by Cara Mentzel
Our extended family was always well intentioned, but more often than not their interest was directed at Dee and I felt peripheral, more like a sidekick. Dee knew how I felt and it upset her. She didn’t want any part in making me feel bad, but she couldn’t help it. With her at my side, people seemed less interested in me, even disinterested in me. Their attempts at conversation bordered on obligatory. On our way to the wedding, neither Dee nor I was interested in playing our parts, not the superstar, not the sidekick.
“We should totally pretend to be each other tonight,” Dee said from behind the steering wheel. “You can field questions about what the hell I’ve been up to—heck, just make shit up. And I’ll talk about the boys and the mountains.”
“You think anyone would fall for it?” I asked. I couldn’t tell if she was serious.
“Who cares?”
In our thirties we looked more like sisters than ever, but we were far from spitting images. We shared similar bone structure, strong cheekbones, broad eyebrows, dark hair—hers was a little darker—and light eyes. But we also resembled each other because of our smiles and our demeanor. We carried ourselves similarly and during casual conversation we often shared similar mannerisms, intonations, and expressions. Furthermore, we were both prone to malapropisms and had a self-defecating—whoops, self-deprecating!—sense of humor. It was safe to assume Dee and I were related but clear that we weren’t identical twins. To accentuate our differences at the wedding, Dee would have the beautiful Taye Diggs on her arm, whereas I would attend single—another possible topic for discussion that I didn’t look forward to. It would be another year before I met Mark.
Dee and I continued to joke about trading places. Taye thought it was a genius idea. He loved practical jokes. Dee would pretend she was me, I’d pretend I was her, wouldn’t it be fun? With his slick suit and bow tie, Taye egged us on (or, as I used to say, edged us on).
True to form, early on the day of Evan’s wedding, Dee took me shopping. She bought me a Diane von Furstenberg shimmery gold minidress that made me feel elegant and sassy, like my boots were made for walkin’. I didn’t know the difference between Diane von Furstenberg and Diane Keaton at the time, but in that dress, with my hair pulled off my face and knotted high on my head, I felt ready to face Long Island and my relatives.
As the guests at the cocktail party waited for the reception doors at the temple to open, a vaguely familiar relative approached me. I should have known her name. I was certain I’d shared a table with her at Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur, or Passover at some point in my life. I held a glass of champagne that sparkled like the gold in my dress.
“I-dina!” she exclaimed with an emphasis on the phonetically long “i” sound, as in Long Island. She wore foundation that was a couple of shades too dark—more like a tanning solution than makeup. Mascara was caked on her lashes and left remnants above her lid and beneath her bottom lashes (no doubt from removing her glasses to put on her makeup). Her lipstick suffered a similar fate, applied beyond the lines like the crayon in a toddler’s coloring book. I guessed that the vision that made it difficult for her to apply her makeup was the same vision that led her to mistake me for Dee.
Before I could stop her, her mouth was off and running: “How are you, dawling? I saw you in Wicked. You were marvelous. I went to the show with your second cousins and your grandfather’s brother’s cousin and we had dinner at this place on the corner and it was all right but we went backstage and you were so gracious and thank you so much for…” I didn’t interrupt, though I probably should have. I hadn’t intended to deceive her, but I knew my silence was akin to lying. I felt guilty, but the coincidence was too perfect and I thought Dee would find it funny, maybe even commend me for having the balls to go through with our plan.
The woman rambled on in her starstruck excitement and I lost track of the conversation. Instead, it occurred to me that this must be what it felt like to be Dee. A person stands in front of you, gushes over you, and you wish you could remember her name. And after a little while your smile starts to feel stale because you’re tired of the subject matter, but you’re grateful for the love because you know it’s partly that love that made you successful. I listened with a sense of Dee’s struggle. She could never take a day off. She couldn’t attend the wedding, or for that matter go out for dinner in New York City, or grab a coffee at Starbucks, without having to be on her best behavior. I realized that Dee didn’t have a choice. She had to attend the wedding as Idina Menzel, Broadway star, and couldn’t simply be Evan’s cousin.
