by Anthony Rapp
“Don’t worry, I can handle it.”
“Be careful. Slow down.”
He slowed down, and the Buick Elektra slowed down. The guys in the car were huddled together, talking to each other and pointing at us with their thumbs.
“What are they doing?” Mom said.
“Mary, don’t worry, just don’t look at them, and they’ll leave us alone. They’re just joyriding.”
“I don’t know…”
“Trust me.”
Abruptly, their car slowed down, switched lanes so they were once again behind us, and bumped into our rear.
“Doug—”
“What the hell are they doing?”
“Doug—”
Another bump.
“I’m pulling over.”
“No, why?”
“I’m not gonna let them just get away with that, who do they think they are? Jesus.”
“No, Doug, don’t, just keep driving.”
Dad’s face was getting all red. Another bump. Dad glared at the rearview mirror. The Elektra zipped back into the lane next to ours, and pulled up alongside us again. One of the white men, his hair a scraggly mane, a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth, made a motion for us to pull over.
“Wait,” Dad said, “maybe they’re trying to tell us something’s wrong with our car.”
“No, Doug, there isn’t anything wrong with our car, now please, just slow down and they’ll leave us alone.”
Suddenly, there was the most aggressive bump yet, from the side, and with that, my head fell forward.
“That’s it, I’m pulling over!” my dad barked.
“No, Doug.” Mom reached back to right my head. As she did, she glanced in the window of the Elektra and saw the scraggly-haired young man watching her help me. Their eyes met. The red tip of his cigarette flared as he took a drag. He looked at me, then back at Mom, then back at me. Another drag, and then he turned to his buddies in the car and said something to them. The driver craned his neck over to us, looked into our car once more, at Dad and Mom and me, and then sped away.
“Good riddance,” Dad said. “Punks.”
Before our arrival in Glenview, we passed two other cars on the side of the road, a station wagon and a VW bus, both abandoned. Once, we passed the Buick Elektra, which had one less passenger than earlier. Mom stared at each car as we passed by and tried to rub the gooseflesh out of her arms. She glanced over at Dad several times but didn’t say anything more that night. When we got home, she put us all to bed and tried to put the whole incident out of her mind. But she couldn’t; she lay in bed awake all night.
Many months later, Mom sat in a courtroom as an eyewitness, testifying against the young men in the Buick Elektra. That night on I-57, they had killed several people by bumping their cars off the road, taking them into the cornfield, shooting them point blank with a shotgun, and leaving them there to die. One member of the gang would then drive up ahead in the victim’s stolen car and knock someone else off the road. Less than a minute after we passed the young woman in the Gremlin, she was murdered.
Mom told me this whole story one night when I was still young—about nine or so. On a rare evening off from her nursing job at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Mom sat next to me on our couch and showed me old, yellowed newspaper clippings about the I-57 incident, including one in which she was interviewed, all of which were collected and saved in a flimsy scrapbook with a brown cardboard cover. When she was done, she closed the scrapbook and reached over to me, holding my hand in silence for a moment. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, so I just sat there, imagining those poor people being shoved into the mud in the cornfields, wondering if they felt any pain as they were shot, or if it was all over in an instant. I looked at Mom. She smoothed my hair and said, “If it weren’t for you, we would have been killed that night.” She smiled softly, gazing right into my eyes. “That guy saw you, and he couldn’t kill a baby. Those terrible kids couldn’t kill a baby. If you hadn’t fallen forward, we would all be dead now. You saved our lives, Tonio.” And I nodded solemnly, believing her to be right, believing that I should continue to do my best to take care of our family.
Years later, in 1990, a severe tornado ripped through Joliet and its surrounding towns, killing over sixty people, and wiping off the face of the earth two of our previous apartments. I was already living in New York by then, and our current house—a condominium that I’d helped Mom purchase by taking care of the down payment with money I’d made doing Adventures in Babysitting—sat within a half mile of the tornado’s path. “If we didn’t live here, we might be dead,” Mom said to me at the time. “Thank you, Tonio. You saved our lives again.”
And even though she was technically right, that there was a good chance our family had averted death twice because of me, it was strange to get credit for being a great savior since neither outcome had been my intention. I was a baby in a car seat in the one case, and I was a thousand miles away when a tornado randomly happened to miss our house in the other. But I knew that Mom still believed that I had been somehow endowed with protective powers, and she gave me full credit for our family’s survival.
But now, as I was faced with this new reality of my mother’s failing health and in a position to possibly do something to make a difference in the outcome, not just by default but by actions I could consciously take, I was consistently falling short.
In April 1995, a couple of weeks after Raised in Captivity closed (we were a critical and box office success, selling out our limited run, but, unable to move to a commercial off-Broadway house, we were forced to close), I got a call from my agent, Paul, about a job in the film Twister, and I promptly shipped out to Ponca City, Oklahoma, for the next couple of months. Twister turned out to be just a paycheck gig, with no creative fulfillment whatsoever—I was essentially an extra, on the “bad guy’s” team. Although I was grateful for the boost in my income, I disliked being in the middle of Oklahoma and wished that I had more of an opportunity to work.
