by Laura Roppé
In a sudden jolt of reality, I realized I had to call John from the record label to give him the news. Right? I had to do that . . . didn’t I? Yes, I did. The honorable thing to do was let him out of the contract—a contract we had signed only days before that world-upending phone call from the surgeon.
Due to the eight-hour time difference between San Diego and London, I had to wait until early the next morning to call. I barely slept that night, anticipating having to make that call. All night, I felt like Anne Boleyn trapped in the Tower of London the night before her gruesome execution.
When I called John’s office the next morning, a receptionist with a Bond Girl voice cheerfully patched me through with a fervent “good day!” When John came on the line, I awkwardly cut off the polite pleasantries.
“John,” I said evenly, “I have some bad news. I just found out I have breast cancer.” My voice was calm, but my heart was breaking inside. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” I took a deep breath. “John, I release you from the contract. You signed a girl with hair and boobs, and I might not have either of those much longer.”
John did not hesitate. “Laura,” he said in his clipped British accent, “I don’t want to be released from the contract. And I certainly don’t release you. Do whatever you need to do to get better. Take care of yourself. And when you’re all better, and I know you will be, we’ll have you over here to film that music video after all. Just do what you need to do to get better.”
I cried tears of joy and relief all at once, which I much preferred to my recent torrent of anxious tears.
“Thank you, John. You’re a saint,” I whimpered, my voice breaking.
“Not really,” he quipped. “I just really love your music.”
Chapter 34
At age eight, one year after my parents had divorced, I sat on the bottom stair at my dad’s new house, crying a river of tears, after having discovered that my Rubik’s Cube had been relieved of one of its essential red blocks, courtesy of one of my brand-new stepsisters.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked, settling himself next to me.
Wordlessly, I held out the broken Rubik’s Cube in my hand, a fresh round of sobs rising up from my raw throat.
“Laura,” Dad said in a firm but gentle voice, “never cry over things. Cry over people. Things can be replaced.”
Sage advice. I’ve never forgotten it. Indeed, I’ve repeated it to my own children many times as they’ve mourned headless Barbies and eyeless teddy bears.
But what do you do when someone is crying over a person? What do you say when the man you love with all your heart is sobbing uncontrollably at the thought of losing his wife, the love of his life? And, in particular, what do you say when that wife, that love of his life, happens to be you?
On the eve of my third chemo session, as Brad and I lay in bed, clutching each other even in our sleep, I was awakened by the sound of his crying.
I was half asleep. “Don’t cry,” I said quietly, fumbling in the dark to pat his arm. “It’ll be all right.”
But Brad did not respond.
I sat up in bed and touched his chest. I looked at his face. Oh, my baby. Brad was asleep. He was crying in his sleep. I exhaled sharply, overcome by a pang in my chest.
“Don’t cry, baby,” I whispered, smoothing his hair.
He didn’t respond.
I rolled over to go back to sleep.
I closed my eyes. I opened them again. I sat up. A song was rushing into my head at full speed. I leaped out of bed and rushed to my desk.
Twenty minutes later, I shook Brad’s shoulder. “Baby! Brad! Wake up!”
Brad opened his eyes, startled. An instant panic seized him. “What is it? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Birdy, I’m fine. You were crying in your sleep, baby.”
Brad’s expression said, And so you woke me up?
“A song just came to me!” I exclaimed, by way of explanation.
He looked groggy.
“Listen to this,” I said. And in the darkness, I sang to him: Don’t cry, it’ll be all right
I’ll be your woobie
Hold on to me tight
Don’t fret, I’m not leaving yet
I’m holding my ground
Won’t let this thing get us, I promise
Baby, baby, you’re my woobie, baby, baby, I’m yours, too
I don’t want no other woobie, baby, all I want is you
I’m here, I’m not going anywhere
Even though I’m scared, I’m not feeling any fear
With you standing by my side
The monster can’t hide
Gonna slap it upside the head
Baby, baby, you’re my woobie, baby, baby, I’m yours, too
I don’t want no other woobie, baby, all I want is you
“Buddy, I love it,” Brad said, pulling me close to him. And then, completely contrary to my purpose in writing the song in the first place, he began to cry.
