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

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