Voice Lessons

by Cara Mentzel

  “Last night, I had a dream,” she said into the black silence.

  I knew those words well from the previews and because I’d wrestled with them in her apartment the night before her audition. But hearing them in the Nederlander wasn’t like reading them had been less than a year earlier.

  “I found myself in a desert called Cyberland.”

  I wasn’t harboring the emotional burden of improving our relationship and providing an indispensable contribution to her professional life. There was only the sound of her voice. And love. And pride. And a quiet celebration in my heart.

  “Out of the abyss walked a cow—Elsie. I asked if she had anything to drink. She said…” Dina’s speaking voice shifted into a melody as she sang a capella:

  “I’m forbidden to produce milk. In Cyberland, we only drink—[cowbell clink]—Diet Coke.”

  She only sang a couple of lines, but each note filled the theater. Her voice had precision, a warm, brassy timbre, and even though she was singing about milk, her voice had an emotional thrust unlike any other I’d ever heard. When they weren’t laughing, the audience sat motionless.

  Dina continued on Elsie’s behalf, “She said, ‘Only thing to do is jump over the moon.’”

  Then she grabbed her throat and started swinging her head back and forth like a heavy-metal guitarist. She screamed:

  “It’s like I’m being tied to the hood of a yellow rental truck being packed in with fertilizer—and fuel oil. Pushed over a cliff by a suicidal Mickey Mouse. I gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta—gotta”—always pausing there and then adding one final gotta that made the audience laugh—“… find a way!”

  Dina was a force of nature, and when she stopped screaming and shifted to a jazzier melody—“That’s bull, he said. Ever since the cat took up the fiddle, that cow’s been—jumpy.… Maybe it’s a female thing”—years of classical vocal training and wedding-band singing were evident in her versatility. By the time Maureen Johnson entices the audience to moo with her, “Moo with me,” she says, there was no doubt they’d moo. She’d corralled them with her vocal range, her sense of humor, her unbridled talent. They mooed louder and louder, growing into a crescendo, until, like an orchestra conductor, she flung her arms through the air and cut them off with a pithy, “Thank you.”

  As Dina finished, a surge of energy shot through my arms and legs and propelled me onto my feet. The audience stood with me, not as individuals but as one synchronistic entity. I clapped so hard my palms tingled. I wished I could whistle—the cool whistle using my thumb and forefinger. That’s my sister, I thought. I have a sister who makes me wish I could whistle.

  By the end of the show Dina hadn’t only made the audience moo—during the performance of “La Vie Bohème,” she also mooned them. Then, after delivering one of my favorite lines, “There will always be women in rubber flirting with me,” she sang a duet, “Take Me or Leave Me,” with her lover, while climbing up and down metal folding chairs and tables in leather pants and heels. Dina was unforgettable. The show was unforgettable.

  Hundreds of people gathered at Chelsea Piers to celebrate the opening night of Rent on Broadway. To accommodate guests, an entire ice rink was covered in AstroTurf and wooden dance-floor tiles. Tables were clustered near designated dance floors. The open space was lit with string lights that dangled like fireflies from cavernous ceilings. Were it not for the ice hidden beneath my feet I could have been at an evening reception of an outdoor June wedding.

  I made my way to a small nest of tables where Dina’s friends from NYU, my family and family’s friends, and my sister’s agent and manager were convening. Everyone in my sister’s world except my sister, who was with the Rent cast for press and pictures in a striking kelly-green gown. I wore a fitted knee-length pewter dress that I’d bought the day before. A Broadway opening required a hot dress I definitely didn’t have in my closet in Boulder.

  At Chelsea Piers it was getting late for my grandmother, who tended to be short on smiles, but she wasn’t that night. She was talkative and lively, wearing her joy like the red lipstick she saved for special occasions. When she started to peter out, my dad took her home. Mom and her friends were engaged in conversation and I sat with Dina’s inner circle, Debbie and Suzy and a few others.

  People were discreetly sharing a joint at our table. I’d never smoked pot—though once I got in trouble with a couple of friends for burning a sage smudge stick from the local health food store in my dorm room. (It smelled just like pot and caused other members of the substance-free community to call the police. I think it’s safe to say that those girls and I are the only people in the history of college residence halls to get in trouble with the police over burning something as innocent as potpourri.)

