Rocking the Pink

by Laura Roppé

  No, Anne Bancroft was a sign from the universe, an answer to my rain dance—a glimpse into my glorious future.

  Anne Bancroft was a harbinger of my destiny.

  Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson!

  Chapter 9

  It had finally sunk in: I had triple negative breast cancer. I was going to have to fight for my life. Like Debra Winger in Terms of Endearment. Except wait—she died in that movie. Scrap that.

  Just a few weeks before, I’d finally resumed dancing and singing my way down the Yellow Brick Road toward Judy-dom—a lawyer had signed a midlife record deal?!—and now, after one disorienting phone call, I had been swept up by a flying monkey and secreted away in the Wicked Witch’s tower, with nary a yellow brick in sight.

  My brain wasn’t functioning normally, and my body felt dragged down by fifty-pound weights. Just taking air into my lungs and then expelling it required a massive effort. Making a grilled cheese sandwich for Chloe was a Herculean feat.

  I cried easily and often.

  My face felt heavy. Numb. I was sinking, sinking, sinking into darkness.

  And Brad wasn’t faring any better.

  Brad had never been a crier; I could remember only a handful of times I’d seen him cry in the twenty-three years I’d known him. And yet now he could not contain his despair. While I put on a brave face to watch a movie with the girls, Brad skulked off to our bedroom to cry in private, and then, when I could no longer maintain my stiff upper lip, we’d switch places. At night, after the girls had gone to sleep, we lay in bed together, relieved to be able to break down together in the privacy of our bedroom. Every night, we clutched each other like rock climbers clinging to a boulder.

  The closest I’d ever come to feeling this way was when my beloved childhood dog, Darrow, died in his old age during my senior year of high school. Back when I was five, my parents came home from a weekend away with a black-and-white terrier mix from the pound. Almost hyperventilating with joy, I stormed outside, into the middle of the street, and shouted at the tippy-top of my lungs, “We got a puppy!”

  At this, children swarmed out of neighboring houses and into our back yard, eventually huddling tightly around the main attraction. Amidst our shouting and cooing, that poor, overwhelmed puppy yakked, and then, on wobbly legs, teetered, with hardly a splash, right into the swimming pool. Like a superhero, Dad scooped the soggy ball of fur out of the water with our blue pool net and plopped him back onto the patio.

  “What should we name him?” Dad asked later, when the commotion had died down.

  “Lemon Drop,” Sharon suggested.

  “Fruity,” I proffered.

  But Dad, a Stanford-educated attorney and the man I loved most in the whole world, dismissed our suggestions with a wave of his hand. “We’ll call him Darrow,” he declared with full authority, “after the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow.”

  And thus Dad foretold, or perhaps even charted, my future.

  When Darrow died as an old dog, I lovingly laid every single photo of him ever taken on my bed, creating a makeshift shrine, and then reclined facedown right on top of them, my heart disintegrating like plastic wrap in a microwave, my grief a bottomless well. For three days, I wailed my lungs out on top of those photos, not knowing how to climb out of my dark hole.

  I’d adored Darrow’s hangdog eyes and tear-sopping fur—and his pragmatic advice through the travails of my childhood had always been right on the money. No matter how much I had pestered him—trying repeatedly but in vain to perform the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti trick with him, or forcing him to emulate the closet scene from E.T. by peeking his head out of my stuffed-animal collection—he had offered unwavering and uncomplicated companionship.

  On the third day of my grief at losing my little four-legged attorney, Brad came over, kissed my swollen eyelids, and said, “Baby, you’ve got to pull yourself together now.” And so I did.

  But this—this horrific diagnosis, this looming death sentence of mine—was exponentially more excruciating than losing my beloved Darrow, though I’d have jumped in front of a moving train for him.

  And this time, Brad was in no condition to stitch up the gaping hole in my heart. He was falling apart, too. At night, as we lay in bed, clutching each other, he whispered, “I can’t live without you” over and over, and tightened his grip on my body as if he could prevent me, by sheer force of will, from slipping away.

