B005S8O7YE EBOK (46 page)

As it turned out, reimbursement wasn’t an issue. Ireland had national health care. Every Irish citizen was covered. No one had to forgo seeing a doctor because she or he couldn’t afford it. At the Point, in the ambulance, in the emergency room at Mater, and during my overnight stay, I received excellent and efficient care that continued through several follow-up visits, checkups, multiple X-rays, a change of cast, the use of modern equipment, and ongoing medications. When on occasion I had to wait, it was never for more than twenty minutes. I suffered minimally, recovered completely, and for all that I paid a total of twelve Irish pounds—at the time approximately twenty-four dollars. And
I
wasn’t even an Irish citizen.

A
fter returning to America in 1995, I went back to Ireland in the summer of 1996. Peter Sheridan was directing a production of Neil Simon’s
Brighton Beach Memoirs
and wanted me to play the role of Kate. We would open at the Andrews Lane Theatre in Dublin, move to the Theatre Royal in Waterford, then take the show around Ireland. Peter never doubted that the universal humor and familiarity of the interactions among Simon’s Jewish characters would resonate with Irish audiences. During rehearsals, when Peter wanted to help me find an emotion, he’d relate an anecdote from among the many he’d accumulated growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in North Dublin. Invariably the story he chose evoked the desired emotion, though I had yet to find exactly where Kate was in me.

As the only Jewish American cast member I became the default dialect coach for the Irish and British actors. My biggest challenge was young Alan King, who eventually overcame his thick North Dublin accent to become entirely convincing as Kate’s son Stanley. I consulted my father, then eighty, over the phone about such details as what type of head covering my character should wear
while lighting the Sabbath candles. He recommended I go to the Jewish quarter in Dublin. And could he remind me of the melody of the Chanukah prayer? He could and did. At the end of every performance, when my character lit the Chanukah candles, it was I, Carole, who sang the prayer my father had taught me with the tune that he had learned when he was a little boy:

“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher kidishanu b’mitz’votav v’tsivanu l’hadlik neir shel Chanukah. Ah-mein.”

In the late twentieth century the melodies of many traditional Jewish prayers were being modernized. I was not a fan of the major-key version of the Chanukah prayer. In 2011, at the suggestion of my daughter Louise, who produced my album
A Holiday Carole
, I recorded the traditional Chanukah prayer with its traditional melody. Louise arranged the prayer into a song form, then she and her son sang it with me. The last vocal we hear on that track is then eight-year-old Hayden singing, “
L’hadlik neir shel Chanukah…”
Tears come to my eyes every time I hear the prayer of our ancestors marching forward to future generations through my grandson, my daughter, and me.

Neil Simon’s character Kate was around forty. I was then fifty-four, but women of Kate’s generation often looked older than their years. In fact, Kate’s life experience was not unlike that of my Grandma Sarah. The problem was that I had no personal knowledge of my grandmother at Kate’s age as anything but “Grandma.” Though Peter’s stories had been helpful, I still hadn’t found Kate in me. My mother came to the rescue. She traveled to Dublin to celebrate her eightieth birthday with me and coach me in the role. Her gift for directing actors, familiarity with the character, and understanding of how to convey her knowledge to me gave me enough confidence to feel on opening night that I had command of the role. With audience reinforcement, my confidence continued to grow until the night I found myself channeling my
grandmother. I had experienced something similar with Mrs. Johnstone, except this character was someone whose genes I carried. When I spoke Kate’s lines that night I was deeply affected by my grandmother’s frustration. Thankfully, Peter helped me make the distinction between myself as an actor and the emotions of my character. The run lasted nearly three months—long enough for me to explore different facets of Kate, but not so long that I grew weary of playing her.

