Storm in a B Cup - A Breast Cancer Tale (12 page)

Lani has
done some fairly amazing things as a friend but this is one of the sweetest
gestures ever. This is even better than being surprised with a life-sized
cut-out of a half naked Adam Levine for my birthday. Brendan had a lot of
trouble letting
that
into our
bedroom. He said he felt like he was being assessed during sex.

I rub my
hand over the prickles on Lani’s scalp. “It feels a like a doormat.”

“Yours will
be softer because it will be growing back, like baby hair.”

I can’t
believe she’s shaved her head. It makes my news slightly uncomfortable to
impart.

“I don’t
have to have chemo,” I say. I wait for the ball to drop through the hole and
engage. “Dr. Downer got all the cancer. It hadn’t spread as far as she first
thought. I’m in the clear. I do have to take Tamoxifen for the next five years,
though.”

I tell her
everything the doctor explained to me about my type of cancer and how if I take
the medication for five years I’ll have a ninety-five per cent chance of
survival. Even without the drug the survival rate is up as high as eighty-nine
per cent since I had the mastectomy.

Lani frowns.
It appears she’s having some difficulty digesting the information. “But you
said you were having chemotherapy.”

“That’s what
the doctors said originally, but after the surgery and the tests, they’ve
decided against it. It’s not necessary. I’m so sorry, Lani.”

It’s weird
that I’m apologising for not having chemotherapy but I feel dreadfully guilty.

“It’s no
problem.” She shrugs flippantly. “I always wanted to shave my head anyway. This
seemed like a good excuse. Bloody lucky you didn’t have to have your leg
amputated or something, eh? Imagine the strife I’d have been in then. At least
hair grows back.”

I can’t help
but laugh. It’s nice to be back.

“You must be
so happy about not having to have chemo,” she adds.

I mull this
over for a second. Of course I’m happy, but there’s something else, too. “I
think I’m a bit annoyed.”

“Why?”

“I feel
ripped off. I had it planned. I’d worked out a schedule for when I was off
doing treatment and everything. I was going to get my hair cut into a pixie cut
and dyed platinum blonde. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“You and
your plans.” She bites the crunchy edge off the crumpet. “You can still cut
your hair off. Nothing’s stopping you.”

“Yeah, but
if it looks shit, I’ll be stuck with it. The whole point of doing it before
chemo was that it didn’t matter because it would fall out.”

“You can’t
control everything, Soph.”

“Brendan
said the exact same thing.”

“I’m glad we
agree for once.”

“And I don’t
like to control, I like to be organised. There is a difference.”

“Apples and
bananas.”

I look over
to the table where Lani has left the pile of hats. I’m loath to ask because we
don’t have the money to spend on stock that will never sell. Like I’m loath to
ask how much they cost.

“Where’d
they come from?”

“Garage
sale.”

I pick up a
particularly odd looking felt number.
 
“So they’re used?”

“Most
vintage things are. That’s kinda the point.”

I brace
myself for the next question. “How much?”

Lani leans
forward. Her eyes are gleaming with delight. “That’s the amazing thing. The
entire box was only five bucks. You could work some of your creative magic on
them. Revamp them into twenty-first century styles.
 
With my help, of course.”

As I lean
over and begin to sort through her purchases, my interest suddenly peaks. Some
of these could be quite cool with a bit of pizzazz added. Not that Rasta beanie
though. That can go straight in the bin.

 
“Are you sure you only paid five dollars?
You haven’t spent huge amounts again and are too scared to tell me because you
know I’ll have kittens?”

“Nope. Five
bucks. The woman was on some sort of cleansing thing in her house. She’d been
hoarding them for twenty years. You should have seen her house, Soph. it was
like that TV show.” She picks up a scarlet-coloured, bell-shaped hat and slips
it onto her head. Even without hair it has no chance of fitting and sits
perched on her crown. Lani’s head is deceptively large.

Taking it
off, she returns it to the table. “A couple are truly heinous, I know, and we
could never put them out for fear people would think we’d lost the plot but
there’s a few sweet little cocktail numbers and I love this cloche. Can’t you
see it on display for race season?”

I most
certainly can. This time, it appears Lani has come up trumps. Well, fifty per cent
trumps. That green pointy thing looks like something Merlin would wear to a
fancy dress party.

We sit in
silence for a while, staring at the hats, sipping our coffees and finishing our
crumpets. Then, as I’m clearing everything away, I remember what I was thinking
about as I stared at myself in the mirror this morning. “Hey, I have a design job
for you if you’re interested.”

“As if I
wouldn’t be. What is it?”

I unbutton
my shirt, revealing the horrendous beige bra. I would never do this with anyone
else I know, but Lani’s different. We’re more like sisters than boss and
assistant. And with her outrageous taste in fashion, I bet she’s seen things
that are a hundred times worse. If anyone can turn this monstrosity into
something semi-decent, Lani can.

Lani’s face
is frozen in a position of wide-eyed shock. The blood has drained from her
cheeks. Even her scalp looks as if the colour has left it. “What the hell is
that thing?”

“This, my
dear, is what is commonly known as the
prosthetic
bra
.”

I take her
hand and put it over my cushion prosthesis.

“Your boob
is made of wadding! What the hell? Isn’t it bad enough you have cancer, now
they add insult to injury by making you wear that thing. Please tell me Brendan
hasn’t seen it.”

I can see
where she’s going with this. If the fact that I only have one boob isn’t enough
to make Brendan balk at sex, the bra will be the clincher.

“I’ve managed
to hide it from him so far. Seriously, he hasn’t even noticed my boobs aren’t
the same shape. He’s too busy moaning about the cost of cancer and the fact
that he had to cook dinner while I was in hospital.”

