by Kim Green
“What is it again?”
Rochelle fixes me with an I-can-get-your-kid-bouncedfrom-varsity stare. For a swollen second, I am tempted to blurt out my bad news; it’s a ready-made excuse for every failure to execute I’ve ever had. Some wise kernel of self-preservation stops me. Telling Rochelle Schitzfelder before the two or three hundred people I like better than Rochelle, just because I’m too wimpy to just say no to her (endless) requests for slave labor, would hammer the final nail into the coffin of my self-respect. Also, I don’t think I can deal with Rochelle staring at my breasts.
“I’m sorry, Rochelle,” I say instead. “I’ve had a really rough week, and things are sort of slipping.”
“The fund-raiser? For the library? The expanded tolerance section?”
“Oh! Yeah, I was going to call you . . . Phil double-booked us. I was so pissed at him. But it’s work-related, so we kind of have to go. His boss’s birthday or something.”
Thankfully, Rochelle Schitzfelder’s gossip meter is set higher than her pique gauge. She leans in so close I can see her sherbert-colored lipstick bleed into the cracks of her upper lip.
“Did you hear about the Welch-Yens?” she whispers, as if Wendy Yen, a dermatologist who gave up her practice to raise her Silicon Valley CTO husband’s two hellions from his first marriage plus their own Clomid-generated twins, is going to spring out from behind a rock and rain staccato Chinese curses down on Rochelle’s hennaed head. I am fairly sure I met the woman only once, but, lacking a proper creative outlet, I pride myself on my meaningless-fact retention skills.
“Splitsville,” Rochelle goes on before I can reply. “Annunciata knows the receptionist at Blakely and Chao. Wendy’s already signed on with them to fight the terms of the prenup. She’ll get a nice package, that’s for sure. Connor’s rolling in it. I just feel sorry for the kids.” She shakes her big Hobbit head. “Wendy was just starting to get somewhere with the little shits. God knows Sylvia never managed to control them. Annunciata says Wendy’s going for the house. With the Bay Area real estate market like it is, I say more power to her! The girl can sell it and get something precious in Carmel or Laguna and still have a lot to live on. She’ll marry again, mark my words. Doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her!”
If I cut her off at five minutes, I’ll still have time to hit Star-bucks on the way home for a green tea Frappuccino. Green tea . . . it must be healthy, right? That will definitely balance out the lemon bar.
“. . . not even the worst part. . .” Rochelle is saying as I tune back in to the stream of words. “The worst part is the”— gulping intake of breath that always indicates an incoming bomb— “the cancer.”
Initially, I assume she is talking about, well, me. It takes me a full five seconds to wrestle my throat open again. You know that weird piece of dangling flesh in your throat, that hangy thing? Mine is abruptly way too big. Perhaps a side effect Meissner forgot to mention?
“Cancer? Who has cancer?” I manage.
“Wendy does. Uh-huh. Hardly anybody knows. Only her closest friends—Annunciata, me, Mimi LeMaitre, maybe Robin Golden.”
“What kind?” I can’t believe that fucker Connor Welch is divorcing his beleaguered, if well-tended, wife right when the Big C hits. Fucker.
“Ovarian. Wendy thinks it was all those fertility drugs she had to take to get the twins.” Rochelle pauses to pluck a loose gold thread from her lamé fanny pack. “They already did the surgery. She starts chemo next week. That’s why she had to resign from the committee.”
“That’s terrible. What an asshole! How is Wendy doing?” I say rather oversolicitously, to mollify Rochelle for my earlier transgression.
Rochelle draws her lox fingers across my arm. “Oh, Raquel, sweetie, you got it backward. It’s not Con who’s leaving Wendy. She’s leaving him. She’s been sleeping with a doctor over at Stanford for over a year. Her own doctor, can you believe it? The boy’s barely legal, even if he is an oncologist! Messner, I think his name is. No, wait a minute. Meissner. Sam Meissner. That’s it. That’s the one. I’m pretty sure he went to Harvard,” she adds.
Yep, Class of ’95.
This is the moment when I begin to suspect that justice post-cancer-diagnosis is not qualitatively different from justice before the bomb. That Wendy Welch-Yen should get a side of sex with her sickness courtesy of my Meissner while I satisfy myself with Sex and the City reruns and the occasional brother-in-law fantasy must be the universe’s idea of a practical joke. I’m not laughing.
