20. James
JAMES
After dinner, I found Will on our shared balcony, reading a Jane Austen anthology. He wore baggy sweatpants and a hoodie to ward off mosquitoes.
I handed him a revised call sheet. “Someone dropped this off for you. I thought maybe we could run tomorrow’s scenes.”
He used the call sheet as a bookmark and closed his book. “I’m not going to go. But don’t worry, I’ll still ask my mom if you can watch.”
I set a six-pack of IPA on the table. He’d said the same thing that afternoon at the quarry—he wouldn’t jump—and look how that turned out.
Granted, it had taken him twenty minutes to build up the nerve to jump off the lowest cliff, which was barely ten feet off the water, but he did it.
And by the time we left, he was diving off the thirty-foot cliff like a pro.
Will just needed a little encouragement, and I was happy to supply it.
I opened a beer using the edge of the table and handed it to him. “I know you were hoping to get the part, but you can’t let one setback knock you out of the ring.”
“I wasn’t hoping to get the part.” He scowled, a crease forming between his thick black eyebrows. He was a terrible liar.
“It’ll be fun, and I’m from Vermont, so I can help you with the accent. By the time I’m done, they’re gonna regret not casting you.”
He stared at the beer. “I can’t drink this.”
I grabbed one for myself. “Lesson one: Vermonters drink beer. Granted, it’s usually light beer.
In fact, it’s customary to carry a cooler in the back of your truck so you have your favorite brew with you at all times.
I only got you this fancy shit because it was second on your list of forbidden drinks, and after you dissed my Pbr the other night, I figured you needed easing into redneck culture. ”
“What are you talking about? I never dissed your Pbr.”
I figured Will didn’t remember passing out in my lap and being carried up to bed. I certainly remembered, though. He was surprisingly heavy, even after I’d gotten him out of his wet clothes and into a pair of dry shorts.
“Here”—I set the script between us—“you be Travis, and I’ll be Bruce.”
“This is pointless.”
“No, what’s pointless is you sitting around the house all day waiting for life to come to you. You gotta be proactive. Take risks. You can’t take no for an answer.”
“Like you’re doing right now?” He swigged his beer.
I smirked. “Exactly.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He scanned the page for twenty seconds, then said, “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Let’s do this.” I winked, then tried to channel my father, a beer-gutted asshole with the temper of a two-year-old and the fists of a boxer. “Where the fuck are my sunglasses?”
“I don’t know, Dad, but you were wearing them this morning when you went riding.”
“Did I leave ’em up on the mountain?” I swallowed hard. I could hear my father’s voice in my head, clear as day. “Go get ’em for me.”
“I’m not going all the way up the frigging mountain just to get your stupid sunglasses.”
“Okay, stop,” I said. Will sounded like a second-grader playing the sheriff in the school play. “Can you maybe make your voice a little deeper and talk a little slower?”
“Why, so I can sound more like Derek?”
“No, so you can sound more like Travis.”
He rolled his eyes again. “Fine.”
“And don’t pronounce the t in mountain. It’s moun’ain. And drop the g’s, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“In Vermont you don’t go fishing, you go fishin’. You don’t go mudding, you go muddin’.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Mudding?”
“Muddin’,” I corrected.
Will let out an exasperated sigh that had no right to be as adorable as it was. “What the hell is muddin’?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s when you take your truck or Jeep up the old logging roads and drive through mud.”
“You’re kidding?” He looked at me like I had a third nipple.
“I’m not, and it’s kiddin’.”
We tried again, but he still sounded like he was mocking Travis, turning him into a cousin-fucking hillbilly. Of course, the point wasn’t to get Will not to suck. It was to get him excited about participating.
“When you and Theo went riding, did you meet Howard by any chance?” I asked.
“Old guy, one eye, looks like Charles Bronson?”
I tipped my beer at him. “That’s the one. Thick Vermont accent, but don’t go that thick. Only old-timers sound like that.”
“Fine”—he rolled his eyes again—“whatever.”