Chapter 35
Brad never even considered missing a single chemo infusion or doctor’s appointment, even though countless friends and family offered to take his place.
“I want to be the one to hold your hand,” he said firmly. “I’d do the chemo for you if I could.”
Obviously Brad couldn’t do that, and even if he could have, I wouldn’t have let him. But there was something he could do for me, something I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else to do, something I’d never done in my whole life: hold the hash pipe for me when I finally inhaled my first hit of Mary Jane. Now, that’s what I call being a caregiver.
A fellow cancer patient had given me a baggie full of marijuana as a gift. “It’s the only thing that helps me,” he had told me in a weary voice, totally unsolicited. “Maybe it’ll help you, too.”
Of course, given my lifelong abstention from drugs, and my goody-two-shoes nature in general, I had been about to say, “No, thanks” to my benefactor. But then, for some reason, I had instead replied, “Thanks a lot.”
Nonetheless, that little bag had remained securely hidden in my medicine cabinet for several weeks, until one night, after a particularly difficult chemo session, I crept downstairs once the girls were sleeping soundly in their beds and found Brad watching TV on the couch.
“Brad, will you help me?” I asked, holding up the baggie and the pipe.
Brad glanced up, and an amused grin washed over his face. “My pleasure.”
If my new friend (i.e., my new drug dealer) had given me a rolled joint, I’d have known exactly what I was supposed to do: light it, stick it in my mouth, and inhale (unlike Bill Clinton). Simple. But I’d never seen this particular type of pipe thingamajiggy and bag of green buds before, and I needed a tutorial.
Now, don’t get me wrong—I’d seen pot before. Way back when I was nine years old, I sat on the couch with Dad’s new wife, Laila, as she watched Fantasy Island, all the while toking away on a big fat water bong. The hypnotic gurgle of the bong, and Tattoo shouting, “Da plane, da plane!” filled the smoky family room.
After a long inhale, Laila turned slowly to me, a vacant look in her eyes, and said, without a hint of irony or intentional humor, “You know who Mr. Roarke is, don’t you?”
I shook my head. Ricardo something, I thought.
“He’s God,” Laila answered. And then she took a long, gurgling hit off the bong.
Not too long after that, Dad sat me down to tell me that he and Laila were kaput. “Some people have little capsules inside their heads, sort of like Tylenol capsules,” he said. “And sometimes one of these capsules opens up and tiny beads spill out.”
I looked at Dad quizzically, trying to make heads or tails of what he was trying to tell me.
“The problem is,” Dad explained further, “sometimes the beads are . . . crazy beads. And that’s what’s going on inside Laila’s brain,” he summed up.
I understood pretty well: Laila’s crazy beads had gotten loose and were r
olling around inside her head.
And so my own fleeting, real-life Cheech and Chong movie came to an end.
But the damage had been done: I became an antidrug zealot, certain that one little puff of pot would decimate two million brain cells at a time and reduce me to a Mr. Roarke–worshipping ninny. And thus I primly declined each and every joint that was proffered to me throughout my teens and twenties, never entering my own personal Age of Aquarius.
After college, after I’d embarked on a career as a professional tight-ass, lighting up a doobie never occurred to me. And, of course, once I had become a minivan-driving mother of two, becoming dazed and confused was out of the question.
And that was why now, at age thirty-eight, I needed Brad’s help to become a pothead. Really, this pipe and loose bag of buds didn’t look anything like the water bong I’d seen in my childhood, and they didn’t come with an instruction manual. Although Brad’s last puff on a joint had been as a teenager almost two decades before, at least he’d had more experience with the stuff than I had.
