by Anthony Rapp
Getting
it All
In February 1995, while I was in rehearsals for an off-Broadway production of Nicky Silver’s play Raised in Captivity (yet another show in which I was not a “nice, normal” character), I got a call from home.
“They’ve found another tumor,” Mom said on the other end. “I’m going to have surgery so they can get it out.”
I didn’t want any more phone calls like this from home. I didn’t want to have to keep flying there for emergencies; I couldn’t afford the financial burden of these trips, and I didn’t have an understudy. What if there were complications and I had to stay in Joliet for a long time? What would happen to the show then? I wouldn’t want there to be cancellations because of me. But how could I even think about the future of the show when my mom was ill? Weren’t there priorities? Shouldn’t she be a priority?
Of course David Warren, my director, had no problem letting me go home. “You have to do what you have to do,” he said, without laying on me a shred of guilt. So I packed for a quick day trip, hoping that would be all I’d need, and booked a flight with Adam. We arranged for our friend Anna, who’d directed me in Trafficking in Broken Hearts, to pick us up at the Chicago airport; her clear-headed strength and dry sense of humor would do us some good on our drive from the airport to the grim University of Chicago Medical Center.
But when we emerged from the jetway into the harsh fluorescence of O’Hare International Airport, all zombied out and cottonmouthed by our journey, we were greeted not by Anna, but by our father. My heart sank; I wasn’t prepared to be the receptacle for his manic energy, and he and Adam didn’t get along, so our trip into town was probably going to be much less calming than I’d hoped.
Even though our parents had been divorced since I was two years old, Dad had always been at least tangentially involved in our lives. He’d traveled down from Chicago to visit us in Joliet occasionally, and I’d done father-son stuff with him as a kid, like attending White Sox and Cubs games, and I’d spent time with him and his second wife and their children at their homes, and I’d enjoyed many holidays with his extended family. But overall, I considered his relationship with me to be more friendly than parental. Except for receiving Dad’s minimal child support when it was due, Mom had truly been on her own when it had come to the daily grind of raising us kids. And maybe because I was so young when he left, I didn’t resent him so much for the divorce. But Adam and Anne both begrudged him for it, and over the years, Dad had become a pariah in our family. So I didn’t have any idea that he would have been alerted to Mom’s condition, let alone taken it upon himself to pick Adam and me up at the airport.
“I was just at the hospital,” he said to us, not even saying hello, his bright blue eyes more intensely focused behind his glasses than usual, his prematurely silver hair swept back from his pale face. “They didn’t get it all.”
Adam and I stopped and looked at each other, our bags weighing us down. “What do you mean?” I said.
“I don’t know much more than that. They just said they weren’t able to get it all.”
This didn’t make sense. It was supposed to have been a simple, routine surgery. They had to open up Mom’s abdomen, isolate the tumor, and then cut it out. Easy. They did this sort of thing all the time. Didn’t they? How much was the all of it that was so difficult to get? And what did it mean? Did it mean that this was the end, that Mom was going to die right now, or tomorrow, or in three months?
I didn’t ask any of these questions out loud; I just let them kick their way through my head as Adam and I silently lumbered behind Dad, following him through the maze of O’Hare and into his dilapidated, cluttered car. On the way to the hospital Dad tried to make small talk, his chipper midwestern voice bright and lilting. “I’m glad we’re getting to spend some time together,” he said, and, “So, how are things going for you guys in New York?” Adam and I answered in monosyllables (what I really wanted to say instead of “yes” and “no” was SHUT UP, THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, but I didn’t), and eventually Dad quieted down. In the ensuing silence I sat staring out the window at the spectacular Chicago skyline.
When we arrived at the hospital, we paused briefly in its vast lobby to pick up our absurdly large laminated guest passes before journeying endlessly through corridor after corridor just to get to the elevator that would take us to Mom’s floor, where we then walked down even more corridors to get to her room. As we made our way through the garishly hued hallways, I began to think that I should memorize all of the details around me, in case I ever needed to act in a scene taking place in a hospital, or if I ever wanted to write a screenplay in which a character was dying. I imprinted on my memory the badly framed paintings by the masters (Matisse, Magritte, Cézanne, Monet) lining the walls; the insidious pall of the flickering fluorescents shining down from the ceiling; the generic, flat-out ugly, ’70s-era modular furniture randomly strewn around rooms; the constant stream of stone-faced, badged doctors and orderlies and administrative assistants rushing around us. I staved off my anxiety, swallowing it down as I walked. In order to avoid thinking about Mom and how frightened and disoriented and doomed she must be feeling, I thought about how all of these mundane details surrounding me in this hospital might come in handy in my work someday.
Finally, we reached Mom’s room, and walked in. Grandma Baird was there, and Roberta, and Anne, all slumping around in the semidarkness, all with hollowed-out looks on their faces, no one moving or saying hello. In the center of the room was Mom, the white sheets of her bed glowing in the light of her bedside lamp, her face grim and spent amid the tubes snaking out of her nose, her eyes more drunken and exhausted and wild than I’d ever seen them.
