Rebecca Handler

o n e w o m a n p a r t y

Nonfiction

The Taste

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I was prepared for the nausea, the exhaustion, and the hair loss. I was not prepared for The Taste. 

After a recent chemotherapy infusion, I tried to describe the sensation in my mouth and how it affects my appetite. “Imagine putting mustard on everything you eat,” I said to my husband. “Even ice cream.”

Except The Taste is not like mustard. It’s like cotton balls that have been soaked in aluminum and old orange juice. It’s like not brushing your teeth for five days, popping an unwashed retainer in your mouth, and then rubbing a stale cracker over your gums. It’s like licking an old sponge covered in paperclips. It’s the taste of something gone horribly wrong. 

Several years ago, when my father was dying, his body took on a smell that I could only describe to close friends as corpse-y. He seemed caught between two worlds, the world of bagels and traffic, and the world of after. I sometimes cleaned his gums with a Q-tip dipped in mouthwash. 

Now, in the middle of the night as I gargle with baking soda and salt to help avoid mouth sores, and then with Listerine to try and escape The Taste, I think about my dad’s breath in those last few weeks. And then I think about my own body and how quickly it has changed. My breast tissue has been replaced by expanders, which are holding the place for future implants. In my armpit is a scar from the removal of several lymph nodes. I have a port in my chest that looks like a rogue Adam’s Apple. Except for my eyebrows, my hair is gone. And my mouth tastes like the lid to the compost bin. 

I am trying to maintain a sense of curiosity about these changes, focusing on what my body can do as opposed to what it looks like. When not curled up in a fetal position with nausea, I can still walk, stretch, swim, and dance. Apart from my breasts, everything else is temporary. These scars will heal, the port will come out, my hair will return, and The Taste will fade away. 

While my mouth tastes like copper and old yogurt, it is difficult to enjoy food. Last night I topped my turkey chili with extra jalapeños. My mouth was on fire but I felt elated to be experiencing a different sensation. Then later, while I was watching Grey’s Anatomy and sipping ginger tea, The Taste returned with a vengeance. “You thought you could burn me away,” it snickered. “Nice try.”

Chemotherapy is the use of chemicals to treat cancer, and The Taste is the byproduct of the unavoidable damage to the cells in my mouth. “But I don’t have mouth cancer,” I want to say to the toxins traveling around my body. “Stay below the neck.” But chemo is a social butterfly who wants to meet everyone at the party. So here I am, chewing peppermint gum while halfheartedly baking a chicken, marveling that one day I will struggle to remember this.   

Everyone Has Cancer

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My middle name is Ilse, after my grandmother who sold her belongings for diamonds that she hid in the soles of her shoes when she left Nazi Germany with my father and his baby brother. She had breast cancer. Died before I was born.

My tumor was on the side of my left breast. I wanted everyone to touch it. I kept offering as a teaching moment. “This is what cancer feels like,” I’d say. 

The tumor was two centimeters. Peanut-sized. My daughters were once peanuts and now one has a boyfriend and the other has blue hair. This tumor won’t get a driver’s permit because it’s gone now. As is the other one they found after they opened me up and removed all my breast tissue. 

I learned about the cancer one month before my first novel came out and scheduled my double mastectomy for the week after the launch. People asked me what the book was about. “Secret keeping,” I’d respond. 

People keep telling me it’s not fair. But it is common, and so why not me? One in eight women gets breast cancer. It’s not even that interesting to have it. Everyone seems to have breast cancer or has a sister, mother, or close friend with breast cancer. 

After my diagnosis, my family took me to Sonoma for the weekend where we played games, soaked in a hot tub, and drank gin and tonics. When we played Celebrity and my mother got Kristin Wiig, she looked at me in horror. Because, you know, wig.

The surgery took six hours. When my surgeon visited me in the recovery room, she shared that each of my breasts weighed the exact same, a first for her. For a moment, the strange delight of this trivial news overshadowed the pain and pressure I felt with each inhale. 

The moderator of my support group put it bluntly: A double mastectomy is a trauma. And your brain might respond as such. My dreams have been frightening. The other night I was running through a city in painful high heels, desperately thirsty, grabbing at glasses of water that kept breaking in my hands.

Last month, I started chemotherapy. Earlier this week, the hair on my head started coming out in clumps. Yesterday it covered the shower floor like a shag carpet. I had underestimated how awful this would feel and sobbed into my husband’s chest. Later that day, I sat in a salon chair as my hairdresser ran the clippers over my scalp. She complimented me on the shape of my head and refused to take my money.  

Due to the aggressive nature of my cancers (plural), I am having 16 infusions of chemotherapy. This is what I’m doing this year. I am also swimming, planning a B’not Mitzvah, and watching The O.A. And when I am not suffering from a kind of nausea I can only describe as absurd, I am writing a new novel. This one is about a woman whose life may or may not be a figment of her imagination.   

Untitled #14

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Yesterday I woke up thinking about a movie I saw in Perth several years ago. A documentary about a family who moves to the Canadian wilderness, the story is a beautiful portrayal of isolation, hardship, and unconditional love. But what was it called? As my tea brewed, I pulled my robe tighter and took a swig from my water bottle. I closed my eyes and envisioned the poster for the movie. A mother pushing her kids through the snow in a wooden sled. But what on earth was the title?  

On the walk to my office, I listened to “Against All Odds.” I wish I could just make you turn around. Turn around and see me cry. This was not the state I needed to be in. I put my phone away and started thinking about that movie again. Was it called All The Love? Our World? No. There’s a bear, and someone gets sick. Was bear in the title? 

