53. Will #2
“Seriously, papi, it’s not polite to interrupt.
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, right.
She wouldn’t give me the time of day, but then I performed an emergency tracheotomy on her cat and saved its life, and she fell madly in love with me, stutter and all.
But here’s the kicker. The confidence I got from having a gorgeous doctor wife and being a doctor myself cured my stutter. ”
Oh, thank god! “That sounds awesome, Enrique. I can’t believe you and Andy drove all the way up here for this.”
“Well, technically, Nandi did most of the driving. Andy did the first leg, but then I found a bottle of Macallan in my bag and—”
“Are you drunk right now?” I swung my legs off the bed and stood, heading for the bathroom.
“Fuck, papi, you’re like super fit now. In The Beautiful, you’re all skinny and boyish. But now you’re a real man. Did you know that?”
I stepped into the bathroom but couldn’t close the door because my pull-up bar was in the way. “I should probably go shower.”
Enrique turned his head, sniffed his pits, then took off his shirt. “Yeah, me too.”
“Alone.”
He nodded several times, as if considering my words, then lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head. “Take it you’re still hung up on James, then? That’s cool. My offer still stands if you want me to rough him up a bit.”
Michelle and Annabeth were skeptical of using Theo’s song in the movie until they heard it. Then they decided it needed its own scene.
“What if we have him sing it as Bruce dies?” Annabeth suggested. “We could have Owen there, too, for even more emotional punch. You know, show the multi-generational tragedy of it all.”
The only problem with that plan was our lack of a child actor. But Theo had that covered, too. His brother, Wyatt, was the perfect age and could be here this afternoon. Mom wasn’t keen on involving Emily, but even she could admit the idea had legs.
First, though, we needed to shoot the original death scene, which was now the pre-death scene.
After the first couple of takes, I went over to check on Theo. It felt cruel to have him there, but he refused to leave, even just to walk around the grounds.
“I’m fine,” he lied, tears pooling in his eyes. “I know I’m crying, but it’s not because I’m sad about the scene or all stressed out about dying. You’re just so much like my dad. It’s just, like, really weird.”
We kept at it for the next several hours, take after take, and though Michelle gave us very little direction, I could tell by the set of her jaw that she was far from satisfied.
“What are we missing?” I eventually asked, peering over her shoulder as she watched playback on the monitor. “It’s my ‘I’m not putting Owen through this shit’ line, right? Do you want me to try it smaller, more restrained, like a silent thought accidentally voiced aloud?”
“No,” Michelle said, shaking her head. “We got that on the third take. It’s these new pages. They’re too perfect, too clean. It feels like a script.”
That made sense. But in Annabeth’s defense, she’d only been given one night to revise the most crucial scene in the movie, and it was a beast of a scene, too. It featured simultaneous dialogue and the ramblings of a demented redneck.
“Maybe we should try having your father improvise,” Michelle said, glancing over at Dad’s hospital bed. The makeup team had really outdone themselves: he looked terrible.
I bit my lip. Dad thrived on preparation and control. He didn’t improvise. “Really? I don’t know if—”
“I know,” Michelle said, taking her hair down. “But let’s try anyway.”
I almost had to laugh when she broke the news to Dad. He looked like he was living out one of those nightmares where it’s opening night and he’s the lead in a play he’s never heard of.
“Come on, Dad,” I said. “It might be fun. And that was the plan, right?”
“Right.”
An hour later, sweat dripped down his forehead, and his voice was hoarse from yelling, but he was doing it, and in a thick Vermont accent no less.
“Remember,” Michelle told Ryan and me before the next take, “you’ve been listening to your father rant like this for years. You don’t hear him anymore. He’s just the wet-dog smell in your car. You’re nose-blind to him. I don’t care if you talk over his funniest lines. Just keep the intensity.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was after, but she claimed she’d know it when she saw it.
So we went again and again. Take after take, Travis toyed with the idea of ending his own life while Jimmy tried to be the supportive brother.
Well, until Travis’s martyrdom pushed him over the edge, that is.
Just before lunch, Andy pulled me aside. “I don’t think Dad can keep doing this. He’s in a lot of pain, and he’s refusing to take any of his painkillers.”
Andy had taken the news of Dad’s illness better than I’d expected. Instead of yelling at me for keeping it secret, he’d apologized, saying it wasn’t fair that I’d been dealing with this alone. Now he was behaving like one of Dad’s nurses, constantly checking in on him.
“I know,” I said, glancing at Dad’s pallid face, wishing it was just the makeup making him look like he was on death’s door. “I’ll talk to him.”