And then one day she’d heard screaming in their driveway. Her mother ears twitched at the sound, which was especially loud in her quiet house. She put down the book she was reading (she had book club that night and was cramming). The screaming was horrific, as if someone was being murdered. She grabbed the phone just in case she needed to call 911. She peered out the kitchen window to get a better look.
When she saw the blood, she moved toward it, carrying her phone with her as she ran out the kitchen door. She prided herself on being someone who moved toward things, even if they were frightening or gory or just plain uncomfortable. She didn’t shrink back like some people. She wanted to be of help, to be that person about whom people later remarked: “I just don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there.” She ran to Debra’s side and knelt there with her beside the older child, Lilah.
“What can I do?” She tried to gauge just where the blood was coming from and whether Lilah was critically injured.
It was an accident that started it all, and an accident that ended it.
The little girl’s shoelace had tangled in the bicycle chain, and she’d toppled over, her sneaker still affixed to the bicycle in such a way that every time they moved her, the bicycle grated along the concrete, making a horrible scraping noise. She looked at Debra’s panicked face, the way the blood was informing her reaction, and rested a hand on her shoulder.
“I think we should take her to the hospital,” she said, willing her voice to sound calm and relaxed. She was almost certain the little girl had broken something, and the cut on her leg that was the source of all the blood was of concern as well. It was deep and jagged, lying open like a yawning mouth. Zell tried to brush some of the dirt from it, but Lilah went crazy trying to get away from her touch. Zell extracted the shoelaces from the chain and scooped up Lilah, carrying her as she ordered the uncertain Debra to grab Alec and follow her to her car. They settled Debra and Lilah in the backseat, with Alec tucked in, too, and set off.
Zell sat in the waiting room and entertained Alec while they waited for Lilah to be stitched up. Lance showed up and offered to take care of him, but Zell sent him into the exam room to be with his wife and child, magnanimously staying put, her arm around Alec. “You go,” she said, and waved him away. “Lilah will want to see you.”
Lance had looked skeptical, glancing at Alec, who was intent on finishing a drawing Zell had started out of desperation. She’d meant it to be a dog, but he’d turned it into a cat, his lips pursed in concentration as he applied the whiskers to the face. “He’s fine,” she said, her voice assuring. She waited for him to say that she was a lifesaver, but he didn’t. Instead, he ruffled his son’s hair and trotted off down the hall. He disappeared into the room they’d had Lilah and Debra in for hours.
Lilah had to have stitches in her leg, and she had a broken collarbone, which required a sling. Eventually Lance took Alec home, and Zell, uncertain what to do without the child to mind, decided to go home, too. She knocked tentatively at the door she’d seen Lance disappear into and heard a weak “Come in” in response.
She poked her head inside the room to see Lilah asleep, her arm bound to her side, her leg resting atop a pillow. Debra was slouched in a chair beside her bed, staring vacantly at a TV with the sound turned off. “I was just going to go home. Unless there’s anything else I could do?” she said.
Debra shook her head. “They’re about to release us.” Debra covered her eyes with her hands, like Ty used to do when he was very small and thought that if he couldn’t see her, she couldn’t see him. She heard small sobbing sounds and waited politely for Debra to collect herself, wondering if she should just back out of the room or wait to be dismissed. She moved inside the room and let the door swing shut behind her.
Finally Debra spoke. “I’m sorry for crying.” She swiped at her eyes, embarrassed.
“It’s OK. You’ve been through a lot.”
“You know what I was thinking just before this happened?” Debra asked, picking at a cuticle instead of looking at Zell. She went on with her story before Zell could admit that she had no idea what the younger woman was thinking moments before her daughter had a bike accident. Before Zell had heard the screaming, she hadn’t thought of Debra at all.
Debra answered her own question, her answer coming out in a rush of words. “I was thinking that this isn’t so bad. The kids are starting to get older, and Alec will go to kindergarten in the fall and I won’t be so tied down. They can play outside without me helping them or watching their every move, and maybe, just maybe, I might end up like the others.” She finished speaking, lifted her finger to her mouth, and began to chew at a piece of stray skin on her cuticle.
Zell’s daughter had a nasty habit of doing the same thing. Her fingers were a mess. She thought about lecturing Debra the same way she lectured Melanie but decided against it. She was not this girl’s mother. “The others?” she asked gently.
Debra still didn’t meet her gaze. She continued to nibble at the skin on her cuticle for a moment, then spat out the piece of skin she’d been trying to chew away. “The other mothers. The ones who seem to actually enjoy this gig.” Her finger began to bleed, and she put it back in her mouth, sucking the blood away. Zell was repulsed but tried not to show it.
She spoke quietly, cautiously, the way one might speak to a child. “I’m not sure any one of us is enjoying all of it fully—not the way you might think.”
Debra’s laugh was a scoff. “That’s easy for you to say.” Finally she raised her eyes. “You’re already past the worst part. You’re home free.”
She gestured to Zell. “And look at you. You’re wearing a white shirt, and there isn’t a speck of ketchup or grease or a child’s lip print or dirt on it. And I bet you’re what—a size four?” Zell had almost corrected her—she was a size two then—but decided it was better to keep that detail to herself. Debra gestured at her own stomach, pooching onto her lap. “I’ve been trying to get the baby weight off since Alec was born!”
When her voice raised at the end, Lilah started to stir. She blanched and went back to speaking in an emphatic whisper. “You might be ‘just trying to survive’”—she held her hands up to make air quotes—“but your survival and mine are light-years apart.” Her voice got softer and her eyes flickered away again, this time toward the window.
“I watch you go running every day, and I think, ‘I wish I could do that. Just run away like that.’ The difference is, I’m not sure I’d come back like you do.” She glanced back over toward Zell, her expression caught somewhere between shame and surrender. She shrugged her shoulders as if it were nothing and straightened her back. “Thanks for helping out today. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you there. And I’m sorry for falling apart in front of you.”
“You’ve been through a traumatic experience,” Zell said. “You’re entitled to fall apart.”
A little burst of laughter escaped Debra’s lips. “Tell that to my family,” she said.
Zell was about to speak again, to say something—anything—to put Debra’s mind at ease. She wanted to tell her that she knew exactly how she felt and that it would get better. The kids would stop needing her quite the way they needed her now. The intensity would ebb, at least. She wanted to tell her that there would come a day when she could go for a run uninhibited, when she could run away, as she put it. She wanted to tell her that this reality wasn’t the only one there was, forever. That nothing stayed the same.