Angry Conversations with God (26 page)

“Hey, Suze, I’m in LA!” It was Bill on the phone. We met for lunch.

“Are you shooting a commercial?” I squealed.

“No, a TV pilot. Isn’t that crazy?! Remember that short film you and I did? Well, it was played at Sundance. A TV producer
saw it and flew me out to audition for his pilot. I just had my callback! I’m staying a few days until I hear.”

“See? You trusted God, stayed in New York, and look what happened!”

“That’s not all. The producer says he dated you in high school.” David Mankewicz?

“David? It’s David’s show?!”

“Isn’t that wild?” Bill laughed. Maybe my face was cracking, trying to hold that “so excited for you” smile, because he reached
across the table to hold my hand. “I’m sorry about Jack. But, Susan, he was holding you back. I know things will change. God
is faithful. You never know what’s going to happen next.”

What happened next was that Bill booked the pilot and the pilot got picked up for a series. And I went to interview for a
legal secretary job at a shoddy temp agency over a dry cleaner’s. A twentyfive-year-old bimbo with pencil-thin eyebrows scrutinized
my résumé.

“I see you worked as a legal secretary in New York. Did you do court filings?”

“No, they used their paralegals for court filings.”

“That’s because New York doesn’t allow secretaries to file,” she corrected me.

“Oh. Then why did you ask me?”

She sent me into a windowless room to take a typing test. I don’t know who writes copy for typing tests, but it spoke directly
to me:

The path to career success is a threestep process. First, identify your interests. Second, research which sectors are hiring
your skill set. Third, make a graph. The point where your interests and skills intersect at the highest integer is the job
that is right for you. And Susan, you are screwed. No one remembers you, and no one cares. You will be sitting at one of these
pressboard desks for the rest of your life, trying to keep the dream alive. The dream is over. Get a job at the post office;
they can’t fire you.

I know: why didn’t I just get a job and a place and ride it out? But how could I get a job when I didn’t know what I was supposed
to do anymore? And how could I get a place when I didn’t belong anywhere, or to anyone? And why temp for some law firm when
I just wanted to jump out their conferenceroom window?

Mom closed escrow. She had lived in the same house for nearly forty years. It was the one house I knew as home. And one day
we packed her up and drove away. Now it was gone. I also had to vacate the house in Queens. It was loaded with memories of
Jack; how could I spend two minutes in it? I had to go back to attend the King Baby weddings: Jeannie, Todd, Bill, and Cade.
How could I spend two minutes with them, when I was so single and scorched?

Jack sent me a card apologizing for “everything he’d ever done.” Maybe it was honest. Maybe it was meant to prevent any further
e-mail protests. Or maybe it was an olive branch. “Maybe when you’re in New York we could get coffee,” Jack wrote.

It wasn’t an olive branch. It was an open door!

“Are you sure you want to have coffee with him?” Sophie asked.

“Jack and I broke up over the phone. I need closure.”

“Is that
really
what you want?
Closure?”

So maybe I hoped for an opener, not a closer.…

And that is how I ended up on that grassy knoll in Central Park with Martha, staring at Jack at the pretzel cart, pretzeling
his tongue down his new girlfriend’s throat. (If you skipped the intro, now would be a good time to go back and read. Done?
Okay, see what you miss when you skip an intro?!)

“I’m going down there,” I murmured. “Just to say hi.”

Maybe it was good I was anorexic because Martha had no problem holding me down.

I returned to the Queens house and took everything I owned and left it on the street for scavengers. I called Mark and got
his voice mail. He was in the Hamptons.

I called my sister, hacking out my story between sobs. “Everything is gone. Mom’s house. Dad. Jack. Career. God. Gone!”

“But don’t you believe God is in all of this?”

“Yes. And he’s torching my whole life!”

“I know this is hard, Susan. But when I’m going through hard times I try to think of the people less fortunate. Like the Christians
in Darfur who are being massacred just because they’re not Arab Muslims.”

