Clever little thing, p.2
Clever Little Thing, page 2
Stella was murmuring something under her breath, but the noise of the motorway made it impossible to catch her words. I glanced over my shoulder. Her window was wide open, so wind filled the car, making her hair float as if it were underwater. Whatever she was saying, it was the same phrase, over and over.
Someone swerved into my lane right in front of me, and I hit the brakes. Shaken, I pulled the car onto the hard shoulder, just as my brain made sense of her words: “Poor Blanka. Poor Blanka. Poor Blanka.”
“Why are you saying that, darling?” She’d been well out of earshot when Emmy had told me, so there was no way she knew Blanka was dead. But why was she bringing up Blanka now? She’d gone into freak-out mode when I told her Blanka wasn’t coming back, but then abruptly stopped mentioning her.
Stella gave me a patient look. “I was saying, ‘Poor Mommy,’ because it seemed like you didn’t have a nice time at the beach.”
I’d misheard her, that was all. Of course, she didn’t know that Blanka was dead. And she was so sensitive, there was no way I could let her find out.
* * *
• • •
Pete worked late at his company, Mycoship, which made packing foam out of mycelium, the root system of mushrooms. He wasn’t home until ten, long after Stella was in bed. I was reading in the bedroom, and I heard him putting his bike in the bike shed and then opening the front door. He would likely go to the freezer to get something to eat. He wasn’t a fan of takeaway, because of the single-use plastic.
I decided I’d let him eat before telling him about Blanka. Suddenly I remembered about the gannet. I leaped out of bed and sprinted to the kitchen, but I was too late.
“Jesus, what is that?”
I explained.
“So you stuck the thing in our freezer—with our food?” was all he managed to say. When I met Pete in California ten years ago, he was thirty-eight, but had looked much younger, with his blue eyes, his swimmer’s shoulders, his head of tight blond curls. Now the overhead light showed up the bags under his eyes. I wished he didn’t have to work so hard.
“I triple bagged it,” I said. “You can still eat your veggie lasagna.” Because my morning sickness made cooking difficult, Pete had stocked up on readymade food from the gourmet place we liked. He stuck the lasagna in the microwave and pulled me into his arms. “How are you feeling, my love?” he asked. I was the one who had pushed for a second baby so Stella could have a brother or sister, but now Pete was as eager as I was. He checked the Pregnant Dad app every day.
“I still feel sick.” I’d tried everything: motion sickness wristbands, B6, promethazine, you name it.
Pete nodded. “But the other times, when we lost the pregnancy, you felt great. So maybe this is a good sign.”
I followed him to the dining table, and we sat down at one end. When we bought this big Edwardian in coveted Muswell Hill—one of the five best places to live in London, according to The Sunday Times—we’d ripped out most of the walls downstairs so it was one huge, open space. We kept the period detail—the mantelpieces and wall moldings—but we had sleek, modern furniture and huge black-and-white photos of surf pounding the beaches of Northern California, where Pete grew up. The table was reclaimed oak from an old barn, big enough to seat twelve when you pulled out the hidden leaves. We both loved entertaining. A few days after we met, we threw a Dungeness crab party for twelve. We pushed together borrowed tables and covered them with butcher paper. I served Negronis while Pete wrestled the crabs into the pot. Guests cracked claws and dipped the flesh into my champagne-shallot butter. Then we rolled back the rug and danced until dawn.
After Stella was born, we still entertained, but less and less. We stopped eating crab when the crab population declined due to ocean acidification. And now, after her birthday party, it was hard to imagine any guests ever coming over again.
I’d felt awkward about inviting Blanka to that party. I was worried it might feel too much like working without pay, and that Blanka would feel shy about socializing with our friends. So I didn’t ask her. But if I had, would the party have turned out differently? Would Blanka still be alive?
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 mode was frightening. 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 word Brexit was 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 have wanted. 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.
* * *
• • •
At two in the morning, I was wide-awake, feeling as if the sea still pummeled my eardrums. We met Blanka when Stella was four. I’d been looking for a babysitter to pick her up after school. I was going back full-time to my job at Design Your Life, a lifestyle portal, where I churned out content about entertaining and gave etiquette advice in my column, “Charlotte Says.” I’d worked there since my late twenties, when an editor at Design Your Life had spotted my blog about stress-free dinner parties, The Reluctant Hostess, and offered me a job in San Francisco. Luckily, they let me work remotely when we moved to London. “Everybody already knows all this,” my mother said, nonplussed, when Pete persuaded her to read my column.
“Americans don’t feel they know everything about etiquette,” I said. Design Your Life had a primarily US audience.
“Well, they wouldn’t.” Edith was the mistress of the poison dart. A professor of nineteenth-century literature, she spent her last afternoon on earth alone, editing her book on illness and femininity in the mid-Victorian novel. Although Edith thought my job was silly, I loved it. The way I saw it, etiquette wasn’t about what fork to use. It was about making other people feel good—with a handwritten thank-you note, a wonderful dessert, or maybe a white lie. This seemed simple on the face of it, but judging by the number of letters I received, common social situations tripped a lot of people up, and made them anxious. As an etiquette expert I gave them a road map: a way to navigate any interaction.
Unfortunately, finding a babysitter good enough for Stella was brutal. One applicant wanted to be picked up and dropped off. A second needed to schedule the babysitting “gig” around her shamanic therapy classes. A third said any house she worked in had to be completely free of artificial scent. When I met Blanka at the door, her hair was in two clumsy black plaits secured with elastics decorated with pink plastic bobbles, and her olive-skinned face was childishly round. She was fairly overweight, noticeable in Muswell Hill, with its yummy mummies in Pilates gear, and had heavy eyebrows that needed attention. She slowly lowered herself onto our slender-legged midcentury modern sofa.
