Angry Conversations with God (25 page)

“We need to help her. But I can’t stay down here until the house sells. Jim is nearby. Rob says he’ll come every other week.”

“I’ll move back.”

“Are you sure
you’re
up for it?” Nancy wondered. “What about New York?”

“What about Mom? I need to help too, Nancy. I want to.”

I stayed in California through the summer. I visited Gwen and Sophie. They urged me to move back. I contacted my agents and
booked two commercials and two TV shows in eight weeks. The decision seemed obvious.

I thought a lot about what I really wanted. I wanted Jesus. Yes, God had saved Jack. Yes, we had walked through a year of
trauma together. But if Jack couldn’t love Jesus, I had to choose. I’d rather have Jesus and be physically alone than be with
Jack and be spiritually alone. Give me Jesus.

I returned to New York in October, and something had happened to Jack. He was relaxed and upbeat; he came back to church;
he even lingered to chat with my friends.

“What happened to Jack?” Jeannie gaped.

“A miracle maybe?”

“I have to move back to LA,” I told Jack one evening. “I have to help my mother move. And I have to get back to the work I’m
trained to do. I can’t stay in New York.”

“I could try life in LA,” Jack said.

“I don’t want you to move out there just to date me.”

“We could get married.” Jack smiled. “You’re the one for me.”

“But Jack, Jesus is the one for me before you are. You don’t find God in church. And I don’t always either. But (and I couldn’t
believe I was saying it) where I’m going is with Jesus. Unless you want to go with me, we can’t go together.”

“I could try. I don’t know that I’m going to connect with God the same way you do. But I’ll go to church when I can. And I’ll
support you when I can’t. Can you trust me for that? Can you trust
God
for that?”

“I guess I can try.”

He smiled. “Come on, Susan. You’re the one.”

That night I went home and got on my knees. “I don’t know anymore, Lord! I keep laying out the fleece, and Jack keeps picking
it up. I’m laying out this move as a fleece. If Jack and I are never going to be right, then help us end it. For your sake.
And ours.” A calm came over me. Maybe it was the calm you feel when God cobbles your mistakes into something beautiful, when
he turns your bonehead Plan B into his perfect Plan A. Or maybe it was one big crapshoot.

Mark and I had dinner before I left. He had been dating a man for six months, a devout Catholic. “Suze, if God put up with
slavery and polygamy for thousands of years, he can put up with me being gay for thirty.”

I had coffee with Bill. Bill was the first person I’d met in New York. He invited me to Thanksgiving dinner when everything
had gone wrong, including my hair. “Ever thought about going to LA for pilot season?” I asked him.

“No, my life is in New York. I’m getting married; I’m leading a Bible study. I’ll let God take care of career stuff.” How
I envied him! He embodied that idea:
Want to be a successful actor? Go to church.
He shot more commercials in a year than I had in my entire career.

I found a subletter, packed my bags and my cat, and left. “No good-byes,” Jack said. “See you in April.”

We put Mom’s house on the market. Rob came back. My siblings and I took turns watching her, cleaning, and packing her up.
Mother’s language had improved, but she still couldn’t remember my name without being prompted. The window for us to be peers
was over. I wished I’d spent more time getting to know her and less time trying to fix my father. Now she didn’t have the
vocabulary to tell me who she really was.

I still had high hopes for work. I enrolled in a solo showwriting workshop. I had so much to write about now: Dad, Mom, selling
the house, maybe getting married. Maybe.

If Jack and I worked out, we’d need to find a church he could tolerate. Gwen’s church in Malibu exploded because of the pastor’s
Hindenburg ego. I didn’t know anyone at the Slacker church anymore. Gwen went Episcopal, but Jack’s mom was Episcopal and
her priest drove a BMW, which Jack hated. I tried a church affiliated with the one in New York. The worship band wore hair
gel; Jack wouldn’t like that. The pastor dropped phrases like
unpack
and
engaging the culture.
“Orthopraxy, dude,” he spewed. “It’s about right
doing.
” Ugh. Even my BS detector was too sharp for that.

I tried another church that a friend called “organic and raw.” I was suspicious of a church that sounded like a juice bar,
but I went. A greeter handed me a program and an article about them that ran in the newspaper. “They don’t sing hymns,” the
reporter wrote. “[The pastor] said ‘European’ songs have no relevance in a multiethnic, multicultural urban church of revolutionaries
in the heart of Los Angeles in the 21st century.”

I wondered if they played worship salsa. I wondered if it was okay that I was white.

The band came out and sang a chorus that ended every line with “What can I say?” Like, “I’m here today and what can I say?
You made a way; what can I say? Turned night into day; what can I say? This song is so hey, what can I say?” I thought,
I don’t know—what can you say? Why don’t you go home, figure it out, come back, and sing
that
. In the meantime, why don’t you play one of those theologically rich, musically complex hymns of the European imperialist
white man?

The pastor was great. He was intelligent. His sermon was organic and raw in an
engaging the culture
kind of way, especially for people under thirty. But I’d done this kind of church in my twenties. They always ended the same
way: the pastor had an affair or bought an Escalade or his ego exploded like a dirigible, people were scarred, and the church
disbanded. Or there was no scandal at all: the pastor was great and the church was fine…until the next organic and raw cuttingedge
church came along and everyone jumped ship.

At least, that’s what I was worrying over as I tried to imagine Jack at that church. Imagining Jack in
any
church or even in LA worried me. And based on our phone conversations, he was uneasy too. He had articles to write; he needed
to visit his family in the Midwest; he needed to save some money.

A few weeks before his scheduled arrival, he called.

