by Kim Green
The audience laughs. Hard.
Am not Hannibal Lecter. Am irresistibly winsome comedienne.
Laurie straightens her already straight mauve cashmere cardigan. “I have just been told that, thanks to Raquel and all of our generous callers and our sponsor, the BABCA is going to be able to fund a campaign to provide health-care advocacy for low-income women!”
This announcement is met with a round of applause.
“And a new Web site directed at women under thirty who are fighting breast cancer!”
The audience goes a little crazy.
“And launch a child-care program so that Bay Area women can get the help they need when they’re sick or have appointments!”
Off to the side, I see Shiny Pony hold up a sign that says SHUSH. The audience complies. Sort of.
“Thank you all for your support,” Laurie says. “Now I’d like to go back to what Raquel said earlier. What we’re hearing here is that women feel angry about their diagnoses. And that this anger has no place constructive to flow. That we’re letting our women, ourselves, down, people.” Laurie turns to me. “Raquel, what do you think we could do, as a society and a community, to help women through the diagnostic stage of dealing with breast cancer?”
Gawd, pull off one half-assed joke and they think you’re Dr. Friggin’ Laura.
I try to think of something helpful and sage to say. Really. Contrary to family opinion, I hate disappointing people. I just happen to be really good at it.
I stare into Laurie’s clear eyes and think: Lucidity. “Well, don’t expect her to get used to the idea right away. I mean, here I am on TV, pretending I know something about, well, anything, and I’m still in shock. Things are moving too fast. That’s what people who don’t have it don’t understand— everyone wants to rush us toward some positive outcome, but we haven’t even had time to process things, to accept it yet. A part of me still believes it’s all a dream, honest to God”— my throat clogs again—“I feel so normal. Wouldn’t I know if I had it? Wouldn’t I have known something was wrong? How did this happen, for chrissake? I almost feel like I did something wrong, like it’s my fault.”
Did I just say that? Did I answer the question? Once, in college, an essay exam came back to me with the words WELL-CONSTRUCTED ARGUMENT; EXACTLY WHAT QUESTION WERE YOU ANSWERING? scrawled at the top next to an inky C+. Plowing a hundred miles per hour toward the wrong objective: story of my life.
Laurie grasps my hand. The word pops into my head: “sister.” It is startling, the feeling of comfort and succor that comes with it. When we were kids, we’d sometimes lie together in bed, the other’s hair tickling our cheeks, flannel nightgowns tangled around our legs. We’d playact Lassie and Charlie’s Angels with gusto, serenaded by the distant hum of the downstairs television. With an older sibling’s sense of entitlement, I always made Laurie be Kate Jackson, reserving sexpots Jaclyn and Farrah for myself.
“And now we’ll take questions from the studio audience,” Laurie says, her voice naturally bright as she lets my latest ill-advised comment float, mostly harmlessly, in space.
Last night I had my first death dream.
I know, I know, so cliché. But here’s the thing: It was so real, so ordinary. You know that ethereal, cinematic quality dreams have? The wishful note that takes the edge off the scare factor, that tells some subconscious monkey part of our brains, Hey, this isn’t real, so why don’t you take twenty pounds off our plucky heroine and upgrade Ren to Viggo. Aim high, girlfriend, ’cause you’re going to wake up sooner or later!
This dream wasn’t like that at all.
It starts out okay. I am walking the halls of my high school, not my teenage self, but me now. I’m wearing a backpack slung over one shoulder the way only too-cool sixteen-yearolds can, heavy with books but without visible back pain. The distinct chorus of several thousand hormonal teenagers teeming in an enclosed space, of lockers slamming, of scudding sneakers and screechy stabs at popularity, fills my ears. The smell—bubble gum and sweat and testosterone with a whisper of pot—froths in my senses. It makes that detached monkey part of my grown-up brain pipe up: Remember this?
