Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (9 page)

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.

The next day as I sat and waited for Mom in the MRI waiting room, I called my friend Ben back in New York. I hadn’t spoken to him in a while, but my being in a hospital had put him in my mind; he was very ill from AIDS.

Ben and I had gone to Interlochen Arts Camp together, when I was fourteen and he was sixteen, and we had kept in sporadic touch since then. He was a thin, pale, freckled, fey redhead from a farm town in Ohio, with an infectious, zany grin and a rare sweetness. He and I hadn’t talked openly about sex or sexuality back at Interlochen, but we gravitated to each other as young queer people tend to do, hanging out with the other undeclared queer kids on the lawn outside our rehearsal rooms, chatting and telling jokes and sharing our love of Kate Bush and the Eurythmics and Peter Gabriel. For some strange reason, we called each other “Worm.” I’m not sure who coined it, but the nickname stuck to all of us in our little group, and even after camp was over, Ben signed off every postcard or letter to me as “Worm.” Three years later, he and I both moved to New York, and we saw each other fairly often at first, but then lost touch for a few years after that.

Then one day as I was leaving the Vineyard Theatre after a performance of
Raised in Captivity,
there he was, his orangey-red hair shining above his bespectacled face, his body shrouded in a dark wool overcoat.

“Anthony?”

“Ben? Oh my god, how good to see you!” And as I said this I could see right away that there was something wrong; his hair was thin, his face was wan and bony, and I felt a tremor in his hand as I took it in mine and gave him a hug.

“Hi,” he said, giggling, his smile as bright as ever.

“Thank you for coming,” I said. “It’s so nice that you came.”

“Oh, the play was very good, but I have to admit, I had a little trouble staying with it in the second act; I had a little trouble concentrating, because of my medication.”

I took a breath and nodded before I said, “Are you—?”

“Yeah,” he said, quick and unapologetic, nodding boyishly, and still smiling, although a little ruefully now.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pathetically.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He shrugged, still smiling, his hands wide open before him. “We have a lot to talk about. I kind of have to go, I have to lie down, it’s this medication. Can we get together?”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “Absolutely.”

“Great. I’d love that.”

“Me too.”

And we exchanged numbers and said goodbye, and then just like that he was gone. I stood in the lobby for a long while after he left, as if I were coming down off a very intense, very brief drug trip, and tried to fit my memories of the Ben that I knew onto this strangely happy but very, very ill young, young,
young
man I had just seen.