The Bucket List

by Georgia Clark

  “We broke up.” I think about the photo the British girl, SJ, posted: our sweet coffee shop scene. She took it down, just like I asked. I’ll never get that moment back.

  “Oh, darlin’, your face went all sad. You really liked him, huh?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “People will tell you, ‘You’re young, you’ll meet someone, don’t worry, get over it.’ But fuck them. I remember getting dumped at twenty-five. It hurt then, and it hurts now. It always fucking hurts because we’re women and we give a shit.”

  “Cheers to that.” We tap our glasses and finish our drinks.

  She burps. “Another?”

  “If I do, I’ll have five more and bail on this thing.” I check the time. “It’s about to start.”

  “You’re right. Gonna powder my nose.” She gets up, then leans next to me. Her breasts are the size of volleyballs. “Do you think the waiter was into me? Scale of one to ten, how close to child molestation would that be?”

  She’s forty-six. He looks twenty. “If you were a guy, seven. But you’re not so, three?”

  “I like those odds.” She pats my back and heads for the ladies’.

  My phone rings. As always, I hope for Unknown Number, i.e., Elan. As always, it’s Vivian. Elan is an hour late for a meeting they’ve had set up for a month. And he’s not picking up. “Have you spoken to him?”

  I tense. “Why would I have spoken to him?”

  “Can you email him?”

  “Haven’t you done that?”

  “Yes.” Testy. “Multiple times.”

  “Why would he respond to me if he hasn’t responded to you?”

  “You guys seem to have a bond.”

  It’s an accusation. My voice is ice. “We don’t.”

  Vivian exhales. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. First Brock, now Elan. Jesus.”

  “Calm down. He’s a busy guy. He’s on a crazy deadline for the pre-fall collection.”

  “What does that even mean? And how do you know that?”

  Bee reappears with a fresh coat of lipstick. She points at our waiter and does a very lifelike imitation of a blow job.

  I’d laugh if Vivian wasn’t stressing me out so much. “Email Tim George,” I tell her. “Make it clear Elan only benefits from a company that’s worth something. I’m at a cancer thing, I have to go.”

  I hang up without waiting for her response, and join Bee by the door. She shows me a piece of paper with a cell number on it. The waiter’s. Unbelievable. She tucks it under her left boob. “Let’s check out some titties.”

  35.

  * * *

  Our tickets direct us to a conference room deep in the bowels of a Marriott hotel. Outside it, a long line of women wait to have their names checked off a clipboard. On the forums, hundreds of women post and comment, but it’s another thing to see them in the flesh. All these women, dealing with the same shit hand I got dealt.

  Bee taps the woman in front of us. “You here for the titty show?”

  “I am.” She has gray hair and fine lines, but a clear youthful energy. She’s the same age as my mom would be. “You’re in the right place.”

  A volunteer marks off our names. “You’re both BRCA1?” She hands us a string of purple Mardi Gras beads. “The beads match your mutation, so you can find other women like you,” she says. “Yellow is BRCA2, pink is CHEK2, green is PALB2, and so on.”

  “All the colors of the mutation rainbow.” Bee slips the beads around her neck. We exchange a Here goes nothing look and pull open the heavy conference room door.

  I haven’t really known what to expect. I assumed the atmosphere would be either somber and respectful, like a wake, or terrifyingly grotesque, like the scene in The Witches when they pull off their wigs. The atmosphere feels closer to a family reunion, with all the attendant emotions. Two hundred women have beads around their necks and plastic glasses of wine in hand. Some are talking and laughing. Some are shedding a tear. About a quarter of them are topless.

  “Alrighty then.” Bee whips open her top like Magic Mike. Her areolae are the size of dinner plates. “Gonna find me some big girls to talk to. Good luck, kiddo.” She’s gone before I can tell her that I think only women with reconstruction are going topless.

  I grab a cup of almost-cold white wine and wander through the festival of breasticles.