“Hi, Tonio,” she said, her voice ragged and dry. “Hi, Adam.”
“Hi, Momma,” I said, and sat down carefully on the bed, taking her hand in mine. Adam murmured hello and took a seat in a chair across the bed from me and gripped her other hand.
“What’s going on?” I said, and immediately regretted it. What kind of a question was that at this moment? Mom’s gaze in response was scared and stern and very very tired.
“I don’t know.” Her words slurred out of her mouth. “They said they couldn’t get it all.”
“But what does that mean?” Why was I so compelled to keep asking her these questions? Now was not the time. But then again, when would be the time?
“I don’t know.”
I could see out of the corner of my eye that Adam had put his head down, his free hand covering his eyes, and I wondered if he was crying, something I had never seen him do. And then I could tell that he was, silently.
“They can’t tell me why,” Mom continued.
“What do you mean?”
“No one will give me a straight answer.”
Even though I sensed her exasperation, I kept going. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she whined, and I clenched my jaw and tried to resist asking her more questions. I didn’t want to keep upsetting her, and I didn’t want all the other eyes in the room burning into me, witnessing how much I was fucking up this moment with my mother. I could hear Dad jiggling his change in his pockets and attempting to make mumbled conversation with Grandma, who sat impassively in the corner. Roberta slumped in a chair, and Anne hovered near the foot of the bed, her eyes sharp and piercingly blue, her mouth set in a firm line. Mom, surrendering to the dope coursing through her body, closed her eyes and dozed off. I took the opportunity to slip out of the room, find a pay phone, and call Anna.
“Hello?” Anna said, her nasal midwestern twang strong and clear and an immediate comfort.
“Anna, it’s Anthony.”
“Hey, bubby.” Her voice softened, becoming more intimate and gentle. “How you doing?”
“Well, they couldn’t get it all.”
“Yeah, hon, I know. Your father told me. That’s how come he was there instead of me.”
“I know.”
&n
bsp; “So how you doing?”
“Okay,” I said, and my chest tightened and I tried to take a deep breath. “It’s just weird. I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, I know. These things don’t make a whole lot of sense, generally speaking. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m worried about Mom.”
“Of course you are. That’s an entirely appropriate response. You should be worried about her.”
“Yeah.”
“You need anything, anything at all, you call me. You know that, right? You call me.”
“Okay, I will.”
“How’s your bro?”
“Fine, I guess. He doesn’t say much.”
“Don’t I know it.”
I looked down the hall at the doorway to Mom’s room and wondered if they all minded my being gone for this long, if they resented my being on the phone.
“You need anything at all, you call me,” Anna said again.
“I will.”
“Love you, bubby.”
“Love you, too.”
I hung up and realized that I’d been pacing the entire time, as much as it’s possible to pace while on a pay phone. I cracked my neck and all the knuckles in my fingers and swallowed and headed back to Mom.
There was so much silence in the room. Mom was asleep and none of us spoke to each other. I could feel Dad pace around and start to say something, then stop himself. At one point the silence was interrupted by a group of brusque interns on their rounds, dropping in just long enough to wake Mom, note her vital stats, and mutter medical jargon to each other. After their visit I went out into the hallway and tried to find Mom’s oncologist, Dr. Barron, to get him to come to her room and explain what exactly was happening to her and why, but I just kept getting shunted off to his answering service. Finally, much later, he lumbered in, a tall, boxy man, his wild, gray, madscientist hair framing a huge, square head.
“How are you feeling, Mary?” he said, his voice mellow and mildly benevolent.
“Okay.” She seemed much more alert now that he was there.
“Well, as you know, we couldn’t get it all.” That phrase again. “We’re going to have to very seriously talk about all of the options now.”
“Okay.” I wondered if Dr. Barron knew that my mom was a nurse, and that she would see and hear through any verbal smoke screens he might attempt to put in her way.
“I want to very strongly recommend putting you on a course of chemotherapy, combined with radiation treatment. We want to shrink and kill that tumor.” I hated chemotherapy, I couldn’t stand the idea of it, I didn’t want her to take it, it was poison. Why couldn’t they get it all?
“Why couldn’t you get it all?” Mom asked, weakly.
“We don’t know yet. I haven’t gotten the full report from your surgeon.” Mom started to ask another question, but stopped. “Now,” Dr. Barron continued, “I want to start you on the chemo as soon as possible. Time is of the essence. It will be rough, but I want to be aggressive. I want to beat this. I’ll be in to check on you later.”
“Okay…” Mom didn’t watch him leave. She stared at the ceiling, and I saw slow tears drip down her cheeks. Anne, Adam, and I surrounded her, touching her legs and holding her hands.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Anne said. It was one of the only things she’d said since I got there. “You’ll be okay.”
“I want to see my grandchildren,” Mom said, her voice cloudy from crying.
“You will, Mom, you will,” Anne said. But I couldn’t help thinking, no, maybe you won’t, maybe you will die from this, maybe you will die from it very very soon, and anything we might say to you now won’t change that, why does everyone always think they have to pretend that nothing bad is happening, you are very very very sick, and that’s the undeniable fact, you can’t pretend that it’s not. But I remained silent.
