“You look fine,” Sonja said. “Great.”
Agnes did look fine, but “great” was pushing it. She’d aged as one would expect—with the gray hair and deep lines. But she looked well. Healthy and happy in jeans and a white sweatshirt, with her hair pulled back in a scrunchie. It made Sonja feel ridiculous in her pantsuit and pumps. She’d spent an hour blowing out her hair that morning. Funny the things she did without even questioning it these days. It was as though she had turned into a robot—everything was on autopilot.
When the waitress came, Agnes ordered a diet Pepsi. Sonja had planned to order chamomile tea, but at the last minute she said, “Do you know what? Make it two diet Pepsis.”
It felt rebellious, somehow. Sonja hadn’t drunk diet Pepsi in years. People in her world didn’t.
When the waitress left, Agnes looked at her. “You’re not dying, are you?”
“No.” Sonja surveyed her sister’s face for any clue to whether this would be good or bad news. But Agnes wasn’t giving anything away. “I just thought it might be nice to see my sister.”
“Oh,” Agnes said. But she seemed so surprised Sonja had to ask herself: Why was she here?
Ever since the night George had choked her, she’d been thinking about her conversation with Dagmar at the hospital. Was she a victim of abuse? The irony of a social worker being abused was not lost on her. She was trained in recognizing domestic violence—how could she not see it in her own relationship? Worse, how could she not automatically know what to do about it?
She thought of all the clients she’d counseled over the years who had turned around and gone right back into the abusive relationship. She’d never understood it. Hadn’t she given the client the number of a women’s shelter? Hadn’t she explained the support programs that were available to her? And yet the client would always say the same thing. “But I love him.”
Suddenly Sonja understood. These women weren’t imbeciles who didn’t care about their safety or the safety of their children. They might have had feelings of fear for their abuser, but they also had feelings of love. Rarely was an abuser a monster. He could also be loving, charming, maybe even a good father. Staying with him might hurt … but then again, so would leaving.
Agnes was still waiting for Sonja to explain. Her frustration began to surface. “What is it, Sonja? It’s not like you to just call up out of the blue. Shane thought you might have had a nervous breakdown or something!”
“I … I…,” Sonja stammered. She’d come here to reach out to Agnes, to ask for advice. But the woman opposite her seemed like a stranger. Of course she was! Sonja hadn’t been in touch with her properly in years. It was stupid reaching out to her now. She was stupid to think she had anyone else to rely on, apart from herself. “It’s just … I’m only working part-time these days and I thought it would be nice if we could catch up every so often. No big deal.” She tried for a smile. “So, how are the kids?”
Agnes looked skeptical, but eventually she said, “Macy’s got herself a new boyfriend.”
“Really?” Sonja said. Macy was a great girl—bright and loud with a laugh that caught. “I hope he’s good enough for her.”
“He seems like a good guy. He’s in I.T. I might even become a nana one of these days!” Agnes gave her first smile since she arrived and Sonja felt herself smile too.
“I’d love to see that.”
The waitress came with their drinks and they sipped them, exchanging unimportant details about their jobs, Agnes’s kids, the latest celebrity gossip. Nothing groundbreaking, but for today that was enough.
“Well,” Agnes said, when her diet Pepsi was finished. “I’ve got to get home. It was nice to catch up.”
“Yes,” Sonja stood. “Very nice.”
Despite the rocky start, Sonja felt sad watching Agnes slide out from the booth. “So,” she said. “I’m off work Thursday, if you’re free?”
Sonja blinked.
“You said you’d like to visit every now and again,” Agnes said. “So … I’m off Thursday if you—”
Sonja threw her arms around Agnes and hugged her tight, nearly causing her to fall sideways. “I’ll be here,” she said into Agnes’s ear.
*
That night, once George was snoring, Sonja crept into the bathroom. Naked, she stood in front of the mirror to survey her injuries. The bruises around her upper arms and wrists were already starting to form, from George’s grip on her less than an hour before. That would do for now. She picked up her phone and snapped some pictures, then attached them to an e-mail. In the subject bar she wrote the date. She sent the pictures to herself. For her files.
Just in case.
56
Zoe’s mom wasn’t doing so well. Ever since her last chemo treatment, she’d gone downhill pretty fast. She hadn’t eaten properly in weeks. She just lay in bed insisting that she was fine, just tired. Zoe didn’t know what to believe. She was constantly cold, so she said, but Zoe slept with her every night and all she felt was sweat and heat.
Her uncle Paul took her to appointments and reported back to Zoe. She didn’t really understand what he told her, and she could tell Paul didn’t either. He’d just recite whatever the doctor or nurse had said. No chemo today, blood test revealed low white-cell count. Antibiotics today for infection. Zoe didn’t know if this was normal for cancer patients, but she knew it wasn’t normal for her mother.
Still, her mom kept up her verging-on-crazy positivity.
“I’m fine,” she said constantly. “A few days of rest and I’ll be back at chemo. This time next year everything will be back to normal.”
She’d become weirdly obsessed with making plans, way in the future.
“You know where we should go next Christmas? Mexico! Or Hawaii? Or what about Australia! You can bring Harry!”
“Let’s just get through this, Mom,” Zoe would reply.
It wasn’t that Zoe didn’t like her being positive. She did. It was that it was so at odds with the way that she looked. Outwardly, she seemed to be getting worse. She’d lost weight and she always seemed sick. But maybe, if her mom said she was fine, she was. Wouldn’t she know her own body better than anyone else?
Today, her mom was dozing on the couch when Zoe touched her hand to her forehead. An hour earlier, she’d been telling Zoe how, when chemo was over, she planned to grow her hair long and get highlights.
“Mom!” she said. “You’re burning up.”
Her mom moaned softly but didn’t respond.