Her head lolls back in my arms. She stares at me with sky-blue eyes. Her father’s DNA. Just a little weird. “Are you gonna getted married?”
“Get married,” I correct her. “Maybe. One day. But I don’t need to.” How can I explain to a little kid that marriage is not the golden ticket that opens the gateway to lifelong happiness? I have friends younger than me who are getting divorced, or who definitely should be. I’ll never admit that I’d like to get married myself. That’d be like announcing I want a housekeeper or monogrammed towels from Barneys: deeply uncool bordering on offensive.
She thinks for a few moments. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
I’m surprised she knows that word. “No.”
“Why not?”
The faces that pop into my head: Elan Behzadi and Cooper last-name-unknown: the dude options floating around my universe right now. But Elan never texted me back, and I don’t really know Cooper. I draw in a breath. “I haven’t met anyone who’s right for me.”
She scrambles out of my lap, and selects a threadbare teddy with one eye. “You can have Tony.” She hands him to me gravely.
“Thank you.” I kiss Tony on his red stitch mouth. “I have a feeling this love will be very, very sacred.”
She giggles. I kiss her head, inhaling her sweet, little-kid smell.
If I want to have kids who don’t inherit my mutation, I have a few options. I can do IVF and only implant an embryo that didn’t inherit the mutation. Or I can test a fetus I conceive naturally and terminate it if it inherited the BRCA1 mutated gene.
If my mother had done this, I wouldn’t be alive.
I honestly don’t know what I should do when it comes to kid stuff.
Storm gallops around the room on Bottom, the horse only she can see. I’m smiling, but a wave of sadness ebbs in my chest.
When I was creating my pro and con list in the loft with the girls, I think I gave not being able to breastfeed a score of three. I’m surprised to realize that was way too low.
* * * *
Dinner is meatless meatloaf that tastes like a lightly broiled boot. Top chef, Mar is not. Considering we grew up in a place where “salad” was canned pineapple, mini-marshmallows, and whipped cream, and every other meal was some version of steak and potatoes, it’s no great surprise.
My sister grills me about the app: download numbers, open rates, metrics. I’ve only explained the behind-the-scenes to her once, and she understands it better than I do. She could’ve been some kind of genius if she’d gone to college or stayed longer than a year in any job. She’s been somewhat supportive of Clean Clothes: “It’s not a bad idea,” which is her version of “certifiably brilliant.” She thinks the outfits are overpriced, but she’s in favor of ethical clothing. We agree sweatshops are “shameful and immoral” and most consumers are “selfish b-i-t-c-h-e-s,” which feels really nice.
I linger over the mush, not wanting the evening to unfold into the inevitable next step. But, of course, it does.
Today is the day, after all.
On the vegan chocolate cake, five candles and one carob drop. We turn out the lights and huddle around it, singing. Two generations of women, remembering a third.
I have never liked this.
“Happy birthday, dear Mommy. Happy birthday to you.”
“Blow out the candles, baby,” Mara says to Storm, and she does. “Well done!” Mara kisses her daughter, who beams at me, pleased. I’m not sure how much of this she truly understands. Mara’s smile fades. “Grandma June would’ve been fifty-one today.”
We do this every year. I don’t know why: it feels morbid, and it makes my sister noticeably depressed in the weeks that follow. But more so, it widens the gap that exists between us, the gap that, in our own dysfunctional way, we do try to bridge.
I never knew my mother. Not like Mara did. I never know who, exactly, I’m supposed to be remembering. We’re not on the same page.
Mara gets out the photo album emblazoned with Memories in curling pink script. She flicks through the mismatched sun-faded pictures stuck behind crinkly sheets of plastic. “Look, that’s me on the tricycle.” She shows Storm. “See? That’s Grandpa, and Mommy when she was your age.”
Dad’s the only one looking at the camera, sunburned, holding a tin of Budweiser up to his Tom Selleck mustache. Mara is impossibly small, tongue out, focusing. My mother is clapping, her hands and face slightly blurred.
Storm says, “Can I have a tricycle?”
