Screen Shots: in a new series of flash fiction for AnOthermag.com, critic and essayist Philippa Snow looks at the interior lives of female characters on screen.
I always say that you’re not really anybody in America unless you’re on TV. I don’t think I had any idea who I was until the first time I saw myself on television, and after that, it was like I was finally in three dimensions. The thing is with TV, you can get up so close when you’re watching yourself on it that it’s like you’re nothing, just a bunch of dots, just a voice and a lot of colour, and not a lot of people talk about that, but I guess it’s kind of a spiritual experience, honestly. When you’re right up against it you can’t see the whole thing, and it’s sort of humbling I think. It makes you consider your place in the universe, stuff like that. Like how we’re all the same, really, all made of little dots – except of course some of us aren’t the same as other people because we’ve been on TV. That’s just how it is. I told my Larry once, my poor Larry, that all my life I had just been regular Suzanne Stone, or Suzanne Maretto – which was my married name, God rest my Larry’s soul – and that it wasn’t until I was on TV that I became my true, authentic self, Suzanne Stone the weather girl, Suzanne Stone the TV reporter. It was like I was waiting to be born. Like those were the only times I was real.
I can tell you exactly what I was wearing that first time: it was this Escada skirt-suit, double-breasted in the cutest powder blue, and I had it on with these pumps that were kind of primrose, like a baby duck colour, and a blouse that was the same. I think the blouse had black dots, maybe? Which is funny, you know, thinking about what I said about TV, and the dots. I had this idea that I wanted to look like the weather, sort of sunny. I told the station manager and he said I was full of ideas, which is true, I have them all the time. So I figured he thought I was right, and I did it, and even though the forecast was actually for rain, when I watched the tape back I thought I looked like this perfect summer’s day, this ray of sunshine. I have an eye for this kind of stuff. A lot of people think that you should dress drab to be on the news, that you should wear black or grey and make a lot of serious faces. Me, I wanted to look like a woman. Men like you to look like a woman when you’re giving them bad news, and okay, I wasn’t doing the real news or anything, but I was doing the weather, and sometimes there’s a real big storm coming, and that’s pretty bad news, right?
I didn’t do what some people are saying I did, of course. I loved my Larry. I could never do that to him. And I was recording my slot at the time. I even wished him a happy anniversary on air. You know, I was coming home from the TV station the other night and I had just done this terrific weather report, I just knew I had done a great job – I had my favourite Versace skirt on, it’s sort of pink, sort of like a hot pink colour? – and this old lady came up to me out of nowhere, and she said: “God is watching you, he knows what you are.” Well, I don’t know if she was talking about what happened to Larry, or if she was crazy. Maybe she saw the show; maybe she saw me on the news. I don’t know if you know, but I’ve been on a lot lately, on all kinds of channels. She got me thinking, though. People say God is always deciding if we’re good or bad, like a big mean judge, but I think maybe he’s just tuning in because we’re fun to look at. Don’t you think it must be kind of like he’s watching us on a screen? Isn’t that neat? Anyway, I know what I am, so I bet God does, too: I’m a widow, a grieving widow, and I’m an American, a proud American. I’m a proud American woman who has been on TV, and you know, not everyone can say that. Not that many people can say that at all.