Chapter Text
(Mid January, Year 1 )
My world ceased to exist when my husband died. I ceased to exist. Or, at least, the version of me that I’d always thought I’d be for the next 50 years or so did. Whatever was left wasn’t anything I had prepared for. We’d met when I was 14 and he was 16, then started dating a little over a year later and dated for the next six years (with a year or so break early in my college years for both of us to do a little growing up independent of one another). I was almost 22 when we got married, and we stayed that way for the next twelve and a half years. That wasn’t just the life I’d lived, it was who I was. I was the high school sweetheart, the partner, the Air Force wife. It was my identity, or at least the biggest part of it.
This is going to make me sound like a walking cliche or self-love meme, but, honestly, that’s probably what I was. I was that girl , the one who put everyone else first, who put on the smile even when everything hurt. Always had been. Anxiety? Always. Depression? In waves. Pouring all of me into taking care of everyone else, from my family, as a child, to my friends, then my husband, and, eventually, to my high-school students, so that I felt I was worthy of something, anything? You bet your ass.
But then my husband died. Fighting a battle that wasn’t his to fight - wasn’t anyone’s really, except the administration that had dragged an entire military into it, over … ego? I still don’t really understand the motivations, but then, I’m not a politician or a foreign policy expert (neither were the people in that administration, but that’s not really important to my story). I didn’t know what to do. Inside, I was nothing anymore. My identity had ceased to exist. Outside, I did the best I could to do what I’d always done, bigger and better, even.
In my eight and a half years of teaching, I’d never simply copied a lesson plan from a previous year, at the very least modifying it for my new crop of kids, but usually doing things completely differently from one year to the next, throwing time and energy into planning new lessons and activities each time around. I’d been told by multiple students that I gave more thorough feedback than any other teacher they’d ever had, and with over 100 English students each year, that was no small task. Each year, I’d had certain kids, outsiders, usually, who I connected with and called “my kids.” I had more Mother’s Day cards and gifts than any other childless woman I knew. I’m not bragging on myself or tooting my own horn here, I never thought I was the best teacher in the world, or even at my school. I just thought that I owed it to my students, and to my co-workers and administrators, to always be doing more, trying to improve. It was the only way I felt I could be good enough. Outside of my identity as “wife and partner,” the way I threw myself into my job, the way I gave so much of myself to everyone else, was all I thought I had.
When my husband died, I threw myself even further into my work. I hired a former student who attended a local college to walk my dog, Millie, in the afternoons then bring her to me once school was over so I could stay there and put in more hours working than I previously had. The only time I allowed for “me” was when I walked Millie before school and the hour every day I spent at the gym. I stepped up my role as “school mom” as much as I possibly could. In the months after his death I even went so far as to bring one former student into my home when her already problematic mother just … disappeared. I had lost a the largest part of my identity, and I threw myself into being everything for everyone else, because I didn’t know how to be anything for myself. By about eight weeks after it happened, I was set into a routine that could be considered “normal,” if exhausting, and, quite frankly, lonely.
Then I got the call from the studio executive. He made it clear that they were going to make the movie no matter what, and they were going to do it soon; what had happened with my husband’s unit was a big deal, bigger than there had been in several years and bigger still because it was a “new war,” Iran being considered separate from the almost 30 years we’d spent fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. They wanted to get the movie out there as quickly as possible. If I agreed to sell the rights to my husband’s story, I could have some say in how the story was told, and they could use his real name. If not, they’d make it one of those fictionalized “inspired by real events” things and use a fake name. Either way, they were moving forward. I had three weeks to make my decision.
I agonized. I talked to my friends, the first real conversation I’d had with most of them in almost two months. I talked to a couple of my adopted kids, ones who had graduated and were no longer my students. I talked to my grandparents, knowing that no other members of my family would provide anything beneficial (not beneficial to me, at least, if they could find a way to benefit from the situation, they certainly would). And, of course, I talked to my in-laws. My mother-in-law and her husband, unsurprisingly, pushed for my involvement. They were taken by the idea of him being seen as a “war hero” on the big screen. (They probably also relished the opportunity to make themselves the center of attention and admiration in their own circles.) My father-in-law was more hesitant, worried about his son’s name and story being used in what he was afraid would amount to a pro-war or pro-government thinkpiece, but he promised to support me no matter what I decided.
Halfway through my “thinking time,” based more on what I thought my husband would have wanted - for me to be taken care of, for there to be at least a measure of accountability in the telling of the story - than anything else, I called the executive back and agreed. He nearly fell over himself thanking me (I knew a game was being played, that I was being glad-handed, but I played along). Apparently he already had a potential director in mind, but the director would only agree to the project if I agreed because he didn’t want any part of the “unofficial” version of the story. That, at least, I could respect. There was also a story outline in the works, based on information they’d been given from other people who’d been on the deployment (people who were getting credits and relatively small paychecks as “consultants” but whose actual identities weren’t necessary for the film), but they wanted to know if I was going to be on board before any actual dialogue was written. They had someone in mind for that too, apparently, an up-and-comer who had written and directed a documentary on mental illness in vets returning from combat and written and produced a short film on the same topic. The executive I spoke to was thrilled to be able to call his writer and director a full week and a half earlier than he’d expected to get the ball rolling.