Still, I drew a parallel to my own life. In my own way, and obviously on a smaller scale—like a microscopic one—I was famous. At Foothill Elementary, kids shouted my name out the bus windows as they arrived in the morning, and ran to me with big hugs in the hallways throughout the day. I couldn’t go to the grocery store in my pajamas, sneak a rare cigarette on the Pearl Street Mall on a Saturday night, or pick my nose at a Stop sign. Someone might recognize Ms. Mentzel.
The woman was still talking. I snapped out of my stupor. I nodded intermittently and squeezed in a few spontaneous thank-you’s. Eventually, we parted ways. I gave her a big hug and one last thank-you.
Half an hour later, Dee and I were back together. It’s no surprise really that the woman approached us and turned to Dee: “And who are you, dawling?” The jig was up!
“I’m Idina,” she answered. Then, of course, the woman said, “No, she’s Idina…” and then stared at me through her clumped mascara and searched my face for confirmation. Instead, she saw the truth in my guilty grin.
“I’m Cara,” I admitted. “So sorry. This is my sister, Idina.”
“You played a trick on me,” the woman said and generously cracked a forgiving smile. Then, before I could feel too bad, she looked at Dee and began all over again: “How are you, dawling? I saw you in Wicked…”
Later on in the evening, the bride asked Dee if she’d be willing to sing a song with the band. Dee wasn’t sure how to respond. If I had a voice like Dee’s I imagined I’d sing anywhere and everywhere, but Dee didn’t feel the same way. She wanted to be generous, but she also wanted to be a normal guest, a normal guest like me. I was standing with Dee near a table with a small numbered table tent when she turned to me.
“Hey, Idina,” she said in her best Long Island accent. “Why don’t you get up there and do it?”
“Ha. Ha.” If only I could.
Another time, instead of pretending to be Dee, one of her fans pretended to be me. And I didn’t like it. Not too long after my fiasco in London with the green suitcase, I received an e-mail from my old boyfriend Ken.
“Congratulations on your wedding. I had no idea you remarried.”
As I was then very single, you can imagine my surprise.
“I had no idea either!” I wrote him back. “What made you think I remarried?”
Apparently, I had a Myspace profile. I searched my name and sure enough, there I was.
To my horror, in the top left corner there was a photograph of my sister with my mom and me, our hair blown out stick-straight at the same salon, on either side of her, taken back when Dee was starring in Rent. To the right, equally horrifying, were a few erroneous facts about Cara Mentzel, including my marital status, that I didn’t have any children, and that I lived in New York. Below the basic profile was a squat little paragraph inundated with exclamation points. I winced as I read, “My sister Idina Menzel is the coolest sister evah!!! We’re totally gonna hang out soon … I’m just sooooo proud of her!!!!!!!” I knew that if there was a way to dot the exclamation points with hearts, this imposter would have hearted each one. This page was public. Not only could ex-boyfriends view the profile, but my students and their parents could see it, too. Moreover, my sister might see it. I didn’t want Dee to think I would exploit her like that. (I also didn’t want her to think I was a shit writer.)
There were a few more pictures of Dee and me pasted off to the side of the text. Some were the very images
I had on my fridge. With my hand over my eyes like this was of Nightmare on Elm Street proportion, I examined the rest of the page through my fingers. I recognized the writing as the fiction of a young teen, clearly a big fan of Dee’s. While this teenager (let’s assume she was female) had been diligent about finding actual photos of my family, she felt no obligation to tell the truth in her writing. She didn’t care about my divorce, Avery or Jake, or that I was an elementary school teacher. She’d taken my name and rewritten my life as if nothing about me was important except for my sister. As if I didn’t matter. She didn’t want to be an exhausted single mom tinkering around on match.com at 1:00 A.M. with a bag of popcorn. She wanted to be Idina’s sister.