CHAPTER 3
Lifestyles of the Ditched and Nameless
“Three, two, one . . . we’re live!”
The young girl with the enviably shiny ponytail and the clipboard waves her hands at the cameras, which are trained on my sister up on the dais. Laurie smiles at the audience in a way that emanates both accessibility and superiority. Where did my little sister learn that? It certainly wasn’t from Dad, whose idea of torture was being the center of attention for longer than the ten seconds it takes to sing happy birthday to a person. And it wasn’t from Ma, whose shtick is founded on a hybrid of suffering and exclusion plucked directly from the biblical Hebrews. And it definitely wasn’t from me: The only thing I can credit myself with bestowing upon Laurie— with the obvious exception of her husband—is the art of how not to balance career, family, and a persistent cream-cheese addiction.
There is something unnerving about watching a loved one perform for television. For this reason, I have seldom visited my sister’s South of Market San Francisco set. (This is the reason I tell myself. Other explanations, among them laziness, chronic brother-in-law avoidance, and garden-variety envy, I would rather not consider.) Today, however, my back is to the wall: The combined hard sell of Ma the do-gooder and Laurie the flinty-eyed ratings queen convinced me that the world needs another voice broadcasting breast-cancer awareness. They caught me in a weak moment.
“When do you see the doctor again?” Ma asked last week. She and Laurie had come over to double-team—er, help—me in my hour of need. This consisted of lots of vigorous grout-scrubbing and duster-wielding interspersed with disgusted clucking over my lack of domestic prowess.
“Two weeks.”
Ma grimaced. “What are those mamzers waiting for, the grass to grow?”
I couldn’t argue with her. Frankly, I’d been a little shocked myself. For me, the earth had tilted on its axis, the trains of normalcy, of reality and decency, ground to a creaking halt. It seemed obscene, criminal even, that people were still shopping for underwear and jogging around the reservoir complaining about their lives while I was catapulting toward death, appointmentless and unsure how Viggo really felt about our future together.
“Dr. Meissner says that was the first opening he could get for me in surgery. He even bumped me up ahead of a whole bunch of people.” I bet he always manages to fit Wendy in, the jerk.
“Give it a rest, Ma.” Laurie gave Ma the hand and turned to me. “Rach, I want to talk to you about something. Hear me out before you say no, okay? I’ve been thinking about a way for you to direct your energies right now. Something that may make you feel better. Would you be willing to come on Living with Lauren! and talk about everything? Like, what you’re going through? How you’re coping. What you’re feeling.”
“Uh . . .” Image of me, face slick with flop sweat, staring into the camera with all the charisma of a doped cow, intruded. Charming.
Laurie went on, “Listen. I’ve talked to some local breast-cancer groups who are interested, and better yet—keep this on the QT—my producer is this close to inking a deal with the Sharks organization to raise money for breast-cancer research.”
I literally didn’t know what Laurie was talking about. Me? Breasts? Carnivorous fish? Then awareness kicked in. “A professional hockey team wants to sponsor me?”
“They want to match pledges. We’ll hold a telethon. You’ll be the featured guest speaker.” Laurie was very patient.
“What do I have to do?”
“Nothing to
o onerous, I promise. You’ll just come on and tell your story. Be yourself. Take audience questions. We’ll have a phone bank all set up to take calls. Someone from San Jose representing professional hockey will be there.” Laurie leaned forward, her face lit with a grin that was somewhat—I kid you not—sharkish. “I’m thinking ‘Pink in the Rink.’ Get it? Or do you like ‘Rink, Pink, Think’ better?”
Ma nodded. “Just make sure the money goes to the research and not some cockamamie PR firm. I heard one of the cosmetics companies was scamming us with those walks, and most of the funds were going to. . .”
I floated to my safe place—a sort of high-end version of an IKEA showroom with me and a Walk on the Moon–era Viggo tucked into a perfectly dressed Scandinavian bed—while Ma and Laurie launched into a discussion of Laurie’s latest brilliant idea and how nonstarter Raquel could be micromanaged into furthering the cause without messing things up too badly.
“Mrs. Rose? Can you come with me, please? We need you in makeup now.” Shiny Pony still has the high, optimistic intonation of a college coed, even though she is, reputedly, the show’s associate producer.
