Postcards From the Edge

by Carrie Fisher

  Suzanne shifted her attention to her right and, to her dismay, found herself in a conversation about film with Gustav Bozena, whose English was only marginally better than Suzanne’s Czech. She tried to ask smart questions, but she thought they just sounded pretentious. Gustav said he liked John Ford, he liked King Vidor, he liked Fellini. I can’t believe this, she thought. I’m an asshole at a party talking to a famous director about film. When she heard herself ask, “Do you believe that film is a more visual medium and that things should be described instead of dialogued?” she wanted to cut her head open and drip brains on the table. It was all she could do to keep from choking on her own social vomit.

  “You do not look so American,” Gustav said. “You look European.”

  “Really?” Suzanne said. “You’re crazed.”

  Gustav said he came from Prague and lived in Paris, and that Suzanne didn’t look American because she looked right into people’s faces. “This Americans do not do,” Gustav said. “It is very European.”

  “Really?” she said, and kept looking right into his face, as if to make sure he didn’t go back on what he’d said. She heard herself telling friends, “Gustav Bozena said I was very European.”

  Across the table a rock promoter named Chris Hunt, who Suzanne thought looked like a losing Senate candidate—he reminded her of John Tunney—was telling a story about Noel Coward going backstage to meet the Beatles. According to the legend, which Suzanne recognized from Noel Coward’s memoirs, the Beatles had already left, so Coward went back to their hotel to tell them how much he’d liked the show, and then none of them came out to see him except Paul, who was very awkward. Coward had noted their rudeness in his diary.

  When he finished this story, the girl next to him, Joan Lilly, a former top British model, declared, “Well, Noel Coward hardly stands the test of time.” She said it with total authority, as if she was stating an accepted political position and that anyone who thought otherwise was simply outmoded.

  “In the final analysis,” said Chris Hunt, with the cavalier nonchalance you might overhear wafting out of a car as it drives slowly by, “the Beatles were just more interesting. Noel Coward,” he added dismissively, “was a wit.”

  Suzanne stared at him, her eyes demanding, “Be serious. How can you make this an issue? How did we get here?” She guessed that he and Joan Lilly had never met before this evening, and now they were bonded for life in their rigid stance on Noel Coward’s pathetic inferiority to the Beatles. She wanted to say something to somebody about the absurdity of the moment they were all sharing, but conversation was now over for her. These two had given taking a position a bad name.

  Somehow the topic shifted to Winston Churchill, whose wit was also belittled. An American television producer whose name Suzanne didn’t catch theorized that his reputation was based on the fact that every joke at that time was attributed to Churchill because they sounded better when told that way. “You know,” the producer said. “It’s like if you say, ‘I haven’t eaten in a week, so he bit me.’ It’s funnier if you say, ‘Churchill said it.’”

  It turned out Chris Hunt was something of an expert on Churchill as well, and he rattled off several Churchill classics. Suzanne leaned over to Gustav Bozena and whispered, “It looks like one of our guests has done some reading.” Then she turned her attention back to her left.

  “I honestly don’t know why people don’t like my character,” Selena was saying. “I haven’t killed anyone. My husband Charles has killed three people on the show.”

  “Well,” Fred said, “I think the reason they don’t like Dorothea, or rather, why Dorothea fascinates them, is because she’s deceptive.”

  “Oh?” said Selena. “That’s very interesting. I’ve never thought of that. That’s very intriguing.”

  “Let me get totally into my now,” Suzanne thought. “We are in a fabulous house in Bel Air sitting under Picassos and discussing the character of Dorothea with Dorothea over bad oyster soup.”

  She had embraced the values of the room and found she had nothing. She promised herself to remember this sensation the next time she was invited to a party.

  She looked across at Joan, who seemed to be listening to a faraway concert of weird classical music, then looked at Chris. She thought he looked like an old boy—someone who should wear a backpack instead of carrying a briefcase, but a very high-style backpack.

