Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? Read Online Free PDF

her.
    When I got home, Noah was next door with his pal, Jake, and Tara was at track practice. I didn’t want them to know anything, so I let Gunther out into the yard and then went upstairs to call Michael, then Ellie. I didn’t let on with them, either. I just asked them to meet me for drinks at seven-thirty at The View, this café with a riverfront vista.
    Two phone calls down, one to go.
    “Joe?”
    “ L-A-T-E. A four-letter word synonymous with your weekly feature.”
    “Yeah. I have a little problem.”
    “What? Got stuck in the machine?”
    “Very funny.”
    “I need the column. Either that or you can go for the colonoscopy.”
    I shuddered.
    “No, look…Joe, they spotted something. I have to have a biopsy. The humorous side of squashing my breasts in a machine for your vicarious pleasure just flew out the window.”
    There was a long pause.
    “Hello? Earth to Joe…your L-A-T-E writer is F-R-E-A-K-E-D. ”
    “Aw, shit, I can’t pick on you for being late if…there’s something really wrong with you. Other than your terminal tardiness and addiction to shoes. And that attitude of yours.”
    “Yeah, well, I don’t know anything yet, so I’m trying to avoid panic, which isn’t easy—even for me. Listen…just keep it under wraps, okay? Run a repeat column, or the one I had scheduled for Sunday. I’ll write something new by then.”
    “All right. And in the meantime, until it turns out to be benign, I’ll store up all my complaints so that when you get the good news, I can rip you a new one.”
    “Appreciate it. Knew I could count on you.” I hung up the phone and smiled. That’s when I knew I’d made it as a writer. When Joe started really picking on me. I remember the first time he called me into his office, shut the door and ranted about how I’d offended several of our advertisers by writing about the conspiracy to place women who look like emaciated death camp survivors in their ads. He screamed and yelled about advertisers being our life’s blood. Then after his little show for the rest of the staff, who were all eyeballing his office through the glass, he commended me for sticking to my guns. He ran the piece, and the fact that he found my column worth nearly having an aneurysm over told me I was doing all right.
    After I hung up with Joe, I stood and faced the mirror over my dresser. I pulled off my shirt and then my bra. My right breast didn’t look any different from the left. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my breasts and my body—until I passed some magical line of demarcation and began making peace with the fact that so much of what most women obsess over isn’t real—it’s society’s standards for us. My son’s sloppy kisses in the morning—they’re real. My daughter’s moments of fragile adolescent beauty—they’re real. Hell, my breasts are real, too, which means that at my age, they’re not perched like two unripe hard melons up near my neck somewhere. So they sag a little bit…I’d made peace with them.
    I changed into a sweater and some jeans and went downstairs. I made dinner—or what passes for dinner—for Noah and Tara; I’m a member of the 400-Club. Everything in my freezer can be put on a cookie sheet and cooked at four hundred degrees. God bless chicken nuggets. I oversaw homework, and left Noah watching Nickelodeon and Tara on the phone with Justin. I drove to The View. Michael and Ellie were waiting.
    Michael had a martini—and he’d ordered me one, too. Ellie had a glass of Zinfandel. Ellie had tried A.A. once although she’s never had a drinking problem. However, she did meet two lovely recovering alcoholics and got engaged to one. Right now she is in Codependents Anonymous learning how to cure herself of serial engagements.
    I slugged back half my martini. “You know that mammo I had today?”
    “Yeah?” Michael cocked an eyebrow.
    “They saw something.”
    “What?”
    “They don’t know yet. I have to have a