by Cara Mentzel
She shook her head and finally smiled. “Let’s get this over with.”
The suitcase was an exact match for the one we returned—apart from the damage I’d done to the lock. The whole mess took only a few hours—albeit a few hours too many.
After the suitcase fiasco, my time in London with Dee improved. I saw the show—which was, in my opinion, of equal caliber to the Broadway production. Dee and I went out with the cast a couple of times for food and drinks. Once we were rejected from a nightclub because Lindsay Lohan was partying inside. Helen Dallimore, the West End’s original Glinda, and a new, dear friend of Dee’s, looked at the bouncer and said something like, “Lindsay Lohan? Pfft. Do you know who this is?” and gestured toward Dee, at which point Dee got embarrassed and we moved on. Dee and I spent a lovely afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery together. We shared tea and scones and clotted cream with a view of Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben. We talked, a lot. Our lives were complicated. Things were good in London, but she and Taye were dealing with the challenges of a long-distance relationship. I loved my job and my boys but was hopping from one unsuccessful relationship to the next. The good and the difficult were ceaselessly twisted together. Rarely was there a moment of pure ease or joy. Yet we both had so much to be grateful for, including the fact that—even if only briefly—we were together.
When it was time for me to go home, I packed up my suitcase. Could it have been a more glaring symbol of my relationship with Dee? I wondered. It was, after all, baggage. It was a symbol of every time I sought Dee’s attention or approval, when I rehearsed with her for my first audition with Mr. Roper, when I sat with the Rent script on my lap, unable to interpret its metaphors, when I sang “Rainbow Connection” to Avery and she overheard. That monstrosity of a suitcase was wedged between us. It symbolized the time it took Dee to return phone calls, the miles between Denver International Airport and LAX or LaGuardia, and the distance between the stage and my seat. It represented our caretaking dynamic, the residue of her resentment and my shame. That suitcase was a cataclysmic reminder that with Dee I was the little sister, I’d always be the little sister. Whether I liked it or not, I couldn’t help but play the part. Against all evidence of my independence and competence, despite Dee’s admiration and love, I’d always feel littler than her. What is it about family dynamics that they persist no matter how we evolve or our lives change around us?
As if that bag weren’t hard or heavy enough, it was goddamn green! Not just a green reminiscent of Peter Pan’s ragged clothes, or Elphaba’s skin, but green like envy. There was lots one could envy about Dee—a standing ovation, for instance, had to be pretty fuckin’ great—but in the end, what I envied was the way she always seemed to be the strong sister, the successful sister, the save-the-day sister, the sister I rarely had the chance to be.
I wanted that chance.
PART IV
LETTING GO
Lesson 13
HOW TO LIVE
Life was full during the 2008–09 school year. The boys were growing up. Avery was ten and Jacob was six—he’d recently decided he preferred to be called Jake. I had a few years of teaching under my belt. I’d moved on from misspelling “pennies” to this:
“No, it’s not “h-a-p-p-y-n-e-s-s,” one of four multiple-choice options. “You have to drop the ‘y’ and add an ‘i.’” Then I wrote the correct spelling on the overhead projector for my class and said, “See, ‘ha-PEE-nis’” as I ran my pen under the word, emphasizing the second syllable. The giggles started immediately and I realized my mistake, but it was too late. Garret, with whom I couldn’t get away with anything, embellished my mishap: “Miss Mentzel just said ‘happy penis,’” and everyone laughed. What is my problem with penises! Like any skilled teacher, I sent my class straight out to recess instead of continuing the lesson. I could barely keep a straight face and didn’t know how much longer I could behave like the adult in the room.
I was also no longer a seasoned online single. I’d met match.com’s Mark—he “appreciates good grammar and sweaty sex.” He had provided ample photos, one with his twelve-year-old son on a San Francisco hill with skateboards, and another shooting pool with a cigarette hanging from his lips. I wasn’t interested in dating a smoker, but something about that cigarette was sexy.
