Page 85 of Born to be Wilder

“Don’t look, Doris! Save your soul!” Marge slung an arm around her, her laughter echoing around us like the brass instruments playing in all directions. Each different songs but somehow they blended together like one big orchestra.

Marge gave Doris a squeeze. “This is nothing. I’ve seen the documentaries. By midnight, there will be things happening on these balconies that would make a sailor blush. We’re in the belly of the beast now, ladies!”

“Oh dear.” Doris shrank.

Marge spun to me. “Well? Where do you want to do it? Just take off your top and join those women?” She pointed to a group of girls lifting their shirts to the cheers of the people surrounding them, beads flying through the air that they caught with big grins. “Or maybe the assless chaps guy knows a good spot?”

I reached up and touched my breasts, something I noticed I’d been doing often since I’d sat in that specialist’s office in New York and heard those words.

You have breast cancer.

My whole world had spun, and I’d been alone when it had happened. I hadn’t told Alejandro about the lump. Hadn’t told the widows. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to utter the words out loud, even the suspicion of the words. So, I’d slipped off to a “spa” and instead went to the best doctors in the world to get my tests run.

And still, I’d hoped they’d come back and tell me it was a cyst. It was nothing. I could go on with my life as if nothing had changed. Return to Wilder Lane with no one the wiser about my scare.

But… everything had changed. With those four words, the world as I knew it ended and a new one began.

You have breast cancer.

They rang inside my skull on repeat like a terrible song you couldn’t get out of your head. At the most inopportune times. Random times. During joyful times. They just… slipped into my mind.

You have breast cancer.

And each time they did, I realized I’d slowly reach up and touch them, as if to ground myself in my new reality. Or maybe it was to appreciate them as they were for as long as I could. I didn’t understand why, but once again, my fingers slipped ever so quickly over my breasts, confirming they were indeed still there.

For now.

With my hands on my breasts, I looked to Marge, giving her a withering look. “I’m not just going to rip off my shirt and start flashing people. I need…” I paused, unsure exactly what it was I needed since that had, in fact, been the plan. But it seemed too pedestrian… too base. The last performance of my breasts deserved a little more fanfare than the drunk sorority girls shaking their tits next to the streetlamp across the street.

For over seventy years, this body had been my most loyal ally. It had opened doors, won arguments, and held everyone’s gazes across crowded rooms. Now, it felt like a house I was being evicted from.

Lumpectomy or mastectomy? The numbers hummed in my head like a broken radio station.

Twenty-five percent chance of it coming back. One percent if I let them take it all.

It should have been a simple math problem. But how do you calculate the loss of the silhouette you’ve seen in the mirror every morning since you were nineteen? How do I stand nude in front of Alejandro and not worry he’s hiding his disgust? Mourning the old me the way I would mourn her too?

“You’ll know when it’s time to give them their moment in the spotlight.” Sylvie pressed a hand to my shoulder, and as always, she seemed to know what I needed to hear. “For now, let’s just enjoy the madness. Alice will let us know when she’s ready for the next step.”

“Thank you, Sylvie.” I reached up and touched her hand, and she gave me a smile and a squeeze.

“Is it all going to be like this?” Doris just kept spinning her head left and right, the insanity around us almost too much to process.

Marge grinned and turned back to the street, her face lit up with completely unguarded delight. “Yes. And I am here for it.”

Sylvie rubbed her stomach. “Well, I don’t know about you all, but it smells so good right now my stomach is grumbling. I can’t tell what I’m smelling. But it’s sugary and fried and sweet. And maybe bourbon? Just… someone feed me whatever smells so good.”

I wasn’t normally one to indulge in sweets, but Sylvie wasn’t wrong. Something on Bourbon Street smelled like heaven, and we hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch yet. Finding a proper place to park Bertha had been quite a debacle, with every camping spot booked up months earlier for the celebration. Marge had driven Bertha around the nearest campsite, trying to get people to give up their spot with my cancer card, but it seemed in this one instance, it wasn’t strong enough.

It took money.

Five thousand dollars’ worth of it to get a group to move on and give us their parking spot.

We followed Marge into the fray, and I didn’t argue when she handed me drinks and food and sweets she’d procured from I didn’t even know where. Either people selling them on the streets or she was accepting them from strangers, but I didn’t care. The smells were intoxicating, and every single bite was as good as I’d imagined.

“Wow! I need this recipe! Who did you get this from?” Doris said, her mouth full of some powdered sugar–covered fried delight.

But instead of answering, Marge slammed to a stop, the rest of us bumping into her.