Postcards From the Edge (28 page)

She was calming down about her career. She had worked three times in the last year. She had done a small part in a movie called Mood Swing and a limited run in a Los Angeles theater of a play called I’ll Buy You a Cherimoya, and had costarred in a ter

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rible TV movie called Cut to the Chase, which also starred Lucy’s ex-lover, Scott Hastings. (Neither of them ever acknowledged that they knew Lucy.) She felt show business was not her life now. It was becoming part of her life. Lately, there had even been times when she regretted not having studied criminal psychology, after all.

She had seen Alex recently, at Wanda’s funeral. Suzanne was with Jesse and Alex was with Amy Baxter, the star of the sitcom Honey, 1’m Home!, who had played the part of Katie in Rehab! Rumor had it Amy had fallen in love with Alex during filming, and had left her boyfriend to move in with him. Amy was standing near Wanda’s family weeping, and Suzanne wondered if Amy had ever met Wanda. Stan and Julie were also there, along with Carl (who was now a therapist at a halfway house), Carol (who was now pregnant), and Sid (who was now dieting). It was a strange little scene.

Afterward, as everyone was walking to their cars, Suzanne and Alex paired off for a moment. She congratulated him on his network job and Emmy nominations, which Jesse had told her about.

“Listen,” Alex said earnestly, “I begged them to use you for Katie, but …” He shrugged. “They said your TVQ was low.” “Forget it,” Suzanne said. “Amy was perfect for it. Very understated.”

“Wasn’t she brilliant in the swing scene?” Alex enthused, as he watched Amy talking to Jesse and reapplying her makeup. “Brilliant,” Suzanne agreed.

Carl and Sid joined them. “You kids feel like a meeting?” Carl asked. “We’re going over to the eleven-thirty Gardner.” “If Jesse drops me, can one of you drive me home?”

“Sure,” said Sid.

“I really can’t go,” Alex said. “Amy and I have a real meeting-I mean, a business meeting-at Trader Vic’s at one fifteen to discuss Beyond Rehab!”

“Don’t sweat it, man,” Carl said. “I make my living out of being an ex-junkie, too.”

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Suzanne and Jesse drove out of the cemetery behind Carl’s car, which had a bumper sticker that said Ex-HEADS GIVE BETTER HEAD. Suzanne looked back and saw Alex in the parking lot talking excitedly to Carol’s husband Rob, who, Suzanne knew, had just signed a production deal with Lowell Stephenson. “He’s probably pitching an idea about a model who ODs in Hollywood,” she said.

“A vehicle for Amy,” Jesse said.

When they’d first started seeing each other, she’d been unable to remember anything he said. She’d wondered if and when his words would stick, and what the sentence would be. Then, in the space of a week, she’d recalled three sentences of his. Random ones, but it was a beginning. First there was “I talked to my friend Roy on Friday-I told you about Roy, didn’t I?” Then, “I run five miles a day” And there was something else about chili dogs, but she couldn’t remember the exact phrase. She was also making strides toward remembering what he looked like. She’d have a sudden image of his face while waiting for the light to change, or sitting in the bath.

Sometimes she disliked the sight of his feet, or the glint of his glasses when the light hit them at a particular angle, or the sensation of hearing him use a word that she didn’t know the meaning of. But then she’d smell his soft Jesse smell, or he’d read something to her about some South African riot, or she’d watch him bent over his typewriter making a correction, and she’d think, “He’s mine. I own him.” Or, in a healthier vein, she’d feel a sense of belonging, a corny feeling that embarrassed and thrilled her. She felt like a What’s Wrong with This Picture? element in a Norman Rockwell painting.

She wasn’t sure exactly when he’d started calling her Gail, but it was pretty soon after he’d moved in. She called him lots of things, ranging from Joseph to Sir. It was their understanding that she called him so many names because he was so many things to her.

