The Mother's Promise

by Sally Hepworth

  “What does it look like?” she said tonelessly. “The dishes.”

  “I already stacked the dishwasher.”

  “I know.” She kept her eyes on the dishes. “Thank you. I just wanted to give them a quick wash before they go through the cycle. Otherwise they never come out clean.”

  David looked perplexed. “You’re washing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? With soap and everything? That’s nuts, even for you.”

  Kate exhaled, exhausted. “So let me be nuts.”

  On the word “nuts” her voice broke. She felt David move in close behind her and she wanted to fall against him—feel the warmth of his chest against her back. But she remained straight-backed—scrubbing an already clean dish with new vigor.

  “Kate—”

  “I’m fine.”

  She picked up a new dish and wiped the pastry crumbs from one side. She’d spent hours making the beef and burgundy pie which her father had barely touched, because he’d once commented how much he enjoyed the beef and burgundy pie he had at the club on Fridays after golf. Why did she try so hard with him? Why didn’t she, like David suggested, order a pizza when her father came to dinner and call it a night?

  “Why don’t you head up to bed?” David said.

  “I have to finish this.”

  “I’ll finish it,” he said. “I will,” he insisted at her skeptical look. “I’ll wash the dishes and then put them in the dishwasher. And when they’re finished, I’ll drive them down to the car wash and give them a run-through there, make sure they’re really shipshape.”

  Kate felt a small smile pull at her lips.

  “You know what, to hell with it,” he continued. “Let’s just throw out these dishes and buy new, clean ones. What kind of peasants are we, anyway, eating off these filthy old things?”

  She smiled, properly now, and let herself rest against him. He was warm and, as always, a tremendous comfort.

  “Don’t let him get to you, Katie,” he said into her hair. “I won’t have anyone upsetting the mother of my baby.”

  He reached her belly, gave it a little rub.

  “All right,” she said. “I won’t. Just let me finish up here and I’ll come to bed.”

  David kissed her forehead again, then headed upstairs while Kate finished the dishes. But just as Kate had convinced herself that it didn’t matter what her dad thought, she went to the bathroom and noticed the streak in her underwear. Red-brown.

  9

  In a small circle of people, Sonja was pretending to follow a conversation with an impressively chatty thirty-something woman when she felt George’s lips against her temple and the coolness of a glass against her fingertips. His sudden presence made her jump.

  “Oh.” She accepted the champagne and took a sip. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  George stood next to her and smiled at the small group. They all smiled back with considerably more enthusiasm. George wore a gray suit and had a name badge pinned to his right pocket, bearing the logo of the organization that was putting on this event and his name above the words KEYNOTE SPEAKER.

  “I’ve just been chewing your wife’s ear off about you,” said the chatty woman. “I’m Laurel, a social worker for the county of San Francisco.” Laurel wore a tight black skirt suit and stiletto heels. “One of our directives this year is to address the mental illness problem in homeless teens, so I’m really looking forward to your speech.”

  Laurel was young enough to be George’s daughter, but her body language—legs slightly parted, leaning inward—made it clear that she thought of him as anything but fatherly.

  “Sonja’s a social worker too,” George said, reading the situation accurately. After ten minutes of small talk, Sonja knew about Laurel’s rescue dog (Roger), her root canal gone wrong, and the family rift created over her grandmother’s inheritance, yet Laurel hadn’t even bothered to ask Sonja what she did for a living.

  “You don’t say?” Laurel said. She eyed Sonja’s black shift dress, her pearls, her gold bangle. Her hair, pale blond and bobbed. You don’t look like a social worker, Laurel wanted to say (Sonja could tell). And you don’t look like you belong with George.

  It was true that Sonja, by an outsider’s standards, was doing well for herself. George was a good-looking man, even at sixty. He was intelligent and charismatic and impressive. Oddly enough, someone like Laurel might be a better fit for him. Young and pretty, not to mention so clearly up for it. Then again, Sonja had been up for it once too. Before she understood what up for it meant with George.

  Sonja had met George at one of these sessions. Back then, her clothes were less expensive but her waist was narrower and the lines on her face were not yet Botoxed. At forty-two she’d considered herself attractive. But twelve years could make a difference. It had been a small workshop, held at a hospital in San Francisco. George had been speaking about depression in the caretakers of the terminally ill, and Sonja had been in the front row. He’d glanced in her direction more often than seemed necessary, enough to make her cheeks hot, and make her unable to look at him. After the presentation he didn’t even try to play it cool—he just bowled up to her and said, “You dropped this.”

  “What?” she said.

  “My business card,” he said smoothly, tucking it into the palm of her hand. “Call me.”

  And then he stole away into the crowd to speak to her superiors.

  Sonja had thought it bold that he expected her to call. But she was so hypnotized by him, she put it out of her mind. Women like Sonja didn’t date men like George. They dated men who drove cabs or sold used cars or didn’t work at all. Men who chatted up other women in bars and spent the grocery money on a horse that “just can’t lose.” In comparison, George was a prize. Who cared that he wanted her to call? Perhaps he was a feminist?

  “Are you nervous?” Laurel asked George now.

