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

by Anthony Rapp

  “Here,” I said, grabbing her sippy cup, a curly straw poking out of its spout. “Here you go, Momma.” I gently lifted up her head and brought the straw to her lips, which clamped down desperately on the straw. Her eyes were huge as she gulped the water down. She barely registered my presence. She swallowed, breathed, then slurped some more.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, her eyes still wide, looking more at the ceiling than at me. I eased her head back down to her pillow, tucked her quilt up to her chin, and smoothed her brow.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Whatever you need, Momma, I’m here.” My adrenaline was still firing through my veins, my heart only now slowing its crazy pace. “Go to sleep, Momma,” I said.

  I stayed with her for a while, until I was sure she was asleep, my fingers lightly stroking the tightened and shiny skin of her forehead.

  Word spread throughout Mom’s massive family that she seemed to be on her way out, and over the next few days more and more relatives descended on the house. It was a pilgrimage to a deathwatch. Grandma, whom I hadn’t seen since Anne’s wedding, was the first, accompanied by Diana, her shadow-daughter. Both of them were stoic and firm, their features pointy and formidable. Joe was next, his comically large wooden cross flopping against his chest, his tinted glasses above his sad mustache giving him the air of a guest star on an episode of CHiPs. One day Grandma brought Amy, whose sad-sack face was even sadder, and they lumbered into Mom’s room to sit silently and watch Mom’s labored breathing. Chris made it down from Wisconsin, his kindly, bearded face struggling to contain his fear and grief as he walked through the door.

  I felt as though I had to defend against an invasion. Even though this wasn’t my home anymore, even though I had hardly been here at all, especially compared to Roberta and Anne, I was strangely territorial. I didn’t want Grandma and Diana and Joe to take up any of the time Mom had left. Grandma especially; she had caused Mom such heartache over the years. I avoided her presence, afraid of what I might say, what might spill out of my mouth. My edges were so raw, I knew I would have very little self-control.

  And then one afternoon we were all in the living room, a group of silent zombies, not talking about why we were all there, none of us having the guts to bring up the words “Mom” or “death,” let alone both in one sentence. The television was on, and Grandma, Diana, Mom’s hospice worker, Terry, Joe, and I were dumbly staring at it. I was sitting as far away from Grandma as possible, crammed on the floor between the window and an easy chair, huddled down like a fugitive.

  Oprah was on, and her guest was Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen had recently come out publicly, which had made huge headlines and garnered huge ratings for her sitcom, and Oprah was talking to her about all of this and about her relationship with her girlfriend, Anne Heche.

  From across the room, I heard my grandmother say, “What are they talking about?” She had trouble hearing.

  Terry said, very matter-of-factly, “Ellen DeGeneres is talking to Oprah about coming out as a lesbian.”

  Grandma screwed her face up. “Well, she’s a person, but—”

  And before I could stop myself, I shouted across the room, “But what? She’s a person but what?”

  Grandma looked stunned for a second, then said, “But why does she have to talk about it? It’s private.”

  I wasn’t going to stop now that I had gone toe to toe with her. “People talk about their husbands and wives all the time,” I said.

  Grandma glanced around the room, looking for support, but everybody else remained silent. Then she sort of shook her head and muttered, “Well, that’s why I don’t watch talk shows. Private things should be kept private.”

  Restraining myself, I got up and went into my room, my blood pumping, proud of myself for speaking up, although embarrassed to have done it in such a forum, and disappointed that I hadn’t taken it further, that I hadn’t annihilated the enormous elephant in the room: my failure to openly acknowledge my own sexuality to Mom’s extended family. If they were going to make a scene at Mom’s funeral about Todd being there, I knew I would not be able to restrain myself then.

  Later that day, after Grandma and the others had left, I sat with Mom. Her room was so quiet, her chest’s movements so tiny.

