, at its core, a story of triumph. Extraordinary.”

  —Joe Quirk, author of The Ultimate Rush

  “We’ve all got that little voice in the back of our heads telling us what to do—and what not to do. Imagine how crazy-making it would be to have more than one! In Sounds Like Crazy, author Shana Mahaffey’s debut novel, heroine Holly has not one . . . not two . . . but five quirky personalities inside her head driving her to distraction. Holly’s desperate struggle with her voices and her out-of-control life make for a highly original and engrossing story.”

  —Melodie Bowsher, author of My Lost and Found Life

  Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

  Visit us online at www.penguin.com.

  NAL Accent

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October 2009

  Copyright © Shana Mahaffey, 2009

  Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009

  All rights reserved

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint lyrics from “Badlands” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1978 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Mahaffey, Shana.

  Sounds like crazy/Shana Mahaffey.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14539-5

  1. Multiple personality—Fiction. 2. Dissociative disorders—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I.Title.

  PS3613.A34924S68 2009

  813’.6—dc22 2009018140

  Set in Bembo

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  For Joe McGrath, Poppa, Uncle Joe, Joey, Coach,

  Old Nut, K.O.D. (Kindly Old Director)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I was taught as a child to measure your wealth by the love and support of the people around you. As such, it goes without saying that I am one of the richest people on the planet. And words can never express how grateful I am for all the wonderful folks in my life who helped me go from thinking about becoming an author to actually becoming one, but I will give it a go.

  Thank you, Scott James, for your unwavering friendship and support and for the San Francisco Writer’s Bloc. Also, thank you, WB members—Arlene Heitner, David Gleeson, Ken Grosserode, James Warner, Melodie Bowsher, and Sean Beaudoin—for your support, feedback, and insight all along the way.

  Thank you, Doug Wilkins, for providing an excellent writing retreat in the Sanchez Annex Grotto, and for your friendship, encouragement and support.

  Thank you, David Henry Sterry, Mark Evenier, and David Gleeson, for giving me the inside scoop on working as a voice-over artist.

  A special thanks to my early readers—everyone at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, Anne Friedman, Annabelle Fritz, Anne Rogers, Andrea Meyer, Alice Rennhoff, Barbara Trimborn, Billy Bosworth, Christian Schmidt, Colleen Mahaffey, Dan McGrath, Dave Viney, David Gleason, Donna Kopfer, Doug Wilkins, Erin O’Connor, Fabio Zurcher, Ingo Haussermann, James Warner, Jan Vaeth, Jana Brauer, Jeff Banks, Jerry FM Walter, Joan McGrath, Kathleen Edmunds, Kathleen McGrath, Kirsten Koch, Kris Tenhunfeld, Kristen Kopfer, Lorraine Gnecco, Lynn Sutliff, Martha Alderson, Maryanne Bushnell, Meredith McAdam, Rachael McGrath, Ralf Schundelmeier, Ralph Manfredi, Richard Gentenaar, Rudd Canaday, and Scott James—for your time, commitment, feedback, insight, ki
ndness, and unwavering support all along the way; and, especially for helping make Sounds Like Crazy a better book.

  Another special thanks and recognition go to Martha Alderson for whispering the plot of Sounds Like Crazy right out of me, and to Paul McCarthy for your early editing insights!

  And finally, my heartfelt thanks and deepest gratitude to Kevan Lyon for your unwavering belief in me and my book, and for being the best agent in the world! And to Ellen Edwards for your kindness, support, insight, guidance and help in bringing Sounds Like Crazy across the finish line.

  To my families (immediate, extended, and urban) and dear friends, more heartfelt gratitude, appreciation, and thanks.

  Everyone I didn’t name—a simple thank-you that hopefully speaks volumes.

  Ingo, for pushing me to pursue my dreams all those years ago, and so much more.

  Martin McGrath, for providing the zany Pierce Street Compound; I couldn’t ask for a better place to live.