  The thought that Brad could not survive without me—perhaps literally—terrified me, since, I figured, he might not have a choice in the matter. But that wasn’t what I told him on those nights as we lay, just the two of us, holding each other in the dark.

  “I’m gonna be fine,” I reassured him, stroking his tear-stained cheeks. I was amazed at how calm and assured my voice sounded.

  “Do you promise?” His voice was shaky.

  “Yes, Buddy. I promise.”

  If that promise turned out to be a lie, I reasoned, and if survival just wasn’t in the cards for me after all, Brad would simply have to forgive me.

  Chapter 10

  When we’d both graduated from college, Brad moved to L.A. to live with me while I pursued my big Hollywood dreams, even though he didn’t fully understand them.

  “You’re so smart,” he said. “You should be inventing the cure for cancer.”

  But I didn’t want to invent the cure for cancer. I wanted to be a star.

  We got an airy apartment that allowed pets, for Crazy Buster. Our next-door neighbor was a perpetually harried woman with six snorting pugs, and the guy upstairs had a loud (goddamned) bird. Brad got a job in the copy department of a law firm while he figured out his next move. And I, presumably, set out to “make it.”

  I managed to book an audition with a reputable talent agent in the Valley. A successful audition could be a life-changing opportunity. A theater friend of mine named Rob agreed to perform a dramatic scene with me, and we rehearsed and rehearsed. Finally, the big day arrived and we performed our scene for the agent in his Burbank office.

  “Compelling,” he complimented Rob first. “You’re understated and believable.”

  And then he turned to me. “You’re good,” he said. “But . . . we’ve already got one of you.”

  Before I could ask him what “having one of me” meant, he elaborated: “We already represent Martha Plimpton.”

  What? I was the poor man’s Martha Plimpton?

  Surely, someone out there would be able to appreciate my special Laura-ness. I was unique! Unlike anyone else! I was not some shoddy Martha Plimpton mimeograph, thank you very much.

  I got a head shot made, and I mailed it out to every reputable talent agent in the greater Los Angeles area. I’d show that guy!

  And then, by God, I waited . . . and waited.

  But I didn’t get a single response to my head shot mailings.

  “I think I’ll go to law school,” Brad declared eight weeks later, having long since abandoned all inquiries about the progress of my talent-agency mailing.

  And I, the former star of The Doors, the girl once destined to become the next Judy Garland, the purveyor of a unique brand of Laura-ness not heretofore seen anywhere else in the world, shrugged my deflated shoulders and said, “Me, too.”

  So much for polishing my Oscar-acceptance speech.

  Why the change of heart? Because the rubber had finally hit the road on an internal wrestling match I’d been waging my whole life: In one corner, there was my heart—my creativity and dreams—looking sort of like a headband-clad Ralph Macchio in the original Karate Kid. In the other corner, there was my head, looking surprisingly like Ralph Macchio’s blond nemesis in that same movie, standing with a combative expression on his (its) face. I’m superior to you, my head taunted my heart. I’m analytical, pragmatic, and far more respected by society . . . and by your family, too. And with that, my head landed a roundhouse kick on my heart.

  I’d been told from a young age by my family and teachers that I was off-the-charts
smart, and I took their opinions in this regard to be unquestionable fact. If it was true that I was a brainiac, as the adults said, then I supposed I’d better not waste my big, fat brains on pursuits for dummies—even though most of the left brain–centered classes, like algebra and chemistry, were torturous. To do otherwise would be such a waste, and a disappointment to everyone, wouldn’t it? And yet if I were to pursue others’ projections of me to fruition, rather than what bubbled inside me like molten lava, how would I ever achieve Judy-dom? Over time, I reconciled the conflict this way: In addition to winning the Academy Award one day, I’d also invent the next Ziploc bags or achieve some other history-changing feat, too. That seemed like a fair solution.

  With each passing year, I felt the strain of my inner conflict: Should I surrender to the allegedly analytical and conventional person others seemed to value in me, or let my freak flag fly and unabashedly pursue my name in lights?