He showed up in my driveway with flowers, a gift bag filled with socks, and his infectious smile. The socks were a reference to one of our phone conversations during which I’d been on a fruitless search in my house for a pair of matching socks without holes. Mark was a classic “tall, dark, and handsome,” and he wore a wool cap. During dinner I couldn’t help but ask what the cap was hiding. I might as well have introduced myself as Cara the jaded bitch. Fortunately, Mark had a better impression of me. He grabbed the bill of his hat, lifted it a few inches over his head, and then ran his fingers through his thinning hair with the other hand.
“Just a little male-pattern baldness,” he admitted, then flashed a grin that filled my stomach with butterflies.
Dee kept busy, too. She’d played a supporting role in a film called Enchanted. She recorded “A Hero Comes Home” for the end credits of Angelina Jolie’s blockbuster Beowulf. She released a new album, I Stand, on which she sings one of my favorite songs, one she wrote with Glen Ballard called “My Own Worst Enemy.” It’s edgy and has a Native American drum beat that makes it impossible not to bounce your head. She toured with the album, entertaining fans with her charisma, disarming sense of humor, and anecdotes from her days as a wedding-band singer. She also performed with Josh Groban in Chess in Concert, where she got to wear a black bustier-type top with black slacks and looked as hot—though classier—as she did back in her “Take Me or Leave Me” pleather-pants days.
It was sometime around Chess in Concert and Happy Penis that Dee called me.
“Hey, Sis. Can you go somewhere no one can hear you?” she said.
“Sure,” I told her and walked from the kitchen up into my room. “I’m here. What’s up?” I took a seat on the edge of my bed.
“I think I might be pregnant.”
“Really?” I said, my voice swinging up at the end. She and Taye had been trying.
“Yeah, but I need to know what you think ’cause I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause the window of opportunity was pretty small. Taye and I were barely in the same place last month.”
“It only takes one time, Dee,” which of course we both knew, but I knew all too well—I swear I could laugh too hard in front of a man and end up pregnant.
“I know, but still … am I ready for a baby? Will I be able to balance motherhood and my career? Do you think it’s the right time? What if I have a girl and she calls me Mommie Dearest?” The sudden influx of doubt was a clear indication of her racing heart and the nearness of motherhood.
I laughed. “Just don’t show her the fuckin’ movie.”
She laughed. “Good point.”
“Dee, you’re ready. You’re going to be an amazing mother.” I paused and then asked what I deemed more pertinent questions. “Have you taken a pregnancy test? What’s the stick say?”
“Yeah, they all came up positive.”
I always purchased the double-pack of supermarket pregnancy tests—one positive or negative dipstick had never been convincing enough for me. But I wasn’t sure what Dee meant by “they all came up positive.”
“How many did you take?” I probed.
“Five, I think.”
I stifled a chuckle. “And they all came up positive?”
“Yeah,” she answered, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud a little. I was familiar with the denial and shock of even a planned pregnancy and I was glad that Dee had sought my advice. But it didn’t take an obstetrician to know she was pregnant.
“What do you think?” she asked again.
“I think congratulations are in order,” I said, and then I squealed, “You’re gonna be a mommy!”
I was as elated about Dee’s pregnancy as I would have been about my own. Part of what made it so exciting was my hope that in motherhood there was potential for a closer relationship with her. I knew things she couldn’t know yet. She’d look to me for guidance. She’d come to understand the choices I’d made: home birth, co-sleeping, maybe even kiss-feeding. And we’d finally be mothers together.
Even six-year-old Jacob—Jake—and ten-year-old Avery had knowledge they wanted to impart to their aunt Dee Dee and uncle Taye. They starred in a gripping how-to video that we filmed as a pregnancy gift, using Jake’s teddy bear as a prop. Part I: How to Change a Baby’s Diaper; Part II: How to Hush a Crying Baby; and my favorite, Part III: How to Feed a Baby. For Part III Jake held the teddy bear against his chest and Avery said, “Always remember to put your boob back when you finish.” Clearly, Avery recalled a choice maternal moment I must have forgotten.
