Susan: So you didn’t see anything in me worth loving?
God: No, Susan. I refuse to let you characterize me like that.
Rudy: Nice answer. May I say something?
God and Susan: Please.
Rudy: Susan, I think you keep apologizing because you haven’t accepted forgiveness. You haven’t given it either.
Susan: Like forgiving Butler? There’s nothing to forgive. He never advertised himself as anything but a rake. It’s my own fault.
Rudy: That’s not forgiveness; that’s just shifting the blame.
Susan: What else am I supposed to do? Say you steal my money. Either you have to pay me back or I eat the loss. But somebody’s got to feel the hit. Forgiveness feels like I’m supposed to let the other person get away with it. God must be okay with what happened to me because I’m not worth making it right.
Rudy: Sin is never okay, Susan. Sin cost you a part of yourself. Sin cost Jesus his life. Forgiveness means you turn the burden of justice over to God. Let him take it. You can’t mete out justice yourself.
Susan: Look, I don’t want to punish Butler or my dad or those churches. But if I let go, then the losses will finally be real. Irretrievable, irredeemable.
Rudy: Aren’t they real enough already?
Susan: Where do I take the loss? Where does it end?
God: Oh, Susan. You know the answer.
I did. It was the same place my mother took her grief every Communion Sunday. It was in the bread and the wine. It was in the body and the blood. It was there in Jesus—not in his sober face but in the marks on his hands.
Chapter 11
NEW LEASE, NEW LIFE, NEW YORK
BEFORE I MOVE ON I SHOULD RECAP MY LIFE AS A PROFESSIONAL actor. Only 2 percent of SAG actors were able to make a living just from their acting wages, and I was in that 2 percent. Granted, there was a galactic divide between my income and that of, say, Julia Roberts. But I booked one day on a commercial and earned forty grand in residuals. I dissed those mindless commercials, but they made the schlepping a lot more palatable. In the end, I survived on my acting wages—that and the encouragement I got from industry insiders and friends.
“Why don’t you have your own sitcom?” asked a costar on Seinfeld. “It’s just a matter of time,” a director said. Church people had more churchy ways of saying it: “I see God’s hand on you.…The Lord is going to use you in a mighty way. You will stand before kings and princes.” Biblical or secular, they prophesied success and I lived on those promises. (And the residuals.)
But there were heartbreaks too: getting cut from PT&A, nearly landing a TV series that proceeded to get canceled, the Addams Family nightmare, quitting the Groundlings and seeing my friends on SNL.…Maybe it was bad luck or bad timing. Church people had more churchy ways of saying that too: “You aren’t ready.…Maybe you love acting more than the Lord.” And my personal favorite: “God protected you from success.” Please. He should be so negligent.
I often wondered: Should I try harder, or not try at all? If God closed a door, should I wait for him to open a window? Or was it time to play “Expunge the Mystery Sin” and wait for the trapdoor to drop open?
Just when I was ready to give up, another job came along. “Praise Jesus, a sign from the Lord!” Sometimes it seemed like a sign; sometimes it seemed like just another job. And sometimes I wondered if it would have been easier if God never opened the door. I never quite got to the inner sanctum of regular employment. It often felt like God had merely let me into a foyer where I could hear others playing my note in another room, with no way to get to the music. And that’s really what I wanted to do. I wanted to play my note. I wanted to do the thing that made me feel alive. The fact that I felt most alive on TV in front of millions of people was beside the point, wasn’t it?
I answered an ad in the Hollywood Reporter reading, “BIG LAUGHS! LOW PAY!” Les had been the head writer on The Tonight Show; Love, American Style; and many other classic sitcoms before retiring. I went to work for him balancing his books, paying bills, and organizing years and years of jokes.