The image of me, Ma, Laurie, and a latent Viggo dissolves, and I follow Shiny into a small, brightly lit room. Nervousness has gelled inside my veins so that my limbs bear the thick spasticity of recent spinal injury. All I can think about is sitting next to Laurie under the klieg-light glow. There is no doubt: I will look fat. Also, there is not enough spackle in the world to tamp the shine from my Roman nose.
“This is Cleo. She’ll be doing your face today. And this is Jonesie. He’s hair.” Shiny Pony lopes away, leaving me in the hands of Cleo and Jonesie, who are examining me the way one might an insect skewered on Styrofoam. I am especially intimidated by Jonesie, one of those sylphlike gay Asian boys who has never had a zit and wears chartreuse blouses with composure.
“Not much you can do with this,” I say, running a hand over my bun, which resembles a day-old cinnamon roll that has been run over by a backhoe.
“Are you really Lauren’s sister?” Cleo says, not hiding her incredulity. She is heavily tattooed, chubby, smooth-skinned, a study in black, white, and red.
“Yes,” I say, anxiety ratcheting up a notch. “But she’s adopted. Her birth mother was a lesser member of the Norwegian royal family who got knocked up by the stable boy at fourteen. She—I mean Lauren— was found in the mailbox by Carmelite nuns. Her birth name was Helga,” I add, proud of that last embellishment.
Cleo and Jonesie stare at me in a kind of mute horror. Then Cleo laughs, her black-lipsticked mouth opening like a tunnel. I can sort of relate to her look, which I interpret as passive insubordination.
“You’re funny,” she says, already whipping out a box of brushes and pots.
“You’re tall,” says Jonesie. Then: “Do you want to wear a wig?”
“Do you have one of those Jewfro ones, like Barbra Streisand in The Main Event?”
He frowns. “Um, no, but maybe a bob or something.”
“Jonesie, she’s kidding.” I can see that Cleo, goddess of some dark art or another, is on my side.
In minutes Cleo and Jonesie turn me into, if not a different person, an infinitely more colorful, mattified one. My white blouse is deemed a disaster— “You want them to think you have cirrhosis instead of breast cancer?” Cleo says, prompting an elbow from Jonesie—and is replaced with a crisp wrap shirt in a flattering sapphire blue. Cleo pauses when she sees the bandage around my bosom, a relic of biopsy. “Does it hurt?” Her voice is husky with respect.
The glass of Chardonnay Shiny Pony slipped me a few minutes ago is starting to work its magic.
“Not anymore,” I say.
If I’d known how well groomed and, quite frankly, petite I’d look next to a professional hockey player, I’d have hired one to stalk me a long time ago.
Jean-Baptiste Lebecq sits with his ham-hock thighs spread and a cheerful grin splitting his doughy face. His right lateral incisor is missing, through which I can see a wad of chewing tobacco that, thankfully, shows no sign of imminent ejection. He sports the type of bilevel hairdo that is, in the words of my friend Sue, “business in the front, party in the back.” Perhaps cancer has affected my vision, but I’m finding John the Baptist attractive, in a fifth-century-Gaul sort of way.
“Miz White, I speak for the San Jose Sharks about how I am happy we will match twice the pledge of the callers.” Mr. Lebecq cheerfully mangles his point in Pepé Le Pew Canadian French.
Fortunately, Laurie is able to pluck references of money and fame from nowhere. I guess that’s why she gets paid the big bucks. “Did you hear that, folks? Our corporate sponsor is going to not just match but double any pledge you call in. Now’s the time to call! Remember, we’re aiming to challenge the scourge of breast cancer for all of us: you, your mother, your wife”—she grips my hand— “your sister. Call us now. In the meantime, while our volunteers are taking your calls, let’s hear from Raquel.” She turns to me. “Raquel, how does it make you feel to know that so many people are behind you in your battle against cancer?”
If I squint, the banner with pucks at either end that reads PINK + RINK = DO MORE THAN THINK . . .ABOUT BREAST CANCER looks sort of like a baby announcement—of the grandchildren I’ll never meet.
How does having people throw money at cancer make me feel?
“Good,” I say firmly. I think it’s a pretty diplomatic answer, considering my real mental state falls somewhere between shitty and clinically insane. The lights are unexpectedly hot on my cheeks. Oh my God, could I be having a hot flash? Are my ovaries closing up shop just because things are shaky in the boob department?