But after that initial phone call from Dee about the pregnancy tests, we didn’t talk as much as I would have liked. I didn’t have the chance to coach her through her first-trimester nausea or to explain why it was better to take a liquid iron supplement than a pill. We didn’t discuss perineal massage, yoga stretches, or helpful meditation to prepare for birth.
I was thrilled when Dee invited Mom and me for a weekend with her at a spa. I learned that she had a doula, a birth companion and advocate, and that she’d considered home birth but ultimately opted to have the baby naturally in a hospital. I remember being envious of the doula, as if my experience with birth and my status as Dee’s sister made me better qualified for the role and I’d been slighted. At the same time, I was relieved that Dee would have someone she trusted to support her, especially in a hospital. My hurt feelings seemed selfish and unreasonable—I lived in another state, for crying out loud—so I cast them aside like I did with the other less-than-honorable thoughts and feelings that sometimes wormed their way into my consciousness.
Dee and Taye learned they were having a little boy, and the summer before he was born, they rented a house on the beach in Malibu where they could enjoy the final stretch of couplehood before parenthood. Mark and I joined them there for a long weekend. It was a special couple of days. Dee met Mark for the first time and I got to feel my nephew squirm about in her belly. Then, at Dee’s request, I photographed her very pregnant silhouette in the light of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the beach house.
When I returned to Boulder I made a habit of wearing my phone in the back pocket of my jeans and made sure I was prepared to bolt out of town in an instant. I’d already written notes for a substitute and made plans for Jake and Avery so that I could leave them home and be in Los Angeles with Mom within hours.
My planning paid off. The call came in the middle of the school day. Dee was in labor.
Within a few hours my ass sat comfortably in front of a tray table at thirty-five thousand feet while Dee labored in a hospital bed. It seemed unfair that I should be sipping sparkling water with lime and enjoying a break from children when Dee was a few states away and breathing through contractions. I empathized with her, but I wasn’t worried about her. Dee was fierce. Birth was intense, but it was no match for my sister.
At some point during the flight, I realized I had a big, stupid grin on my face, but was talking to no one and staring off at nothing. I’d remembered a babysitting experience Dee and I shared back when she was still Dina. Back then I was too young to babysit alone, but with my big sister, I could capitalize on her age and she could capitalize on my domestic strengths, like my diaper-changing expertise.
A gorgeous little boy named Aviv lived in our neighborhood. He was Indian and had skin like caramel. His eyes were so brown I could barely distinguish his irises from his pupils, an attribute that accentuated their roundness and made me want to squeeze him like a puppy. He and his parents lived around the corner from us at the base of a large hill.
One night, when Aviv was about two years old, Dina and I babysat together. She was thirteen at the time and I was about ten years old. Aviv was potty training. His parents gave us a rundown on the potty-training protocol, which was, essentially, to check in with him a lot and get him to the potty quickly if he said he had to go.
It was mid-evening and we were all on the living room floor with a wooden puzzle when Aviv said, “Go potty.” Aviv’s bathroom was upstairs, so Dina squeezed his pudgy hand like a wad of Silly Putty and started up the stairs with him. “Go potty,” he repeated, “go potty.”
“Go, go, go,” I said, waving my hand behind them as if pushing the air would move them along more quickly. Dina scooped Aviv up into her arms and started jogging up the stairs. I followed behind, taking two steps at a time. In our race to get him to the toilet, we overlooked the step stool and cushioned potty seat with built-in deflector that leaned against the bathtub. Instead, we sat him directly on the standard ceramic toilet seat, where he gripped the sides tightly and tried not to fall in. Dina bent down on her knees in front of him.