Les had a gap between his two front teeth that gave him a perpetually comical look, as if he found the whole world ridiculous. Maybe he did, because his house was filled with silliness: plastic frogs at the front door that ribbeted when anyone approached, gumball machines, rubber band-propelled airplanes—toys to delight children and annoy adults. Les doctored every expletive with a flourish. “Oh, shit…as you would say.” I started laughing again around Les. He was the nicest, funniest, most encouraging man I had ever met. And Les was an atheist.
Ironically, he loved to talk to me about God. He asked questions, listened, and offered his own thoughts, always with respect and a smile. “You believe all that stuff because you’re a naturally good person.”
“You should have met me two years ago.”
Les also loved my writing. I brought him stories, spec scripts, and the essays I started writing after I got sober. “I like your essays much better than your scripts,” Les said flatly.
“Why? Are my scripts that bad?”
“No. Your essays are that good. I don’t suffer fools, Susan. Write more essays.”
“But what can I do with them?”
“Beats me. I’ve been out of the business too long. But you’re a terrific writer. Keep writing.”
Les had been accurate about the job. It was low pay and big laughs. But he didn’t advertise how valuable it would prove to be. It had been years since I’d had a tough, loving mentor who heard my note and encouraged me to play it.
Writing essays and working for Les were two good things I did for myself that year I got sober. The other was to get a cat. Honey had been abandoned. Pick her up and she purred—she knew where she had come from and was grateful. It was good to have someone to stay sober for and remind me what gratitude looked like.
I also did myself a favor and skulked back into church. Gwen was trying out a new place in Malibu. I hated it. “This is like Baywatch Goes Biblical,” I complained.
Gwen was more forgiving. “Yes, the people look like Barbie and Ken, the pastor is arrogant, and the music is too hip. But I want to be around Jesus on Sundays.” Gwen was a schoolteacher, not an addictive, perfectionist arteest. I gritted my teeth and went. Even at its worst, it was better than sleeping off a hangover.
“Come visit me in New York!” Mark e-mailed me. “Lots of cool Christians. Lots of cute guys. For you, I mean!” I took him up on the offer. I also visited my friend Diane, who’d moved east for a development job at a cable network. Diane had always found me funny so of course I liked her. Over lunch, she told me they were developing new shows for New York—based talent. “Ever thought about writing for TV, Susan? In New York?”
I went back to Mark’s apartment and wrote up a series idea. Diane loved it and so did her boss. “Here’s the deal, Susan: We’re only hiring local talent. You have to live here. It’s cable: they didn’t even pay for me to relocate.”
The moment I got back to LA, I started thinking about moving to New York. What did I have in LA besides a rent-controlled apartment and a part-time job? I had friends. But friends move. Mark moved to New York. Cheryl was moving to Hawaii. At least I’d be moving somewhere I had a close friend.
Mark called. His friend Dave from church was renting a house in Queens. “The small room is available for only $325 a month!”
“What is it, a crack house?”
“No, Susan. You’re thinking of Brooklyn.”
Les insisted I go. “It’s the best city in the world.”
Only Gwen peed on my parade. “You can’t move until they offer you a job.”
“They won’t offer me a job unless I’ve moved. If it sucks I can move back.”
“Not to your rent-controlled apartment, you can’t.”
“But I can get a room in a house in Queens for $325 a month.”
“What is it, a crack house?”
“No, you’re thinking of Brooklyn. Can you think
of one positive thing to say?”
Gwen sighed. “I’m jealous. If it weren’t for Danny, I’d move with you in a heartbeat.”
I’d wasted three years ignoring God’s opinions about my life. Now that I was sober, I dared to hope that God might still have a purpose for me, and he might have an opinion about me going to New York. Despite the Oakies and the Slackers and the Roidheads, I still believed God could give me a sign. Maybe I was being superstitious. Maybe I wanted God to be my personal tarot card reader. Or maybe, just maybe, God had my best interests at heart, and maybe he would tell me. (Hopefully not with a nightmare about moving to New York and getting decapitated.)
