Rocking the Pink (23 page)

Against my will, I cracked a smile and chuckled, even as tears trickled down my cheeks.

One less person on Planet Earth out of billions? Bullshit. I would not go quietly into that good night. No, I would fight tooth and nail to make it to my 103rd birthday.

“Doc, there are just no guarantees,” I responded, my spirit beginning to flicker back. “About fame, that is.”

Dr. Hampshire laughed. “No, but some things are just inevitable.”

Indeed, we both knew he could make no guarantees about any of it—life, death, health, fame. But it didn't matter. Dr. Hampshire had the audacity, the compassion, in a world full of lawsuits and insurance companies and limits of liability, to promise to cure me, his patient on the brink of hopelessness.

And just like that, by doing so, he took the machete from my limp and blistered hand, and he began swinging and hacking, clearing a pathway through the dense jungle, just for me.

 

 

Even before my winning bingo card came up with all the right letters—C-A-N-C-E-R!—I'd always been fearful of death. Well, actually, not
death
so much as
dying.
I wasn't afraid to be dead so much as I didn't want to experience a gruesome and painful death.

There were a million possibilities for my eventual death, and some were downright horrifying. A terrifying car crash? Or, worse, a plane crash, with plenty of time to anticipate the ultimate impact? A serial killer, maybe?

Or perhaps I'd win the lottery (as I was entitled to, after all) and pass in my sleep at the ripe age of 103. Yes, I concluded each time
precancerous thoughts of mortality danced in my head like sugarplum fairies in
The Nutcracker,
yes, I would die a very old woman, in my sleep, while wearing a white cotton nightgown (with pretty little eyelets trimming the bottom hem), my long gray hair brushed beautifully across the crisp white pillowcase. And I wouldn't feel a thing. It would be just like sleeping.

But once Brad and I started having babies, the accepted standards of parental care and responsibility obligated us to at least consider the possibility that one or both of us would make an unexpected, early departure, and most likely in a manner not including a white cotton nightgown with pretty eyelet trim. And, worse yet, we had to
plan
for this morbid possibility.

And so, back when Chloe was an infant, Brad and I trudged off to the office of our estate planner to sign a thick stack of useless documents that we would never need in real life, just so we could pat ourselves on the back and boast smugly to our yuppie friends, “We've put everything into a living trust, just in case. Haven't you?”

“Sign here, here, and here,” the estate planning attorney instructed me. “And Brad, you sign here, here, and here.”

Brad and I looked at each other, amazed at how adult we'd both become. We were ready for every contingency now—even our premature deaths, however inconceivable that possibility seemed.

“If I go first, Brad,” I blurted, overcome with anxiety about future catastrophes, however hypothetical, “I would want you to remarry and find love again.”

I stared at him expectantly, basking in my Mother Teresa–ness, awaiting his equally loving reply.

Without missing a beat, though, he replied, “Not me. If I go first and you remarry, I will haunt you like a poltergeist.”

I laughed—as I always did at Brad's zingers—but then I rolled my eyes for the estate planner's benefit.

Actually, Brad's possessiveness thrilled me. I reveled in the thought that even in the afterlife, he would be infinitely unable to relinquish me to another man.

And now, only a few years after signing those estate planning documents, on the night after Dr. Hampshire had promised to cure me (presumably against the advice of the hospital's legal department), Brad and I lay in bed together, holding hands. Since hearing Dr. Hampshire's confident words, I'd felt the weight of the world lifted off me. Quitting was no longer an option.

And yet, I realized, there was no going back to my precancer state of bliss. I'd never again assume I'd make it to 103. I'd never again assume I'd make it through next year, for that matter. Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, the odds that I might precede Brad in death weren't quite as long as they'd once been.

“If I die,” I said quietly, holding Brad's hand in the moonlit room, “I'm gonna hang around you and the girls in the afterlife, watching you, protecting you, and continuing to love you.” Brad didn't say anything, so I continued, “I'll send you signs I'm there with you. If you don't see the signs, I'll be frustrated and bang my head against the wall. Well . . . my
proverbial
head against the
celestial
wall. You know what I mean.” Still nothing from Brad. “So please, Buddy,” I pleaded, “be alert and acknowledge me so that I can be at peace.” I blinked back tears. This had been very difficult for me to say, but it had to be done.

Brad turned to look at me in the moonlight, without speaking for a brief moment. “Babe,” he finally said, “I don't listen to you when you're alive. What makes you think I'll listen to you when you're dead?”

Although my long brown wig had sounded like a great idea before I lost my hair, once I was as bald as a cue ball, it turned out I preferred myself au naturel. I never wore that pretty brown wig. Not even once.

When I went out, I wore a simple scarf on my head, which, I quickly learned, was akin to stamping CANCER PATIENT on my forehead. But hey, it was easier for me than pretending everything was hunky-dory.

Looking like a cancer patient had its perks. (Occasional line cuts, for example.) But it also had its drawbacks: I was never just “some lady” anymore—a lady buying stamps at the post office. A woman unloading her groceries from a cart. No, even while performing simple errands, I was “the lady who is fighting bravely for her life.” I was Susan Sarandon in
Stepmom,
courageously preparing her children for their future with Julia Roberts
.
A swelling, symphonic soundtrack followed me all the time, everywhere I went.

I often elicited reactions from passersby when I was out and about. Sometimes they turned away. Maybe I was an uncomfortable symbol of mortality, or perhaps a reminder of a heroic battle a loved one had fought. At the other extreme, people sometimes stared at me meaningfully, as if to say,
Hang in there
or, occasionally,
I've been there.
My return gaze always said,
Don't worry about me. I'm a fighter.

Maybe I was just imagining all of these telepathic conversations, but I could hear them just the same.