“Why don’t we nail this one line first, then go back, okay?” I pointed to Travis’s line halfway down the page.
“Fine.” He closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, then opened them again. “I’m not goin’ all the way up the friggin’ moun’ain just to get your stupid sunglasses.”
I couldn’t speak. Holy shit! He not only sounded like a real Vermonter. He sounded like Travis.
“How was that?”
I took a slow pull from my beer, trying to chase away the ghost of my brother. “It was good.” I gripped the bottle tighter, hoping he didn’t notice the way my hand shook. “Okay, let’s go from the top.”
We ran the scene half a dozen times, and each time Will got better. Their voices were different: Will’s was more melodic than Travis’s had been, but the subtext, the weight behind the words, was the same.
I glanced at the next scene on the call sheet. I knew I shouldn’t—Will’s dad wasn’t even in it—but I couldn’t help myself. “Let’s try this one. I’ll be Jimmy.”
He read the first line—“Hey bro, whatcha up to?”—and I was transported back to my tiny Queens apartment.
“Nothin’, just chillin’,” I said.
“Emily and I were wonderin’ if you wanted to come up for the baby shower next weekend.”
I pictured Travis in the kitchen, our old mustard-yellow rotary phone pressed to his ear.
“You know I can’t do that.” It was a lie. I could’ve gone.
“Come the fuck on. Dad doesn’t even remember kickin’ you out.
He fuckin’ thinks you still live here. Yesterday, he accused you of eatin’ all his beef jerky.
” Will took his time, hitting every inflection.
“And I need you.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“He’s fuckin’ killin’ me. I can’t keep this up. ”
“I’m sorry. I can’t. Es and I are going to a protest.” Another lie.
“What kind of protest?”
“It’s for, uh, social justice.”
Will’s hand landed on mine, cold and damp from his beer. “Are you okay?”
I jerked my head, trying to shake away the memories. “Sorry, lost in thought.” I forced a laugh. “You’re a really good actor, you know that?”
He ignored the compliment and grabbed two more beers. “You’re going to have to open these. I can barely do it with an opener.”
“I’ll teach you. Real Vermonters don’t need openers.”
After I taught him how to open a beer like a pro, we finished the scene.
“This Jimmy character is a real asshole,” Will said. “How much do you want to bet his idea of social justice is bottoming for fascists?”
I’d spent the last ten minutes trying not to cry, and now I was laughing. It wasn’t true, of course. Well, the asshole part was. But not the bottoming part. I’d only bottomed for one guy before, and that was a long-ass time ago.
“Want to try again?” Will asked, and for a moment I thought he meant bottoming, which made my ass clench like a fist.
I swallowed thickly. “Sure.”
By the time we finished another read-through, the sun had set, and the sky was a dark amethyst. In the yard below, little blips of fluorescent light flickered over the grass, and I remembered how Travis and I used to smear firefly guts across our faces and pretend we were ninjas.
Someone hiccupped behind me, and I turned to find Theo in the doorway, tears in his eyes.
“Hey, bud,” I said.
He ran into the house without a word.
“Jesus, Miles made him cry, didn’t he?” Will said. “I’m going to kick his ass.”
“He’s fine. But I’d better go check on him.”
I found Theo in his room a few minutes later, holding Atticus like a stuffed animal.
“He sounds just like Dad.” Theo wasn’t crying anymore, but his face was drained of all expression.
“I know.” I walked over and picked up the picture on the nightstand, the one of the three of us at Disney World.
“I didn’t know who you were talking to, and—”
“I know.” I set the picture back down and turned it to face Theo.
“He should be playing Dad, not Derek Hall. It should be Will.” Theo sounded like he was going to cry again.
“I know.” I felt like a broken record. But what else could I say? “Can I get you anything? Ice cream, perhaps?” Theo wasn’t five anymore, but it was worth a try.
He shook his head. “No. Ice cream isn’t allowed this close to bedtime.”
“Good lord, not you, too?”