The following Sunday, I gritted my teeth and joined Gwen at the Baywatch church. “Be ready to go where God calls you,” the pastor bellowed. “Some of you are not meant to stay here. Some of you are meant to move out of state.…” Arrogant or not, that was my sign.
I gave notice, cleaned out my apartment, and took a few boxes to my parents’ house for storage. My father’s childhood polio was taking its toll. His muscles had been deteriorating, which meant he moved even less and watched even more TV, if that were possible. At least he was watching more movies, Mom said. Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers. “And there’s one he watches over and over,” she puzzled. “Sleepless in Seattle?”
At the dinner table my father went off on Hillary Clinton and Travelgate. “It’s just a bunch of GHADDAMNED crooks. GhadDAMN…” I could still feel the electric shock, so I excused myself and went back to packing. I had forgiven him. But I couldn’t help mourning the relationship we’d lost, the relationship that could have been.
Later that night, I walked past Dad sitting in his Barcalounger. “Let me show you something, Susie.” He demonstrated the headphones that allowed him to watch TV all night without disturbing anyone. “One night I got up from the TV and went to the bathroom down the hall. Sitting there in the john, I thought, Man, that TV is loud! Susie was right. It’s louder in here than it is in the TV room. I never realized how the sound traveled down the hallway and echoed. You were right…about how loud it was.”
“It’s funny the things we used to fight about. Actually, it’s not funny. It was your house and I didn’t respect you. I’m sorry I hurt you, Dad. I hope you will forgive me.”
Dad looked down. “Well, the sound just echoes and gets louder down there. Right near your door.”
“What do you like about Sleepless in Seattle?”
“That Meg Ryan. I look at her and think, Susie could have played her role really well.“
I wondered if Dad liked the movie itself or if he just liked playing it over and over the way he relived his memories: trying to rewrite our lives to have a better ending. I kissed him on the forehead. He grabbed my forearm. His hand was shaking. I hadn’t realized until that moment how frail he’d become.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving I left Los Angeles with four suitcases and my cat. Mark picked me up and took me to Long Island for the weekend. New York had been good to Mark. He’d opened an acting studio and was making a great living as an actor’s coach—enough to rent a cottage in the Hamptons in the winter. The beach was nothing like Southern California. The sand was riddled with high grass; the water was gray and wild. But I loved the wildness of it all; I loved the adventure. That night the sky was dark and the wind turned bitter, but the stars were out.
“It’s beautiful,” I marveled to Mark.
“I thought you should see the beauty before you experience the horror that is Queens. Dave’s house is big, but it is Queens, honey.”
“Oh, stop it. You’re pissing on my adventure.” Yes, this was an adventure. God hadn’t forgotten me. He had called me to live a big life. I was glad to be alive and sober for it.
That Sunday I met my new roommates, Wendy and Dave, at the house. “Your room is smaller than I thought,” Dave apologized. “It’s eight feet by eight feet. But the ceilings are high. You could do a loft bed.” The room was so small that by the time I put my bags down I had to sleep in the fetal position.
I decided to do something nice for myself and get a great New York haircut. That was a horrible idea. Haircuts are rarely great the first week. I’d just upended everything else in my life—why crop my hair? Oh, did I say “crop”? No, I did not. I said, “A trim with some layers.” However, the stylist—as he loosely referred to himself—interpreted that as Ellen DeGeneres on a bad hair day.
I called Mark in tears. He laughed. “I always thought Ellen would look cute with mascara and bigger earrings.” Mark bought me some massive earrings. I bought a bottle of hair-growth serum.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Diane called me from the cable network.
“Susan, I just got fired.”
“What?!”
“My boss jumped ship for ESPN. They fired everyone in her regime. Including me.”
“What are you going to do?” I wondered.
“I’m moving back to LA. I hate it here. It’s too cold.”
“What about my treatment?”
“Basically, you’ve got a Democratic bill in a Republican Congress. I’m so sorry, Susan. Don’t stay in New York. It’s too cold.”
