Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent

by Anthony Rapp

  “Do you think you guys might have stayed together if you’d had that help?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. We were both pretty young, and there’s a lot of things we both could have done to try to make it work.”

  Another new piece of information. I’d never heard her take even partial responsibility for the divorce.

  “Did you really love each other?” I asked, settling into the conversation more readily. It was much easier for me to ask questions of Mom than to reveal more of my own issues with Todd. And I knew that there wasn’t going to be a lot more time to discuss all of these things with her.

  Mom nodded slowly. “Yes, I think we did. He was very good to me, and I was very happy to be married, and I loved you kids so much, and he was always a nice man. But then we just started having problems.”

  “Have you talked to him lately?” I asked.

  “Oh, he calls every once in a while to see how I’m doing. He never changes. Good old Doogles.” Her teasing mangling of Douglas into Doogles had existed since I was a child. “He always says he’s still learning.”

  I smiled. “Well, he is, though. What’s wrong with that?”

  Mom laughed. “He’s been learning the same things over and over and over again. You’d think sooner or later he’d get it right.” She sighed.

  “Well, it’s nice that he calls you,” I said. I always felt the need to defend Dad to the other members of our family who were often hard on him, even though he sometimes drove me crazy as well.

  “Yes, it’s nice. He still doesn’t know how to talk to me, though. He just rambles on and on.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Yeah, but he’s getting better at stopping the rambling if you tell him that he’s doing it too much. You just have to get him back on track.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Tonio,” Mom said. “I don’t think he’ll ever really change. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just sort of clueless sometimes.”

  “I guess.”

  I was happy that Mom had opened up to me. And as usual with these visits, lurking around the edges of the warmth I felt in her presence was the now-familiar dread that soon these moments would be gone.

  Back in New York, back in the grind of eight shows a week, I rarely spent time in my apartment; I enjoyed running around like crazy, and I had little reason to be in my home except to get clean clothes, since I was still spending most nights at Todd’s place, even though time with him was becoming increasingly difficult. But I still didn’t like the idea of spending nights alone, with all that was going on, so I weathered our storms, and took solace in our occasional peaceful nights.

  I still shared an apartment with my brother, but since we had upgraded to a slightly bigger place we now had two other roommates, and the four of us pretty much pulled our own weight, taking care of our personal space and whatever messes we might make in the common areas. For the most part, everyone was tidy and mellow, although my small room was becoming overrun by my ever-growing CD and book collections, and I longed for an apartment with more space and privacy.

  Even though the mood was generally easygoing, Adam and I had had our share of roommate-style arguments over the years. But since I rarely saw him anymore we hadn’t had a good fight in a while. One night when I got home from the show—a rare occasion when I was going to sleep in my own bed, since Todd and I were in the middle of a major tiff (there was that pattern again, of escalating fights with my boyfriends)—Adam came out of his room, his arms folded across his chest. An imposing figure at six-foot-three, he looked even scarier at the moment, with his large brow knitted and his imposingly chiseled jaw tightly set.

  “We need to talk,” he said. My pulse immediately quickened, and I faced him down in our narrow hallway.

  “About what?”

  “Where the hell have you been? You’re never here.”

  “What do you mean?” His steady gaze felt like a blazing hot searchlight.

  “It’s like you’re a fucking ghost, you’re never here.”

  My voice started to rise in volume. “So what?”

  “So it’d be nice if you pulled your own weight for once.”

  My fists clenched tightly. I was already set off and began to yell. “What the fuck are you talking about?!? I’m not even here, I’m not even doing anything to the apartment in the first place, so what’s the fucking problem?!”

  “That’s exactly my fucking point. It’d be nice if you were here, if you took a little initiative, or something. If you made a little effort. You know, did a little something extra. It’d be a little bit of common courtesy. It wouldn’t kill you.”

  I couldn’t believe he was laying this on me. I started pacing, my voice getting more and more shrill, my chest tightening, my head pounding. “Where the fuck do you get off being the fucking head of household?!?”

  “It’s not just me, Anthony, Walt was bitching about it the other day, too.”

  This was something I really couldn’t stand, to hear a complaint from someone other than the person complaining. “Well why the fuck doesn’t he tell me himself?!?”

  “Because you’re never here.” Throughout the conversation, Adam’s voice had not altered in volume, and he stood in the hallway impassively, his arms still folded, like a statue guarding a palace or temple. Losing control of myself, I kept pacing furiously, feeling the weight of this moment crushing down on top of all the other pressures and struggles of the last few months.

  “Do you have any idea what my life is like right now?!?”

  “How could I? I never see you.”

  In spite of myself, tears welled in my eyes. I fought off hyperventilation. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a rational, calm eye watching my hysteria, but I couldn’t get a grip on myself. “I’m working my ass off, I’m working so hard,” I sobbed.

  “Get off it, we’re all working hard. You’re nothing special.”

