Rocking the Pink

by Laura Roppé

  “Oh, no, you don’t, honey,” Brad reassured me. And just as I was about to hug him, he added, “You look like Horshack.”

  But nothing could get me down. I had hair again. My port had been removed. I had no nausea or bone pain. We had (gratefully) said goodbye to our (wonderful) baby sitter. It was time for our family to take care of itself again.

  And then, like a faucet that has suddenly been turned on, new songs started pouring into my head. They flooded me at all times of the day and night, boring holes through my gray matter.

  I was back, baby! There was no doubt about it.

  Chapter 43

  Jane and I were engaged in an enthusiastic email exchange about how to cast the movie about our lives. I definitely wanted Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock to play me, or, if the movie included a younger me, maybe Anne Hathaway. Any of them would do, really; I loved them all. (Not very original, I know, but you’ve got to aim for the top.)

  “At any rate,” I reasoned, ever the pragmatist, “I’d need an A-list actress to play me to get the project green-lit.” I was proud of myself for using such in-the-know industry-speak.

  Jane agreed that my entertainment-industry acumen was admirable. “For me,” she joined in, “it’s got to be Cate Blanchett or Renée Zellweger. Either of them would do me justice.”

  “I understand Cate,” I responded, having established myself as the resident Holly wood expert, “but Renée Zellweger to play you? An American? Perish the thought!”

  “Oh, yes,” Jane shot back. “Renée did a bang-up British accent in the Bridget Jones movies.”

  Actually, I’d read an article in which Hugh Grant had said Renée’s accent had been impeccable. Perhaps Jane was onto something there. “Good point, Jane.” Really, we’d missed our mutual callings. We both should have been Hollywood casting agents. “So hard to choose.” (And, of course, it was imperative we make a decision soon, since Holly wood was sure to be knocking down our doors any day now.)

  “What about Brad?” Jane asked.

  “That’s easy,” I wrote. “Brad Pitt will play my Brad. Brad Pitt’s a dead ringer for his irreverence and charm.” And, I recalled, the two Brads had been members of the same fraternity at their respective colleges. That being the case, my Brad and Angelina’s Brad (or dare I call him “Angie’s Brad”?) could greet each other on the movie set with secret handshakes and sappy fraternity songs—about which Angie and I would roll our eyes and exchange warm looks of commiseration about our beloved men. They’re so silly, our mutual expressions would communicate, but oh, how we love them.

  And now that I thought about it, if Angelina Jolie wanted to star in my movie with her Brad, then I most certainly would not stand in her way. It had been an egregious oversight to overlook her as a candidate to play me in the first place, I realized. I wasn’t totally convinced she could pull off my particular brand of spazziness—she seemed like a pretty cool customer to me—but I would be open to letting her try.

  “Well then,” Jane wrote, and I could detect her bossy tone clearly through cyberspace, across two continents, “how about a cute boyfriend for me? I’d like Hugh Jackman, please,” she commanded, as if she were ordering fish and chips. “That man can sing! You could do a duet with him in the movie, maybe in a dream sequence or something.”

  It made no sense! Jane was unattached at the moment! And this movie was meant to be cinema verité—as realistic and gritty as possible.

  Ha! Who was I kidding? If my Brad and I were Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, then by God, My Dearest Jane would enjoy a torrid, if fantastical, affair with Hugh Jackman. It was our movie, wasn’t it?

  “Okay, Jane. We’ll create a part for Hugh Jackman.” I laughed as I pressed the “send” button. It was the least I could do for my dear friend.

  Come to think of it, that gave me an idea: As long as we were creating parts that made absolutely no sense in this movie, couldn’t we find a part for George Clooney (twice honored as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, if you haven’t heard)? Given George’s years of experience portraying a TV doctor on ER, perhaps he could be Dr. Hampshire in our film.

  “George is my absolute favorite!” I wrote.

  “Oh, yes, he’s a dream,” Jane replied.