Brad looked strangely elated. His straitlaced wife was finally going to join the rank and file and get stoned! No matter that I was bald and sickly; this was his chance to finally knock me off my holier-than-thou pedestal.
We went outside onto our patio into the chilly night air, where, after sitting me down at a table and wrapping me meticulously in a warm blanket, Brad gave me proper instructions.
“I’m going to put the buds into the pipe, and when I light it, you need to inhale deeply into your lungs. Okay?” I nodded, my eyes wide. “The hardest part for first-timers,” he continued, “is inhaling deeply enough that the pot gets into their system. You can’t just inhale into your mouth and throat; that’ll just make you cough, and you won’t feel anything.”
“I can do it,” I assured him. “Hit me.”
Brad laughed. “Hit me,” he echoed, and grinned.
He carefully packed the little mosslike balls of pot—or, as I like to say, weed, herb, Mary Jane, spliff, ganja, reefer, bud, dope, doobie, purple haze, devil’s lettuce, hashish—into the pipe, and then he lit it with a match. Ooh, that smell.
Brad gently held the pipe up to my lips, and I inhaled. Deeply. And then I held the smoke in my lungs for what seemed a very long time.
The seal had been broken.
“Oh my God,” Brad whispered. “You’re a natural.”
I laughed, and a white puff of smoke shot out of my mouth. And then I coughed. “I guess I’ve got big ol’ singer’s lungs,” I reasoned. Or maybe I’d picked up a thing or two from watching my blink-and-you’ll-miss-her stepmom, Laila.
My throat felt hot and scratchy, and my lungs hurt. I felt as if I’d just escaped from a burning building. How the hell is this so alluring to everyone? I wondered. But, hell, I had nothing to lose.
“Hit me again,” I ordered.
Now that I’d given up my reefer V-card, I figured I might as well find out what all the fuss was about. And given the sickness and pain I was already feeling, killing two million brain cells didn’t seem like such a travesty. I’d have sacrificed all of them to make the pain go away.
“This is hysterical,” Brad whispered, as he held the pipe up to my lips again, and then we both started laughing uncontrollably, although we were careful not to make so much noise as to attract notice from our neighbors, a mere ten feet away, on the other side of the fence.
Perhaps you are wondering if Brad took the opportunity to smoke with me. He did not. You might not believe me, but it’s true. Pot held no attraction for him, he said. And even if it had, he had two little girls sleeping upstairs who needed a sober parent in the house, as well as a cancer-stricken wife who’d just taken her first hit of weed at the age of thirty-eight. Who knew how I’d react?
Brad and I settled onto the couch to watch TV together before I inevitably drifted off to sleep. I was staring intently at the television, watching the medical drama House, when I heard Brad’s garbled voice next to me, sounding as if he were standing in a distant wind tunnel.
“That was so funny,” Brad mused about something that had just happened in the show.
I turned my dull gaze to him. “What was so funny?” I asked slowly, though I’d been staring at the television the whole time.
“Oh, honey, you are so stoned,” Brad observed. And he was right.
But even in that state, I still felt absolutely horrible. Now, I was just feeling horrible and stoned, and my throat and lungs felt as if I’d just spent the night in a Las Vegas casino. For me, marijuana (even this strong stuff) was no match for the powerful chemo drugs coursing through my body. As it turned out, I much preferred the antinausea medications, painkillers, and sleep aids Dr. Hampshire gave me to combat the chemo’s effects; at least with those, I didn’t feel like my lungs were on fire. But, oh well, it was worth a shot. And, I must confess, it was a relief to hang up my long-standing goody-two-shoes for good.
