Have you ever not been able to stop when you planned to?

“Mommy?” Ellie sat on the examining table, legs crossed, gown spread neatly in her lap. “Are you mad?” she asked. Her lower lip was quivering. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. Then again, Eloise frequently appeared to be on the verge of tears. When she was a baby, a slammed car door or the telephone ringing could jolt her out of her nap and into a full-fledged shrieking meltdown. In her stroller, she’d cringe at street noises; a telephone ringing, a taxi honking. Even the unexpected rustling of tree branches overhead could make her flinch.

“No, honey. Why?”

“Your face looks all scrunchy.”

I made myself smile. I held out my arms and, after a moment’s hesitation, Ellie hopped off the table and sat on my lap, folding her upper body against mine. I breathed in her little-girl smell—a bit like cotton candy, like graham crackers and library books—and pressed my cheek against her soft hair, thinking that even though she was high-strung and thin-skinned, Ellie was also smart and funny and undeniably lovely, and that I would do whatever I could to maximize her chances of being happy. I wouldn’t be like my own mother, a circa 1978 party girl who hadn’t realized that the party was over, a woman who’d slapped three coats of quick-drying lacquer over herself at twenty-six—teased hair, cat-eye black liquid liner, a slick, lipglossed pout, and splashes of Giorgio perfume—and gotten so involved in her tennis group, her morning walk buddies, her mah-jongg ladies, her husband and his health that she had little time for, or interest in, her only child. I knew my mother loved me—at least, she said so—but when I was a girl at the dinner table, or out in the driveway, where I’d amuse myself by hitting a tennis ball against the side of the garage, my mother would look up from her inspection of her fingernails or her People magazine and gaze at me as if I were a guest at a hotel who should have checked out weeks before and was somehow, inexplicably, still hanging around.

When I was almost eight years old, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I’d been thinking about it for weeks and I knew exactly how to answer. I wanted my mother, who was usually asleep when I left for school, to take me out to breakfast at Peterman’s, the local diner that sat in the center of a traffic circle at the intersection of two busy highways in Cherry Hill. Everyone went there: it was where kids would get ice cream cones after school, where families would go for a dinner of charcoal-grilled burgers for Dad and dry tuna on iceberg lettuce for Mom and a platter of chicken wings, onion rings, and French fries with ranch and honey-mustard dipping sauces for the kids. One of my classmates, Kelly Goldring, had breakfast there with her mother every Wednesday. “She calls it Girls’ Day,” Kelly recounted at a Girl Scout meeting, taking care to roll her eyes to show how dopey she found the weekly breakfasts, but I could tell from her tone, and how she looked when she talked about splitting the Hungry Lady special with her mom and still having home fries left over to take in her lunch, that the breakfasts were just what Mrs. Goldring intended—special. I imagined Kelly and her mom in one of the booths for two. Mrs. Goldring would be in a dress and high heels, with a floppy silk bow tie around her neck, and Kelly, who usually wore jeans and a T-shirt, would wear a skirt that showed off her scabby knees. I pictured the waitress, hip cocked, pad in hand, asking “What can I get you gals?” As I imagined my own trip to the diner, my mother would order a fruit cup, and I’d get eggs and bacon. The eggs would be fluffy, the bacon would be crisp, and my mother, fortified by fruit and strong coffee, would ask about my teacher, my classes, and my Girl Scout troop and actually listen to my answers.

That was what I wanted: not a new bike or an Atari, not cassettes of Sting or Genesis, not Trixie Belden books. Just breakfast with my mom; the two of us, in a booth, alone for the forty-five minutes it would take us to eat the breakfast special.

I should have suspected that things wouldn’t go the way I’d hoped when my mother came down to the kitchen the morning of my birthday looking wan with one eye made up and mascaraed, and the other pale and untouched. “Come on,” she’d said, her Philadelphia accent thicker than normal, her voice raspy. Her hand trembled as she reached for her keys, and she winced when I opened the door to make sure the cab was waiting out front. I rarely saw my mom out of bed before nine, and I never saw her without her makeup completely applied. That morning her face was pale, and she seemed a little shaky, as if the sunshine on her skin was painful and the floor was rolling underneath her feet.

This, I reasoned, had to do with the Accident, the one my mother had gotten into when I was four years old. I didn’t know many details—only that she had been driving, that it had been raining, and that she’d hit a slick patch on the road and actually flipped the car over. She’d spent six weeks away, first in the hospital, having metal pins put into her shoulder, then in a rehab place. She still had scars—a faint slash on her left cheek, surgical incisions on her upper arm. Then there were what my father portentously referred to as “the scars you can’t see.” My mom had never driven since that night. She would jump at the sound of a slammed door or a car backfiring; she couldn’t watch car chases or car crashes in the movies or on TV. A few times a month, she’d skip her tennis game and I’d come home from school to find her up in her bedroom with the lights down low, suffering from a migraine.

The morning of my birthday, my mother slid into the backseat beside me. I could smell Giorgio perfume and toothpaste and, underneath that, the stale smell of sleep.

The cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. My mother reached into the pocket of her jacket and handed me a ten-dollar bill. “That’s enough, right?” I stared, openmouthed, at the money. My mom looked puzzled, her penciled-in eyebrows drawn together.

“I thought you’d eat with me,” I finally said.

“Oh!” Before she turned her head toward the window, I caught an expression of surprise and, I thought, of shame on her face. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. When you said ‘I want you to take me to Peterman’s,’ I thought . . .” She waved one hand as if shooing away the idea that a daughter would want to share a birthday breakfast with her mom. “Since I knew I’d be getting up early, I set up a doubles game.” She looked at her watch. “I have to run and get changed . . . Mitzie and Ellen are probably there already.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. Already I could feel tears pricking the backs of my eyelids, burning my throat, but I knew better than to cry. Don’t upset your mother, my father would say.

