Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

She postponed reading Jesse’s novel for the longest time, until Lucy finally volunteered to read it first and sort of test the waters. When she finished it, she was quite enthusiastic. “It’s real good. Go ahead and like him,” she told Suzanne. “It’s about a bunch of obsessives—one of your favorite subjects. It’s funny. Read it.”

“Is it smart?”

“Smart? Yes, it’s smart, funny, all that,” said Lucy. “It should even make a good film. I might ask you to sleep with him an extra time to get me the part of Leslie.”

So she read it, and was relieved to find that she thought it was very good. Even the Sleeping Giant seemed to like it, except for a couple of the sex parts.

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 terrible 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, I’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.”

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.

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 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.