Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (11 page)

The only professional downer of that time was the news that Paul, my agent at ICM, had been fired suddenly, for not being “aggressive” enough. This was ridiculous to me, and if the powers-that-be at ICM couldn’t value the kind of dedicated and resourceful agent that Paul was, there was no way I wanted to stick around. I resolved to leave the agency where I’d been represented for the past nine and a half years, and promptly called my friend Sarah Fargo, who’d been an assistant at ICM years before, and who was now an agent herself at a much smaller but still very reputable agency. She was feisty and fun, her trademark red ringlets framing her pale, pretty face. I’d always loved Sarah.

“I don’t want to be presumptuous or anything,” I said to her over the phone from Connecticut, “but I’d love to work with you.”

“Oh, are you kidding? I’d love to work with you, too!”

“Great,” I said, genuinely flattered. “That’s great. Thanks.”

When I went into her office a few days later to sign my papers, I told her about
Rent.

“I haven’t heard anything about that,” she said. “What is it?”

“Well, it’s a rock opera based on
La Bohème,”
I said.

“Uh huh.” She was clearly skeptical, but she nodded and smiled politely. “Sounds intriguing.”

“It is. I think it’s going to be great.”

“Well, cool. Can’t wait to see it.” I could tell that I hadn’t convinced her, that she was simply behaving as both a good friend and a good agent by being supportive, but I didn’t press the issue; I’d let the show speak for itself. I happily signed my agency contracts with her lucky, green-sequined pen, shook her hand, and left, glad to be entering into this new partnership with my old friend.

After the shoot for
The Mantis Murder
ended, I had a few days off and then started work right away again, this time on
David Searching.
Even with our tiny budget (we had a crew of three on most days) and all of its inherent constraints (no real meals to speak of, the need to quickly film scenes guerrilla-style on the streets, hoping no cops would ask for our nonexistent permits, Leslie having to pay a real New York City cab driver to drive back and forth on East Fourth Street just so we could get a shot done), the filming went off without a hitch. I was honored that Leslie had entrusted the lead in his film to me (he told me he had written the role with me in mind), and I had the pleasure of working with a couple of old friends for the first time, Camryn Manheim and Julie Halston, as well as a great cast of wonderful New York actors, including Stephen Spinella, Craig Chester, John Cameron Mitchell, Joseph Fuqua, and David Courier.

One night toward the end of the shoot, Julie and I were filming an intense scene in which my character, David, meets a man who is very ill from AIDS. He is the lover of Julie’s character (whose name in the film was—intentionally, of course—Julie Halston), and he is the first person with AIDS David has ever met. As we rehearsed the scene, I began to think about Ben. I wondered where he was, I wondered if he’d found a place to live; I had called his ex-boyfriend upon my return to New York from Oklahoma, but he’d never called me back. I didn’t know how to find Ben after that; he wasn’t listed in information, and we had no mutual friends. I had thought of him on and off since, but this night he was very much on my mind.

There was a hush, a respect for the power of a sickroom, that had fallen over the set as we worked that night. Conversation was at a minimum, but after we did a couple of takes of the master shot, and while John, the cinematographer, lit the room for my close-up, I turned to Julie and said quietly, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about a friend I have who’s very sick right now, and I’m really frustrated because I have no idea how to get in touch with him. I just wonder how he is.”

“Ouch, that’s a tough one. What’s his name, dear?” Julie asked, her usually manic energy greatly subdued, and a rich, lovely serenity taking its place.

“Ben. Ben Wackerman.”

“Ben?” She frowned for a moment. “Wait. Was he very young? Did he have red hair?”

I was absolutely shocked. “Uh, yeah. You know him?”

“Yes, yes, he worked for a friend of mine.”

“Wow. Do you know where he is?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Julie said, and took my hand into her own. “Ben died. He died a few weeks ago.”

“Oh…” I managed. I took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. He was very, very sick at the end. It was his time to go.”

“Yeah…”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I really am. He was so young. And very sweet. A very, very nice young man.”

