Page 4 of Clever Little Thing

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed her.

“What’s the matter?” said Pete, seeing my face, and I knew I couldn’t put off telling him any longer.

“Blanka’s dead.”

Pete blanched. He pushed his lasagna away. “That’s terrible. She was just here—what, last week? Jesus Christ.”

“Emmy said it was an accident, but she didn’t have the details.”

“What a tragedy. I can’t believe it. God—how does Emmy know?” He asked a few more questions, and I told him the little I knew. We were both silent. Then Pete said, “Are you OK, baby? It’s terrible news, but it’s not a good time for you to get stressed. Here, give me your feet.” He pulled them into his lap and began to massage them.

“What kind of accident could it have been?” I said. “Do you think she got run over?” She did cross the road very slowly, apparently never having developed city smarts, even though she’d moved to London with her mother when she was a teenager. Before that, they’d lived in Armenia, and before that, they fled from some country I no longer recalled, some place with a spiky name like Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. But I forgot where, and as time passed, it became more and more embarrassing to ask her again. Besides, questions seemed to make Blanka uncomfortable.

“Or perhaps it was a freak accident of some kind,” I continued. “Though it’s not like Blanka went skydiving. I used to ask her every Monday what she’d done on the weekend, and she always said, ‘Not much.’ ”

Pete bent the toes of my right foot gently back and forth. “We’ll send flowers to her mother. I’ll do it, since you’re sick.”

“She must feel awful,” I said. “Do you think it’s strange she didn’t call me to tell me?”

Pete was frowning at me. “You look very pale. Have you eaten today?”

“Rice cakes.”

“You have to eat.” He served me some lasagna, and I smiled, swallowing down nausea.

“Listen, this bird obsession of Stella’s worries me.” Pete cut his portion into neat squares. “Year four starts the day after tomorrow. I’m concerned she’s not going to fit in.”

I frowned. “Marie Curie probably didn’t fit in either. If Stella was a boy, Emmy wouldn’t have made such a big fuss about her picking up the dead gannet. The problem is that Stella’s a girl and so her interest in the thing comes across as macabre.”

Pete looked skeptical. “How was everything before that?”

I had to admit that Lulu had mostly played alone while Stella sat with her hands over her ears. “But it’s not her fault. She’s got very acute hearing.”

“She has to learn how to be with other kids,” Pete said. “We need to be proactive, especially since—you know.”

We both shuddered, thinking of the birthday party, and I tried not to look at that one spot on the kitchen floor, which Pete had scrubbed so aggressively that it was paler than the surrounding wood.

“It’s not just other kids,” Pete continued. “She hates baths. She hates noises. She hates food, unless each item is separate. And what about freak-out mode?”

I said nothing. Freak-out modewasfrightening. Late at night, I’d watched videos other parents had posted of their kids’ meltdowns, hoping to feel solidarity. Instead, I thought, If you can take a step back and film it, it’s not that bad.

Pete squeezed my hand. “I just want to help her. I love her too.”Having finished eating, he pulled out his iPad. “Look, I’ve been collecting recommendations. I made a spreadsheet of different doctors and therapists.”

“But she had her checkup recently,” I said. Here in the UK, parents only took kids to the doctor if they were actually ill, but Pete, being American, believed in kids having annual checkups, so I took Stella for the sake of marital harmony. “She’s healthy as a horse.”

“Physically,” Pete said.

“It’s not that hard to accommodate her needs,” I said. “I would rather do that than take her to a doctor who is only going to slap some label on her that might not fit. And how’s she going to feel about seeing a doctor? We don’t want her to think there’s something wrong with her.” Pete looked at his spreadsheet, marshalling another argument, and I offered, “Look, I only stopped working last week. More time with me is going to help her relax. I really think I can help her much better than any doctor. If she gets worse”—which she wouldn’t—“then, I promise, we’ll get her evaluated.”

Pete fiddled with his glasses while I searched desperately for a change of topic. Usually, just the wordBrexitwas enough to get him going, and by the way, why didn’t Boris Johnson ever brush his hair? But I didn’t think that would work today. “I can’t believe Blanka is dead,” I said, hating myself for using her death as a segue.

At that, Pete’s face filled with compassion. “It must be really hard getting this news so soon after losing your mom.”

“I’m upset about Blanka,” I said. “This is not about my mother.”

My mother, Edith, had died six months earlier: of a stroke, in the night, at home at her terraced Victorian house in Oxford. She slipped away without saying goodbye, exactly as she would havewanted. She and I were very different people. Still, I expected a wave of grief to hit me, but it never did, not like the way Pete got sideswiped when his dad died. Sometimes I’d give a little start, like when you realize, I’ve forgotten to do something: the kettle is screaming, the smoke alarm needs a new battery. Then I’d think, No, I didn’t leave the kettle on, but my mother is dead.

•••

---