When the show was over I went to a castle in France to write with other songwriters at a semiannual gathering hosted by Miles Copeland. Miles was known for managing the Police and creating music industry companies with three letters and three periods. The best known was I.R.S. During my week at the castle I again connected with music and established friendships with songwriters that continue to this day. After my return to the United States in the fall of 1996, the rest of that year was not a happy time. John and I saw the end of our relationship approaching, and by the beginning of 1997 it was time. Though an ending had been understood from the beginning, I took it hard. I was stuck in pain, grief, loss, and depression for nearly eight months. It was one of the rare periods in my life when I was too miserable to eat—a diet I do not recommend. I was just beginning to rediscover my happier self and appreciate my status as a free, independent, unattached woman when I met Phil Alden Robinson in October 1997. I was already familiar with his work as the screenwriter of
All of Me
and the screenwriter and director of
Field of Dreams
. I became romantically involved with this kind, intelligent, and gifted man and remained with him for seven years until we realized that his ties to Los Angeles and mine to Idaho made us geographically incompatible.

In 1998, with encouragement from my friend Carole Bayer Sager, I coproduced an album called
Love Makes the World
with
Humberto Gatica, whose collection of Grammys for producing and engineering would require several mantels. Humberto is known for his work with artists whose superior sound is as instantly recognizable as their first names: Céline, Barbra, Bette, Chaka, Mariah, Cher, three Michaels, and three Kennys.
^*
Then there are the Latinos: Gloria, Julio, Marc, Ricky, Olga, and two Alejandros.
^†

I lost my father on November 10, 1998. He was eighty-two.

Yizkor elohim et nishmat avi mori…

May God remember the soul of my father, my teacher.

A
fter recording all the songs for
Love Makes the World
, Humberto did a final mix on all the tracks, then we worked on a sequence and created a digital master. I had written the title song with Sam Hollander and Dave Schommer, then collectively known as PopRox. I loved the song then, and I still enjoy performing it. The lyric is a positive message with a snippet of attitude and a hint of a love story. The melody has a sexy groove, a syncopated rhythm, and more than a hint of an urban arrangement. “Love Makes the World” is the first track on the CD, followed by the equally positive “You Can Do Anything,” written by Carole Bayer Sager, Kenny Edmonds (Babyface), and me.

Lorna helped me form a new label, which I named with an anagram of Carole King: Rockingale Records. Our scheduled release date for both the album and the single was September 11, 2001.

I was in an apartment building more than a hundred blocks north of the World Trade Center when I turned on the TV that morning. When NY1, New York’s news channel, came on, I noted the time in the little square on the screen with the time and temperature. It said 9:02. With my mind on other things, I barely
registered the import of what the anchor was saying—something about a plane having crashed into a building. I assumed they meant something like a Cessna until they showed the silhouette of the twin towers with smoke coming out of one of the towers. The question “How could a small plane have caused all that smoke?” was just beginning to form in my mind when the digital clock on the nightstand changed to 9:03. I watched in disbelief as the second plane hit and a fireball appeared on the screen. By 9:04 smoke was billowing from both buildings and flames were spreading rapidly.

Clicking to other channels, I saw similar live shots of the Trade Center interspersed with images of journalists trying to understand and explain what was happening. Personal emotions were overcoming the reporters’ usual composure as each correspondent endeavored to interpret the events unfolding in real time. Through a south-facing window I could see smoke blackening a corner of the crystal blue sky. At 9:59, when the South Tower collapsed, my first thought was that someone had placed a bomb in the building with a timer set to go off an hour after the plane hit. The images on the TV showed that people were running now, with papers that had been important the day before wafting down all around them. The morning blue sky of daylight downtown was rapidly giving way to the darkness of ash turning everything black. I don’t remember if I saw images of people jumping out of the buildings that day, but it was as if I were watching the most horrific disaster movie ever made, except that it was happening to real people. At 10:28, the North Tower collapsed. It was almost as if a movie producer had said, “Make it even more horrific!” When I heard that a third plane had hit the Pentagon, I thought, Holy shit! They’re going to destroy every symbolic building in America. Then, when a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania, I was convinced that humanity was doomed. I didn’t think it was God
visiting his or her wrath on humankind, nor did I think it an act of nature. Those acts of destruction were too closely timed. They had to have been planned by human beings trying to wreak as much havoc and create as much fear as possible. My imagination ran wild as I envisioned potential targets all around the United States being blown up in one terrifying act of destruction after another. But there would be no more planes that day.

