“Ladies and gentlemen…” The talk-show host announces your name, and you perform. Applause. Come gather these roses.
***
How did you get here?
CASTING CALL
Project name: “Savannah Smiles.” Lonely runaway rich girl sneaks into back of car driven by two career criminals, who are subsequently blamed for her “kidnapping.” A nationwide manhunt ensues.
Character is six years old, preferably blonde. For audition, child will be asked to tell bedtime story to adult male character. The story will melt his heart.
***
A Youth in Film Award nomination: Best Actress, 1981-1982. Your first of four such nominations, the others for television shows. Nothing after that. The awards always had “Youth” in the title. Nothing after that.
***
“Poppies will make her sleep.” The legends of Hollywood people, your people.
You died of a heroin overdose at age 21. There was also alcohol. You lived long enough to drink and not break the law.
***
We talk about what Hollywood does to young girls, and it sounds like talking about a favorite monster, one we agree is evil but plays a somehow necessary role. Dish about it at the water cooler, let your eye stray to the tabloid in the supermarket checkout line.
***
What did you want?
When you were small, you loved "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Silver Spoons," and you wanted to be on TV. On the Johnny Carson show, you told a story about how you once tried to crawl inside the TV to play with the Little Rascals, to be part of Our Gang. (Was the story manufactured? Calculated to make the audience go aww?)
On your Wikipedia page, the last line in a section called "Career:" "In her teenage years, Andersen had trouble finding acting work." That polite, vague, embarrassed-for-you word, "trouble," leading us to assume we understand this part, higher up: "Andersen died of an opioid and alcohol overdose in 1997, in Los Angeles County, California, at the age of 21.”
Ah, we think. That old sad story. As if we know anything. As if we know you.
***
How would you like us to remember you?
From “Savannah Smiles,” your big hit? (60 child actresses tried out for the role, including Drew Barrymore. You won the screenwriter over by telling the story of Br’er Rabbit. They kept this in the film, this real-life part of you.)
Would you like us to remember you from the poem Amber Tamblyn wrote, in her compendium of tragic starlets who died young? Or the “companion” poem from the same book, from the POV of an actress who adopted “Savannah” as her nom-de-porn, because of your movie? Would you have found a strange poignancy in this twisted homage?
(Another actress memorialized in the book: Heather O’Rourke, who played flaxen-haired Carol Anne in “Poltergeist.” She went into the screen.)
Or perhaps you were more wholesome. A better tribute: the “Savannah Smiles” lemon cookies sold briefly by the Girl Scouts, now discontinued?
***
Perhaps you were wholesome, or tried to be.
The internet says that, post-stardom, post- “trouble” finding acting jobs, you worked at a health-food store in L.A. How did you feel, going through orientation, clocking in, stocking shelves, or ringing up customers, or whatever you did there? Was it a comedown after being up onscreen?
Or did you gravitate toward that ideal—health—because you had previously gravitated to unhealthy remedies? (Poppies.) Maybe this wasn't a step down, a dreary day job like a normal, unfamous person, but a move in a hopeful new direction? An employee discount on kale juice?
Would you simply like to R.I.P.? Without these exhumations?
***
A story on the internet says you had recently distanced yourself from a dealer. You were trying to stay clean. You were working at the health store, studying theater, maybe hoping for a comeback, or at least a purpose.
He insisted on coming over. You told a friend you were going to tell him to take a hike. It was the last time your friend saw you, until the hospital. Did you change your mind, decide “one last time?” (“One last job,” the motley gang of casino robbers say, the legends of your people.)
The theme song from your movie: "Smile, Savannah, just one more time for me."
***
Your gravestone has two dolphins on it; the photo that accompanies an online memorial shows you at the wheel of a boat. Perhaps you loved the ocean. Your family buried you in Oregon, far from L.A., far from the monster.
The monster is always hungry, but you are only food for so long.
Maybe the kindest thing to say, the happiest ending, is this: You made it. You went into the screen. You live there now.
Christie Chapman's work has been published and is forthcoming in Electric Literature, LEON Literary Review, L'Esprit, Ghost Parachute, Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine, The Bulb Region, and elsewhere. She was a Lascaux Prize finalist for flash fiction and nominated for Best Microfiction.