They say a good night’s sleep cures all, and everything feels better in the morning. “They” are filthy liars who should be unmasked and punished. I don’t sleep much or well. At about 3:00 a.m. I take a sleeping pill and succumb to a suffocating nightmare about turning into a werewolf that Elan Behzadi keeps trying to put in a runway show. My alarm goes off at six. It’s still dark outside when I drag myself into my tiny bathroom. The fact I shower before and after spin class is something only Steph knows about me, and this morning, I am determined to get my butt on that bike. I am in control of my body; I am its master. I put it through hell four mornings a week, and it rewards me by fitting into size 4 jeans. Hot water blasts my skin. I scoop out some rose-and-bergamot sugar scrub and circle it gently around my breasts. My fingertips swirl over the faint stretch marks and scatter of small freckles. Each breast sits comfortably in my palms, the weight of a small bird.
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 wants 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.”