I asked, “What do you like about working with kids?”
“I like taking care of kids,” said Blanka.
“What do you like about that?” She smiled, and I wasn’t sure if she’d understood the question. I decided to move on. “You have to keep everything separate when you serve her meals.” I showed her Stella’s compartmentalized melamine plates.
“Oh yes.” She sounded matter-of-fact, not skeptical like the other babysitters.
Encouraged, I continued. “Also, you have to slice her fruit nicely, or she won’t eat it. Apples, especially.”
“Oh yes.” Blanka nodded vigorously, like nobody in their right mind would expect a four-year-old to tackle an unsliced apple. I went through Stella’s whole routine, and Blanka agreed with everything I said. Maybe it was because her English wasn’t very good, but it was relaxing. I went up to Stella’s room and coaxed her out to meet Blanka. As with all the interviewees, Stella marched straight over to Blanka and studied her. The other women had chirped out their names or inquired as to Stella’s favorite color. Blanka just held Stella’s gaze. Several seconds passed. Then, to my astonishment, Stella climbed onto the sofa and nestled up to Blanka’s pillowy body. Our savior.
Now I gave up on sleep and crept into the kitchen. I stuffed a handful of pretzels into my mouth. I’d forgotten about that first meeting with Blanka, when she’d seemed so perfect for the job. Yet somehow things had changed so much that she had left without saying goodbye. That was one mystery I would never solve now. But maybe I could solve the mystery of how she died.
I grabbed my laptop and sat on the sofa. Perhaps she had a Facebook page, which might have more information about her death. But when I typed in “Blanka Hakobyan,” there was no Facebook page. No Blanka Hakobyan on Twitter or Instagram. When I googled her name, I got no results. There was a faint twang in my abdomen, and I felt afraid. In years of trying to get pregnant, I’d miscarried three times. But I kept going, because if Stella had a sibling, it wouldn’t matter so much that she didn’t really have friends and, worse, didn’t seem to care. A sibling, I hoped, would teach her how to get along with others.
I walked to the window, hoping a change of position would help. The whole back wall of the house was glass, showcasing our view over London, a sea of lights with the Shard on the horizon, the dull glow of the light-polluted sky. At night, things looked different than they did in the day, but I always felt like I was seeing things as they really were: the night truth. I was going to lose this baby, and Stella would always be alone.
I went into Stella’s room and listened to the ebb and flow of her breath. Maybe it was my fault she didn’t turn cartwheels on the beach, and I didn’t deserve to have another child.
“Oh yes,” Stella said, quite clearly, and I gave a start. But her breath was deep and regular: she was talking in her sleep. Blanka used to say, “Oh yes,” in response to everything I asked her, always in exactly the same way, like a two-note birdcall. I shivered. It was an innocuous phrase, but still, it was uncanny how perfectly Stella captured Blanka’s singsong tone.
now
3.
I compose my face, trying to appear calm, but not too calm. I must appear exactly as calm as a sane person would in this situation. I am sane, I remind myself. Still, it’s hard to look sane when I’m forced to wear what amounts to pajamas. I sit up straight on the edge of the sofa, feet planted on the floor. Dr. Beaufort, my new therapist, has a round, earnest face, greying brown hair cut sensibly short, and a navy poncho that looks like it has dog hair on it. “Sorry about this old thing,” she says. “I feel the cold. Do you? Snuggle up in the blanket, why don’t you.”
“I’m fine.” A blanket isn’t going to help me right now. On the wall is a painting of a woman standing in a river, facing away from the viewer. She looks like she’s trying to hold her ground, but any minute a mighty current will sweep her away.
“Do you need the tissues?” Dr. Beaufort asks. “I moved them onto that side table there. I used to have them on the coffee table, but then a patient said they made her feel like I wanted her to cry. I don’t want you to cry. That is, not unless you want to.”
“OK?” I say. She’s babbling. Maybe she’s new to this job. Perhaps she got her qualification after her kids started school. To the right of her is a bookcase, which has heavy psychiatric diagnostic manuals, but also Mind Over Mother and Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts. Is she a mother who has had scary thoughts? On a side table at her elbow sits a misshapen vase of dried spear thistles. There are no family photos, but that ugly vase definitely looks like it was made by a child.
“Charlotte?” Dr. Beaufort has asked a question.
“Sorry?”
“Can you tell me why you’re here?”
I stroke my throat. When I was seven, my mother took me to see a doctor about a persistent cough. Three doctors later, we learned it was thyroid cancer, and I endured surgery and radioactive iodine treatment that left my throat sore, my mouth tasting of dirty coins. Even though they’d cured me, I’d disliked doctors ever since.
“Why are you here?” Dr. Beaufort repeats gently. I stare at the bowl of marble eggs on her coffee table.
“My husband thinks I need a rest.”
Dr. Beaufort nods. “What mother doesn’t, right?”
I chuckle obligingly.
She studies me with her serious gaze. “The intake form says you’re concerned about your daughter Stella.”
A headache blooms on the right side of my forehead. Pete has filled her in already. She will likely report on our sessions to him. I probably gave permission on the form I signed when I was so distraught. I have to convince him of my sanity so he will take me seriously and help me save Stella. But if Dr. Beaufort is reporting to him, I need to get her on my side too.
I pick up a marble egg and weigh its coolness in my good hand. I want to roll it over my brow, to soothe its ache. But I must remain calm, polite, composed—while also making her believe me. I need to choose my words carefully, share the monstrous truth a little at a time. “Yes, I am worried about Stella,” I say.
