32. James
JAMES
Ipulled Ryan into a corner of the banquet room. “All right, what do you know?”
I felt bad leaving Will’s side, even though he kept insisting he was fine. How could he be fine, though? Someone had just slandered the shit out of him.
It was calculated, too, timed perfectly to coincide with Will’s first public appearance in ten years. And it was cruel, painting him as a child abuser. Accusations like that don’t just go away. They leave a permanent stain, even after they’re proven false.
Before pulling Ryan aside, I’d typed Will’s name into Google.
There were dozens of hits, but the two that were most concerning were the Entertainment Weekly article, which reported Will was set to co-star alongside his father and Derek, until his father, convinced Will wasn’t up to the task, talked the director into casting Ryan Ashbury instead, and the TMZ article, which cited someone “close to William” who wondered if his erratic temper and use of physical intimidation had forced him to leave his teaching position early.
“Nothing for certain,” Ryan said. “But the other day, when you guys were filming in the woods, Tony came back to the farm, and I overheard him talking on the phone. I don’t think he knew I was there. I didn’t hear much, just Will’s name and something about ‘excessive force.’”
Shit! Is this my fault, too? Anyone with half a brain could see through Robert’s plan. He didn’t just want Will to show off in front of an influential director. He wanted him to take over Derek’s part. There was almost no chance of that happening, but the karaoke video must’ve made Tony nervous.
Maybe Tony wasn’t totally off base, either. The video was divisive, certainly, but those who liked it really liked it. For the first few nights after it was posted, I sat on the corner of Will’s bed and read him every positive comment.
“@ForeverTwentyNine says you’re hot AF when you sing, and @BroadwayBitch69 says you should play the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, and that one has over two hundred likes.”
I was about to ask if Ryan thought Derek was in on it, too, when Robert came over, holding the hand of a small child. “Ryan, our esteemed flower girl, here, has a very important question to ask you. Do you have a minute?”
Ryan smiled and waved at the little girl, then turned back to me. “Sorry. I should probably go.”
What if Tony had the pen recorder on him when he leaked those stories? Maybe this was exactly what Robert wanted: proof Tony was sabotaging Will. Maybe Tony had even put Sharron Moore up to the whole wine incident. I needed to get that pen back.
I grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing tray and took in the warmly lit banquet room for the first time.
Crystal chandeliers hung over two long tables lined with high-backed upholstered chairs, and swaths of textured brown-and-gold fabric hung from the walls.
In the center of the room, Enrique was taking a butter knife to a life-sized ice sculpture of a swan.
And there was Will, sandwiched between Miles and Tiffany, right where I’d left him, only now he had an empty glass dangling from his fingertips.
“King isn’t picking up, but I left a bunch of messages,” Tiffany was saying as I rejoined them. “We’re going to fix this.”
“It’s fine.” Will’s eyes found mine, and he smiled. The color had returned to his cheeks, and he was talking again, even if every other word out of his mouth was “fine.”
“No, dude, it’s not fine,” Miles said. “That was fucked up. They can’t do that. Someone’s going to pay for this.”
I agreed. Someone was going to pay for this. I just had to get my pen recorder back.
Donna broke free from a huddle of Nandi’s relatives and made her way over. Perfect, Barbie-Mom to the rescue.
“Miles, dear”—Donna placed a ring-clad hand on Miles’s thick arm—“your devotion to William is appreciated, but threatening the paps never makes things better. You can’t let them get you riled up like that. William is a big boy. He can handle himself.”
No, he can’t.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” Will said the moment we were alone.
Tiffany had run to the bathroom, and Theo and Miles were in line for Enrique’s ice luge. Somehow, the fucker had managed to carve a groove down the length of the swan’s neck without snapping it off, and now he was pouring shots of Cristal down it.
“Doing what?” I asked. “Rubbing your back?”
He stepped away from my touch. “This isn’t what you signed up for, and you don’t need them—”
“Stop.” I grabbed his arm before he could pull away any farther. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“They won’t stop—ever,” he said, finally letting his anger show. “It’s only a matter of time before they go after you and Theo.”
I placed a finger to his lips, shushing him. “I don’t care. I wanna be here with you. I want everyone to see us together. I don’t care what those fuckers think. I’m proud of you, and I’m proud to be with you.” Before he could say, But you’re not with me, I kissed him.
It wasn’t the desperate kiss from the hotel room, and at first, Will didn’t kiss me back.
He just stood there, like a dummy from a CPR course.
I refused to give up, though, moving my lips against his until they parted and let me in.
I should’ve been familiar with this pattern by now.
It was the same with every new experience he tried: resistance, acceptance, total domination.
Unlike our first kiss, though, he didn’t dominate by taking charge but by surrendering completely, responding to my every touch like a finely tuned instrument.
I grew hard in an instant, way too hard to be standing in the middle of a crowded banquet room, but just when I was about to suggest we go for a walk, a piece of lettuce slapped me in the face.
I turned, blinking, and found Andy smiling back at me.
“Stop making out and come over here. You have to try the ice luge.”
I wiped my cheek and smiled down at Will. “What do you say? In the mood for a little Cristal?”
He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and nodded. “Okay, sure.”
Robert walked to the front of the room, and Donna’s mother, a silver-haired woman in her early eighties, groaned.
“If I die while your father is talking, don’t let him off the hook with any of that ‘It was her time’ nonsense.
Let the bastard know he bored me to death.
