The Mother's Promise Read online

  “What?” she whispered, when he didn’t look away.

  “You just said my name.”

  Was he crazy? Why on earth would she say his name? “No I didn’t.”

  “You did. First and last.” Harry spoke matter-of-factly rather than with ridicule. “Why else would I be looking at you?”

  Zoe felt her cheeks pool with hot, shameful color. It was a good question, which made it all the more humiliating. Someone like Harry would never look at Zoe spontaneously. Harry wasn’t good-looking exactly, but he managed to hide it well by being big and looking more or less like all the other guys who played football. Maybe she had said his name out loud? She did do weird things like that sometimes. Once, in gym class, she’d accidentally started singing out loud (she needed to sing internally to get through the horror of exercising and wearing gym shorts in public). Maybe she was actually as crazy as she thought she was?

  Harry opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, Amber Jeffries was practically sitting in his lap. “Partner, Harry?”

  She gave him the kind of slow sexy smile that was both adorable and sickeningly desperate. Harry’s gaze flickered to Amber’s. “Sure.”

  As he turned back to face the front, Zoe’s heart started to beat again. Another bullet dodged. Just about another five hundred billion to go.

  Until tomorrow.

  * * *

  Once, Zoe’s mom had asked her to describe what it felt like, being her. For a heartbeat, she’d considered telling her the truth.

  It’s like being anchored to damp sand, she’d imagined saying. Your head is toward the ocean, your ears are wet, and you’re waiting for the next wave. You want to turn and look, to see what’s coming, but you can’t move. So you just lie there and wonder. Are the waves big today? Will they come, tease me a bit, then recede away? Or will they come at speed, dumping on me again and again, filling my nose and mouth with water until my lungs are burning and ready to explode? The awful part is, you don’t know. So you wait, helplessly, expecting the worst.

  Zoe had pictured what her mom’s face would look like if she were actually to say these words. And then she’d said, “It kind of feels like being out of breath. You know, a little light-headed, a little fluttery. But it only stays for a few minutes and then it fades away.”

  It was bad enough that one of them knew the truth.

  4

  As she hurried along the hospital corridor, Sonja caught her reflection in the window and winced. She’d overdone the Botox. She knew she’d overdone the Botox. She wasn’t sure why she’d started doing it in the first place, but once she’d started, it had become surprisingly addictive. First her forehead, then the deep lines that bracketed her mouth. Before she knew it she had become utterly expressionless. Now, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t show how she felt. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

  By the time she found Kate’s door, she was a little breathless. “It’s me,” she said, knocking.

  “Come in!” Kate smiled. It was the kind of smile that warmed you through. She gave off an almost serene aura of goodness, Sonja thought. Or perhaps it was simply youth? Kate was in her mid-thirties, at a guess. A hundred and fifty years younger than her.

  “I hear you have a case for me?” Sonja said.

  As a hospital social worker, Sonja had “cases” that varied widely. One day she’d be dealing with a child who’d been admitted with injuries consistent with abuse, the next with a family who’d lost their primary breadwinner in an accident. When she was dealing with a cancer patient, her role was usually more administrative—putting the person in touch with community services, providing assistance filling out forms and dealing with insurance companies. But no two days were the same. Once, it was what Sonja had loved about the job. Lately, the uncertainty of what lay ahead felt unsettling to her.

  “I do,” Kate said. “Come in, sit down.”

  Sonja did, eyeing the picture on Kate’s desk—of Kate and a man who must have been her husband, judging by their body language. In the picture Kate was sitting in his lap and they both laughed into the camera, heads tilted up, eyes squinting. It was the kind of photo that came with the frame—beautiful people with a perfect life. People who had a lot of mutually satisfying sex.

  “I have a single mother scheduled for a salpingo-oophorectomy on Monday,” Kate started. “Alice Stanhope is her name. She has a teenage daughter and no support people.”

  Sonja looked away from the photo. “How old is Alice?”