  And before I knew what I was doing, I charged at my brother and spastically whipped my fist into his shoulder as hard as I could, matching every word with a blow. “Leave—me—the—fuck—alone.” He didn’t move at all as I hit him, didn’t try to stop me.

  “You’d better calm down,” he said.

  My chest heaved. “Fuck you, leave me alone,” I said again. I charged away from him, my head spinning, and headed into my room for a second, then wandered down the hallway like a drunken moth.

  “Why are you freaking out so much?” Adam said impassively.

  “You have no idea what it’s been like for me. I have no help anywhere, I’m doing it all myself, I’m exhausted—”

  “What about Todd?”

  “Todd is no fucking help, either, he just comes at me and at me all the time with all the things I’m not doing, and then I come home for once and you come at me—”

  “I’m just trying to tell you what’s going on here.”

  And there I was, leaping at him again, my fist pathetically plowing into his shoulder. Once again, he did nothing to stop me. “I can’t take it right now, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone.”

  “Why are you freaking out so much? Calm down.”

  I flew away from him again, my mind racing, and I tried to find that quiet part of myself, but it was locked away and I was drowning drowning drowning. “I feel like I’m going to explode,” I wailed. “I can’t take anything more right now. Mom’s dying, Mom’s dying, and I can’t do all of this, I’m sorry, but I can’t, I can’t.”

  “I know Mom’s dying,” Adam said. It was the first time such words had come out of him.

  “I just have too much, I have too much to deal with right now,” I said, my voice sounding and feeling foreign to me. “Please leave me alone. Please leave me alone. Please leave me alone.”

  Adam remained inert, his voice calm and clear. “Well maybe we should talk about all this so you don’t keep freaking out,” he said.

  “I’m talked out,” I said. “I talk about it so much with so many people, I’m exhausted.” That wasn
’t true; I didn’t know why I was saying it.

  “But you never talk to me about it.”

  And somewhere through my craziness it dawned on me that Adam was being as gracious to me as he’d ever been—he hadn’t hit me back, he had offered to help, he had said he wanted to hear from me how I was feeling—and my pulse slowed.

  “I mean,” Adam said, “I’m going through the same things too, you know.”

  I stopped and leaned against the wall, gradually coming back down to earth. Tears still flowed, but they were slower and somehow truer now, no longer hysterical. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe you needed to let off some of that steam.”

  “I just…” I began, and couldn’t finish.

  “It’s okay, everybody freaks out sometimes.”

  “Yeah…” I said.

  “Hopefully Todd can be more supportive.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know sometimes,” I said.

  Adam looked at me steadily. “I just want to be able to talk to you, too,” Adam said.

  I could barely bring myself to look back at him, I felt so ashamed and sickened by the inanity and volume and violence of my outburst. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “I’ve never seen you like this before,” Adam said.

  “I’m sorry I hit you.”

  “Believe me, if it had hurt I would have stopped you. I would have clocked you.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “Sometimes people need to let off steam,” Adam said. “You shouldn’t keep it all bottled up.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. I’m doing my best.” But letting off steam was still a somewhat terrifying prospect; it could lead to disaster if left unchecked.

  “Life sucks right now in a lot of ways,” Adam said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It sucks, what’s happening with Mom. It sucks.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I mean, we have no way of knowing what’s going to happen, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But you have to find ways to get this off your chest.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We stood there in silence for a long moment. My shame melted away and in its place emerged more love for my brother than I’d ever felt. We’d crossed over into a new world with each other. In spite of, or maybe in some ways because of, my brush with temporary insanity.

  “Just talk to me when you want, okay?” Adam said. “There’s no reason you have to let yourself get so burnt out.”

  I looked at him and nodded. “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  Holding

  Fast

  On my next visit home, I walked into the house and realized there was no eager Zelda panting and pawing at me as I opened the door. Of course—she was too much for the hospice workers to handle, so she’d had to go. I was sure that Mom missed her. And then I realized that there was no gleeful little Rachel running to give me a hug, either. Mom had mentioned during my last visit that Anne would take Rachel when the time came. Well, I guess the time had come. In their absence, the stillness of the house took on an almost holy quality, bathed in the sunlight streaming in through the glass patio door and the windows. I stood there and breathed in the quiet.

  Tom, one of the hospice workers—a small, gentle, mild man with a dark mustache and slightly rumpled clothes—emerged out of the hallway and walked right up to me.

  “Nice to see you, Anthony,” he said. We’d met briefly, once before.

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “I knew you were coming home today. Mary didn’t even have to tell me, and I knew. She was so up and happy when I got here.” He smiled as he said it, but his words didn’t sound right, at first. Mom was excited I was coming home? I thought my visits with her were always so serious, why would they be exciting to her? If I had still been the angelic boy she talked so fondly about, who wowed the crowds singing “Where Is Love?” at eight years old, I might have understood. But now? As an adult I’d brought her so much concern and worry and more than a little heartache that, without realizing it, I’d come to think she half-dreaded my visits.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “She’s sleeping now—she just fell asleep—but I’m sure she’ll wake right up when you go in.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Now Tom became slightly—only slightly—more serious. “I want you to know, if you need to talk about any of this, you are more than welcome to talk to me.”

