Dorothy Witt, friend 

    

Because Carole and I became friends in a writing class way back in

the 1970s; I want to begin by describing that period in our lives. The

class was taught by Leonard Bishop, a big beefy guy from Hell's

Kitchen in Manhattan, who in his early crime years, before he became

a briefly celebrated writer, had leapt from a second-story building

and wrecked his feet. Thus the huge lumpy shoes he wore.

 

      These are some of his pronouncements, words that still ring

down the years: By the time you've reached eighteen years of age

you've gathered enough life material for a dozen novels. Launch

your story as on a speeding train. Give the artifacts in the story a

role to play in pushing the story onward. Choose the right words to

set a story's mood. Remember that character is plot and plot reveals

character. Put into motion opposing forces, like arrows flying

through space and cause them to clash. Slow down for the story's

denouemont and end it as if it will go on without you.

     

Nervously and filled with hope, Carole and I submitted our pages

of fiction, and when he'd read them. Bishop returned at least two

pages of single-spaced typewritten criticism at the next meeting. We

learned to shoot the story's arrows in the first paragraph. Chairs

were sat on hard or thrown across rooms. Fathers cursed.     

Teachers insulted students, swords flew. Lovers lips smacked. When we

got it right, he praised our efforts, when not truckloads of scorn were

shoved ourway. Then one day Bishop was gone. His life took a novelistic

turn when he left town with the newest young member of the group

to become born again and to take up farming in Kansas.

     

Without a teacher, Carole and I began to read each other's works

and to offer our own critiques. We usually met at her house to read

our stuff, drank tea from her teapot with its tea cozy, ate her home-

baked bread, and when our work was done we went for walks: over

to Marin, up to the Arlington, down one of the west-winding streets

to the Alameda and back.

 

     It was on these walks that we began to tell each other our private

stories. Carole talked about her early years in Brooklyn, the death of

her mother, and the sudden change in circumstances when she was

placed at age 10 in charge of the woman I called her mean Aunt

Ruchl, Ruchl being the name Carole had given her fictional

counterpart in an early novel. This aunt was a Brooklyn version of

David Copperfield1s stepfather, Mr. Murdstone. And from the day of

her arrival at Aunt Ruchl's until she left for college, the bargain

that was struck between them was that in exchange for food and shelter,

Carole would become a kitchen maid and do Aunt's bidding.

 

    My story began in Mormon Utah. After our father's death, our

mother, without his benign influence, channeled Cotton Mather of

the early American colonies, as her model for raising five children.

It was meant to help our development that we were reminded of our

sinful nature, that Satan was on the prowl for our souls and that the

last days were at hand.

 

    So Carole and I examined our scars, taking them our of our pockets

like stones. We polished them, studied them this way and that, and

then found a satisfaction in denouncing our tormentors. It was in

these moments that our friendship was sealed.

 

     Carole was the more forgiving of us. When Aunt Ruchl was ailing

in Florida, Carole went to visit her and in their meeting the aunt

asked her niece's forgiveness for the sorry way she had treated her.

There was so much more to Carole than the bad times in Brooklyn.

I knew her as a woman who came to life's table with a hunger and a

zest, who had created a rich life with Dick, with her adored children,

her mobs of friends, and not least her thirst to learn about

everything, in school and out. In Dick, luck and good taste gave her

the finest partner one could want.

 

     Even with the threat, time and after time, of a recurrence of

cancer, Carole was able to mobilize her great life force and emerge

with new ambitions, new writing projects. I leave it to others to

speak of the giant hole in Carole and Dick's lives that the death of

their son Daniel carved. But how like them to turn that loss to an

important purpose, by leading grief groups for others who had lost

loved ones, a practice they continued until they left for Colorado.

 

    The theme that runs through Carole's life is the availability of

feeling. The writer Jonathan Franzen has written that "the act of

fiction writing is a performance of sympathy with people you are

not." Her fiction was often about the suffering that lack of affection

brings to her characters. Empathy was central to her role as

grandmother of the next generation of Malkins. When any of the

grandchildren were scheduled to visit Berkeley, Carole and Dick

reeled off the plans they had made for them, at the very least these:

The Lawrence Hall of Science, the art museums of San Francisco, the

amazing aquarium in Monterey, and more recently the art collection

at the DiRosa Foundation in Napa, where the best and loopiest

collection of Northern California artists is on display. Shiny metal

cows and sheep are planted on the hills surrounding the galleries, and

an enormous ceramic woman in day-glo colors lies in wait to greet

visitors at the door.

 

As grandchildren accumulated in our lives, Carole and I used our

walking time to chart their grown, boast of their wit and charm and

talent, and to feel for them in their setbacks. Mostly we tried to

understand what the world looked like to them, and wonder how they

would find their way in it. Carole's grandkids were her project and

her passion. What she began with them will have a life, like the best

stories, for the rest of their days.

 

A year ago, when Carole seemed full of her usual zip, no shadow

on the horizon of what was to come, she phoned from Colorado

Springs to say that she and Dick were coming to Berkeley the week

before Thanksgiving. Because Carole had heard me more than once

mutter ominously about overnight guests who came to stay with us

for longer than fifteen minutes, she was hesitant to ask if they could

come. She gave us every out. But after they moved away, I had

missed them a lot. So yes, they were to visit. We held our breath, all

of us, as we dove into the shark-infested waters of hospitality.

 

    And of course Carole and Dick were marvelous. They came bearing

gifts and news of life in their new city, of Jessie and Mickie and

their two children, and of their new friend Melody. Because the Malkins

are serious insomniacs, we expected to hear them when they rose at

two or three a.m. We never heard a sound. They crept downstairs

and out without a whisper. Each day they visited friends and came

home to spend an hour or two with us, a time Mel and I looked

forward to. I even found myself thinking: what if this were the end

of the world, the bombs or some intergalactic disaster were on the

way? These are the people I'd want to be with when it all came

crashing down, as rqy mother promised it would.

 

    While writing these words, I reread "The Journeys of David Toback"

and found a passage that is pure Carole. Her grandfather David has

turned thirteen and is a Bar Mitzvah boy in Russia where the well-

known Rabbi Alter Richels was visiting. Having heard about David,

Richels wished to examine him. This is David speaking: "Suddenly I

felt confident that I could answer anything he asked -and that is how

it happened. For each question, a response would leap into my head

and begin to develop, first one way, then another. All the ideas I

thought were new to me...Later, the Rabbi addressed my mother and

father in a solemn tone. 'Your son is not an ordinary person. Not

only is he intelligent, but he has a pure heart. You must see to it

that he studies with good teachers...'"

   

It came to me that her grandfather David's fine mind and pure heart

were passed directly to his granddaughter, for where could find a

more apt description of Carole than in these words?