***
9 weeks later (late May, Year 1)
I had no real sense of the speed at which these sort of things were supposed to move, but nevertheless it felt fast to me. Nine weeks after I agreed to not only let the studio use my husband’s actual identity in the movie but also to serve as a writing consultant myself (which really just meant that they would send me pages of dialogue occasionally and ask me to look them over for anything that seemed glaringly out-of-character for him), I got a call letting me know that the director, locations, much of the cinematography and photography teams, the editing team, and almost all the actors had been secured. The director wanted to call and talk to me himself about his vision for the movie; it wasn’t really a request, just a courtesy heads-up on the part of the studio executive who had seemed to start to see me as a daughter over the past months.
I was sitting at my desk at school over two hours after the school day had ended when I got the first call from Jon Favreau. A year earlier, I would have been shaking too hard to answer the phone. At that point, it was just another transaction. Not because I had become too cool to be starstruck, but because my admiration of him was outweighed by the knowledge that, no matter what, we were talking because he was preparing to direct a movie about the events that led directly to my husband’s death.
The call was pleasant, and he was as warm and gentle as I could possibly hope for him to be. He seemed to have the utmost respect for the story he was telling and for the fact that it involved the lives of real human beings. When he asked me, at the end of the call, if I had any questions for him, I had only one: Why had nearly everything fallen into place except the actor who would play my husband? I couldn’t be sure, of course, but I truly felt that he was being sincere when he told me that it was because my husband, and therefore the casting of that role, was the most important piece of the story. The other men and women who had been on the deployment with my husband, particularly the two others who had died with him, were all incredibly important from a human standpoint, of course. But from a mission standpoint, and therefore from a story standpoint, my husband had been the leader, the decision-maker, and, ultimately, the primary sacrificer. If they didn’t get that one just right, they didn’t get the story right. It was the same reason they hadn’t sought to use the actual identities of so many of the other airmen who had been on the same deployment (though everyone who had been asked had agreed) or employed any other special consultants outside the Air Force itself.
“Don’t worry though,” he’d assured me, “we’re close. I’ve got someone really, really great that I’m working on. He really wants to do it, really wants to be a part of this story, we’re just trying to take care of some legal stuff.”
***
5 ½ weeks later (end of June/beginning of July)
It had been 17 weeks since that first contact with the studio executive who contacted me about legally obtaining the rights to my husband’s story and his identity, but it had all felt so abstract, unreal, until Mr. Favreau, along with a handful of assistants and a few producers, came to Virginia to meet with me and some of the higher ranking members of my husband’s squadron who were also helping with the movie. Then suddenly, everything seemed to be moving at warp speed.
That Monday, the studio catered a lunch in one of the hangers on base for the squadron and their family members, including the families of the other two airmen who had been killed and me, which was followed by a brief meeting including Mr. Favreau and the rest of his team, the producers, the other consultants, and myself. It was just a formality, really, a chance for everyone to be properly introduced and for the producers to sell their ideas for the movie in-person to everyone involved. Mr. Favreau gave a brief overview of his vision for the film, nothing he hadn’t already told me, and I was invited to leave before things got “too boring” as everyone else stayed around to talk about the specifics of some of the more tactical and logistical aspects of the film - Air Force rules and regulations, weapons, planes and other equipment, all that sort of thing.
I had a one-on-one meeting scheduled with Mr. Favreau for that Thursday, but just before lunch on Wednesday, while I was at school facilitating a help session for my upcoming Advanced Placement students, he called to ask if we could move up our meeting.
“I’m so sorry to spring this on you, I really am, but some scheduling things came up and it would be great if we could meet this afternoon instead of tomorrow. You name the place, although something not too public would be better, for obvious reasons.”
It’s not like I could really say no, and I had no real reason to want to anyway. My help session window only had 30 minutes left, so I invited him to come to the school that afternoon. It doesn’t get much more “not too public” than a high school in the middle of the summer. I sent him the address and instructed him where to park and which of the numbered doors to meet me at and told him to just send me a text when he had parked.
I was engrossed in revamping a lesson plan I’d used at the end of the school year that had just finished, since it was still fresh in my mind, when he texted to say he’d arrived. I closed my eyes and dropped my head to my desk when I realized I’d gotten so involved in my work that I’d lost track of time and was still sitting curled into my desk chair with a blanket over my lap and a school hoodie pulled over my dress. Oh well. It’s not like I was looking to seduce him or anything. I slipped my sandals back on and hurried down the hall to the door I’d told him to meet me at.
“Good afternoon my dear! Thank you so much for your flexibility.” He pulled me into a hug when I opened the door for him. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” He took in my attire with a bemused expression.
“No,” I shook my head and chuckled a little. “I had a few kids come in this morning, and I’ve just been using the time since to get some work done. Can’t hurt to get ahead for next year, right?”
He just laughed. “Aren’t you supposed to have summers off?”
