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baby announcement—of the grandchildren I’ll never meet.
    How does having people throw money at cancer make me feel?
    “Good,” I say firmly. I think it’s a pretty diplomatic answer, considering my real mental state falls somewhere between shitty and clinically insane. The lights are unexpectedly hot on my cheeks. Oh my God, could I be having a hot flash? Are my ovaries closing up shop just because things are shaky in the boob department?
    I don’t realize my foot is jiggling until Laurie’s decidedly unsensible Louboutin heel skewers my toe.
    “Can you elaborate, Raquel? I’m sure some of the other women out there facing the same challenges would welcome your point of view.” Laurie’s face is open and guileless, but she doesn’t have cancer, so I sort of hate her anyway.
    The strange sort-of-hate sensation clogs my throat. “Well, you want to know the truth? I’m scared shitless,” I blurt out. The words stream out of me, not from the new, shocked I-have-cancer place, but from some deeper inferno that, I realize, has been brewing for years. I go on, “I hate that this happened, and I don’t know why it did. I hate that I have to keep it together. I hate that I got it instead of somebody else. I do! I’m sorry, but it’s true! I hate that I’m supposed to smile when I buy groceries, and for that matter, why do I even have to go shopping anymore? Like, can’t somebody else get off their ass and do it? I keep having crazy thoughts, like maybe I shouldn’t have bought all that regular milk with bovine-growth hormone or whatever in it instead of the organic stuff, because it’s so friggin’ expensive, and would it be inappropriate to ask for a breast lift when they cut me open to do the mastectomy”—surprisingly, a few audience members laugh at this—“and I’m so angry. Like, crazy angry.”
    Breathing hard, I let my hair, which Jonesie blow-dried into fleeting submission, fall over my face. It feels cool, soothing, like a school nurse’s palm.
    “I think I want to kill something,” I announce loudly and clearly to Laurie’s studio audience.
    Fuck. Am Hannibal Lecter of breast-cancer victims.
    Before I can attempt to repair the damage caused by my anger-management problem—
Congratulations, Raquel Rose! You have just cost breast-cancer research half a million dollars!
— a weird alarm peals through the studio. Only the fact that I have sweated through my underwear and slacks keeps me from jumping under the table.
    One of Laurie’s minions trots out and hands her a piece of paper. Laurie’s face brightens. It must be my commitment papers.
    “We have just topped a hundred thousand in matched pledges, a show record, people!” Laurie says. “I want to personally thank every one of you, and of course our corporate partner, and the Bay Area Breast Cancer Alliance for providing the resource materials, and also my sister, Raquel, who is, in the words of one of our callers”—she flicks open the note—“ ‘a breath of fresh air and an honest voice representing real women who don’t take’—well, I think we know what she said, but I’ll substitute ‘guff’— ‘from anybody’!”
    The audience cheers. I wonder if this means I will get a mountain-facing room at Casa Loca.
    “Raquel, would you like to take the audience through the pamphlet the BABCA so generously provided?” Laurie says.
    The pamphlet is in my hand. It is pink except where my palm has perspired through the paper and turned it the arterial purple of an internal organ.
    “Um, okay. It’s called ‘What Every Newly Diagnosed Woman Needs to Know.’” Above me, the page’s contents appear on a gigantic screen—the one that formerly featured my hot-tub-size pores.
    “‘Number one, don’t go to the doctor by yourself,’” I read.
Hmm. Unless your husband is one of those guys who thinks a Pap smear is a topping at Noah’s bagels.
“Uh, ‘number two, get informed before you go on doctors’ visits. Number three,