“One day. There’s Grandma holding Auntie Lacey when she was a baby. Isn’t she beautiful?”
I know Mara isn’t talking about me. In the picture, my mother is unsmiling, holding me as if she’s not sure I’m hers, on the junky patio of the house I was born in but don’t remember. She’s about my age. I cannot comprehend how someone in their midtwenties could already have two children, but of course, that’s all of my high school friends now.
“That’s Grandma’s studio, where she painted.” My mother converted the studio herself from a garden shed: in the picture, it’s small, crowded with canvas and paint tins. Mara points to the portrait hanging on the wall opposite us: an unidentified woman, green-skinned and ghostly. “Grandma painted that.”
It’s a good painting, technically, but I wouldn’t want it in my own house. It’s melancholic, almost eerie. Storm stares at it in silence. Unease feathers in my stomach.
Mara points to another photograph. Her favorite, I think. It’s one taken of my mother without her knowing, a slightly unfocused long shot. She’s sitting by a large window, staring outside. She has Mara’s same fierce features. She looks beautiful, but also, sad.
What is my mother thinking about in this picture? Motherhood? My father?
Cancer?
“You know how Mommy has grump days?” Mara strokes Storm’s hair. “So did Grandma. See?”
I think for most women, photographs of their mothers before they were recognizably “Mom” create and complicate the portrait of the woman who raised them. They reveal their mothers were once dangerously young; hitchhiking or dancing or smoking a joint with a boy who’s not their father. This youth is a bridge and it is a chasm; she is Mom and she is a mystery. And holding these two truths in your hands and seeing them, really seeing them, that changes you. It’s the kind of epiphany you have in college, when the world seems to be pulling back layers on the daily, and everything is giving off a frequency of light you’ve only just learned to see. Sometimes I feel like that’s where Mara’s stuck. Forever sophomoric and serious, offended by everything, outraged at everyone. My sister stares at the photo in front of her. “There’s Grandma, doing the dishes. After she was gone, I did that.” With the right ears, you can hear the resentment.
I say nothing.
I’ve always felt like I am nothing like my mother. That was Mara’s connection. Moody, artistic, someone who didn’t exactly fit into the world, wincing at its brightness, its brashness. But I am connected to my mother. I am genetically programmed to meet her fate.
I want this to be over.
Mara turns the page. “That’s Granddad, dressed as Santa.”
“I’m pretty sure Dad’s d-r-u-n-k in this photo,” I mutter.
My sister’s gaze shoots to the glass in my hand, because, yes, I’ve usually polished off half a bottle of wine by now. But I have water. She notices it with a frown. Her eyes flit to mine. I see her conclusion appear, not so much judgmental as darkly matter-of-fact.
She closes the album, and announces it’s bath time.
* * * *
An hour later, we sit on the lumpy orange lounge chairs near the fire, which has reduced to a handful of glowing embers. My foot bounces into the old rug. I am nervous.
My sister thrusts a mug of ginger tea at me. “You’re getting an abortion, I assume.”
“I’m not pregnant.” The ceramic mug is too hot to hold comfortably. I close my fingers around it.
“Oh. What, did Dad call you?”
“No.” This ca
tches me off guard. “Does he call you?”
She shrugs, pulling her cardigan around herself. “Sometimes he sends money. For Storm.”
I am shocked. Then angry. My father doesn’t send me money. Shit, he only sends Christmas cards every other year: the cheap kind you buy at the post office: Hey, kiddo! Happy Christmas, and all that jazz. I don’t even have a current address. Does Mara? She hates him as much as I do; why does she still stay in contact?
I can’t get sidetracked. Focus on the facts, Lace. Every individual has two copies of the BRCA1 gene, passed down from their parents. If I have the mutation, that meant Mom had it (no cancer on Dad’s side), which means Mara has a 50 percent chance of having it and if she does, then Storm has a 50 percent chance of having it too. My mouth is tacky. Tension cuts each breath short, slicing at my chest. “Do you remember that article I sent you at the beginning of last year? The one about the . . . test?”
“The test for cancer,” Mara says. “Of course I do.” An irritated huff. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Lace.”