  She realized with dismay that this was her type of guy. She always ended up with guys like this, in relationships she likened to being partners on a school science fair project. She always felt like calling them up afterward and saying, “You left your beaker and your petri dish here. Do you want me to bring it to class tomorrow?” Now the old boy was telling a joke.

  “How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?” he asked, then looked around with his eyebrows raised and his mouth open. After a moment’s pause, he said, “Fish.”

  There was another short pause, and then laughter. Selena Warner said, “How clever,” several times. Suzanne said, “Funny,” to Gustav Bozena, who nodded with reserved enthusiasm. She considered explaining it to him, then realized the enormity of the job and thought better of it. Then Fred asked if anyone had heard any WASP jokes. Suzanne had, but she said nothing.

  Fred Weaver was radiant with joke hope. “Two WASPs run into each other on the street,” he said, “and one WASP says, ‘How are you?’ and the other WASP says, ‘Fine.’ ” He glowed and waited.

  “Oh, I get it,” Selena said. “That’s the joke.” Everyone had a hearty delayed laugh. Gustav looked confused.

  “What is a WASP?” he asked Suzanne.

  She hesitated. “A kind of insect,” she whispered earnestly. “Like a bee.” He nodded and stared in front of him vacantly, using this news to try to unlock the puzzle of the joke. By now, though, Fred was telling another one.

  “A WASP is trying on a suit in a clothing store and he turns to the salesman and says, ‘How much is this?’ and the salesman says, ‘Four hundred seventy-five dollars,’ and the WASP says, ‘I’ll take it.’”

  Everyone at the table roared, even Gustav, who said to Suzanne, laughing, “A bee buying a suit!”

  The desserts arrived, little cakes in raspberry sauce. Everyone made “Mmmmm” noises as they chewed and swallowed and clinked their forks against the china. Suzanne ate all her raspberry sauce, then broke apart the cake to find the filling, some kind of nut paste. Suddenly, there was a burst of laughter at the next table. Suzanne saw Wallis standing with Brian Whit-lock, a New York director whom she now whisked over to Suzanne’s happy group. Wallis was radiant. “I’m sure all of you know Brian,” she said.

  “Certainly,” said Selena Warner, nodding enthusiastically. The others mumbled vaguely in the affirmative, though in fact no one at the table had ever met him.

  “Well, I’m forcing Brian to tell this fabulous story of his to everyone,” Wallis said. “It’s just the most fabulous story.”

  Brian looked embarrassed. “Wallis, just let me tell it, okay?” he said. He pulled over a chair and sat between Selena and Fred.

  “I was invited to this concert in London last week,” he began. “Some benefit thing where everyone played—Bowie, Sting, Elton John, everyone. And the Prince and Princess of Wales were there. Well, I wanted to meet her so bad I was quite mad.

  “Afterward,” he continued, “there was a reception, and I found myself standing a few feet away from her. I knew she could hear me, so I started saying all this funny stuff, and I could see that she was listening and laughing, and I thought, ‘She gets me. She literally gets me.’ So I got myself introduced, and the guy who introduced us said, ‘This is Brian Whitlock, he directed The Punishing Blow.’ And she said, ‘Really?’ It turned out she’d seen The Punishing Blow.

  “So I’m in heaven, she’s asking questions about my movie, and I’m making her laugh—she was very cute—and all of a sudden I hear someone say, ‘Brian!’ Well, I’m talking to the Princess of Wales s
o I try to ignore it, and I hear again, ‘Brian!’ And I look, and it’s an Oriental girl in sunglasses. I have no idea who she is, but she knows my name and she comes and stands between the Princess and me and says, ‘I’m Yashimoto, I work in the office across the hall from yours. How long are you in London for?’

