Friends: A Love Story (18 page)

Thirty days? And then a week to prepare to play this lead role?
That was outrageous. Fortunately, it didn't happen. Later that weekend I learned I had gotten the part. I would have thirty days to prepare. A month was a lot better than a week, but still just
awful!
It wasn't enough time. But you know what? Black folks have been asked to do so much with so little for so long. And here's the grandness and the shame of it: We do it—it gets done! So what does that perpetuate? More of the same; more doing much with little in a very little amount of time.

At this point, I had been cast as the female lead but there was still no word about the male. Around that time, I traveled to New York to attend the movie premiere of
Malcom X
and saw Laurence while I was on an escalator. I knew they wanted him to play Ike. The director had told me, “I had this dream and I saw the marquis. Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett were starring in this movie.” Even though Laurence had already said no, they kept asking him anyway. So when he saw me, he had a look on his face like he expected me to bug him about something his mind was already made up about—like he expected me to say, “Man, why don't you want to come do this with me? It's going to be fabulous. Come on!” But I figured everybody's got a dream, something they want to do, and some people are really good at getting everyone to help them make their dreams come true. But what about
their
desires,
their
aspirations? Don't pressure folk and don't get your feelings hurt if other people don't catch your fever, too. You've got to consider, What do they want to do?

So I shouted from the escalator, “Hey! They keep talking about you, but I told them to leave you alone. You're grown. You know what you want and don't want to do. They should just leave you alone about it!”

It wasn't like I had some reverse-psychology ulterior motive. I'm not that smart. I just didn't want to pressure him. I figure if folks don't want to do something, move on; you've gotta give them an easy way out.

But a couple of days later the telephone rang, and a deep resonant voice asked, “So you want to get married?”

“Whaat?
Yeah!
” I shouted. “This is gonna be fun! I'm gonna get a chance to work with you again. We're really going to work together on this one!”

Who knows what convinced Laurence to take the role. Maybe he had seen a more recent revision of the script, so he knew it was gonna be all right. Maybe he thought, Angela's doing it. She's good. She's cool. Let me come support her. He had been acting since he was ten or so and had been in a number of different movies—
Cornbread, Earl and Me, Apocalypse Now, School Daze, Cadence.
But he was still looking for a starring role. As he said, back then people couldn't put his face and his name together, which is what, as an actor, you want them to be able to do. This movie wasn't starring the man—and people were going to be talking bad about Ike. But the script was really a two-hander. It needed someone who could do it all in the span of a two-hour movie. You had to be attracted to him—his charisma—yet he had to inspire fear. You had to be drawn in and repelled by him. Laurence just embodied that. He had it all.

Once Laurence accepted, I'm sure they paid him
waay
more than I got, though that's neither here nor there. Their first offer to me was fifty thousand dollars. I knew that wasn't fair. I had gotten that playing in
Dessa Rose.
My righteous indignation sprang up. We settled on two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was pretty standard for a newer, up-and-coming actor asked to carry the load.

“This is going to be a breakout role for her,” the movie executives said.

I was happy. I had a lead in an important movie and I had never made that kind of money before. I thought, “Let's do this thing, let's make it happen.”

I
continued auditioning for other roles, and
Six Degrees
opened to rave reviews. Before long, I got a phone call. James had decided to leave the play to do a television series. I was in shock! Could it be possible?

“They're offering it to me?” I asked my agent.

“No, it's between you and Andre Braugher.”

“Oh, not again!”

“Yeah, you guys have to audition again. The director, Jerry Zaks, was feeling nervous because he and James had not gotten along well during the rehearsal. Their personalities didn't mix.” Since I knew Andre would be fierce competition, my agent thought it would be a good idea to leverage a film I was up for to help me get the role.

“Don't you dare!” I told her. “Jerry's already skittish—he's already had one bad experience. Don't make him think that I'd try to force him to do something.”

“Courtney, I think—”

“Take me out of the film! I want to do the play.” I knew
Six Degrees
was a masterwork. I knew if I got seen in it, my performance would bring me movies.

“But, Courtney…”

“Take me out and tell Jerry I'd like to sit down and talk.” I felt that if I could talk to him, he'd like me and see that I'm very easy to get along with.

“Okaay…”

So she set up the meeting and as I expected, we loved each other. He said, “Okay, Courtney, go see the play and if you like it, then let's do this thing.”

A few nights later I sat backstage in the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, watching the play with the stage manager from his perch near the lights directly above the stage.

This is amazing! I thought. I wondered what exactly I was seeing that made it so superb: Was it the acting? The directing? I asked Jerry soon thereafter and he let me know that it was a very tightly directed play. I was hooked!