I don’t realize my foot is jiggling until Laurie’s decidedly unsensible Louboutin heel skewers my toe.
“Can you elaborate, Raquel? I’m sure some of the other women out there facing the same challenges would welcome your point of view.” Laurie’s face is open and guileless, but she doesn’t have cancer, so I sort of hate her anyway.
The strange sort-of-hate sensation clogs my throat. “Well, you want to know the truth? I’m scared shitless,” I blurt out. The words stream out of me, not from the new, shocked I-have-cancer place, but from some deeper inferno that, I realize, has been brewing for years. I go on, “I hate that this happened, and I don’t know why it did. I hate that I have to keep it together. I hate that I got it instead of somebody else. I do! I’m sorry, but it’s true! I hate that I’m supposed to smile when I buy groceries, and for that matter, why do I even have to go shopping anymore? Like, can’t somebody else get off their ass and do it? I keep having crazy thoughts, like maybe I shouldn’t have bought all that regular milk with bovine-growth hormone or whatever in it instead of the organic stuff, because it’s so friggin’ expensive, and would it be inappropriate to ask for a breast lift when they cut me open to do the mastectomy”—surprisingly, a few audience members laugh at this—“and I’m so angry. Like, crazy angry.”
Breathing hard, I let my hair, which Jonesie blow-dried into fleeting submission, fall over my face. It feels cool, soothing, like a school nurse’s palm.
“I think I want to kill something,” I announce loudly and clearly to Laurie’s studio audience.
Fuck. Am Hannibal Lecter of breast-cancer victims.
Before I can attempt to repair the damage caused by my anger-management problem—Congratulations, Raquel Rose! You have just cost breast-cancer research half a million dollars!— a weird alarm peals through the studio. Only the fact that I have sweated through my underwear and slacks keeps me from jumping under the table.
One of Laurie’s minions trots out and hands her a piece of paper. Laurie’s face brightens. It must be my commitment papers.
“We have just topped a hundred thousand in matched pledges, a show record, people!” Laurie says. “I want to personally thank every one of you, and of course our corporate partner, and the Bay Area Breast Cancer Alliance for providing the resource materials, and also my sister, Raquel, who is,
in the words of one of our callers”—she flicks open the note—“ ‘a breath of fresh air and an honest voice representing real women who don’t take’—well, I think we know what she said, but I’ll substitute ‘guff’— ‘from anybody’!”
The audience cheers. I wonder if this means I will get a mountain-facing room at Casa Loca.
“Raquel, would you like to take the audience through the pamphlet the BABCA so generously provided?” Laurie says.
The pamphlet is in my hand. It is pink except where my palm has perspired through the paper and turned it the arterial purple of an internal organ.
“Um, okay. It’s called ‘What Every Newly Diagnosed Woman Needs to Know.’” Above me, the page’s contents appear on a gigantic screen—the one that formerly featured my hot-tub-size pores.
“‘Number one, don’t go to the doctor by yourself,’” I read. Hmm. Unless your husband is one of those guys who thinks a Pap smear is a topping at Noah’s bagels. “Uh, ‘number two, get informed before you go on doctors’ visits. Number three, make a list of what you want from your doctor.’” Babyface Meissner’s luscious brown eyes fill my mind, and I feel a creepy, inappropriate grin start to spread over my face. Get a grip, Quel. “‘Four, get a second opinion. Five, journal on what it means to you to potentially lose a breast to the disease.’” I glance into the wall of lights with facial silhouettes behind them and lean in to my microphone. “Can someone please tell me when ‘journal’ became a verb? When I first met with my counselor, I read that one and was, like, what does losing a breast mean to me? And I said the first thing that popped into my head: at least five pounds!” Big laughs. “Which was sort of embarrassing. For the counselor, I mean.” Bigger laughs, which has the unexpected effect of making me feel sort of, well, good. “And ‘ numero seis, develop a plan for talking to your kids about cancer.’ ” I glance up. “If any of you are able to do this without feeling like a complete failure as a mother, let me know, because I haven’t quite managed to pull this off. Where was I? ‘Number seven, be on alert for signs of depression following treatment,’ because, hey, what’s depressing about cancer, right?”