Rocking the Pink (9 page)

“You're right,” Alan agreed. “A person can't rest on past accomplishments forever. You have to keep growing, getting better.”

“Totally!”

And then Alan's tone shifted. He sounded contemplative. “Honestly, I worry sometimes I dwell too much on my NFL days . . . ”

His NFL days?
I didn't hear anything Alan said beyond that phrase. What the hell? Alan had played in the NFL? My mind was reeling.
Was he a kicker? Does. Not. Compute.

“Alan, go back a minute. What do you mean, your ‘NFL days'?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said nonchalantly. “I played in the NFL.”

Silence hung in the air for a beat while that sank in. “What position?”

“Defensive back. For the Eagles.”

What?!
I was stupefied. I had been talking to this guy every day for months! Throughout that time, my mental image of him had become so fixed in my mind, I was finding it hard to readjust.
He must not be so skinny,
I thought.

About a month later, Alan and the other lawyers from his firm paid a visit to my firm's San Diego office.

Janice buzzed me. “Come to the conference room,” she said. “Alan wants to meet you.”

After months of talking on the phone and working so hard on our legal briefs together, it would be a pleasure to finally meet Alan face-to-face.

When I entered the conference room, Janice was standing next to a man who could not possibly have been Alan. But then she said, “Laura, this is Alan.”

I smiled. Alan wasn't tall and skinny. And he didn't wear glasses or look like an accountant, either. In fact, he was handsome, and muscled, and masculine. Oh, and one other thing:
Alan was black.
I burst out laughing as I hugged my long-distance friend. And after a few moments of warm conversation, I felt comfortable enough to admit to him, “You know, Alan, this whole time, I thought you were a tall, skinny white guy with glasses!”

Alan laughed heartily. “That's okay, Laura,” he said. “I thought you were a short, fat Latina.”

Even through my laughter, I immediately recognized the important lesson:
Books don't always match their covers.

 

 

When the time came for me to defend a corporate client in my first big trial, I was thrilled when I caught our adversary, the company's former employee, in an outright lie on the witness stand. I was Matlock! Victory would be mine!

But when the jury read their verdict a week later, they had found in favor of the former employee and against my big client. Not only that, but they had further found that my client had “acted with malice” in firing this gentleman, meaning the jury could now consider an award of punitive damages, the granddaddy of damages awards—a potential catastrophe for my client.

The judge scheduled the punitive-damages phase of the trial for the following day.

That night, I couldn't sleep a wink. I was flabbergasted that I'd lost. I had believed in my case, but the jury hadn't believed in me. And now the jury was poised to render a verdict, in perhaps the millions of dollars, to punish my client. I thought I was going to be sick.

The next day, I had dark circles under my eyes and my face was tight.

I stepped in front of the jury—the same jury who had just condemned my client the day before—and pleaded my case for them to deny punitive damages. As I spoke, I could feel my knobby knees knocking together underneath my gray pencil skirt.

When the jury returned its verdict later that afternoon—glory be!—they awarded a pittance, hardly anything at all. I thought I might pass out from relief. I made my way into the hallway outside the courtroom, where I was allowed to speak with the jury now that the trial was over.

“Laura,” the foreperson said to me (and I recall distinctly that she addressed me by my first name), “we hated your client.” Everyone added their vocal agreement to that sentiment. “But we loved you.”

Another juror added, “You're so funny!”

More vocal agreement, and warm smiles.

The foreperson continued, “You looked so nervous this morning, we decided we didn't want to ruin your career by awarding big punitive damages against your client.”

Excuse me? I was grateful for their mercy, of course. The verdict had been a huge relief. But this wasn't my idea of justice—this was a crapshoot!

In an instant, I realized something that shook me to my core: I was living my life, both personally and professionally, in pursuit of external approval. And that dangling carrot, I suddenly understood, was a prize as fickle as the wind.

The whole affair left me wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.

