53. Will
WILL
Isat on my balcony that evening with my guitar and a Manhattan. My fingers were bruised and sore from mindlessly strumming the same chord progression over and over again.
“What song is that?” Theo asked as he sank into the other chair.
“What are you doing here?” I thought Theo and James were staying at a hotel.
“Your mom said I could crash here tonight. Uncle James and I sorta got in a fight.”
I leaned my guitar against the balcony railing. James must’ve told him the truth about changing the book’s ending.
Theo picked up my guitar and perfectly mimicked the chord progression I’d been stuck on like a groove in a broken record, his fingers moving over the strings with the grace and strength of a dressage horse as he added flourishes and embellishments.
When he stopped, he said, “I’m glad you’re gonna put the old ending back, and I wanna be there tomorrow when you film it. ”
“I don’t think that’s a—”
“The plan was always for him to go into a nursing home when things got bad. I was gonna visit him on his good days, because they said there would be good days. There were gonna be so many good days, especially at first. Then, when there weren’t any more good days, when he no longer remembered me, only Uncle James was gonna visit him.
Then he’d die there, behind closed doors.
That was the plan. That was what the song was supposed to be about.
‘I’ll take my life behind closed doors and give you an end that’s only yours.
’” Theo plucked the low E-string, and it droned into the late summer evening.
“But it was a lie. There were no doors.”
My stomach felt like an elevator in free fall. James was right. I didn’t know shit about Travis.
“I wasn’t supposed to know about the gene, but I overheard them talking about it one night when we were camping, and .
. . it doesn’t matter. The point is, even though there’s a fifty percent chance I don’t have it, in my dad’s eyes, there was never any doubt.
That’s what pisses me off the most. He blamed himself for something that might not even be a big deal.
I could be fine. I could live to be a hundred.
In fact, I went to this fortune teller once, and she straight-out told me I was gonna be fine.
Dad didn’t believe in that kind of thing, though. ”
I could tell Theo had more to say, so I sat quietly and waited.
“Uncle James brought me with him to the hospital when Grandpa died. I was three at the time. I remember seeing Dad crying and thinking how weird it was because I didn’t know grownups could cry, especially not my dad.”
Jesus, my dad cried all the time.
“Then he saw me, and he stopped crying. Just like that. He even smiled. Sometimes, I wish they would’ve let me get the test early, so that Dad wouldn’t have felt so guilty. Don’t tell Uncle James, but I almost got the test on my birthday. I had the appointment scheduled and everything.”
I set my drink down, afraid I might spill it.
“Brice talked me out of it, though. But I figure, even if I do have it, at least I’ll know my father didn’t kill himself for no reason.”
I took a deep breath, trying to organize my thoughts. I didn’t want to overstep, but I hated seeing Theo in so much pain.
“I can’t speak for your father because I’m not him,” I said.
“I’m just the actor playing him in the movie.
But if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t want my kid watching me suffer.
I wouldn’t want him to remember me like that.
I know you think he did it for you, and maybe that was part of it.
But is it possible he did it for himself, too? ”
His glasses magnified the tears in his blue eyes. “I guess, maybe.”
“Can I ask you something?” I picked up my drink, then set it right back down.
“Sure.”
“Would it be all right if I sang your song in the movie, the one you wrote with your dad?”
“You wanna sing my song?”
I nodded. “If you don’t mind.”
The smile that lit up his face nearly broke my heart in two. “I don’t mind. I can teach you the guitar part right now if you want.”
My fingers ached from playing all evening, but I grinned. “Really? That would be awesome.”
I couldn’t sleep that night, and apparently I wasn’t the only one.
The TV in Dad’s room, James’s old room, was on.
I couldn’t make out what he was watching, but I suspected it was that Desperate Housewives episode again.
I considered downloading a white noise app, but an image of Dad silently choking to death on his bed had me knocking on his door a moment later.
“Come in,” he said, clearly not choking.
It wasn’t Desperate Housewives he was watching, though. It was The Beautiful—my movie—and he was bawling.
“Jesus, Dad, knock it off.” I couldn’t find the remote fast enough, so I stalked over and shut the TV off the old-fashioned way.
He sniffled. “I’m so sorry I never told you how good you are in this. Your work here is nothing short of astounding.”