“Yeah, he was…”

We fell silent after that, as we waited for the call to do our scene again. I just stared at the ground and concentrated on my breathing and railed in my mind against that asshole who hadn’t ever called me back. I thought of Ben and his joy and radiance even in his illness, and I thought of his mom, whom I’d never met, but who must have felt enormously lost right now. I thought of my mom and wondered how much longer she had left. I looked up to the ceiling, beyond which I thought maybe, just maybe, Ben might be able to see me or hear me or feel my thoughts, and I sent him—or his spirit or my idea of his spirit or whatever it was, even if it was nothing—I sent it or him all of my love and all of my wishes for his peace and comfort. I said a silent goodbye to him and then I went back to work, pouring all of my shock and love and sorrow into the scene, in no small way grateful that I had the chance to channel it all somewhere, hoping that I could perhaps, by doing so, pay my friend Ben some tribute.

M
y sister Anne’s wedding to Ken Smith, her boyfriend of a couple of years, was scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving 1995, and Adam and I flew out to Joliet a couple of days before to be a part of it.

“I want you guys to be ushers,” Anne said over the phone when she told us of her plans for the wedding. I had never been in anybody’s wedding, so I was happy to be included, although it was strange to participate in a wedding for two people I hadn’t spent time getting to know deeply. Of course I had more than a passing relationship with my sister, having grown up with her, but Anne and I hadn’t talked that often as adults, and when we did, it was not about intimate issues. Instead, we discussed the movies we’d seen (she liked
The Joy Luck Club,
which I hadn’t caught, while I liked
The Piano,
which she thought was good but not great), and the music we were listening to (we shared an affection for Sheryl Crow, among others), but beyond that our tastes diverged. We never talked about how either of us was feeling about Mom’s illness. Nor did we ever discuss the remarkable fact that Mom had rebounded significantly from her tough summer of chemotherapy and radiation and was now well enough to walk down the aisle and give Anne away at her wedding.

In the ten months since Mom’s surgery, many of us in the family would not have predicted that Mom would have been able to do that. But none of us brought it up directly with one another, perhaps because none of us wanted to tempt fate. Instead, we allowed Mom’s strength to speak for itself, and we allowed the happy moment of Anne’s wedding to carry the day.

“I’m going to be the flower girl,” Rachel announced, eager and joyful, when Adam and I walked into Mom’s house with our bags.

“That’s what I heard,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“I wanted to wear a tux, but Mom wouldn’t let me.”

“Oh, Rachel,” Mom said. “You’re going to look very pretty.”

“I know,” Rachel sighed. And then she gave me one of her customary, supertight hugs around my legs.

As Adam and I said our hellos, I didn’t press the wardrobe issue with Mom, even though I thought Rachel should have been able to wear whatever she wanted to Anne’s wedding; there was no reason for Mom to perpetuate gender stereotypes. Besides, Rachel would have been totally adorable in a suit. But it wasn’t my place to say anything, and even if it had been, I didn’t want to have an argument with Mom in my first moments home.

Mom looked better than when I’d last seen her over the summer, which was a relief, although she was still far too thin for her frame. Her hair was as thick and glossy as ever, though, and her excitement for Anne’s wedding sparkled in her big brown eyes as I kissed her hello on the cheek.

The next day felt almost like summer, not like late November at all, with a bright, cozy sun blazing the worst of the autumn chill out of the air. Buoyed by the weather, and finally starting to feel the excitement of Anne’s big moment, I threw on my tux and unpacked my camera, bringing it over to Anne and Ken’s house so I could document everyone’s final preparations.

Mom had spent the night at Anne and Ken’s so she could get up early for her beauty treatment in the morning, and when I arrived, she was sitting serenely at the kitchen table, her hair poofed up like Elizabeth Taylor’s, her face tilted up to one of Anne’s friends, who was applying her makeup.

“Mom, you look great,” I said, although I preferred her usual plain and simple look to this new, foreign, glamorous one. She glanced over to me and made a silly face, sucking in her cheeks, puckering her lips, and bugging her eyes out.

“You think so?” she said.

“You do,” her makeup artist chimed. “Mary, you look gorgeous. Doesn’t she look gorgeous?” she asked the roomful of bridesmaids.

“Yes, absolutely,” one of them said.

“Definitely,”
another agreed.