  According to Hollywood and porn, most breasts resemble modest basketballs located somewhere above a ski slope stomach. Not here. Flesh is abundant: round bellies, wobbly arms. All shapes and sizes are on display: breasts that hang, breasts that bounce, uneven breasts, barely there breasts. Breasts of all skin tones, from coal black to alabaster white. And, of course, these breasts have scars. Some are almost invisible, running along the fold where the bottom of the breast meets the chest. But some are long and bold, running across the breast, taking the nipple. Some are perfect case studies. And some are warnings.

  I’m reminded, again, of how strong women are: to be here, showing up, giving back. To have taken their health into their hands in the first place. The women who have had mastectomies, whether they’re preventative or in response to cancer, are quite literally opening themselves up to other women to answer their questions and quell their fears. Elan’s reaction to my surgery—that it’s an end point—seems ridiculous, childishly squeamish, and pathetically hypocritical. He’s hardly an Adonis; he’s hardly a man. A good man would not be freaked out by the women in this room. But my anger at him doesn’t cloud my vision. I feel more clearheaded than I have in months. I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

  I’m not the youngest person here, but most of the boobs on display belong to older women. My eyes rove pendulous breasts, child-rearing breasts, large and luscious, fantastically fleshy breasts . . . until they land on the Holy Grail.

  A modest 32B, perky and taut. Nipples intact. The scars run along the fold under the breast, so neat they’re almost invisible. I can tell they’re implants. No reconstruction looks 100 percent natural. But overall, these breasts are beautiful.

  And so is the girl they belong to. The side of her head is shaved, grown out half an inch. The rest is a tumble of black, woven with small plaits and tiny speckled feathers. A sprinkle of fine tattoos dot toned arms: the arms of a dancer or an athlete. Her eyes are almond-shaped and ice blue. Ethnically ambiguous: Japanese Nordic. She is startling.

  “Sorry.” I back up. “Didn’t mean to stare.”

  “Isn’t that the point of all this?” Her lazy, easy smile reveals small, precise teeth.

  Just like that, I’m on the Kinsey scale.

  “Where did you get them done?” I ask, taking the opportunity to stare, again, at her perfect breasts.

  “Here in the city. New York Cancer Care Center.”

  “That’s where I had my genetic counseling!” I’m thrilled. “You liked it? Your doctor, the team?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says, and I can’t ever imagine her being stressed about anything, ever. “They were great. I completely healed in a few months.” She moves toward me, her breath tickling my ear. She smells like hippie deodorant: sage and rosemary. “That’s the thing about getting them done when you’re young. You heal so much faster. It’s almost unfair.” She smiles at me, again.

  Would we adopt children, or have them naturally?

  “Who was your doctor?”

  “Eric Ho,” she replies. “He’s an expert in DTI: direct-to-implant. One and done.”

  “I read about that!” I say. “Just one surgery.”

  “That’s right. I think expanders are a scam by the hospitals and insurance companies to get more money out of you. Why would I want to keep going back every few weeks, you know? Why prolong it?”

  Why indeed? “Do you mind seeing the scars every day? Honestly, is it weird?”

  “I studied in Japan for a few years,” the girl says, her eyes resting on me with the weight of a sunbeam. “They have this tradition there, where they repair anything broken with gold. So the flaw is
seen as something that’s just part of the object’s history. It’s seen as something beautiful.”

  It’s been a while since I’ve had this kind of New York moment: crossing paths with someone extraordinary. “It’s so weird I didn’t think of NY3C as an option,” I say. “But everyone there was pretty cool.”

  She twists her fingers through her hair. “It worked for me.”

  I am flush with elation. This feels so right. “Did you meet with any other doctors? What shape did you choose? Do they feel cold? What about—”

  “Why don’t I give you my number?” The girl nods past my shoulder. There’s a crowd of women behind me, subtly rubbernecking the world’s best reconstruction. I’ve been monopolizing the most popular rack in the room. I hand her my phone.

  “I’m Luna,” she says, and of course she has a cool name, she is the coolest person I have ever met. “Text me.”

  “I will,” I say, backing up. “Roger.”

