Page 31 of Clever Little Thing

Pete didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll try to—what was the phrase you used? I’ll try to relax and gestate.”

I went upstairs to rest, but instead of going to sleep, I went on Mumsnet, trawling posts about what caused sudden changes in behavior. Adrenarche—an increase in adrenal emotions that happened around the age of seven—could make kids rage and scream. Heavy-metals exposure could cause anxiety and defiance. But the more I read, the more alone I felt. There was nothing that makes your child calmer and better behaved. Because nobody else, not one other person on the entire Internet, had ever worried about that.

Now

19.

After my second session with Dr. Beaufort, I don’t want to be in my room, alone with my thoughts. I pump for Luna, dutifully, and produce a few drops of colostrum, which I give to reception. They have a special fridge for the mothers’ pumped milk, everything carefully labeled. At least I don’t have to feel guilty about not being there to breastfeed Luna: she’s too premature to have developed the sucking reflex, and gets fed through a tube.

I go to the lounge, which has a tasteful Christmas tree with all-white fairy lights, silver ribbon, and delicate glass icicles. It is not a tree that any mother of young children would have—no foil-wrapped chocolate balls or pine cones daubed with glitter by little fingers. It honors the season without reminding us moms of what we are missing.

A woman with a severe ponytail has cornered another one by the fire—a high-end fake, judging by the lack of smell—and is murmuring to her in a low, intense voice. I sit in a chair by the window,but I can still hear everything she is saying. She’s talking about how important it is to wash your hands thoroughly after you change a nappy. It’s absolutely essential. Her husband doesn’t understand this. He couldn’t be bothered to wash his hands properly, so now she’s stuck in here. She’s terrified that in her absence, he’s contaminating the house with the twins’ fecal matter, which could make them very ill. Her hands are red and chapped, and she rubs them as she talks. The mom she’s talking to is trying to readElle Decor.

I stare at the darkening fields, feeling hollow inside. Have I become so consumed by my obsession that I’m impossible to live with?

I go to my room and call Pete. “How are you? How’s Stella?” My voice cracks. I never have to ask this question, because I’m always with them. I’ve never spent a night away from Stella until now, and tonight will be my second.

Pete says Luna is gaining weight, and Stella is fine too. He’s working from home so he can take care of her. “How are you?” he asks warily.

“I miss you,” I tell him.

He takes a long, shaky breath. It sounds like he’s trying not to cry.

I must have seemed so different when we met, at a volunteer clean-up day on foggy Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Empty juice boxes, Doritos bags, and a used nappy littered the sand. The other volunteers and I had no idea where to begin. Then Pete jogged up with a stack of traffic cones. He organized everyone into teams and divided the beach into squares: the first team to clean their square would win a bottle of champagne. “Want to be a team?” heasked me, and I tried not to stare at his full lips and muscular shoulders.

Pete raced about with boundless energy, and I was methodical, gathering every scrap. By sunset, the entire beach was clean, and the triumphant volunteers chugged the beers Pete produced. Later, we found a rock to sit on, away from the others. “I knew we’d make a good team,” Pete said. “That’s why I picked you.”

“We didn’t even finish in the top three,” I said, warming my cold hands in my armpits.

“Only because we’re perfectionists,” Pete said. He took my hands and chafed them between his warm ones. His eyes were ridiculously blue.

For our third date, we went camping. Pete pointed out the Big Dipper and told me stories about his childhood growing up in coastal Mendocino: getting up early to feed his pet goats, how great his parents were. He insisted on unzipping our two sleeping bags and then zipping them together to make a single big one, so we could fall asleep entwined.

Remembering this, I start to cry. I no longer know what the truth is, whether I’m sane or not, but I know I’ve made Pete suffer. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

Pete clears his throat, and I imagine him holding the bridge of his nose for a minute, getting it together. Now that I’m crying, he won’t cry, and I feel guilty about that, denying him that relief.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. “If anything, it’s mine. I’ve been working way too hard and not paying enough attention to what’s going on at home. Dr. Beaufort says prenatal depression can be just as bad as postnatal. You had it before Stella was born too.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You were plagued by negative thoughts. What about Humboldt Redwoods?”

I’d forgotten about that.

When I was seven months pregnant with Stella, we’d flown to visit Dianne, and then we’d taken a side trip, our last camping trip as a couple. After a drive down a dirt road, we arrived at what I’d thought was the campsite. It turned out to be just a trailhead: the site was in the backcountry, half a mile away. We forded a creek and then followed the trail through a tangled mess of forest.

The sun was setting, but there was still just light enough to put up the tent, and Pete made the long trip back and forth to the car to get our stuff. To warn bears of his approach, he belted out “Here Comes the Sun”—he’d inherited his love of the Beatles from his dad. I sat in the tent as the dusk gathered. When Pete finally got all our stuff to the spot, we realized he’d left my Moonlight Slumber pregnancy pillow in the car. I was seven months pregnant and had trouble sleeping. I could only really sleep comfortably with one knee propped on the pillow, so my belly didn’t feel squashed. Pete insisted it was no problem for him to go back. I listened as his singing faded into the trees.

Then he didn’t come back.

I didn’t know how long he’d been gone, because I’d left my phone in the car and I didn’t wear a watch. Twenty minutes? “Pete?” I called. “Pete? Pete!” I was panicking now. What if he hadn’t come back because he couldn’t? He was lost or he’d twisted his ankle. Or a bear had attacked him, a bear made hungry by the drought.

I shouted his name until I was hoarse. When I turned, the treesbehind my back seemed to have shuffled closer together. A minute ago, there had been a clearing behind me, and now there was dense forest. I tripped over something and fell forward on my hands and knees. I heaved myself to my feet, whimpering.

I was trapped. Even if I found my way back to the trailhead, it was at least a mile more to a paved road, and there was no chance of a passing car at this time of night. We were miles from civilization. It would be morning by the time I found another human being—if I succeeded. I could easily get lost in the forest.

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