The Bucket List Read online

  My boobs made their appearance fashionably late. I was nine before there were any developments worth journaling about, and almost thirteen before a critical mass could justify a real bra. I was dying to ditch the hand-me-down training bra I’d gotten from my sister, but the question was how. By this stage, my dad was more like a special guest star than a cast regular, and my sister spent all her spare time listening to Morrissey and hating everything. I’d started to make money babysitting, which I did in secret because both my family members were not above “borrowing” my savings. I’m the only girl I know who bought her first bra on her own. I told the saleslady my mom was in the bathroom. The lady brought me four soft-cupped sizes, and I tried them all on with the diligence of a scientist. I bought the cheapest, counting out the exact amount on the chipped beige counter. The saleslady, who’d been periodically sweeping the store looking for my absent mother, eyed me as she handed over the plastic bag.

  “Is this your first bra?” Her earrings were shaped like little cat faces.

  I nodded, embarrassed.

  She pursed her lips. Frosted mauve lipstick feathered into the cracks. “Sometimes men don’t think with their brains. They think with their . . .” She frowned at her crotch. My embarrassment escalated to mortification. “You gotta always use this”—she tapped a temple hidden by a cloud of orange hair—“when it comes to this.” Her crotch penis.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said automatically, while sending a nondenominational prayer for my immediate execution.

  She nodded, satisfied, and turned to help the next customer.

  My adolescence was full of those moments: well-meaning if disjointed pieces of advice from a loose network of older women that formed an elusive patchwork of womanhood. I needed “sanitary napkins” for when “Aunty Flo arrived”; I might have “urges” but it was best to “let them pass.” Rather than being taught to embrace being a woman, the message was ignore it, and maybe it’ll go away. All in all, anything to do with sex, my body, or being female was mysterious bordering on shameful, and the less I had to think or do anything about it, the better. You can imagine how grateful I was when my boobs stopped growing at a 32B. The girls are neither pendulous nor bite-size and thus not one of my top five body concerns. (I’m generally okay with what I’ve got going on, but let’s just say my hips don’t lie or shut up in any outfit.) Nipples the size of a cranberry, areola the color of a ripe summer peach. I can pull off cleavage in the right push-up bra. My college boyfriend called them “polite.” A couple of quiet achievers who have unexpectedly become the stars of the show. For all the wrong reasons.

  The sweet smell of rose mixes with the steam. I draw a long breath in and let it out to a count of four, then do it again. For the first time since Dr. Fitzpatrick’s phone call, I feel something close to pleasure. Release. Even . . . hope. Perspective. I don’t have cancer. I may never get cancer; I’m twenty-five. I’m young, even though it doesn’t feel that way. The absurdly high stats Steph found are a lifetime risk: the chances of me getting cancer in my twenties are much, much less. This isn’t a death sentence—far from it. Maybe I’ll postpone my appointment this afternoon. It’s entirely possible my panic is a bit of an overreaction . . .

  That’s when I feel it. There, on the left side, the underside.

  A lump.

  Everything stops.

  I press into it, around it again and again and again, and it’s a lump, I think, I don’t know. I do breast checks every now and then, but I’m never sure what I’m supposed to be looking for, and half the time I end up plucking errant hairs or casually masturbating. It could be a lymph node or a cyst or IT COULD BE FUCKING CANCER. I slam off the hot water so hard my hand stings. Rocketing out of the shower, my foot hits the bath mat and keeps zooming forward. I shoot backward on the slippery tiles, landing hard on my butt. Pain shoots up my tailbone. I’m not sure if I’m thankful or sad that there’s no one around to witness this.

  * * * *

  I’m still limping when I get to Midtown Medical, where my impression of a pigeon trapped in an attic convinces a receptionist to squeeze me in to see Dr. Fitzpatrick about my jaunty new bump. To be perfectly frank, I have more loyalty to my hairdresser than my doctor. Fitzpatrick is the kind of white-haired patriarch who probably considers deer heads to be wall art and has a few illegitimate children stashed around the globe, but he takes my insurance and he’s close to work.