  On the first day of my senior year of high school, I sat in Mr. Brown’s trigonometry class, a Cheshire cat–like grin across my face, smug about the fact that, unbeknownst to anyone else, I’d staged an illicit protest. I had been slated to take calculus that year, but instead I’d covertly signed up for trigonometry—one step behind the advanced algebra course I’d completed the year before.

  I’d spent the last three years of high school studying myself into a stupor, and, by God, I was going to enjoy my senior year, especially now that Brad was embarking on a party-filled freshman year at the local university. Besides, I needed to free up more time for the one thing that had unlocked my soul more than anything else: singing. I had starred in every high school musical, and I’d reveled in every minute of every performance—except for the time when my shirt fell off in the middle of a performance, leaving me standing, aghast, at center stage in my Maidenform bra and the audience gasping, “Oh!” in unison. And so I had decided, at least for my senior year of high school, that it was high time for my heart to reign supreme.

  As Mr. Brown drew a figure on the white board, the classroom door opened and the calculus teacher stormed into the room. The class looked up at him expectantly, full of dread. The calculus teacher surveyed the room, until his eyes fixed on me.

  “You,” he said, pointing. “You’re supposed to be in calculus. Come with me.”

  Please! Don’t hurt me. “I’m not taking calculus this year,” I said meekly.

  He paused, assessing me. “Tell that to Mrs. Beldam.”

  With all eyes staring at me, and a few scattered snickers, I excused myself and made my way to the assistant headmistress’s office.

  Mrs. Beldam was a stark woman who invoked terror in every student—even more so than the actual headmaster, who happened to be her husband. Even her smiles were chilling. Think Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Or maybe, more aptly, the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “You are supposed to take calculus this year, Laura,” Mrs. Beldam said, her voice steely. It was petrifying to hear her utter my name. “Trigonometry is a step backwards for you,” she continued. “This is most unlike you, Laura.” Again, terror.

  “I’m not . . . really . . . interested in taking calculus this year,” I answered.

  She let this information set in. Her expression was one of disappointment and disdain; apparently, I was not the scholar she had presumed.

  “Do your parents know about this . . . my pretty?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  Well, implicitly. When a kid barricades herself regularly in her room to study for hours on end, there’s no need for parental pressure, is there?

  “Is calculus a required course?” I asked, but I knew the answer. You can’t make me!

  “No,” she answered with reluctance. She was pissed.

  “Okay, well, then, I’ll just stick with trigonometry.”

  And with that, I hurled a bucket of water at her face and then leaped back in horror as she started fizzling and melting into a puddle on her desk.

  “Oh, what a world, what a world!” she howled amid the rising steam.

  “May I go back to class?” I asked, sweetness personified.

  She stared me down. “Go ahead.” She shot daggers at me.

  I skipped back to class, resisting the urge to whistle. I had stood my ground against a powerful, green-faced witch and had adhered to my principles—even if my newfound principles were laziness, sloth, and lack of ambition. I’d avoided evil calculus, ensured a glorious senior year with my college-freshman boyfriend, and paved the way for my continued pursuit of Judy-dom.

  And then, at the end of the school year, I marched off, triumphantly raising Mrs. Beldam’s broomstick into the sky, all the way to the theater school at UCLA.

  Score one for the heart.

  And yet only a few short years later, by the time of my college graduation, my head had stormed back and waged a come-from-behind victory, relying on my willingness to please, as well as my utter spinelessness, as its weaponry. By then, as a result of societal and familial influences, real or imagined, I viewed the phrase “I’m a people person” as code for “I have no definable skills.” “I want to be an actress” equated to “I’m self-absorbed and delusional.” Basically, anything short of conventional, left-brained pursuits had become, in my mind, the equivalent of running off to join the circus. And since I was born with an enlarged desire to garner approval from society, as well as from my law school–educated family, I certainly did not want to be perceived as the sword-swallowing bearded lady.

  “You’d make a fine judge or professor or CEO one day,” Dad and his parents often said to me, intending to convey a sincere compliment.