At Chloe's first T-ball practice one chilly afternoon, a fellow mother, whom I'd never met before, approached me. Without preamble or ramp-up, she sidled up to me and stage-whispered, “You must really cherish every moment with your kids now.”

Her eyes were moist.

Oh, wow, she thinks I'm dying,
I thought.
And soon.

“Yes,” I said to my new, nameless best friend, this unexpected shoulder to cry on, matching her intensity with my own urgent stage whisper, “yes, I really do.” And then, just for good measure, I sighed deeply and shot her a meaningful glance.

I wanted to leave. I didn't want to be a walking emblem of mortality that day. I just wanted to watch Chloe's haphazard attempts at swinging a much-too-heavy baseball bat.

But really, what did I expect? What was this woman supposed to do in my presence? Ignore me? Or make idle chitchat? Can a person talk lightheartedly—about
American Idol,
perhaps
—
with someone she presumes is dying? With someone who is dying, talking about anything other than matters of life and death—about cherishing one's children—would be downright petty, right?

Maybe so. But I just couldn't be lofty and intense every minute of every day. At least not at T-ball, anyway.

The thing was, despite my physical appearance, despite all the infusions and doctor's appointments and medicine and weird smells and metallic tastes in my mouth and pain and nausea, I still felt like plain old me on the inside. I may have looked like a wraith, a gray phantom floating through life in a head scarf, but I was still me. The problem was, in my cancer patient disguise, no one could discern the undercover rock star held captive inside me. She had ceased to exist to the outside world. All anyone could see was this . . . this stupid . . .
container.

Well, everyone, that is, except that weird guy in the grocery store parking lot a few days before.

I had just come out of the grocery store, gray as granite, wearing my head scarf and Jackie O. sunglasses, when a man in the parking lot approached me.

“Hi,” he greeted me.

“Hello,” I replied politely, though the thought of chatting with a stranger in a parking lot made me want to set my hair on fire. (Just a little cancer humor for you.)

“Do you shop here a lot?” he asked.

I figured this was his well-meaning attempt to convey his best wishes to the (presumably) dying lady, but I'd reached my “well-meaning attempt” quota for that week, and I was tired.

“Yes,” I responded. “I shop here all the time.”
Please get to the part where you encourage me to stay positive. I need to go to bed.

“I really like your scarf,” he said then, zeroing in on the singular “I really like your scarf,” he said then, zeroing in on the singular thing about me that was compliment-worthy. What else could he have said—“I really like your gray pallor; it reminds me of dolphins, and I just love dolphins”?

Then something in the way he looked at me, just for an instant, caused me to realize he was
flirting
with me. But that was impossible.

“Thank you,” I replied to his compliment, increasingly wary.

“Yeah, I saw it from across the parking lot, and I just wanted to tell you that.”

“Thanks,” I said again. Was there a point to this conversation? I was just so damned tired. I started to walk away. “Have a great day.”

“So, um,” he continued, stopping me dead in my tracks—and by that I mean he caused me to
stop walking,
just to be clear (a little more
cancer humor for you)—“can I get your phone number?” he continued. “Maybe we could go out sometime?”

Long, awkward pause. I looked at him as if he had feet for hands.

Finally, my voice came: “Wow, thank you. That's sweet. But, I'm . . . ”—
bald underneath this headscarf, you dumbass—
“married.”

And then I ripped off my head scarf, leaped at him like a mountain lion on a jogger, and shouted, “How ya like me now, sucka!”

No, I didn't. But I wanted to.

Could he
really
have no idea he was talking to a just-about-to-crumple-to-the-ground-without-an-ounce-of-energy-left-in-her-sad- sack-body cancer patient? If so, he was the stupidest man alive. Or, alternatively, had this gentleman
knowingly
hit on such a pitiful creature? If so, he was a saint . . . or a total perv.

Ogled,
I reminded myself.
It's always better to be ogled than “ma'am-ed.” And yet in this instance,
I thought in a flash,
I think I'd rather be “ma'am-ed.”

Of course, Brad and the girls ignored my container, too. Despite my shocking physical transformation over the past several months, they still, thankfully, saw just me. Wife. Mommy. Me.

Indeed, Brad continued to tease me as mercilessly as he had before cancer, displaying absolutely no regard for the inspirational, saintly creature I had become.

“Hey, Elmer Fudd,” he said to me at the dinner table one night, “pass the butter.”

“Hellooo,” I responded, “you're not supposed to tease me, Buddy. I have
cancer,
you know.” I made the universal “duh” gesture with both hands.

“Babe, if I stop teasing you,
then cancer will have won,”
he retorted.

And he was right.

Damn.
I hated it when Brad was right.

 

 

I walked Buster along a dirt trail by my house. The poor dog was becoming a bit rotund after spending so much time lounging in bed with me. I let him off-leash, and he immediately darted ahead to chase a bunny (or perhaps a leaf), but then rocketed right back to my side with (what I imagined to be) a gleeful
woohoo!
He repeated this dance over and over again.

In the third round of this game, when Buster looked up at me with his
woohoo!
expression, it hit me: Buster didn't see my physical appearance. He just saw
me.
I got that electric-current feeling that comes to me on occasion.
My identity has nothing to do with my physicality,
I thought.
I am not my container.

Indeed, my whole life, this lesson had followed me around, poking me on the shoulder, urging me to listen. Back when I was thirteen years old, after arriving home from my preppy private school and throwing my backpack onto the floor, I changed from my good-girl clothes into a black shirt and leggings, wrapped a metal-studded belt around my hips (tiny as they were at the time), and smeared black lipstick on my lips. And then, with great care, I teased and shellacked my thick hair straight up into a “fauxhawk.”