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

by Anthony Rapp

  “Grandma, this is Todd,” I said, trying to make my voice sound assured.

  She immediately took his hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you, Todd,” she said, looking him in the eye.

  “Thanks for including me,” he said.

  And without missing a beat, she replied, “Well, of course, you’re part of the family.” I couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth, but there they were. Todd and I shared relieved glances as we made our way to our pew and sat down.

  The coffin was closed, and on its lid rested a color portrait of Mom, set in a tasteful frame. It was the portrait that had been taken on Anne’s wedding day—the one featuring her coiffed hair and too-red lipstick. Mom had never had any sense of glamour, or even style, beyond sweatshirts and jeans, so it struck me as odd to see her publicly represented in this way. But I imagined that Roberta must have thought it was the most flattering picture of Mom, even if it didn’t really look like her.

  I wondered if Anne and Adam and Rachel felt as calm as I did, sitting in the church, listening to the priest intone his prayers and recite his homily.

  After the Mass, my uncle Chris read a prepared eulogy, and I gripped Todd’s hand, simple tears leaking from my eyes—the first of the day—as I listened to Chris’s calm, quiet voice fill the church. He had been such a loyal and good brother to my mom, and I knew how much she had valued his friendship and counsel, and how much she had supported him through his life’s vicissitudes.

  But mostly as I sat there, I was looking ahead to the secular comfort of the memorial service, which Mom had wanted more than a funeral. It was like a show, with a program that Roberta had designed rather beautifully. It featured my favorite portrait of Mom: a black-and-white photograph from her student nursing days, complete with an old-fashioned white cap perched atop her head. She looked young and open and calm and much more herself than in the color portrait on her coffin, even though the shot was in black and white and she was sitting in a formal pose. And the memorial would feature entrances and exits and music and the whole works.

  So after the last hymn was sung, and accompanied by the clatter of the church bells’ peals in the bright spring air, we all piled into our caravan and rambled over to the park.

  There was only one substantial park in Joliet, Pilcher Park, and I wasn’t sure that Mom had spent any time there, but it turned out to be a lovely setting for her memorial. The previous days had been filled with intermittent showers and blustery winds, but on this day the sky was blue and clear.

  I made my way to a small clearing ringed by old oak trees with Grandma and all of Mom’s brothers and sisters (save Katrina, who was in some sort of feud with Joe and refused to come), Rachel and Adam and myself, Devin and Todd and Dad, Tom and Terry and the other hospice workers, Gloria, and other friends and coworkers of Mom’s. I wondered how Rachel was feeling being around Lucie, her birth mother, and her two brothers, Nathaniel and Matthew, on a day like this. She was only nine years old, and I wondered how she was processing what was happening—I was having a hard enough time myself, at almost three times her age. But I had to help set up the service, so I didn’t have an opportunity to check in with her.

  After we all munched on the comfort food that was awaiting us in the park, we made our way to the folding chairs that had been set up for us, and found our seats. I was glad to see that the piano delivery I had arranged came through, and I conferred with my accompanist, Beverly, whom I knew from my days at Joliet West High School and who had graciously agreed to donate her services today.

  “How you doing, honey?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said. And it seemed to be true. If anything, I felt a little numb around the edges, and even a little remote, but basically I was clear and present and, for the moment at least, at peace. “Thanks again for doing this.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m honored, truly.”

  I had become the de facto emcee, so when everyone was seated I took to the microphone and began.

  “Um, thank you everyone for coming to this,” I said, feeling less self-conscious than I thought I might in front of Mom’s family, who looked up at me with a strange mixture of passivity and expectancy. I took a deep breath. “We want this to be kind of informal and everything. Some of us have prepared some things to say, but when we’re done with our part, please feel free to share whatever you’d like.” After witnessing the reluctance of everyone in Mom’s family to say anything at Grandpa’s funeral, I wasn’t sure how well they would do at this today, but I retained some hope that they would rise to the occasion. I continued, “Mom asked me to sing, so I’d like to do that first.”

  I had originally planned to sing only “Waiting for the Light to Shine,” as I’d discussed with Mom, but I’d also decided recently to sing “Without You,” and I’d worked up a version of it with Beverly. I looked to her at the piano, and she began the introduction’s lovely and mournful arpeggios, and I sang. As I stood there in the sunlight, singing for my mother and the people who loved her who had gathered here, I felt like a conduit for the clarity and simplicity and beauty of Jonathan’s words and music. I had anticipated having to contend with a closing up of my throat as I sang, but it didn’t come; instead, I continued to sing freely and strongly.

  After the piano’s last note gently subsided, Adam read a poem he’d written years before, which Mom had requested he recite today, and Rachel and Anne read prepared speeches. Anne’s voice rang out strongly, and she impressed me with her uninhibited, fearless presence, her eyes meeting ours as she spoke in a direct address to Mom.

  “I guess I’m a lot like you,” was her touching refrain. She and Mom had often been at odds, and Mom had worked hard to bridge the gaps that existed between them, so to hear Anne likening herself to Mom now struck me as a generous acceptance on her part, a final peace offering.

