Sounds Like Crazy by Mahaffey Shana

Author:Mahaffey, Shana [Mahaffey, Shana]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-10-18T18:31:16+00:00

When I finished the story Milton said, “Do you remember how you felt when you were floating in the lake?” I was perplexed by his attention to this particular detail. I expected him to ask about Linda.Turned out my father did have an affair with her. She was not the first and she certainly was not the last. But Milton and I had long since covered the ground of my father’s infidelities and my mother’s complicity, and the funny thing was, I did remember exactly how I felt that day.

I closed my eyes and imagined I was floating in that lake.“All I could see was the blank and empty sky. I felt so small floating there, and I was afraid, but not in that primordial-fear kind of way,” I said, opening my eyes. “I see that in my cats all the time when I watch them react to something that startles them. They jump a mile high and start moving their legs in the air as if to get a running start when they hit the floor. Where they’re going is beyond me. It’s not like our apartment is large enough for a reaction like that.”

“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.

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