Actor: A Novel in Three Acts

I left for Chicago the following week.

The plan—more of a spontaneous urge to flee—was immediately sidelined by the one person I was trying to distance myself from. Edie, as she often did, proved my point without even knowing it, demanding I explain not only what was going on, but why. And she wasn't going to do it from the "concrete varicose veins" of Los Angeles—her words. She would only listen to my reasons for "doing away with everything I'd been given" in San Francisco.

She made a very distinct point of that.

"I can't hear the truth, or whatever you're going to tell me, over the traffic," she said. "Beep, beep! Toot, toot! Madness. And if I'm going to die from whatever you tell me—whatever you're "doing now"—I want to be in the city where I was born."

So, of course I went, and yes, there was a big blowup cast with tears, screaming, and long, drawn-out explanations. Drama was what we knew, but ironically, most of it came from not being able to properly communicate. Our back and forth then was doomed from the start as she didn't want to understand, and to make sure she didn't, she—going against her training—didn't listen. At one point she even boxed her own ears like a child.

Dean had understood, but from a place of indifference. That's not fair—he cared, but more so because it gave him one less thing to think about...me. His affection came from a place of self-serving, which is who he was as a person, a husband, and a father. I have accepted that the way I accept things in nature: that I will never be the tall leading man (I'm 5'9"), or be remembered as someone who "changed everything" in the world of acting, but merely as someone who added to it as the craft moved forward.

"Not everyone can be a revolutionary, Ave," Edie so often told me. "But you can add strokes of new color to the easel, strengthening and maybe even redirecting some paint to a new place to honor the old while looking ahead."

I still don't know if Dean has realized his narcissism serves himself rather than the ones he claims to love. But when he said—very simply—good luck with a wink and told me to check my bank account when I landed, I took the money. Of course I did.

What could I do? I was broke.

So, bout after bout through the week, my final day and night with Edie finally arrived. "Our curtains," she called it, but we decided on a truce and sat face to face, tucked into the breakfast nook of our kitchen. I could sense she wanted a drink by the way she gripped the edge of the table, both eyes downcast, every so often glancing toward the laundry room where another door hid the wine and liquor. That wouldn't have done anybody any good. It would make everything and everyone louder, especially in of matters of the heart. No, not a good idea at all.

"Tell me one more time," Edie said. "I need to hear it plainly, like a child's poem, for me to understand—even though I don't think I ever will."

"To see if I can actually do this on my own," I told her.

"Why?"

It hurt me in a very specific way I was too young to articulate. Even now, I don't know if she was playing dumb—or worse, lying—to get me to stay. My desire for independence could have been something we connected over. It could have been something new, something other than acting we could have shared. But she kept this to herself, for herself, like so many other things.

"You've always been there. I'm thankful for that, but now I need to prove to myself that when I'm out in the world without you and Dean's help, I even want to do this without you."

"You want to quit acting?"

"Is that what I said?"

"No," she shrugged. "but that's what you implied. There's a tone."

"I didn't."

"To be honest..." she said, leaning back against the wall and folding her arms. "This is worst than I thought."

"I've only had a very small, very protected relationship with acting, with theatre—with art," I tried to explain. "I want to deepen it. Explore it. And doing that myself, without any help—free fall, I guess—means I'm the only one who can catch me when I inevitably fall." I paused. "If I even want to catch myself at all."

"But Dean's paying your rent," Edie said. "So how does that make any sense?"

"Jesus, I need some help or I'm going to die over there."

"Fair," she said. "That's fair."

"You're one to talk. He's been paying both of our rent for as long as I've been alive."

"I just said it's fair you're taking the money."

"There was a tone."

"You're right, you know." She said this solemnly, as if something painfully veracious had just dawned on her. "To take it. You learned it from me I guess. Every artist needs their benefactor." She looked from her lap up at me. "Smart boy."

On the table was a pad of post-it notes. Beside it, a pen. She took it and drew a childish drawing of an Elizabethan shoe.