Judy Goldman - Losing My Sister: A Memoir

LOSING MY SISTER

Also by Judy Goldman

FICTION

Early Leaving

The Slow Way Back

POETRY

Wanting to Know the End

Holding Back Winter

Contents

Published by

JOHN F. BLAIR,

PUBLISHER

1406 Plaza Drive

Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103

www.blairpub.com

Copyright 2012 by Judy Goldman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address

John F. Blair, Publisher, Subsidiary Rights Department,

1406 Plaza Drive, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH

Judy and Brenda, 1944

Jacket design by Laurie Goldman Smithwick

Book design by Debra Long Hampton

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldman, Judy.

Losing my sister : a memoir / by Judy Goldman.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-89587-583-9 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-89587-584-6 (ebook) 1. Goldman, JudyFamily relationships. 2. Women novelists, AmericanBiography. 3. BreastCancerPatientsBiography. I. Title.

PS3557.O3688Z46 2012

813.54dc23

[B]

2012021309

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Henry

For Laurie and Bob,
Lucy and Zoe

For Mike and Brooke,
Tess and Benjamin

For Donald

In loving memory of Brenda, my parents, and Mattie

I gratefully acknowledge the editors of the following publications, in which portions of this book originally appeared, sometimes in different form:

Real Simple magazine

The Southern Review

Shenandoah

Black Warrior Review

The Charlotte Observer

Wanting to Know the End

Portions also appeared in the following anthologies:

Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Womens Poetry (Beacon Press)

Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women Writers on Cars and the Road (Faber and Faber)

Heres to the Land: 60th Anniversary Anthology of the North Carolina Poetry Society

Luck: A Collection of Facts, Fiction, Incantations & Verse (Lorimer Press)

A portion also appeared in the following online journal:

Drafthorse: A Lit Journal of Work and No Work

I read portions of this book as personal commentaries on WFAE-FM, the NPR affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina, and on WUNC-FM, the NPR affiliate in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Huge gratitude for many different things: Abigail DeWitt, my breakfast group (Bobbie Campbell, Mary Hunter Daly, Ann Haskell, Laurie Johnston, Clarissa Porter, Dannye Powell), Judy Pera, Marilyn Perlman, Ruth Cohen, Debbie Rubin, Mary Fenster, Paula Reckson, Darnell Arnoult, Georgann Eubanks, Dwight Allen, Dana Sachs, Peggy Payne, Christina Baker Kline, Mike Chitwood, Paul Austin, Betsy Thorpe, Charla Muller, Claire Bateman, Lindsay Reckson, and Stephanie Whetstone.

Equally huge gratitude: my magnificent, enthusiastic, and very smart agent, Amy Rennert, and the exceptionally talented, hardworking, and lovely folks at John F. Blair, Publisher: Carolyn Sakowski, Steve Kirk, Angela Harwood, Debra Long Hampton, and Brooke Csuka.

Also, gratitude to my daughter, Laurie Goldman Smithwick, for a cover design that brings tears to my eyes.

The names of some people in this book have been changed. Details have been re-created from journal notes, recent interviews, and memory. Throughout the six years I was working on this memoir, I struggled with the question: Am I taking liberties? Embellishing? And, of course, the big question: do I even have the right to tell this story? In fact, the act of remembering is inevitably an act of revision. All I could do was keep my eye on one goal: try to tell the truth, as I know it.

I ts 1992 and Im soaping my breasts in the shower so I can check for lumps. The first time a doctor told me I should do periodic breast exams, I laughed and said, Thatll be easy. It should take about a minute!

But Im feeling something in my left breast. More soap. Lather. Stand up straighter. This thing is not just a lump. Its what youd call a mass.

In bed, before sleep, I guide my husbands sweet and careful hand to the spot.

Right here, I say. Feel it?

I do, Henry says.

I cant help noticing the way his dark, heavy eyebrows squeeze together in the middle of his forehead, the funny way his mouth is twisting to the side. I hate telling him. Not just because hes going to be worried, but because saying the words out loud makes them real.

Next morning, I call two people: My doctor. And my sister.

Brenda, three years older, is the person I want to tell if something is wrong. Shes practical, clearheaded. She knows what to do. What to think. Well, the real story is, she knows what I should do, what I should think. When Brenda says it, I believe it.

But she has her own news.

Shes just had a routine mammogramshe was getting ready to call me!and they discovered calcifications in her breast.

Not exactly a tumor. More like sprinkles, she explains. But it could be breast cancer.

Our doctors refer each of us to a surgeon. The same surgeon. My appointment is the day after hers.

Ill soon begin writing a novel in which the two main characters, Mickey and Thea, are based loosely on Brenda and me. In the book, each sister discovers a lump in her breast.

After the book is published, Ill give a reading in one of those bookstores with hardwood floors and deep, upholstered wing chairs. A woman in the audience will say that she finds the situation with the two sisters and their biopsies hard to believe.

What are the chances of two sisters having tumors in their breasts at the same time? shell ask, leaning forward in the chair, wrapping her arms around herself, satisfied to be on to me, to expose my insubstantial grasp of reality.

Students in fiction workshops are always defending their farfetched plot twists by insisting, But it really happened that way.

My job as teacher is to say, It doesnt matter. What you write has to seem believable to the reader.

But it really happened that way, Ill hear myself telling the woman.

Brenda sees the surgeon, doesnt like his abrupt manner. I know hes used to dealing with patients who are asleep, she tells me, that closed tone of voice,but Im not going to put up with his rudeness.

The next day, I see him. I mention that he saw my sister. He immediately lets me know that he knows she was not exactly thrilled with him. He says to me, You make sure your sister has those calcifications biopsied. It doesnt matter whether Im the surgeon or not. She needs a needle biopsy. As quickly as possible.

Then he examines my breasts, his eyes gliding across my face until he finally focuses on the wall behind me. All the while, hes kneading.

But then he spends more time talking about Brendas situation than mine. I think he knows something. Which makes my mouth go dry. Im suddenly more worried about her than me. Being the younger sister, Ive always thought of her as more important. Its not a problem. Just the way it is. In my mind, shes Technicolor and Im black-and-white. Shes an entre. Im a side dish.

Brenda finds a different surgeon. In an uncharacteristically independent move, I stay with Dr. Abrupt.

Our biopsies take place one day apart.

We both wait for the pathology reports.

Mine is benign.

Hers, malignant.

Which is a capsule image of the two of us. Im that prim type of person you could call benign. And Brendashe is certainly not malignant, but she is