  After feeling my boobs for .2 seconds, he tells me he can’t be sure of anything but he’ll try to book me in for a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound after my appointment with the genetic counselor this afternoon. A diagnostic mammogram is different from a screening mammogram; diagnostic means they’re looking for something. I have no idea if my insurance covers this, or what it does cover. When I start to cry out of sheer terror, he tells me, “There’s no need for that,” and that the nurse will handle the scheduling. I had no idea so much empathy could fit in one aging body.

  At Hoffman House, my colleagues are all slumped at their desks with breakfast sandwiches and hangovers. With my red eyes and smeared mascara, I fit right in. The interns twitter around me like Sleeping Beauty’s forest friends, bearing phone messages and gossip, wanting direction, needing attention. It appears no one noticed my panicked exit out of the party last night. I should feel relieved but I have no room for any emotion or sentiment other than the one blaring in my head, bright red and full caps: CANCER. CANCER. YOU HAVE CANCER. I will myself not to touch that spot, which I’ve done so much it’ll either bruise or turn shiny like a brass door handle. The sight of my desk, so neat and cheery, almost reintroduces the waterworks. Black-and-white photo-booth snaps of Steph and me pulling goofy faces at a random event, my VIP pass to the Alexander McQueen retrospective at the Met. My copper pencil sharpener in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. My niece’s third birthday party invite. Next to my keyboard, a paisley fabric swatch. So small. So innocent. A perfect metaphor for my small, innocent past, back when the goal was just to have fun and get drunk and laugh with Steph, and even though I know I’m rewriting history and it wasn’t that easy . . . it was. It really was.

  A raspy voice: honey on broken glass. “Lacey?”

  Patricia Hoffman is standing at my desk.

  Oh no.

  Patricia Hoffman is a thousand kinds of fabulous that invokes a heady mix of loyalty, admiration, and fear. I’ve never worked out exactly how old she is, thanks to her devotion to plastic surgery, boyfriends who wouldn’t be too old to be dating me, and wigs. She’s been married four times, owns two town houses in Manhattan, one uptown, one downtown, and rumor has it Paul Simon once wrote a song about her. Classic extrovert with the energy of a freshman, the sophistication of royalty, and the wardrobe of a costume designer. I typically enjoy our brisk bantering. But nothing about today is typical.

  “P-Patricia. Hi. How was Paris?”

  “The usual.” She slips off a pair of gold cat-eye glasses. “Lots of little boys with silly mustaches foisting cheap champagne on me, trying to get me into their tiny beds.”

  My cue to offer a peppy reply like “I see you flew Emirates,” but I’m trying so hard not to cry in front of my boss that I can’t get a single word out.

  She pulls off a pair of dusty-pink leather gloves, revealing a manicure the color of plums. “How was the party? I’m so terribly sad to have missed it!”

  “It was . . .” I cannot conjure a single decorative adjective or simile. Horrifyingly, I settle on: “Nice.”

  “Nice?” Patricia peers at me, confused. Which changes to alarm. Which softens to concern. In her nontheatrical voice she asks, “Lacey, are you all right?”

  I nod, quick and fast, affecting a smile as convincing as a toupee.

  Her brow flicks into a frown. She places a hand on my shoulder.

  “Come into my office. We’ll have the kittens”—the interns, fawning—

  “pick us up cappuccinos from Le Coucou.”

  And while the pathetically needy part of me want
s to dig my feet into Patricia Hoffman’s sheepskin rug and tell her absolutely everything, another, more powerful part of me shuts that down. My boss has already been extraordinarily kind in supporting my working on Clean Clothes after hours, most likely because I’ve implied that, if we ever got funded, I wouldn’t quit my job here. I didn’t want to disappoint her or worry her unnecessarily: so many start-ups don’t, well, start up. But to be honest, there’s something about Patricia’s generosity that has always made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I’m not a charity case. I don’t want to be anyone’s burden or for anyone to feel sorry for me. And I don’t want to give Patricia any reason to think I don’t belong exactly where I am. I summon the ambitious glint of a thriving New York transplant. “Thanks, but I want to follow up from last night’s rampant networking. Strike, iron; you know the drill.”

  Her smile returns with light relief. “No rest for the wicked.”

  That was the right move. I smile back. “No rest at all.”

  5.

  * * *

  I spend the day watching the clock count down to 4:00 p.m. Seasons change more quickly. There’s a poster opposite my desk that asks in bold typography, WHO IS AFRAID OF NOW? I’ll give you one guess who is afraid of now.