  “Forty.”

  “Forty?” Sonja felt her eyebrows rise. Most forty-year-olds had spouses, siblings, and friends coming out of their eyeballs. Tennis clubs and social groups providing meals on rotation every night of the week. It was rare to find a person so young without a network to rely on.

  “Yes, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on,” Kate said, reading her mind. “She said she doesn’t have any family other than her daughter.”

  Kate pushed a file over to Sonja. Sonja opened it and scanned the top page. “How old is her daughter?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “And Alice’s financial situation?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought you could discuss this with her. She seemed very concerned about her daughter, so she might need some support there too.”

  “Is she expecting my call?” Sonja asked. She glanced into the file to make sure all the information was there.

  “Yes, but it’s hard to say how receptive she’ll be.”

  Sonja nodded. Unfortunately it was often the case that the people who needed the most help were the least likely to take it.

  “I’ll call her today,” she said, fully intending to stand up. And yet she remained in her chair. Some days, when she sat, she wondered if she’d ever get up again.

  “How are you settling in to the area?” Kate asked, mistaking her inability to stand as a desire to chat. “You live in Atherton, right? So do I.”

  Sonja nodded. “I’m missing San Francisco a bit,” she admitted. The sudden move had been George’s idea—a segue into retirement, he’d said. Sonja went along with it, but six months later she wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing there. Atherton was a desirable place to live, certainly—in fact, it had been ranked the number one most affluent zip code in the United States by Forbes a few years ago. A twenty-minute drive from Silicon Valley, it was home to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman, and Google’s Eric Schmidt. (Sonja had found this out when she’d Googled Atherton.) Most homes, Sonja’s included, were fenced and gated and on a minimum lot size of an acre. On the street people smiled and kept walking, minding their own business. It unnerved Sonja a little, even if it was, strangely, perfect for her. “But Atherton’s very nice. Small, but nice.”

  Kate nodded politely.

  Sonja glanced again at the photo on Kate’s desk. Is your marriage as good as it looks? she had a sudden urge to ask. Are you happy all of the time? Or do you have days when things are good and other days when you think about swerving into oncoming traffic? But she couldn’t ask any of these things, of course. So instead she smiled and said, “Well, I guess I’ll call Alice today.”

  5

  “Cancer.”

  An hour after leaving her appointment, Alice was still in the hospital parking lot. Like a crazy lady, she said the word aloud, listened to the way it sounded. “Cancer.” “Cancer.” It was strange. She must have said the word a hundred times before but today it felt different on her tongue. Rounder, and in a way, ridiculous—like the words “leprechaun” or “scapegoat.” But then the whole thing was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

  Two weeks ago she’d gone to the doctor with some discomfort in her shoulder. She’d had one of her increasingly rare sessions at the gym (brought on by a newly paunchy stomach she’d she blamed on too much eggnog at Christmas) and had, she thought, overdone it with the overhead weights. But when the pain continued for nearly a week, in spite of Advil, Alice finally m
ade a visit to her family doctor.

  “Shoulder tip discomfort?” Dr. Hadley asked when Alice finished explaining.

  “Well … I guess it’s the tip, yes.”

  “Does it get better or worse when you move your arm or head?”

  Alice tried moving. “No,” she said. “It’s pretty much the same all the time.”

  “And you’re otherwise well?”

  “Yes.”

  “You couldn’t be pregnant?”

  “Does that still require sex?”

  Alice chuckled at her own joke. It was hard to believe that once, sex had once been her drug, something that had never been far from her mind. Now sex was like a childhood friend that she remembered vaguely, a friend she had no intention of reconnecting with.

  Dr. Hadley, bless her heart, let the comment go. “You’re menstruating regularly?”

  Alice thought about that. She wasn’t clockwork regular, but more or less. And there hadn’t been any change in that regard.

  Except.

  “Well it’s probably not relevant but … my flow has been a little heavier than usual lately, I guess. And a few months ago, I did have a … gush.”