“Wow, I’ve never been told I look
gorgeous
before,” Mom replied in a slight English accent, goofily wiggling her eyebrows.

“Now hold still there, Mary,” the makeup artist said, gently taking Mom’s chin in her hand. “We’re almost done.”

I snapped a couple of pictures of Mom sitting there, and then a couple of pictures of Adam and Rachel (who looked adorable after all in her velvet sailor dress, white stockings, and buckled patent leather shoes), and then as I was looking for some fresh angles and new ideas for shots, Anne appeared from upstairs.

Anne had always been a cute girl, with her absolutely stunning, cloudy, blue-gray eyes shining under her auburn hair, but I had never seen her more beautiful than she looked that morning in her wedding gown. Her skin, peppered with light freckles, had been tanned to an exquisite golden brown, which glowed against the pure white lace of her dress; the combination of light and dark made her amazing eyes shine even brighter than usual, and her perky, sweet face sat perfectly framed underneath girlishly elegant bangs.

“Anne,” I said, “you look beautiful.”

Anne giggled bashfully. “Thanks,” she said. Her friends ooohed and ahhhed, sending Anne into more giggles. “Okay,” she finally said to her friend the makeup artist, “when you’re done with Mom, you have to check me.”

“Oh, Anne, I don’t think I have to touch you. Look at you!”

Anne giggled yet again, sheepishly looking around the room. I couldn’t remember ever seeing so much joy in her face, so much light, and then I turned to Mom, and my heart burst when I saw the same joy and light mirrored there.

I drove to the church with Adam and our friends Walt and Ross, blasting Smashing Pumpkins all the way. We were all originally from the Midwest, but none of us felt at home there, each of us having scurried away to New York City at our first opportunity. So in a way, on our short trip from Anne and Ken’s to the church, our little car, crammed with midwestern expatriates and filled to bursting with the raucously beautiful sounds of Billy Corgan and his band mates, became the locus of our own tiny rebellion against the silence and blandness of the monotonous towns and villages and suburban sprawl stretching out all around us.

At the church, Adam and I took to our tasks, quietly leading everyone to their seats and handing them xeroxed programs. The room remained virtually silent, except for the subtle tones of organ music hanging in the air like fog. The congregation simply sat, staring straight ahead, as if they were under a spell or transfixed by some distant television program.

Suddenly, the familiar tones of the “Wedding March” resounded through the room. Dad and his mother, Grandma Doris, hadn’t yet arrived. This was no big surprise, though; Dad was almost always late, and usually by a wide margin. And even though Mom, not Dad, had been designated by Anne to be the one giving her away, I was pretty sure that Dad’s absence wouldn’t please my sister. But if Anne was bothered, I couldn’t tell from looking at her as she slowly walked down the aisle, holding on to Mom’s arm, both of them keeping their eyes front, their proud faces poised and serene. And I doubted that anyone who didn’t know my mother was ill would have known by looking at her that her body was locked in a battle for its survival; there was that much life force glowing out of her.

Rachel followed behind, struggling in vain to hold her head up in a similar fashion as Anne and Mom, which struck me as odd at first, until I looked closer at her face and saw that she was crying. I wouldn’t have thought that an eight-year-old would be prone to such adult behavior, but there she was, methodically and seriously placing one foot in front of the other in time with the music, as her lower lip quivered and her big blue eyes spilled over with tears.

Right after the procession ended, I checked to see if Dad had arrived, just in time to watch him and Grandma Doris enter the lobby. I popped out of the main room and helped them with their coats.

“Has it started?” Dad said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but only just.”

“Oh, well at least we made it in one piece,” Grandma Doris said with a big grin, as jolly and vital and spirited as ever.

Anne and Ken had their backs to the congregation by now, so they couldn’t see us come in, but I hoped that she would somehow sense Dad’s entrance; there had been so much bad blood between them over the years, and I didn’t want for there to be any more spilled on Anne’s big day.

After the wedding, Walt, Ross, Adam, and I parked far away from all the other cars in the reception hall’s lot so we could smoke some pot before heading inside. I felt childishly naughty; I rarely smoked pot in the first place, and I had never, ever smoked pot right before I was about to spend time around Mom and my family. When I was sixteen, Mom had lectured me about drugs, leaning against the door to my room, her arms folded across her chest.

