Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

Suzanne went cold. Jigger jumped out of her lap. The ash fell off her grandfather’s cigarette. “Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “Why?” This is surreal, she thought. I’m going to be fired from a bad movie for not relaxing.

“I always ask my actors that,” he explained. “Look, just because we imagined Goldie Hawn or a Marilyn Monroe kind of thing in this part… Now we’ve got to deal with what you have to bring to it. We hired you, now we’ve got to go with what you have.”

Suzanne sighed. This is a lot, she thought. This is as hard as I was hit for taking drugs. “I appreciate your comments, Mr. Lazan,” she said finally. “I’ll certainly give relaxing my best shot. If I’m not enjoying myself, though, it’s not because I’m deliberately trying to sabotage your film.”

George cleared his throat again. “I realize that,” he said. “Just do the best you can.”

“I’ll try,” she replied, in her most relaxed voice.

“Well,” he said, “nice to… I’ll see you on the set.”

“You sure will,” Suzanne offered, and hung up. “You sure will,” she repeated to the air in front of her.

“And the farmer hauled another load away!” sang her grandfather. Suzanne looked at him and saw that he was smiling. “Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap,” he said. She walked to his chair, sat on the arm, and kissed his head.

“Soup’s on,” her grandmother called from the kitchen.

Her grandfather shook his head and said, “Don’t that beat all?”

After dinner, Suzanne decided to go to sleep early and put this day behind her. She took off her makeup, brushed her teeth, and put on her nightgown. Before going to bed, though, she decided to call her therapist.

Before she lifted the receiver to dial Norma, the phone rang. “Suzanne?” a man’s voice said. “It’s me, Rob.” Her agent.

“What’s happening?” she said.

“Well, George Lazan called me today and he’s very upset. He says you’re not enjoying your work.” Suzanne felt what she had been holding together all day quickly begin to come apart.

“If George Lazan is upset about that, he should see a shrink,” Suzanne said tightly. “If he’s upset about me not enjoying my work, he should fucking go into therapy.”

“Well,” said Rob, “but, I mean, what are you doing?” He sounded concerned. “What are you doing?”

“I’m on Quaaludes,” shouted Suzanne childishly. “I’m on lodes and base and smack.”

“There’s no need to shout,” he said.

“Rob, it’s me , Suzanne,” she said. “I’ve been working one day. ”

“Two days,” he corrected her.

“Well, I usually don’t go into my deep REM relaxation until about my fourth or fifth day on the set.”

“But George Lazan told me you seemed to be holding something back.”

“Don’t do this to me,” said Suzanne ominously. “Do not do this to me! I don’t want to be in this business anymore anyway.” She started to cry. “I will not be treated like I’m deliberately withholding something. I went into this on Monday, and it’s Tuesday, and I’m doing the best I can. I got the job Friday night. It’s Tuesday!” She sniffled loudly, and felt silly.

“Well,” said Rob, sounding worried, “there’s no need to get so upset. I simply wanted to pass on what Lazan said to me—”

“Are they going to fire me?” Suzanne demanded.

“No, of course not,” he assured her.

“What is this, then? This is not going to achieve what they want. This is going to make me defensive. If they want me to relax and enjoy myself, this is not the way to get me to do it. I’ve been in this business twelve years, and they’re treating me like I just got out of drama school.”

“Suzanne, take it easy,” Rob said. “George Lazan is on your side . He wants you to be as good as you can be in this part. So calm down and just go in there tomorrow and be great.”

Suzanne sighed. “All right,” she said finally. “All right. But I don’t want any more of these conversations. If they call after tomorrow and don’t like it, I want you to fucking get me out of it, and… I’m sorry. I’m tired. I got four hours’ sleep and I worked all day, and I got a lot of acting lectures, and now…” She trailed off dramatically. “Let me talk to you tomorrow. I’ll be more philosophical by then.”

“All right, sweetheart. Take it easy.”

“Thanks,” Suzanne said, and hung up.

“Honey, you shouldn’t get so worked up,” her grandmother said from the doorway.

“They’re treating me like I’m a jerk,” Suzanne said.

“Just ’cause they treat you like a jerk doesn’t mean you have to act like one. How they treat you is not necessarily who you are. My mother always told me that. She’d say, ‘Honey, just ’cause they treat you like shit, you could still act like pie.’”

“This was a big recurring theme with Great-grandma Pearl,” said Suzanne. “I remember her saying that a fly is as likely to land on shit as on pie. So she thought everything could be divided into two categories. Either shit or pie.”

“Well, yeah, but she was a smart woman. Very smart woman. But I guess we were never rich enough to have your problems. Not so much time to get ourselves so worked up. Your grandpa worked on the railroad.” She paused for a moment and sat down next to Suzanne on the bed. “You know what you should do? You should do something with your writing, with those poems you used to write. Some of your poems are better than anything I’ve ever read in those cards over at the Palm Desert Mall. Why don’t you find out how you get into that?”

“I don’t know if I want to,” Suzanne said dubiously.

“Well, then, why don’t you find a nice guy and marry him and settle down?”

“It’s the ‘nice’ part I have trouble with,” she said. “Don’t you think that if it was going to happen, it would have happened already?”

“No,” said her grandmother. “You’re a good age for it. Find a nice guy to take care of you.”

“Yeah, but Gran, I’m a lot to take care of.”

“Oh, you talk big,” her grandmother said. “You talk big and you think fancy, but you’re just like other people. You act all rough and tough, but you’re a pushover. You just think too much and you talk too loud.”

“Don’t you think my life is weird, Gran?”

“Weird, weird, you call everything weird. It’s not so weird. But you’ve got to do something sooner or later to get your life together, girl. You don’t take those drugs anymore, and I’m real proud of you for that, but now that you can see it clearly, you’ve got to figure out what you want to do with it all.”

“What was that thing you always used to say? ‘It ain’t what you eat that makes you fat, it’s what you get’?” Suzanne asked.

“Yup.”

“What does that mean? I always thought it was specifically designed to confuse people out of their panic.”

“No,” said her grandmother, “it’s like ‘Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.’ It ain’t what you eat that makes you fat, it’s what you get. It’s like what you eat is what you get—even if it’s a plate of cold beans.”

“I see.”

“What’s happening?” said Suzanne’s grandfather, who was standing in the doorway. “Look what the cat drug in.”

“Hi, Granpaw.”

“Hi, honey,” said her grandmother. “What are you doing up?”

“Well, I heard everybody yap, yap, yappin’ in here and I thought I’d come in,” he said.

“You want some more beef jerky, Granpaw?” Suzanne asked.

“Did I have some already?”

“He doesn’t remember,” her grandmother whispered.