I was hurt, hurt by some stranger who was probably half my age with Rent and Wicked posters on her walls, and maybe even Dee’s signature on the cover of a playbill. Regardless of the writer’s age or innocent intentions, my space—or Myspace—had been violated. I was pissed. I wanted to call this girl up and say, “You wanna be me? You gotta take the divorce and the bills, and the laundry, and the stomach flu, and the piles of grading. You don’t get to pick and choose what part of Cara Mentzel works for you!”
My hurt was real, but I knew I was overreacting and that I shouldn’t take the page personally. I understood Dee’s overzealous fan. I knew what it felt like to be an Idina fan, and what it felt like to want to be closer to her. Still, I couldn’t leave the page online. I had a professional life, one that—among other things—included teaching kids how to use periods and commas and the occasional exclamation point.
I was trying to figure out how to reach customer service at Myspace when I noticed a chat function at the bottom of “my” Myspace page. Fraudulent Cara was chatting with Dee! My stomach did a flip. I didn’t want Dee to accidentally disclose personal information to an imposter.
I called Dee in a frenzy and explained the situation. I assured her that I would never share personal information online. She interrupted me.
“That’s not me,” she said calmly.
“What do you mean that’s not you?” I asked.
“Whatever Myspace page you’re looking at, obviously isn’t you, and it isn’t me either. It’s someone pretending to be you, talking to someone pretending to me.”
“No. Stop it,” I said.
“Really.”
I raised my voice in astonishment. “Who would do that? Why would someone do that?” I wasn’t sure which was more inconceivable, that two frauds would knowingly engage in conversation in character or that I was so naïve I actually believed one of them to be Dee.
“Welcome to my world,” Dee said.
I let out a big sigh.
“In this world of yours, is there someone who can get a Myspace page taken down for me?”
“Yeah. I’ll take care of it.”
The glamorous Allure of the Seas, packed with loyal Idina fans, was also a part of Dee’s world and it was there that I finally woke up from a two-hour nap and took a long shower. (Note to self: do not drink anything alcoholic when the orange slice and maraschino cherry garnish will be the only thing with it in your belly, and when you’re dehydrated from nearly an hour in a steam room.)
I enjoyed dinner and Dee’s performance. We spent the A.M. hours together at a crowded piano bar for Honolulu comedian Matt Yee’s vulgar sing-along show—some of the most fun I’ve ever had. Back at the suite, Dee and I fell asleep in side-by-side lounge chairs on the balcony. And then, in true diva-style, unable to hear the telephone, we overslept and delayed the disembarkation procedure for the entire ship. With over four thousand paying cruise goers waiting on Idina Menzel, it sure was nice to be the anonymous sister.
Lesson 15
HOW TO JUMP
In November 2013, Dee was in Washington, D.C., rehearsing for the trial run of a new Broadway show, If/Then, and only weeks away from the Thanksgiving release of her latest movie, Disney’s Frozen. She would star as the towheaded Scandinavian queen, Elsa—the towhead part was something only animation could pull off. With a new show and a new movie you might think Dee was happy, yet when I answered the phone, she was in tears.
“It’s over,” she said. “Taye and I are getting a divorce.”
Mark and I were minutes from going to bed. He was reading his book by the only light on in the room, the small lamp on his end table. I sat up.
“Oh, Dee. I’m so sorry.” Mark put his book down and looked over at me. I pointed to the phone against my ear and mouthed “divorce.” He looked at me with sympathetic eyes and I resumed the conversation.
“Are you okay?”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing … I just don’t want this for Walker.” Her voice cracked and I guessed her tears were falling in a steady stream. I pictured her in a dim hotel suite, away from home, a new theater family nearby, but still very much alone.
She continued. “I don’t know what this’ll do to him. He’s so little. I wanted to give him the perfect family. To do everything right for him.” I knew her pain firsthand. I knew that the end of a marriage, especially when children were involved, was pretty much an emotional clusterfuck.
