I found Tommy, and I don’t remember what I said, but I found myself crying hard almost immediately. I was caught off guard; I really thought I’d be able to tell him without breaking. I was choking through “Sorry, shit, I’m sorry, Jesus, I thought I could stay professional and just tell you and I’m really sorry.”
I felt like I was letting my mom down. I’d made it through that conversation with some dignity, and here I was crying in front of Tommy, making him embarrassed and uncomfortable. He was very kind of course, and he didn’t offer me water, which I respected. He told me he’d let “them” know and went off to speak to whoever “they” are.
The truth is, I didn’t know what happened in these situations. I’d never wanted to ask, because asking would acknowledge that something bad might happen during a shoot.
Luckily, later that day my mom told me the family could have the service on Saturday. When I updated Tommy he looked relieved. So I still don’t know what happens if your family can’t have a funeral on your day off, and I’ve still never asked.
When I walked away from Tommy after that first conversation, Jinhee Joung, the actress who played Kimmy Jin, my character’s apathetic roommate, introduced herself. It was her first day and she wanted to say hi. I still had my sunglasses on and I was acting incredibly distant. I’ve always wondered if she thought I was a bitch or if she could tell I’d been crying, but I never explained myself. Maybe she just thought I was tired. Either way, her dry humor made me think that perhaps, like me, she didn’t put a lot of stock in “nice” anyway.
We were getting ready to shoot the activities fair scene, and once the sun came up, I was happy to be spending the day outside. One by one, all the producers came up and said something awkward to me. Obviously, they had the best intentions and it’s the Emily Post thing to do, and I’m the weird one for hating it so much, but I wished more people could tell the difference between the “leave me alone” vibe I give off all the time by accident and my actual “leave me alone” vibe.
I wasn’t sure if people in the cast would find out, and I wasn’t sure I wanted them to. I didn’t want anyone to think I was irritated with them, but at the same time I didn’t want to field more perfunctory condolences. But perhaps because death isn’t juicy gossip, or because everyone was used to me being a misanthrope, or because by noon that day Kim Kardashian had announced she was divorcing Kris Humphries after just seventy-two days of marriage, my news had not spread.
After lunch our director, Jason Moore, was going over an upcoming shot with me. Because it was a Steadicam shot, for a moment we found ourselves alone in a crowd. We were both idly studying the prop flyers on the “activity booth” in front of us, and he took a breath. “Hey, I didn’t say anything before—”
“Huh-uh.”
By the time I hit the second syllable he was walking away. He really sees me. About a month later he brought it up again and we said a few sentences about it. That was it.
We shot more of the activities fair the next day, and on Wednesday we switched to nights to shoot the “riff-off.” Thursday was more of the riff-off and Friday we shot the initiation party scene where Jesse tells Beca they are going to have aca-children and Chloe gives her some bi-curious vibes. Not a bad night for Beca, actually. It was a little trickier for me. Night shoots start at sundown and go until sunrise, so we were scheduled to finish that scene around seven a.m. Saturday morning, the morning of the funeral. My flight was at seven a.m., so I packed my suitcase and brought it to set with me and got in a van to the airport at five a.m. That wide shot of us all dancing at the end of that scene? I’m not in it.
I got through airport security and took off my makeup with a wet wipe in the bathroom. The sun started to rise. Since there are no direct flights from Baton Rouge to Bradenton, Florida, where my family was, my first leg took me somewhere in Texas. I understood that this was my fastest option, but as the fatigue started to set in, it was maddening to know that I was heading farther from my destination. The ability to sleep on planes would have been helpful. The next leg took me to Florida and I landed midday.
My mom picked me up at the airport and we headed straight to the funeral home. I changed in the car so we wouldn’t be late. I had borrowed a simple dress from the Pitch Perfect wardrobe department since I didn’t have anything in Baton Rouge that was appropriate for a funeral.
The service was lovely. Either the elderly are practiced at giving compliments or people really loved my grandmother. She may have been insensitive about weight gain and curt about proper piecrust technique and used terms like “lifestyle choice,” but she was generous to a fault and put others before herself. You could feel the love in the room. My mom started to lose it and so did I. Five years earlier, I’d refused to cry at my grandfather’s funeral as part of some misguided point of pride. My brother had done a reading and after every line, I distracted myself by making up a Dr. Seuss–like rhyme in my head.
“He will not be burned though through the fire he walks.”