  My Pierce Street Compound community, especially Annabelle, Katie, Lucky, Duke, Del, Howard, and Raphael.

  My fellow Spartans for helping me grow up and never leaving my side. Pass the biscuits!

  My brother, Brendan; my parents, Mike and Kathleen; my aunts and uncles, Mickey, Maryanne, Marty, Joan, Dan; and especially my sister, Colleen, for your love, encouragement, and support.

  The Kopfers (Goo, Donnie, Dansie, Princess, Ne, Q, Johnny, and Ricky) for making me a part of your family and always cheering me on.

  My urban family, Al ex, Alice, Alfredo, Andrea, Barbara, Chris, Dirky, Erik, Fabio, Georg, Jeanette, Jenny, Katrin, Kirsten, Kris, Lynn, Philippe, Ralfie, Sabine, Stefan, Svenja,Thorsten,Tom, and Turhan, for being the family I choose and always believing in me.

  And once more to Kirsten Koch and Thorsten Raab, my two dearest and closest friends, for teaching me the true value of friendship.

  Last but not least to Poppa, who taught me what is most important in life and who never gave up on me. Thank you for sticking around until I knew I could do this on my own.

  I am truly blessed.

  “For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside,

  That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

  —“Badlands” BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

  PROLOGUE

  My mother taught me that image is more important than reality. Everyone has secrets. If you belong to a family that keeps them, then you also have an unwritten contract that you will play your part in the theater of appearances. Trust me, I kept my secrets. I played my part. I did it so well, and I did it for so long, that the secrets I’d been keeping started keeping me.

  I have five people living inside my head. In the order they appeared, there is the Boy in the red Converse sneakers—I can’t see his face, only his shoes. Next, the ancient man who spends all his time in meditation. I call him the Silent One because he’s spoken to me only once since I met him, which makes him the perfect manager of my spiritual life. Third, Sarge, who keeps me safe. Fourth, Ruffles, a whale-sized woman who sits on a purple pillow eating Ruffles potato chips all day. And, saving the best for last, fifth, Betty Jane, a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara who makes my life hell on a good day.

  My condition is called dissociative identity disorder. A far more serious form was made famous by Sybil back when it was known as multiple personality disorder. Either predicament, according to my shrink, Milton, is a result of severe and repeated trauma; he’s been trying to get me to talk about it for the past five years. The problem is, I don’t remember any trauma, severe or repeated, before I was eighteen and Betty Jane appeared. Since that time, living with her is what any sane person would call severe and repeated trauma.

  Milton has never labeled me or my condition. Instead, he subscribes to a progressive notion of psychoanalysis that disregards diagnostic classifications in favor of facts and aims at treatment specific to the patient’s needs. The only label in our work is the one Milton has for the voices—he calls them the Committee to make it easier when we talk about them as a group. But don’t be fooled into thinking that “Committee” means each voice has equal representation.The truth is more like an autocracy, with Betty Jane as the despot and me and the others as the servants doing her bidding.

  The Committee and I can switch back and forth with an ease as natural as blinking. Okay, with Betty Jane the switch is really a coup de main that requires coercion or a show of force, usually by Sarge, to regain control. Regardless, the best way to describe the switch is to compare it to driving. As the driver, I have my hands on the proverbial wheel and the open road is right in front of me. Having one of the Committee members take over is the same as allowing them to take the wheel while I move to the passenger side or backseat. Either way, I am no longer in charge.When this happens, I experience everything taking place externally from a different perspective. Basically, I experience everything taking place outside from the inside of my head.

  It goes without saying that my Committee is a lot more than the voices most people have in their heads—the ones that recount the events of the day or the last conversation with a friend. Not that I have friends. How could I? You try walking around with five fully formed, visible people in your head and see if you have the space or even the need for friends. I don’t have either. Besides, no friendship, or relationship for that matter, can flourish under these circumstances. I stopped trying to have an honest relationship with anyone other than my older sister, Sarah, and Milton, who both unearthed my secret despite my best efforts. But analysts are paid to stay, and family is permanent. Friends, on the other hand, are easy to lose.