“That’s horrible. But I’m not in Darfur, I’m in America, and—”

“Susan! Do you really think your life would be better if Mom stayed in that house and you lived with her? And do you really
want to marry someone who’s going to hell?”

“You sound like a James Dobson mix tape!” I hung up on her.

I called Sophie. Sophie was a writer. She understood what it was like to suffer for your art. “Did you ever see
Searching for Debra Winger
?” Sophie asked. “A bunch of actresses
way
more successful than you ever were, and they can’t get arrested. The market has spoken. The market doesn’t want women over
forty.”

“Do you try to be rude or is it your subconscious?”

“It’s not just you. The market doesn’t want women writers over forty like me either. The whole
business
is dysfunctional, Susan. It’s just another bad boyfriend who reels you in with flattery and promises, then neglects you and
tells you you’re too fat or too old. And just when you’re ready to leave, he lures you in with a crumb. Get out before he
destroys your spirit.”

Get out
to where
? I was stuck in my empty apartment: no love and no career and a fancy dress that was now two sizes too big. And now I had
to put on that fancy bag four times to go celebrate the marriages of my in-love and on-TV friends.

The weddings were magnificent. I counted every bit of their magnificence: the number of flowers in the room, the number of
breaths I took between bridesmaids filing by. I counted how many rows of hors d’oeuvres fit on a tray. I counted how many
fast songs there were before a slow one. I listened to other people’s conversations, stories about anyone else’s life. No
one asked for mine. It was written all over my face.

Rudy looked shell-shocked.

Susan: And that, Rudy, is how I ended up in your office four months ago, unable to function. I know I messed up. But I thought
I was doing the right thing, coming back to LA, helping my mother, getting my professional life back, putting Jesus before
everything else. And God torched all of it. All at once.

Rudy: What about what Sophie said, that it’s just a dysfunctional business?

Susan: I wish someone in church had told me that long ago instead of prophesying that God would “open the doors that no man
can close.” If it was going to end this badly, I wonder now why God ever opened the door in the first place.

Rudy: At least you got to do it for a while.

Susan: Yes. But it’s hard to watch my friends get to keep doing it.
My
high school David cast
my
New York Bill in his show! God was lining up the dominoes twenty years ago. And Central Park? What kind of cruelty motivated
God to do that?

What could God possibly say in response?

God: Are you ever going to grow up?

It was God the Father. Pure, old-school stern. Not snarky like I would have made him, and no kind Jesus to mitigate his severity.
I feared this was the real God, and not my imagination.

God: You sit back, “wait on God,” and blame me for the outcome.

Susan: I wasn’t just sitting back. I was following what I thought you wanted me to do.

God: As long as the results were favorable.

Susan: Doesn’t the Bible say you will grant me the desires of my heart? And “may he grant you success”?

God: Is that why you married me, Susan, so your plans could succeed?

Susan: Should I have desired failure?

God: I gave you success anyway. You drank it away. I rebuilt your life in New York, and you put Jack first. You broke up with
him; and you blame me that it hurt. You always have an excuse.

Susan: And you don’t? It wasn’t
you
who hurt me; it was just the church that represented you. Well, your representatives also taught me that you were involved.
Tell me what your involvement was in Central Park. What kind of cruelty motivated you to do that?

God: Cruelty?! It was
love
that motivated me. I hated what happened to you. But I didn’t want you wasting any more of your life or your heart on Jack.
I was tired of it. I was so tired of seeing you in agony. And you think I enjoyed it? You don’t know me.

Susan: Then what about Bill and David?

