by Cara Mentzel
“You always think about that,” Mom said, “the vulnerability. I know I was overprotective sometimes when you were growing up—”
“Or now,” I interrupted. After all, she’d just tightened my seat belt.
“But I hope you know I was overprotective because I was afraid. It was my fear. My trauma. It wasn’t because I thought you couldn’t handle stuff.”
“I never thought that, Mom.”
“But you should know, Cara. People die from pertussis. Babies died from pertussis. Especially thirty or forty years ago.”
“I know, Mom.”
“No, look at me,” she insisted with a new shade of seriousness and teary eyes—she could never talk about The Whoop without crying.
“What?”
“You. Lived.”
I don’t know what came over me. I started to cry, full-on scrunched-up face, ugly crying. I couldn’t help myself. People were still moving about the plane. A flight attendant was walking by, shutting the doors of full overhead compartments. And I was having A Moment.
“I never thought you were weak,” Mom continued. “Quite the opposite. You were a fighter, a survivor.” And then she said it again: “You lived, Cara. There’s nothing weak about you.”
“Thanks, Mommy, I know,” I said, but I was wholly unconvincing, given the crying and all. Part of me must not have known, not have identified as a fighter or a survivor, because those tears came from a hole so deep inside me I’d long forgotten it was there. In that hole I was still a baby:
Cara, so little, so weak.
Cara, so fragile.
Cara, who needs to be rescued.
Mom took my hand from across the aisle and gave it a squeeze, and I regained my composure.
Lesson 14
HOW TO MAKE A MARK (OR MARRY ONE)
In 2010, Dee was invited to perform at the White House as part of their music series, A Broadway Celebration. I proudly announced on Facebook, “My sister’s singing at the White House!” and then, to my horror, I realized the post had suffered an unfortunate autocorrect and it appeared that Dee would be singing at the “whore house”—another kind of gig altogether. Around that time, Dee also scored a role in the popular television show Glee. Fans of both the show and Dee noted the resemblance between her and one of the show’s stars, Rachel, played by Lea Michele. Dee was given a recurring role as Rachel’s mother, Shelby Corcoran. As exciting as it was for Dee to be a part of a television series where she could act and sing and still have time to be a mother to Walker, being cast as the mother of an actress fifteen years her junior stung a little bit—or maybe a lot.
While Glee fans saw a resemblance between Dee and Lea, it wasn’t long before Walker noticed the resemblance between Dee and me. He was almost three. I hadn’t seen him nearly enough in those first three years and I missed him. I went to visit them in their home in Los Angeles. Walker and I were sitting on the living room floor with a large sampling of rubber dinosaurs. He looked up at me with his dark eyes, long lashes, and broad brow, cocked his head to the side a bit, and then said, “You look like my mom.”
I smiled. “That’s ’cause we’re sisters,” I told him. “You look like your mommy too.”
“I do?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“Yep. You do.”
He smiled.
That was also the year, 2011, that Mark and I celebrated a Late Christmas together, the Christmas we have every other year when our kids get back from celebrating Real Christmas with our exes. We sat around our tree with Mom, the boys, and Mark’s teenage son, Oscar, among the crumpled paper and collapsed boxes and Styrofoam. Mark asked everyone for their attention, then lowered himself onto one knee and professed his love for me. He withdrew a small black box from his pocket while explaining that he’d ordered a ring that wasn’t ready yet—not a diamond, because I didn’t want a diamond—and also, because he wanted to propose during the holidays, that he’d gone to the store to buy a temporary ring, an understudy to fill in in the absence of the real one. He lifted the lid and revealed a beautiful emerald-cut amethyst. Before I could respond, he scrambled to pull another ring out of his pocket, explaining that he couldn’t decide which temporary engagement ring to get me so he bought me two and I could choose my favorite and he liked the funkier one with the rubies, but thought I might prefer the more traditionally cut amethyst, but also that I didn’t have to choose, I could keep both and that would make him very happy.
I loved that my typically suave man was fumbling and reduced to rambling.
