The Mother's Promise

by Sally Hepworth

  Emily had offered to give her a ride but Zoe had made an excuse about needing to finish her math project, and Emily was too caught up in the prospect of a date with Cameron to notice how unlikely that actually was. Only an hour ago Zoe still didn’t know if she was going to do this. Even if it wasn’t for the date thing, movie theaters terrified her, almost as much as the school cafeteria. The airlessness, the artificial light, the people (mostly the people).

  Through the glass doors, Zoe could see that the foyer was full. There must have been a kids’ movie about to start, because the place was full of moms with kids ranging from ages three to ten, and the floor was sticky and dotted with popcorn. A kid had dropped his drink and an employee had erected a CAUTION: WET FLOOR sign while he mopped it up. This created a bowl-like opening in the wall of people, and through it, from behind the pole where she stood, Zoe could see Emily, Cameron, and Seth.

  Emily was wearing a dark blue T-shirt dress that was tight around her chest and stopped at her upper thigh. It must have been new as Zoe hadn’t seen it before. She’d straightened her hair and she was laughing at something Cameron had said a little too enthusiastically. Seth appeared to be half listening, smiling a little, but he kept glancing around, looking for her.

  Zoe wasn’t sure if it was the anticipation or the strong smell of popcorn, but she was feeling woozy. Perhaps it was just the closed-in-ness of the movies? She imagined having a panic attack right here, in front of all these people—the shame of it. Someone might give her a paper bag to breathe into. Someone else might call an ambulance. Afterward she’d overhear people say, “What was wrong with that girl?”

  Even as she took her first shallow breath, Zoe could see the ridiculousness of her thoughts. She was panicking over the idea of panicking! She silently recited some affirmations—I am calm, collected, and in control. I am calm, collected, and in control—and then she peeked around the pole again. Emily said something and then Seth and Cameron went and stood in the ticket line. Then she got her phone out and was texting. A heartbeat later, Zoe’s phone beeped.

  Where r u? U’d better b coming.

  Suddenly Zoe saw an “out.” She could text a response—she was sick! Something had come up! Texting was a godsend for someone like Zoe. With written words, she could say exactly what she wanted without being crippled by fear about what the other person was thinking. It was like braille for a blind person, signing for a deaf person. A way for her to communicate where she was impaired. She lifted her phone and started to reply, but her thumbs were jelly. She wiped her hands on her jeans. They were sweaty, useless. Heat crept up Zoe’s neck, and her heart started its horrible, rapid thrum. She tugged at the neck of her T-shirt.

  I am in a safe place, she told her panic. This will pass. She asked herself, What is the worst that can happen if you go? Seth and Cameron might think you’re an idiot, but then again, they probably already do. But what is the worst thing that can happen if you don’t go? Emily won’t be your friend anymore. Zoe closed her eyes for a second. Then, she stepped out from behind the pole and pushed through the glass doors.

  The kids’ movie must have started because the foyer had cleared. It helped a little. Emily was concentrating on her phone but, as if feeling Zoe’s presence, she looked up.

  “Zo!” Emily exclaimed. “I just texted you!” Her concentration had already melted into relief. “I was worried you were going to be a no-show.”

  “Nope.” Zoe smiled weakly. “I’m here.”

  “Great, the boys are getting the tickets. Seth is reeeeeeally excited!”

  “Cool,” she mouthed, but no sound came out.

  “Do you want anything from the concession stand? Popcorn? Gummy bears?”

  Zoe tried to speak but her mouth was dry. She shook her head.

  “Okay, well—let’s go.” Emily looped her arm around Zoe’s and started to walk. “I don’t want to be stuck in the front row, not with Cameron sitting beside me! We might need a little privacy if you know what I…”

  The room began to soften at the edges. What would she say when she greeted Seth? What would she do if, afterward, he wanted to hang out, just the two of them? What if—and even in her stressed-out state she realized the irony of this—he didn’t want to hang out afterward, just the two of them? There would be relief in that, but there would be shame too. Like everything in Zoe’s life, she was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t.

