Rocking the Pink (20 page)

“Mommy, why'd this have to happen to you and not someone else?” Sophie asked one night as we pressed our bodies together in my bed.

“Honey, it might as well be me. If it were someone else, then that's someone else's mommy, and that wouldn't be any better, would it?” I answered. I had long since accepted that this was my mountain to climb.

Sophie considered this idea with the utmost seriousness. Her body went limp against mine. “You're right, Mommy,” she finally declared, sounding weary. “I wouldn't want this to happen to anyone else's mommy.”

Oh, Sophie.
My eyes welled with tears.

With all the recording on my album wrapped up, it was time for me to impersonate a supermodel for my album cover. My chosen photographer was Bil Zelman, a renowned photographer who'd shot countless album covers for Virgin Records. He met me at a remote mountaintop location outside San Diego, looking every bit like the rock 'n' roll photographer I'd envisioned.

I had brought several outfits to choose from, and I laid them out for Bil to peruse.

“I like that one,” he said, pointing emphatically to a black, leg-revealing minidress covered in splashy sequins. “It's perfect.”

I'd always been self-conscious about my skinny legs. Back in fifth grade, right after I'd transferred to a private school twenty miles from my neighborhood, I'd spent every afternoon riding my bike around a nearby park, hoping to befriend the kids from the local schools. One afternoon as I circled the perimeter of the park, trolling for friends
and enjoying the sunshine in my snazzy tank top and Dolphin shorts, a group of boys playing flag football detected my loneliness like sharks smelling blood.

“Hey, Pencils! Hey, Olive Oyl!” they shouted to me. “How do you even ride a bike with legs like that? Your legs are gonna break!” They cackled with laughter.

I had no witty comeback.

I had always known my legs were on the skinny side, of course. But in that instant, in a sudden epiphany, I realized they were
freakishly
skinny. The full extent of their embarrassing ugliness dawned on me all at once. Speechless, I changed course on my bike and rode back home as fast as my stick legs could pedal.

For several years after that, I did not wear shorts, no matter what the weather. And that's saying a lot when you live in Southern California. When I finally succumbed to the sunshine and wore shorts again, I was pretty sure everyone was snickering at me behind my back. By then, though, I had simply resolved to suck it up.

And now this charismatic rock photographer was suggesting that I wear a leg-baring minidress—a dress that would display my chopstick legs in their full glory—for a photo that could become one of the defining pictures of my life.

“Hey, that one was my first choice, too,” I responded without hesitation. It was like giving a high-five to my ten-year-old self.

Of course, since we were in the middle of the dusty countryside on a mountaintop, the aforementioned sequined ensemble seemed a completely inappropriate wardrobe choice.
Perfection!

“Here, hold this,” Bil said, handing me a purple wildflower he
had just picked from the side of the road. “Now, just give me a second while I check the lighting.”

“Sure thing.”

I stood there holding that purple flower, waiting for Bil to begin shooting, passing the time by admiring how his curly hair gleamed in the spring sunshine. But, unbeknownst to me, Bil had been shooting the whole time I'd been standing there. After a moment, he looked at the small screen on his digital camera and smiled broadly.

“Hey, Laura, look at this,” he called to me.

I hobbled over to Bil—quite a feat in six-inch heels on a bumpy dirt road—and squinted at the image on his camera screen. When my eyes settled on the picture before me, I smiled, too. There was my album cover.

 

 

When I finally got the big box of CDs back from mass duplication in August 2008, I ripped it open. And there I was, in my black minidress and towering heels, staring back at me. I touched the smooth, glossy CD cover in my hands and felt like weeping for joy.

A few days later, with a bit of luck, I managed to get my CD into the hands of “Little Tommy” Sablan, the producer of the highest-rated morning radio show in San Diego, and he shocked me by promising to listen to it.

The very next morning, the telephone rang. It was Little Tommy calling. “Turn on your radio,” he said abruptly. “We're about to play ‘Float Away.' The guys [the stars of the show, Jeff and Jer] are going to hear it for the first time on the air. They might
love it, and they might hate it. Whatever the reaction, it'll be real. Good luck.” And then he was gone.

I was shaking.

Brad, the girls, and I crowded around the radio, tittering with excitement. After a few lascivious (but not unappreciated) comments about my booby-leggy, purple-flower photo and some lampooning about the lengthy dedication to my family and friends on the album's inside cover (they were particularly amused by my mention of Grandpa Wayne-o), Jeff and Jer finally played “Float Away”—a song written by little ol' me—on the radio!

“She says I think I'll go home, turn off the telephone . . . ” I heard myself sing through our stereo speaker. A tree had fallen in the forest, and tens of thousands of people were around to hear it.

When the song finished playing, Jeff and Jer's comedic tone had vanished. They said things like, “Wow!” and, “Where did this girl come from?” And then, best of all, they exclaimed, sounding genuinely surprised, “Our phones are lighting up!” Indeed, listeners were calling the station in droves to gush about the song. My song!

The first caller was a woman who could hardly speak through her sobs. “That song just spoke to me!” she cried.

“It told
my
story,” another woman blubbered into the phone.

And the calls just kept coming and coming. Every single caller praised the song and said it had resonated with them. The avalanche of listener response to “Float Away” was overwhelming.

“Laura, can you come perform ‘Float Away' for our listeners at our big listener party in a few weeks?” Jerry asked.

“Oh my God, yes!” was my immediate reply.

In late August 2008, I walked onstage at Jeff and Jer's listener party in front of 3,500 people—which felt like three million people to me—and performed “Float Away” with my band. My hands were shaking (again) as I held the microphone, but I sang from the bottom of my heart. And, in one of the most surreal moments of my life, I realized the crowd was singing my own song back to me. Thousands of people knew my song! I'd never felt a rush quite like it before.

