Chapter 42 1996
Even though she helped Rip write the scene (they had sat down together, gone through every line, every shot like clockwork), Susan cannot remember her lines.
She always remembers her lines. But these do not want to come, do not bear being said.
Elvis stumbled over lyrics that he couldn’t bring himself to say.
And she feels this: by saying the lines properly she will be saying goodbye to Margie. A part of her is not ready to let go.
She knows Margie like she knows her own bones—the invisible feel of them holding her up.
She couldn’t reduce her to an adjective, but she knows what she would or wouldn’t say in any situation—God knows she’s had to ad-lib enough when someone else has forgotten their lines.
She knows what Margie’s anger feels like, crystalline and animal, unlike her own muddled frustration.
She knows how viciously she fights against fear, against perceived injury.
She knows how Margie worships her own body, wields it like an expert.
And here is Susan: chopping it to pieces.
Most of all, Susan knows Margie doesn’t want to die. So thank God they’ve done it in this way, where she can’t see it coming. It’s like putting down an animal.
The final scene wasn’t going to be cheap—Margie would be pleased about that, if she could have understood.
They had to rent a special car just for filming the interior driving shots, operated by a stunt man who sits on the roof.
Sitting behind the ineffective wheel is thrilling and terrifying.
The stunt team have just filmed the barrel roll, gutted and cleaned the car, taking out all the gas and fluids.
And now she is preparing herself to say goodbye.
“Quick and dramatic,” she said to Orson, her face in pain with smiling.
“She died as she lived.”
It’s so strange to be with all of these people off set, the cameras rolling, characters walking around in the jeopardy of the real world. They’ve closed the streets filming, but that doesn’t stop the blurring of it all.
“If I’m dead before it airs, can you make sure they show an In Memoriam?”
“Jesus, Susie.”
“I’m just being realistic.”
She tries to wink, but he’s not in a mood for joking. Which is annoying, because what she could really use right now is a good joke. He’s looking at her like he’s trying to say something important, like he’s trying to make every second count.
“Do you have a cigarette?” she asks.
“Yeah, actually.”
Her stunt double is over flirting with Rip. Good for Rip. The girl is gorgeous. Marion comes by and fixes her makeup.
“I’m thinking blood here,” she says, pointing to the top of Susan’s head, looking at Orson like he has any idea where blood should be. He shrugs one shoulder, in his Orson way, not taking his eyes off her.
“Blood wherever you like, Marion.”
Marion smiles, adjusts Susan’s blouse, and busies off to massacre someone else.
Orson lights her smoke. Looks out to the road again.
That face. Her heart. The edge of the world.
She wonders, after she dies, whether California will keep rising out of the water or fall back into the ocean.
For a long time, she thought that she was living at the end of time, that everything would just continue on in its final perfected state forever.
But standing here feels like the opposite.
Like the earth can’t help but keep moving.
“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
She nods. She breathes in the smell of him. She’ll give him his chance, now, to say what he needs to say. It’s the nicest thing she can do.
“Orson,” she asks. “Does any of this matter?”
“Of course it matters.” He is looking at her fixed, scrambling for words.
“It matters. Even if it’s not us, even if it’s not always good or meaningful, it helps people understand their lives.
It matters that we show up for them day after day after day.
It matters that we’re here, that we spent this time together—”
“Susie, can we get you in place, please—”
“Sure, sure.” She looks at Orson. “Hold that thought.”
She lies there heavy while around her are voices of people swapping out functional cars for busted-up ones.
She has been thrown from the vehicle through the windshield, and a props woman carefully places broken glass around her body.
When she was little, she and Sadie used to outline each other with chalk on the sidewalk in front of their house.
Her stomach is killing her, the surgery wounds have been so slow to heal.
ROLLING.
She tries not to breathe. Orson is screaming at her motionless body and she feels, in the vacuum of Margie, Susan leaking in. An untenable pride, at having begun this, at having finished it. At having nothing left to say.
When they cut the final shot, she walks away from the scene of her death, and into the waiting cab.
Orson is looking around for her, distracted, as the car pulls away from their world.
Don’t look back, don’t let yourself fall apart.
She’s learned this much: in real life, there’s no such thing as a satisfying goodbye.