  “What?” Emily said, turning around.

  Zoe blinked. Had she spoken aloud again? Jesus, what was wrong with her? “Nothing,” she muttered, and Emily turned around again happily.

  How were all these people all breathing normally? Zoe wondered as Emily dragged her along. She couldn’t seem to get a lungful of air. It felt so real, even though Zoe knew it was all in her mind. There was air all around her. Why couldn’t she feel it in her lungs?

  Suddenly she planted her feet. “I … can’t do this.”

  Emily glanced back over her shoulder. “What?”

  “I’m s … sorry, Em. I can’t.”

  Emily stopped, not understanding. “You can’t go to the movie?”

  Zoe shook her head, taking a deep rasping breath. She pressed her hand to her pounding chest.

  Emily stared at her for a moment. And for the briefest flash, Zoe saw something in her eyes. It was as if, after all these months of friendship, something had clicked into place and she got it. Zoe was not just shy. There was something wrong with her.

  But just as quickly, the look was gone. “How will I explain this to the boys?” She lifted her hand and let it slap against her side. “Jesus! What is wrong with you?”

  Zoe was shaking now. It was as though her lungs were a vacuum bag and someone was sucking out the air. Behind Emily, Cameron and Seth approached holding sodas and popcorn.

  “There they are,” Emily said. She thought for a minute, then sighed. “I’ll be with you the whole time, okay? I’ll even sit between you and Seth.…” Her expression was pleading. “You don’t even have to speak to him. But please don’t leave.”

  Seth stepped forward. “Hi, Zoe,” he said, holding out a soda. “Em said you liked Pepsi.”

  Zoe looked at the drink then back at Seth. Did no one see her? She couldn’t breathe! She felt Seth’s eyes, and Cameron’s, wondering what was up. And she felt Emily, willing her to stop making a scene and let her get on with her date. She wanted, more than anything, to go on the date. But it was far too late for that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, a final time, and then she sprinted out the glass doors, into the night air.

  12

  Alice sat on the floor in front of the television with her portable filing system on her lap, sliding the paid bills in one by one. Zoe had finally decided to go to the movies. Alice had given her a high five and a giant grin as she walked out the door, but once Zoe was gone she felt positively ill with nerves. Going to the movies with guys was a big deal for her daughter. Alice didn’t have high hopes.

  She shoved the last bill into its pocket, wondering why she kept the blasted things. Her file was close to bursting. She glanced into it, looking for things she could toss, and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper in the W section—work. It was the article the local newspaper had done on Atherton Home Helpers last year. Alice scanned it.

  When Helping Others Becomes a Career

  Alice Stanhope was working as a receptionist in a psychology practice when she got news that her great-grandmother was going to be transferred to a nursing home.

  “I knew she wouldn’t want to go into a nursing home,” Alice said. “Joan was a homebody. She found the idea of having strangers around her very distressing.”

  While many 25-year-olds would have been too absorbed in their own lives to worry about their relatives, Alice moved from her native San Francisco to Atherton, where she lived and cared for her great-grandmother in her own home.

  “It made sense for all of us. I was pregnant with my first child and about to start caring full tim
e for my child. I thought, why can’t I care for them both?”

  After her great-grandmother’s death 2 years later, Alice found herself at a crossroads. She’d been out of the workforce for 2 years and, as a single mother, she needed to get back to work.

  “It occurred to me that Joan wasn’t the only elderly person who needed help. I’m not a nurse, but I can do grocery shopping, housework and drive people to and from appointments. Some people just like the company.”

  At first, part of the appeal for clients was that Alice, a single mother, brought her young daughter to work with her. “Zoe used to come to work with me when she was little, and clients loved that. She’s 14 now, so she has other places to be.”

  Alice now offers in-home help to over 20 elderly residents of the Atherton area.

  At the bottom of the article were the company Web site and a photograph of Alice sitting beside Ida Keaney, who’d died last year.