It was bitterly cold. It was also two days before Thanksgiving and I was stuck in an eight-foot cubicle with a bad haircut and no job.
Mark’s friend Bill from church invited us to a Thanksgiving dinner up in Washington Heights. The hostess handed out Bible verse cards to everyone. She didn’t know me from Adam. The verse she gave me read, “I will watch over you wherever you go.…I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen. 28:15).
“Perhaps God tricked me into moving here,” I told Mark on the subway ride home. “Maybe he lured me out here with a shiny object and then pulled a bait and switch. But maybe I needed a shiny object to get here, because the real gift might not be so shiny. And maybe I need to be patient and discover what the real gift is. Besides, Jesus has never ever let me down.…Well…”
Mark laughed. “You are so going to be okay.”
That Sunday I went to Mark’s church in the Village. The air was crisp, the sky was a severe blue, the wind was scattering the last autumn leaves, and it took my breath away. I thought to myself, It’s okay, Lord. I’ll stay until you tell me it’s time to go. And after all, this is lovely. It really is lovely. And then God smiled. At least that’s what it felt like when the wind whipped the leaves around my feet.
I decided to wait it out and discover what God meant for me to find in New York. I got a temp job working for a law firm. I got a theatrical and commercial agent and started doing the thing I knew how to do: schlep around the city for auditions. Mark was right: I was going to be okay.
The first big surprise God had for me was a solid, healthy church. I never thought I’d find that again. The pastor was intelligent; his sermons were like meaty college lectures that fed my brain. The worship music was sophisticated: classical in the morning, jazz at night. Mark hated jazz. “It’s like ‘Kenny G Does the Hymns.’ Who can worship to a jazz scat?”
“Well it beats rock ’n’ roll power ballads.” I laughed. “Jesus, Luvvah of my soul-ahh, let me to thy bosom FLY-YAHH!”
There was no emotional excess whatsoever at this church. No crying in the Spirit or reaching hungry hands up to God. Given my past, that was a good thing.
My second surprise was the friends I made at that church: artists like Mark who loved God and were making a living at their art or working survival jobs to support it. They didn’t just “wait on God.” They took action.
“New York does that to you, Susan. It kicks you in the ass.”
Want to be an artist? Then go make art and stop talking about it. So I went.
My new friend Bill introduced me to Paula, a film producer who liked my treatment. I developed the story into a feature script and we shopped it around. I entered the script into a competition and won a $10,000 prize. So I kept temping, kept auditioning, and kept writing.
Then
Bill introduced me to Todd and Jeannie, sketch comedians, and Cade, a filmmaker. We started King Baby, a comedy show with sketches and short films. We got a producer, Chris, and booked gigs all over town. It was a blast. While we were all Christians, we didn’t do “Bible skits.” Some sketches had a spiritual element; others didn’t. The first priority was to be good. These guys were the most talented people I’d ever worked with. I was having more fun than I had at the Groundlings. I began to book paying acting work again: commercials mostly. I still did some temp work, but it didn’t matter. I was playing my note. Maybe God couldn’t turn back the clock, but in one short year he accomplished amazing things with the time I’d given him.
Rudy: At last, a happy moment in your life!
Susan: This too shall pass.
Rudy: Well, let’s enjoy it while it’s here. If you want good times to return, you’ve got to remember what made the good times good. Why don’t you tell each other something you appreciated about this time in your relationship?
Susan: Okay. I’m very grateful for what God did. He turned my life around.
God: I turned her life around.
Susan: God blessed me.
God: I blessed her.
Susan: I think you’re supposed to respond by saying something you appreciate about me.
God: What do you want me to say?
Susan: I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
God: But you’re the one who’s imagining me.
Susan: Rudy, help. Sarcastic God is back.
Rudy: This was a good time for you. Yes?
I imagined us nodding politely.
Rudy: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
Susan: I just want to remind God that I didn’t freak out when everything fell apart within the first month of my being there.
Angry Conversations with God Page 13