  I said to her, “Momma, I think I know what song I want to sing at your memorial.” I didn’t know whether she could hear me. She seemed almost comatose. Lightly and tenderly, I began to sing:

  I am waiting for the light to shine

  I am waiting for the light to shine

  I have lived in the darkness for so long

  I am waiting for the light to shine

  It was a song from Big River, a show we had enjoyed together over the years. I held her hand as I sang, knowing she probably had no idea what was happening, knowing this would probably be the last time she’d hear me sing, if she could hear me at all. And when I was done, she squeezed my hand ever so slightly, and then she faintly smiled and said, with her eyes closed, “That’s nice.”

  I kissed her forehead. “I’m glad you like it, Momma,” I said.

  The next night, Roberta stayed behind when the others left, and she, Adam, and I opened a bottle of wine and went through some of Mom’s personal effects. Mom was a great keeper of mementos, so there were many boxes in the basement crammed with letters, cards, and assorted knickknacks. We huddled on the floor together, sipping our wine, the musty cardboard boxes strewn around us.

  “Look at all this crap,” Roberta said, laughing.

  “I know,” I said, also laughing. I felt giddy, on my way to a slight buzz. We passed around items of particular interest, such as homemade Mother’s Day cards a preadolescent Anne had given to Mom and drawing after drawing Adam had made as a kid.

  “God,” Adam said, “I don’t remember doing half of this shit.”

  I found an old leather-bound journal and opened it. It was written by Grandma, the pages filled with her angular, careful script. Faded black-and-white photographs were taped to some of the pages, the first such photographs I had seen of Grandma as a young woman. She had actually been pretty. Striking even, with her strong jaw and sharp eyes. I flipped through the journal and came across a note she’d written to Mom, when Mom was a baby asleep in her crib. Mom had been born in 1941, right before Pearl Harbor was bombed, and Grandma wrote that she sometimes wondered if she should have brought Mom into such a horrible world, full of violent, evil, terrible people. She wrote that life was hard and there is precious little joy in it. She wrote that she wished Mom would never have to know some of the pain she had experienced. I read the letter aloud to Adam and Roberta. “Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot to lay on a baby.”

  “Jesus,” Roberta said. “Well, that’s Dolores.”

  We sat quietly for a moment, regarding the heaps of stuff around us. I sipped my wine and said, “How much longer do you think she’ll last?”

  Roberta chuckled ruefully. “God, I don’t know. She’s certainly hanging in there, isn’t she?”

  I chuckled, too, in spite of myself. “What the hell is she waiting for?”

  “She’s so damn stubborn,” Roberta said. “She’s always been stubborn, our mother got that right.”

  Adam said, “You’d think she’d be sick of Joe just standing over her, breathing heavily and shit, and want to get the hell out of here.”

  We all laughed. Roberta wiped her eyes and said, “I should just go in there with a damn pillow and get it over with. It’s the only way she’ll leave, that’s for damn sure.”

  I chuckled again, shaking my head. And part of me wanted Roberta to do just that. The ugly truth was that this waiting around was getting tiresome.

  The next day, I stood in Mom’s room with Tom, the hospice worker. We were looking at the color of her urine, collected in a clear plastic bag at the foot of her bed. Earlier in the week, it had progressively darkened, growing murky and thick, like caramel, a sign of renal failure, one of the surest indic
ations of impending death. But now it was clearing up again, becoming the color of weak tea.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “Well, it seems to me that she’s bouncing back a little,” Tom said.

  I chewed my lip. “So how much longer do you think she has?”

  He looked right at me. “There’s no way to know, really,” he said. “Maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks. With your mother, she’s so strong, we’ve been amazed she’s made it as far as she has.”

  I watched her sleeping there, wondering if she was aware of our conversation. I wanted so badly, almost obsessively, to be there when she died, to have that dramatic moment of closure. Why wouldn’t she give me that?

  Tom put his hand on my shoulder. “Maybe you should think about going back to New York. I think your mother would want you to be there, rather than waiting around here.”