  Alice had been thrilled to receive the coverage. It had prompted the spike in business that required her to hire a part-timer, and then another. But she’d been annoyed with herself for using Zoe’s name. She should have expected it. Of course a community newspaper would be looking for the human element—the elderly woman, the single mother, the child. But Alice had always been protective of Zoe in public—making her use a pseudonym on Facebook and Instagram. Zoe thought she was being over-the-top, and she probably was, but the idea that someone (one person in particular) could cyberstalk her daughter terrified her.

  She stuffed the newspaper article back into the bursting file, annoyed at herself for thinking about him. Again. But the sad truth was, she thought about him more than she cared to admit. But how could she not? She had a living, breathing reminder of him that she looked at every day. And that reminder was the reason that she could never regret that night. That reminder was why it was the very best thing that ever happened to her.

  13

  When Zoe was ten, she was invited to a sleepover. The fact that she’d been invited was beyond exciting, even if she knew she wouldn’t go. And she’d known she wouldn’t go from the moment she saw the pink envelope. Parties were something other kids did, normal kids. Like Jordan, the diabetic kid in her class, she knew her limitations.

  But the birthday girl, Jane, was insistent. All the girls in the class are coming, she said. It won’t be the same without you. It was nice. One common misunderstanding about Zoe was that she wanted to be a recluse. On the contrary, she longed be part of things. She just longed to be part of things without being plagued by debilitating fear.

  Her mom said it was up to her, but Zoe saw the fear in her mom’s eyes. That was what finally made up her mind. If Zoe started trying to be normal, maybe her mom could be normal too. Have friends, go out—have her own life.

  She arrived at Jane’s house with dread in her heart and a sleeping bag under her arm. While the girls set up on the living room floor, unrolling their sleeping bags and opening packets of candy, her mom gathered with the other moms in the kitchen. Zoe heard a pop of champagne and a giggle. Her mom would love this.

  Meanwhile, the girls all stretched out in the living room, deciding on a movie to watch. Zoe saw the effortless way the other girls interacted—giggling, talking. She wanted to be like them. She wanted to be them. But every time she tried—to laugh at a shared joke, or squeal when Jane’s brother squirted his water pistol at them—it felt forced, fake, not like the others. And then she hated herself for being different.

  After about an hour, the moms started to leave.

  “If you need anything, I’ll be here in a flash,” Zoe’s mom said into her ear. “I promise.”

  Zoe nodded, working hard to keep the tears at bay. It would be okay, she told herself. What was the worst that could happen?

  After the video ended, they played a game of truth or dare.

  “Zoe,” Jane said when it was her turn. “Truth or dare?”

  Immediately Zoe was blushing. “Uh … truth, I guess.”

  Of this, at least, Zoe was certain. She wanted no part in stealing Jane’s brother’s baseball cards, or knocking on the neighbor’s door and running away. And, being Zoe, she hadn’t done enough stuff to have any secrets.

  “Have you ever wet the bed?”

  “No,” she said immediately. It was the truth. Sleep was one of those blissful places where she was relieved of the burdens she carried during the waking hours. She was far more likely to wet her pants when she was awake and stressed. Still, her blush deepened.

  “Are you sure?” Jane said.

  Zoe nodded. It was horrible. She knew she looked guilty but this knowledge just made her face hotter. Now everyone was staring at her, little smirks on their faces. She wanted to cry.

  “How do we know you’re not lying?” one of the other girls said.

  “I … I don’t know.” She tried hard to sound indifferent. “You just have to believe me.”

  “I want proof,” Jane said.

  Zoe felt the heat rash start to creep up her neck. She didn’t know what to do. Sophie had been the last one to pick truth, and when Sophie answered that no, she didn’t want to kiss Wayne Langford, she hadn’t had to prove it, even though no one, including Zoe, had believed her.

  “Whose turn it is next?” Zoe said desperately.

  Eventually the game moved on to the next person, but Zoe was still stuck. What was wrong with her? If she had just laughed, like Sophie did, or teased someone else, everyone would have left her alone. Why did she have to be such a freak?

