Page 20 of Clever Little Thing

Pete joined me on the sofa. He was bursting with news. “Nathan got us a meeting in Atlanta with Home Depot.”

I hugged him. “That’s amazing, my love.” Nathan had been trying to get a meeting with Home Depot for months. Mycoship’s first big-box retailer. At last.

“The catch is we have to leave now so we can catch the red-eye. They want to see us Monday first thing.”

“Now?” My heart sank. I’d have no relief from childcare for the rest of the weekend. If I felt ill, there was no one I could call. “If the meeting is Monday, why can’t you fly out Sunday night?”

“I’m so sorry, baby. I hate to leave you when you’re not feeling great, but we need tomorrow to whip our presentation into shape.”

I wanted to ask him not to go. But if major retailers started using biodegradable packing materials, it would be a giant win for Mycoship and for the oceans, choked by single-use plastic. Pete still talked about the time when, out surfing, he found a dead baby otter with a six-pack ring cutting into its neck.

While Pete threw things in a case and called an Uber, I went to check on Stella: the cardboard box of leftovers was gone. Her bedroom door was ajar. Wet snuffling noises came from within. I peeked in. Stella was sitting on her bed, cramming her mouth with limp chips and cold veggie burger.

She was so absorbed that it took her a minute to realize I was there. When she did, it was like she didn’t recognize me. She stared at me with such suspicion, clutching the greasy box to her chest as if I’d try to take it away. I backed out of the room. Bits of food fell onto the bedclothes as she shoveled it in. “Little Wolf,” Irina had called her.

13.

The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, I toasted a leftover waffle and knocked on Stella’s door. “Room service.” For now, I’d accept her need to eat in private, even if I didn’t like it. She was eating, that was the important thing. Stella opened the door, wearing yesterday’s dress, her hair hanging down, as if it were wet. “Thank you, Mommy.” Then she closed the door in my face.

I fretted about what to do about the FOMHS meeting, which was at five that afternoon. Charlotte Says: Flakiness is the plague of modern times. Never cancel, except in an emergency. But now I had no childcare. I couldn’t take Stella to the meeting, which was about prosecco and gossip as much as fundraising plans, and I couldn’t miss the meeting either, because I needed a regular connection with the other moms in order to organize playdates. I wished I had someone I could leave Stella with, but the only person I could ever have asked that favor of was Cherie.

The cross on the wall caught my eye. Could it be connected with Stella’s insistence on taking her meals alone? When Stella emerged from her room, I pointed to the cross and said, “That wasn’t me or Daddy. Any idea who it was? Tell me the truth.”

“People should always tell the truth,” Stella said piously.

I exhaled sharply. “Whatisthe truth? Why won’t you eat when I’m around? Why does that thing keep appearing on the wall?”

Stella was silent, as if my questions were simply unanswerable, like so many of hers were: “Do trees care about each other?” “Where did the ocean come from?” “Is planet Earth going to get hotter and hotter until it’s four hundred and sixty-four degrees like on Venus?”

“May I go back to my room?” Stella said, and I nodded, defeated. Pete had said she had to clean it off, but I didn’t have the heart to insist if she thought she didn’t do it.

The doorbell startled me. On the doorstep was Emmy, her striped dress paired with tan ankle boots, her fringe looking as if she’d measured every strand of hair with a ruler. By her side was another school mom who always wore lurid yoga leggings. Her name escaped me.

Emmy was clearly not here to organize the playdate with Lulu that Nick had suggested yesterday. Her face was grimly self-important, and my stomach sank.

“We’ve come to tell you that you’re disinvited from the FOMHS meetings, starting with this afternoon,” Emmy said. Her breath was swampy with green smoothie. “I just heard what you did to Cherie.”

“Cherie told you?” I whispered. “But she already accepted my apology.”

“This didn’t come from her.” Emmy pulled up a video on her phone: the freeze-frame was of me, standing legs wide apart, brandishing scissors, while Cherie lay crumpled at my feet.

“Where did you get this?”

“I live right next door?” said Lurid Leggings. Emmy hit play. The video had been edited. I heard myself shouting, “Stella isn’t like Zach! She’s absolutely nothing like Zach.” Oh no. Then I shoved Cherie, or it looked that way. Cherie gave a little scream, which I didn’t remember, sat down hard on her front path.

“You physically assaulted her,” said Emmy.

“It was an accident,” I protested.

“And you denigrated her special-needs child.”

I turned to Lurid Leggings. “You’ve edited the video.”

She looked self-righteous. “People have short attention spans.”

“Emmy, please,” I said. “I did say those things about Zach, but there was a larger context.”

“So, you admit it,” Emmy said. She was so sure she was in the right. In her downstairs toilet, she had a framed copy of “Desiderata,” and I thought of the line “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” Emmy certainly seemed to think so, and it was easy to believe that if you never really had any problems.

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