 

 

As the years passed, I continued working the crazy hours required of a litigation associate. I worked and worked and worked, and received bonuses and assurances that I was “on partnership track.” And though I relished the praise, as well as my time with Janice and other friends I'd made at the firm, I became overwhelmed with the stress of my job.

Every morning as I drove in to work, my stomach turned to knots. As I sat down at my desk to start each day, I gave myself a pep talk about facing the confrontations that awaited me.
This is what they pay you to do,
I'd tell myself before picking up the phone to call a particularly rude opposing attorney.

Night terrors regularly interrupted my sleep (and Brad's). One night, I turned to Brad in the middle of the night, waking him from a dead sleep, and shouted at him, my heart racing and my eyes bulging, “Who
are
you?!” In the morning, my throat was raw.

Year-end bonuses and incentives didn't motivate me anymore. A bone tiredness overtook me.

“I feel like I have a terminal illness,” I lamented to Brad one day during a grueling case.

Supernatural prophesy yet again? Nah. I was twenty-eight years old, and as far as I was concerned, I was immortal. But I felt like my soul had been sucked dry of all moisture, like a sponge that's turned rock-hard sitting too long on a sink ledge. No, I didn't think I was actually terminally ill; what I meant to say was, I was
terminally tired.

“Hang in there, Buddy,” Brad consoled me. “You'll be fine.”

Countdown to chemo: two weeks.

By this time, I had long since passed the denial phase. Now, I was just petrified. It was now a reality that, yes, bad things could happen to me. A doctor had already called with unthinkable news. He had said “cancer,” and he had been talking about me. And then he had added words like “rare” and “aggressive” and “triple negative.” I had thought something was impossible, but it had proved entirely possible—and not in a
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
sort of way.

At my next oncology appointment, Dr. Hampshire told me, in no uncertain terms, that I would lose all my hair during chemo. Everywhere. Without a doubt.

“Well, you never know,” I countered. “Maybe I will and maybe I won't.” I ran my fingers through my long, thick hair.

“No, you will,” Dr. Hampshire said matter-of-factly. “With this particular chemo drug [a beast called Adriamycin], there is no doubt
you'll lose your hair. One hundred percent of the people lose one hundred percent of their hair, one hundred percent of the time.” He didn't want me to hold out false hopes.

I'd come to expect, and appreciate, Dr. Hampshire's unflinching honesty. It was best to know what I was up against. I looked at Brad and sighed. I liked having hair. A whole lot.

“Don't worry, honey. It'll grow back,” Brad said with a sympathetic smile, and he kissed me on the forehead.

Cancer might take my hair,
I thought,
but that's all it's getting.

A week later, my sister, Sharon, accompanied me to my neighborhood hair salon. I had decided I would lose my hair on my own terms and donate it to Locks of Love, a wigmaker for children with cancer. And selfishly, I also figured it would be somehow less traumatizing to lose short hair.

“If I feel like we're making a documentary, I can get through it,” I told Sharon. “Never stop taking pictures.” Thus, as the hairdresser cut my hair to pixie length, Sharon imitated a photojournalist, snapping endless photos of me. I made silly faces and gave her two thumbs up (my patented “stay positive” pose), and we laughed and laughed.

Sharon has always been my touchstone, through every form of heartbreak and catastrophe. As little girls, when our black cat, Kitty, went missing for over a week, Sharon and I cleaved to each other, stoking each other's waning faith that Kitty was all right. After a tip from our neighbor that Kitty might have met his maker in the street, Sharon and I crept outside, trembling and holding on to each other for dear life.

Sure enough, we discovered what used to be our Kitty, now
reduced to a furry lump on the asphalt. My brain could not accept that the mound before my eyes was my beloved Kitty, but Sharon understood. She broke into a horrified wail, clutching my slender body with the full force of her grief.

Sharon's hysteria jarred me from my stupor—just as our kind neighbor swept Kitty into a dustpan—and I started screaming, too, almost collapsing into Sharon's arms in my horror.