  She’d been playing bridge with Marie Holland, a ninety-year-old client, when she’d felt it. They had nearly finished with the game, so Alice had decided to plow ahead. But she’d had to keep her back to the wall when she’d excused herself a few minutes later. There’d been enough blood to soak her underwear and her trousers and leave a faint stain on the armchair. She’d sponged it clean and covered it with a cushion and attributed it to changing menstrual cycles as she’d got older. Then she’d made a mental note to mention it the next time she went to the doctor. Which she was doing. Although she failed to see what any of this had to do with her shoulder.

  “Okay,” Dr. Hadley said. “I’d like to palpate your abdomen if that’s all right with you. Make sure everything feels normal.”

  “Sure,” Alice asked. “But you know I’m here for my shoulder, right?”

  “I do.” Dr. Hadley grinned as she guided Alice toward the table. “What I’m trying to ascertain is whether the discomfort you’re feeling in your shoulder is what we call referred pain.”

  Alice lay down on the table. “Referred pain?”

  Dr. Hadley began to touch her belly. “It’s a pain perceived at a location other than the stimulus. An example is when a person is having a heart attack and they feel pain in the neck or the jaw, rather than the chest.”

  Dr. Hadley’s fingertips, Alice noticed, had slowed in one particular area. She glanced at Alice’s face as she pressed down on it. “That sore?”

  “A little uncomfortable,” she admitted. “Why?”

  Dr. Hadley continued examining her stomach in silence, leaving Alice to wait. It wasn’t like Dr. Hadley to leave a question hanging like that.

  “Why?” Alice repeated. “Do you feel something?”

  “I’m going to refer you for an ultrasound. Your abdomen feels distended and I think it’s best to be safe.”

  “What do you think it is?” she asked.

  “It could be a cyst, or possibly even gallstones. Or”—she smiled—“it could be a sore shoulder. An ultrasound will tell us more.”

  Two weeks later Alice was in the hospital parking lot. With ovarian cancer. The same cancer that killed her mother.

  She put the car into gear. She was, she decided, going to work. It wasn’t as ridiculous as it sounded. She and Mrs. Featherstone were going grocery shopping in Menlo Park this morning, then perhaps to the nail salon. Alice could handle a little grocery shopping, even today. If there was anyone used to going about her business with an unspoken tragedy in her pocket, it was Alice.

  On the way to Mrs. Featherstone’s house, things looked the same, evidence that nothing had changed. Mrs. Featherstone lived close to Alice, in the part of town just north of the train station that Alice and Zoe lovingly called “the slums of Atherton.” Despite its name, this part of town was lovely, just modest in comparison with the rest of the area. Alice preferred it to Atherton’s West, with its opulent homes and lack of sidewalks (which always made Alice feel unwelcome, like she was trespassing when she walked down the street). Today people were out walking their dogs or taking a stroll, enjoying the warm weather. Alice passed a couple that must have been in their mid-twenties, strolling with their arms resting lightly above each other’s bottom. They both wore T-shirts and cutoffs and large sunglasses and their lives seemed to be brimming with possibility, almost as though they’d been planted there to remind Alice how life once was. It was working. The sight of them brought up images—actual, visual snapshots—of Alice at a similar age, only with shorter shorts and bigger glasses. Right before everything changed. It was amazing how easily it all came back to her, almost sixteen years later. Alice should have known that, today of all days, it was only a matter of time before her thoughts turned to Zoe’s father. Still, it always astonished her—her capacity for hate.

  Alice arrived at Mrs. Featherstone’s fifteen minutes early, and parked around the corner. Then she pulled her phone from her purse.

  “I know it’s tempting,” Nurse Kate had said before she left, “but whatever you do, do not go onto Google.”