  Aren’t families supposed to encourage young girls to shatter glass ceilings in male-dominated professions? To kick ass and take names in courtrooms and boardrooms across America? Of course! I’m not complaining about my family’s high aspirations for me—it’s just that, in retrospect, I know I should have responded: “Thanks, but I don’t really care about civil procedure. I just want to be on Saturday Night Live.” And yet through absence of clarity or courage, or maybe both, I didn’t say any such thing.

  And anyway, as much as I’d absolutely loved being among the artsy types in the theater department, I knew I wasn’t one of them. At theater parties, everywhere I looked, someone was experimenting with drugs or sexuality (or both), or doing a manic stand-up routine to an audience of three. And me? I was the Girl with Her Head on Straight. The Girl with a Boyfriend Back Home. I didn’t have any interest in luxuriating in angst or drugs, or in “finding myself.” I was the only person I knew who’d never even smoked pot, for Pete’s sake.

  I wasn’t a thespian like my roommate Holly, who was angst-ridden and deep in a way I couldn’t fathom; I was just sort of . . . faking it. But one day soon, if I continued down this gotta-be-me path, I worried, the jig would be up and I’d wind up with no marketable skills, serving “Adam and Eve on a Raft” at a truck stop forever.

  At the time, I am sure, I couldn’t have articulated any of this. But in retrospect, it’s clear that my head had finally beaten the pulp out of my heart, after years of epic struggle. And so, for all of these reasons, I jumped the first train to Plan B and joined Brad in law school.

  Goodbye, Judy.

  Score one for the head.

  Chapter 11

  Although Brad and I had spent many a weekend together up to this point, living together full-time was an adjustment. I would go to the grocery store to buy what I thought was a week’s worth of groceries, only to find that Brad had emptied the refrigerator a mere two days later. And since I’d never had a brother, I wasn’t hip to all the pointless and imbecilic teasing that’s second nature to boys.

  Once, when there were two cookies left on a plate, I asked Brad for one of them.

  “Sure,” he said, and then he picked up both cookies, licked them with exaggerated gusto, and held them both out to me, a cocky grin on his handsome face. “Which one do you want?”

  I was aghast
. “You’re an animal!”

  He just laughed his silly, infectious laugh.

  And Brad learned new things about me, too—like the fact that I was a somnambulatory lunatic.

  “Honey, what are you doing?” he asked, dumbfounded, having awakened to find me gingerly patting a large houseplant in the corner of our bedroom.

  “Shhhh!” I admonished with intensity. “You’ll scare it!”

  Brad turned on the bedroom light and said, “I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna scare a houseplant.”

  I awoke from my trance. “Oh,” I said, bewildered. “I thought it was an injured German shepherd.”

  In addition to learning about my nighttime secrets, Brad discovered (as did I) that my Brooklyn-born mother’s “from da nay-buh-hood” accent had tainted my speech since birth.

  Sharon and I had visited our Brooklyn grandparents during many childhood summers, endlessly amusing ourselves with our simulations of that distinctive accent. My favorite pastime in the world was to sit in the muggy summer air on my grandparents’ front porch (“the stoop”) and, simply by sitting there, lure the neighborhood kids to me like moths to the flame. What Brooklynite could resist chatting with the visiting girl from California?

  “Say dwahg,” one of them would prompt, after a small crowd had formed.

  “Dog,” I’d answer politely, in my perfect Grace Kelly diction, my California-bred superiority wafting from every pore.

  Hysterical laughter would ensue from the menagerie.

  “Say cwahffee,” one of the kids would shout.

  “Coffee.”

  Peals of laughter.

  “Say mirr-uh.”

  “Mirror.”

  Mass hysteria.

  I amused them? Okay, I’d let them enjoy their alternate reality, even though I knew, without a doubt, that they were the amusing ones.

  And so, years later, when Brad and I finally shacked up and each day brought a new revelation about the other person, I was blindsided to learn that, despite my holier-than-thou tours of duty on that stoop in Brooklyn, my movie-star pronunciation had been compromised at the cellular level.