  Vivian and Steph call multiple times, and I send each one to the vastness of voice mail. Speaking to either of them about last night feels as tempting as an anal probe.

  At exactly 3:30 p.m. I cut out, mumbling something about a coffee-drinks thing to our receptionist. Last night’s snow is already turning gray and sludgy. I take the subway uptown.

  I had assumed the New York Cancer Care Center was a clinic for consultations and sorry-you’re-fucked support. I’m unprepared for the fact it’s also a treatment center. The woman in the queue in front of me has a completely bald head. My reaction embarrasses me: I find it horrifying. When she finishes at the front desk, I realize I’d been keeping an unnatural distance from her.

  I’ve never liked hospitals. It’s fair to say I hate them. For reasons I don’t really want to think about.

  I’m instructed to wait on one of the immaculate teal-green sofas. Everything looks new and clean and expensive, which makes me worry, again, about my insurance and what exactly it covers. I know I’m putting off calling them, and I know that’s cowardly. The prospect just makes everything way too real.

  Anxiety itches me. I tell myself it’s just a consultation, that nothing bad is going to happen here. But my body won’t hear of it, responding instead as if I’m about to give a solo presentation to the entire company. My heartbeat is loud in my ears.

  A trashy women’s mag is a ghoulish carousel of grinning photoshopped faces. A woman with as much body fat as a rubber band stands over a guy with a waxed chest, tied to a bed. His eyes are slit in a way that indicates either desire, or intent to kill. The headline screams: Unlock Your Fantasies! The Sex You’ve Always Wanted to Have. Rubber Band’s breasts spill out of a lacy black bra like a couple of overripe melons intent on escape.

  She is textbook sexy.

  Breasts are sexy. Everyone likes breasts: ogling them is one of the great American pastimes, like baseball and casual racism. Babies like boobs. Men like knockers. I like mine. But I’ve definitely never towered over a dude tied to a bed in order to motorboat him with some renegade cantaloupes. Is that what I should be doing, considering one option is . . . well . . .

  “Lacey Whitman?”

  A woman in an ankle-length skirt, cream turtle neck, and what I strongly suspect is a hand-knitted vest, is holding a clipboard. Demure bob, open face, few extra pounds. Have I tumbled down the rabbit hole back to Illinois? She is bake sales and Tupperware and if she’d ever unlocked her sexual fantasies, I’m betting they involved buttered English crumpets and a nice lie-down. She is Judy-Ann McMallow, and she is my genetic counselor.

  Judy-Ann’s office smells like a hot cinnamon bun as interpreted by a cheap air freshener. Lamps attempt an atmosphere of “cozy,” but they don’t hide the fact this an office where people get bad news. No fewer than three boxes of tissues are within arm’s reach. I perch on the edge of a pillowy love seat as she apologizes about a mess I can’t detect. Tea? Sure. She has a pot of chamomile, ready to go. Judy-Ann speaks in a voice I know is designed to soothe me, and while it doesn’t do exactly that, it does result in my mimicking her. I’ve always been something of a chameleon, able to mix it with everyone from billionaire bros to fourth-generation farmers, by almost unconsciously simulating their mannerisms and speech patterns. As Judy-Ann begins in a puddles-of-pity half whisper, I find myself responding in kind.

  “So, Lacey, how are you doing?”

  “I’m okay, Judy-Ann. I’m okay.”

  “Good. Now, what do you know so far?”

  “I know I’ve tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, and I understand the risk that puts me at.”

  “Mmm.” Cue look of fervent compassion. “That’s tough. I see from your file you didn’t see a genetic counselor before taking the test, is that right?”

  “Yes,” I say. “My doctor didn’t mention that as a possibility.”

  This is, in fact, a lie. The truth is I told my doctor I’d already seen a genetic counselor; that, yes, I understood the risks. I was fundamentally convinced the test would be negative. Seeing a counselor beforehand seemed completely unnecessary; just another way the health-care system was trying to screw me out of my already paltry paycheck. I was more worried about whether my insurance covered the test than the result of it.

  “And how are you feeling right now?” Judy-Ann asks.