  The Boy, the Silent One, Sarge, Ruffles, and Betty Jane serve as family and friends. They talk to me. They talk to one another. They have their own lives, hobbies, and interests. They even have a fully furnished house with front and back doors, a well-manicured lawn, and a rosebush complete with thorns. And I see all of it inside my head from the moment I awake until the moment I go to sleep. We share a terrible intimacy where no words are required. But, like family, they judge me, sometimes a lot; and they keep secrets from me. So does my sister. Like I said, we all have secrets. I’ve kept the Committee’s secrets, at least the ones I know, and in return, they’ve kept mine—the ones I know, and the ones I don’t know.

  { 1 }

  I sat in my darkened room, lit a cigarette, and watched the orange tip glow as it burned.

  Six hours to go. Then it would be over. Six more hours and I, Holly Miller, could mark off another milestone—twelve Christmases spent alone.Well, technically not alone if you counted the Committee.At least, that was what I told Sarah last April when she started asking how and where I planned to spend Christmas. She’d asked me the same question for the last eleven years, each year asking it earlier than the last. Each year I evaded the question until the day came and went with me still sitting in my NewYork City apartment counting the hours until the birth of Jesus passed and “normal” loomed once more on the horizon.

  The first time I said I wouldn’t make it home for the holidays nobody protested. My mother said, “Things are too complicated at the moment to add you to the mix.” Sarah had just gotten married, so she was caught up in making memories and didn’t ask probing questions about what I’d do for the holiday.

  I remember sitting in my freshman dorm room on Christmas day thinking this was how cracked glass must feel—not broken enough to be shattered and replaced but disfigured enough that it marred the view of the world. The following year my mother sent my Christmas gifts in October. She lives in Palo Alto, California, where I grew up. Okay, mail deliveries are notoriously slow around the holidays, but you don’t need two and a half months to deliver a package to the East Coast.

  When I’d interviewed at New York University, they’d asked me if the distance from home would be a problem. My answer was “New York is as far away as I can get from my mother without leaving the continental United States.” Unlike with my father, whose random appearances in between business trips made i
t easy to ignore him regardless of proximity, I could avoid my mother’s duplicitous deeds only with physical distance between us. I didn’t realize my mother shared my need for distance until my Christmas gifts arrived early. After that, the tacit agreement between us went like this: as long as I remained in New York City, my family would continue to supply financial aid. In my absence, Mom could spin any tale she wanted to her bridge club. Having me show up on her doorstep would be the equivalent of perfect fiction colliding with imperfect reality. Trust me when I say that comparison would provoke from my mother far more than an end to money flowing from a bank account in Northern California.

  I lit another cigarette and listened to people shouting at one another outside on the streets. In the Lower East Side, holidays are not exempt from altercations when you have a bottle of Colt 45 and an attitude to match. I didn’t have either, so I sat there muting my own regret-tinged anger by chain-smoking.

  I inhaled and wondered what the people hurling insults were so angry about. What was I angry about? To root out the cause meant I’d have to dig into my past. Avoid the past was another one of my mother’s lessons. Trust me, I’ve mastered the ability to avoid all introspective journeys down memory lane.

  When I pulled back the curtains, I didn’t see anything. Never did. I’d rented my place sight unseen because I couldn’t believe “a four-room apartment with a view” was offered for such a low rent with no up-front fee.The day I moved in, I understood. My new abode consisted of a hallway (so small you had to step into the bathroom to enter and exit), bathroom, main room, and a closet.That’s four rooms in Manhattan.After eight years, I had yet to find the view. All I saw outside my two windows was a brick wall. But if I angled my body just right, I caught a sliver of sky. Regardless, the small space with only enough room for my bed, armchair, dresser, and tiny table with two chairs suited me just fine; and the brick vista had grown on me.