“That’s the myth, isn’t it?” I tucked my hands into the pocket of my hoodie. “Anyway, my classroom is just down the hall,” I inclined my head in that direction, “and I figured that was as good a place to talk as any.”
“That sounds great, but uh,” he looked over his shoulder back out into the parking lot. There was only one other car on that end of the lot besides mine and what I assumed was his rental. I didn’t immediately recognize the man pulling a backpack from the passenger seat, but we’d hired a couple new teachers for the next year and I assumed it was one of them, getting a head start on working in his classroom. “We’ve got one other person joining us. That’s why I needed to move up our meeting, actually. I need him to meet with the higher ups at Langley and the only time they could do that was when we already had our meeting scheduled tomorrow.”
I looked at Jon’s small smile, his soft eyes that looked at me then back out to the parking lot, and let my eyes drift back out to the man who had made it to the sidewalk leading to the doorway we were still standing in. There was a definite familiarity about him, his gait, maybe, or the set of his shoulders, or the NASA hat that could have been anyone’s, considering that there was a NASA research center less than three miles away. But it wasn’t just anyone, I realized, as he got close enough for me to get a look at the eyes under the brim of the cap. My mouth went dry and my hands began to fidget involuntarily inside the pocket of my hoodie, rubbing the cotton between my fingers and thumbs.
Jon grinned and clapped him on the shoulder over his backpack strap once he was close enough. “Let me be the first to officially introduce you to the incredibly talented man who has committed to tell your husband’s story.”
He dipped his head so that his face was obscured by his cap, but I saw the light blush that colored his cheeks before he did. “Thanks man,” he said, and stuck his right hand out to me. “It’s really, really nice to meet you, I’m -”
I jerked my hands out of my pocket and ran them down over the skirt of my dress before pushing my right one out for him to envelop with his much larger one. “Yeah, no,” I cut him off, accidentally, “I know who you are.” He smiled. “I’m sorry, that was rude. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just get excited. And nervous. And I talk a lot anyway, so …” I trailed off and he laughed.
“You’re good,” he told me, still holding my hand (which I was pretty sure was trembling a little bit). “Hey, you know what, I’m a hugger, is it okay if I hug you?”
“I, um, yeah. Absolutely.”
He stepped forward and wrapped both arms around my shoulders, leaning down a little until his cheek pressed against my hair above my ear. (And oh god, I thought, my hair. The outfit was bad enough, but halfway through the morning, while leaning over my desk poring through a book with a student, I’d grabbed the nearest pencil and swept my hair up into a messy bun on the top of my head with it. Both of these very professional, very successful people were going to think I was just one big mess.) I went to hug him back, but wrapping my arms around his waist felt too intimate, so I tucked my arms under his then hooked my hands up to rest on his shoulder blades, like I would with one of my kids.
He was still smiling, first down at me then over at Jon, when he pulled away. How many minutes - hours even - had I spent staring at that smile on a computer or phone screen, back before everything went to hell and I still had the luxury of fangirling?
“Um, okay then,” I said, still trying to compose myself. “So I guess we should go to my classroom now.”
“Lead the way,” Jon said.
We got halfway down the hall and I stopped dead in my tracks, my head falling and both hands coming up, folded almost as if in prayer, in front of my nose and mouth. “I’m just warning you,” I said, not turning around to look at the men behind me, “this is going to be really embarrassing for me.”
“Why?” the actor asked behind me.
“You’ll see.” I took a deep breath, shook my head at myself, and led them the rest of the way to the classroom. “I apologize for the student desks,” I told them when we got into the room, “but if it’s any consolation, I have a couple 17-year-old boys in here every day bigger than either of you.” Both men laughed. “But, if you want, I can go grab a couple chairs from down the hall.”
“No no,” Jon shook his head, “this will be fine.” He headed straight for a desk in the front row, but his colleague - our colleague, I guessed, technically speaking - continued to stand just inside the doorway.
He moved slowly, turning to take in the entire room. “This is a really nice classroom, you’ve made it really ... comfortable,” he said as his eyes moved over the stocked bookshelf in the corner and the small ottomans and pillows beside it. “I don’t see what’s emb -Oh.” He stopped abruptly when his gaze had made it to my desk, and the poster just above it, a grin filling his face and his head dropping, probably to keep me from seeing it. “Are you,” he cleared his throat and moved to a desk, “are you an artist?”
“No,” I sighed, “but some of my students are, and they like to gift me their work.”
On an open patch of cinder block wall just above and to the right of my desk, right where the students couldn’t miss it if I was in the front of the room teaching, was a poster that one of my students made for me based on something she had seen on Pinterest. “When is it okay to interrupt while teaching?” it asked in large, bold letters across the top. “Fire!” it said, below an illustration of logs being licked by flames. “Major injury!” and “Very sick!” were accompanied by cartoon drawings of a figure encased in a full-body cast and leaning on a crutch and another with her face contorted in agony and a green substance spewing from her mouth. “You have coffee!” was in the bottom left corner below a lovely drawing of a steaming mug of creamy looking coffee. Finally, in the bottom right corner, the poster exclaimed, “Captain America/Steve Rogers/CHRIS EVANS is here!” The drawing there was different from the others. There was a cartoon female head with my hair and pink hearts for eyes, and out of her head came a thought bubble containing the only realistic drawing on the board, Cap himself, complete with shield and Nomad beard.