Remarkably, my landline was still working. Molly, now living in Brooklyn, would have been on her way to work near Grand Central Station when the planes hit. She would normally have taken a different subway line than the one that passed under the Trade Center, but I became anxious when I couldn’t reach her. I left a message on her mobile and work voicemails and didn’t stop worrying until she called me back. Though Molly was an exceptionally competent young woman who had heard the news and knew exactly what to do, I couldn’t stop myself from shifting into Jewish-mother command voice.

“Molly. Walk north and keep walking till you get here!”

“Mom. I know.”

All transportation in the city had been suspended. My daughter became part of a massive movement of people traveling north on foot. It took her half an hour to get to my apartment. We joined neighbors in lining up at a nearby hospital to donate blood that, sadly, would never be needed by the victims. The next morning Molly went home to Brooklyn and I began making calls to see how I could help.

It seemed that everyone in New York who wasn’t looking for a loved one or working at an essential job was either already helping in the rescue effort or trying to find a way to help. But New Yorkers had organized themselves so efficiently to get food, water, and clean clothing to rescue workers that we were told additional assistance would put well-meaning people in the way. In between calls,
the phone rang. It was my friend Carolyn Maloney, U.S. congresswoman from New York’s 14th District, calling to ask if I would accompany her on rounds while she answered questions and tried to bring comfort to families with a missing loved one. There was little that Carolyn or I or anyone else could do, but family members wanted someone in authority to hear their story, tell them what was being done to find their family member, and join them in praying that their loved one had somehow escaped and wasn’t calling home only because she or he was wandering around the city in a temporary state of amnesia.

Seeing the attacks and the aftereffects of those acts that had been carried out by what we later learned were nineteen human beings with the deliberate intention of hurting as many Americans as possible and disrupting the economic and social fabric of the Western world, it was difficult for me to keep from sinking into despair. I redirected that feeling by resolving to drive myself harder to be a good person and hold on to my belief that love makes the world… what? Go around? A better place? Or, perhaps, simply tolerable.

Some people reacted to the attacks with fear and anger. Others responded with an unprecedented outpouring of love. I saw the latter response on the streets of New York in the days after September 11. I saw it in the selflessness of the first responders and the tireless efforts of the rescue workers. I saw it in the generosity and support of people from every walk of life, from every corner of America, and from countries around the world. And I heard the same heartfelt message of solidarity repeated over and over again by people with dissimilar political views:

“Today we are all New Yorkers.”

Unfortunately the camaraderie didn’t last. People with opposing political views moved apart to stand on opposite sides of a seemingly impassable divide. Fear and anger began to grow along
with a sense of hopelessness among those of us who didn’t want to live under that kind of emotional siege. Subsequent efforts to obtain funding for medical services for the first responders and rescue workers who had been digging through the pile in the weeks and months after the attack were met with an appalling level of resistance by enough senators and members of Congress to keep them from getting necessary care for their damaged lungs. Solidarity had given way to, “Yes, I know, we were all New Yorkers, but that was yesterday. Today we have a different agenda.”

With so many things out of my control, one thought brought comfort: when in doubt, give back.

M
y forebears passed on to me a love of learning and a sense of responsibility to leave the world better than I found it. I’m a grateful beneficiary of my mother’s intellectual curiosity and my father’s compulsion to solve every problem he encountered. But the call to help others is passed on in many cultures. Consider the volunteers who went to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to help their fellow human beings and rescue animals. In 2006 ordinary citizens from every conceivable background donated more money online than they could probably afford in order to assist with tsunami relief. The earthquake in Haiti in 2010 brought out the best in people from diverse cultures around the world, as did Japan’s triple-whammy earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis in 2011. But human generosity doesn’t require earth-shaking events. Good people help their neighbors in communities every day. Whether through military service, political activism, volunteering at a school, hospital, or library, or simply through quotidian acts of kindness, each of us has something to contribute to improve another person’s life. I’m
grateful to live in a world where there are so many people who act on the impulse to be kind and helpful.