Slut queen Christie Mueller and her minions are gathered around their locker mirrors, applying Lip Smackers and lasagna-like layers of eye shadow. Back then the favored color was an unreasonable blue, the exact shade of Robby Benson’s eyes (I should know, having seen Ice Castles fifteen times). I hunch by them in full Quasimodo mode, mindful to avert my eyes lest they accuse me of trying to initiate contact with my betters. Christie’s birdcall laugh seems to chase me down the corridor. I am borne into Mrs. Rossi’s conversational-Spanish class by the bell, my heart pounding out a stuttering flamenco along with this thought: Congratulations on surviving one more day without being humiliated.
A scene change: The asbestos-tiled walls of the classroom morph into our house in Palo Alto. Well, sort of our house. The basics are the same, but it seems to me like other people live there, because the lawn is freshly mowed and someone has finally reinforced the saggy rain gutter I was nagging Phil about for at least three years. It doesn’t smell like our house, either, the usual perfume of molting teen, dog, and interior paint replaced by a suspiciously pleasant lavenderish concoction.
I take a quick peek in the living room. The Bonafacios from next door are perched stiffly on kitchen chairs, their identical turkey-gobbler necks quivering. Phil’s boss, Ross Trimble, checks out Robin Golden’s rack while pretending to focus on a loosely rolled deli slice. Friends and family mill about, whispering. Nobody laughs. The dining room table is buried under an avalanche of casseroles, triangular sandwiches, and that to-die-for mayonnaise-artichoke dip that I have always secretly wished to bathe in.
A restless blonde with jiggly buns whom I vaguely recognize as a volleyball parent corners Phil. “I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do, anything, you call me, okay? I’m so sorry, hon. Call me.” She hands Phil a card. Phil—the traitor—slips it into his jacket pocket and nods. His green eyes are either pinched with fatigue, or he has been on one of his TV marathons; his face is the definition of haggard.
I float into the bedroom wing. One of the basset hounds has dragged a platter of tuna casserole into the hall and is hastily slurping it down. Nobody intervenes. Music flows under the closed door to Taylor’s room. Inside, a circle of teenagers cling and sway together, as if at a rock concert stoked up on Ecstasy. My daughter and son are enfolded in a nest of kids. Taylor has a cup of punch in her hand. Instinctively, I know it is 64 percent vodka, 36 percent Crystal Light. Don’t ask me how; it’s just one of those dream things. Micah’s head rests in his hands. A skinny girl with a sheet of glossy black hair runs her hand along his back. My dream mind calculates an 89 percent probability they will have sex tonight (72 percent likelihood of using a condom; 3.4 percent chance the condom will break).
This is when it hits me: I am dead.
My dream self reels at this sorry revelation. Although I cannot see her hand, I know it is there, against the wall, propping up the ghostly soul of Raquel Rose in her own dog-hair-strewn hallway. I stagger around a bit before going on—okay, this is morbid—a search for my casket. Finally, wending my way around friends, neighbors, and more than a few annoying people I am surprised to see there at all, I realize there is no body. I, the special guest, am AWOL at my own wake. Typical! This could be because (a) my will explicitly requested cremation as the preferred mode of corporal disposal, and I am already occupying mantel space in a pretty vase; (b) nobody but the Bedouin really lays out the dead anymore; or (c) my body was stolen by grave robbers, and everybody’s too embarrassed to mention it.
Panic engulfs me.
At this point I basically wake up. My mouth is dry and vile with a cheesy coating of sleep. I can feel blood rushing around my body without a plan, ending up in weird places, broadcasting the spastic rhythm of my heart to the outer reaches of the faltering kingdom.
Like everyone else, I have heard that if you see yourself
dead in a dream, you will really die. Soon. I wonder if the fact that I couldn’t find the body is at all germane, or if praying for a technicality is just the futile yearning of a middle-aged woman who has witnessed the crooked finger of the Reaper before her time.
Extricating myself carefully from the blankets so as not to wake Phil—if we ever divorce, it will not be because of our sleep habits, which are civilized to the point of real refinement—I pad to the kitchen to comfort myself.
I shove aside the New Agey collection of colon-cleansing teas I habitually buy and allow to molder. Instead, I grab one of the juvenile brands of cookies featuring drawings of smiling dinosaurs and monsters, and arrange several—okay, several dozen—on a plate.