“Wait, what?” I said. Was this a proposal or a magic trick? Would he pull another ring from his ear? Was there another up his sleeve? I wanted to say yes to his proposal, but it had been a full minute or so since he’d gotten down on his knee and I couldn’t remember if he’d even asked me to marry him yet. Mark slowed down and took a breath.
“You’re my world,” he said. “Marry me?”
“Of course,” I answered and kissed him.
Then I wiped a happy tear and added, “I’m keeping both rings.”
A few weeks later, I had a triumvirate of engagement rings: a ruby, an amethyst, and a green sapphire. I wasn’t just engaged, I was really engaged. I was lounging on the couch, my feet up on the coffee table, admiring my new sapphire in the noon light when Dee called with another proposal I couldn’t refuse.
“I have three shows to do on a cruise ship. It’ll be like forty-five hundred gay men. Wanna come?”
Duh.
In February 2012, I overheard someone say the Allure of the Seas was the largest cruise ship in the world. I’d never been on a cruise ship and I’d only seen a few from a distance off the shores of Mexican beaches. But as I stood at the Allure’s side it seemed to lie on the ocean like Superman had tipped over the Empire State Building and set it afloat. It was preposterous that any amount of water could support its brawn.
The trip would be short. Dee and I would hop aboard in Cozumel for the last two and a half days of the cruise’s seven-day tour, giving Dee just enough time to rehearse and perform. Those two days were busy and spent largely apart. Dee had shows scheduled; she needed to conduct business, rehearse, warm up, find her sea legs—it’s hard to stand in platform heels when you’ve only just boarded a cruise ship. I was equally busy, overloaded with problem-solving tasks. I had to figure out how to eat using a fifteen-piece place setting, how to determine the time zone—easier said than done—how to use the bathroom at the spa when both rooms were designated Men’s, where to look when taking the shortcut through the poolside Dick Deck, and how to walk from one end of the ship to the other during the Speedo contest without accidentally swiping too many hard bodies, or, conversely, ensuring that I swiped every possible hard body (on this point, I felt conflicted). I was busy.
On the last full day on the ship, Dee and I finally had an uninterrupted hour together that wasn’t spent sleeping. The spa arranged for a private steam room where Dee could warm up her voice. It turned out to be less like a room and more like a shower. The shower was tiled in mosaics the color of the Caribbean, and attached to the wall on either side hung a large white chair that struck me as a disparate cross between the chair Jane Jetson would sit in while watching TV, and a urinal. We giggled a little, trying to figure out how it all worked, and finally sat down in our towels.
I spoke up quickly. I told Dee I’d been depressed. Even with Mark and the boys and the way my life was coming together, sometimes I still felt distant.
“Atheism suits Mark well,” I told her. “Me? Not so much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he grew up Baptist, pretty much Footloose-style. No rock music and stuff. He was always trying to figure out God’s will instead of his own. For him, atheism is liberating. For me, it’s lonely. My spirituality was like … this is gonna sound so corny…”
“Just say it.”
“It was like a witness, a kind one. Then there was all that blood when I hemorrhaged with Avery and all the craziness with Jon and
now it’s gone.”
“You don’t have to go from believing in God to believing in nothing, Cara,” she said, and I knew she was trying to help—ever the big sister. But I realized that I hadn’t brought up such a serious subject because I wanted her to help me. I brought it up because I wanted her to know me.
We always told people we were close. If that was true, wouldn’t she know my deepest thoughts and feelings? Living in different states, Dee and I had to work to have meaningful experiences together, like lots of siblings living at a distance from each other had to contend with. But there were other aspects of our relationship that weren’t so common, and that added to my sense she didn’t know me as well as I wanted her to. In magazines, on television, the Internet (I googled her several times a week to see what was new), and movie screens, I could see Dee and hear about her life—albeit mostly her professional life—far more than she got to see or hear about me. It wasn’t like I could broadcast my classroom once a week and she could watch and say, “Great job teaching Colorado history today, Sis! I had no idea top hats were made out of beaver pelts.” So sometimes our relationship felt lopsided. I wondered if I knew her better than she knew me. I think that’s why, in an odd little shower somewhere in the depths of the Allure of the Seas, I attempted to close the gap a bit. What better way to do that than with a lighthearted conversation about God and depression?