“Typical
man.” Lani eyes my body. “There’s a definite difference in size and shape. It
looks like the fake one’s growing out of your armpit.”

I knew it. I
knew I hadn’t imagined the looks I’d been getting as I walked along the
footpath that morning.

“Can you fix
it?”

“I wasn’t an
almost contestant on
Project Runway
Australia
for nothing. If I can make a ball gown out of a roll of cling
wrap, I can fix that thing.” She waves her finger in a circular motion at the
offending item and looks me up and down again. “How can you bear to put it on?
It looks like a form of medieval torture. Hold on a sec.”

She dashes
to the storeroom and within seconds has returned with a handful of wadding,
left over from a ‘snowy Christmas’ window decoration.

“This should
do. Come here.”

I lean
towards her. She shuffles around on the right side of my chest and pulls and
pushes a bit. A few grunts escape her lips but she’s not giving up. She stands
back to check out her handiwork.

“At least
you’re not sprouting a third breast now. You look a little more even. That bra
is
so
the wrong size for you. And the
colour’s, well, icky.”

I glance
down at my chest.
 
The beige is
quite yucky.

“What if we
dye it?” Lani asks. “Purple would be nice or cerise.”

“You could
do that?”

“Sure. I
have some dye left over from when I tie-dyed my hot pants for that music
festival.”

Lani likes
to ‘theme dress’ to suit the occasion. And I think she has the idea that music
festivals are where seventies hippies, with flowers in their hair and see
through cheesecloth tops, hang out. Still, I’m finding the idea of tie-dyed
purple hot pants a little hard to fathom. Even for her.

“How many
bras do you have?” she says.

“Only one. I
can’t bring myself to buy another, so I’m rinsing it out in the sink. Besides,
when I get the real prosthesis in a few weeks, I can buy a couple of nicer ones.
Hopefully.”

“Doesn’t
mean you have to suffer while you wait. Give it to me and I’ll take it home and
see what I can do. If you wear something loose to work tomorrow nobody will notice
your lack of boob. I can bring the bra with me.”

I nod my
agreement at the plan. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Lani gives a
chuckle. “Neither do I. I can’t imagine you having left over dye in your
laundry cabinet.”

*****

The next
evening at bedtime, I decide it’s time to confront Brendan with the new me.
I’ve been putting this off since I got home; getting changed before he comes to
bed, taking my clothes into the bathroom each morning, but I think the time has
come. And the changes Lani has made to my nana bra make me feel slightly more
confident. I don’t feel so completely ugly.

Brendan is
propped up in bed reading a book about becoming a property millionaire by the
time you’re thirty. It combines his two greatest passions — real estate
and money — so I can understand his choice. His metal-rimmed glasses are
sitting attractively on the end of his nose, making him look rather imperious.
I’d like to rip them off him in a game of ‘naughty professor’ or something like
it, but I’m not too sure how he’ll react. While he’s been good at caring for me
physically since my diagnosis, the emotional care has not improved. It might be
because he’s feeling a bit like a fish out of water in this new situation of
being housekeeper and partner but it’s like he’s turned off his feelings, or is
pushing them away. Maybe tonight I’ll be able to rectify that. It’s early, Rory
is staying over at Harris Farmer’s and neither of us has to work in the
morning.

I begin to
take off my clothes, starting with my jeans. For some reason, I feel nervous
about baring myself to Brendan. It’s irrational, I know, because he’s seen my
body a thousand times, but the physical side of our relationship has always
been important. I don’t look the way I did a month ago.

I slide my
jeans past my hips and knees and step out of them. Then I begin to unbutton the
man-style shirt I wore to work today. Beneath it, the newly remodelled bra
awaits inspection. Lani has done a great job. I hardly recognised it as the
revolting thing it was before. Now, it’s bright purple and the edges around the
top have been accessorised with a touch of chartreuse trimming that Lani had
‘lying around’. It looks like one of those groovy sports bras you can wear
without having to put a t-shirt over.

“What do you
think?”

Brendan
gives a cursory glance over the top of his book. His grunt is non-committal but
I can see he’s not impressed.

“What
happened to those other bras you used the wear? I liked them better.”

He’s always
been known for his straight talking, but right about now I could use a little
bit of embellished truth.

“Well,
clearly I can’t wear them anymore, seeing as how I have nothing to put in one
side.”

Do I have to
spell it out?

“So what’ve
you got in that, then?”

“It’s a soft
prosthesis. It’s only temporary until I can be measured for a proper one.”

“I thought you
were having a reconstruction?”

Perhaps if
he’d stayed during my consultations, instead of running down to the coffee
shop, he’d know what was going on. Dr. Downer had clearly explained that an
immediate reconstruction wasn’t an option for me. She’d thought the tumour to
be bigger and more widespread, initially, than it turned out to be which would
have meant chemotherapy and possibly radiation.

“I am. But because
I didn’t have a reconstruction at the time of my mastectomy, I have to wait for
a bit.”

“How long?”

He’s staring
at me now, like he’s never seen me before, and I begin to wonder if this having
one breast is going to cause a problem for us.

“I have to
go back to Dr. Downer in eight weeks so I guess I’ll find out about the process
then. She’ll refer me to a plastic surgeon, I suppose. It could be ages.”

“And until
then you’ll be wearing that….” His voice fades away, but I haven’t missed the
tinge of revulsion in it.

I lift my arms
slowly and unhook the bra. I’m not trying to be seductive; it’s a bit of a
trial putting my right arm behind my back or over my head. I haven’t got full
use of it yet, though it’s improving.

The bra
drops to the floor and I walk around the bed, tugging my singlet top on as I
go. Brendan has gone back to his book but I can see him watching me out of the
corner of his eye. This is a good sign isn’t it? It’s been weeks for him too.
Surely, he must be feeling the urge?