Chapter 36
She says, this life’s too heavy, I’ve reached the breaking point
If I check out now I can leave it all behind
And float, float away
But she hears the voice of her little girl
Only thing that matters in this whole world
Gotta find a way not to fade away
Hold on, for one more day
She’s not sure how she got to this place, the world is crashing down
Gotta have faith it’ll be all right, too much to lose if she loses this fight
Baby growing up ashamed all her life if she goes away, if she fades away
Won’t float away, no! Won’t float away
Hold on, for one more day
Hold on, for one more day
When I wrote my song “Float Away,” I was six months shy of my cancer diagnosis. Cancer was still someone else’s sad misfortune, something that would never happen to me. In fact, I had never faced a defining hardship in my own life, though, of course, I had experienced personal heartaches and disappointments. “Float Away” was what came out of me when I allowed myself to feel others’ struggles vicariously.
Way back when Brad and I were teenagers, we were driving south toward Mexico, intent on reveling in a carefree day of surfing (Brad), sunbathing (me), and lobster, when we spotted a young woman clinging to the outside of a chain-link fence on a freeway overpass, just before the Mexican border.
The girl was perched on a three-inch-wide strip of cement, clutching the chain-link fence at her back and looking down at the rushing cars twenty feet below. There was no question in our minds what she was doing out there on that precarious ledge, her skirt billowing above the speeding traffic below.
“Pull up onto that overpass, right next to that girl,” I ordered Brad, and he did, holding his breath in anticipation.
I had never been trained in crisis management, and I didn’t know the recommended protocol in such a situation. But what I did know was this: I was pissed.
Wordlessly, I stomped out of the car, slamming the door behind me, and marched directly toward that shivering girl.
The roar of the passing traffic below us forced me to shout, even though we were standing mere feet apart. “Hey!” I called out in a stern voice. “You there!”
She turned to look at me with wide brown eyes.
Oh, she’s younger than I’d thought. She was about my age.
“Get down from there and come over here this instant!” My tone was indignant. “Right now!”
But she didn’t budge. She just stared at me for a few seconds and then turned her dull gaze back to the freeway.
I was miffed. How dare she!
“You know, you’re not allowed to be there!”
Still no reaction.
I inched closer to the girl, until I was standing about a foot away from her, just behind her right shoulder, on the safe side of the chain-link fence. She didn’t react to my advancement, but instead maintained her blank stare at the onrushing traffic.
“Do you
speak English?” My tone was not gentle; it was bossy. Still no response. “¡Ven acá este minuto! ¡Está prohibido!” I shouted with authority, showing off my many years of Spanish-language studies.
Without acknowledging me, the girl with the big brown eyes tilted her gaze to her right, toward the end of the chain-link fence, twenty yards away, and then slowly began to inch her way across the length of the fence, back toward the safety of the overpass. She finally arrived at the open edge of the fence and stepped gingerly onto the sidewalk. For just a moment, she stood about a foot from me, both of us now on the safe side of the fence, and our eyes met.
How could you even think of doing such a horrible thing? And then I felt my heart soften. Why do you feel so hopeless?
Her big brown eyes flashed at me one last time, and then she ran away without a word.
I stood rooted to my spot on the sidewalk, as a loud semitruck rattled past me on the freeway below.
I climbed back into the car, where Brad had watched this drama unfold from the driver’s seat.
“What did you say to her? That was crazy!” he exclaimed, but I was too stunned to respond.
He didn’t push me for a response. Instead, he silently started the car and pulled back onto the road, shaking his head in disbelief. I looked out the car window, lost in my thoughts as our car merged into traffic again. She was nowhere to be seen.
I pulled down the visor mirror above my car seat and gazed at my own brown eyes. But all I could see were that girl’s haunting brown eyes staring back at me.
It was then, and only then, that I thought to myself, Holy crap.
Throughout the twenty years after that day, I thought about the girl with the empty brown eyes many times. Had she returned to the bridge to complete her mission five minutes after we’d left? Or maybe the next day? There was no shortage of freeway overpasses in the world. Or had she gone straight home to swallow a bottle of pills?
I had somehow managed to shame her off that bridge that day, but I’d done nothing to give her hope, to change her heart. I had merely distracted her for a brief moment, like swatting at a fly buzzing around a picnic feast.