Books |
Not Exactly What I Had in Mind
Rosemary Breslin
By
Published: Jan 01, 2004
Category:
Memoir
I liked it better when I didn’t know how this story ended — when I didn’t know the story had an end.
When I picked up Rosemary Breslin’s book in 1996, I sort of knew that it was about having this devastating illness and getting married anyway. Sort of knew she was the daughter of Jimmy Breslin, the New York columnist who has the finest instinct for recognizing the Real Deal and the greatest ability to turn a phrase in the business. Sort of knew she married a guy named Tony Dunne, who is related to Butler’s pals Dominick Dunne the writer and Griffin Dunne the actor-director-producer, and also to John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, who need no introduction.
Rosemary Breslin, the cover picture announces, is an extremely attractive woman. But also, for most of her life, a particular kind of Manhattan screwup. Very bad with money, for one thing, and not quick to file her tax return. Before she met Tony Dunne, she hadn’t gone on a date for three years — so long a dry spell that her father asked her, "You’re not a dyke, are you?"
And, of course, there is the small matter of her disease: Her body is unable to manufacture mature red blood cells. It’s like anemia — if you gave anemia the A-bomb.
But let Rosemary tell it:
Every two weeks, I truck on up to the Adult Day Hospital at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and get pumped up with two pints of red blood cells. This is what it takes to keep me alive.
Without the blood, I could probably last a month at the most. The last two weeks I would not be able to get out of bed and would only be able to breathe with the help of an oxygen mask. And then that would be it. Gone, like Ali McGraw in“Love Story.”
With the blood transfusions, I’ve got this life I really dig. I work, go to the gym, hang with my friends, have the greatest marriage in the entire world. And all because of two pints of red blood cells every two weeks, four pints a month, forty eight pints a year. That’s what gives me my life. Forty eight pints of blood.
Doctors say my condition is not fatal and if it doesn’t go away or nothing else works I could live for the rest of my life this way…
Not fatal. Okay, then, every reason to live. Which she does — on her own terms. When she meets Tony Dunne, for example, Rosemary Breslin is 33 and about to move out of an apartment she can’t afford. For their first dinner, which she doesn’t realize is a fix-up, she puts on a gray cashmere sweater that’s so not-new she notices, reaching for the wine, that she can smell her body odor on it. And yet…they click.
Their marriage is big. It needs to be, for there are three characters in it: Rosemary, Tony and Death. That is why the first sentence of her book is a grabber: "I think I’ve found my husband’s next wife." And why, as you read, you pray that tough-talking, big-living Rosemary Breslin gets to grow old with Tony Dunne. And why, as you read, you quickly understand that your prayers aren’t just about her — they’re also about you, about me, about wanting to feel love that strongly even if you have to live in the shadow of death.
So I fell in love with Rosemary’s book, and then I met Rosemary and fell in love with her, and then my wife came into the picture, and we started spending time with Rosemary and Tony, and I was able to steer some film work Tony and Rosemary’s way, and they won prizes, and everyone was just delighted to be alive and on the planet together, and then, this June, at 47, Rosemary died. Amazing. Impossible. But true.
Reading the book, knowing the author’s gone — does it change anything?
Yours to find out.
My take? Well, I’m thinking of the magnificent, 484-word piece that her father wrote (and read at her memorial service). In it, he writes:
Typing a script with tubes in her arms. Writing, rewriting, using hours. Clearly, being attacked by her own blood. She said that she felt great. She said that for 15 years. I don’t know of any power that could match the power of Rosemary Breslin when sick.
To get a taste of that much life, to have a window on that much love — the importance is that it happens, not that it goes. So the book is, for me, the same as it ever was.
And a last thing: The book is the woman. To read it is to have her in your ear. She’s the voice that whispers to you, “Don’t complain. Look up. Keep on.” Don’t have that voice in your life? Better get this book.