  “He’s such a man’s man, isn’t he?” I sighed. “I bet he smells like Old Spice! I just want to get right up close and . . . smell him.”

  During those interminable months of chemo, my sense of smell had become particularly acute as the unmistakable and omnipresent odors of chemicals and sickness had bombarded my nostrils. I just hadn’t been able to escape that awful chemo scent, though I’d changed my sheets and pajamas obsessively—it was on my skin, my clothes, my sheets.

  Yes, I decided, George Clooney’s manly-man smell would be an idyllic escape from cancer and its wafting stranglehold on my life. Yes, George Clooney’s Old Spice smell would be just the ticket to take me away from it all.

  “Oh, Laura,” Jane wrote in her reply email, “is he your celebrity crush? The one you’d ‘do’ if given the chance?”

  “I don’t want to have sex with him, Jane,” I wrote piously, though, of course, I was lying. “I just want to smell him!”

  I just want this to be over.

  For the hundredth time, I thought about my bucket list, something I’d composed in my mind, and supplemented many times, as I’d lain in bed on my darkest days. Some of the items on the list were meaningful and poignant, exactly as you’d expect. Like watching my daughters graduate from college. Or holding my future grandchildren in my arms. Or taking golf lessons so I could join Brad on the course in our twilight years.

  But life is also about moments of giddy excitement, flashes of unexpected, pulse-racing thrill. Isn’t it?

  Yes, the more I thought about my bucket list, the more I realized smelling George Clooney was pretty high on the list. And, dammit, I wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  I want to be the kind of girl who eats sushi and has tattoos

  Always a witty comeback, drinkin’ gin and vermouth

  I want to sing my songs in Prague and wear a coat in London fog

  Go down to ’Nawlins on the Dog, never sit at a desk job

  I wanna laugh and sing all day, thinking’s purely optional

  I’ve thought a lot, I’m done with that, and now I’m having fun

  I wanna smell George Clooney

  I bet he’d smell real good

  I’d wrap my arms around him

  And I would breathe him in

  Yeah, I would breathe him in

  I want my “happy” and my “right,”

  I won’t give up without a fight

  I want to see my name in lights

  It’s finite, my dear

  Life is finite, my dear

  When I emerged from my very last radiation treatment and into the hospital waiting room, my fellow radiation patients, whom I had befriended over the past several weeks of daily treatments, threw me a “radiation graduation party.” My song “Mama Needs a Girls’ Night Out” was blaring on the CD player, and we all started dancing around in our hospital gowns, booties hanging out and all. After cake and presents and warm hugs all around, I walked out of the radiation area as the group hummed “Pomp and Circumstance.”

  Brad and I marched out the front doors of the hospital together, arm in arm, and at the first flash of bright sunshine on my face, I raised my arms in triumph. We’d reached the finish line.

  Before heading to the car, though, we made one last stop, in the building next door.

  “Sayonara,” I said to Dr. Hampshire, real sassy-like, as I stood in his office.

  “You’re not nearly done with me,” he reminded me. (Indeed, regular checkups with my oncologist would be part of my life for years to come.)

  “I know,” I admitted. “But it feels so good to say that today. Just humor me, Doc. Sayonara!”

  Brad and I drove to an artsy area of town for a celebratory lunch at an outdoor Italian café. We basked in the
San Diego sunshine and smiled at each other until our cheeks hurt. It’s over.

  “Babe, I want to get a tattoo,” I announced over my seafood pasta.

  Brad paused for just a moment, smirking at me in his usual “oh, Lucy” sort of way. “Of what?”

  I told him.

  “Honey,” Brad began, the voice of reason, “a tattoo may seem like a great idea now. But one day you’ll be old and saggy and you’ll totally regret it.”

  I considered what he had said for a moment. It was a relief to note that he had reverted to assuming I’d live to old age—a welcome change from his despair of only a few months before.

  “The way I see it, I can’t lose. Either I get a tattoo and love it for the rest of my life, however long or short that is, or I live long enough to regret it one day. I’d love to live long enough to regret a tattoo.”

