Alive on Earth

Pretending to be fine has its limitations

That day, the day before I was supposed to get the results of my biopsy, I was called into a meeting on the 21st floor to present TV commercials to the new head client on our biggest account. Dave wore a suit and cowboy boots with extremely pointy toes. All the men were wearing suits. I was wearing a black turtleneck, black tights and a pink wool miniskirt with large mod buttons. This was 11 years ago.

There was a general fear that Dave would take the account to another agency, and that fear was concentrated in the conference room. The executive creative director, a nice-ish guy I didn't know named Ira, introduced me. At that moment, the anxiety I had about the biopsy and the anxiety in the room joined forces. My mind became as unquiet as a mind can be; my mind was a subway platform at rush hour.

I stood. If you were listening for it, you would have heard my voice waver; if you were looking, you would have seen my hands shake.

I don't know what Dave heard or saw. Gradually, as I read the scripts and described the story boards, this client I was supposed to impress and befriend turned first his legs and then his arms and finally his face away; even before I'd finished, his back was to me, and all eyes were on him. I took this as a sign that I had cancer. I had cancer, and Dave sensed it, and everyone in the meeting sensed it, too. When Ira mouthed, "Sorry," what I read on his lips was, Sorry you have cancer.

I can't explain how it happened -- maybe the anxiety wore itself out -- but a few hours later, I became calm. Out of nowhere, my mind, for weeks too agitated even to think in words, said, A biopsy is just a test. It came to me as a revelation, and that's how I said it to my older brother that night over turkey burgers at the Chelsea Square diner.

Andy nodded, Uh-huh, or even, Duh. He seemed a little irritated, which in itself was heartening. "I can't believe I was so worried," I said. "I can't believe I made myself so crazy. You know the chances of me getting breast cancer?"

He didn't, and neither did I. "Really, really small," I said.

Then I told him about the meeting with Dave. I said, "It took everything I had not to cry."

"Yeah," he said. "You don't want to cry."

I rode my bicycle to work the next morning, as I did every morning. I rode because it was fast and I was always late and because it might be the only exercise and fresh air I'd get. I rode because it gave me a feeling of control and freedom that is hard to come by in adult life, and especially in New York.

At work, everyone came up with theories about Dave and called him names and told stories of their own humiliations. I was feeling better until I got a voice mail from Ira saying I'd done "fine," a word seldom heard in advertising: Presentations were "incredible" or "amazing"; barely adequate products were "simply the best." Fine -- that's what I was worrying about when the surgeon called with the bad news.

My friend Michael and my brother and I met with the surgeon in a small examining room at New York Hospital. Michael sort of leaned against a sink. Andy and I sat up on the papered table, our legs dangling.