  I imagined that one day I’d smoke a joint in a cozy living room somewhere with a boyfriend and a bag of Doritos. But I definitely never imagined an ice rink or hundreds of people, cameras, or Leonardo DiCaprio on a nearby dance floor.

  “Hold it in for as long as you can,” Arie said. “You may need more. The first time you need more.” I obliged, not sure if he was fucking with me or telling the truth.

  Soon after, I spotted my sister and she and I had a chance to connect.

  “Hey, Sis,” she said and kissed me on the lips. “You look hot.”

  “Thanks. You too. Love the color.”

  “Is that a new dress?” she asked me.

  “Got it with Daddy yesterday. You haven’t seen the best part.” I turned to the side and lifted my arm slightly, exposing an armpit mark the size of a fried egg.

  “Classy,” she said. “Watch this.” She leaned in toward me and adjusted her boobs while looking off in another direction.

  “Classy,” I said and we giggled. “By the way, I’m stoned.”

  “What? Ca-ra!”

  “Yeah, under Arie’s proud tutelage.”

  “You feeling okay?”

  “I think so. I don’t feel much of anything.”

  “All right. Be careful. I have to do more press. We’ll hang at home later. I love you.” She kissed me again.

  I watched as Dina returned to the press and the cast, including Taye Diggs, Rent’s Benjamin Coffin III. He had chocolate skin and a big smile that showcased teeth so white they belonged in a toothpaste commercial. I must have stared too long in Taye’s direction because years later he’d tell me that he felt flattered because he thought I was flirting with him! Of course, the chances of me flirting with him were unlikely. I wasn’t in a flirting mood. Since the joint, I’d been staring too long at everyone and everything. The more probable explanation was that I was lost in thought staring at the string of lights that hung a couple of inches over his right shoulder.

  I headed back to my family and friends. Some of them were on the dance floor, and I merged with the swarm of swinging arms, bobbing heads, and twisting bodies. The music pounded in my head as if the speaker itself were in there. I looked down at the floor and stared at a sea of busy feet—bare feet and dress shoes and heels—and near misses between bare feet and stilettos.

  When I looked back up into the crowd I noticed that my vision was impaired. Every time I turned my head it was as if I were scanning photo negatives. I couldn’t paste the scenes in front of me together. Along with visual continuity, I also lost depth perception. Far, near—heck if I knew the difference. I saw a conga line. I saw Debbie’s back. The conga line. Her back. I grabbed her waist and shouted, “Conga!” to which she turned to me dead serious and said, “Don’t be touchin’ me, girl.” Shit.

  I realized that the conga line was on another dance floor in the distance and Debbie had no idea why I had suddenly grabbed her. Mortified, I decided to go to the restroom and wait for the high to wear off before I embarrassed myself further.

  Getting to the restroom was easier said than done. It was a long diagonal stretch across the rink and my heels were problematic. I’d bought them the day before with my dad, having fallen in love with them on a virtual catwalk through a
narrow store on Eighth Street. They were black peau de soie sandals with four-inch stiletto heels and a paltry centimeter-wide strap that crossed the base of my toes. They’d been hard to dance in, even hard to walk in, and as I began my stoned trek to a toilet sanctuary far, far away, I worried that I walked like one of them was shoved up my ass. I took them off and held them in one hand by their straps. Shortly after that, I noticed that my feet were numb—I’d forgotten there was ice beneath the AstroTurf. I jogged the remainder of the way to a bathroom stall, where I covered the seat in toilet paper and sat down in my skin-tight dress.

  I can’t say how long I was camped out in there, but I think I could have read my entire thesis and the full Harry Potter series. Me. The stall. Minutes ticked by like hours, but my mind stayed very active.

  I thought back to earlier in the evening and remembered Dina in her green dress standing among press and cameras. She pressed her lips together to ensure her lipstick was still on. She tipped her head in toward Daphne Ruben-Vega, Rent’s Mimi, and whispered something. Daphne nodded and then they laughed.