  When Anne was done I opened up the floor to anyone else who wanted to contribute, and Grandma was the first to take the microphone. I wondered what she would manage to say on this day that her eldest child was being remembered. I was happy that she was taking the opportunity to say something, but I hoped it wasn’t going to include a lot of talk about sin and hell and heaven and her Catholic God. This was, after all, the secular part of the day’s events.

  “I was always very proud of Mary Lee,” she began, her voice more subdued than normal, her eyes downcast, but her proud face tilted up into the sunlight. “She was my firstborn and always managed to live her life with a very strong will and a lot of determination. I saw her raise her three children by herself, never complaining about the hardships she faced, and then I saw her face this illness with courage and grace. She never failed to make me proud of her.”

  As she continued, I kept waiting for her to say she loved her daughter, but that one word, “love,” remained unspoken. It seemed unbelievable that she didn’t—or couldn’t—say it, but I was glad that she had at least spoken.

  Dad made his way to the microphone then. I was proud of him for braving the potentially hostile eyes and ears of some of the members of the Baird clan, not to mention those of Anne and Adam, but if they were unhappy that he was there they didn’t show it overtly. He deserved the opportunity to pay his respects just as much as anyone else.

  “Thanks for the chance to say something,” he began, shifting from one foot to the other, one hand in his pocket. “I met Mary quite a few years ago now, as many of you know, and then of course we were married and had our three wonderful children together…” He searched for words. “I learned a lot from Mary,” he said. I hadn’t heard him say anything like that before. “I learned about love and commitment, and even though we weren’t able to make our relationship work, I always admired her so much and knew what a remarkable woman she was…” His face clouded over, and tears sprang to his eyes, which he quickly covered with his free hand. “Uh…” he said. “She was a gentle and kind woman and a wonderful mother to our children, and, uh, thank you for letting me speak.”

  I was touch
ed by his sentiments and his courage. I wondered if Anne and Adam were merely tolerating his presence, or grateful for what he said.

  A couple of other friends and family members spoke, and then I closed the proceedings by singing “Waiting for the Light to Shine.” Again, my throat remained clear and open. As I sang, I hoped that today had been a suitable memorial for Mom. So much of her spirit had departed, bit by bit, well before her body had ceased functioning, and her death had been so long in coming, that we were ready to lay her to rest now. We were all ready to begin, at last, the long process of moving on.

  Tyson

  For myself, moving on began with going back home to New York, which I did the next day, but not until after Adam, Anne, and I shared a ceremonial Scrabble mini-tournament. As we sat around Anne’s kitchen table shuffling through our tiles, searching for our best moves and most impressive words, I wanted to ask my siblings how they were feeling, whether they were experiencing the disorienting mixture of relief and exhaustion and peace and guilt and love and sadness and freedom that I was experiencing. But the words caught in my throat. It was precisely the kind of question we had never asked each other, not ever, for any reason. Why? And why was I still abiding by our unspoken rule not to go there? After all, it wasn’t that long ago, on the night I had flailed and ranted at Adam, that he and I had communicated openly. But the door seemed to have closed.

  During our game, Todd, who had accompanied us to Anne’s house at my request, but who had opted out of the game, sat sullenly in the next room, reading. Or trying to read. I could feel his impatience and anxiety building, even without seeing him—his sighs and groans had become audible—but I ignored him, resenting him for not being able to just be there and hang out while we played our game, which he knew was an important ritual. At one point, he got up and leaned in the doorway and whined, “How much longer are you guys going to play?”

  I clamped down on my rising irritation and said as calmly as I could, “I’m not sure, we’re going to play a couple of games. They take a while.” I glanced at my brother and sister to see if they were picking up on our tension; I didn’t want to argue with him in front of them.

  “I should have just stayed at your house,” he said. “Why can’t you take me back there?”

  The house was a twenty-minute drive in each direction. There was no way I was about to leave for all that time, in the middle of our game. “I’ll take you home when we’re done,” I said, still trying to maintain my calm. Todd sighed and rubbed his eyes and skulked back into the other room. I resisted my urge to follow him and grab him and shake him and scream at him until he just got off my back and let me spend some time with my brother and sister whose mother had just died, and this was the time we had to spend with each other and this was how we dealt with that time, this was what we did in our family, and maybe it was ridiculous that our family couldn’t do anything at moments like this but play a fucking board game, but it was my family and if he wanted to be with me then he had to accept us and how we managed our lives and why couldn’t he just grow the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone???

  My cheeks reddened as I reached in the Scrabble bag and pulled out fresh tiles. Anne and Adam and I finished our games quietly, except when Anne and I had to challenge Adam’s usual attempts at playing invented words, at which point we all laughed at how silly he thought we were that we would accept “tumiscal” or “jumbation” or some other concoction, without a fight.

  “Adam, you’re nuts,” Anne would say every time.

  “You’re just jealous,” he’d reply, his eyes glinting. And Anne and I would share a knowing chuckle as we removed his errant letters from the board.

  And just as quietly—with a hasty hug and a muted goodbye—Adam and I left Anne’s house (with a sullen Todd in tow) and flew back home.