  “So I lean behind her and I silently say to the Princess, ‘I don’t know who this is,’ and Yashimoto says, ‘I’m here doing publicity on this show and then I’m going to Lisbon tomorrow. Have you ever been to Portugal?’ And the Princess drifts away, and Yashimoto says, ‘I can’t believe you’re here, this is so great.’ And I say, ‘Do you realize who I was talking to?’ and she says, ‘Oh, I’m just one of those people who’s not impressed by anybody.’ ”

  Everyone laughed uproariously, even Suzanne. “That’s actually true?” asked Chris Hunt.

  “It has to be,” answered Selena on Brian’s behalf. “No one could make up something that absurd.”

  “But did you know the girl?” asked Joan Lilly.

  “She worked across the hall from me in New York, I guess,” shrugged Brian. “In the Brill Building.”

  Everyone at the table seemed to be entertained, so Suzanne figured she’d take a bathroom break and kill some time. Soon, she thought, she could go home. Soon the bell would ring dismissing her from party class, and she would run up the street with her hair flying behind her, free . . .

  She excused herself to Gustav, and to anyone else who felt particularly close to her, and ventured forth into the huge house. There was no one in the little waiting room, so she went into the bathroom, closed the door, and locked it. The walls were all soft rose-colored cloth, and the sink was rose marble. Suzanne put the toilet seat down and began some real party breathing.

  She heard someone enter the tiny room just outside. Two voices. Two women. They seemed to be reviewing the evening. “Did you see Selena Warner?” one of them said. “She looks ancient.”

  “And what about that burp of a husband she’s got,” said the other.

  “Well, you know what they say,” said the first voice. “TV stars can’t be choosers.”

  Suzanne was not breathing as comfortably now. Their voices suddenly became more muffled. Why couldn’t she hear them? She put her ear against the door.

  “I feel sorry for her,” one was saying.

  Who? thought Suzanne. Me?

  “She hasn’t worked in a while, and she lives alone,” said the other.

  It is me! she thought. Oh my God, they’re talking about me. How will I ever get out of here?

  “Why can’t she get work? She’s a pretty good actress, and she certainly has connections.”

  Suzanne was humiliated. I can never leave this powder room, she thought. She was breathing like a sick baby.

  “Haven’t you heard?” said one of the voices. “She’s put on a lot of weight.”

  Everyone knows! Everyone’s talking about me!

  “Really?” said the other.

  “Oh, yes, about thirty or forty pounds.”

  “Really?” said the other.

  Oh, thought Suzanne. Who? Thirty or forty. Oh.

  She was devastated now. It hardly mattered that they hadn’t been talking about her. The way she felt now, they might as well have been. She had to get home, that much was clear. She flushed the toilet and walked out into the little room. The voices belonged to two attractive women in their forties, neither of whom Suzanne knew. She smiled and nodded at them as she passed, trying to look hopeful and thrilled.

  She considered leaving without saying good night, but ruled that out when she considered how it would look. She went back into the dining room, where Wallis was presenting Brian to yet another table. Many of the guests were moving to the living room with their coffee and after-dinner drinks. Suzanne waited on the edge of the party, on the outskirts of the in crowd. When Brian began his story again, she caught her hostess’s eye.

  Wallis came over. “I just can’t get over Brian’s story,” she said. “Imagine interrupting a conversation with royalty.”

  “I was on acid when I met Princess Margaret,” said Suzanne. “Listen, Wallis, I gotta go. It was great. Great cake.”

  “So soon?” Wallis pouted. “Phil Esterbrook might play one of his songs. Are you sure you can’t stay?”

  “No, really,” said Suzanne, letting Wallis kiss her as she moved toward the door. “I’m retaining water for a couple of people, and I’ve got to return it by midnight.”

  When she put her nightgown on and went to bed, she didn’t know that she intended to stay there. By Sunday afternoon, though, she was fairly dug in, with empty soft drink cans piling up on her night table and the slow burn of television branding her cowlike brown eyes.