“I used The First Avenger to introduce a unit on the hero’s journey last year, and one of my girls brought me that a week or so after we finished watching it.”
“Huh,” he leaned back into the desk and nodded once, “you taught that movie?”
“Yeah,” I wheeled my chair around so I could sit in it without the desk between me and them, “it went really well, actually. It’s a perfect example of the hero’s journey because it hits all the steps of the journey and all the archetypes, and it was really high engagement for the kids.” I always got excited talking about that unit because of how well it had gone. “They had to do a project once we finished the movie, and they turned in some of their best work of the year.” He smiled a little. “ And it was the last three weeks of school. So in every other class they were complaining about having to even open a book, but in here they were watching your movie then actually getting really into the projects they made afterward. I saved nearly all of them to show future classes, because I’ll definitely be doing some version of the unit again.” Without any real thought or expectation, more on auto-pilot than anything, I added, “You should see some of them.”
“I’d like that,” he told me, and he sounded really sincere when he did. “I would’ve never thought good ole’ Cap would be the subject of a high school …” he trailed off, unsure.
“English.”
“English class.” I’d only just met him, but I was pretty sure I heard pride in his voice. “And it went well?”
“Really well,” I affirmed.
“Wow. Nice.”
Jon had listened, smiling, throughout the whole exchange, but I could tell he was ready to get down to business. “So,” he clasped his hands together on the top of the desk, “you know I wanted to talk to you about your last set of script notes,” I nodded, “and since we were able to get Chris here, I thought it would be great to introduce the two of you as well.”
Chris had turned serious, and he looked up as he pulled his copy of the script and a folder out of the backpack he’d carried in. “I want to do this right, that’s really important to me. I know there’s no way to do it right without your input, and ultimately, you being happy with the outcome is my primary goal.”
He really had a way of oozing sincerity and making a person feel important.
“That means a lot to me, really.” I gave him a weak smile, the most I could muster over the topic at hand.
“Alright, so Chris has a script and a copy of your notes. Let’s have a look and make sure you’re good with the changes.”
***
One week later (early July, Year 1)
“Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me again and let me pick your brain,” Chris said as I led him down the same hall we’d walked the previous week. “I just, I really want to be able to get in the right place, mentally. I’ve, uh, I’ve been told I can overthink things, so I didn’t really want to force Jon to sit through all that last week. Unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with me.”
“It’s really not a problem,” I turned back to smile over my shoulder at him as we passed through the doorway into the classroom. “I have nothing else going on right now, and honestly, it’s touching. I really appreciate what you’re trying to do.”
“Of course. Hey, look at that,” his voice rose a little, “a grown-up chair!”
I laughed. “Yeah, well, I was a little more prepared this time. Please, have a seat.” I motioned for him to sit in the chair I’d borrowed from my classroom neighbor and positioned across the desk from mine. “This feels a little bit more like a professional working environment, right?” I settled into my own chair so that we were face-to-face over my desk.
“Sure. I mean, I was fine the other way too, but yeah, this definitely works.” His smile was meant to be disarming, I think, but it made me nervous. For one thing, I was finally starting to get starstruck. For another, it was really sinking in to me that I was going to have to talk to him in detail - personal detail - about my late husband, which was something I hadn’t done with anyone, even the people close to me. “So,” he settled back into the chair while I was distracted, “how was your weekend? Did you have a good holiday?”
I shrugged. I’d never really done a lot for the Fourth of July, we’d barbecued some years but that was pretty much the extent of it, and that year I’d just stayed at home on the couch with Millie and Victoria, my unofficially adopted daughter, and watched, almost embarrassingly, all three Captain America movies. (It wasn’t actually because of having met him a few days earlier, it was something Vic and I had done together the year before, when my husband was deployed, and we’d decided to make it a tradition. I didn’t have the heart to back out on her.) “It was quiet. Uneventful.” He nodded. “How about you, you didn’t spend the weekend in this area, I’m guessing.”
“Nah. I went up to Boston, barbecued with the family, shot off fireworks for the niece and nephews. It was fun.” His smile was so easy. It honestly made me jealous. I tried to smile back, but it was hard. I certainly couldn’t match his level of genuine comfort and ease.
“That’s good,” I nodded. “Family time is fun.” I didn’t add what else I was thinking, which was, ‘with the right family.’ I took a deep breath and dropped my chin into my hand, elbow propped on the desk. “So. You had some questions for me?”
“Wow. Right down to business.”
“Sorry.” I closed my eyes and scrunched my nose a little. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be short. I just figured you came for a reason, you’d want to get to it. I don’t want you to feel like you have to, I don’t know, butter me up first.”