But there seemed to be something missing in how James approached the way the character Paul drew in the family into his web of lies. I thought Paul was completely improvising, as he was living life on the edge, and this should have manifested itself in a slightly higher energy level than James exhibited as he played him. I thought his performance left unanswered the question “Why didn't the family kick him out?” So for five weeks beginning sometime in July 1990, Jerry and I began to explore that fine line of possibility. The role was very slippery to me. Sometimes I'd have my arms around it then it would slide right out of my grasp. But that slipperiness fit the character. He was on edge. He was lost and unmoored and making things up as he went along. “Will you be my family? Will you be my mom and dad?”

John Guare plays are very difficult to do. They have a very specific rhythm and he does not allow you to improvise. During rehearsals, sometimes I'd be saying my lines and lose my place. Sometimes the words would slip my mind. And in performance I'd remember the rhythm but not the lines, so I'd say gibberish until the words came back to me. My cast members, who
during the performance would sit in the first row, would laugh and howl. “Oh, Courtney, you're so funny!” They didn't understand how shy I was, that I was completely frightened, how much work it takes me to stand onstage in front of over 1,400 people—or how close I was to walking off the stage. For I, too, was on edge. I was playing the role of a man on a tightrope, and I felt I was walking a tightrope, as well. The entire play hinged on my performance, but the role was so complex it hadn't yet taken up residence in my body and spirit. An acting role will eventually settle into my body's muscle memory so I no longer have to think my way through it. When that happens nothing can throw me. But I wasn't there, and wouldn't be for seven or eight months. The smallest thing—my costar missing a line, someone's cough, an audience member arriving late—could cause me to lose my rhythm. The play was being moved to a larger theater—the Vivian Beaumont—also in the Lincoln Center, and also on Broadway.

The night the play reopened with me in it, it was rereviewed. We got a good review, which basically focused on me since I was the element that had changed. In the meantime, the young man that the story was based on was walking around town telling people that
Six Degrees
was his play—that he had written it. So when I'd come onstage the audience members would be asking each other if this wasn't a masterwork but a rip-off. From the first time I came in, my focus had to be strong enough not to be defeated by what people were thinking—not to mention, my own fear.

Six Degrees
became a tremendous success, but for a long time playing Paul took everything I had. Even though the show didn't start until about eight o'clock at night, I'd start getting anxious about it at about one in the afternoon. At about four I'd leave home to catch the subway so I could get there by five. For the next three hours I would read my notes—things I needed to tweak, change or improve—then I'd walk through
every moment, every word, every beat of the show in my dressing room, by myself. I had to do that to integrate the changes and build up my self-confidence each night. If I didn't do that, I was so shy and insecure, I'd never have been able to go onstage. After the show, I'd either leave the theater at about ten and go straight home, or call Ahren and invite her to join me for dinner or drinks with friends who had come to the show. The next day I'd be up at six-thirty to walk Bottom. Physically and emotionally, my life was totally exhausting.

 

Around Thanksgiving of 1990 I learned that something was seriously wrong with my parents' relationship. I knew Dad had been stressed out. He had worked his way up through the ranks at Chrysler, and when the company had financial problems during the late 1970s, he thought he saw a way out. He hoped that Chrysler would go under so he could leave with his benefits and start all over. I don't know what he had in mind, but knowing my dad I'm sure he had a plan. But when Lee Iacocca was brought in and saved the company, my father was crushed. He felt trapped—like he couldn't move on. He had bills to pay, and I was at Harvard. Of course, neither he nor my mother told me this at the time. Back then, Dad worked in the benefits department. The plant he worked at was retooling, so he was responsible for firing and rehiring three thousand employees. Later I'd learn that my mother's sister Lois Ann had been talking to him and had encouraged him to leave for years.

“The kids will understand, Conroy. Everything will be fine.”

“No, I can't do that to them,” my dad would tell her.

“They'll roll with it, Conroy. If they have to come out of those schools, they'll get over it and be fine. You've gotta do what you've gotta do.”

“No, I can't do that to them.”

I don't know how my dad's troubles affected my parents' marriage. Dad and I didn't talk like that, and Mom confided
to Cec about that kind of stuff. She and I didn't have that kind of relationship. As much as we loved each other, in our family everyone was an island. But it was obvious to me that “all was not well in Denmark.” In a marriage it takes two to tango, and it was clear that after thirty-five years, there had been a lot of pain, disappointment and “dreams deferred.” My father and mother had been quietly struggling for a number of years.

Ahren and I were struggling, too. I'd started calling 1-900 numbers again. These days things have progressed to Internet porn, but back then a lot of men were into these porn “talk lines.” Whenever I felt lonely, I'd pick up the phone. Between the images I'd seen in my father's magazines and what the women on the other end of the phone would say, it created a gulf in our relationship. She had started to go to therapy and wanted me to go, too.

“I don't need to see nobody. I'm fine,” I'd say. “What do
you
need a therapist for?”

And she kept wanting us to talk about our relationship and my problem with pornography.

