Live a Little

by Kim Green

Then, as I gaze out at the avid, adoring faces of my constituents, my heart plummets into my Marc Jacobs wedges.

  It takes me a second, but, as I count seat by seat, my unease mounting, I realize that the entire front row of the studio audience is filled with my former Peninsula compadres, the power junta of JCC/PTA/MIA (mentally) ladies who lunch that guards the purity of the local social network as devotedly as the Swiss Guard shields the Vatican. In quick succession, I register Annunciata Milk, Rochelle Schitzfelder, Tate Trimble, Mimi LeMaitre, Robin Golden, and Wendy No-Longer-Welch-Yen, along with a couple of other superbly highlighted, chemically peeled, subtly liposuctioned women with lots of disposable income and plenty of time to dream up ways to torture nonbelievers.

  As I absorb their intense, almost feral expressions, sleek blowouts, and, oh God, killer outfits, alarm begins to cloud my mind, forming a nimbus of foreboding. It is likely that they are not here to cheer me on. They are here for . . . something else. While I recall, word for word, my confrontation with Tate, then Rochelle, at yoga class last summer, back when I thought Phil was still canoodling Ross’s wife and I no longer needed Rochelle’s sponsorship to survive among the high-status members of our social set, an icy tongue of dread licks at my heart.

  Why are they here?

  I realize that Laurie is speaking to me. I turn toward her and smile so big, they can probably see my bleached molars.

  “So, should we bring out the panel, Raquel?” If Laurie recognizes these women, all of them several rungs below her on the celebrity meter in spite of their ability to charge purchases in the four figures, she does not let on.

  “Absolutely!” I say brightly.

  Somebody call in a bomb threat. Somebody call in a bomb threat. Somebody . . .

  The members of the panel—a couple of oncologists, a couple of survivors, a bioethics professor, a patients-rights lady in Birkenstocks—trot onto the stage. They all look suitably enthused to be on TV, a little deer-in-the-headlights, a little nervous, mostly cheerful, except—

  Meissner.

  Samuel Meissner, aka Jailbait Meissner, aka my supposed doctor, is so surprised to see me that he actually stops in his tracks, causing the professor to stumble on top of Meissner’s brown loafers, one of which falls off, clunking on the stage with a soft thwap. It is apparent that little Sammy did not make the connection between Lauren White, celebrated host of the station’s longest-running local cable-television talk show, and Raquel Rose, stagnated artist, disgruntled wife, and erstwhile cancer patient. Why would he? I’m sure he has better things to do with his time than track the Schultz girls’ dramatic tribulations, like screw little Wendy on the hood of the Jag and evade Connor Welch’s legal henchmen.

  “Whoopsie!” Laurie has risen and is escorting my panelists to their seats, sending me gamma-ray alerts across the jealous-sister spectrum, trying to save her show and her career from my bumbling paralysis. I seem to stick, frozen to the stage, which has about it the air of a man-eating garden, toothy and succubal, drawing me down into the bilge.

  Overcoming what must be some sort of undocumented acute post-traumatic stress disorder— future show topic, anyone?—I force my feet to move me to my designated place in the half-circle of chairs.

  I cannot believe, out of all the oncologists the Bay Area has to offer—the nest of teaching and university-affiliated hospitals in the area is overflowing with the smug bastards—that they happened upon Meissner. Sure, he was recently included in a San Francisco magazine roundup of the leading doctors under forty. Yeah, his personal parking spot on the Stanford hospital campus is just three slots away from the head of the department’s. And I’ll be the first to admit that, with his puppyish eyes and hairy Neanderthal forearms, he’s minor-league fantasy fodder. But so what? That doesn’t make him God’s gift to cable-television talk shows. That doesn’t make him look skinny on camera. That doesn’t make him God.

  Other things I cannot believe: that I was too lazy to insist on reviewing Shiny’s updated panelist list. With a few minutes’ notice, I could have invented something, a family emergency or health crisis or spontaneous nosebleed, anything to get out of having to face Meissner, who—oh my God—is looking at me with his brows drawn into a quizzical, near-comprehending grimace.

