The Mother's Promise(20)

“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.”

Dulcie was thin.

“Sorry, Dulcie,” Zoe said turning toward her own door.

“What if I’d been trying to sleep?” Dulcie cried. “You would have woken me up!”

Zoe apologized again, even though it was eight thirty on a Saturday night, and scrambled for her keys with useless, uncooperative hands. She just wanted to get out of this hallway into her apartment. Away from Dulcie and away from people. Finally she found her key and slid it into the door.

“Young people these days,” Dulcie muttered.

Inside, the lights were off, and it took Zoe a second or two to locate her mother on the couch, watching TV. A comforter was slung over her hips and a pizza box sat on the floor beside her.

She looked up, instantly panicked. “Mouse?”

Zoe had managed to hold back the tears all the way home, but at the sight of her mother she broke into a full-blown ugly cry.

“What happened? Oh, no. Come here.”

Her mom opened the comforter and Zoe crawled in. She laid her head on her mom’s chest, drenching her.

“I tried, Mom,” she said when her sobs had slowed enough for her to talk. “I went to the mall. I even talked to Em. But then the boys came up and I … I started to panic. I ran away in front of everyone. I ran!”

Zoe could see her mother’s face in the window reflection. She shook her head, resolute. “At least you tried. You should be proud of yourself.”

Zoe knew she’d say something like this, and yet today it made her angry. “Proud of myself? I’m a freak, Mom. A fucking freak.”

Once again she liquefied into tears.

“I know it seems hard to believe now,” her mom said, “but this is not the end of the world.”

Zoe felt her face mangle in pain. “I lost my best friend. My only friend. For a high school student, that’s the end of the world.”

“You don’t know you’ve lost her, hon. I’m sure Em will understand.”

Her mom’s voice was still calm, still soothing. But when Zoe snuck a look at her mom’s face in the reflection she saw a mangled mirror image of her own.





14

Alice knocked on Paul’s door fifteen or twenty times before finally letting herself in with her key. She’d driven an hour to get here; she wasn’t leaving without seeing him. Something heavy was behind the door and she had to put her whole shoulder into it to edge it open. A wet rolled-up towel, as it turned out. She didn’t want to know why that was there. The last time Alice had let herself in to her brother’s apartment, he’d been in bed with a woman. Sleeping, thankfully. Passed out, actually. That time it had taken several hard slaps before Paul came to, but today he was awake, plodding wearily into the living room.

“Alice!”

He grinned. It was something, she supposed, that he was pleased to see her even if it did raise the odds that he was still drunk.

“I knocked,” she said.

He nodded, sheepish. “I heard.”

She looked around. She hadn’t remembered the place looking this bad. It had never looked good—a decrepit apartment with a shared kitchen and bathroom. The carpet, which had once been cream, was now gray and littered with beanbag fill. The curtains had just three hooks still attached; the rest had been affixed with electrical tape so they were permanently closed save for one corner where a triangle of light beamed in. The glass coffee table was covered in ashtrays and coffee mugs and half-empty bottles of wine and Jack Daniel’s and Coke. There was a faint smell of vomit and whiskey.

Paul glanced at her empty hands and failed to conceal his disappointment. Usually Alice brought food. She knew better than to bring cash. He had enough to survive. Alice collected his disability payments and had set up an account for him, releasing funds in small amounts every few days so he couldn’t kill himself on a booze-filled bender. Still he did, invariably, spend the majority on booze, so he was always happy when she arrived with groceries.

Well, not today.

“So,” he said. “What brings you by?”

She sighed. “Take a seat, would you?”