“What do you mean?” I'd ask her. “Things are fine.”

“But, Courtney, what are we doing? Where are we going?”

“What are you talking about? We're good. Let's keep going like we are.”

“There are a lot of things we need to discuss and figure out.”

“Ahren, I'm tired,” I'd tell her. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to connect with her. I didn't know what it was that she wanted. We were thirty now—we weren't kids anymore—but how we dealt with each other hadn't changed. I didn't have the tools to talk about stuff that mattered or deal with difficult conversations, like “When are we getting married?” which everyone seemed to ask us. We never, ever discussed the subject. I wouldn't allow it. I didn't have the tools to deal with either Ahren's or my parents' emotions. What I did have the tools to deal with was work. There was safety in work.
So I focused on it. I needed to; I hadn't mastered my role yet and being onstage was very stressful for me. I had lost my usual ten to fifteen pounds, I was always tired, constantly tired.

One day in December 1990, I was still in bed trying to get as much sleep as possible in order to deal with my two-show Wednesday, when my mom called.

“Your dad—he's not waking up!”

“Ma, what's wrong?”

“Your dad—he just…”

She was hysterical. Absolutely hysterical!

“He's dead, Courtney. He's dead. He shot himself!”

“WHAT?”

I didn't know what to do or say. There are five stages of grieving. I was in the “shock” stage. Everything became a blur. I remember telling Ahren. She was a mess. We had been together for a long time and it was like she was part of my family—my parents were like her parents.

“Go home, Courtney,” she told me.

I also remember thinking, “I gotta call Stockard and tell her.” Until that point I had taken no days off. A part of me was afraid to leave the show. It had been hard to get the role in the first place, and it had been such a difficult part for me to learn. Stockard, John and I had this rhythm together. Any one of us stepping out would throw all the others off. But I knew I had to go home. Stockard was very supportive. “Go home. We're gonna be fine. You take care of yourself.”

Now, after thirty years of successfully avoiding emotional issues in my personal life, I had to deal with the most intense emotions a person can have—and all at once. Throughout my whole life there was a door my father wouldn't open; consequently, we didn't try to go in there. But now the issues were front and center. There was no way to avoid it. There was no escaping.

I flew home to Detroit. When I arrived, Mom told me that Dad had been violently depressed. His mood swings, she said,
had been incredible—a lot of highs and a lot of lows. I believe she knew he was on Prozac. I'm not sure how much else she knew. Later, we would discover he had been working with five or six different therapists, leaving one to go to another. Not going when he was supposed to. Maybe trying to find the right one. Maybe feeling that none of them were right for him. To get coverage he had to stay in his HMO. He was so secretive he probably resisted the emotional sharing that counseling involves. Being a black man in the 1980s. And proud. And ashamed of the stigma. And depressed.

According to my Mom, Dad's foster father had kept guns in his home. My father had inherited them back in 1984 when he had settled his father's estate. Mom had told my father, “Get those guns out of here. Get those guns out of my house!” But later she discovered one or two still lying around. It was like he had been gathering up the courage for a long time—he'd been gearing up.

 

The funeral. It was held at a funeral home. I was kind of out of my body. Our folks came in from all over. My family is full of really intelligent people—Harvard, Brandeis Yale—very educated, and at the same time silly, funny and goofy. They played the “dirty dozens,” cracking on each other all the time. They'd tell jokes close to the bone, up on each other, but with love behind it. My dad had been the life of the party. The center of it all. Everybody was ripped. This was the last thing folks would have expected. Nobody knew what to do or say.

My grandfather pulled me aside. “People gonna try to tell you that what he did was a terrible thing. That he's a coward. Don't you believe none of that. Your daddy was very unhappy and it's a blessing you had him as long as you did. Your daddy was a great man.”

“Thank you, Granddad.” I appreciated what he said. But I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about. I wasn't churched.
I didn't realize there is a biblical prohibition against killing oneself. It didn't occur to me to be embarrassed.

Everybody spoke. Emotionally, my sister was just gone. Everybody waited for me—“Baby Boy.”

“You gotta say something, Court.”

When I got up to speak, I said, “I don't care. I don't know what people will say about him. I don't know what they'll think about him. All I know is, that man was my father!” Then I broke. It was all I had to say. Later I would hear the same line—“All I know is that man was my father”—recited in the movie
The Road to Perdition.
My father was the greatest man I'll ever know. A mixture of all the things I want to be. During this time I would remember the advice Rose gave to Cory in
Fences.
“You have to take the best of what was in your father and move on. That's all you have to make a life with.” While he was here, my father was the best father any son could ever have. He was always there, always teaching, always there to support me. Although he wrestled and eventually succumbed to his demons, through the way I walk this earth, I'm attempting to “take the best he was able to give me and go on and make a life.” If I could do that, I would honor him and the vision he had for me, Cecilie and our mother.