“Eh,” he waved a hand at me dismissively, “I’m in no hurry. I just thought I’d make a detour through here before we start filming next week and, ya know, try to learn some things. You’re the only thing on my schedule today, for a couple days, if needed.
The movie was going to film in New Mexico. They were trying to make what Jon had described to me as a “more human story about the effects of war, not a war movie,” and that meant no huge budget and a relatively short production time. Instead of actually making the movie in the Middle East, they were using the American southwest, and they planned to be completely finished filming within three months.
“Well,” I blushed a little. I wasn’t used to people going out of their way for me. And yes, really it was for the movie, but it had the immediate effect of being for me as well. “I’m honored. Really. I feel like you’re doing more than you have to, and that means a lot.”
“Like I said,” he shrugged. He seemed to do that a lot, “I want to get this right. I don’t mind at all spending some time with you to make that happen.”
I studied him for a few seconds. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be sitting across my own work desk from Chris Evans , let alone doing so in order for him to pick my brain about a movie he was preparing to make about my own husband. An earlier version of me, a different version, at that point, would have been giddy, unable to sit still or concentrate on anything other than staring at him and trying to figure out the least obnoxious way to ask for a picture.
“You know,” I started, letting out a deep breath, “you are not at all who I expected when Mr. Favreau told me he had an actor he was working on.”
His brow furrowed just a little bit and he looked almost concerned. “No?” I shook my head and he put on a slightly less easy-looking smile. “What, no resemblance?”
I actually laughed. “That’s not what I meant, but no, actually, you look nothing like him.” He smiled a little bigger. “Okay, maybe the eyes a little bit. He had really blue eyes too.”
His own eyes softened and he leaned forward onto the desk. “What else? Tell me about what he looked like. You never know, maybe I can pull it off. Movie magic.”
I shook my head. “I think the closest you’ve ever been was Winter Soldier, but I don’t see you slimming down that much in a week, and I won’t ask you to dye your hair blonde like that again. Not that,” I rushed to cover what could be considered an insult if taken the wrong way, “you need to slim down. You look great. You always look great,” he looked up at me from under raised eyebrows, smirking just a little, “but he was just, you’re more … He was a runner. He had run a marathon and several half-marathons and usually put in at least 40-50 miles a week. He was really thin. And taller than you. You’re more muscular, more of an athletic build rather than just thin.”
He was laughing at me, just softly, by the time I’d finished. “You done?” I groaned and nodded. “I know I’ve put on some weight over the years, you don’t have to feel bad about it.”
“No! That’s not -”
He laughed and reached for my hands where they were wringing on top of the desk, pinning them down with one of his. “I’m joking, I’m joking .” His eyes twinkled. “It’s all totally fine. Really. Do you have a picture, maybe?”
“Of course.” I reached for the framed photograph on the corner of my desk, one from just about a year before he’d been killed. He hated pictures and would never willingly let me take them. But we’d been at a promotion banquet honoring him and about 15 other men and women, him in his most formal dress blues and me in a floor-length, one-shouldered navy gown, and a contracted photographer was taking photos all throughout dinner and the ceremony. He could say no, make terrible faces, and hide from me and my phone all he wanted, but when a photographer hired by the Air Force stood in front of us, his only choice was to smile for the camera.
Chris pulled the photo across the desk and studied it for several seconds. “Wow. You’re wearing heels?” I nodded. “He is tall. And blonde.”
“Six foot four,” I confirmed, taking the picture from his hand as he passed it back to me and setting it back on the corner.
“You look happy.”
I smiled down at the picture. “I was really proud of him.”
He gave me a soft look and nodded, then went on. “So, aside from being too big, too short, and not blonde enough,” he winked at me, and under other circumstances I’d have thought I was being flirted with, but instead I just thought he really needed to make people feel comfortable, “why didn’t you think I was right for this?”
“No, it’s not that. I’m thrilled that it’s you. You’re one of my favorite actors. Clearly,” I inclined my head toward the poster over my shoulder and put on a small, embarrassed grimace. “Honestly, I just kind of expected someone I’d never heard of, not someone already so established and successful.”
He nodded. “I get that. And, to be perfectly honest with you, there are definitely merits to casting someone like that when you’re trying to tell such a personal, intimate story. Less likely you’ll have to contend with someone’s ego, for one thing. So, on that note,” he sighed and spread his hands, palms up, on the desk, “I guess a good place for us to start is, what concerns do you have? About me, and how you see me doing this role.”
I folded the fingers of both of my hands together and brought them up under my chin. I sat in silence for a minute, maybe more, and he just waited while I thought. “Honestly?” he nodded. “My biggest concern was that they would cast a Republican.” I put on a small smile so that he could interpret it as a joke if he wanted to.