  As she thumbed the words “ovarian cancer” into her iPhone Alice wondered how many people followed that advice. Alice wasn’t exactly a rebel, and yet she’d known, even in the moment, that it was advice she wouldn’t take. Could anyone? Knowing there was a world of information at her fingertips? She did know a thing or two about ovarian cancer, of course—her mother had died of it—but there hadn’t been Google back then. She’d relied on what the doctor told her—or rather, what her mother told her the doctor told her. Now she had a veritable glut of information at her fingertips.

  She hit Search, and a Wikipedia link popped up. What is ovarian cancer? Alice hovered over it for a second or two, and then she tapped it.

  Ovarian cancer is a cancer that begins in an ovary.

  Helpful, Alice thought. She read on.

  Symptoms may include bloating, pelvic pain, and abdominal swelling, among others.

  Alice scanned the symptoms. Bloating, okay, but she was, after all, a woman. Pelvic pain, no. Abdominal swelling, well, wasn’t that the same as bloating? So the symptoms were … bloating? If that was the case, every woman she knew had ovarian cancer too, at least once every twenty-eight days.

  There, she thought. It had all been a terrible mistake.

  Alice scanned the links. Forums. Early warning signs. It was called the “whispering illness,” apparently, which had, to Alice, an almost glamorous ring to it. But having watched her mother go through it, she knew there was nothing glamorous about ovarian cancer.

  Alice returned to Google and added the word “cure” to her search.

  The screen filled again. She tapped a few links, recognizing some of the terms as ones that had been mentioned at her appointment. Salpingo-oophorectomy—that was the operation she was scheduled for on Monday. She tapped an article.

  Salpingo-oophorectomy is the surgical removal of both the fallopian tube (salpingectomy) and ovary (oophorectomy). A unilateral salpingo-oophorectomy is generally performed on patients in the case where an ovary is unable to be preserved, such as: cases of ruptured ectopic pregnancy where hemostasis is unable to be achieved without removal of the tube and ovary; a tuboovarian abscess that does not respond to antibiotics; adnexal torsion where the ovary and tube are necrotic; or when no viable healthy ovarian tissue is able to be preserved if a benign ovarian mass is present. A bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy is usually one of three classifications: elective at time of hysterectomy in the case of benign conditions, prophylactic in women when there is an increased risk of ovarian cancer, or due to malignancy.

  Alice read over the description again. She didn’t think the doctor had suggested a unilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, so she supposed hers must be a bilateral one. She wondered if she should read something into that. Did it mean it wa
s bad if they had to take out both ovaries? Then again, why not whip them both out? She didn’t need her ovaries anymore, so why have them just sitting there, gathering cancer? Taking them both out was a good thing, she decided. It would sort it all right out, and then it would be over.

  Good.

  She put down her phone, and gave herself a little shake. Get it together, Alice—it’s time for work. At Mrs. Featherstone’s front door, she pressed the doorbell and then let herself in using her key. She was barely inside when a figure appeared in the wide hallway.

  “Alice!”

  Alice supposed she should be pleased that Mrs. Featherstone’s daughter, Mary, was happy to see her, but instead she felt an immediate sense of dread. Mary had been the one to hire Alice, saying that she couldn’t possibly take care of her mother, not when she had a family of her own (two grown married children and a retired husband) to take care of. Alice had expected that, in light of this, Mary wouldn’t be around very often. No such luck.

  In the open-plan kitchen/living room, Mrs. Featherstone was seated on her usual chair. Alice sent her a wink, which she promptly returned. Beside her, Mary sank into the sofa. Alice slipped behind the kitchen counter and pulled a notepad from her purse.

  “Well, it’s official,” Mary announced. “I hate him.”

  Mrs. Featherstone raised her eyebrows at Alice—an apology. A lot of their exchanges were this way: silent. It was difficult to believe that someone as discerning with words as Mrs. Featherstone had birthed a talker like Mary. (Once, Mrs. Featherstone had said to Alice, “I love my children, but I do wonder, as a mother, if my job will ever be done.”)