Mom stared off at the wall, exhausted, and I said, “Mom, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to come home, because of the show.”
She didn’t look at me as she said, “I know…” Nothing I had said all day seemed to help or comfort or please her, and I hated my inability to help, but I had to talk to her. How many more chances would I have? I had to cram it all in now, because the next time might be too late. I couldn’t bear to throw out empty false hope, because who really knew anything about what was going to happen?
And so I asked her, “What kind of chemotherapy are you going to have?” and she answered, “I don’t know,” and I asked her, “Why can’t anyone tell you what went wrong in the surgery?” and she answered, “I don’t know,” and I asked her, “Are you going to be able to go back to work?” and she answered, “I don’t know.” And with each question I asked, she seemed to shrink deeper into her bed, and the lines around her eyes etched themselves more vividly into her skin, and yet I couldn’t stop myself.
Finally, after a long silence passed between us all, it was time for me to return to the airport. I slowly stood and said, “Goodbye, Momma. I love you.”
“I love you too, Tonio,” she said, her weary eyes meeting mine for the first time in a while. I kissed her on the forehead and left.
Saviors
and Angels
Back in New York, back in the show, back in my life of running around to auditions and dinners and movies and plays, I barely called home. I kept thinking I should be doing more to help, or that I should want to do more to help, but the truth was that I was avoiding making contact with Mom, without ever admitting it to myself, for fear of what news might be on the other end.
From the little contact I did make, I learned that her recovery from her surgery was as swift as always, but that she wasn’t going to be able to go back to work because of her debilitating chemo and radiation treatments. I tried imagining how she would look without her hair and thought that it would probably make her already large and prominent dark brown eyes all the more noticeable. I wondered what her scalp looked like. I didn’t want to find out.
I could hardly stand the fact that at the end of the day, there was nothing I could do to help, not really. At least not from New York. I wondered if Mom resented my absence, if she wanted me to be home with her. I wondered if she still believed that I had always been the savior of our family, and therefore should try to do something to save us all once again; after all, she had credited me with literally saving all of our lives more than once. The first time was one night back in 1972 when I was a small baby.
Our tiny red Volkswagen Bug crawled down I-57. We were somewhere on the stretch of highway between Manteno and Glenview, Illinois, and it was dark, very dark; there were no lights alongside the road. We had just left Grandma’s after our weekly visit; my dad was driving, my mom was in the passenger seat, Adam was curled up in the cubbyhole behind the back seat, Anne was slumped down in the back seat itself, and little one-year-old me was next to her, in my car seat. We three kids were asleep.
Mom and Dad weren’t talking much, as usual, just watching the road speed beneath our car, relieved to be out of her mother’s house, away from all of the noise that came from eleven brothers and sisters and several of their children running around all day.
I-57 was like most Illinois highways: completely straight for miles and miles, its four lanes separated by a grassy median, with the occasional dilapidated overpass thrown in. Cornfields and plains stretched out on either side. Every once in a while a barn or farmhouse or granary sprouted up on the horizon, usually accompanied by a huge oak tree or weeping willow. There were shoulders on the side of the highway, but if you pulled over, it might be a long time before anyone came along. Exits were few, and no towns were visible from the road.
It was late summer, but the night was cool. The steady pat pat pat of insects dotting the windshield and the sputter of the motor filled the silence between my parents. The radio wasn’t playing, probably because they wouldn’t have agreed on what station to listen to.
We passed a midnight blu
e Dodge Dart on the shoulder. Its door lay open, but no one was in sight. Mom thought that was odd. She looked at Dad, thought about saying something, and then decided there was nothing really to say; cars were often abandoned on the sides of highways.
Another couple of miles down the road, that same Dart passed our car on the left, moving at an incredibly fast speed. A young black man with an Afro and a goatee sat in the driver’s seat. Again, Mom thought something was odd, but again, she didn’t say anything. She looked back at me asleep, and at Anne, and then stared out the window at the barely visible cornfield whizzing by.
Soon after that, we passed two other cars on the shoulder: one a faded, rusty Gremlin; the other a clunky, army green Buick Elektra. In the Elektra was a group of three young men, two white, one black, and outside, between the two cars, stood a young white woman, talking animatedly to another young white man. Mom and Dad glanced over.
“Should we stop, Doug?” my mom asked.
“What? Why should we stop?”
“I don’t know…”
He kept driving. My mom was growing more and more nervous, uncomfortably so. She reached back to me and adjusted my head in my car seat, rubbed Anne’s hand for a second, and lifted herself up so she could peek over the back seat at Adam’s sleeping, curled up, little-boy body.
Suddenly, the young woman’s Gremlin zoomed by, going even faster than the Dart. Mom stared after it, her heart pounding. It didn’t make sense, this many people doing this kind of driving, on this road, at night, she thought.
The headlights of the Buick Elektra splashed into the car, growing in intensity very quickly. Mom whipped her head around, staring into the beams. Recklessly, the Elektra changed lanes and drew up alongside our car. The three young men inside stared into our car.
“Doug, watch out, I think they’re drunk,” Mom said.