He just looked at me for a few seconds, then, finally, “I … you’re serious.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Sort of. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I get that acting is acting , and it’s not like I think that because he was a Democrat, he couldn’t be played by a Republican. And I definitely trust Mr. Favreau. But,” I took a long, deep breath and shook my head, “my biggest fear was that this would become just some big ‘Rah rah, America is perfect, our military is so badass, let’s re-stoke the patriotic fires with another war movie,’ thing. Don’t get me wrong,” I rushed to add, “obviously I support the men and women of our military. And I certainly don’t hate America. But we’re kind of a mess right now,” he lifted his eyebrows and nodded, “and if my husband’s identity is going to be used to tell this story, I want it to be honest. And I don’t want it to be used to gloss over or distract from some of the problems that we so desperately need to work to fix. I just worried that if they had cast someone who was openly conservative, or, god forbid, supportive of the current administration, it wouldn’t matter how honest the movie was, it would get overshadowed by the politics of the person.”
He looked like he was thinking over what I’d said, his eyes narrowed a little and one hand plucking at his bottom lip. Finally he sat back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s actually a very valid concern. But,” a small version of that easy smile was back, “how do you know I’m not a Republican?”
I actually scoffed and my eyes fell closed for a second, my head shaking. “I follow you on Twitter.”
His head fell back and he laughed, the sound melodic and somehow calming. He put his hands up in mock surrender. “Fair point. Hey, I should follow you back. If that’s okay,” he added quickly.
The giddy fangirl in me, a facet of myself that I didn’t know even existed anymore, it had been so long since I felt giddy over anything, stirred a little. Once upon a time it would have been a dream to have Chris Evans see and acknowledge one of my tweets, let alone follow me back. “Yeah, of course. That’s,” I pointed to the Cricut-cut letters stapled to the bulletin board to my right, “the handle for my professional account, my teacher-Twitter.” He pulled out his phone and began typing and I scribbled on a sticky note. “And this is my personal one. It’s a private account.”
“You have two?” He quirked one eyebrow up as he reached for the sticky note.
“Yeah,” I sighed. I nodded at the handle on the wall, “I’ve had that one for about three years now, since I attended a professional development session about the use of social media in the classroom. That was mostly about how it can be used for networking, sharing resources, things like that, but it’s also a really good way to get out information to my kids, share things they’re doing in the classroom or brag on them, just generally to connect with them. I do sometimes post some non-school-related, personal-ish stuff on there, but I keep it very student-friendly. Comments on sports or movies, embarrassing but harmless anecdotes about myself or my dog, funny stories about coffee mishaps -”
“Coffee mishaps?”
“Oh yes,” I snickered. “I drink a lot of coffee. There tend to be mishaps.” He grinned, and my phone buzzed as he tucked his own back into his pocket. “The private one is newer. I just started it last summer. I kept seeing things I wanted to re-tweet or comment on, but I couldn’t.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Why couldn’t you?”
“This is a very conservative community. How many Trump signs did you see on your drive in?” I paused and watched the realization cross his face. “Exactly. I’m ‘strongly discouraged’ from saying anything in my classroom that might be considered me trying to impose my views on my students or use my position of authority to influence them. It’s supposed to be like that across the board, in all of public education, really, and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m the adult, they’re kids, I don’t want them thinking that they’re going to be punished for disagreeing with me. But around here that’s only really enforced if you lean left-of-center.” He pulled a face and shook his head. “So, even online, anything anti-Trump, pro-choice, pro-woman in general, really, pro-gun control, anti-wall - you get the idea - anything like that is totally off-limits. I couldn’t re-tweet you, for example.”
“Right,” he nodded.
“Finally I got so tired of seeing things I wanted to comment on, or even just like, and not being able to, and having things of my own to say, and not being able to, that I made a second account and made it private. I don’t, like, not let someone follow me just because we don’t agree on everything; I don’t mind being challenged and I actually enjoy a good discussion, but I do limit it to people who I know aren’t going to get pissy and shut down on me because I say something, I don’t know,” I looked to the ceiling and waved a hand through the air, “in support of gay rights. I’ve only let one current student follow me, and he’s a rising senior - a gay senior, not an easy thing to be around here - who adopted me as his mom when he was a freshman.”
His brow furrowed and he appeared to be chewing on the inside of his bottom lip. “Hmm.” The force of the scoff made his head bob. “I hadn’t thought about that. I mean, I get what you were saying about not using your authority to have undue influence, but it really just kinda sucks that you have to pretend to not even have your own views. I mean, shouldn’t we be teaching young people how to have a civil discourse, not pretending that differing views don’t exist?”
“It’s like you’re reading my mind,” I sighed, and smiled at him a little sadly. “Unfortunately, the powers that be, and by ‘be’ I mean ‘decide if I keep my job,’ see it differently.” I pulled one leg up into the chair and wrapped my arms around my knee. “Um, anyway,” I changed the subject before I went off on a rant, “I should probably warn you, if you look through my personal one at all, you’re going to see a good bit of yourself. Up until the first of the year, anyway. You won’t see much at all since then. I’ve backed off social media quite a bit.”
“Right,” he nodded, “the re-tweets.”
