Page 17 of Clever Little Thing

“If you eat here, I could read to you,” I said. This had worked for Irina, and I hadShipwreck: A History of Disasters at Seaat the ready. But Stella shook her head.

“Fine,” I said. A family should eat together at the table. But I wasn’t about to rock the boat when things were going well. I tottedup the successes: two days of school without incident, a proper bath, and brushing her own hair. I dared to hope that her extreme sensitivity was a phase.

“We’re going to visit a wildlife refuge today,” I said. “They have peregrine falcons.” Stella hated the sight of wild things in captivity, but this place was OK because most residents were temporary, being taken care of in the wildlife hospital before they were given their freedom again. The ones who stayed were only the ones who wouldn’t survive in nature. I’d called them that morning to confirm there were no actual cages.

“Yay!” Stella caroled. Pete grabbed her hands and spun her round. My heart swelled.

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But when we got there, the air was a palimpsest of awful smells: bleach and cat litter and, on top of that, the visitors’ smells of hair products, skin lotion, fabric softener. People had no idea how much they stank. Life must be terrible for dogs. My phone pinged, and when I saw it was from Cherie, my heart lifted. But all she said was,Thanks for the card and gift!

You’re welcome,I wrote.We OK then?

Her only response was a thumbs-up. I stared at the screen, willing something else to appear. In this context, just a thumbs-up—by itself—seemed tantamount to a thumbs-down. It was clear that she didn’t want to communicate further, at least for now.

The glass bird enclosures were open at the top, and the kestrels and falcons could fly up to perches there and survey the visitors. Stella stared up at them, captivated. I was glad the birds seemedcontent, but I regretted the loss of their wildness. Part of me wanted them to swoop back and forth around the museum, strafing the visitors until they found an open window.

“Do you think you’re going to throw up?” Pete murmured to me, and I realized I had my hand across my mouth. I shook my head. The Sisyphean punishment of morning sickness was that I constantly felt as if I were about to do so, but never actually did.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m totally fine.” I twined my fingers in his. I was happy because he’d barely taken his phone out of his pocket.

While Stella studied a cormorant, I seized my chance to speak to Pete out of her earshot, and told him how Stella had had a bath, with Irina presiding, the previous evening.

“Wow,” he said. “Seems like it’s good for Stella to spend time with another adult. You two have such an intense relationship.”

I bristled. What was that supposed to mean? Then I forced myself to take a deep breath. Maybe Pete wasn’t criticizing my relationship with Stella, just making an accurate observation. “She did enjoy her time with Irina,” I said.

“It’s good for you to get a break.” He glanced at Stella to make sure she was out of earshot. She didn’t know about the miscarriages. “After what you’ve been through with the other pregnancies, you should be relaxing now. That’s why you gave up your job, isn’t it?”

I frowned. The thought of a few hours on my own, without Stella, without even Stella-related tasks, filled me with panic. I hated being alone. When I was seven years old and the doctors discovered the tumor in my thyroid gland, the next step after the surgery to remove it was radioactive iodine, which came in a drink.The doctor said that after I swallowed this at the hospital, I would be radioactive and should stay six feet away from other people for five days.

My mother didn’t explain what a thyroid was, or how the medicine worked. Her vagueness made me feel like she was hiding the truth: there was something terribly wrong with me. That was why I had to be kept away from others.

Maureen checked on me during the day, and my mother said good night. Otherwise, I stood at the window. The mother across the street walked her children to school in the morning and went to pick them up in the afternoon. Then they all appeared in their lit front room, eating buttered crumpets in front of the TV. Snuggling. My mouth was dry, yet tears leaked incessantly from my eyes.

After two days of solitude, I realized there were people watching me from inside my dollhouse. The clicking of the radiator took on a pattern, repeating an urgent message. The walls billowed, like panels of fabric. My own life, my own animation, was leaking out into everything around me.

By the fifth day, I couldn’t speak.

I returned to normal after a week or so, but I learned that although you think your personality is something essential and unchangeable, really it relies on the pressure of other personalities holding its shape. Without other people, your edges dissolve. You don’t become more yourself when you’re completely alone. You become less so.

So now I said quickly, “I want to be with Stella. That’s what makes me happy.”

At lunch in the café, Stella refused to touch her meal, eventhough it was her favorite, a veggie burger (which I hastily deconstructed) and chips. Not wanting to make a fuss on our day out, I persuaded the server to pile it all into a cardboard to-go container and squashed it into my handbag. As we were leaving the café, Pete exclaimed, “Hey!” It was Emmy’s husband, Nick. He’d been at Stella’s birthday party, and greeted us with what felt like overcompensatory warmth. He nodded down at Lulu, sucking a juice box. “It’s Dad-urday,” he explained. “Every Saturday morning, I take Lulu so Emmy can have some downtime with the baby.”

“Downtime with the baby,” I said. “I’m sure she appreciates that.”

To my surprise, Stella sauntered over without being summoned, even raised her hand in greeting. Lulu merely fluttered her fingers, but Nick shooed his daughter away. “Go play with Stella.”

Lulu trailed after her apprehensively, but Stella found a lever that made the jaws of a mountain lion’s skull clack shut. Then she watched while Lulu made the jaws of the skull clack again and again.

Nick and Pete chatted and were soon involved in a deep conversation about whether Nick thought Pete should grow a beard. I went to the bathroom and dry-heaved over the toilet. When I returned, Lulu was holding Stella’s hand, and Stella, to my surprise, was allowing this. “Can we go to the playground, please, please, please?” clamored Lulu.

I began formulating an excuse, but Pete spoke first. “Great!” he said. On the way there, he murmured, “She needs more physical activity. When I was her age, I rode my bike all over the neighborhood.”

In the playground, Pete and Nick chased the girls around. Several other kids joined in, overjoyed to find an adult not glued to a phone. The one bench was full, so I had to perch on a fiberglass rock, unable to get comfortable. Usually, Stella hated playgrounds, but now when the dads raised their arms and did monster roars, Stella trotted after the other shrieking kids.

Then Pete went to grab coffee, and Stella gave up playing and just stood and watched. Blanka used to watch Stella with the same impassive expression. For some reason, she rarely sat down at our house, and almost always stood. Also, she never looked at her phone. She wasn’t the type to sit on the floor and do craft projects, but she was never distracted. She had a special kind of total presence, one that somehow also felt like absence.

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