“I can’t move to LA,” Jack blurted out. “My life is here. I’m just starting to heal from what happened. I’m just starting
to feel like myself again. I want to stay here.”

“Okay.” I breathed. This was it.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“We know what we need to say, Jack.”

There was a pause. “I’ve never stayed friends with an ex.” Jack’s voice cracked.

“I’ve never wanted to,” I replied.

We said what we loved about each other. We promised to be friends. It was kind and loving and mature. It had been three years.
And it was over.

I went to Gwen’s house and cried. “I know it’s the right thing. If only it weren’t for that cardboard.…”

She laughed. “Cardboard?”

I told her about Pastor Norm’s cardboard. Bits and pieces of Jack still clung to me, and me to him.

“But Susan, even if the relationship is over, he still loves you. That will never go away.”

“Nuh-uh!” I blubbered. Then Gwen cried with me. Thank God for Gwens. When you go through a breakup, make sure you have a Gwen,
not a Martha.

For the first time in three years I was really alone. I was free to find a church and not worry about how Jack might like
it. I was free to be God’s alone. And that’s really what my life was about, wasn’t it? The love story between God and me?

My mother’s house sold a week after we put it on the market, which I expected. Then Wendy called: our landlords had sold the
New York house, and we had to move out. That I hadn’t expected. God was closing the doors. But I still believed God would
open another door. Or a window. Or maybe a vent.

I got a catsitting gig in Venice in a decaying apartment with underground parking and windows that misaligned on their tracks.
Cars came in and out of the garage at all hours, their tires banging against the rusty security gate. Maybe this was the door
God was opening. So it was a crappy door. At least it wasn’t a sewer cover.

But then agents didn’t call for four months. How come that door didn’t open? I’d booked four jobs the previous summer. What
was wrong this time? What was wrong with me? Was this why I came back to LA? To catsit in crappy apartments? To wait on agents
who weren’t calling? Bill hadn’t been so foolish as to race out to LA for pilot season. No, this wasn’t a door. This was a
circus fun house. Everything felt wrong.

And Jack: Hadn’t he been relaxed and upbeat? Hadn’t he wanted to try? Didn’t I push love away once again?
Oh, God, I closed the wrong door!
I e-mailed Jack to check in. I signed with, “Love always.” It took him four entire days to respond.

“Susan,” his e-mail began (No Dear Susan, or Suzer, or even Hey. Just Susan, colon, paragraph, return).…

I didn’t want you to hear this through the grapevine. I met someone. I was not looking. I never expected it to happen so soon.
But it did. I wanted to tell you myself. Hope you’re well. Best, Jack.

The fridge was buzzing. I could smell the cat box. The computer image burned a shadow on the back of my retina.

No. No! He didn’t. He couldn’t! We were going to get married! Yes, the breakup was mutual. Yes, I felt peace. But wasn’t he
supposed to grieve? For three years I put my faith in Jack’s commitment! Okay, yes, his
obsessive, controlling commitment,
but still! Jack said I was “The One,” and he replaced me? Inside the span of a menstrual cycle?!

I e-mailed him immediately. Really stupid idea.

You said I was “The One”! If you could replace me so quickly I must not have been that important!

And his response:

Susan (colon, paragraph, return) My love for you hasn’t gone; just the nature of it has changed. I realize now you weren’t
“The One.” You were just my first big relationship. I never intended to hurt you. But we did break up and I’m free to date.
Best, Jack.

Best?
Best
what
? “Best of luck putting your shattered life together”?

“Some men don’t grieve,” Sophie said. “They just move on.”

“No, Sophie. You have to grieve. Jack is in denial. Or he’s shallow. Or the relationship never meant anything to him!”

“Then
you’re
in denial. You need to go to Al-Anon. That guy criticized your friends, your church, your butt. Your whole identity was wrapped
up in what he thought of you.”

I sobbed. “But he wanted to marry me!”

“Be glad he didn’t!”

Norm’s cardboard: what a wimpy analogy. Forget cardboard; he should have shown us a clip from
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It wasn’t cardboard; it was my flesh and blood and all the memories that made up a shared life. My heart was gutted. How
could Jack walk away clean?

I stayed on Gwen’s couch for a week, then Sophie’s; then I took another catsitting job. My cat got resentful of the moves.
Finally I landed a summer housesitting gig in Bel Air. Now that I was here, I was ready to go on all those auditions my agents
weren’t sending me on. I prayed a lot. “Lord, I don’t believe you brought me out here just to drop me. Jack can drop me, but
you won’t.”

A month prior, I had enrolled in a writing class, thinking I’d pen some breezy tale of Mom selling her house. Now all I could
do was sit in the back and snivel until everyone else left. My writing teacher, Terrie, was so nurturing. “Keep writing, Susan.
I know how painful this is, but you’ve got such great material.”

“I don’t want great material. I want to be happy!”

But I did what she said: I kept writing. I wrote down everything I remembered about Jack, from the night we met to the night
he moved on. It felt like lancing an infection. Or more like slugging your arm to forget your migraine. But I wrote. I had
to write. It was the only way to stay sane.

Finally I heard from my agent, in a letter. It was a copy of a copy of a copy, gray and spotty and misfed at a thirtydegree
angle.

“Dear Client: We no longer can be representing you. [Hindi syntax?] Please collect your materials, but after ten days they
will be disposed, but we will be closed
foe
the Memorial
hollidays.
“

“Dear Sirs,” I replied. “I will collect my tapes
befoe
the holiday. May I be suggesting you invest in a copy of Microsoft Word? It will be having spell-check.” Boy, did I feel
good sending that off. Then reality sank in: For the first time in twenty years I didn’t have an agent. I also didn’t have
a boy-friend, a job, a home, or a reason.