by Anthony Rapp
I picked up the card and regarded the childish scrawl with which Joe had fashioned his message. There it was, with exclamation points and everything: LET GO!!! “That’s crazy,” I said.
“I don’t hear from him or see him in months and months, and then suddenly out of nowhere, there he is, telling me to let go. It’s almost like he wants to get rid of me.” She smiled as she said that last bit, surprising me with her gallows humor. I found myself giggling with her.
Shaking my head, I put the card down. But even as Mom and I chuckled at Joe’s over-the-top message, I wondered if there was any part of her that was thinking about taking his advice and letting go.
Later, I rifled through her closet—with her approval—looking through mementos of my career, which she’d kept in various cardboard boxes. She had always been better at such things than I, for which I was grateful. Embarrassing headshots of an eight-year-old bespectacled me gave way to old Playbills from the short-lived Broadway flop of The Little Prince and the Aviator (we previewed for two weeks and then closed, without ever performing an opening night). Underneath those were other clippings, including copies of the issue of Seventeen that featured me—along with my cast mates from Adventures in Babysitting—and an interview from when I was twelve, appearing in a Milwaukee summer stock theatre production of Oliver! I recognized in the grainy picture accompanying that article a badly mauled haircut I’d given myself a few days before, which Mom had tried to fix to no avail. “Oh, Tonio,” she’d said as she amateurishly snipped away. “Look what you did to your beautiful hair.” I didn’t know why I’d done it—it was one of my rare childhood moments of blatant rebelliousness.
As I flipped through more papers, I came across an audiocassette. I picked it up, surprised to see the call letters of our local radio station—WJOL—typed on the tape’s label.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Oh, that? Don’t you remember? We did an interview together when Adventures in Babysitting came out.”
“Oh yeah…” Mom’s memory had always been sharper than mine about most things, as this once again proved. But now it was coming back to me—the two of us sitting in a cramped and decidedly unglamorous studio in mostly deserted downtown Joliet on a hot summer day. My little claim to local glory, if it could be called glory—even when I went to see Adventures in Babysitting at the Louis Joliet Mall, I had to pay for my ticket, and the ticket taker and rest of the staff had no idea I was in it. This being my first movie, I didn’t know that such experiences would continue to be the case in years to come.
“Can we listen to it?” I said. It was one other thing I wouldn’t be able to share with her when she was gone, and I wanted to seize the moment while I could.
“Sure.”
I popped it into her boom box and turned it up. As we listened I was struck by how much firmer and stronger and deeper and more substantial her voice sounded on the tape than it did now. I sounded young, but I also seemed to be trying to talk with as low a register as possible, to sound like a serious actor.
“Oh, I’ve always been very proud of him,” Mom said on the tape. I watched her listening to herself and wondered how she felt being confronted with a time and place before this illness had begun to stalk her.
I sounded cocky. “I really want to move to New York and just keep working as an actor,” I said. “I’m really primarily a theatre actor, and that’s where I have to be.” I laughed now. Yes, those things were true, but did I have to be so serious about it then? Couldn’t I have lightened up a little? I remembered the huge chip on my shoulder I’d had about Joliet, which had only somewhat faded.
“Well, we’ll see about when he’s moving to New York,” Mom said on the tape, trying to sound lighthearted. It had been a point of conflict between us—I had been all ready to just pack up and go, and she had wanted me to finish my high school career in Joliet. At the time of the interview, I had only my senior year left, but I was so ready to get the hell out.
The interviewer asked a few more innocuous questions and thanked us, and that was that. I stopped the tape and realized I’d been holding Mom’s hand. Her expression seemed more melancholy than it had before the tape began. I wondered if it had been a mistake to bring it out, to remind her of everything.
“That was interesting,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I was never comfortable being in the spotlight.”
“But you handled yourself well,” I said. “You sounded comfortable.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m just a normal person. I’m just your mom.”
Back in the closet I came across my baby book. It was white with “Baby’s Milestones” written in sparkly silver letters on the front, underneath a simple line drawing of a bouquet of roses. I flipped through it briefly. It was packed with pictures and cards and page after page of Mom’s impeccable handwriting, recording every detail of my early years.
At 8½ months Anthony is very bright and sociable. He can pat-a-cake, wave bye-bye, do so big, and shake his head ‘no-no’ appropriately.
At 9 mos. winks and blows kisses.
At 15 mos. is a real climber—so fearless and so brave. He fell twice and cut his tongue one day and his lip the next.
At 19 mos. 2 days Anthony climbed out of his crib for the first time (darn!) He was very proud.
“You can keep it if you want,” Mom said.
“I’d love to.”
“I want you to have all of that stuff in there,” she said. I looked at her from my spot on the floor of her closet. Her eyes were clear and solemn and peaceful. Her voice gave no trace of sentimentality. This was just part of what she had to do now; relinquish her hold on her things, give them up to whom she chose. “And if there’s anything else of mine that you want, you have to let me know, okay, Tonio?”
I sat silently for a moment. I was glad she was brave enough to say this, that she was dealing with everything head-on, but I didn’t want to make this decision. I looked around the room.