Several weeks into the shoot, my aunt Diana called me. “Your mom’s not doing too well,” she said. “Is there any way you can come home?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ll have to find out.”
“Well, I hope you can. Your mother really wants to see you.”
So here it was, another urgent phone call from home, and another moment I had to ask permission to leave work. I went right to our executive producers, Kathleen Kennedy and Ian Bryce, neither of whom I had seen since the first day of shooting, and explained to them my situation.
“Of course you can go,” Kathleen said. She actually seemed concerned about Mom’s well-being. “There’s no reason why you can’t spend time with your mother.”
“Thank you,” I said, flush with my newfound freedom and anxious about what I would find when I went home.
Melanie Hoopes, another fellow underused teammate, managed to get permission to leave with me (she had friends in Chicago and was as eager as all of us to get out of Ponca City), and so the two of us set off on a thirteen-hour drive up through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, arriving in Joliet just after dawn. Her presence in the car was a gift, even though we weren’t close friends at that time. When we started our journey, I said, “I don’t know how talkative I’ll be, or how I’ll feel, you know, because of the circumstances,” and without hesitation, and with complete sincerity, she replied, “I totally understand. You don’t have to talk to me or entertain me at all. If you want to talk about anything, I’m here; otherwise, you don’t have to worry.”
Mom had always been thin and pale, but when I got to the house and saw her that morning after she awoke, she was far thinner and paler than usual, her skin milky and stretched over the bones of her face. I was relieved to see that she still had a full head of hair, although it was limper than I remembered. The many bumps dotting her skin stood out in a kind of relief, and her large eyes seemed even rounder and larger than normal. I hugged her gently, afraid that too much
of a squeeze from me might snap her in two.
“I’m so glad you could come home, Tonio,” she said.
“Me too.” And I was, although I was already dreading my time in Joliet. In my excitement to get out of Ponca I had forgotten that, in many ways, Joliet was no better. And there was so much I wanted to say to Mom, especially regarding all of her unresolved issues with my sexuality, but would she want to talk about any of it? Wouldn’t the barest mention depress her? Wasn’t it selfish of me to want to force her to discuss my concerns with her when all she probably wanted from me was my kindness and care?
During my first couple of days home, I remained mostly silent and wandered from room to room, overwhelmed by the weight of my unspoken thoughts. Mom asked me to go to the store, and I went to the store. Mom asked me to cook a meal for us, and I cooked a meal for us. Mom asked me how the film was going, and I told her. During the day, I was numb and vacant, but as I lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, my mind chased after its reeling, swirling questions and panicky thoughts, until I finally drifted off to sleep.
Mom broached one of my concerns herself. We were sitting in the living room, watching TV at a low volume, when she turned it off and said, “I want you to start thinking about what you’ll want from me when I’m gone.”
The simplicity and clarity of her words instantly cleared the thick air of anxiety hanging over me. I was surprised that she was willing to deal with the truth of her possibly imminent death head-on. I looked right at her, took a deep breath, and said, “Well, Momma, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Okay,” she replied calmly. “Just think about it and let me know.”
“I will.”
And with that, she turned the TV back on.
The next day, I had to drive her up to the University of Chicago Medical Center for some tests, and because of our brief conversation the previous night, I was looking forward to the opportunity to sit and talk with her during the hour-long trip into the city.
Stuffed into Mom’s tiny white Neon, a car she was so proud to own (she had only been able to afford used cars before her recent raise), we hit the road, and I wasted little time on I-55 before I said, “I was thinking about what you said last night, Momma, and I realized that there’s really only one thing that I want.”
“What’s that?”
I couldn’t tell if her voice held any tone of dread or suspicion, so I plowed on. “Well,” I said, “I just want for there to be nothing between us. Nothing left unfinished. That’s more important to me than anything else you could possibly give me.” As I said this, I felt clear and cleansed and focused and true.
“Well, I want that too,” she said. I glanced over at her and she looked small and delicate in the passenger seat, as she stared straight ahead out the windshield.
“Is there anything you want to talk to me about?” I said, feeling my pulse rise slightly as I did.
“Well…” she began. I glanced over at her again, to see a distinctly pained expression in her eyes. She frowned and then turned to me and said, “I just want to know that you’ve forgiven me about what happened with Zucchini.”
This was the last thing I was expecting to hear; I almost laughed from surprise. But I was also touched by the sadness and fear in her voice. Zucchini had been an Australian shepherd I’d found in the Nevada desert a few years before while filming the movie Far from Home. She was an adorable, motley creature when I discovered her walking through town, but she was also almost dead from dehydration. I nursed her back to health, driving three hours to the nearest vet, and then three hours back, feeding her vitamin supplements from a tube, until she was as sprightly and joyful as any healthy puppy. When the filming was over, I brought her back to Joliet with me. I’d named her Zucchini after an eccentric Italian restaurant owner in Nevada offered Drew Barrymore, the star of the movie, a free plate of zucchini at dinner one night. It had been such a bizarre incident that it had become an inside joke among the cast and crew of the film, and thus an appropriate name for my new dog. Mom initially protested having another animal in the house—we already had a little dog, Scooter, as well as a couple of cats—but she quickly fell in love with Zucchini, and when I moved away from home the next winter, unable to bring Zucchini along, I was thrilled that Mom decided to keep her.