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Sometimes she would go to him to discuss the notion of happiness. “Remember in Ethan Frome,” she said earnestly, “where they’re sledding in the moonlight? Where they’re wailing with laughter in the glistening snow? That’s what I think happiness is.” She stared at the floor in front of her.

Jesse removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. “More than anything,” he said, “it’s probably just the absence of pain or anxiety.” He squinted across the desk at Suzanne. “What does Lucy say? Did you ask her?”

“She said it’s a penis the size of a wastebasket, which hardly covers absence of pain, unless you like cystitis.”

“Which apparently she does,” Jesse said. “So, Lowell has a penis the size of a wastebasket.”

“How did we get on this subject?”

“Happiness,” he said, his glasses once again on and his hands folded in front of him. “Have you eaten today?”

“I think so,” she said vaguely.

“You’d be happier if you ate, don’t you think?” he asked. “Maybe.”

“Want me to fix you a peanut butter sandwich?” Suzanne smiled. Maybe she was just hungry.

One morning, while driving to the gym, she suddenly panicked. “I’m going to die,” she thought. “I’m going to be killed in a car crash.” Her hands gripped the wheel and she slowed to the speed limit.

Suzanne was convinced that now that something nice and regular was happening to her, she was going to die. Whereas she used to hasten her death through substance abuse, she now feared for her life because she had reason to live it. She had felt the hot breath of irony on the back of her neck for years. Now she was breathing irony, filling her lungs with invisible irony, its buoyant dread charging the atmosphere, moving in like a cold front.

She predicted her death flippantly to Lucy, so that in case it

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actually did happen, at least someone close to her would know that she knew. She didn’t want them to think she was one of those putzes who died unwittingly. She could hear Lucy telling people, “She predicted it-she knew somehow. What a talent.”

Gazing at him now across the abyss, she felt as though she was somehow displaced, but she realized now that she’d always felt that way. She’d thought she felt that way because it was true. Now she saw she felt that way because it was her.

She moved out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb Jesse. He stirred and opened his eyes. “Was it something I said?” he asked groggily.

“You’re suffocating me,” she whispered lovingly. On the way to the bathroom she had an idea. She’d make Jesse some waffles. Waffles and muffins and bacon and … That was probably enough. Oh, and orange juice and coffee. Coffee with cinnamon in it.

Maybe she shouldn’t make waffles, though. Her slapstick tendencies had a habit of rearing their ugly heads during waffle preparation. Still, she wanted to do something nice for him. She’d been staring at him for half an hour, and now she’d sort of woken him up … All in all, she felt she owed him waffles. That big waffle gesture was the only one that would do. She smiled at her reflection, filled with the enthusiasm of bold resolve.

Twenty minutes later, on the way to the hospital, Jesse said, “But why waffles? I don’t even really like waffles.”

“Look,” said Suzanne stoically. “It’s already starting to blister.” She held up her left hand, with its domestic scar across the knuckles where the waffle iron had landed.

He shook his head in bewilderment and patted Suzanne’s head. “Isn’t this the emergency room where … they know you?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling slightly. “I should open a house account there.”

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“They should at least give you a quantity discount,” he said, heading south onto La Cienega. “What was the last thing? The dog bite?”

“The dog bite,” she said cheerfully “Unless you count the time I had to take Lucy to have her IUD removed.” She held out her hand to him. “It hurts,” she said, with some surprise. “You’re a brave girl.”

“Soul,” she corrected him. “I’m a brave soul.” She sighed. “This is what I get for trying to be the cooking half of a couple.” “Gail, don’t be dramatic,” Jesse said. “You’ve made meat loaf and spaghetti several times without incident.”

She was quiet for a few moments, then asked meekly, “Don’t you have your dudefest tonight?”

“You mean am I leaving you alone with your hand tonight?” he said. “No, Gail, I’m staying with you.”

“Oh, goody,” said Suzanne maturely.