“I can’t force myself to believe in something just because it makes me feel better,” I told her. “I wish I could.”
“I know. I get that.”
“I feel like my idealism and spirituality were bound together, and as one eroded, so did the other.”
“Well, things got pretty ugly for you. You were in survival mode,” she said and then paused. Her hair was soaking wet and she adjusted her ponytail. “You know how much I admire you and how you handled all that, right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“You’ve always been such a wise soul.”
“Oh, whatever. Pfft.” I shook my head, unable to accept the compliment. It was sweet of her to say and made me think of a song she’d written for me. About six years earlier she wrote “Rise Up.” When she performed it in concert she told the audience about a prophet named Devorah, whom she described as a judge, a general, and a poet—the mother of Israel. Then she told them about the time she overheard me sing to Avery, and how my voice was beautiful. She told them that I’d had a rough time and was a single mom. And that to her, I was the poet, the warrior, and the mother. “Sing to the world, my sister,” she sang, “rise up”—I cry every time I watch it on YouTube. The crazy thing was, I didn’t remember ever seeing Dee perform it live, but she was as certain that she’d performed the song for me during one of her concerts as I was certain that she hadn’t.
Dee continued. “Cara, you’re the first person I call when I need advice. Remember Howard Zabinski? You’re the one I called when he broke up with me. You’re the one I called when I thought I was pregnant.”
“I think maybe my brain has selective memory or something. I mostly remember the shit about me needing you, not you needing me.” I wondered if Dee had performed “Rise Up” for me after all and I’d simply forgotten about it, just like I’d forgotten about Howard Zabinski. Why is it that the times when I felt most diminished made sticky memories and the times when I felt valued made slippery ones? It hardly seemed fair.
“Well, you’re the one I call,” Dee repeated and took a swig from her water bottle. When she set it back down she smiled and said, “But now you have to get the fuck out of here, ’cause I need to warm up.” We laughed.
We’d been in the steam for over forty-five minutes when I left Dee and decided that the closest thing to God on a cruise ship had to be an endless view of the ocean.
I dragged my dehydrated, starving ass (thanks to Ship Time, Dee and I had overslept and missed breakfast that morning) up the elevator to the pool deck. I was determined to have a piña colada with the theme to The Love Boat playing in my head. I arrived to a slate sky that—had I been at home—would have been an excuse for a movie and Raisinets. But even with gray skies, I was able to fulfill my cruise-ship dream with a couple of added perks—cigarettes and drag queens. I bummed a cigarette, downed my drink in under fifteen minutes (a personal record), enjoyed the fashion and makeup of a couple of gorgeous drag queens, and ordered a second beverage.
Just moments after ordering my second drink, the fun came to an abrupt end. A cold sweat made its way across my face and down my back, my ears started to ring, my vision darkened along the edges, and my drink appeared to sit at the end of a tunnel. I couldn’t keep my head up and so I let it fall to the bar, thinking, Oh my God, I’m the slovenly drunk in this story. With my forehead against the bar I visualized the path back to my room. I needed to trek across the pool deck to the elevators, get in the elevator, hold myself together for the short trip to my floor, then make it down the hallway to my room, where it would finally be safe to collapse. But first I needed to mind my manners and take the drink the bartender had just made for me, lest he be insulted or, worse, learn of my embarrassing condition. My drink was filled beyond the rim, nothing but surface tension preventing the imminent spill. It jostled in my hand as I used what little focus I had to steady it. My mantra—“Elevator, fifth floor, hallway, bed. Elevator, fifth floor, hallway, bed.” I made it to the elevator doors. No one else was there. My head was a bowling ball and my legs stood no chance beneath its weight. I slid down the adjacent wall and onto the floor. Then, I vomited so vehemently that I also lost control of my bladder. It was mutiny.