“If you’re okay, Walker will be okay too, Dee. I promise. He’ll adjust.” I wasn’t surprised that Dee’s main concern was Walker. Since he’d come along, she was a mother before all else.
“Try to take one step at a time,” I added. “What do you need right now?”
“I just have to get through rehearsals. There’s so much going on. I don’t have time to think or make any plans.”
“Would it help if I flew out there? I can hang out. You can do what you need to do, and I’ll just be there to keep you company.”
“No. You have school and the boys and so much going on. I’ll be fine,” she replied.
“I know you’ll be fine, of course you’ll be fine.” Mark and I locked eyes for a second. A confirmation of what I’d say next. “But I’m going to come anyway.” It was in Dee’s most difficult moments that she reached for me and I wouldn’t miss a chance to be there. I glanced over at Mark, who had already pulled up some flight options on his phone and was pointing to them for me.
“You sure?” Dee asked.
“Yep. I’ll be there tomorrow, probably late.”
“All right.”
“One more thing, Dee, this isn’t a failure. You and Taye were together for the better part of eighteen years. Try not to beat yourself up. After that long, there’s blame to share.” The latter statement, “there’s blame to share,” was a quote from Wicked’s “For Good” and entirely unintentional.
“I know,” she said, but her voice was hollow.
That night, I went to sleep next to Mark, my husband of over a year, thinking about how my marriage to Jon and Dee’s to Taye had been different, the details of hers not mine to share. But the differences in our marriages didn’t matter. When it came to divorce, I always felt the ingredients were the same. There was self-loathing, usually spousal loathing, regret, guilt, sadness, some relief, and, eventually, the odd pairing of fear and excitement. Fear of the unknown, and excitement about new possibilities. Being able to identify with each other had often brought Dee and I closer, and I enjoyed that, but not once did I hope we would bond over single motherhood.
In D.C. I mostly played tagalong, hung out at the theater, and loafed around in bed with Dee in front of the TV. Initially, I harbored a similar feeling to the one I had when I read the Rent script decades earlier, anxiety brought on by a desire to say the perfect thing, and a fear of saying the wrong thing. And yet I knew that sometimes emotions run too high for words to reach, and this was very likely one of those times. I realized that what Dee needed from me was easy to give: time, understanding, and love.
I watched the dress rehearsal of If/Then. Dee played Elizabeth, a woman on the cusp of forty moving back to her beloved New York City for a fresh start after a bitter divorce. The story wasn’t an exact replica of Dee’s
recent life, but it still hit close to home. Also, with a plot that followed Elizabeth through two different lives—one as Liz, who falls in love and starts a family, and one as Beth, who pursues a high-powered career—it wasn’t hard to draw parallels between the different paths Dee and I had chosen. Eventually, the show would be billed by the Los Angeles Times as “… two Menzel’s for the price of one!” I watched Dee inhabit her roles with an emotional rawness drawn straight from her personal struggles, offering her audience a rare intimacy, another chance to witness her derive strength through her acceptance of vulnerability. The secret to her powerful voice, and the secret to her magnetism. A truth best expressed toward the end of the show when she belts the riveting ballad “Always Starting Over” and leaves the audience breathless.
By December, Frozen was growing in popularity and the terms of Dee and Taye’s separation were taking shape. She was worried about Walker and wanted him to be with family, so we planned a New Year’s trip. Dee and Walker, Mom, Mark, the boys, and I took a vacation to a villa in Anguilla.
The villa was a five-bedroom, two-story house with cathedral ceilings, part of only a handful of homes on Shoal Bay West in Anguilla. Reviews of our accommodations noted the villa’s otherworldly modern architecture—stark white, massive wide-eyed aliens on a foreign beach. It stood at the foot of the seashore, facing the southern Caribbean, with walls of windows and sliding glass doors that, according to New York magazine, “… court the seascape from every corner…” The kids gave us no time to unpack. We arrived at the villa, walked straight through the front door, over the terra-cotta-tiled floors through to the beach, and in no time at all had three boys in wet clothes.