I sighed and sat on the edge of his bed. “Dad, please.”
“No, it’s the truth. You’re so natural. I don’t know how you do it. Maybe I’m biased because I’m your dad, but you’re the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing I’ve ever seen on screen. I mean that. I don’t know why it took me so long to see what was so plainly obvious. Everyone else saw it.”
I reached for the bottle of pills on the nightstand. “What’s in these?”
“I wish I’d been more like you as an actor. You’re so free. You never overthink things.”
I laid my hand on his leg. “Are you kidding me? I overthink everything.”
“Not when you’re acting. I’ve been studying you, and it’s like .
. .” He trailed off, staring into space, and for a desperate second, I thought he was having another stroke.
Then he said, “It’s like all the puppet strings vanish.
The makeup. The costumes. None of that matters when you’re acting because it’s not even really acting, is it? How do you do it?”
“Jesus, Dad, maybe space your painkillers out more.”
He adjusted the pillow behind his back. “There’s a manila envelope on the desk. I want you to have it.”
I followed the path of his outstretched finger, but made no move to retrieve the envelope.
“It’s all my old acceptance speeches,” he went on, “the ones I never got a chance to give. I want you to read them.”
“Right now?” I wasn’t in the mood to put on another performance.
“If you don’t mind.”
Holding in a groan, I made my way over to the desk. I paused when I spotted a second envelope, this one addressed to Theo. “Did you make Theo a copy, too?”
“No, of course not. What’s in there is between me and Theo. The other one’s for you.”
I sat at the desk and gingerly opened the envelope meant for me, the brass tabs digging painfully into my tender fingertips. I pulled out a stack of yellowing pages and started reading.
All thoughts of putting on a proud face vanished when I read the most recent speech, the one he’d written right after his first cancer diagnosis.
“William’s the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up,” he’d written, “natural, honest, and unyielding.” In the next, he quipped, “Sorry, Meryl, but you’ll have to settle for second best this time. My son William is the best scene partner I’ve ever had.”
Every one of his speeches, save for the ones he’d written before I was born, gushed about me, and to a lesser extent, Andy, too, and by the time I got to the end, working my way backward in time, my eyes were heavy with unshed tears.
I slid the speeches back into the envelope, wishing I could trade places with him. I’d never achieve my dreams, but he was so close.
“I always planned on being magnanimous,” he said. “I just never got around to it.”
“We could write one more,” I said. “Just in case.”
He shook his head, laughing through bitter tears. “Nah, I’m done with that. It’s not important, and it shouldn’t be to you either.”
I glanced at the clock. “Well, we go again in five hours, so maybe don’t be done just yet. Theo’s counting on us to get his song in the movie.”
Dad managed a smile. “Okay, well, in that case, let’s have fun with it. Let’s forget about the cameras and all the people counting on us and just pretend we’re running lines in the library, like old times. Fuck the Academy.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to reinforce Dad’s weak smile with my own. “Fuck the Academy.”
“Oh, and while we’re on the topic of fun,” he added, “I pulled some strings and got some top-notch talent to play the medical team.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, Jesus. Do I even want to know?”
He gave me a wry smile. “Probably not.”
Ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off, all the covers were yanked from my bed.
“Damn, papi. You never said you were packing.” Enrique flopped down next to me, eyes glued to the bulge in my briefs.
I crossed my arms over my morning wood. “What the fuck, Enrique? What are you doing here?”
“It’s Dr. Drake Ramoray to you.” Enrique laughed, rolling onto his side so his face was only inches from mine. “Your dad said I could name my own character.”
I sat up and yanked a pillow over my lap. “You’re playing one of the doctors?”
“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to play a doctor. I only have three lines, but your dad said it’s still important to create a fully realized character. So, get this, while Andy was driving, I came up with a killer backstory.”
“Andy’s here, too?”
“I’m talking, Will. Get this, in college, I was a major stoner and thought I was applying to nursing school, but I accidentally applied to medical school instead.
I got in, too, because I’m secretly very smart.
I would’ve dropped out, but there was this girl I really liked, so I stuck it out just to impress her.
Of course, she wouldn’t give me the time of day because of my stutter, you know, like Colin Firth in The King’s Speech, but—”
“You’re going to deliver your three lines with a stutter?” This had to be a dream.