Page 28 of Clever Little Thing

17.

One afternoon after a nap, I went into Stella’s bedroom and sniffed the air. I liked to come into her room when she was at school, because even during the day, that honeysuckle odor lingered. It had grown less each year, and now, no matter how hard I sniffed, I couldn’t smell it at all. Only lamb stew. It was mid-October now, and she’d been eating Irina’s cooking every day after school for five weeks.

A book I’d bought for her,Flight: The Complete History of Aviation, was on her desk, where I’d left it at least a week ago. She hadn’t cracked the spine. That was not like her. Her room was different too, unusually neat, the bedcover smooth. I ran my finger over her plumped-up pillow. For years, I’d nagged her to make her bed. She was hiding something.

I peeled back her duvet. A book stuck out from under the pillow. I tugged it out: theWorld Domination Plansnotebook she’d beenusing as a diary. I hadn’t seen her write in it for a while and realized she must be writing in it in her room.

Obviously, I would never read her diary.

But would it explain why she’d become so quiet, why her face lacked the play of expression it used to have, why she hadn’t gone into freak-out mode for weeks? Or maybe she hadn’t freaked out because she wanted to please Irina, because Irina was simply better at parenting. Maybe I just wasn’t very good at connecting with my own daughter. My mother claimed I didn’t recognize her until I was ten months old. Maybe there was something wrong with me.

A chair leg scraped, and I gave a start. When I looked round, Stella was under her desk with a container of leftover stew, spooning lumps of lamb into her mouth. Acid burned my throat, and I felt afraid. Normally Stella was so fastidious, insisting on a napkin for every single meal. And when I served her a dinner of leftovers, she looked at me as if I’d asked her to lick the bottom of the compost bin.

“Where’s Irina? I thought you were out together.” A muscle jumped under my eye, like a bubble in boiling porridge, and I placed my hand on my face to steady it.

“She went home.”

“Sweetie, darling, come out of there. You should have found me if you were hungry. I would have got you a snack.” Something more appetizing than cold fat and gristle. I knelt down and took the container of stew away. Stella stayed under the desk for a moment, wary, and then came out and stood before me, her shoulders hunched. She was so solid-looking these days, her tummy was evenstarting to stick out a bit. Her hair was losing its curl, and although I’d complained about her feral mane, I missed it.

“Why haven’t you read the new book I got you?”

Stella shrugged. “It’s too difficult.”

I stared. This was the child who had taught herself to read at three and a half—I had nothing to do with it. Extraordinarily intelligent kids did sometimes grasp a new skill almost overnight, a phenomenon called sudden competence. But suddenincompetence? I’d never heard of that.

Her face seemed rounder than usual, almost puffy. Then it hit me. She was ill. That was why she’d lost her spark, why she was finding reading difficult. In a strange way, I felt relief. If there was something physically wrong with her, then we’d fix it. Until she was well again, I wouldn’t leave her bedside. I’d read aloud about historic shipwrecks, and we’d play Battleship for hours.And when she was better, she’d be herself again.

•••

The next morning, I took Stella to her pediatrician, feeling grateful we could afford private healthcare and could therefore get a same-day appointment. Dr. Fleishman was a toothy woman about ten years older than me who wore loose dresses with Dr. Scholl’s sandals. I wasn’t comfortable around any doctor, but I could tolerate Fleishman. She always spent several minutes exclaiming at the beginning of the appointment about how precious Stella was and how marvelous it was that she was reading such grown-up books. Plus, she didn’t tell me how to parent. When it came time to sleep-train Stella and to wean her, she told me what studies to read so I coulddraw my own conclusions. Once, Stella was sick of being offered stickers, so she told Dr. Fleishman that stickers were a waste of Earth’s resources. Dr. Fleishman had laughed, but after that I didn’t see any stickers in her office.

“Sit up here on the bed, honey.” Stella climbed onto the bed, which was covered in clean paper. The nurse had already weighed and measured her. Fleishman looked at her notes. “She used to be in the second percentile for weight, and she’s gone up—wow—she’s gone up to the tenth. For height she was in the eleventh, and she’s gone up to the sixteenth. She’s really growing beautifully.”

“That’s actually why I’m here.” I explained that I was concerned about her rapid weight gain.

“Since she’s also gaining in height, I’m confident she’s just growing,” Fleishman said. She studied my face. “That’s a good thing.”

“Don’t you think her face looks puffy?”

Fleishman felt Stella’s neck glands. “All normal.”

Stella stared into space, not even looking at the brightly colored paper sea creatures dangling from the ceiling—a dolphin, a shark, a jellyfish. Last time we were here, a couple of months ago, Fleishman had said she liked jellyfish because they were so pretty. Did Stella like jellyfish?

Stella had said, “I likeTurritopsis dohrniibecause it can reverse its biotic cycle and turn itself into a polyp.” Now she looked so vacant it was like she herself was turning into a polyp.

“As you can see, she’s not her usual self,” I said now. “She’s not curious. She doesn’t want to do her favorite things. Like reading. And her face looks different. It’s rounder.”

“Faces change as we grow.” Fleishman studied Stella’s face. “Do you feel OK, honey? You’re sleeping OK? Got enough energy?”

“Oh yes,” Stella said in that singsong voice that jangled my nerves.

“But her eating,” I said. “She eats and eats. I’m concerned that such rapid weight gain isn’t normal. Going from the second to the sixteenth—”

“Tenth for weight.”

“Still, such a big jump.”

“It’s within the limits of what is normal.”

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