“Is ten dollars enough?”

How was I supposed to know? I had no idea . . . but I nodded anyhow. “Have a good day, then. Happy birthday!” She gave me a kiss and a cheery little wave before I got out of the cab and closed the door gently behind me.

I hadn’t braved the restaurant. It wasn’t Wednesday, but I could still imagine sitting at the counter and seeing Kelly and her mom in a booth. I didn’t even know whether an eight-year-old could be in a restaurant and order by herself—I could read the menu, of course, but I was too shy to talk to a waitress, and shaky about the mechanics of asking for a check and leaving a tip. I went to the bakery counter instead, where I ordered by pointing at the case—two glazed doughnuts, two chocolate, a jelly, and a Boston cream. There was a path through the woods that led from downtown to my school, and in those days a kid—even a girl—could walk through the woods alone, without her parents worrying that she’d get kidnapped or molested. I walked underneath the shade, kicking pine needles and gobbling my breakfast, devouring the doughnuts in huge, breathless mouthfuls, cramming down my sadness, trying to remember what my mom had said—that she loved me—instead of the way she’d made me feel. By Language Arts, I was sick to my stomach, and my mother had to take a cab to come get me. In the nurse’s office, still in her tennis whites, she’d been impatient, rolling her eyes as I checked my backpack for my books, but in the backseat of the taxi her pout had vanished, and she looked almost kind.

She had on a tennis skirt and a blue nylon warmup jacket with white stripes. Her legs were tan and her thighs barely spread out as she sat, whereas my legs, in black tights underneath my best red-and-green kilt, were probably blobbed out all over the seat.

“I guess breakfast didn’t agree with you,” she said. She reached into her tote bag for her thermos and a towel, giving me a sip and then gently wiping my forehead, then my mouth.

In Ellie’s doctor’s office, I sighed, remembering how special I’d felt that my mother had shared her special blue thermos, how I’d never have dreamed of grabbing it out of her bag, let alone backwashing, when Ellie’s doctor came striding into the room.

“Hello, Miss Eloise!” Dr. McCarthy wore a blue linen shirt that matched his eyes, white pants, and a pressed white doctor’s coat with his name stitched on it in blue. Ellie sprang out of my arms and stood, trembling, at the doorway, poised for escape. I gathered her up and set her onto the crinkly white paper on the table, ignoring my back’s protests. The doctor, with a closely trimmed white goatee and a stethoscope looped rakishly around his neck, walked over to the table and gravely offered Ellie his hand.

“Eloise,” he said. “How is the Plaza?”

She giggled, pressing one hand against her mouth to protect her single loose tooth. Now that she had a handsome man’s attention, she was all sweetness and cheer as she sat on the edge of the examination table, legs crossed, poised enough to be on Meet the Press. “We went for tea for my birthday.”

“Did you now?” While they chatted about her birthday tea, the white gloves she’d worn, the turtle she had, of course, named Skipperdee, and how her computer game was “very sophisticating,” he maneuvered deftly through the exam, peering into her eyes and ears, listening to her chest and lungs, checking her reflexes.

“So, Miss Ellie,” he said. “Anything bothering you?”

She tapped her forefinger against her lips. “Hmm.”

“Any trouble sleeping? Or using the bathroom?”

She shook her head.

“How about food? Are you getting lots of good, healthy stuff?”

She brightened. “I like cucumber sandwiches!”

“Who doesn’t like a good cucumber sandwich?” He turned to me, beaming. “She’s perfect, Allison. I vote you keep her.” Then he lowered his voice and took my arm. “Let’s talk outside for just a minute.”

My heart stuttered. Had he seen the quiz I’d been working on? Had I done, or said, something to give myself away?

I handed Ellie the iPad and walked out into the hallway as a young woman, one of the medical students who assisted in the office, stepped in to keep an eye on the patient. “Do you like Broadway musicals?” I heard my daughter ask, as Dr. McCarthy steered me toward the window at the end of the hallway.

“I just wanted to hear how you were doing. Any questions? Any concerns?”

I tried to keep from making too much noise as I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. Maybe I’d picked Dr. McCarthy for shallow reasons—he was the first pediatrician we’d met with who hadn’t called me “Mom”—but he’d turned out to be a perfect choice. He listened when I talked, he never rushed me out of his office or dismissed any of my ridiculous new-parent questions as silly, and he provided a necessary balance between me, who was prone to panic, and Dave, who was the kind of guy who’d wrap duct tape around a broken leg and call it a job.

Dr. McCarthy put Ellie’s folder down on top of the radiator. “How’s the eczema?”

“We’re still using the cream, and we’re seeing Dr. Howard again next month.” Skin conditions, I’d learned, were one of the treats that went along with the sensitive child—that, and food allergies.

“And is school okay?” He paged through Ellie’s chart. “How was the adjustment from preschool to kindergarten?”

I grimaced, remembering the first day of school and Ellie clinging to my leg, weeping as if I were sending her into exile instead of a six-hour day at the highly regarded (and very expensive) Stonefield: A Learning Community. (In my head, I carried out an invisible rebellion by thinking of it as just the Stonefield School.) “She had a rough few weeks to start with. She’s doing fine now . . .” “Fine” was, perhaps, an exaggeration, but at least Ellie wasn’t weeping and doing her barnacle leg-lock at every drop-off. “She’s reading, which is great.”