“Yeah, the re-tweets, and,” I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling then down and to the side, avoiding making contact with his gaze, “gifs.” I looked in his direction and waited for a reaction. He just looked back at me. “When I created the account, one of my kids - and I mean one of my kids, she actually moved in with me recently when her mom just kind of took off on her - challenged me to only use gifs of you or from your movies when I wanted to use one. And I … can’t say no to a challenge. It’s a problem, really.” He laughed. “If I’m being completely honest, your tweets and how much I related to them, how much they made me want to be able to speak my own mind, were a big part of what drove me to create a private account. So, using gifs related to you became kind of an inside joke between Victoria and me.”
“Thanks for the heads up.” We laughed a little together, me mostly out of embarrassment, him, I think, out of some desire to put me at ease. “Okay, so aside from what I can see on your Twitter, what should I know before we start filming?”
We spent a few hours together that afternoon. I filled him in on everything from the way my husband had taken his coffee to the details of his running habits to his (really embarrassing) pet name for me. And before we left, he asked to see those projects.
***
2 months later (early September, Year 1)
Jon and Chris both kept in touch while they filmed in New Mexico. Jon would email me short videos of scene rehearsals and ask if I had any input on Chris’s mannerisms or his line delivery. Chris communicated more through Twitter direct messages. He had clearly been making his way (slowly) through my profile, because occasionally I would get a DM from him in response to something I’d posted, typically political things, but my favorite was when he sent me back my own post of my dog in her Captain America harness, her on her back with her legs in the air, with the comment, “Really glad I’ve already given up the shield, I could never compete with that!” He did text me once, though, right before I went back to school. He said, “I saw on your censored account that you go back to work officially tomorrow, and I just wanted to say good luck! Don’t stab anyone with a pencil during a meeting.” I was touched at his genuine kindness, and also by the fact that he’d paid enough attention to know that my first week and a half back was all meetings and trainings.
Just before Labor Day, I got a call from Jon letting me know that he, Chris, some of the other cast members, and part of the crew would be back in my area right after the holiday to do a few days’ worth of filming on base and that he hoped I would meet with him and Chris, if possible. And over that weekend, I got another text from Chris, a picture of Dodger, his head on what I could only guess was Chris’s thigh, wearing a collar that resembled a shelf of classic, leather-bound novels. “I saw this and thought of you, but I don’t think Dodger can pull off stealing your job quite as well as your girl did stealing mine,” the text read, then continued, “I hear we’ll be seeing each other again soon, looking forward to it!”
Jon had asked if I would be willing to come on base to meet with him and Chris that Wednesday, after they’d met with the base commander and several others about the filming that was set to begin the next day. When I got there after school, Jon took my hand in both of his and squeezed, but Chris went straight in for the hug. He leaned down, slipping both arms under my own so that mine fell over his shoulders, and squeezed around my ribcage.
“How are you?” he asked as he pulled away.
“Good,” I smiled. “Tired. The first week of school with actual students is always exhausting.” I shrugged as he pulled out a chair for me. “It’s a good exhaustion, though. How about you? Good Labor Day?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, “the big guy over there,” he gestured across the small table we sat at toward Jon, “threw a big party on-set on Sunday. He invited a bunch of people from the base there, the one near Alamogordo -”
“Holloman,” I supplied.
“Right! Holloman. We’ve had some men and women from there come in as extras, so they were invited, along with a bunch of others on base, and all their families. It was a really good time. He suggested trying to bring you out,” I looked over to Jon, but he just smiled and dropped his head, “but I didn’t think the timing would be very good for you, with school starting yesterday and everything. So if you’re upset about not being invited, be mad at me, not him!”
I laughed. “Of course not. There’s no way I could have flown half-way across the country right before school started. I actually spent part of the weekend at school. That was a really awesome thing to do, though.” It really was, and I appreciated the thought, and the effort, even if I didn’t get to participate in it. It was good of them to do that for the men and women of Holloman, and while Chris laid all the credit at Jon’s feet, I’m sure he did just as much as his director to make the experience a positive one for everyone there.
Jon just shook his head and cleared his throat. “It was my pleasure to do, really.” He smiled. “Well, I know you’re tired, and busy, so we won’t keep you longer than necessary. I wanted to meet with you because Chris had an idea, a good idea, and we wanted to run it by you in person.”
“O - Kay.” I was a little hesitant because I couldn’t begin to guess what kind of idea he’d had. I turned my attention back to Chris.
“Right. Wow, nothing like being put on the spot.” He laughed. “Okay, well, I was thinking. The point of the movie is to show personal impact, humanity within a very inhumane situation, right?” I nodded. “So far, all we have is your husband interacting with his peers and his troops. By all accounts he was a great leader and always put everyone else before himself, but by your own account, he wasn’t close with any of them. He didn’t develop personal relationships with them the way …” he trailed off, looking for an example, “the way you do with your students. The movie we’ve made so far definitely shows his leadership, his lack of ego, and how important it was to him to speak and look out for those he was assigned to lead, but I just feel like it’s still missing that truly personal piece that we really wanted to show.” My brow furrowed. I didn’t know where he was going. “So … we want to put you in the movie.”
My eyes widened dramatically and I think I even jumped in my chair. “I -”
“Hear him out,” Jon cut me off, kindly but firmly.