“I want to give Adam first choice on the books,” she said. “That’s something he told me he’d like.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “He’s reading so much now.”
“But let me know if you want anything.”
“Well, I said,” my eyes falling on her Bose radio, “I think I might like to have your radio.”
“That’s fine,” she said.
“I know how much you love it,” I said. “And I love music so much.”
“I know you’ll appreciate it.”
“Yeah.” I then got up, still holding the baby book, and sat next to her once more on the bed, holding her hand. Her eyes held mine. We hadn’t looked at each other this much since I was a little child.
On the flight back to New York, amid the antiseptic gray and blue interior of the plane, I pulled out my baby book and started reading it, and before I knew what was happening, hot tears poured out of my eyes and my breath started coming in gasps. Out of the corner of my eye, I half saw a flight attendant walking toward me, and I quickly averted my face, staring out the window at the pure blue sky and the rolling white clouds below. The baby book held so much love, so much care and concern and effort and work and hope. The enormity of Mom’s love and the gift it had bestowed on me and the terrible truth that for so long I had in many ways squandered that love, all of these things collided and spread over and through me, pressing into my chest, flooding my eyes with tears. As I choked back great, gulping sobs among strangers on an airplane, I felt horribly exposed but also surprisingly safe. I was in a different dimension, thirty-five thousand feet above the earth, where it seemed for a moment that anything was allowed.
When the tears subsided, I continued staring out the window, my breath settling, my throat releasing its gigantic lump. I watched the clouds drifting by, calm now, cleansed, marveling at the power of these moments, their sudden, almost violent ability to overcome me, and their subsequent evaporation, as if they never had happened at all but for the peace and clari
ty that they left in their wake.
Taking
Leave
The day the Clintons came to the show in April 1997, we all had to march through metal detectors and pass by numerous Secret Service agents stationed throughout the building, including the backstage and dressing room areas. Apparently there were snipers on nearby rooftops in case anyone tried anything foolish.
Almost a year into our Broadway run, it had become commonplace for cast members to take time off, but not on this day. No one wanted to miss being a part of this command performance.
We were in our offstage positions, ready to go on, when the Clintons arrived. The entire audience gave them a rousing standing ovation, complete with whoops and cheers and whistles. When everyone finally settled down, I marched out onstage with the rest of my fellow cast members and took my customary spot front and center.
The show began as usual with the house lights fully illuminated, so we had a clear view of the audience, and I quickly scanned the seats until I found the president and his family. There he was, right on the aisle of the sixth row, his chin resting in his hand, his eyes alert. An electric surge coursed through my spine and lingered in my fingers—after hundreds of performances, I was once again more than a little nervous.
And I began.
Throughout the show, periodically, I glanced over to see if I could tell how the Clintons were responding. And I can’t say that I could—Bill sat in the same position the entire time, his chin in his hand, Hillary was straight-backed and alert, and Chelsea was the same. Earlier in the run, when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman had come, we had all remarked backstage that Tom was beaming from his seat, glowing like the superstar that he was. Bill, on the other hand, didn’t seem unhappy, but didn’t seem to be aglow either.
We’d been told before the show began that we were to line up at the end of the performance, that the Clintons would walk onstage and do a quick meet-and-greet, and then be whisked away. The whole event was to take about five minutes.
So after the last chords of the finale rang out, after we sang our last “No day but today,” after the curtain call and the screaming of the audience, we dutifully created our receiving line. One by one, the Clintons made their way to each of us. Bill was taller than I’d imagined and incredibly charismatic, with a palpable gravitational pull that drew me to bask in his presence. He shook my hand warmly and said, “Thank you for your performance,” smiling and looking me right in the eye. When Hillary shook my hand, I said, despite my embarrassment at being cheesy, “We share a birthday.” She smiled and responded, “Well, I’m honored.” Chelsea was poised and even glamorous, unlike her reputation. A couple of her friends had tagged along, each of them well-coiffed, well-dressed, and articulate.
Surprisingly, the Clintons lingered. Either we had been misinformed as to what we should expect, or they had liked the show so much that they wanted to hang out with us all the more (an explanation I liked to believe). They spent a good half hour onstage, mingling, chatting, and posing for pictures. I decided that I wanted to say something of substance to the Leader of the Free World, so I made my way over to Bill when he was between conversations and said, “I just want to thank you for the work you’ve done on behalf of the gay and lesbian community.” He’d received some criticism for not doing enough, and while I agreed with that criticism to a point, I still felt quite sincerely that he had done so much more than any previous president had, and I wanted him to know that I appreciated it. He replied in his soft drawl, “Well, thank you, but there’s so much more to do.” I said, “Yes, but you’ve done a lot.” And I believe that he appreciated my saying so.
I spent my next three weeks at the theatre in anticipation of Daphne’s imminent departure. She was the first of the original cast to be leaving, which didn’t seem fair or right, since she was one of the three of us who had been with the show from the beginning. But I refrained from trying to convince her to stay, from telling her how part of me was angry that she was leaving so soon. It was her choice, after all, and her prerogative, and who was I to argue?