  Brad laughed. “You make a great point.” He shook his head as if shaking off a bad dream. “I can’t argue with that logic.”

  Brad paid the bill and we ran, holding hands, to the tattoo parlor across the street, where I told the tattoo artist the phrase I wanted him to “ink” on my body. (I’m sure I didn’t actually use the word “ink” at the time, but in the retelling, it makes me seem edgier, doesn’t it?)

  “What font do you want for the letters?” the tattoo artist asked me.

  I hadn’t thought about that. “I have no idea.”

  He referred me to a computer with hundreds of fonts, each identified by name.

  “Just take a look through all of these and let me know which one you want,” he said, and turned to walk away, apparently assuming this was going to take a while.

  I squinted down at the list of fonts. How on earth was I going to pick from so many options? I started scanning.

  Bingo. Third one down from the top. I didn’t need to look any further.

  “Okay!” I called to the tattoo artist, summoning him back. He hadn’t even made it out of the room yet. “I found it.” I pointed. “That one.”

  “Sounds good. Lie down here,” he said, motioning to an adjacent table.

  I complied.

  The tattoo guy prepared his instruments and explained the process to me.

  I pulled up my shirt, unhooked the clasp of my bra, and positioned my body on its right side, beaming at Brad the whole time.

  Brad watched in total fascination as the tattoo artist carefully inscribed—in Jane Austen font, of course!—the phrase “I’m still here” next to my scarred and embattled breast, just under my left armpit.

  I’m still here!

  Not too long ago, when I’d inhaled pot for the first time, I’d hung up my goody-two-shoes for good. And now, with each plunge of the tattoo needle into my skin, I was donating those damned shoes to the Salvation Army.

  Oh yeah, sucka? How ya like me now? I’m still here!

  I kicked you hard and I’m not sorry,

  I beat you up and it felt good

  Said hit the road, Jack, and I meant it

  With half a chance, I’d do it again

  Kiss-off of the century,

  Slamming the door on your back as you leave

  Don’t come back, don’t come back, don’t you never come back!

  Just the beginning of me

  Get out! Stay out! Time’s out! And I’m starting all over

  Stand out! Rock out! Break out! I’m my own superhero

  Nothing to pout about, just gotta shout about: I’m still here!

  Nothing to pout about, just gotta shout about: I’m still here!

  When we returned home from our eventful afternoon, I showered the girls with confetti. And though Sophie was appalled by my new tattoo (“How could you?”), all was forgiven in her relief to have her mommy back.

  “Oooh, I love your tattoo, Mommy,” Chloe purred, in direct contrast with Sophie’s horrified reaction. I could see her eyes light up, even at age seven, with what she perceived to be my implicit approval of her future, teenage tattoo.

  “You know,” I told Chloe, “I waited to get a tattoo until I was thirty-eight and had kicked cancer’s booty.”

  Yeah, yeah, Chloe’s mischievous eyes said to me. Blah blah blah.

  A few days later, I picked up the girls from school for the first time in many months. Because I had been in treatment for so long, their classmates had not seen me with any regularity during the school year, and they didn’t know me. As I waited outside Sophie’s third-grade classroom, one of her classmates, Josephine, emerged first.

  “Whose mommy are you?” Josephine asked me.

  “I’m Sophie’s mommy.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know you. I didn’t know you cut your hair.” She sounded so mature.

  “Well, actually, I didn’t cut my hair. It came out because of some medicine I took, but now it’s growing back.”

  The look on her face told me she’d already heard about what had been happening to Sophie’s mommy. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Me too.”

  My Dearest Jane,

  We have been hand in hand, our legs tied together in a three-legged race, and now we have hurtled across the finish line together! And this summer, when I come to the UK for my music, we will hug, and drink a “pint,” and laugh and laugh and laugh together at our stubbly little heads and the amazing journey we have traveled together!