Chris went on, his hands moving, animated, as he spoke, “We talked to a few people, some of the guys your husband worked with back here before the deployment, and it turns out the only thing he really had an emotional attachment to, was you.”
I could probably guess who they’d talked to, and it wasn’t exactly wrong. My husband was a really good man. As Chris had said, he always, always put other people, particularly the young men and women below him (his “dudes and dudettes,” he called them), first. He was an absolute rule-follower, but I one time listened to him on the phone telling his superior that he would personally disobey a command and tell his troops not to come to work on what, for most of the base and the rest of our area, was a snow day, because their presence was not necessary, given that no planes could fly under the conditions, and all that would happen if they tried to come in would be that they were all put in undue danger. In the days leading up to the deployment, he sent them all home from work, even though, technically speaking, they still had work to do, because they needed to spend time with their families before they flew out. He could also be an asshole, though. It was never gratuitous, but unlike me, who often “gave in” far too much with my kids, he was incapable of sugarcoating things. He didn’t feel a need to have a lot of friends, and he certainly didn’t need to be friends with his troops. More than once he’d told me that he didn’t need friends because he had me.
“Um,” my brow furrowed and I let my eyes fall closed as I shook my head, thinking, “what - what does this mean, exactly?”
“Well,” Jon took back over, “if you agree, we would shoot one short scene, him preparing to leave. We learned from some of the people we talked to that you didn’t come with him on base to head out that morning, so we thought we would do your last few moments together.”
My heart clenched and my chest ached when I drew in a long, slow breath. Our last few moments together . That was a heavy thought.
“We would put it in as a flashback, toward the end of the movie,” Chris added softly, and his hand moved across the tabletop until his fingers barely touched my forearm.
The room was quiet for a minute or so while both men let me think over what they had just proposed. It was a lot to think about. On the one hand, a version of me being included in the movie had never been part of the deal before. I wasn’t sure if that’s something I was quite up for. On the other, they had a point. I hadn’t seen what they’d shot so far, but I’d read the script, and I’d heard Chris read parts of it, and I knew my husband and what he was like in work situations. I could see how the story could come off cold, detached. I didn’t want that. It wouldn’t really achieve the effect the movie was meant to achieve, and on a more selfish note, it wouldn’t paint the best image of my late husband, and he deserved better than that. It was the only right thing to do, really.
“Who - do you have an actress in mind?”
Chris and Jon looked at each other across the table. “Well -,” Chris started.
Jon interrupted, “That’s tricky. We don’t have a lot of time. We’re here for a week and a half, then back in New Mexico for two weeks of reshoots, and that’s it. We really need to be in post by October for things to stay on track.”
“Right,” the whole situation confused me. “So, what are you going to do?”
Chris looked at him and Jon nodded. “We want you to do it.”
I actually laughed. It was the only thing I could do. I was not an actress. “I’m not an actress.”
Chris smiled, softly. “You don’t need to be. You’re you. It’s your story to tell.”
Jon added on quickly, as soon as Chris stopped talking. “It would be one short scene, that’s it. You tell us what you guys did that morning, within reason, of course,” he added quickly, “we’ll do a couple dry runs, and we’ll shoot. It’ll just be the three of us, a few cameras, and a couple ADs. The whole thing should take less than a day. I was thinking we could do it next weekend, before we head back out west, that way you wouldn’t need to take off from school.”
“This is,” I paused and shook my head, “a lot.”
“It is,” Jon agreed. “And I’m really sorry to spring it on you last minute like this. But I think it would make a great addition to the film, and it would be really, really great if you would agree. I know what I’m about to say isn’t fair, but I have to say it; this one scene could make or break the emotional impact of the film, so think about your husband’s story.”
I tilted my head back to look at the ceiling. He was right. It wasn’t fair. But it wasn’t wrong, and I’d already had that thought myself.
“Hey Jon,” Chris said, quiet, “give us a minute?” I didn’t look down, but I heard Jon’s chair push back from the table and tracked his footsteps as he walked to the door. Chris’s hand cupped my elbow. “Hey, this was my idea, so if you hate it, blame me.” I finally looked down. “But I really do think it would make a world of difference for the movie. And, for the record, even if we did have more time, I would still think you should be the one to do it. You may not be an actress, but no one else can bring the authenticity to this that it deserves.”
I just nodded and chewed on my bottom lip. “What if I’m terrible?” I finally asked. “Won’t that, I mean, what if I make it worse?”
“You won’t.”
“I really want it to be good.”
“It will be.”
“And what if,” I sighed and my voice shook, “what if I can’t do it? What if it hurts too much and I just can’t ?”
His hand slid up just until his palm rested on my tricep. He managed to wrap his large hand all the way around my arm but kept his grip loose. “I don’t think that will happen. I think you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.” He looked into my eyes, not looking away even when I squeezed them closed and a couple tears spilled out. “But if it does,” he almost whispered, “we’ll call it and I’ll take the fall. I’ll say that something about the scene didn’t work for me and I’ll make sure it’s on my shoulders, not yours. I promise.”
I trusted him. I didn’t know why, but I did. My eyes still closed, I nodded.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”