  I regarded him for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”

  I made my arrangements to leave the next day—Mother’s Day—and when the time came, I packed up my belongings and loaded up my rental car. I went to Mom’s room to say goodbye, surprised to see that when I kissed her forehead, her eyes opened gently.

  “Hi, Tonio,” she said, her voice feeble.

  “Hi, Momma. I’m going back to New York, okay?”

  She blinked several times. “Okay,” she said.

  “I love you, Momma.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I kissed her again and walked to her doorway, pausing there for one last look. I signed “I love you” with my right hand. And ever so slowly, she raised her left hand and, trembling slightly, signed “I love you” back.

  Floating

  On the morning of May 22nd, a week and a half after I left Joliet, the phone rang. It was Anne.

  “Anthony?” she said, her voice tight and clipped. “We think you should come home today.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Well, the hospice people seem to think this is it,” Anne said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I had last spoken to Mom a few days earlier. After several attempts to reach her, only to be told by Diana or Terry or Roberta that she was sleeping, I got her on the phone in a rare lucid moment.

  “Hi, Tonio,” she’d said, her words slurred, her voice weak.

  “Hi, Momma.” I couldn’t bear to hear her like this, to be so far away and not be able to see her, to be unable to hold her hand.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m okay, Momma. I miss you,” I said.

  “I miss you, too.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. To ask her how she was doing seemed absurd. So I didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “How’s the show going?” she asked.

  “It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t tell her that earlier in the week I had stayed home because I could barely bring myself to get out of bed, let alone perform in front of twelve hundred people. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t know what to do in those moments of grief except stare at nothing. I didn’t tell her that on those days I felt like I was moving underwater, that all things seemed dim and untouchable.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  I sighed and said, “Well, I should let you rest, Momma.” As if she could do anything else.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I love you, Momma,” I said.

  “I love you, too.”

  But now, after the phone call with Anne, it was time to call the airline yet again and book a flight and get Adam’s travel sorted out and call my stage manager to tell him that I was going home and then pack—for how many days was never clear—and get a car to the airport and go home and see her for what might be the last time, although that was never clear either. Task after task after task. One foot in front of the other.

  At Newark airport, Adam and I made it to our gate with time to spare before boarding. We had hardly spoken during the day’s activity, except to cover the logistical details. We sat in the waiting area, grimly watching the CNN feed on the airport monitors. Or at least looking in their direction—I was processing none of what was being reported, thinking instead only of going home. Would this really be the time?

  Right before the gate personnel started calling us to board, I had the impulse to check in to see how Mom was doing. I hadn’t called home all day, knowing that Anne or Roberta would have called us if anything had changed. “I’m going to call home,” I said to Adam. He barely looked at me when he quietly replied, “Okay.”

  I dialed my calling card information into the phone and then dialed Mom’s familiar ten-digit number. Two rings, three rings, four rings, and then Roberta’s voice said, “Hello?”

  I could tell she was crying.

  “Roberta?” I said, gripping the cold metal pay-phone cord. “It’s Anthony.”

  “Oh, Anthony,” she said. “It’s over. She’s gone.”

  The ground tilted. I rested my head against the phone, staring at the floor, watching my tears splash down at my feet.

  “When?” I managed.

  “She just went a couple of minutes ago,” Roberta said, “right before you called.”

  I swallowed. “Okay,” I said.

  “Oh, I miss her so much already,” Roberta said, her voice keening.

  “I know,” I said.

  “It was peaceful,” she said. “She just went to sleep.”

  I fought off a sob. “Really?”

  “I was right there with her,” she said. “I was holding her hand. She just went to sleep.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “I love her so much,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. And then I asked, “Will you leave her there until we get home?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Okay. I just want to say goodbye, you know?”

  “Okay.”

  I was gripping the phone so tightly. “We have to get on our flight now,” I said.

  “Have a safe trip.”

  “Okay. See you soon.”

