Page 12 of Clever Little Thing

That painting on the wall of the woman in the river catches my eye, and I see that she’s not about to get swept away by the current. She’s steeling herself to plunge in and swim. It’s so easy to miss the truth, unless you study a situation closely, which Dr. Beaufort clearly isn’t. “You think I caused freak-out mode?” I ask. “Because I’m so tightly wound? You know, they used to blame autism on the mothers. Schizophrenia too. Not that Stella is either of those.”

Dr. Beaufort nods. “What about your mother? We haven’t really talked about her.”

I snort. “You want me to talk about how my mother shaped me. But she didn’t. We were very different people.”

“You didn’t have anything in common?”

“We used to look for birds.” I hadn’t thought about this in years. Until I was thirteen, my mother took me on a birdwatching trip a couple of times a year. We visited woodlands, heaths, and marshes—she never considered I might like to be near a beach or playground. In truth, I loved the ritual of rising before dawn and assembling our kit: binoculars, notebooks, and thermoses. I loved driving past dark farms on our way to the birding spot, the only ones awake.

Edith always grew calmer after a few hours in the woods. If Ifumbled my binoculars or misidentified a bird, she didn’t mind. I still tried my best, desperate to please her. Once, I caught the drill of the rare lesser spotted woodpecker, and Edith raised a finger to her lips and crept to the source of the sound. Suddenly, there it was, right in front of us, perched in a hollow tree. I was disappointed. Apart from its crimson crown, it was just a stumpy brown bird, no bigger than a box of matches. But then I realized that Edith was trembling a little, mouth open in wonder, and I dared to slip my fingers into hers.

The year I turned thirteen, on a trip to the Forest of Dean, I woke up with a stomachache. I trailed behind Edith as she crept through the early morning woods, squinting through her binoculars. The ache tugged at my lower belly, and when my breasts started hurting too, I got an idea of what was happening to me. I looked at Edith’s narrow back and wished I could ask questions. When did your period start and how did you know it was starting?

But I didn’t say anything, because Edith was very particular about using the “right” words. These weren’t the ones she’d grown up with, in a Lancashire mining village. Once she made it to Oxford on a scholarship, she smoothed out her Northern vowels and never again referred to the evening meal as tea. I had no idea what she would call a period, and didn’t want her to think me déclassé.

Suddenly, Edith rounded on me and whispered, “Stop trampling like that. You’re frightening every bird away.”

“I don’t feel well.”

Edith rarely looked me in the eye, her gaze traveling over my shoulder as if expecting somebody more interesting to show up. She sighed. “What’s the matter?”

I always tried to stay calm around my mother, for fear of triggering her temper. But I had an irritable feeling, like tiny legs walking on my skin, and this made it impossible to think straight. “I’ve had enough. This is boring.”

Edith had my fair complexion, flushing easily. “Then go back to the cottage.”

I shivered. “By myself?”

“Go on. Shoo!” she hissed, flapping her hand at me, and I ran.

It was several miles by road back to the cottage, and I took a wrong turn and made the way longer. When I finally got back and went to the toilet, my knickers were bloody. I hid them in my suitcase, found a new pair. When she got back, Edith acted as if nothing had happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about my period. Maybe she wouldn’t have been annoyed, but she’d be unbearably brisk. So I improvised pads out of toilet paper until we got back to Oxford and I could help myself to her stash of sanitary towels under the sink.

The next month, my period pain was so bad I stayed home from school. By then, Maureen only came in one day a week, but it happened to be her day. She found me curled on my bed, clutching my stomach. “Is it your monthlies?” she asked, nodding sympathetically. She brought me a glass of water and a wet flannel and wiped my face. Then she opened the window and told me to stick my head outside, even though it was raining. I filled my lungs with fresh air, and I felt a little better. But I still had a heaviness inside, because if that was all it took to help, why couldn’t my mother do it?

“My mother and I really had nothing in common,” I tell Dr. Beaufort now, folding my arms over my chest.

She blinks. “Maybe we’ll come back to her later. Tell me, did Stella have these ‘freak-out’ episodes with Blanka?”

“She had no reason. Blanka gave Stella everything she wanted,” I tell her. But I give Stella everything she wants too. Is it possible that being with me—her own mother—makes Stella so anxious she simply has to erupt? I rake my nails over my skin.

Dr. Beaufort hands me a bottle from a side table: lotion. “For your arms. Your mother’s temper terrified you and you vowed not to subject Stella to the same treatment. But it can also be frightening when an adultneverloses their temper. A child, especially a sensitive one, always knows when there’s anger and grief simmering beneath the surface.”

“This is all backwards,” I say. I must have broken my skin when I scratched, because the lotion stings. “Let me tell you about the last time Stella went into freak-out mode, and you’ll see there’sno wayany parent could want that.”

But now that I think about it, the last time it happened, it brought us all closer together.

then

8.

The day I pushed Cherie, Pete didn’t come home until after I was in bed. I didn’t get a chance to tell him about it until the following morning. It was the first day of school, so I delivered breakfast to Stella’s room bright and early. While she was getting ready, I found Pete in our bathroom, shaving, and gave him the bare outline of what happened. He wiped the foam off his face. “It’s not like you attacked her. Just explain it was an accident.”

“It’s going to take more than that,” I said. “Maybe I’ll get her some flowers.”

“This is the last thing you need when you’re feeling so unwell.” Pete dried his face and moved towards me. He knew instinctively when to stop problem-solving and just give me a hug. But the urge to throw up came on suddenly, and I pushed him aside and dropped to my knees in front of the toilet.

Pete rubbed my back as I retched. “It sucks that you’re the onewho has to go through this. I wish I could take the pregnancy. Give you a break.”

“Like a seahorse,” I murmured. The female puts her eggs in the male’s pouch. The three of us had seen an exhibit at the London Aquarium when Stella was four, just after we’d moved back to the UK.

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