  I heard laughing in the bathroom. Is someone waiting for my toilet and wondering what’s taking me so long? How long have I been in here? I peeked through the crack in the stall door and saw a couple of girls, like me, in front of the sinks. Are they laughing at me? Do they know what I’m doing in here—or rather, what I’m not doing in here? Do they know I’m stoned? My eyes drifted from the crack in the door to the door itself where someone had scratched “Jocelyn sucks cock.” Beneath the writing was a date noted with slashes, as if it were important to note the year Jocelyn sucked cock. Hmph. Way to go, Jocelyn!

  One of the girls washed her hands and I heard the other tug on the paper-towel dispenser. When one dropped a brown wad of paper into the trash I stood up and used my foot to flush the toilet. At the time, I thought this was genius trickery on my part. In the event that the girls knew I was stoned and were in fact laughing at me, the sound of my flushing toilet might convince them otherwise. I stared at the swirling water and watched it rush down into the tunnel at the bottom of the bowl as they left. Then I resumed my seated position.

  Jesus, Cara. Of all the places—all the times—to get stoned, what the hell were you thinking doing it at this party? What a shit sister I was, paralyzed by paranoia and stuck in the bathroom instead of in the party celebrating Dina. Of course, it wasn’t like Dina and I were going to have quality time together. If I hadn’t been in the bathroom, I would have been back out in the hullabaloo, smiling until my face felt frozen in place, conscious of my every word, trying to be eloquent and articulate, cool and relaxed. I’d scan the crowd for famous faces—maybe Keanu Reeves or Michelle Pfeiffer would be there. All the while knowing I’d be star-struck and never approach anyone, not even to say something polite like, “I really appreciate your work. I’m a big fan,” which I’d rehearsed saying the night before in hopes I’d find the opportunity and the nerve. And maybe a ride on Keanu’s motorcycle or your basic celebrity one-night stand.

  I felt my hair swelling in the cold dampness of the East Coast and I looked down at my wrist for a hair tie, but there wasn’t one. I heard another woman enter the bathroom and then the stall next to mine. I saw her patent-leather heels under the stall wall and the royal-blue cuffs of what I guessed was a wide-legged pantsuit. Can she see my feet like I can see hers? My bare feet? She probably thinks that’s weird, bare feet on the gross public-bathroom floor. I heard her fuss with the defiant toilet-paper roller.

  I set my elbows on my knees, set my head in my hands, and closed my eyes. What time is my flight home tomorrow? Back in Boulder I’d defended my thesis and passed. I remembered pushing the two flat bins of drafts and articles under my bed, first with my hands and then with my feet, sitting on the floor and shoving each one clear out of sight. “Take a few months off,” my thesis adviser had said. “We’ll get the paper ready for publishing later.” “Later” wasn’t far enough away. I wanted to publish my paper, but I’d exhausted myself and had nothing left to put on a page. I hadn’t applied to graduate school; I couldn’t—at least not yet. Underlying the excitement of a strong finish at school was an eerie sense of finality. If something was over, something else had to begin, and I hadn’t a clue what that would be. Focusing on Dina for a few days had served as a recess from the stress of “what next?” But suddenly, stoned and in the stall, my focus on Dina was no longer a recess but a reminder. With Rent came the promise of a rich career for my sister. I was unmistakably elated for her. But Rent was Dina’s beginning and reminded me that I didn’t have one.

  Someone opened the restroom door and a wave of music entered, carrying with it another memory of Dina from earlier in the evening. This time she was in a line along the edge of the stage with the cast singing “Seasons of Love” together. They were a family. I wished I could be with Dina as often as they were. Is she closer with them than she is with me? I wondered, and the question bothered me. It felt wrong. I couldn’t name what I was feeling, but I was glad that despite my paranoia, I knew no one could hear my thoughts. More than anything, I missed Dina. Our lives were becoming more different and distant than they’d ever been. But, I reassured myself, our roots run deep. They’ll hold us together. And it was from those roots that I loved Dina, from them and—as it were—from a toilet seat at Chelsea Piers.

  Later that night, I went back to Dina’s apartment and sat sober—finally—on the couch with Debbie and Suzy.