“I want you to
promise
me you’ll never do any drugs,” she said.

“I don’t think pot’s all that bad, Mom,” I replied.

“Yes, it
is.
It’s terrible.”

“Why?”

“It kills
so
many brain cells, and you’re just too smart to do that to yourself. You take such good care of yourself, why would you want to do damage to your brain? Please promise me you won’t do it.
Please.”

“Mom—”

“I mean it. I want you to promise me you won’t ever smoke pot or do any other drugs at all, ever.”

I stood there and considered her for a long moment, trying to think of some way to say no to her and get away without an argument, but her steady, intense, wounded gaze melted my resolve, and at last I said, sighing, “Okay, I promise.”

“Thank you.”

And for at least a couple of years, I had kept that promise. When people would offer me a joint, I always refused. Until I finally decided that what Mom didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and besides, I was too old to be living my life under her rules and expectations. So I casually, and only occasionally, smoked a little pot with a few of my friends, breathing in and trying to swallow the twinge of guilt that crept around the edges of my mind.

Even as I inhaled in our car at Anne’s reception, trying not to cough out the harsh, hot smoke from Ross’s pipe, I wasn’t sure why I was so boldly smoking up right then and there. Maybe I was simply succumbing to peer pressure, or maybe I really did want to tempt fate and flaunt my drug use, as sporadic as it was, in my mother’s face. More likely, though, I just wanted to relieve the tension that had insinuated itself through my body that day, as it always did when I was around my family for long periods of time.

The four of us quietly and quickly shared our pipe, and then just as quietly and nonchalantly strolled into the reception. I felt giddy as I feigned sobriety, not just because I was stoned, but also because I suddenly saw myself as some kind of ridiculous suburban outlaw, packing heat and on the lam from the local authorities. Real, scary paranoia, a common byproduct of pot, thankfully stayed at bay, though, as I greeted Mom in the foyer, wondering if she’d notice if my eyes were already red, or if she could smell the residue of cannabis on my tux as I hugged her. If she did, though, she didn’t say anything, and she hooked her arm into mine and allowed me to escort her inside.

By the time dancing came around after the meal, my high had fallen a little and I was mellowing out, but that didn’t stop me from jumping up out of my seat so I could boogie to the middle-of-the-road, Top 40 hits the deejay spun. I didn’t care that I didn’t dig the music he was playing; it had been a while since I’d cut loose on the dance floor, and I sorely needed the sweat and release that spazzing out in public gave me. Anne and Ken jumped into the fray, too, surprising me with their enthusiasm, their grins enormous and infectious, Anne surprisingly letting herself go, spinning around and hugging her new husband, and even planting a few kisses on him every now and then.

Midway through the dancing, the deejay slowed everything down and announced over the PA, “Now we’d like to ask the parents of the bride and groom to join each other in a dance.” I whipped my head around to see Mom’s reaction, but she was unreadable, although she did rise out of her chair a little stiffly. I stood off to the side and watched as Dad met Mom on the dance floor, his shock of gray hair, his handsome and youthful face, his bowed legs, and his distended gut all combining to make him look old and young at the same time. He looked odd and small and awkward. And yet he approached Mom evenly and directly, with what felt to me like true openness and warmth, which she didn’t quite return. She remained stoic throughout their brief dance, her back and arms tight, her head down, keeping her distance from him as much as she could while still dancing in his arms. They exchanged a few words, which I couldn’t hear from where I was, and as I watched them dance, I wondered if they’d ever danced together when they were dating or married. I didn’t think so, although I couldn’t be sure; the stories Mom had handed down left me feeling that their abbreviated married life was hectic, leaving little or no time for nights on the town. I watched them and wondered if they’d ever really known or loved each other. I wondered what Anne and Adam were thinking as they watched the dance. I wondered how it felt to Mom and Dad to touch each other more intimately than they had in years and years, and how it felt to them to be doing so in public. I wondered if they would perhaps attempt to resolve any of their unfinished business before Mom died, if in fact she was as close to death as we all feared.