Clever little thing, p.8
Clever Little Thing, page 8
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. “What is the 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.
“I saw it,” Stella announced, appearing beside me. “Zach’s mommy was being mean to my mommy.” I loved her so fiercely. But then she continued. “If someone invades your personal space, you should punch that bastard right in the face.”
I gaped. “Stella! That is not how we talk. Go to your room.”
She retreated, and I closed my eyes, feeling hot and prickly all over. “OK, OK,” I said. “I get the message.” I felt so ashamed, desperate for them to go away. As I shut the front door, I distinctly heard Emmy saying, “Cray-cray.”
I certainly looked cray-cray in the video. I thought of all those videos I’d watched of little kids freaking out. Now other people had watched this video of me. But those videos of kids were anonymous, taken by their parents to help other parents. This video was taken to warn the other moms about me, a menace who had to be disinvited from FOMHS.
I called Pete, even though it was still early in Atlanta, and did my best to make this into a funny story.
“Those moms are the crazy ones,” he said. “They’re treating you like you’re some kind of psycho.”
I tried to laugh. “I know! But they know I’m not. I’ve been out for margaritas with them.” On one occasion, we’d laughed ourselves silly at the thought of the nit-removal party we were going to invite people to: “The pleasure of your company is requested/For an evening of cocktails and nit-picking…” For some reason, the phrase BYONC (bring your own nit comb) was especially hilarious.
But now that I thought about it, the way the nit party came up was that I’d been talking about hosting a get-together at my place, musing about what type of event I could have. “A drawer-organizing party,” someone had joked. I’d laughed along. Then Emmy had suggested the nit-removal party. I thought they were laughing with me, but now I realized they were laughing at me.
I sat down on the sofa and cradled a cushion to my chest. “I don’t think they ever actually liked me. They thought I was uptight.”
“They only know one tiny part of you. In San Francisco, they would have killed to be invited to one of your parties.”
“Do you ever wonder about that time?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Were we really friends with all those people? I’ve lost touch with pretty much all of them.”
“Long-distance friendships are tough,” Pete said.
But after I got off the phone with him, I reflected that he was always texting and calling old friends. I was the one whose friendships were so flimsy they had melted away. My time in San Francisco had been my proof that I could make friends. But now I looked back on all those parties and dinners, I realized I was always too busy to sit down and talk with anyone. I couldn’t remember a single conversation.
Maybe I didn’t know how to get along with others, and the FOMHS mothers saw the truth.
I got the rubbing alcohol from the cleaning supplies cupboard and poured it onto a clean cloth. Then I went at the cross. It didn’t work, and I tried nail polish remover, and then toothpaste. Finally, I got a paring knife and scraped off the paint. I would need to paint over the ruined spot. But for now, it felt good, so good, like scratching a mosquito bite until it bled.
14.
By the time I’d finished gouging the wall, it was lunchtime, so I forced myself to make something for Stella. Sometimes when I cooked, I felt as if my mother were standing in the kitchen watching me. She did this when I was growing up, and later, on the rare occasions she visited us or we stayed with her. Sometimes she said, “Is that how you chop an onion?” or “Will Stella eat that?” Someone else might not even have recognized these comments as criticisms. Mostly she just watched, her eyes following me as I chose a knife, as I chopped, as I heated oil in a pan or grated cheese. If you have something to say, say it, I thought now, and then gave one of those small starts as my brain realized that this particular thought groove had expired. Pete said that for months after his dad died, he thought of funny or interesting things to tell his dad, then remembered with a jolt that he was dead. I thought of Edith telling me I was using the wrong spatula.
I tried to perk up, but everything reeked. The sponge smelled moldy, even though it was a new one I’d unwrapped yesterday, and its smell fought with that of biodegradable peppermint dish soap. I texted Cherie and told her about Lurid Leggings’ video. Emmy threw me out of FOMHS. I’m a pariah! Confused face, melting face.
The old Cherie would have responded with a tears-of-laughter face and OMG I wish she’d banish me too. Btw did you see what she was wearing yesterday? She looked like a walking zebra crossing.
Nothing.
Cherie could have offered to text Emmy and set her straight about what had happened. But I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t. That thumbs-up the previous day had clearly meant what I thought: she didn’t really forgive me after all.
I was starting to regret apologizing to her. Normally I apologized for everything, including things I hadn’t done. I apologized when someone stepped in front of me to grab the last shopping basket at the supermarket. I apologized to Pete when he came home late. I apologized to Stella when the bath temperature wasn’t to her liking. Charlotte Says: If in doubt, apologize. It doesn’t cost you anything.
I felt that this apology had cost me something: I’d put myself in the wrong. Cherie could stand to apologize too.
I finished making Stella’s lunch and delivered it to her room. Then I flopped on my bed. If my friendship with Cherie was still intact, I could return to our running joke and text: “Never mind, a spot of eyebrow reshaping will cheer me up.” Instead, I scrolled through home-organization photos, my eyes stinging. I aspired to cupboards and drawers where the entire contents were visible at first glance. I hated losing things that I knew were somewhere inside my house.
My bedroom door banged as a breeze blew through the hall. How long had I been lying here? “Stella!” I went to her room. Everything was as usual: the birds of California poster, her collection of mussel shells that looked identical but weren’t (she noticed when I tried to throw a couple away), the stuffed owl we’d sewn together, made from some fluffy fabric that molted everywhere. But no Stella. A trickle of cold in my chest.