The source of the dream is as obvious as the furrow on my brow. Earlier today I’d had a call from Laurie’s associate producer, Shiny. She wanted to know when I could come back to the Living with Lauren! set.
“Did I leave something there?”
“Leave something?”
“Was it my cell? Oh no, did I leave my purse? I must have left my purse.”
I could almost see Shiny’s untarnished face pucker up. “Not at all. I’m talking about having you back as a guest. Raquel, do you realize how successful your first appearance was? We’re still getting calls and e-mails about it.”
“Laurie wants me to come back?” Why didn’t dear sister call herself?
Shiny had been briefed on the Schultz talent discrepancy. “She was the first to suggest it!”
Hmm.
“We were thinking of doing another fund-raiser. Maybe something on location. Something adventurous. Something that hasn’t been done before. There’s a brainstorming session on Tuesday.”
Brainstorm?
“We have a real opportunity here to make a difference!” Even Shiny’s voice was, well, shiny.
“If I die, do you still get the money?” Where this came from, I don’t know. Probably the heinous well of morbid thoughts that had been brewing since I first sat across from Babyface Meissner stiff with fright and pondered his hairy, steepled knuckles.
“Uh, I don’t—” Shiny had momentarily lost her patina.
“It’s okay. I don’t know why I said that.” Because I so, so don’t want to. Die I mean.
“Well, there are strict regulations governing fund-raising and philanthropy. I don’t know the details—we have lawyers and tax people for that stuff—but I do know that everything goes directly to the Breast Cancer Alliance. We aren’t even taking a share for operating costs. Laurie’s rules.” Shiny’s admiration of my sister nearly shimmered across the phone lines.
“I’m glad.” I was. Really. Gladness personified.
Shiny’s squeaky falsetto dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You didn’t hear this from me, but this couldn’t come at a better time for the show. Our ratings have been slipping a little. Alicia—that’s the station director—isn’t happy, Laurie’s nervous, and our biggest competitor is gaining on us. That’s why we need a win right now, something we can spin but really matters, you know? But we have to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’, too. Otherwise they’ll find some reason to can us, and . . . let’s just say I think it would be, like, a travesty if the world lost a visionary like Lauren White to the ratings wars, you know?”
She had me convinced.
“Look, Raquel, I’m glad to have this chance to talk with you, because I just want to say you’re really making a difference.
I, like, totally respect you for putting yourself out there while you’re going through this, and trying to help other women. Nobody would blame you if you didn’t, but the way you think of others before yourself, is, well, it’s awesome. And the fact that you speak your mind instead of sugarcoating everything. You may not realize it, but you’ve just become an icon to the breast-cancer community.”
Raquel Rose, icon.
Like all thoughts that brew in the cavernous pit of self-doubt and wishful thinking that is midnight ponderings, this one stinks of delusion. I lick my finger and dab at the potpourri of crumbs on my plate. Being a pillar of iconlike strength sounds like hard work. All the more reason to keep my strength up.
CHAPTER 4
Confucius Wish You Double Happiness
“I don’t understand. How can you possibly make a mistake like this?” I wail.
Samuel Meissner, M.D., sighs and rakes his hand through his Harvard-approved mop of chestnut hair. It is hard to look straight at him, now that I know where that hand passes the time when it isn’t palpating my breasts.
“Mrs. Rose, I’m sure you can appreciate the unlikelihood of two women named Raquel Rose getting breast biopsies the same week at the same hospital.”
“Not really. I mean, don’t you use computers to keep track of this stuff?”
Meissner leans back and studies me. He looks unhappy. I wonder if he gives Wendy Yen that look when she does something that pisses him off, like rushing back to San Carlos to make sure the housekeeper has finished making Connor Welch’s brats’ dinner or not letting Meissner come in her mouth.
“Mrs. Rose, you’ve just had a death sentence revoked. I would think you’d be thrilled.”
“I am. Of course I am.” Am I?
“You don’t have cancer. The lump’s benign. You’ll live a long, full life.” He checks his watch, a fancy gold cuff that shouts Shiksa Goddess, There’s More Where This Came From.