  XOXO Laura

  Chapter 44

  The first six months following my cancer treatments were a whirlwind of activity, despite Brad’s constant admonishments to me to “take it easy.” I was making up for lost time—trying to prove to myself, and everyone else, that I was “back.”

  The first item on my agenda? My “Laura Kicked Cancer’s Ass” comeback concert at a renowned local venue called the Belly Up. That night was like attending my own funeral, without the death part. The place was packed to the rafters with family, friends, fans of the Jeff & Jer show, fellow cancer survivors, and, much to my delight, the doctors and nurses who’d saved my life.

  Before the Laura Roppé Band hit the stage, we smashed our bodies into a group hug backstage, energized by the expectant hum of the waiting crowd.

  “I love you guys!” I shouted into the huddle, above the din.

  “We love you, too, Laura!” came the energetic reply.

  Out in the club, the hum was becoming a roar.

  “Let’s do it!” I whooped to my band.

  “Hell yeah!” is what came back.

  As my band made its way onto the stage, joined by my cousin Matthew as our guest guitarist for the night, I remained backstage momentarily. I could feel a tidal wave of anticipation fill the club. Is she there? Where is she?

  Grinning from ear to ear, I climbed the back steps of the stage and walked down to front and center. A tsunami of love crashed onto the stage and flooded all the way up to the rafters of the joint. The roar in that crowded club was deafening.

  When my drummer counted off “one . . . two . . . three . . . four!” the band launched into a rousing version of “Girl Like This,” and the crowd exploded. We were off to the races! And though I had not originally considered myself the girl in that song, in that moment, there was no doubt that, at least for that night, I was the rare girl with “magic in her fingertips.”

  After several high-energy songs to get the crowd going, the lights dimmed and Matthew joined me at the front of the stage on a stool, his acoustic guitar at the ready. I smiled at him, and then I turned back to the crowd.

  “When I was little, I needed a ‘woobie’ to keep me safe from nightmares.” I shielded my eyes from the bright stage lights and, after a brief moment of searching the crowd, found Brad’s handsome face, a head taller than most people around him, in the audience. “During the nightmare of this past year, my husband, Brad, was my woobie.” You could hear a pin drop in the crowd. I continued, looking into Brad’s blue eyes, “This song is for you, babe.”

  Matt began playing his guitar and I started to sing “Woobie,” th
e song inspired by Brad’s heartbreaking cries in his sleep, for which Matt had composed a heartfelt guitar accompaniment:Don’t cry, it’ll be all right

  I’ll be your woobie, hold on to me tight

  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

  Baby, all I want is you.

  Brad had journeyed every step of the way with me through the fires of hell. He had shielded me as best he could as I’d walked through the flames, and then he’d lovingly wrapped bandages around my burns and battle scars. And Matt, my beloved cousin, now playing his guitar so beautifully, had willingly jumped onto my tour bus to Hades, right into the seat next to mine, and had strummed his guitar as a means of distracting me from the horrific view out the window. It was a magical moment for the three of us.

  It was the official end of my tour of duty as a cancer patient.

  After the girls and I, like summer campers on uppers, had methodically ticked off every entry on our When Mommy Gets Better To-Do List—Sea World! The beach! The pool! Duck feeding! A picnic!—I giddily boarded a London-bound airplane in August 2009. My mission? Cross off two items on my bucket list: (1) filming the much-anticipated music video for “Float Away”—the carrot that had been dangling in front of my face since the moment I’d been diagnosed—and (2) drinking a “pint” with My Dearest Jane, the honorary sister who had held my hand, from across the pond, throughout my whole ordeal.

  When I exited customs at Heathrow Airport, a gentleman was standing in the waiting crowd with a sign that read MS. ROPPÉ. I’d always wanted to be one of those passengers whose name was written on a sign at the airport. He’d even gotten the accent on the é right!

  The gentleman was a very proper British man with a fancy car (whose steering wheel had been placed on the wrong side of the car; someone had neglected to tell him). John from London had sent this gentleman to “collect me” at the airport. It was all so very “posh.”