  Back in New York, Todd and I continued our circular fights, which included a rehashing of why the hell I had stranded him at my sister’s house so I could play a fucking game. I had hoped that Mom’s passing would alleviate our stress, but it didn’t. Maybe he had hoped the same thing, too. I was in constant turmoil to decide whether to break up with him, but I always panicked at the thought of being alone now, and I told myself that his capacity for sweetness, which had shown itself periodically throughout our time together, would carry the day in the end, and all of our struggles would be worth it.

  I also couldn’t bear to end yet another relationship, leading to yet another person out in the world resenting me, after having split up with Keith and David and Marcus. I needed to prove to myself that I could make a relationship work, that I didn’t have to run away when things got difficult, as my father had.

  As relieved as I was at having to endure no more uncertainty over Mom’s condition, I was also spent, and a couple of weeks after my return, I asked for a week’s vacation from the show, which the producers kindly granted. Todd had to be in LA for writing meetings, where he was getting put up in a free hotel room, so I figured I should just head out there with him. I had friends in LA, and it was an escape from my daily grind. Not that I liked LA much; I found its clichés—shallow, pretty people driving expensive cars; too much traffic; never-ending rays of impossibly bright sunshine—to be entirely accurate and distasteful. But LA was near the water, and the thought of spending at least a little bit of time by the ocean appealed to me.

  On one of our first nights there, I drove to Santa Monica by myself and took a nice long walk on the beach. Mom had come to LA with me a couple of times when I was a kid, for screen tests and auditions, but we’d never made it to the beach together. The one time that I was aware of her being at the Pacific Ocean was in San Francisco when I was eleven, while we were traveling with the national tour of The King and I. That ruggedly beautiful beach was rocky and windy and the water was freezing, but she had enjoyed it, and I thought she would also have enjoyed the sandy beaches of Southern California. Maybe I was wrong, though, because I didn’t recall Mom ever going on about wanting or needing to return to the ocean on either coast. But something about taking a walk in her honor made sense.

  As I strolled along in the lovely, gentle breeze, basking in the orange and peach and violet sunset, listening to the mild and steady rhythm of the surf, I thought Mom would have loved it as much as I did. I didn’t care if I was blithely reaching for a meaningful moment that didn’t exist; during the hour or so that I spent out there, I felt very close to my mother indeed.

  Michael Greif was currently in La Jolla, a couple of hours’ drive south of LA, rehearsing the California company of Rent, so I decided to drop in on him. Todd was busy with his work, which was fine with me; we needed some time away from each other. Though our fights had lessened a little bit since the trip had begun, I could never trust which Todd I’d be dealing with—the patient, kind, open, easygoing Todd, or the distrustful, jealous, nagging, needy, neurotic Todd. His jealousy had been driving me mad for a while now. While I had been faced with many opportunities to be unfaithful, with so many people paying me so much attention in the spotlight of Rent’s success, the truth was that I hadn’t even tried to kiss anyone, as tempted as I had sometimes been. It was a heady experience to come out of the stage door at the Nederlander and face any number of adorable and sexy young men (and the occasional adorable and sexy young woman), some of whom openly flirted with me. But I had made a commitment to Todd to be monogamous—at his request—and I had been proud to honor that commitment.

  Not that Todd ever really trusted me. Word would get back to him that I had looked someone in the eye as I talked to them outside the Nederlander (and, truthfully, I may or may not have been flirting by doing so; it depended on the person), and he would grill me.

  “Who was it? Did you give him your phone number? Am I going to have to worry about you two?” he’d say.

  “I don’t even know which person it might have been, Todd,” I’d reply, avoiding the phone number question, because there had been times in which numbers had been exchanged. “And just becau
se I looked someone in the eye doesn’t mean I wanted to fuck them.” (Which was only sometimes true.) “And no, I didn’t give him my phone number,” (again, only sometimes true) “and no, you have nothing to worry about. People are going to think that I want to fuck them just because I talked to them, Todd, that comes with the territory, you have to know that.”

  “But why do you have to talk to everybody all the time?”

  “Because it’s important to me,” I said. “I never wanted to feel like I couldn’t connect with the people who appreciated my work. I never wanted to feel untouchable or something.” Which was true, but it was also true that I enjoyed the attention and occasional flirtation.

  “Well, you sure have a knack for making me feel special,” he said.

  “Oh, give me a fucking break. How many more ways do I have to show you how much I love you? I can’t ever prove I’m not doing anything, I can only tell you that I’m not.”

  “Oh, that’s reassuring as hell.”

  “God, Todd, it’s like I’m on trial or something. Seriously, what the fuck can I do? I can only tell you, I can only swear on my mother’s grave, that I’m not doing anything. With anybody.”

  But these conversations never seemed to alleviate his anxiety or dampen his jealousy, and I came to feel as though I had to police my every thought while I talked to any fan or glanced at some hot guy on the street or even dreamed about someone else, for fear that somehow I was being unfaithful.

  So it was a relief to have some time alone on the long car ride to La Jolla. I was looking forward to reconnecting with Michael, and I was curious about how this new cast was shaping up.