“But how can I trust anything you people tell me after this? What if I do have it?”
“I promise, you don’t. The biopsy, remember?”
Oh yeah. “But . . .” But what? “I don’t feel right. I feel sick.”
Annoyance flashes, quickly veiled. “Mrs. Rose, I have a hundred percent confidence that at this moment you are suffering nothing more than an attack of nerves. You’ve had a trauma, but you’ll recover. If you want, I can refer you to a qualified therapist.” His hand dangles threateningly over his Rolodex.
“I already have one, thanks.” And she’s going to get an earful this week!
He is halfway out the door. “Now you just skedaddle on home and tell your family the great news.”
“Skedaddle.” I hate that word, even when children use it.
I tuck the sunflower with the snapped stalk between two of its sisters to prop it up, careful to maintain the upturned motion of its face. Wouldn’t do to have a party pooper spoiling it for everyone, now, would it?
I drove home from Meissner’s office in a daze. “Reeling” would be too scrawny a word to describe my state of shock. Once you’ve had someone point the finger at you and pronounce the “C” word, it’s pretty much incomprehensible that God is going to amble on down the mountain and revise His handiwork. I’d even demanded to see the biopsies side by side. Meissner had humored me with a shrug and a sigh, but by that time the characters had blurred into a morass of ink and I’d stumbled out of the office into the sunlit, alien-looking parking lot. During the forty-nine minutes it took to locate the car, I had plenty of time to ponder the latest development.
On the one hand: This is great, right? I won’t have to delegate the preservation of Taylor’s virginity to Phil after all.
On the other: Several thousand people just wrote fat checks to the Bay Area Breast Cancer Alliance because I spilled my sob story.
That said: It’s not my fault the hospital data-entry people suck.
Still: The Alliance cashed them.
And: You did go on TV. . . with a blow-out, no less.
But: They told me I had to! Mom and Laurie railroaded me! I was scared!
Not to mention: Nobody will believe you.
Hey: It’s true!
So: Pathological liar spins better than data-entry victim.
But: Duh . . .
Plus: And let’s not forget, you’ve been. . . different since this happened.
So: Different how?
Well: Different good.
Okay: Whatever. Do you ever think about, you know, the other Raquel Rose?
’Nuff said.
The most pressing issue: how to break the news to my family for the second time. It seemed wrong to deliver the good— awesome? apocalyptic? weird?—news without ceremony, so I buckled down and cleaned the house, undoing some of the damage I’d done when I’d thought no one would hold it against me (salad spinner put away unwashed, household receipts plopped in art-supply drawer, wine bottle opener put back with cork rammed on). I put on a festive garment—red knit tunic and matching palazzo pants—and dabbed Chanel number something behind each ear and in the furrow of my (happy again) cleavage. My beloved tunic is, in Sue’s opinion, one small step above Jaclyn Smith for Kmart, but it does have the magical redeeming quality of expanding to accommodate whatever I care to put in my stomach. I go out and shop for foods that occupy the bottom portion of the pyramid at the snooty organic store, come home and crack my mother’s Joy of Cooking, and sweat my way through a four-course meal.
At the last second, I light a stick of tangerine–butternut squash incense I got free for participating in a focus group (“Mrs. Rose, on a scale of one to five, how likely would you be to buy peanut butter with fish oil in it?”). Now Phil, Micah, and Taylor will associate my second lease on life with the restorative scent of citrus and root vegetable instead of the stench of anxiety perspiration.
Sounds of teenagers and husband and canines mingling at the front door.
“Mom! We’re home!”
It’s funny how it takes a cancer diagnosis to rouse a civilized greeting. Maybe they’re afraid I’m dead?
“I’m in here!” I call gaily, Doris Day with a tumor (or not, as the case may be).
They explode into the room. I watch, amused, as the kids go through the usual ritual of dropping their backpacks on the floor then, shamefaced, pick them up unsolicited and deposit them on the countertop in a semblance of order. Taylor pauses to sniff the table bouquet, as if verifying that it is indeed real.