Did you know his wedding vows were over twenty minutes long?
I’ve had colonoscopies shorter than that. ”
Robert didn’t tap his glass or clear his throat.
He just stood there until the room fell silent.
“Thank you all for coming. It’s a remarkable thing when two families join as one, especially two families with such complementary bone structures.
” He paused, leaving space for laughter, which a few people supplied out of nervous obligation.
“Nandi, you are a striking woman, both inside and out, and the Chapman family is honored to call you daughter, wife, and sister.” He gave Nandi a warm smile, then looked up into the chandelier, as if searching for the rest of his toast in the crystals.
“I’m currently shooting a movie where I play a man dying of Alzheimer’s, a man whose life is slipping away memory by memory, and it’s forced me to reflect on my own life.
I always assumed my legacy would be my filmography.
I considered myself blessed because, unlike my character, who fades into obscurity with each lost memory, my life is preserved in celluloid and digital for generations to see, for Nandi and Andy to say, should they choose to have children, ‘That’s your grandpa. ’” Robert paused, savoring the image.
“William, I hope you’ll forgive me for addressing the elephant in the room, but it’s important I say this, not only to you but to everyone here.
Ten years ago, our family suffered a publicity nightmare so big it would be pointless to describe it now.
At the time, I remember thinking, ‘Ah, so this is my legacy. I will be remembered as William Chapman’s father.
My decades-long acting career will be relegated to a footnote in the margins of film history. ’”
Every eye turned to Will, who went rigid beside me. I found his clammy hand under the table and squeezed it. He didn’t squeeze back.
“Most parents intuitively know that their legacy lives in their children. They think, ‘I’ll die one day, but my kids will live on, and their kids after them.’ It’s biological. We die, but our genes survive. Yet, for whatever reason, that thought never occurred to me.”
Robert lifted his glass of champagne, as if his rambling toast might end there, but instead of drinking, he swirled the honey-gold liquid, smelled it, and set his glass back down.
“I played a linguist once. This was many years ago, and the details have grown fuzzy, but in my research for the role, I came across a very fascinating scientific paper.
It described a group of missionaries, or maybe they were colonizers, I forget.
But anyway, they found themselves marooned with a group of natives.
In order to communicate and trade, they created a sort of pidgin, a combination of the two languages.
“And here’s where the story gets interesting.
According to linguists, the language they created didn’t actually qualify as a language, even though they meticulously built it from the ground up.
Think Esperanto. It didn’t have proper syntax or grammatical structures, all the stuff that makes a language a language.
But interestingly, their children, the children who grew up speaking the pidgin, miraculously transformed their parents’ best academic efforts into a real language, a natural language.
That’s because a child’s brain is primed for language acquisition.
These children instinctively added all the necessary grammatical structures. ”
Robert stopped and looked down, as if his point had migrated from the crystal chandelier above him into the golden beads in his champagne.
“I’ve spent my entire life learning the craft of acting, finding ways to make Robert Chapman disappear and my characters come to life, but it’s always been work.
It’s always been a product of choice after choice after choice.
Nothing came easily to me.” A tear slid from Robert’s eye.
“But over the past few weeks, I’ve watched my son, William, do something I’ve never seen before, something I’ve only ever dreamed of.
I’ve watched him effortlessly, organically, naturally—call it what you will—become consumed by his character.
And, perhaps more importantly, I’ve watched him drag everyone in the scene with him, myself included.
“My own father never shared his acting process with me, but William has been watching me for years. Donna used to say I did my best work acting opposite William. When he was a baby, I’d carry him around on my chest, skin-to-skin, and we’d run scenes together.
I was playing Macbeth in Central Park at the time, and William used to fall asleep to the cadence of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
And as soon as he could talk, we’d run lines together.
Before Meryl famously played Charlotte Reid, William occupied the role.
Before Julia and Angelina, before Anthony and Diane, before Glenn and Helen, there was William. ”
I felt Will’s hand begin to squeeze back, slowly fighting off its chill.
“Just like those children who fashioned a real language out of their parents’ pidgin, William has turned a lifetime of watching me labor over acting into an instinct, an art form.
And finally, I get it, what every parent seems to figure out naturally.
My legacy isn’t my career. It’s my family.
It’s my son, Andy, with his effortless charm and charisma and his big, generous heart.
It’s William, who is quite possibly the most versatile, naturalistic actor of his generation.
It’s the time we got to spend together and the memories we made along the way. ”
Now Will’s grip threatened to cut off my circulation, but I held on. I wanted him to fight back, even if he was just fighting me.
“We all die,” Robert said, letting the words hang.
“And that’s scary. But we can take comfort in knowing we’re just one link in a long chain that grows stronger with each generation.
We are not our accomplishments. Those are finite, shelved, forgotten.
We are our families. We are the time we get to spend together.
“In two days, Andy and Nandi will start a new act in the same movie we’re filming right now, a movie that started production long before they were born and will continue long after they die.
Their storylines will intertwine, and the chains that bind us will grow stronger and stronger until the last syllable of recorded time. ”
Robert Chapman didn’t drink his champagne. He didn’t say, “Here’s to love,” or “May you have a long and happy marriage,” and no one knew what to do. Was the toast over?
Robert could’ve achieved a similar reaction by performing a tender saxophone solo in the nude.
The awkward silence might have gone on indefinitely had Enrique not lifted his glass and cried, “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but it seemed to do the trick. Glasses were raised, emptied, and promptly refilled.