“Why not?”
“I told you why not.”
“I want to talk about it again,” I mumble.
“Why?” Her back straightens. “You didn’t take it did you?” Her gaze whips to me like a spear, banging through me.
The hot, quick fear of my sister’s impending wrath trumps everything. I’m shoved back into our family home, reacting in the way I know best. I lie. “No! No, I was just thinking about it.” Fuck. Exactly the kind of lie Dad would tell: a stupid one.
Mara relaxes a little, her posture softening. She likes when I beg her opinion. “Think about it, Lace. You find out you have this mutation—if this test is even reliable, which I doubt—and then you’re thrown into an underfunded, unreliable medical system that has a history of misdiagnosing and mistreating everyone, especially women. Biopsies and mammograms and MRIs every month. Jesus, the stress of that alone would cause cancer, whether you have the mutation or not.”
I can’t bring myself to say I don’t think this is how cancer works. “Or there’s . . . the other option.”
“Oh what, a mastectomy?” She rolls her eyes. “That is truly the height of privileged hysteria. The article said there’d been an increase in them ever since what’s her name—Jolie—took hers off. I mean, can you imagine?” She tosses me a disgusted look.
I can imagine.
My sister can tell. Once again, I try to summon the courage to tell her the truth, but before I can, she puts down her tea. “Lacey. You are twenty-five years old. Your brain isn’t even fully formed yet. You are not old enough to make a decision like this: permanent, life-changing. It’s not like dying your hair pink or wearing a tutu to prom.”
It wasn’t a tutu. For some reason, my sister has never gotten over that. I bite my cheek.
She presses her fingers into her forehead. “Look. I love my daughter. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, she is. But if I could have my time again, would I get pregnant by a bipolar drug-addict who disappeared the second my water broke? Uh, no. That was a stupid decision, and it’s one she and I have to pay for the rest of our lives.” She’s welling up. Her chin trembles. “Look, maybe when you’re settled. You have two jobs, you don’t want to fuck that up.” She leans toward me. “You’re doing good, Lace. You know? You’re doing good down there.”
My sister has never said this to me. I start tearing up too. “Thank you, Mar.”
Mara threads her fingers into mine. The feeling of her calloused fingers undoes me. I have to close my eyes. My sister’s voice is soft and compassionate. “If you find out, you live life by its rules, its values,” she says. “Not yours. You’re not in charge. It is.”
I freeze. Can this be true?
Mara pulls her hand away and shifts back toward the fire. “Besides: you can’t stop fate. If either of us are destined to get it, it’ll happen.” We stare at the dying embers, one by one turning to ash. “It’ll just happen, and we won’t be able to stop it.”
18.
* * *
I make an appointment with Vivian’s plastic surgeon.
It’s not as if my sister’s warning didn’t land with me: it did. There is considerable truth to the fact my diagnosis is directing my life right now. I should’ve been more informed about the consequences before I got the test: it was stupid not to be. But this is where I am. And by the end of the drive back to Brooklyn, I’ve settled on the two key reasons why I disagree with Mara. First, I am old enough to make important decisions for myself, about my future. And second, I don’t believe in fate in the way she imagines it, as something that happens to you, regardless of your involvement. I have free will, and I use it.
Knowing my sister is wrong and acting in direct opposition to her advice feels both freeing and frightening. It’s the feeling of looking around for an adult and realizing I am the adult. I am my best option.
* * * *
Dr. Dan Murphman’s offices are as sleek and impersonal as a Midtown cocktail bar. Black leather sofas, bright track lighting, shiny new issues of Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair. On the walls, framed articles of Murphman in various Top Doctor and I’m So Great lists. A bit arrogant, but I suppose that’s to be expected. He was one of the first names that came up when I googled New York plastic surgeon.
The bottle-blond receptionist has jugs the size of basketballs. I’ve always been a bit judgy about women with implants. Now I might be the one getting fake tits.
I see you, karma. I see you.
It’s 12:58 p.m. I text Steph.
Here. This place is terrifying. Where you at?
