Once, when Paul was drunk, he asked Alice if she ever resented Zoe for coming along and ruining her life. Zoe was three.
“You used to have a life,” he slurred. “Friends. Prosperence.” (“Prosperence,” Alice decided, was a mash-up of “prospects” and “prosperous,” so she didn’t bother to correct him.)
She should, of course, have been outraged at the question—the very idea of asking a mother if she resented her child—but it was hard to invoke that sort of feeling about something Paul said, particularly when it was something so utterly laughable.
The truth was, Alice herself had been unprepared for how much she would love Zoe. She liked kids well enough, admired their honesty, among other traits. But she hadn’t understood the way she’d become addicted to Zoe’s smell, the feeling of her nestled against her hip, the way she would call spaghetti “sketetti.” Most of all, she didn’t understand how addicted she’d become to the way Zoe loved her. Sometimes Alice wondered if she liked that a little too much. Sometimes she wondered if Zoe had ruined her life, or if it was the other way around.
*
A week after being released from the hospital, Alice sat on the couch, leafing through her mail, while Zoe sat on the floor, folding laundry. In some ways it felt as if nothing had changed. Apart from the great wound on Alice’s belly, and a diary full of chemo dates, things had effectively returned to normal.
Zoe looked up at her, holding a white shirt.
“Kate has a shirt like this,” she announced.
“How nice,” Alice said, trying for a smile. In the past week Zoe must have mentioned Kate’s name a dozen times. Not a ridiculous amount, Alice conceded, but a lot for Zoe.
Kate did a speech at her wedding and got the hiccups.
Kate has a little sunroom that’s nice to sit in.
Kate has a giant house.
Kate. Such a pretty, inoffensive name, and Alice was starting to find it quite irritating.
“It would look really good with a chunky necklace,” Zoe said, “or with a sweater over the top, you know, layered?”
“It would,” Alice agreed. She wanted to add that she wore layers all the time. That Kate didn’t actually invent layering. But that would have sounded mean-spirited. Alice was relieved when there was a sudden knock at the door, so they could finally stop talking about Kate.
“It’ll be Dulcie,” Alice said, shifting forward in her seat. “Give me a pull to standing, would you, Mouse?”
Alice reached out her arms, but Zoe beat her to it, heaving herself off the floor in a flash. “I’ll get it.”
Alice was stunned into silence. Zoe never answered the door. Even now she didn’t look entirely comfortable. Her hands shook and her cheeks were already flaming. But she was crossing the living room and wrenching open the door. Was she dreaming?
“Oh, it’s you,” came Dulcie’s voice. “Here, my grocery list. And tell your mother I don’t want the generic brand of canned tomatoes. But not the fancy ones either, too expensive. I like the ones with the yellow label and—”
“Actually,” Zoe said, her voice wavering slightly. “My mom isn’t well. She’s been in the hospital. She can’t even do her own grocery shopping, let alone anyone else’s.”
There was a pause.
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Dulcie said.
“You could go yourself,” Zoe suggested. “Or you could pay the grocery store to deliver. Or you can leave your list with me and I will do it when I can. But right now I’m looking after my mother.”
“When you can? But I need these things—”
“You heard your options. Push it under the door if you want me to do it. Bye, Dulcie.”
Zoe closed the door.
“Did you … did you actually just do that?” Alice said.
Zoe blinked as if she couldn’t quite believe it herself.
“What just happened there?” Alice said.
A little smile started. “I just didn’t think about it,” Zoe said. “That’s what Kate does, when something scares her.”
Alice could actually feel her daughter’s sense of accomplishment radiating from her.
“Cool,” Alice said, giving her a high five. At the same time, she conjured up an image of Kate’s pretty face in her mind and then imagined slapping it.
36
Zoe was going to debate practice. Or maybe she wasn’t. She hadn’t decided yet. The debate was in a week. Their team had organized an after-school meeting to “practice” their debate, but from what Zoe could tell, it was actually to “write” the debate, because except for her and Harry, no one had actually done it.
Apart from in class, she hadn’t seen Harry all week. For some reason, she found herself avoiding him. At lunchtime she sat outside, alone. In class she kept her head down. Once she’d even ducked into the restroom when she’d noticed him coming down the corridor toward her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him. The problem was, she had absolutely no idea what to say when she did see him. She couldn’t flirt, that was for sure. She could barely be around him without blushing. And so, she decided, it was better not to see him at all.
Now she stood at her locker, clutching her index cards. The meeting had started twenty-four minutes ago, and for the past twenty-four minutes Zoe had stood with her head in her locker, frozen with indecision. The stupid thing was, she wanted to go to the meeting. She wanted to be part of the debate. She just wanted to go as an invisible person.
She took her bag out of her locker and walked toward the gates. This was ridiculous. She was going home. But at the last minute, as if tricking herself, she took a sharp left into the classroom where the meeting was being held.
Eric stood at a laptop while people talked over one another. A few people looked up when she walked in, then quickly down again. Harry stood at the back. Just like that, Zoe’s breath disappeared. She turned, ready to duck out again, pretend she’d taken a wrong turn.
“Hey, Zoe.”
She froze in the doorway, then turned back. It was Ella Brennan. Zoe didn’t even know that Ella knew her name.
“Hey,” she said, so quietly that even she couldn’t hear it. She walked a little closer to the group, feeling Harry’s eyes. Being in the same room with him sent tingles up and down her body. Not the tingles of discomfort she usually had around people. A different kind.
“So,” Eric said to the group. “What are we going to close with?”
A few people called out ideas, most of them juvenile. The rest talked among themselves or thumbed their iPhones. Clearly the group had lost their mojo.
Eric struggled to get the group’s attention. “Guys? Come on! We need a closing!”