  I pretend to consider the question, and answer in her affected half whisper. “Scared I’m going to die of breast cancer, Judy-Ann.”

  Her lips move into a sympathetic smile, but her eyes are assessing me, drawing conclusions. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  About my fear of dying? With you, a complete stranger? My mirroring trick evaporates. I stare at my feet. “Maybe later.”

  She scribbles a note. “Let’s talk about your family history.”

  Even though I suspected this was coming, my foot jitters the carpet. “Sure. Won’t take long.” I explain my grandparents on my dad’s side live in Florida, still alive, with no history of cancer. We are not close. “They think abortion is worse than pedophilia, which they know about from the existence of gay men. Last I heard, my dad, Wayne, was working as a pearl diver in Tahiti. He is a free spirit slash terrible father. No aunts, no uncles. My maternal grandparents died in a car accident in Rome in the 1970s while on vacation, but at least they died doing what they loved, which was drunk driving. I have an older sister, Mara, thirty. She lives upstate with her daughter, Storm, who is the most sane member of my family. Storm’s best friend is an invisible horse called Bottom, to put that in perspective.”

  Judy-Ann is unfazed by all of this. “Any history of cancer with your sister?”

  I shake my head. “My sister is . . .” How do I put this: a worshipper at the altar of kombucha? “Not exactly a fan of Western medicine. Which includes genetic testing.”

  “When a sibling tests positive for BRCA1, there’s a fifty percent chance the other siblings also carry the gene mutation,” Judy-Ann says. “How do you feel about telling your sister about your results?”

  “That I won’t,” I say. “That I can’t? That I’m scared?” I wipe my hands on my pants. “My sister is . . . I don’t think she would . . .”

  “We can come back to Mara some other time,” Judy-Ann says. She looks at me pointedly.

  “That’s all I know,” I say. “Like I said, it wouldn’t take long.”

  “What about your mother?”

  I stare at Judy-Ann as if she’s asked me the most invasively personal question possible, which in some ways, she has. It is surprisingly easy not to talk about your family in a city like New York. Here, everyone is remaking themselves in a model they alone see fit. It only takes a few conversational sleights of hand to plant the message that family is not somet
hing you talk about. I feel exposed. I’m squirming in my seat, knowing Judy-Ann is going to jump on this like a drunk girl on a cheeseburger. But this isn’t a bad first date. This is serious. I have to face my own stupid fear. I look her square in the eye. “My mother, June Whitman, died of breast cancer when I was five years old. She was thirty-one.”

  “Thirty-one?” Judy Ann can’t hide what appears to be excitement, or possibly relief: there is the explanation for my mutation. “That’s very young.”

  I nod, once.

  “What was her treatment plan?”

  “Two rounds of chemo. She died in the hospital.” My voice is robotic. I won’t be getting emotional.

  “Do you know how old June was when she was diagnosed?”

  I shake my head. “I know it was quick. From the beginning to the . . . the end.” I remember a dark room, curtains drawn against bright sunlight. The glass of juice I’m holding, so big in my small hands, falls to the floor.

  “Do you know what kind of breast cancer it was?”

  “I don’t. I can try to find out. If it’s helpful.” I’m worried the juice will stain the hospital room floor and I’ll get in trouble. I want to cry, but I’m afraid of waking her. My efforts to help my dying mother, so phenomenally useless.

  Judy-Ann underlines something. “It helps to have as full a picture as possible.”

  “Why?”

  The counselor assesses me for a brief, sharp second, her would-you-like-another-cookie? sweetness momentarily flashing away. Evidently, she decides I can handle this. “Hereditary cancer that forms in patients with the BRCA1 mutation tends to be very aggressive. Triple-negative, fast-growing tumors, which means a lower threshold for chemo. I’m just curious if that’s the cancer your mother had.”

  If that’s the cancer I will get. If that’s the cancer I already have. If that’s the cancer that—and surely, I’ve known this all along—meant my insurance covered the genetic testing in the first place. That made me ask Dr. Fitzpatrick about starting mammograms. The air in the room feels tight. It strikes me as utterly ludicrous that we’re sitting here, drinking tea, discussing my possible death as if it’s serious, yes, but no more serious than a noisy neighbor (“It’s noise pollution. That’s what it is: noise pollution.”). This is my life.