If Aviv had needed a French braid or pigtails, we were the girls to do it; a lanyard cobra-stitched bracelet or beads threaded through his shoelaces, we were the girls to do it; a wannabe-Broadway-star performance of “It’s the Hard-knock Life,” we were the girls to do it. But help him pee on the potty … not so much.
And so, with a smile full of teeth like mini Chiclets and his penis at a ninety-degree angle to the pot, he proudly began urinating everywhere except the bowl—including, but not limited to, the opposite wall, the floor, part of the tub, and, of course, us—especially Dina.
“Ahhh!” I shouted.
“Tip him over!” Dina shouted back, and she steadied him on the potty as I gently pushed his shoulders toward his knees to redirect the stream into the bowl. He tilted his head up at us, his earlier smile now a small dash above his chin. We all froze in place and listened to his last bit of tinkle hit the water and I stared at a streak of urine across the front of Dina’s gray sweatshirt. Then we helped him down and he stood before us with his Smurf underwear and pj’s scrunched around his ankles. Dina and I looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Aviv’s little Lincoln Log–size penis was the first we’d ever seen and we were two sisters who knew how to do only one thing when we finished peeing—wipe. I shrugged and then handed Dina a single square of toilet paper. She looked at Aviv’s puzzled expression and then tapped the droplet of pee off the tip of his penis like it was a bug that might bite. Afterward, we cleaned up and put his nighttime diaper on, wrapping the sticky tabs across his belly with great relief.
Dina and I said nothing to Aviv’s parents when they arrived home that night, but we laughed under the streetlamps all the way back to our house, and again as we took the stairs up to our bedrooms. And over thirty years later, on an airplane, I was still laughing.
It was hard to believe how much time had passed since that experience with Aviv. Hard to believe that I was a seasoned parent, well-schooled in the ways of potty training little boys. And that Dee would soon be, too. It was even harder to believe that two sisters from Long Island were about to be outnumbered by our male offspring, and wouldn’t be painting a little girl’s fingernails or pinning buns into place for ballet class anytime soon.
I had barely stepped through the doorway to Dee’s delivery room when she spotted me and said, “We have to talk. You did th
at twice?”
She caught me off guard. I knew I’d be proud of her when I saw her for the first time as a mother, I was already proud of her. But I didn’t know that she’d be proud of me. Her acknowledgment made me feel like I’d achieved a higher ranking in her book, as a woman and as a sister. I nodded my head in confirmation. “Yeah, twice.”
Dee lay in the bed, her brown hair pulled back into a loose knot. A slightly exposed breast. A glare of shock still in her eyes—birth can do that—and her child cradled in her arms. I walked toward them until I could see the baby better. His hair was slick and black, his lips plump and heart-shaped like his mommy’s. His dark eyes peeked at me through swollen slits, with the essence of both innocence and enlightenment. It was easy to love Walker Diggs.
Dee and I finally had motherhood in common; and a few hours later, as I watched her nurse Walker, I wondered if we’d had more in common than I’d realized. If maybe we’d shared a strength I’d overlooked because I’d struggled to see it in myself.
Mom and I stayed for a couple of days and then boarded a flight home from L.A. I sat down in my aisle seat while she got situated across the way. As I used my foot to shove my backpack a few more inches under the seat in front of me, I caught Mom eyeing my seat belt.
“Is it tight enough?” she asked as she reached across the aisle and tugged on the strap a couple of times for me.
“Mom, what the fuck? I’m thirty-five years old. I know how to fasten my own seat belt.”
“Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “Once a mother, always a mother.”
A gentleman squeezed past us toward the back of the plane. Then Mom leaned toward me.
“You know, I can’t help but think about you when I’m in a hospital with little babies.” She didn’t have to say why. I knew she was referring to those weeks I’d fought The Whoop.
“I know, Mommy.” She loved that even as adults, Dee and I still called her Mommy sometimes. Every now and then I did it on purpose to make her happy. “I look at little babies, how vulnerable they are, and I can’t imagine how unbearable that time must have been for you.”