Was she in the alone-time cupboard? No. Back to the living room. Could she have crept behind the curtains when I was sleeping?
The front door was wide open. Hence the breeze.
I had the strange sensation that what was happening was preordained. This was always going to happen. From the first night of her life, I’d wondered how I could deserve such glorious riches. When I got to take her home from the hospital, I could hardly believe it. It was like a mythical creature had come to live with us, a phoenix. Now she had flown.
I ran out the front gate. There was no one on the street. “Stella!” No sign of her. Which way should I go? Could she have walked somewhere on her own? But she was eight years old and had never gone anywhere alone. She’d never even walked to the toilet in a restaurant by herself.
“Stella!” I screamed. All the houses seemed to contain people who were watching and thinking, Cray-cray bitch. There was no one I could even ask for help. I felt as if cold water poured down my throat and into my belly, at such a tremendous speed I would burst.
Two blocks up, an older woman with Russian-doll hair and a dark-brown skirt turned onto our street. “Help!” I screamed. The woman waved. It was Irina.
Then there was Stella, dancing around the corner. I charged up the street and threw myself upon her, pressed my face into her hair, wanting to press her back into my body, into my flesh, where she would be safe. She actually let me hold her, though she didn’t hug me back.
I fought to catch my breath. “Where were you going, darling?”
“To my swimming class. But Irina said I should go home.”
I’d forgotten about the private swim lesson I’d scheduled on Sunday afternoons. Usually, I had to drag her to the pool. But never mind. “You can’t go by yourself. You know that,” I said. I couldn’t get my heart to stop thumping: What if she’d tried to cross a busy road?
Stella said calmly, “I’ve gone out by myself lots and lots of times.”
This was patently untrue—her first barefaced lie. I didn’t know what to do. Should I punish her? I didn’t have the parenting techniques for this. Putting Stella in a time-out would be no hardship for her. Was she openly defying me, trying to get a rise out of me? Was that what the cross was? Her refusing to eat at the table?
I looked at Irina hopelessly. She seemed to understand what was needed. She crouched down so her face was at the same height as Stella’s, and she took her firmly by the shoulders. “Now you listen,” she said, her voice fierce. I stared. I had never once spoken to Stella in a voice like that. I was about to intervene: How dare this woman talk to Stella like that? But something stopped me. Irina made sure she had Stella’s full attention. Then she barked, “In this country, child cannot walk alone. Understand?”
I waited for Stella to lash out, but she nodded solemnly. I was stunned. Is this what I should have been doing all along? When Stella displeased Pete’s mother, Dianne, she suggested CBD oil, convinced this was the balm for all ills. When Stella displeased my mother, she turned to me and said things like, “She certainly talks a lot,” and “Is that all she’s going to eat?” Stella turned up her nose at Dianne’s CBD gummies, and my mother’s little comments made her worse. But she seemed to take Irina’s words to heart.
“OK,” she said.
Irina stood up and laid a hand on my shoulder. Her hand felt warm and heavy. My eyes pricked, but I pulled myself together. “Thank you,” I said. “Are you going out somewhere?”
She looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen her. Her hair was darker, carefully dyed and neatly pinned back. She wore a white blouse and dark skirt, tan tights and what looked like men’s business shoes. She had the same blue eye shadow as when I’d seen her on Friday, but on both eyelids this time.
“I come to see you,” Irina said. She held up something mummified in cheesecloth. She nodded at Stella. “And Little Wolf, of course.”
Stella howled obligingly. “What’s that you’re holding?”
“Sorry, this is not nazook. This I make for your mother,” Irina said. “This is”—and then she said something that sounded as if she were trying to get a hair off her tongue. Stella and I stared at her, and she said, “In English, I translate as oily bread.”
“I like nazook,” Stella said.
Irina smiled. “Next time, maybe. Today I bring oily bread. My husband’s recipe. Makes mothers feel better.”
It did not sound at all appetizing, but I was touched. “Thank you so much, that’s very kind of you,” I said, meaning it. “I can’t wait to try it.” I reached out for the bread, but she held on to it.
“Blanka’s father has bakery. Long time ago. He teach me many breads. This is how I make oily bread: I roll dough to size of table, very, very, very thin. Then I roll it up and make…” She shook her head. “Shape like snail?”
“A spiral!” Stella said.
She nodded. “And then I roll out to size of table again and again roll up like snail.” She cradled the bread. “This I do seven times.”
“Seven,” I said. “Gosh.” Of course she wanted to watch me sample something she had worked so hard on. It was the least I could do after she had helped find Stella. And now that she had mentioned Blanka, I couldn’t send her away, a grieving mother who nonetheless had found the energy to make bread for me.
“Stella, will you draw me picture?” Irina asked once we got back to our house. “Maybe nice picture I can take home?” Stella beamed and trotted off to get her drawing supplies. Irina sat down on the sofa and unwound the bread from its wrappings. It looked like greasy, greyish pita. I’d written an etiquette column on how to politely choke down foods you don’t like. Charlotte Says: Take a tiny bite, so you can swallow it without tasting it, like a pill.
Then I smelled it, and for the first time in days, my stomach growled. It smelled like funnel cakes at a fair on a summer evening or french fries when you’re drunk. I picked it up in both hands and tore into it. It was rich and flaky and unbelievably delicious.
“This is amazing,” I said with my mouth full. I ate until the bread was gone.
