“But, honey,” the surgical fitter said, “think of me as your doctor.” I am inclined to think of my doctor as my doctor, Joan thought, and I tend to think of this person as someone who’s going to sell me a falsie. Still, she does this for a living and I don’t want to dump on her. “I appreciate that you’re trying to help me,” Joan said, “but the best way for you to do that is to recognize that I’m a little, uh, eccentric. So you just show me a Jodi bra or two and Jude and I will try them out.”
The surgical fitter went somewhat glumly to get a Jodi bra. Several old ladies had gathered at the bra counter to buy a Bali bra and stopped to watch. The surgical fitter returned with an apparatus that looked like a suspension bridge. “Jesus Christ,” Joan said. Jude was contorted with suppressed laughter. “Joan,” she murmured, “I’m going to wet my pants.”
The bra had side panels nearly five inches across with thick heavy straps. “Ma’am,” Joan said to the surgical fitter, “that bra is obviously meant to contain undulating, pendulous breasts.” Joan pointed to her chest. “Could you look at my terrific chest and my magnificent bod and see that I don’t have a lot of equipment there? I mean I never wore a bra like that in my life. I will not start wearing one now.”
“Honey, it is meant to hold the Jodi form,” the surgical fitter said.
“You mean Jodi only makes forms for huge-breasted women?”
“Oh no, we make them all sizes.”
“Well, see if you can find one that would be maybe an A cup size or A form or whatever you call it.”
“Certainly. I’ll just take a look in the back.”
She left. The other ladies completed their transactions for normal bras, but two of them lingered, looking at stockings, waiting to see how things worked out.
Joan said to Judy, “Isn’t this thrilling?”
“This woman may be the biggest asshole in the western world,” Judy said.
“I wouldn’t limit her that way,” Joan said.
The surgical fitter returned with a lump of siliconish-looking material shaped somewhat like a breast. She put it on the counter and they all stared at it. It looked like a large translucent grapefruit. In bra terms it was at least an E cup. The surgical fitter said, “There.”
Jude’s voice was shaking. “Joan...” she said.
Joan said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but look at me. Don’t you think if I were to shove that great rubbery thing inside my bra it would overpower the other side. I mean that’s very large, and I’m not very large.”
The surgical fitter was disappointed. She said, “Well, sweetheart, if you would just step into the fitting room I could fit you properly.”
“Why can’t we compromise,” Joan said. “Judy and I will go into the fitting room and you can hand things into the fitting room and we’ll do it that way.”
The surgical fitter reluctantly agreed to that. This was not the way she’d been trained. She picked up the great rubber grapefruit and the great huge bra, and led Joan and Judy to the fitting room. Joan and Judy went in. Joan took off her blouse. “Now,” she said through the curtain, “you just hand me that grapefruity thing.”
Joan took out the old foam falsie she had been wearing, and the gauze padding and shoved the grapefruit inside her bra. Judy’s eyes filled with tears and she leaned helplessly against the wall of the fitting room. “Joan,” she said, gasping for breath, “I’m going to be hysterical.”
The left side of her chest stuck out aggressively, twice the size of her real breast. She opened the curtain, her bra in place and said to the surgical fitter. “What do you think?”
“It’s a little big,” the surgical fitter said.
“Yes,” Joan said, “let’s try a smaller size.” The surgical fitter brought a D. It was too big. She brought a C, it was too big. She brought a B. It was too big. “She’s not a quitter, is she,” Judy said.
What seemed to Joan maybe an A½, size was about right.
“Now,” said the surgical fitter, “you’ll need a new bra.” She looked very scornfully at Joan’s old bra. She had been wearing it every day because it was comfortable, taking it off at night to run it through the washer and dryer. The bra looked tired and gray. “I’m here only to help you, honey. I’ve helped a lot of women. I’ve fitted a lot of women and they come back and tell me that they went out into the store to show Hubby, and Hubby says to them, ‘Sweetheart, you’ve never looked so even.’ ”
Jesus Christ, if that’s my goal in life, Joan thought, I am in severe trouble.
Judy said, “I think she’d be better off with a regular bra. You know, a Playtex, or a Rogers Formfit, or whatever.”
Wearily the surgical fitter went back out of the fitting room and wearily she returned with a Rogers Formfit. “Ah,” Joan said, “now we’re talking about the kind of bra I wear.” The surgical fitter stepped out of the fitting room and Joan took off her bra and slipped into the new one.
“Look at that,” Judy said, “a regular, ordinary bra, like the ladies wear in the dressing room at Loehmann’s.”
Joan shoved the form into the left cup and adjusted the bra. “There I am,” she said.
Judy said, “That looks terrific.”
And it did. With the bra on Joan looked perfectly normal. Perhaps a quarter of an inch of scar showed at the V of the bra, but otherwise there was no sign that she was not as she had been. The prosthesis moved with her; she felt it and it felt like her. She could be bumped, hugged, poked at, and no one would know the difference.
The surgical fitter was pleased. “It’s puncture-proof, darling.” Puncture-proof, Joan thought, I wonder what she thinks my sex life is like. “And guaranteed five years. There’s no worry about this for five years, darling.” Joan felt a flash of indulgent humor. Five years, she thought, well, Christ, in five years this thing will grow back. That was followed by a brief stab of depression. No, it won’t. It’s gone forever. If this thing does last in its puncture-proof purity for five years I’ll have to come back and go through this again. There was always that part of her which perceived the operation as temporary, which rejected forever.
Joan paid, and she and Judy went out of the store. “Joan,” Judy said. “I don’t think I can go through this every five years.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” Joan said.
“I’ll find out some places that do this sort of thing, at the hospital,” Jude said. “I know there are easier ways. Longwood Pharmacy in Boston, I think. They make a pocket in your bra and everything.”
“Do you think they employ a surgical fitter?” Joan said.
“Oh God, I hope not,” Jude said.
Epilogue
A Friday night, six weeks to the day since she discovered the first hint of breast cancer, Joan said to Ace, “Don’t think this is going to be fun, because it isn’t. But it’s time to resume sexual activity.”
“You sensuous bitch,” he said.
“I mean it. Don’t think of this as a fun time. Think of this as a sort of experiment. We very carefully try it out and see if it’s okay yet. It’s not going to be a big treat.”
“It’s probably won’t be much worse than the cold showers I’ve been taking.”
“Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll pretend we’re very old people and we’ll do the whole thing very gingerly. Very carefully.”
“Tough, but oh so gentle,” Ace said.
“Maybe,” Joan said. “But the weight. The two hundred twenty pounds tends to worry me.”
“I can take most of it on my arms,” Ace said. “Like doing a push-up... Or a push-in, as the case may be.”