God: Oh, stop. Just stop it, Susan. What are your complaints against me? That I didn’t give you the career you wanted? That
you didn’t get the husband you wanted? I’m not a life-insurance policy; I am your Maker. I want to be the Lover of your soul.
You married me for my money! I know the church is messed up. Do you know why? Because they’re like you: you’re here to improve
your own life. And then when you don’t get what you want, you complain: The church is too hip; it’s not hip enough. They’re
too controlling; they’re slackers. Remember Miss Toft? She spent forty years in Japan trying to get one person to hear how
much Jesus loved him. She moved back, an old spinster, to take care of an invalid sister and teach you poetry and long division.
All she ever asked of you was to write one Bible skit and you wouldn’t do it. You were too cool.

Wait. This wasn’t the Father at all. I could “see” his hands now. I could “see” him thrusting them toward me. And I saw nail
prints. It was Jesus.

Jesus: I gave you my life, Susan. But you wanted a career and a boyfriend.

I hid my face.

Susan: You’ve grown tired of me. You’re going to leave me.

Jesus: I’m not coming back to these counseling tribunals.

Susan: Please don’t leave. You’re all I’ve got. I may get angry with you, but it’s because I want to make this work!

Jesus: (Pityingly) No, Susan. You want to make it work for you.

I could see him turning for the door.

Jesus: If you decide you want to know the real menot a drillsergeant Father or a wimpy Jesus you can manipulate or blame…If
you want to love the real me, for better or worse, richer or poorer, lonely or in love—which is how I’ve loved you, Susanthen
I’ll be back. But not until then. And don’t ask me to come back until you mean it. Because I’ll know.

The room was as quiet as the first day I walked in. There was the trophy case, the Bibles and hymnals; the Baptists on the
wall smiled with the same confidence. And there was the Nice Jesus on the wall, face caught in that same sad expression. But
it was not a depressed or passive sadness I imagined now. It was heartbreak.

Rudy: We’re out of time, Susan. I’ll see you next week with your next chapter.

Susan: There is no next chapter, Rudy. This is where I am in my life: here with you, in a room with no spouse. I came to prove
God had been a deadbeat and force him to step up and heal this “marriage.” And he walked out on me.

Rudy: Did you just imagine him walking out?

Susan: No, he really walked out, Rudy.

Rudy: Do you think he walked out because he’s a deadbeat?

Susan: No. The deadbeat’s still in the room.

TRUE To HIS WORD, GOD DID NOT RETUUN: NOT TO THE COUN-
seling office, not at home, not anywhere. I could not conjure or cajole him in my prayers or my darkest imagination. Utter
silence. How do you solve your problems with someone if he’s not talking?

I couldn’t hear from God, but others could; maybe I could eavesdrop on their conversations. So I went looking at the place
I knew best: church. I had attended some wacked and cracked churches in the past. I figured I just needed to find another
church, one that wasn’t wacked and cracked, or at least wasn’t
as
wacked and cracked as I was now. I was desperate. I didn’t have the luxury of being a church snob.

I tried Sophie’s church: everyone was either married or bluehaired. I felt out of place. I tried Gwen’s Episcopal church,
but all the men were gay. It was hard enough that I couldn’t find a man; did I have to watch them find each other? I went
back to Organic and Raw, but they were playing trance music. I visited the Bel Air yuppie church I’d attended before grad
school. Now they had a rock-your-ass-off praise band that dressed in Abercrombie and flip-flops. A media screen lowered from
the ceiling and played a snarky video about tithing. In the best of times I might have appreciated the snark. But this was
my worst of times. I didn’t come for Abercrombie and snark; I came for Jesus. I left at the announcements.

Finally I returned to the “Orthopraxy, Dude” church. I arrived late; the pastor was in the middle of his sermon. He must have
just uttered something profound because he removed his glasses, wiped his tears, and bellowed, “God, I love my job!” His fan
club applauded. I looked around; they seemed like intelligent people. Couldn’t they see through this bloviator? Was everyone
hoodwinked? Or was it just me, having a theological meltdown? I excused myself, went to my car, and wept. “God, where are
you?” I panicked. Jack was right. He didn’t find God in church. Because GOD WASN’T THERE!