Because Zucchini had grown up in the desert, she loved to run, and Mom was always having to chase her down when she’d dash out of the house, which she’d do at the smallest opportunity. Mom and I had more than a few arguments about it—I was afraid that Zucchini would just disappear if she got on too much of a tear—but Mom always swore that she’d never let it happen, and we’d leave it at that.
The following Thanksgiving, however, while I was away at NYU, she called me, her voice choked with tears. “Anthony, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. But Zucchini’s dead.”
I stopped breathing and moving and said, “What?”
“She’s dead. She was hit by a car. It’s my fault, I let her run, she got out, and I figured she’d come back, but she didn’t, so I looked for her, and I couldn’t find her, and then finally I found her, and she was lying by the side of the road, just lying there, and nobody had stopped or anything, and she’s dead, and I’m so so sorry…”
“It’s okay, Momma, it’s okay,” I said, but really it wasn’t, it wasn’t at all, it was terrible, and it was her fault, I’d told her that she couldn’t let Zucchini run, it was so dangerous, it was her fault, it was, it was. After I reassured her some more and listened to her crying and calmed her down and then said goodbye and hung up the phone, I stood in my dorm room and wept and tried to remember what it felt like to hug my dog to me and to throw her favorite toy for her to chase and to take long walks with her at night. I had lost many pets over the years, but it never got any easier. I felt my grief over each loss keenly.
But in the years since, I had not given Zucchini’s death much thought at all, and when I did think of it I bore Mom no ill will whatsoever, so to hear her ask me for my forgiveness almost six years later was totally surprising.
“Of course I forgive you, Momma,” I said, and I really did mean it, absolutely. “I was always a little upset about her death, you know, because I loved her, but I really do forgive you.”
“Well, you know,” she said, her voice small and weak, “I just knew how much you loved her, and how disappointed you were in me.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I was a little disappointed at the time, but that was years ago. It really is okay.”
“I just didn’t want to let you down. I know how much you loved her,” she said again.
“Yeah, I did, but so did you, and I know it was very hard for you, too.”
“Yeah. She was so sweet. Such a good dog.” I heard Mom sniffle and glanced over to see that she was crying. I reached over and held her hand.
“Oh, Momma, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
I was so relieved and happy that we were talking this way, and so touched by the depth of Mom’s remorse, and so proud that I was finally able to bring her some comfort, that almost all of my fears of what we could and could not discuss immediately evaporated.
“Thank you, Tonio,” Mom said.
“You’re welcome, Momma.”
At the hospital, Mom and I trundled through its endless, forbidding hallways from one appointment to another. I sat in each waiting room as she had blood drawn or received her final round of chemo or met with Dr. Kelly, the kindly female therapist the hospital had granted to help Mom cope with her cancer. Through it all, Mom methodically and quietly submitted herself to these rounds, talking little. I took her lead and kept silent myself, hoping that I was giving her support and strength by simply being there with her.
The only stop for which I joined her was the brief physical exam and interview she received from Dr. Barron in a cramped and drab corner room. I sat off to the side as he listened to her lungs with his stethoscope.
“How are you feeling, Mary?”
he asked.
“Oh, pretty good,” she said.
“Any pain anywhere?”
“Well, my back always bothers me. But that’s nothing new. I’m just very tired.”
“I understand.”
He asked her to lie back, and tested the flexibility and strength of her legs. She inhaled sharply once or twice as he gently moved her feet up and down.
“That hurt?” he said.
“A little bit,” Mom replied, but I could tell it had hurt much more than a little bit.
“Okay,” Dr. Barron said, “you can sit up now.” After Mom had settled into a more comfortable position, he sat down on the edge of the examination table and said, “As you know, Mary, we’re going to stop your chemotherapy now and just concentrate on radiotherapy. But I’m going to need you to come back in tomorrow so we can perform an MRI. We need to do that so we can know exactly where your tumor is, and to see how much it’s shrunk or grown.”
“Okay,” Mom said, her voice quiet, her eyes clear and strong. “That’s fine.”
Dr. Barron turned to me then. “We’re doing our best to beat this for your mother.”
I wasn’t sure that I believed him, but I nodded and said, “Thank you,” anyway.
By the end of the day, Mom was exhausted, and slept all the way home. I watched her periodically, in fleeting glances away from the traffic. Mom sleeping in the car was a turnabout from my childhood; she used to drive me into and out of the city for auditions and rehearsals and performances, and I usually fell asleep on the way back. Sometimes, our arrival home jarred me awake, but I never opened my eyes, and, night after night, Mom would reach into the back seat, cradle me in her arms, carry me up the two flights of stairs into our apartment, and lay me down on my bed, kissing me on the forehead and whispering “Good night” before leaving the room. It took all of my self-control to stifle my smiles and giggles on these nights as I feigned sleep. It was my little game. I didn’t know if Mom realized I was awake, but if she did, she played along every time.