 

 

“Hi Laura,” an email from a “fan” in the UK began. “I love your music. Do you ever plan to come to the UK to do any shows? Regards, John.”

Isn't that sweet,
I thought. And, in typical Laura fashion, I didn't hold my cards close to my vest when I replied:

Of course, I didn't know then that John, my UK fan, was actually the head of a record label based in London; he'd concealed his vocation until he'd gotten a sense of my personality. Luckily, he told me later, he'd been instantly charmed by my utter lack of pretense.

“Did you discover me through Jeff and Jer?” I asked, once I'd learned of John's true profession.

“No,” John answered. “I found you myself, on the Internet.”

Over the next several weeks, Brad and I negotiated the terms of a contract with John for the release and distribution of my album in the UK and Europe. John loved my entire album, he said, but “Float Away” in particular
.
The very first order of business would be for me to travel to the UK, probably in late October 2008, to shoot a music video for “Float Away” and to embark on a promotional tour throughout the country.
A music video?! A tour?!
My head was spinning.

“Brad,” I asked breathlessly when I got off the latest phone call with John. “Can I go to the UK? Can you handle the girls while I'm gone? Can I go? Can I?”

Brad, the love of my life, the man who had loved me since I was fourteen years old, the man who understood me better than I understood myself, answered, “Absolutely.” And then, in his best Cuban accent, he added, “Oh, Lucy, you're gonna get into the Copacabana, aren't you?”

During those giddy weeks when Brad and I were negotiating my record deal with John from London, I felt it: a tiny, hard lump on the side of my left breast. I was confused. Had that been there all along?

I went to Brad, who was already in bed.

“Babe,” I crawled into bed next to him. “Do you feel this?” I put his finger directly on the bump. “Has that always been there?”

Brad's face was pensive as he touched the spot where I had placed his finger. And then his face turned dark. “You need to go to the doctor about this right away,” he ordered. “Tomorrow.”

I'd had a clean mammogram right before getting my boob job two years earlier. “I think that's a bit of an overreaction, honey,” I said. I wasn't the least bit worried, though I couldn't remember having felt that lump before. “I'm sure it's nothing.”

But Brad insisted. “Promise me you'll go to the doctor about this tomorrow.”

My calendar was loaded with lots of client meetings and court appearances the next day. I hesitated.

“Buddy, promise me,” Brad repeated. “Tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay. I promise.” I knew that resisting Brad would be useless.

I called my doctor the next morning, if only to avoid Brad's persistent nagging on the subject, and was surprised she could fit me in right away.

“Well, there's definitely a lump there,” Dr. Paula Dozzi confirmed as she examined my breast. “Do you have a history of breast cancer in your family?”

“No.”

“Did you breastfeed?”

“Yes, both my girls.”

“Do you exercise regularly?”

“Yes. I run.”
A lot.

“How is your stress level?”

“High.”
But what else is new?

“Well,” Dr. Dozzi began, “based on your history and age, it's very unlikely that this is cancer. But there's definitely a pea-size lump there.”

I nodded. Many of my girlfriends had discovered lumps in their breasts that had turned out to be calcifications or benign cysts. I was too young to get breast cancer, and I felt completely fine. And, truth be told, bad things didn't happen to me. I was sure it was nothing.

“Just to be on the safe side, though, I really want you to get a mammogram and also see a surgeon,” the doctor continued. She
wrote me a referral for the mammogram and gave me the surgeon's contact information. “I don't want to worry you, but I just want to be sure.”

“Thanks,” I said casually, stuffing the referral into my purse. “I'm not worried.” I smiled to reassure her.

As directed, I made an immediate appointment for a mammogram—not because I was anxious about the lump, but because I am a Dudley Do-Right to my very core: I change the oil in my car at the designated mileage; I do homework exactly as assigned; I cross streets at crosswalks; I shake my head no when offered a joint at a party; and, of course, I always,
always
follow doctors' orders.

At the mammogram a week later, the technician pulled and squashed my saline-filled breasts into potato pancakes to get the images she needed.

“Please don't pop me,” I implored her.

She laughed, mistakenly assuming I was joking. “Don't worry. I do this all the time.”

When the mammogram results came back, the findings were “normal.” There was indeed a round mass in my left breast (I didn't need a fancy machine to tell me that); however, so said the mammogram, the mass wasn't reading as cancerous.

I knew it!
Brad had overreacted.

He wasn't convinced, though. Despite the mammogram results, he still wanted me to see the surgeon as soon as possible, as Dr. Dozzi had suggested.

Yes, I agreed, of course. But I wasn't in any rush. Work was unbelievably hectic at that time, as I tried to fend off a perfect storm
of lawsuits against my loud-mouthed client, Frank, so I vowed to make an appointment as soon as I could find a convenient time. I really would.

That night, Dr. Dozzi called me at home.

“Laura,” she said. “I got the mammogram results. That's good. But I wanted to remind you to please make an appointment with the surgeon right away. I want to get a surgeon's opinion on that lump.”

I promised her I would see the surgeon. “And I'm not worried,” I added truthfully.

But Brad
was
worried. Really worried. A week later, he went with me to the surgeon's office.

The surgeon examined my breasts and the mammogram results, and then went through the same list of questions Dr. Dozzi had asked.

“It's highly unlikely that this is cancer, based on all the information I have,” he concluded. “But even if the chances of this being cancer are two percent, that's just too high to ignore. What I recommend are removal and biopsy of the lump. It's always better to be safe than sorry in these matters.”