  Oh my God. Oh my shit. Oh my God. Oh my—

  “Welcome.” In the face of my near-complete collapse, Laurie is back to her brisk, vivacious, accessibly sultry self. She introduces every one of my executioners—panelists, I mean—and turns the mike back to me only when the state of my exhalations indicates that I am neither going to hyperventilate nor soil myself next to the tabletop potpourri.

  “So, Raquel,” she says in the same grave tone she used to employ when we were teenagers and she wanted to convey the potential consequences of defying her in front of Ma and Dad, “why don’t we start with medical school?”

  Medical school. Medical. School. That place where people have lots of furtive cot sex and learn how to be doctors. What about it?

  With greater force of will than it took to attend Laurie and Ren’s wedding, I plaster the fakest smile on my face that has possibly ever been seen outside a presidential campaign, and I address the panel.

  Birkenstocks smiles back tentatively. I latch on to her like a suckling wolf pup. “Ms. Johns. Thanks for joining us today. Tell me, do they teach communication in med school?” It comes out sounding like an accusation. I realize I am practically yelling. Offstage, Shiny Pony is conferring worriedly with Lecherous Without Cause Producer and Lecherous with Cause Assistant Producer, perhaps deciding whether my condition warrants immediate transfer to a maximum-security psychiatric facility, or if they can get away with a simple roofie and a balaclava.

  “I don’t know,” Birkenstocks stutters. “I’m, uh, a social worker by training. I never went to med school.” She looks genuinely sad, as if, by deciding to take Sociology of the Feminist Superego instead of organic chemistry, she failed me in advance.

  “Of course,” I say, frantically perusing my notes for a name with an M.D. behind it that isn’t Meissner. “Dr. Keshishian. Abel Keshishian. You’re an oncologist. A doctor. A cancer doctor, in fact. What is your position on doctor-patient communication?”

  Oh God. Am officially the female Bill O’Reilly.

  Keshishian raises caterpillar brows. “Uh, it’s good?”

  “Exactly!” I stand up. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, people! How much longer can we put up with pat pro forma answers to this kind of crucial, life-altering question? When are we going to stand up and demand our rights? Our rights as patients, as women, as human beings?”

  “Hey, that’s not fair. I didn’t say I didn’t think it was important! What the hell is this—” Keshishian mutters a choice expletive, which, because of modern-day sound technology, I later discover after watching the tape for the twenty-seventh time, was easily heard not just in the Living with Lauren! back row but also down the hall in Alicia’s office and outside the studio by two landscapers who were, at that moment, digging a trench for a perennial ground cover.

  Laurie cuts a glance at Boss of Shiny Pony. He flashes his hand: five minutes before we can cut to a commercial break.

  A droplet of sweat scuttles down my back, over my tailbone, tickling the groove between my butt cheeks where dumb, gorgeous Duke Dunne lingered longer than was technically necessary.

  Laurie gets up and straightens her pumpkin sweater. Her gold cross glints in the light. My sister’s eyes glow with the eternal strength of deep ocean, of deciduous forest fleeced with mist. They sweep me and everybody else in the room into a whirlpool of protection. Watching her radiate her unique brand of incandescent, comforting resolve, I acknowledge that there are individuals for whom the reality warrants the hype. Joan of Arc. Oprah Winfrey. Jesus.

  Laurie.

  Either they really do possess a higher purpose, or they’re terrifically adept at making you think they do. Really, at the end of the day, what’s the difference? I also think it is unl
ikely that we— Laurie and I, the savior and the accursed— will be breaking bread together anytime soon.

  “Why don’t we start taking questions from our studio audience?” she improvises. Immediately, an LwL! serf with a microphone darts from backstage, puppyish with resolve, the Wimbledon ball boy of cable talk shows.

  Rochelle Schitzfelder raises her hand. Her big slab of lox-fingered hand. Raises it higher than anyone else, her ugly chunky gold wedding bands piled up on her ring finger like dog collars on a Chihuahua. Wimbledon Boy runs to her and holds the mike under her big lox lips. In spite of the circumstances, I can’t help thinking, Christ, somebody should slap a bagel around those motherfuckers.

  “I’m Rochelle Schitzfelder from Los Altos Hills, California. Hi, Heshie! Hi, Bunny!” She flaps her hand at the cameras and slobbers on the mike, causing Wimbledon Boy to wince. “My question is for Ms. Rose. Ms. Rose, how did you react when your oncologist gave you your biopsy results?” Rochelle stares at me, challenge written from her scant forehead to her weak chin. A tic tugs at the corner of her cheek, as if teasing the self-satisfied smile that’s waiting impatiently to reveal itself.