To this day, our shared grief at having found Kitty-Lump in the street is one of the defining vignettes of our sisterhood: Sharon and I were there to prop each other up through thick and thin, no matter what.

And now, just as I had done throughout my entire life, I was holding on to Sharon yet again, though perhaps not physically in this instance, as the hairdresser relieved my head of all its hair in anticipation of my imminent chemotherapy.

When I approached the front counter to pay for the haircut, still laughing with Sharon and making my “stay positive” thumbs up, the salon manager wouldn't take my money.

“It's a gift,” she said. “We just wish you a speedy recovery.”

In that moment, the full weight of my predicament fell on my head like a wayward theater sandbag from an episode of
Scooby-Doo
(“and I would have succeeded, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!”). Strange as it may sound, I had actually forgotten what had led me to the hair salon in the first place. I had tricked myself into thinking I was just a normal girl getting a “whole new me” haircut—as part of a midlife crisis, perhaps? Or maybe on a dare? But the salon manager's kind gift reminded me:
No, I'm a cancer patient.

I started to cry. Sharon did, too. We collapsed into each other's arms, just as we did when we discovered that poor Kitty had gone off to take an eternal nap.

It was the first stamp in my cancer passport.

When I went to pick up the girls from school later that day, I wore a straw hat so they couldn't see my new, short hair. I wanted them to be able to react to it privately, away from their friends.

I waited outside Chloe's first-grade classroom, reminding myself to take deep breaths.

“Hi, Mom,” Chloe said when she emerged, her Dora the Explorer backpack slung over her shoulder. “Hey, your hair's gone.” And then she started rambling on about her day.

But when Sophie made her way out of her third-grade classroom, her face turned pale the moment she saw me. Tears filled her eyes, and she tilted her head back to keep them from spilling down her cheeks.

“Baby,” I assured her, “it's okay.”

“Don't talk to me,” Sophie hissed between clenched teeth, and she marched ahead as if she didn't know me.

As I followed Sophie's angry little body to the car, my lips were trembling.

During the short drive to our house in our minivan, I could not find words. Every time I started to speak, my throat closed up and nothing came out. We drove in silence (and by “silence,” I mean that Sophie and I did not speak; Chloe, on the other hand, chatted nonstop about her day at school—about her boyfriend, Jackson; about her latest
Geronimo Stilton
book; about how her teacher had broken
her toe on her coffee table—all the while not disturbed one iota that not a wisp of hair was peeking out from under Mommy's hat).

When we got home, Sophie burst into tears. “Why did you
do
that?” she demanded.

“Baby,” I said, “I'm so sorry. The doctor says I'm going to lose my hair, and I wanted to beat it to the punch.” I started to cry, too.

Sophie was pissed. This was so embarrassing, so mean, so awful. How
could
I? Why was I
doing
this to her?

“I'm sorry,” I sighed. I sat down on the couch and took off my hat.

Sophie's eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she gasped.

“What is it?” I was worried. I touched my head.

Sophie sat down next to me. “Mom, that's actually pretty cute.”

Oh, geez, she scared me.
“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

I hugged her. “Thank you, Soph-a-loph.”

Brad had always been moony-eyed about having kids; if I'd said yes, we would have started trying for a baby on our honeymoon. But I'd never given him the green light. I had invested a lot of time and money in law school, and once I began working, having a baby would have cramped my billable-hours style.

Even more than worrying about my career, I wasn't sure I wanted children at all. As a teen, I'd done my share of baby-sitting to earn extra cash, but, although the kids in my care were cutie pies, I had never thought,
Oh, I can't wait to have kids of my own one day.
Throughout my twenties, I'd never clamored to hold other people's babies (though I did hold them, so as not to arouse suspicion about my lack of maternal instincts). My “oohs” and “ahhs” at baby showers about itty-bitty baby clothes had been forced, a total sham. I was missing the baby gene. I could easily envision a fulfilling life filled with Brad, work, and my crazy-ass dog.