  I hung up and held on to the phone, trying to stop my tears. Only another couple of hours and I would have been there. The timing seemed horribly unfair.

  I breathed deeply and slowly walked over to where Adam sat. He looked up as I approached.

  “She’s gone,” I said. More tears sprang out of my eyes. Adam just stared at me for a moment, nodding ever so slightly, and then he gently stood up and put his hand on my shoulder, his eyes wide, his face almost expressionless. I moved in to give him a brief hug, which he stiffly reciprocated, and then we wordlessly gathered our belongings and boarded the plane.

  We sat silently in our cramped airplane seats, next to a fidgety, anxious man, waiting for the plane to taxi and take off. The fidgety man seemed terrified of flying; he kept staring out the window, rubbing his hands on his lap, clearing his throat incessantly. I knew Adam also didn’t love flying, and I hoped this man’s fear wouldn’t bleed over into him.

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask what Adam was thinking or feeling or wanting. I felt incredibly alert, even as my chest caved in on itself. I focused on my plastic tray table as it faced me in its upright and locked position. I made sure my seat back was also in its upright and locked position. I checked to see that my carry-on was safely stowed beneath the seat in front of me or in an overhead bin. I even watched the flight attendants as they did their safety demo. I tried to hold back my tears, afraid of freaking Adam out, afraid of making a scene, but there they were anyway.

  And then we took off, and as the plane made its lazy turns toward Chicago, my breathing gradually became steady and a kind of spaciousness and peace followed. Here I was floating above everything that had happened today and this year, away from it, able to see just the purest facts of it. My mother was dead, and I was flying with my brother to see her one more time before they took her body away, and then w
e would hold a funeral and memorial service and that would be that. It was simple, really. There would be people to call and inform, there would be arrangements to be made, there would be family to see, and there would be no more waiting for the end, no more hoping she would at last have some respite from her daily grinding discomfort and pain, no more wondering how much worse it could get before it was all over.

  In the air, flying incredibly high across the landscape of the eastern United States, I automatically set about a task that reminded me of my actions in the wake of Jonathan’s death: I looked through my laptop’s address book to figure out who I would need to inform that Mom had died. Who most urgently needed to know? I hadn’t called Todd yet—after getting off the phone with Roberta, I had just boarded the plane. Todd was in Los Angeles, having all kinds of work meetings, but I was sure he’d be able to come to Joliet for the memorial service and funeral. At least, he’d better. Of course he would, why would I even question that? Mom had made it clear he was welcome. (When I had told Mom that I hoped Grandma wouldn’t object to or make a stink about his presence there, Mom had said, quietly, sternly, “She’d better not.”) But who else needed to be told? I wasn’t relishing the thought of breaking the news to people, but I knew that I could and should do it. Not for the first time, I imagined myself playing a scene in a movie in which I informed someone of my mother’s death. It was the sort of event that took place in the movies and on television hospital dramas.

  So I checked off the names of those I would inform, sitting next to a silently slumbering Adam. (He had always had the knack for falling into a deep sleep the instant a plane began speeding down the runway for takeoff. He thought it was his way of dealing with his anxiety about flying.) One name jumped out at me: Phyllis Wagner. She was Mom’s old friend from Portland, Oregon, who had come to Rent’s opening night. Mom had always had an enviable knack for keeping in touch with her friends—this in the days before e-mail and mobile phones—but none were as close to her as Phyllis. Phyllis and Mom shared a propensity for taking in what Mom called “human strays,” although Phyllis did it officially, as a state-recognized foster mother, specializing in kids with severe medical problems. She often sent long, handwritten letters to Mom, their accompanying envelopes spilling snapshots of her latest children. Many of her kids didn’t make it past their childhoods, and some were just passing through Phyllis’s home on their way to somewhere else, but some she wound up raising as her own. Somehow she and Mom found time to spend hours on the phone laughing and laughing, even when telling stories of the suffering they witnessed all day long.