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 time 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.