  “Your name is Roger?”

  “No, no, Lacey,” I say. “Lacey Whitman. I meant ‘Roger that. Roger to texting.’ ”

  “Okay,” she says, before turning her attention to the woman behind me.

  Awkward ending, promising connection. I walk back into the boobfest, smiling. Not just because I’d secured a good plastic surgeon recommendation, here in New York, at a center my insurance covers.

  Steph was right. I do need to start putting my needs first. Number six on my bucket list.

  Sex with a woman.

  36.

  * * *

  July

  I book a consultation with Dr. Eric Ho. Immediately, I see the appeal. The director of integrated plastic surgery services is polite, warm, and professional, and he’s wearing a nifty purple bow tie. He’s fantastic; Luna was right. We’ve been texting. Or, I’ve been texting incessantly, and she’s been responding periodically. It’s like she doesn’t realize we should be Brooklyn’s answer to Ellen and Portia, which is totally bonkers. Or my gaydar is still reliably terrible and she’s not even gay. Or she’s not interested.

  In his very tidy office, Dr. Ho walks me through a one-step bilateral nipple-sparing mastectomy. He establishes that I’ve met Dr. Laura Williams, when I first had my screenings. She’s the breast surgeon Dr. Ho works with. “As the breast surgeon, Dr. Williams makes an incision underneath the breast, in the inframammary fold,” he says, “finding the plane between the fat layer and the breast layer. She carves the breast tissue away from the overlying skin and nipple, then removes the whole breast in its entirety in one fell swoop through that incision. The tissue is turned inside out so she can immediately send it to a pathologist who can evaluate the tissue behind the nipple. Once it comes back negative—no indication of cancer—I proceed with the reconstruction.”

  His tone is so soothing he makes the surgery sound like something I might want to do to relax.

  Dr. Ho asks, “What size do you want to be at the end of the procedure?”

  I tell him I want to stay the same. “Small boobs. Big dreams.”

  He smiles. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  He uses a 3-D photographic imager to calculate the volume of my breasts: he’d plan to replicate the same volume using the implants. On the computer screen, I can see what my new breasts will look like. Quite similar to my real breasts, except they won’t sag beyond the inframammary fold. The implant will keep me extraordinarily perky till the day I die. I won’t even need to wear a bra.

  “Ninety-nine percent of women choose silicone implants,” he says. “Saline tends to be more like a water balloon. The silicone will ripple and wrinkle less. It’ll look and feel very natural.” He hands me an anatomic-looking implant about the size and shape of a small mango. It’s clear but has a textured surface, soft and squishy. The good doctor explains how it all goes down: the lifting of muscles, attaching of donor skin tissue, placing of implants, securing of drains, closing of skin. I understand 75 percent of what he says, but I’m recording our meeting and can listen back again later. “All that’s left is one simple scar,” he concludes. “It’ll all take between two and a half to three hours.”

  “Will I have to have follow-up surgeries? I read online I have to swap out an implant every ten years.”

  “No,” says the doc, explaining how the incorrect but widely held assumption arose as a result of the mean time women have implants in, including those who voluntarily swap them for (often) bigger implants after six months or so. “Assuming there’s no problems, you may have the same implants the rest of your life.”

  “How many of these surgeries have you done?”

  He doesn’t even sound braggy when he replies. “One thousand seven hundred and sixty nine.”

  Impressive. “Not your first time at the rodeo, huh?”

  He shakes his head with a smile. “No, ma’am.”

  “And did any of those women contract breast cancer after the procedure?”

  “Of those patients, we’ve had two,” he says. “Which means your lifetime risk of developing a breast cancer, as a BRCA carrier, goes from seventy, eighty percent, to less than one percent.”

  I can’t help it. I’m sold. I’ve known this is the right thing for me to do ever since the pros outweighed the cons, back in the loft when the girls were helping me decide what to do. Now, I’m ready to commit. “I’m in. I want to do this.” I rise to my feet and shake the doctor’s hand.