  George smiled into his drink because it was a tough one to answer. To not be nervous is to be arrogant. But to admit nerves is to care too deeply about ego. The best response was to simply dodge the question entirely. Or let his wife answer it. And Sonja answered right on cue: “George is more comfortable behind a lectern than he is in his own living room!”

  Laurel and George laughed and, ridiculous as it was, Sonja felt pleased that she had got it right. In this world—George’s world—she never really knew. The rules were just different. For one thing, people never said what they meant. They told people their hideous outfit was lovely, and they laughed at things that weren’t funny. And they always pretended things were great, because admitting your life was less than perfect brought shame upon you—even if the shame rightfully belonged to someone else—for having the audacity to actually talk about it. It was the curse, Sonja thought, of the middle class.

  In the world Sonja grew up in, people came right out and said things, usually loudly.

  “My husband’s a shit.”

  “Can’t go the movies. I’m broke.”

  “The kids are driving me nuts.”

  “Frank was completely wasted last night. Woke up the entire street. I was ready to call the cops on him!”

  It always felt peculiar to Sonja, the way everyone pretended. And yet, unwittingly, she had joined them. Now Sonja was the expert in pretending.

  A man appeared at George’s shoulder and whispered something. George nodded. “Excuse me, everyone,” he said. “Looks like I’m required to give a speech.”

  Everyone laughed and started to drink up their drinks and shuffle toward the double doors. George’s hand grazed Sonja’s bottom and, on instinct, she jerked away. He raised his eyebrows at her—Are you all right?—and she nodded that she was. Pretending, yet again.

  “Good luck,” she whispered, and then took her seat in the front row. George strode confidently toward the podium. He was going to dazzle everyone tonight. He was going to dazzle her. He’d be pumped—he always was after a speaking engagement. And that was what terrified her. />
  10

  A “missed miscarriage,” that was what they called it. A missed miscarriage. The phrase swirled in Kate’s mind as she lay on the gurney in Emergency, too numb to talk or move, even to cry. Her baby had died nearly two weeks earlier—they could tell from the size—but her body had held on to it, almost as if her mind had forbidden her cervix to open. But as it turned out, the mind could only do so much. Finally her cervix couldn’t hold on any more and all remaining traces of her baby had flushed out.

  The funny thing about being pregnant, Kate thought, was that you were never ever alone. There was no other time in your life like it. Sure, if you had a toddler, you might feel like you were never alone, but there were always little pockets of time. When you went to check the mailbox. When you nipped to the store for milk. When your husband gave the little one a bath. But when you were pregnant, wherever you were your baby was too. Even if you were by yourself, they were with you.

  Until they weren’t.

  Emergency had been bustling when she’d arrived. Kate hadn’t known the doctor, and for that she was grateful. Some might have felt comforted by a familiar face, but Kate wasn’t one of them. Familiar faces were great for good news, but for bad she’d always found comfort in the unassuming stranger.

  Having been through this twice before, Kate knew the drill. And yet, like a fool, she’d allowed herself to hope. There hadn’t been that much blood, the cramps hadn’t been that bad. As the doctor did his thing with the ultrasound she squinted at the screen waiting for a tiny heartbeat to come into view. But of course there was no heartbeat. David, she noticed, didn’t look. Inexplicably, it enraged her. Perhaps it was because it made her feel foolish, looking when it was so painfully obvious nothing would be there?

  The doctor said they could stay as long as they wanted. They always said that. Kate herself had said it to patients, though she was always surprised when they did stay. Wouldn’t they rather be home? Now, suddenly, Kate understood. Cancer or miscarriage, as soon as they walked out the door it was the end of a chapter of their life.

  “Katie,” David said. Kate rolled to face him, but he had nothing else to say. It might have been the light, but his face seemed an odd gray color. She observed the contours of his face as though they were individual, separate entities rather than part of a whole man.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she whispered.

  David smile was anguished. He didn’t try to respond. Probably because she knew the answer.

  Unexplained infertility.

  She’d assumed, at first, that the issue was David’s—a fair assumption, given that when they’d met David was being treated for testicular cancer. With Hilary on his arm, supporting him through treatment, Kate had been taken aback by the way he looked at her during appointments. He had seemed like such a family man—a handsome family man. It was Hilary who explained the situation, one day, while David was having his chemo.

  “Oh we’re not together,” she’d said, chortling as though the very idea was preposterous.

  David had burst out laughing too. “Us? Good God, no.”

  “So you are…”

  “Exes,” Hilary said cheerfully. “We were young,” she said by way of explanation. “And desperate. We came from a small town.”

  David struggled with chemo. Kate did a home visit when Hilary called to say how ill he was, and she found he was mildly dehydrated, mildly delirious. She wanted to admit him for IV fluids, but he promised to drink a whole liter of water if she’d just hold his hand while he slept for a while. It wasn’t the first time she’d held a patient’s hand while they slept, but it had a new intimacy in the patient’s bedroom. His bed was enormous—bigger even than king-size—and his sheets were masculine and expensive. She remembered a fleeting, inappropriate thought about what it would be like to sleep in this bed, curled around this man. Even during chemo he was a ball of pure muscle, from his broad chest, which was just visible above the sheet, to his calves—one of which had flung free of the blankets. As she looked at him, she felt both horrified and thrilled by what he was stirring up in her. After an hour, she’d wriggled her hand free.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as she was halfway across the room.