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*

DEAR DR. BLAU,

Of course I remember you. Who else would have sent me a stuffed animal exactly like the one he gave me after he pumped my stomach, only twenty times the size? When you gave me the little one three years ago in the hospital, I thought it was a thumb of some kind. Now, though, in its enormous form, I see that, of course, it’s a dolphin. How great. No one’s ever given me a giant pink dolphin before. How did you know I’ve always wanted one? You must think I’m very inconsiderate for not acknowledging your first letter sooner, but I’ve just moved to a new house, I’m rehearsing a play, my grandfather died, and I’m inconsiderate.

I hardly know where to begin in response to your question about “what I’ve been up to for the past two and a half years.” Suffice to say that the last time I did dope was the last time I saw you-and nothing personal, but I don’t want to see you or anyone else standing next to me with a hose ever again (unless we’re standing over flowers in a backyard).

Sometimes I feel like my life ended and I’m still here. Other times I feel so calm, I swear I can hear air moving slowly over the earth. I still eat junk, I don’t exercise enough, and last week

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I had a cigarette. But I figure if I had to give up everything I put between me and my feelings, I’d stand at the center of my being and howl like a lonely old dog.

Unfortunately, I am not “available for dating,” as you so quaintly inquired. I am presently living with someone, and have been for over a year. I guess I like it. One of the hardest habits for me to break is taking the right things the wrong way. If I was available, though, I would definitely consider you as an escort, since even after I’d thrown up on you, you said you found me “interesting.” For that I am truly grateful.

I had what I call my triumphant return to the Cedars Sinai emergency room a while back for a bum, but I didn’t see you there. Your psychodrama group sounds intriguing, but I think I’ll stick to conventional therapy for now. I still don’t think I feel the way I perceive other people to feel. I don’t know if the problem lies in my perception or my comfort. Either way I come out fighting, wrestling with my nature, as it were. And golly, what a mother of a nature it is. Sometimes, though, I’ll be driving, listening to loud music with the day spreading out all over, and I’ll feel something so big and great-a feeling as loud as the music. It’s as though my skin is the only thing that keeps me from going everywhere all at once. If all of this doesn’t tell you exactly what I’m doing, it should tell you how I’m feeling when I’m doing whatever it is.

Thanks again for the dolphin and your letter. I hope this finds you well and still on the right side of that hose. I have to sign off or I’ll be late for my shrink. I’m expecting a breakthrough any decade now.

Happy New Year, Suzanne

P.s. That night in the emergency room, do you recall if I threw up something I needed? Some small but trivial thing that belonged inside? I distinctly feel as though I’m missing something.

But then, I always have.

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*

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgments

There are no words to express adequately my gratitude to my friend and editor Paul Slansky, but if there were words, they’d have to be multisyllabic and shrieked from high atop a roller coaster in appreciation and glee.

I would like to thank the following for their support and inspiration:

Gloria Crayton, Mary Douglas French, Ilene (she knows why) Waterstone, Buck Henry, Melissa Mathison, Mike Nichols, Maxene and Ray Reynolds, Constance Freiberg, May Quigley, Richard Dreyfuss, Beverly D’Angelo, Bill Reynolds, Beatriz Foster, Amy Edmondson, Charles Wessler, Blair Sabol, Chana Ben-Dov, Arnold Klein, Cindy Lee Zucker, A1 Lowman, Patricia Soliman, Richard Hamlett, Brian Frielino, John Burnham, Jim Wade, Edwin Jack, Donald Roller Wilson, Bill Wilson, and Harper, Sean, Linda, J.D., Simpson, Albert, Roger, Begley, Grip, Lennie, Arlo, Harrison, Henry, Lester, Mo, Evelyn, Maggie, Penny, Ted, Moses, Carolyn, Evi, Thom, Nikki, Shimkus, M.G., Reigo, Bleeaz, Mira, LaVallee, Henley, Erika, Renee, Hyjean, David, Howard, Tom, Lynne, Drew, Toni, Carol, Leon, Kipper, Philip, the alumni of the Century City New Beginnings Rehabilitation Program, and Joan Hackett.

THE END