It was her idea to come. I told her she didn’t have to but she was surprisingly insistent.
Even though this is just a consultation, tension tightens my muscles. I tell myself to relax but I rarely take my own advice.
Trying to busy myself with Clean Clothes outfits proves fruitless. I’m distracted with thoughts of boobs. I found an article online about women who “go flat” after mastectomies: no reconstruction at all. I thought about this, because I want to consider all my options, but it’s not for me. I can’t imagine not having breasts, to the point that it’s worrying. I mean, they won’t function as breasts from a biological standpoint. I’ll have minimal, if any, sensation. So who am I getting reconstruction for? Me? Or the way I appear to others? As a woman, the question of appearance is complicated enough. If I wear a short skirt, am I celebrating my sexuality or succumbing to a sexist stereotype? Let’s say celebrating: but what if I wear that skirt to a meeting with a male client because I know it’ll give me some kind of advantage? And is it actually an advantage? I could ponder this endlessly: one thing I know for sure is that my client is not questioning what he wears when he meets with me and neither is anyone else.
The receptionist calls my name: Dr. Murphman is ready for me. I gather my purse, annoyed and yet oddly satisfied that Steph didn’t make it.
I knew it. I can’t rely on her.
* * * *
Dr. Murphman has a framed portrait of himself above his desk. It looks like an actor’s headshot, the kind a casting agent might consider for LA Gym Owner or Sleazy Investment Banker. Slicked hair, every tooth capped, and I strongly suspect chin implants. Flanking his picture are very boobalicious photographs of Kourtney Kardashian and Salma Hayek. Did Murphman do their boobs or are the pictures supposed to make you assume that?
“Hi. Dr. Dan Murphman—you can call me Dan.” He extends his hand. Manicured fingernails. Firm shake.
I take a seat. “Lacey Whitman, you can call me Lacey Whitman.”
“Great,” he says, glancing at my file. “BRCA, right. Honestly, you’re making the right choice.”
“Honestly, I haven’t totally decided yet,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “I might end up sticking with surveillance. Mastectomy’s just so . . . final.”
His face flickers, and I wonder if he meant I was making the right choice coming to see him. “Well, as you c
an see, I’m best in class. Even though the circumstances might not be ideal, I promise you’ll walk away with a beautiful set of breasts, covered by insurance. That’s a home run.”
Home run? Seriously? I’m so miffed by this I can’t think of what to say.
“Now, some breast surgeons take too much tissue to be able to deliver a good result,” Dr. Dan continues. “Who’s on your team?”
I thought the point of mastectomy was to remove all the breast tissue. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“I can make some recommendations of some surgeons who are excellent, best in class.” He reaches for a clicker. “Let’s take a look at—”
The door flies opens. It’s Steph, flustered, in her leopard-print puffy jacket and bright orange beanie. “Sorry I’m late. Subway drama. Hi.” She waves at Murphman. “Steph. Friend of Lacey’s.”
He indicates Steph should sit. “As I was saying, let’s take a look at some of my work.”
Steph sinks into an empty chair. I give her a smile. I’m a little relieved that I was wrong about her. She came.
Murphman hits the lights. A projected image of two sets of boobs lights up the opposite wall. Steph jumps. “Cripes! Wasn’t expecting that.” Then, “Ooh. The ones on the right are rather nice.” The pictures are cropped from the bottom of someone’s chin to the top of her stomach. The breasts on the left, the “before,” are small, the size of apples. The second pair are at least a cup size larger: full and lovely. Pale pink scars circle under both breasts like silvery snail trails.
Murphman speaks without looking at them. “Example of smooth, round silicone-gel breast implants—270 cc, subpectoral. A 32A/B to a 32 C/D.”
I have to admit: they look good. “Is that a BRCA reconstruction?” I ask.
“No, just regular augmentation.” He clicks the remote. Another four more boobs appear. Again, the after looks fuller than the before. “Saline breast implants—”
“Can we go back to that last one, please?” Steph is sifting through a loose pile of notes. “I’m curious if you think, um, wait a second . . .” Half her notes slide to the floor.
The Bucket List Page 12