Titles are either good, bad, or forgettable. I find it hard to assign titles to my writing. I understand artists who simply use Untitled #14 or whatever. How can we expect to sum up a piece of writing in a few words? Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius might be the best title of all time. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle isn’t bad either. Some titles are like bubbles – pretty for a moment, until they’re gone. Yesterday Never Came, for example, or Love on The Mind (I made these up). 

For my debut novel coming out in March, I had a long list of titles. For a while it was called You Belong To Everyone, and then it was simply the name of the narrator, Edie Richter. I toyed with Species Checklist but couldn’t say it without spitting on myself. I liked Lost Satellite Reception but it didn’t have much to do with the story. I think I just liked the word satellite. I scrolled through lyrics to Sufjan Stevens songs, because he makes an appearance in one chapter. My editor also had a list of possible titles, but I didn’t love them. Finally, the name came to me. It was simple, paid tribute to the matter-of-fact protagonist, while expressing the theme of the book. Edie Richter is Not Alone. My editor approved, and within days I was reviewing potential covers.

Walking home from my office yesterday, I found myself behind three meandering young men discussing their favorite Thai restaurants. They took up the width of the sidewalk, so I slowed down, relishing the eavesdropping opportunity (something I miss during this pandemic). One of them noticed me however and pulled his friends towards the curb. “Let’s let this lady pass,” he said. I responded jokingly, “I’ve got big plans tonight. So many places to go.” The tall one with the bushy beard and black mask laughed and said, “Good point. I guess we have all the time in the world.”

As I passed them, I grinned under my blue Golden Gate Bridge mask. That was it. That was the name of the Canadian wilderness movie. All The Time in The World. It’s good. You should see it.

The Could-Haves

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Living through a pandemic means endless hours of evaluating risk and erring on the side of caution. The enemy is invisible and highly contagious. Friends could be poisonous, and a neighborhood walk feels like a spin of the roulette wheel. We’re out of eggs but is it worth killing Grandma? When isolation frustration kicks in, I try to feel grateful for all I have. When that fails, I consume stories about people on ventilators, and watch videos of families saying goodbye to dying, isolated relatives. I remind myself of the horror of Covid. We do not want this. We miss our friends, but we do not want this. I repeat my mantra: This is all we need to do.  I think about how I want to look back on this year. I want my children to feel proud of themselves, sacrificing for the greater good. 

Over the summer, my family and I were heading south on the 101 towards the Golden Gate Bridge, returning home after an outdoor, distanced dinner with friends in Marin. I was driving, my husband in the passenger seat, kids in the back. We were listening to the band Khruangbin and were nearly giddy from the rare event of socializing with non-family members.  

Let me pause to mention that I am a nervous driver. In 2009, I was in a head-on car crash, one that left me – with the exception of a bruised nose from the airbag – miraculously, physically unharmed. But I carry that crash with me. I see the other driver’s face through the windshield and remember “Losing My Religion” was on the radio. I recall stepping carefully out of my red Honda Civic to examine the wreckage. A stranger took my arm and led me to the sidewalk. He said, “I saw it happen. I can’t believe you’re ok.” I remember the smell of his deodorant and the way his voice cracked when he said, “You’re ok.” My husband arrived and brought me to the hospital where I was placed under observation. Natasha Richardson had died earlier that year, two days after sustaining a head injury. No one was taking chances.  

Back to the bridge and Khruangbin. As sometimes happens when I drive at night, a sense of dread came over me. I imagined flipping the car and catapulting off the side of the bridge, slamming into the dark water. I reviewed my alcohol intake, wondering if that was a factor. Two glasses of wine over four hours. Intellectually I knew I was sober, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. My hands turned sweaty and my legs trembled. I asked my husband to drive, and pulled off the highway into a mall parking lot. Later, after the kids had gone to bed, my only explanation was, “I thought something bad might happen.” 

Recently I have found myself replaying that night. I made a choice, and all I have to show for it is what didn’t occur. I’ll never know what could have happened on the bridge. All the could-have-beens drowned in the cold dark water. 

And now, during Covid, we make similar calculations without a spare driver. We are parked in our masks, on our Zooms, exhausted every night from assessing and quantifying everyday life. Tomorrow we will do the same. Make choices and wait.  

I Wrote A Book

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I don’t have any tattoos. I admire some tattoos – very few to be honest – but some. My favorites are the ones that are not thought out in advance. The ones that are sketched in a dark bar and inked that same night. I also love the roses. So many roses on so many bodies, and why not? They are beautiful and thorny. The only thing I envy about tattoos is the concealment. You order a coffee and the barista has no idea you have a snake on your hipbone. A coworker pulls up his shirtsleeve to reveal a lyric from a Taylor Swift song. The secrecy and subsequent disclosure are exciting to me. 

My secret is Edie Richter is Not Alone, my debut novel coming out in March 2021. This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for many years. It is not my story. It is fiction. But ever since Edie appeared in my mind and persistently tapped me on the shoulder, I have held her close and not shared her with many people. I didn’t know if I could write a book. But it turns out, showing up every day, writing a lot of words, and then eliminating most of them, works.  

Edie doesn’t have any tattoos. She probably wouldn’t see the point in trying to make something permanent out of something so temporary. But she would certainly notice them and wonder about the inspiration. She might ask someone an uncomfortable question, like how they feel about regret. 

Feeling alone is something we all understand. Especially in 2020. But of course, as Edie learns, we are never alone. We have each other. And some of us have snakes on our hipbones, and faded roses on our arms. And it’s all beautiful, and we’re all going to be ok. 

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[Edie Richter is Not Alone (Unnamed Press, March 2021) is available for preorder at most bookstores. If you live in the states and would like a signed copy, please order through Green Apple Books in San Francisco.]