  I nodded, not intending to open myself up to yet another person, but not wanting to blow him off, either. “Thanks, I will,” I said.

  “I know this must be very hard for you. So I just wanted to let you know I’m here.”

  I nodded again, feeling cornered by his kindness. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  “Well, I’ll see you soon. Have a nice visit.”

  “I will.” And I shook his hand and headed down the narrow hallway, the cheap floor creaking under the dingy carpet in the same spot it always had, and walked into Mom’s room.

  She lay on her back, her lips chapped and parted, her bony, nearly translucent hands splayed out at her sides. I realized that, in all these months of visiting her, this was the first time that I had been in her room while she slept. It was the first time I could just stand there and take in the ravaged shell that her body had become. I quietly seated myself in the recliner next to her bed and stared at her, listening to her shallow breath, watching her tiny chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and for the first time in all of these months, I saw, really saw, that all of her was no longer there. For the first time, I imagined what horror she must be experiencing every day, how impossibly hopeless she must feel as she lay day after day fixed to her bed, waiting for the phone to ring or some friend or loved one to drop by or for the nurse to take her vitals or change her dressings or empty her colostomy bag or refill her Demerol cartridge or feed her. How was she abiding this? And for the first time in all of these months, I sat next to my mother as she slept and I lowered my head into my hands and I wept, as quietly as I could, my face hot and slick with tears. This was not right, not at all, not any of it, not for her, not for anybody, but especially not for her.

  As silently as I was attempting to weep, I couldn’t stop myself from sniffling, which must have woken her up, because her meek voice called out, “Who’s there?” And as soon as I heard her voice I clamped down on my tears, quickly wiped my face, and steadied my voice as much as I could—I didn’t want Mom to know I had been crying. I didn’t want her to feel she had to comfort me, since I was there to comfort her. Wasn’t I?

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Oh, hi, Tonio,” she said. I stood up and clasped her hand, which had already reached toward mine. “I didn’t know who it was at first.”

  “It’s me, Momma,” I said. She smiled, and I knew then that Tom had told me the truth: she was happy that I was there. I smiled back. “I didn’t want to bother you while you were sleeping,” I said. “I know you need to rest.”

  “Oh, I get plenty of rest,” she said. “That’s all I do, is get rest.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m all rested up. This medication makes me so sleepy. That’s why I try to keep it to a minimum.” That’s when I noticed a handwritten note on her Demerol cartridge: “Do NOT touch this without permission.”

  “Yeah, but if you need it,” I said.

  “I take as much as I need,” she said. “But I hate to feel all sleepy and loopy. I don’t like that.”

  “I understand.” I sat then on the bed in what had sort of become my customary spot, careful not to jar the mattress too much or knock into her weak and sore legs. As I held her hand and she looked up at me, I hoped there wasn’t any evidence remaining of my recent tears. We looked at each other in silence for a moment, not sure where to begin our conversation. I was curious how long Rachel and Zelda had been out of the house, but I feared that asking Mom about it would de
press her, so I said nothing.

  Breaking the silence, Mom asked, “So how are you? How’s the show?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, relieved. “The show’s going great still. Daphne’s leaving, which is really sad.”

  “She is?”

  “Yeah, she got a movie. I wish she wasn’t going, but I know she has to do what she has to do.”

  “Well, she’s very talented. All you guys are talented.”

  “Yeah…” I said. “Oh, the Clintons are going to come to the show.”

  “Really? That’s exciting.”

  “Yeah. There’s going to be all this security, and Secret Service sharpshooters on the roof. It’s going to be pretty wild.”

  “I bet. That’s wonderful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you get to meet the president,” she said.

  “Yeah. Apparently they’re going to come up onstage after the show and we’re supposed to line up and they’re going to shake all of our hands and take pictures with us.”

  “You’ll have to show me the pictures when you get them.”

  “Of course.”

  “This is all so exciting, Tonio,” she said. “What a wonderful show, it’s so nice that it’s such a success.”

  “Yeah…” I was filled with a genuine happiness to be able to sit with Mom like this and give her updates on Rent’s success, but I also felt the pressure of the inexorable forward movement of time. How many topics, how many questions, could I cram into this moment? What could I think of now to ask, to say, since who knew how many more opportunities I’d have to do that?

  She saved me from having to choose the topic, though. “So Joe wrote me a very crazy letter,” she said. Joe was her brother, a manager of a Sizzler franchise who lived in southern Illinois with his wife and kids. Apparently in recent years he’d become something of a religious zealot, taking to wearing an oversized plain wooden cross fastened around his neck by thin twine. “He kept telling me to let go, that Jesus would come and take care of me.” She did her best parody of his thick, slow, flat voice. “ ‘Let go, Mary Lee, let go!’” She rolled her eyes. “The card’s right there, you should take a look at it.”