  “Oh my god!” Dina screeched from her room. “Come listen to this.” She popped out from around the corner and with a silly grin she waved us over. “Taye’s drunk and he left a message on my machine.”

  We huddled around her answering machine as Taye slurred and rambled on about how beautiful Dina looked that night and how much he liked her. She listened like a giddy high schooler who had just been asked to prom. I felt lucky to be there with her. I’d look back on that night countless times and feel grateful that I’d been there for the beginning of her professional career, and the beginning of her relationship with Taye—Taye, who called her Dee. And Dee she would be from then on.

  I knew that being Maureen meant being onstage eight times a week, and I knew it would be nearly impossible for Dee to make it to Colorado for my graduation. I knew and I understood and I didn’t want her to feel bad about it and I tried not to care. But I did. When I walked across the stage and the dean placed a medal around my neck, magna cum laude, Mom and Dad were there, but Dee wasn’t.

  Lesson 5

  HOW TO SING A SOLO

  At twenty-three, I was no longer the little girl who sang lullabies to her Cabbage Patch dolls and strapped newborn diapers onto apathetic teddy bears. I had grown up and I dreamed of snap-crotch onesies, a BabyBjörn, and the drool that pools around a baby’s brand-new bottom teeth. Having my own family was and always had been an ambition far more compelling to me than any career. Unlike the path to a fulfilling job, the path to a family was no mystery: Find a man. Make a baby. Set up house. The first order of business I’d already taken care of.

  I met Jon at CU in the ashes of my relationship with Ken—you might say that Astronaut Ken and Long Island Jew Barbie “failed to launch.” I was the kind of girl who didn’t like to be alone, and Jon had dimples. He also had a smile more round than wide, and with curly brown hair that sat tall on the top of his head he made a good Seinfeld’s Kramer on Halloween. He knew how to throw big parties and I liked having a social boyfriend. He was also a business major and had the drive and ambition I’d always found attractive. Jon won me over one night when he delivered a Subway sandwich and a latte to the psychology lab.

  It wasn’t a perfect relationship: he left me waiting one too many times and I started to wonder if he wasn’t as sensitive as I’d originally thought. We spent six months apart, during which time he moved to San Diego. Eventually we chose to give things another shot and I moved there to be with him.

  We rented the walkout basement of a large home in the village of La J
olla. The house was built of coral stucco, its edges were covered in climbing bougainvillea, and it was wedged into the side of a hill on a well-manicured lawn. Unlike the house above it, our studio was tiny and unremarkable—visitors needed help finding our door—but we didn’t need much and it was only a short walk to the shore.

  It was there, in that gray-carpeted hole-in-the-wall-of-a-real-home, that on a lazy afternoon Jon and I lay in bed in a postcoital fog. I was forming constellations out of the bumps in the popcorn ceiling when he shifted in the bed and reached into his end table, then sat up and faced me. There was a brief anticipatory silence and I sat up instinctively so our eyes were level. Jon opened his hand and in his palm sat two silver Tibetan spinning rings.

  “Cara Mentzel,” he said, so close to me that I could see the speckles in his green eyes. “Marry me? Please.”

  “They’re just promise rings,” he added—nervous, I think. “But I’ll make it official … soon.”

  I wrapped as much of myself around him as I could, my arms, my legs, even craning my neck around, setting my chin on his back.

  “Of course,” I told him softly. Then I kissed him. “Of course,” I said again, this time in tears.

  I stayed in bed alone when he went into the shower. We weren’t planning on a baby, and yet I lay on my back with my legs up in the air, my feet facing the ceiling. I pictured my microscopic eggs reeling Jon’s frenzied chromosome-toting suckers in. After a couple of minutes, I pulled my knees into my chest and rolled on my side. With my cheek against the pillow, I imagined brushing my lips gently over the beating fontanel of a newborn, like a whisper.

  I thought that my ambitions of young motherhood were culturally unpopular. I was part of a generation that wanted me to make my mark in a man’s world before having a child. My generation wanted me to be Murphy Brown or Clair Huxtable. But I wanted to be a mother first and foremost. The sooner the better.