  “Excellent,” he says. “You’re making the right choice.”

  A rush of relief: yes. This is right.

  “Have you given any thought as to when you’d like to schedule your surgery?” Dr. Ho asks.

  There are still so many factors I have to work out. I need to plan recovery time. The end of the summer is always slow for Hoffman House, and it’d mean I get it all over and done with before Eloise quits. But the most time I have off is over Christmas. “I’m not sure.”

  He gives me a tactful smile. “Don’t wait too long.”

  “I’m only twenty-five,” I say.

  “I had a BRCA1 patient who wanted to wait until she was closer to your age,” he says. “She was diagnosed with a stage three last month. She’s twenty-two.”

  Twenty-two? I snap into focus.

  “There’s no need to rush into anything,” he says. “But better to be safe than sorry. Every month you wait increases your risk.”

  Mom was thirty-one when she died. That’s not far off. I need to do this. Now.

  I schedule my mastectomy with Dr. Eric Ho and Dr. Laura Williams for the end of August.

  I am stunned to realize this is only a month and a half away.

  I have six weeks to finish my bucket list, before my boobs-as-I-know-them are gone forever.

  37.

  * * *

  Steph squints at the invite on my phone. “What is it?”

  I thrust the screen closer to her face. “Night of Yes: Dance Party and Sensual Experience.”

  She swats the phone away and flips a page of a very dull-looking textbook: Theories of Developmental Psychology. “Are you stroking out? On what planet would we want to pay to have a sensual experience with a bunch of strangers in Bushwick? It’s actually a reoccurring nightmare of mine and I’m not even kidding.”

  “This planet,” I say. “Luna invited me. She’s performing.”

  “Who”—page flip—“is Luna?”

  Oh. Right. “I didn’t tell you about her?”

  “I think I’d remember the name Luna. It has a certain hipster ridiculousness that tends to make an impression.”

  “I met her at a cancer thing. She’s had reconstruction, with the same plastic surgeon I’m thinking of using. Actually, the same plastic surgeon I am using.” I bite my bottom lip. “I, ah, booked my mastectomy.”

  Steph’s mouth falls open. “When?”

  “When’s the surgery or when did I book it?”

  Steph bolts upright. “Both!”

  “Booked it a few days ago for the end of August.” I roll off her b
ed, studying the ceiling. “It all happened so quickly, I haven’t had time to tell you.”

  “Well, that’s great.” Steph shakes her head, confused. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to . . .”

  “Listen to you? I did. You were right. I was putting Elan’s needs first, and I did need to get back on track. So that’s why we have to go tonight. I’ve only got six weeks left to spoil these amazing lady cakes.” I grab Steph’s hands and shove them onto my chest.

  She squeals. “Stop, sexual assault! My body, my choice!”

  I let her go, giggling. “I met this girl. Luna. You’ll love her; she’s amazing. She can put us on the list, so it won’t even cost anything. Please.”

  Steph sighs and takes my phone, reading the invite. “ ‘A celebration of love and sexuality, discovery, and acceptance.’ So, what: an orgy? Like Eyes Wide Shut?”

  “I think it’s more like a BK costume party where it’s okay to get a little nasty.”

  Steph wrinkles her nose. “That’s disgusting.” She gives me a funny look. “You’re surprisingly chill about all this. Who are you and what have you done with Lacey Whitman?”

  I take this as a compliment. “I’m an open-minded human, Steph. Look, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. They go on and on about consent, they’d probably kick you out for an unwanted high five. There’ll be performances and cheap drinks and everyone will be dressed up. What else are we doing tonight?”

  “Studying. My thesis adviser wants to see three new chapters by the end of summer; cruel and unusual punishment.”

  “What about later?”

  She shrugs. “I might google my crush’s boyfriend and then you can watch me cry for a bit.”

  “Exactly. We’re going out. Who knows? Maybe tonight’s the night I cross number six off the bucket list.”

  Steph flips her textbook shut and heads for her closet. “Will there be white limousines at this party? They won’t last long in Bushwick.”