I tried to drink in and remember every moment of her performance night after night. We didn’t share that many scenes, but I had the privilege of sitting onstage and watching her heartbreaking rendition of “Without You” every night, with her wonderfully raspy voice sailing through the theatre, her arms reaching out, groping for some kind of solace. I listened to her attack “Out Tonight” with increasing fire and abandon, seeing in my mind’s eye her daredevil assault on the bars and staircase of the fire escape that led from Mimi’s loft to Mark and Roger’s. I stood helplessly by as she broke down and cracked her heart wide open in “Goodbye Love.” And I held her ever more tightly as I carried her into our apartment in the finale, laying her down gently, and standing off to the side as Adam’s Roger sang of his love for her.
As the days wore on, I became all the more grateful that the line “Thank God this moment’s not the last” was true, for the moment, anyway.
On Daphne’s last night, Jesse was fighting a flu, so he wasn’t in the show with us, a cruel twist of fate that prevented all of us from sharing in her final moments together. The cast and crew and producers and Michael and Tim and everyone else in the building who could fit crammed into our tiny, unglamorous basement greenroom before the show for a champagne toast. Daphne was alert, tightly wound, like a tiger, staving off the brewing emotions that were no doubt lurking just below her surface. She and Mimi had always shared a fierce resolve, a pitched effort to be strong at all costs, which made her vulnerability, when it did show through, all the more poignant. But she didn’t seem ready to show that vulnerability here and now. If she had, I don’t think any one of us would have been able to stem the tide of sadness that would have overwhelmed us. Instead, we all solemnly held aloft our plastic cups of weak champagne and toasted our friend and colleague, who said, “To Jonathan,” before she downed her glass in one quick gulp.
As had happened on so many nights, the show took off like a rocket, riding stratospheric currents of unstoppable energy and heart and commitment. Familiar faces filled the audience. Todd was right in the front row, flashing his smile and sign-language “I love you” to me (we were in the midst of a pretty good spell without a lot of fights lately, and he had become an extended member of the Rent family, so it was vital that he be there to witness what was really the passing of an era). Cy was in the middle of the orchestra, her proud beaming face a beacon of love and support reflecting back at us. Jonathan’s parents were right next to her, a complex blend of stoicism and fulfillment. And there were lots of regular Rentheads scattered through the front two rows, some gripping each other’s hands in anticipation of what they knew would be a heady and heartbreaking evening.
We powered through “Rent” with more than our usual explosiveness, making every note, every gesture, every moment matter. The audience’s outlandishly enthusiastic screams at the end of the song matched our efforts.
Habitually, I would head down to the greenroom during “One Song Glory” and “Light My Candle,” but not on this night. The entire cast and crew hovered in the wings to witness the last time Adam and Daphne enacted their sweet and funny and sexy introduction to each other, and we cheered with the audience when it was over.
On and on through the night, I stole every chance I could to watch and witness this closing of a chapter in my long association with this show that I loved so much. Daphne’s performance that night was a pitch-perfect mixture of willpower and sexuality and desperation, peppered by that steely exterior of hers. But by the time “Without You” came around, her veneer of strength was beginning to crack along with her voice, and it took every ounce of resolve I had not to crumple.
Daphne had lost her mother to illness years ago, and often during the run of the show she would turn to me offstage and just check in with me. “How are you doing, Papi?” she would say, and I knew she was asking specifically about how I was doing with regard to my mom, without actually saying those
words. “I’m okay,” I would reply, and that was usually the extent of our conversations about the subject. But just the knowledge that she knew something of what it was like, that she was aware enough to reach out to me in that way, had provided such comfort. And I couldn’t bear to see that go.
Nor could I bear to witness Adam losing her. Their bond was so strong, so full of deep and abiding love and respect for each other. They had carried each other through this incredible journey, on and offstage. On this last night of Daphne’s run, when she as Mimi lay dying in front of him and he reached for his guitar to begin playing and singing his farewell song “Your Eyes” to her, I held my breath—everyone onstage and in the theatre seemed to as well—when he couldn’t bring himself to begin the song, but instead bowed his head for endless and tormented seconds, unable to begin saying his last goodbye to his beloved. The entire theatre was absolutely silent in that impossibly full and painfully arrested moment, watching him breathe and gather his strength, until at last, at last, he lifted his head, plucked out his tentative notes, and somehow through his tears sang his lament.
Shifting
Ground
On May 5, 1997, my next visit home, I lingered longer than usual at the health food store on my way to Mom’s house; I didn’t want to see how much worse she had gotten in the weeks since my last visit. I needlessly wandered the small store’s aisles, knowing that there was nothing for me to get that I hadn’t already gotten, knowing that the clock was ticking on the time I’d be allotted to spend with Mom before her final moments, which seemed to be arriving soon. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to walk out of the shop and get in my rental car and drive the last couple of miles to her door.
Finally, I paid for my nondairy vegetarian frozen dinner and my chips and my juice, and I headed home, numbly staring at Essington Road as it spread out ahead of me. At the corner of Essington and Black Road I noticed for the first time a large new prefab building made of blond brick, the sign for which told me it was a funeral home. I wondered whether that would be Mom’s funeral home.