  After a while something else started to prey on her mind. What did that mean, they wanted proof? What was going to happen, after she fell asleep? Was someone going to do the old trick of putting her hand into a glass of water?

  Her lungs began to constrict, her veins began to prickle.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, standing up.

  “Why, are you going to pee yourself?” Jane laughed and a couple of others joined in.

  Zoe wondered if that was exactly what she was going to do. The room was dark and she felt for the light switch on the wall. What had she been thinking, coming here? She wanted her mom, her apartment, her own bed—where she could sleep peacefully. I am in a safe place, she told herself. I am calm, collected, and in control.

  But she felt a swell in her bladder, and panic gripped her. She pinned her knees together.

  “Oh my God!” Jane said, turning her attention from whomever it was she was grilling. “Zoe is going to pee her pants.”

  By the time the others looked, it was already streaming down Zoe’s legs. The girls flew to their feet, and then backed away, as if it might knock them down—a tsunami of pee instead of a small puddle at her feet. Zoe couldn’t bear to raise her head, so she just ran out of the room.

  If you need anything, I’ll be here in a flash, her mom had said. But Zoe couldn’t find a phone. She picked her way along the corridor toward the front door—looking for a hallstand, somewhere a telephone would be. Down the hall she could hear the television—Jane’s parents watching TV. She tried to breathe, but her throat felt blocked. Her chest was close to bursting. Her heart hammered. She leaned against the wall for support. Her lungs felt flat and tight, a plastic bag void of air.

  This was it; she was going to die. She had visions of the girls finding her here, flat on the floor, white-cold. Their terrified faces being the last ones Zoe saw before she blacked out of this world. She wanted her mom.

  Just then the sensor light on the front porch flicked on. In the window Zoe saw her mother’s face. She was hallucinating.

  “Zoe,” her mother instructed. “Open the door.”

  Zoe did. She wondered how her mom could possibly have known that she needed her at that exact moment. Was that something mothers just knew?

  “Are you all right?” her mother asked.

  Zoe shook her head, gasping.

  “Okay, just breathe,” her mother said. “Slowly, not too deep. Come outside and breathe in some fresh air.�
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  Still light-headed, Zoe allowed her mother to guide her into the cool night air. “Mom,” she gasped. “My chest. I’m … going … to die.”

  “It’s just a panic attack, you’re not going to die.” Her mother’s voice was a cool stream on a hot day. She looked Zoe over, her eyes stopping at her soaked pajama pants but only for a second. “We’ve been through this before, it will all be over in a minute if you just relax.”

  Zoe let her mom hold her and she weakened in her arms. When it was over, her mother put her into the car while she ran inside to get her things and explain what had happened to Jane’s mother. While she waited, Zoe noticed a blanket on the driver’s seat and a book and her mother’s reading glasses.

  “How did you get here so fast?” she asked when her mother returned to the car.

  For an instant, she looked guilty. “I just … wanted to be nearby. You know, in case you needed me.”

  “Thank you,” Zoe said. But as they drove home, Zoe thought a more appropriate response would have been “Sorry.”

  * * *

  “Why so loud?” Dulcie cried when Zoe reached her apartment. “When I was a girl we walked up the stairs.”

  Dulcie was sitting in a folding chair on the landing—she did that sometimes. As for the stairs, they were carpeted, so Zoe had literally been soundless as she’d run upstairs.

  Dulcie lived in the apartment across the hall from them and was approximately a hundred and fifty years old. Around five years ago Zoe’s mom had offered to do Dulcie’s grocery shopping. Since she looked after old people for a living, she’d thought why not help out a sweet elderly neighbor? Problem was, Dulcie wasn’t sweet. She’d stopped thanking her mom for buying groceries several years ago and instead started treating her like the delivery person, making her stand there as she checked the groceries against her list to make sure that she’d got everything she asked for (and then usually shortchanging her mom). Once, Zoe had watched a TV comedian talk about the two types of elderly people. The fat ones who adored children, gave them sweets, and told them they were lovely. And the thin ones who complained about “young people being the problem with society these days.”