  In a flash, the truth is out, lying gross and distended between us, a decomposing whale on a windswept beach.

  She knows.

  I clear my throat. One minute till commercial break. If I can delay her till then, I can “accidentally” sever a finger in the cantina and escape.

  “I was in shock, I suppose. Like most people, I was hoping it was a bad dream—that it would just disappear.” Like you, witch-breath . . . poof!

  “That may be true, but you don’t really have cancer, do you?”

  Rochelle Schitzfelder has extremely small eyes. Unforgiving eyes. How could I not have noticed this before?

  A horrible half-burp, half-giggle bursts out of me. “Thankfully, I am in remission,” I say.

  After this über-lie, I hear Meissner stand up behind me, or at least squirm in his seat. With my back blocking his censorious visage, I imagine him withdrawing a poison-dart gun and shooting me, point-blank, in the head. For the first time since this all started, I want it to end. Just not this way.

  “How can you be in remission if you never had cancer?” Wimbledon Boy is stunned with horror, but he still manages to hold the mike under Rochelle Schitzfelder’s mouth, which is glistening with a vengeful spray of saliva. A buzz of protest starts up from the crowd. Like disciples, the front row falls into worshipful line. Annunciata nods emphatically, as if giving Rochelle’s vendetta her papal blessing.

  “If nobody else is going to tell them, I will,” Rochelle says. She turns around. “Raquel Rose is a complete fraud. I have the biopsy results right here! This woman never had cancer. Everything she’s told you is a lie. She built a whole career out of her big bad cancer experience.” Rochelle is scathing. “The suffering cancer victim, milking it, everyone eating right out of her lying hand. When people, real people, mind you, people sitting right here, really have it!” In a stroke of genius, Wendy Yen removes her wig. The effect is as shocking as a vicious slap to the face. All the light of the room seems to coalesce on her bald head, studded with snow-white tufts. Why is Wendy Yen taking part in this piece of horror theater? What did I ever do to her? Besides not have cancer, that is.

  Or is that enough?

  Rochelle places her hand on Wendy’s scrawny shoulder. “Dr. Meissner, you know the truth. You tell them.”

  Meissner scowls. As I watch his ocher eyes crinkle sternly at the corners, it occurs to me that the Boy Doctor is not part of this plot to ruin me. Meissner, operating in a world where lives are rudely snatched by the dread hand of mortality and the innocent suffer for no good reason, finds the whole business distasteful and sullying. No doubt he is sorry he ever met me. It occurs to me that his presence on the panel is one of those blind acts of fate so often interpreted as fortune, good or bad, but in fact an accidental spasm of time and place. While I watch him prepare a response, the faces of my family pass before my eyes: Phil, Taylor, Micah, Laurie, Ma, Ren. I want them, want their arms around me and their hands on mine. I want to go back to that fateful day when Meissner told me the good news, and do nearly everything completely differently.

  “The State of California Confidentiality of Medical Records Act prevents me from revealing facts about my patients,” Meissner says, every word dripping with contempt, “or even whether somebody is my patient.”

  Whatever his intent, the damage is done. The audience erupts in shock and fury. Laurie’s hand is at her throat, plucking at the cross. For once, I see, she is out of her depth. For no longer than it takes a lie to take flight, our eyes meet. In hers, I see shock and anger with a pity chaser. Then she looks away. Offstage, Shiny Pony sobs into her script notes.

  Boss of Shiny Pony is sliding his hand across his throat. Cameramen flick off their lenses. Technicians cut at last to the planned commercial break. As I sag into my chair, nausea painting my stomach, two words emerge from my parched lips over and over, like a mantra, belying the indictment.

  “Not everything’s a lie,” I say. “Not everything.”

  CHAPTER 29

  When Raquel’s Wax Wings Are Revealed to Be . . . Wax

  My finger hovers over speed dial: pizza or Chinese?

  A black crow, universal harbinger of death, bisects the sky over my head. It feels good to have confirmation. Pizza, then.

  After I order the team-size pie with artery-clogging sausage and extra cheese, plus a single Diet Coke—old habits die hard—I let the phone fall onto the blanket and resume staring into the milky bowl of sky overhead.