  “Hemingway needed his rest,” her mother assured her over the phone. “So did Paul Muni. Alfred Lunt would just retreat to his garden and let his wife answer the phone.”

  It always relaxed Suzanne to hear her mother compare her favorably to someone like Paul Muni or Alfred Lunt. She settled down under her covers. “You’re just like me, Suzanne,” her mother said. “You just get overwhelmed sometimes. I don’t think you should feel bad about going to bed for a few days. You’re a sensitive, questioning personality.”

  Suzanne wondered when she had begun to be more of a personality than a person. When her shrink had pointed it out to her, she’d felt as though she’d actually known it for a long time. When she was twenty-one she had written in her journal, “I narrate a life I’m reluctant to live.” Soothed by her mother’s voice, she found herself recalling the maternal voice of her therapist at her last session.

  “I think that basically you are a very frightened, shy person,” Norma had said, her eyebrows slightly raised with the effort of insight. “You seem very open about yourself, but it’s really just part of your need to control. You want people to know that you’re well aware of the truth about yourself. It’s like a fat girl walking into a room and announcing that she’s fat.”

  Suzanne had sat there glowing with a deep, happy blush. “That’s wonderful,” she exclaimed, gazing at Norma in admiration.

  “You’re just excited because now you have another truth to entertain people with,” Norma had said. “Part of your little honesty show, which exists to make people think you’re not trying to stay as far away from them as you actually are.”

  Suzanne had been thrilled. She’d been caught. Even as she had been hearing these new truths, she was storing them where she stored all the pertinent information she used when describing herself to new people, or when describing herself to old people in a new way. Describing herself was Suzanne’s way of being herself. It was as close as she got, and it was way off the mark. She had shaken her head with wonder and asked, “So, now what do I do?”

  “Nothing,” Norma had said, as though this should have been obvious. “What could you do? This is simply how you operate.”

  “So this is it? I’m sentenced to a life of lifelike behavior?”

  “We obviously have a lot of work to do,” Norma had said. “You will, of course, always be like this to some degree. You have fashioned yourself a personality of highly intricate design. It would be almost impossible to dismantle, and that is not our purpose. I just want you to feel something, in between all this talking and thinking that you do. I want you to lead a life instead of following one around.”

  Now, in bed, Suzanne heard her mother mention Jane Powell. “. . . and Shirley MacLaine took several years off,” her mother said. “Listen, dear, do you want me to send Mary up to fix you something? She has nothing to do when I’m out of town. She’s just sitting in my house watching TV and eating Fritos. She could come to your house and fix you a bacon sandwich, or chicken crepes. It always makes me feel better when I’ve eaten something . . .”

  It was decided that Mary would come up and fix her a meal and straighten up her house. Suzanne hung up, sighed, and rolled over in bed to face the TV. Someone exploded. She searched her bedding for the remote contr
ol clicker, found it under several pillows, and scanned the stations for solace.

  When Mary arrived she removed all the empty cans from the bedroom. Suzanne loved Mary, who had taken care of her since she was six. “What was I like when I was little, Mare?”

  “You were a good li’l child,” said Mary, straightening the pillows behind Suzanne’s head. “You were always a good li’l girl. Now, what can I fix you for lunch?”

  Suzanne asked for a bacon sandwich and German chocolate cake. Mary went off to the kitchen, and Suzanne rolled over on her side. She wondered how long she was going to stay in bed. She wondered if she would awaken one morning—maybe tomorrow morning—and feel like bounding back into her life, refreshed and unafraid. Just now, though, she felt stale and paralyzed.

  She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn’t feel the life she saw she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective.

  She was having trouble sleeping again, lying still with her thoughts tossing and turning. As far back as she could remember, she had had trouble sleeping. As a child she would wait out her naptime like a prison sentence. She would lie in bed and stare at the wallpaper pattern and wonder what would happen if there were no heaven. She thought the universe would probably go on and on, spilling all over everything. Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe, a lid that kept everything underneath it where it belonged.