Feeling about as far from the “strong, successful, save-the-day sister” as I could possibly be, but also feeling a hair better after vomiting, I climbed to my feet. I backed away from the puddle of vomit and the curiously damp spot off to the side of it. I folded my arms and looked off in another direction. Soon enough, a few people collected around the elevators. One casually noticed the drink and the vomit. I hoped he attributed it to the late party the night before and fixed my eyes on the shut elevator doors of the slowest … elevator … in … the … history of elevators. When it finally arrived I pushed the button for the fifth floor, and secretly hoped that my jeans were dark enough to render the wet spot that spread down the center of my thighs undetectable. When the doors opened I power walked myself back to my room, where I peeled off my pants and flopped onto the bed. I briefly debated placing an anonymous call to the operator requesting a “cleanup on deck 8” but gravity was unrelenting—I couldn’t even turn my head. All I felt was the coolness of the sheets against my body.
I stared at the ceiling and had a paranoid vision of my semiconscious moments on the floor near the elevator. I imagined a video camera like a big eyeball high on the wall recording my episode and a small secret room filled with a group of shirtless men with waxed chests and six-packs, all watching me on the screen. One of them says, “Holy shit! Is that Idina Menzel’s sister?” Another one adds, “Ew! She threw up. And left it there.”
And yet another one adds, “Hey! I wonder if she can sing.”
I lay on the bed, grateful. I’d been lucky to fly under the radar that day. After all, I was a rarity on the ship. One-of-a-kind. A female lightweight with a weak bladder and a famous sister. A famous sister! I remembered that Dee was rehearsing on a stage somewhere in that huge ship and I started laughing. How different our afternoons had been. She was preparing to be glamorous and the center of attention, and I was in bed, sleeping off one beverage and one cigarette—cheap date—and relieved that no one was watching a recording of my indignity.
I was surprisingly reflective, given my condition. There was something to be gleaned from the previous two hours of my life—the conversation with Dee in the steam room and my drunken catastrophe on the pool deck. It’s true that anonymity had been a blessing for me, but ironically, it was feeling seen—even at my worst—that was precisely what I wanted more of in my relationship with Dee and what I missed when I no longer felt a d
ivine presence in my life. When it came to spirituality, there was something about having a gentle witness that made me feel more significant and gave weight to my existence. Instead, even with the good fortune of a job I loved, family and friends I loved, and the ability to laugh at myself—which I was exceptionally good at—I felt like a ghost sometimes. The kind that floats around without even holographic feet on the ground. I felt like I was writing my life with an invisible pen, going through the motions, but leaving no mark—except near the top floor elevator of the Allure of the Seas, of course. And even that mark was temporary!
In some ways, Dee had the opposite problem. Parts of her life were documented and couldn’t be erased if she wanted them to be. There were songs she’d released that she no longer liked. Hairstyles immortalized in magazines she’d prefer to forget. And off-the-cuff statements she’d made in interviews that she couldn’t retract. I remember being with Dee at her apartment in Manhattan after she performed “Defying Gravity” on David Letterman’s show. We were watching a recording of her performance on her huge television. “Oh my god! My eyes are crossed. Do my eyes cross when I sing? Are they always like that?” and she paused the screen so that the two of us were staring at a close-up of her green face, wide-open mouth, and eyes ever so slightly … crossed.
When it came to fame and relative anonymity, Dee and I were occasionally able to empathize with each other. Once, we even agreed to trade places for an evening. It was at our cousin Evan’s wedding back in 2007. Evan, who, as a teen, enjoyed too much Manischewitz on the high holy holidays and played a decent game of air hockey on the table in his basement. He was all grown up and the last of us to walk down the aisle. I’d already been married and divorced, Dee and Taye were hitched, and Evan’s brother, Andrew, had married Andrea years earlier.
Dee, Taye, and I drove to Long Island together from the city. We hadn’t seen Dad’s side of the family much since Grandma died. We talked about our expectations of the wedding. Not the bride’s dress or the flower arrangements. Not the ceremony, or steak or fish, but how the evening would unfold socially. Dee didn’t look forward to having to account for the last two years of her career, of lower-profile projects—no starring roles or platinum albums—and having to answer tactless questions about why she hadn’t been on the Today show for a while. “What are you up to these days?” people would ask. For my part, I wasn’t looking forward to the more banal, courtesy questions about the weather in Colorado, but hoped someone might ask about the boys. Uncle Marty still liked to remark about how “big I’d grown,” so there’d probably be that, too.