  Ultimate irony: From the minute my family discovered I was not dying, I have deeply, unreservedly wanted to.

  It is not the humiliation, per se—although that itself is as jagged and unceasing as a butcher’s blade carving through raw sirloin—but, rather, the vile knowledge that no matter what my prior rationalizations were, the experiment in civic activism and self-improvement was not worth the pain I have caused them.

  How could I have ever thought that it was?

  That I am a monster of some sort is indisputable; whether monsters are capable of repairing the damage they’ve caused, let alone clambering past it, is as yet undetermined.

  I dip my toe over the edge of the pool for sensual respite before I remember that it is drained. The pale blue-white canyon is vacant and dry, save a rainbow heap of leaves in the shallows and a clot of mud over the drain. Like my conscience, the pool awaits cleansing from unidentified sources. On the advice of our Realtor, we will leave it unfilled until the house is sold, primed for future occupancy.

  I feel like a criminal awaiting the firing squad.

  Unlike those assembled to eke justice on my criminal brethren, my firing squad delivers the bullets individually and protractedly. The reckoning started four days ago when Rochelle Schitzfelder outed me on Living with Lauren! Things show no sign of slowing down.

  Remembering is hard, so I try not to think of it. I am not particularly successful. Yesterday I drove over the Dumbarton Bridge to Fremont, an hour away in noxious traffic, to shop for food in a dilapidated Safeway where no one would recognize me. Halfway through, I began to picture the house, empty save me and the two bassets—who, I suspect, would desert me in a heartbeat if they found an alternate food source—and, panicked, abandoned my basket in the middle of the snack aisle. Its contents—two one-liter bottles of Diet Coke, a rainbow of chips (some of which contained the stuff that causes anal leakage), Ho Hos, beef jerky, cold-sore cream, and panty liners—sketched a sad existence. A solitary sad existence.

  Alone yet accountable—that pretty much sums it up.

  Laurie fired the first shots.

  “Are you all right?” Her first words to me, delivered in her off-the-set dressing room after last week’s show, were so much kinder than I deserved, they immediately unleashed a wellspring of self-recriminating tears. My downfall had redressed the cosmic imbalance between us. Things were now back to no
rmal, with Laurie operating on high ground while I squirmed in the mud, a swine seeking the throwaway morsels of her mistress.

  “Do you have any Kleenex?” I asked.

  Laurie handed me a box. Apparently, enough guests required tissue that her show’s logo was stamped on the container: LwL-approved snot rags. For the discriminating nose-blower. Except for the moral repugnance of my actions, I was not alone in my regrets.

  I blew my nose hard. Traces of my lipstick stained the tissue red. A year ago, if somebody had suggested I’d wear red lipstick on an occasion other than Halloween, I’d have laughed.

  “Is it true, Rachel?” Laurie looked so beautiful and righteous. She could have boiled in here full of now-you’ve-doneits and you-make-me-want-to-pukes. Instead, she gave me Kleenex and the benefit of the doubt. For the first time ever, I believed unreservedly that she deserved Ren more than I. She really did.

  “ Uh-huh.” More sobs. “I think I’m hyperventilating.”

  Laurie cocked her head. “No, if you were, you wouldn’t be able to talk.”

  “Do . . . Don’t you have to go back out there?” How horrible. Maybe I should give her my adoption story, the one I handed out to people like Cleo and Jonesie, so she could distance herself from my ethical decrepitude. For all I knew, she really was born to Scandinavian royalty.

  “It’s okay. We’re re-airing the show about mite-free bedding. Everyone’s gone. We gave the studio audience another set of tickets and gift certificates to Jamba Juice.”

  I pinched my thigh under the beautiful slacks that I’d never wear again. “Do the kids know yet?”

  “I don’t know. Phil called the studio when you didn’t answer your cell. I think he may have told them.” Laurie thoughtfully plucked another box of tissues from a cabinet and set it in front of me. “Rach, I think you should call Ma,” she said.

  We both knew Ma watched Living with Lauren! religiously. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see her sitting on the chartreuse sofa, spine straight, one bird leg dangling off the edge, the other tucked under her butt, curly gray head cocked to one side, her small fist curled around a mug of tea.