  “No, I am,” she said. “I’m afraid I have to go.”

  “I manipulated you. Making you hold hands with a dying old man.”

  “You’re not dying,” she said automatically. And it was true. David’s prognosis was good. Unfortunately it didn’t make the chemo process any less ghastly.

  He looked sheepish. “You were meant to say I’m not old.”

  She smiled. David looked terrible, but there was an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. “You’re not that old,” she allowed.

  She went to leave, then paused at the door. “Anyway, I’m sure a man like you doesn’t need cancer to get a girl to hold his hand.”

  “I don’t,” he admitted. “But cancer has to be good for something.”

  She didn’t agree to go on a date with him until after his treatment was finished. Apart from the ethical issues, she assured David that he didn’t have the strength to be starting a new relationship and battling cancer at the same time. He reluctantly waited, but later admitted to her that it was that kernel of hope that helped him endure the chemo.

  Three years later, when despite their best efforts a baby hadn’t been conceived, it made sense that he should be the one to be tested. He’d had a testicle removed, but the test showed that the other one was performing well. Above average even. And so it followed that the problem must be hers.

  She had ultrasounds. Laparoscopies. Dye injected into her fallopian tubes and followed on a screen. Test after test came back normal. Which left them with …

  Unexplained infertility. The treatment prescribed: IVF.

  Kate knew that David wasn’t thrilled by the prospect. But once they got through the first couple of squeamish appointments, it actually brought them closer. Every night, at the same time, he’d inject her with drugs (including one night at a country wedding when the pair of them had to shimmy into a portable toilet to get it done). It wasn’t a wonderful time by any stretch, but it was a close time in their relationship. As though they shared a secret.

  When they got the call, they drove to the clinic to harvest Kate’s eggs. Even the word “harvest” hadn’t been enough to rain on Kate’s parade.

  “Harvest my eggs!” she’d exclaimed on the road.

  “Yeah, baby!” David sang. “Harvest my wife.”

  David’s contribution had to be made eighteen hours later. Like everything to do with IVF, it was time-sensitive, but he wanted to do it at home rather than in a magazine-filled cubicle at the clinic. Kate liked the idea. Their baby could still be conceived as an act of love, an act of passion. She lit a candle, put on some music, and made sure it would memorable. But despite their best efforts, only one embryo was fertilized. An embryo that wasn’t to be.

  The second time, when it was time for David’s contribution, they didn’t bother with a candle. Again, only one embryo was created. And failed to thrive.

  The third time, Kate was distracted. It wasn’t happening for David, and time was of the essence.

  “David, can you just…” She glanced at the clock. “I mean, why don’t we try—”

  “Jesus, Kate,” he’d said, pushing her off him. “Just … can you just let me do this? I’ll be out in a minute.”

  In the living room, Kate waited on the edge of the sofa. Then they drove to the clinic in silence.

  With hindsight, she should have known this baby would be doomed. Conceived by a frozen egg and a reluctant sperm. What hope had this poor baby ever had?

  Now, she squeezed his hand. “It will work next time,” she said with a breeziness that she recognized sounded plain wrong in this setting. David didn’t reply. He looked spent. Normally she only noticed his age in terms of how distinguished it made him, but today he looked old.

  “Right?” she pressed.

  He closed hi
s eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s not worry about that just now, okay, babe? Let’s just take care of you.”

  “But it will work. Next time. Won’t it?”

  She heard the crazy in her voice. But you were allowed to be crazy in the face of tragedy, weren’t you? People made allowances for it.

  David stood. “Can you walk or do you want me to get you a wheelchair?”

  “David.”

  He dropped his gaze. “Let’s not talk about it now,” he said, and Kate felt her heart splinter.

  “Katie.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “I don’t want to see you like this. That’s why I think…”

  “Stop,” she said into his chest. “Don’t say it. I can’t handle you saying it.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly, kissing her forehead. “I won’t. Shhh. I won’t say it.”

  But as Kate sobbed into her husband’s chest she realized he already had.

  11

  You know that dream people always talked about—the one about going to school naked? Zoe had never had it. Ironic, right? The sad truth was, Zoe’s subconscious never needed to go that far. In Zoe’s anxiety dreams she walked the hallway fully dressed. People stood around, at their lockers or in groups, glancing at her—checking out her giant forehead or last season’s sneakers and laughing. This dream always had her jerking awake, drenched in sweat, her heart thundering. And the worst thing about it was, her anxiety dream was also her reality.

  It was 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, and Zoe was outside the movie theater in Redwood City, which was nothing short of a miracle. People walked by, glancing at her and then quickly away. Under their brief gaze, Zoe felt bigger than she actually was. Freakishly big, like a kite puppet on a freeway, bobbing and waving in the wind. What was she doing here? Like a fool she’d told herself she’d be able to do this.

  I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me. The words came at her suddenly. They were from The Outsiders. They were studying the novel this year in English and Zoe had never found so much truth between two covers.