world. I wanted only to be what I am—a comedienne, a jester. Everything was working against me, but I wasn’t going to accept that fate. I would be funny again. Each day in the hospital following my operation I just tackled what had to be done. If it meant having the strength to walk around the hospital floor twice or to go in and have surgery to have a Port-A-Cath put in, I ignited my spirit to do it.
A couple of years before I got cancer I read a book called Disturbances in the Field. I told Gene about it because it was one of the most horrifying and intelligent books I ever read. It was about a woman my age and her circle of friends. She was highly educated, a philosophy major and a musician. She played the violin and lived in New York and married a wonderful man, unlike some of her friends, who had troubled marriages or were in and out of relationships with no sense of continuity. They had four children right away—and she continued to do her music. The children were aged sixteen, eleven, seven and five. One afternoon, the two youngest children were coming home from a skiing trip that they had gone on with their school and their bus was in an accident. The two children were killed. She had explained before that there are “disturbances in the field” when something happens that you don’t expect—for instance, this accident—and that changes everything. In one moment she lost her two beautiful youngest children. The book follows her and her husband through their mourning. She remembers that when she was a little girl, her parents had a house on the beach in Long Island, a summer place where they took her and her sister when they were about the age of her children who died. They’d go down to the beach and there were always lots of people there, and everybody had umbrellas that looked alike. She and her sister would go and play by the sand dunes, but it was hard to tell where their parents were. So her father began to tie a pair of tennis shoes on one of the spokes of their umbrella so when the two little girls looked over, they could see right away where their parents were. She longed for that time when you could believe your parents were protecting you.
I remember riding in the backseat of my father’s car and thinking I was really safe. He would take me to school and I used to play this game where instead of sitting with him in the front, I would ride in the backseat and pretend he was chauffeuring me to school. He could truly protect me then. If my parents were home, I was safe, and things didn’t happen—cancer, bus accidents, plane crashes or wars. As long as my parents were home, everything was all right. The woman in the book couldn’t change what happened to her children. She couldn’t protect them the way her father had when he had tied the shoes to the umbrella so she and her sister could know where their parents were. In the hospital I remembered that book, thinking inside, Please, someone protect me from this cancer. Make me feel safe again.
The night before my first chemotherapy, I was lying in bed and Gene walked in the doorway of my hospital room. He was carrying a little pink umbrella with shoes tied to it.
7.
Chemotherapy
W hen I finally came home from the hospital I felt like the inside of a radio. A head of a Hollywood studio once gave me a radio that you could see the inside of because it was clear plastic and lit with pink neon inside. You could see every intricate wiring detail, hot and exposed. That’s how I felt. The toxicity in my body from the chemotherapy made me feel like those swirling geometric patterns and designs of the 1950s—you know, the red vinyl furniture with black pianos on it, and neon lights and chrome watches with geeky things sticking out of them. It felt kind of like a mixture of everything that has come back as nostalgia now—leopard skin and black patent leather with red lightning jags on it, Jimi Hendrix guitars and felt skirts with musical notes and
A couple of years before I got cancer I read a book called Disturbances in the Field. I told Gene about it because it was one of the most horrifying and intelligent books I ever read. It was about a woman my age and her circle of friends. She was highly educated, a philosophy major and a musician. She played the violin and lived in New York and married a wonderful man, unlike some of her friends, who had troubled marriages or were in and out of relationships with no sense of continuity. They had four children right away—and she continued to do her music. The children were aged sixteen, eleven, seven and five. One afternoon, the two youngest children were coming home from a skiing trip that they had gone on with their school and their bus was in an accident. The two children were killed. She had explained before that there are “disturbances in the field” when something happens that you don’t expect—for instance, this accident—and that changes everything. In one moment she lost her two beautiful youngest children. The book follows her and her husband through their mourning. She remembers that when she was a little girl, her parents had a house on the beach in Long Island, a summer place where they took her and her sister when they were about the age of her children who died. They’d go down to the beach and there were always lots of people there, and everybody had umbrellas that looked alike. She and her sister would go and play by the sand dunes, but it was hard to tell where their parents were. So her father began to tie a pair of tennis shoes on one of the spokes of their umbrella so when the two little girls looked over, they could see right away where their parents were. She longed for that time when you could believe your parents were protecting you.
I remember riding in the backseat of my father’s car and thinking I was really safe. He would take me to school and I used to play this game where instead of sitting with him in the front, I would ride in the backseat and pretend he was chauffeuring me to school. He could truly protect me then. If my parents were home, I was safe, and things didn’t happen—cancer, bus accidents, plane crashes or wars. As long as my parents were home, everything was all right. The woman in the book couldn’t change what happened to her children. She couldn’t protect them the way her father had when he had tied the shoes to the umbrella so she and her sister could know where their parents were. In the hospital I remembered that book, thinking inside, Please, someone protect me from this cancer. Make me feel safe again.
The night before my first chemotherapy, I was lying in bed and Gene walked in the doorway of my hospital room. He was carrying a little pink umbrella with shoes tied to it.
7.
Chemotherapy
W hen I finally came home from the hospital I felt like the inside of a radio. A head of a Hollywood studio once gave me a radio that you could see the inside of because it was clear plastic and lit with pink neon inside. You could see every intricate wiring detail, hot and exposed. That’s how I felt. The toxicity in my body from the chemotherapy made me feel like those swirling geometric patterns and designs of the 1950s—you know, the red vinyl furniture with black pianos on it, and neon lights and chrome watches with geeky things sticking out of them. It felt kind of like a mixture of everything that has come back as nostalgia now—leopard skin and black patent leather with red lightning jags on it, Jimi Hendrix guitars and felt skirts with musical notes and
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