No Time to Die
Time Warner AudioBooks, $17.98
Look who's talking in BookPage!
Bob Adams
Children's Authors
Mary Chapin-Carpenter |
Living with cancer, after a fashion
INTERVIEW BY EVE ZIBART In 1993, Liz Tilberis could look back over a 25-year career as a fashion editor with satisfaction and more than a touch of glee. Having clambered all the way from a summer intern at British Vogue to its editor-in-chief by her 40th birthday, she had left it for the riskier but exhilarating chance to reestablish Harper's Bazaar, flagship of the Hearst publishing empire, as the fashion magazine of record. At year's end, she was tossing a Christmas party for that '90s-media A-list where fashion meets society meets celebrity: Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi, Donna Karan, Paloma Picasso, Todd Oldham, Mick Jones, Jann Wenner, Blaine Trump, Jerome Zipkin, Liz Smith. She remembers what she wore (Lauren's plum-colored panne velvet); what she served (spinach tarts, chicken with chutney) and on what (slate and wooden trays); the flowers, the music, etc. She remembers with such detail because on that night she stood as if above the center point of a see-saw, with her past and her future in the balance: She had just been diagnosed with third-stage ovarian cancer, possibly the result of her previous (unsuccessful) use of fertility drugs, and was scheduled for surgery the next day. Over the last few years, Tilberis has undergone long and debilitating weeks of chemotherapy, biopsies, recurrences, and remissions. She has passed through many stages of fury, fear, self-pity, and even self-delusion and come out with a sort of strength that leaves no room for shame or even obliqueness. And she is using her new-found knowledge, as well as, frankly, the cachet of her position and her friends in the glittery world of high fashion, to capture the attention of other women at risk. The name-dropping and tales of the wild old days, the galas with Princess Diana and sleepovers in the White House (yes, the Lincoln Bedroom) are a sort of sugar-coating for the very serious dose. "I never wanted to be a poster girl for cancer," she writes in the epilogue to No Time to Die, a memoir that expands that dichotomy of success and danger by combining stories of her success, her encounters with the rich and famous, and her collision with the truculent corruption of her cells. "But cancer has become part of who I am, along with my big feet and my English accent. I am five feet seven, I have greenish eyes, I was born on September 7, and I have ovarian cancer." So do almost 175,000 other women in the United States, and that is the reason Tilberis, who first disclosed her illness in the pages of her own magazine, has written this book. "I am determined to lie in a shallow grave," she says in one of its best passages, "no room for other unwitting victims of this miserable disease." That dealing with her illness was frightening, extraordinarily painful, and often confusing is clear -- but more between the lines than in them. Although Tilberis is as straightforward and unsparing of herself as possible, the tension in the sections of the book which deal with her diagnosis and treatment is in fairly sharp contrast with the gay and irresistibly gleeful manner in which she recounts her years in the fashion biz. "It was really hard, because chemotherapy does such strange things to your psyche, no matter how positively you think about that fact that this will allow you to live, no matter how many times you do it -- even at the stage where it takes 10 minutes and you go to work -- it's incredibly scary. You know full well they're putting this stuff right into your heart, the shunt is connected to a tube that goes down an artery to the aorta . . . My oncologist said to me at the beginning, 'You know, Liz, you'll never escape us now. We will be part of your life; if I need you to be somewhere, if you need a blood test, you have to come in.'" And there is even a third voice, a more purely journalistic one, that emerges when she considers the state of oncological research and information available to women today. "In order to tell a really truthful story about chemotherapy, I had to be much more careful about the way I talk, much more guarded and serious," she says now. "But that was the reason for the book. If I get two or three women to go to their gynecologist in time, it will have succeeded. If somebody writes me to say, 'I took fertility drugs and I went to my gynecologist and you'll be happy to know I'm fine,' that's wonderful. "I'm never dictatorial," she continues. "I'm not dictatorial about fashion or whatever, but I am absolutely dictatorial about doctors. You must go. I'm absolutely in awe of the way women took on the medical establishment in the late '80s on the issue of breast cancer, saying Guess what? We want more mammograms, we want to make them available to women of lower incomes, we want the figures on the number of breast cancer deaths out there." There is another change sensible between the lines: Living with cancer has made Tilberis much more aware of herself in a physical sense. Her descriptions of her earlier life, of her childhood and her first fashion shows and even vacations, have an observer's quality; her eye is very fine, and her grasp of fashion as a sort of great social metaphor is almost visceral. But in the later portions of the book, her awareness of her own body seems stronger. Her pleasure in being with her family or relaxing seem far more "in the moment." "You know, I think that may be true," she says, almost surprised. ". . . I don't take anything for granted anymore. After the first operation, I only looked about a year ahead or maybe even six months. Now I'm looking at the next 10 years or so. I've taught myself to be positive about my body and about my cancer, remission or no remission. I'm very aware of changes in my body; I know exactly when my [blood chemistry] goes up and down." Writing the book was difficult in other ways as well. Tilberis, her husband Andrew, and collaborator Aimee Lee Ball would all sit down and say, "How did you see this? What's your recollection?" and were sometimes surprised at their different perceptions. "We put some ghosts to rest, so that was good," she says. "And it did help me put my life into chronological order, and as a Virgo I found that very comforting. It was like putting your house in order. On the other hand, I'm simply terrified of the book's coming out, because everybody will know absolutely everything about me; and as a Virgo that's horrible. It's in print now, and there ain't no recourse." Tilberis, who is chairman of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, is both rueful and excited about how the field is expanding. "I'm going on a book promotion tour after [the spring collections in Italy], and I'll have to bone up on all the new developments before I get asked; it's already been three or four months since we finished the book, and there's all sorts of new figures already." Not only was Liz Tilberis's first exploratory surgery scheduled at the same time as her triumphant Christmas dinner, but the news of Gianni Versace's murder came out the day she was supposed to try a new drug because her blood chemistry indicated another surge in cancer. And only weeks later, "On Friday August 29, 1997, I received voice mail from the assistant to the Princess of Wales. She said the princess would be delighted to write the foreword to No Time to Die and that Diana would call the following week when she returned to London. "On Saturday, August 30, she was involved in the car crash that would kill her." A week later, the day after Diana's funeral, Tilberis turned 50. "Not being a religious person, the only message I can take away from the violent and premature loss of such dear friends, and from facing my own mortality, is: Carpe diem. Seize the day. Diana and Gianni, two vibrant human beings in the prime of life, are gone, and I am thriving." Eve Zibart is a staff writer with the Washington Post. |
Support your