Page 24

24.

I was in luck: Wesley had a last-minute cancellation, so I was able to take Stella to see him the following day, after I collected her from school. In the car on the way there, she asked, “When is Irina coming back?”

“She’s gone on holiday,” I improvised. I’d tell Stella the truth when she was herself again. By then, she would have adjusted to not seeing Irina.

“For how long?”

I shrugged, and Stella slumped into her seat. My heart ached, but I had to do what was best for her.

We’d barely arrived in the waiting room when Wesley Bachman opened his office door, bang on time. He was clean-shaven and shiny-faced, dressed in jacket, shirt, and pressed khakis. He projected competence. I felt underdressed in my old grey jumper and maternity jeans. “Sorry about the drama outside,” he said. “They’re tree-trimming so the branches don’t interfere with a power line. Necessary work, but I do wish they weren’t doing it during office hours.”

I said it was fine. It was a pretty office, the walls painted blue with white clouds. There was a wooden dollhouse and a dress-up chest with costumes spilling out of it. There was a craft table, a colorful tent with a flag on top. In a corner of the room, there was a small sofa with two chairs opposite, where adults could talk.

Wesley gestured for me to sit on the sofa. “Stella, you can do whatever you prefer. You can sit with us or play.”

Stella knelt down before the wooden play kitchen. I was surprised. I’d never had to encourage gender-neutral play because Stella wasn’t interested in the pretend cooking and serving of meals, let alone cleaning or taking care of babies. It had always struck me as a little absurd, the way girls like Lulu and her friends feverishly cooked and served food, playing at the very activities that their moms complained about to each other. Now Stella pulled the sleeve of her cardigan over her hand and rubbed it over the stovetop. “What are you doing, sweetie?” I asked.

“Cleaning,” Stella muttered.

“Don’t use your sleeve, baby,” I said.

Wesley asked me questions about Stella and wrote notes on a clipboard. It wasn’t easy to hear everything he said, because the saw revved outside. I kept expecting Stella to put her hands over her ears. Instead, she was intent on removing every plastic saucepan and teacup from a shelf so she could wipe the shelf. She was now using her skirt. The shelf was probably dusty and sticky, but I decided to let it go. Wesley asked some basic questions, and then he said, “How was the birth?”

“It wasn’t great, but what birth is? Not that you would know.” I left him to interpret the tone of that one. I wasn’t about to give this stranger a blow-by-blow account of my episiotomy.

“It’s one of the questions I have to ask,” said Wesley. “What about friends? Does Stella play with other kids?”

“Not until recently.”

“Lulu invites me to her house,” Stella contributed.

Wesley smiled. “Great! Playdates are great. Now, tell me. Does Stella have sensitivity to noises, chafing clothes, anything like that?”

I explained that these things used to be challenging but now were not.

“Excellent. Now, eating, sleeping—normal, would you say, or—?”

I admitted that she ate a wider variety of foods now. “And she used to have a lot of trouble falling asleep. Now she sleeps well.”

Wesley nodded. “She looks very healthy.”

“Hm,” I said. Was “very healthy” code for “chunky”?

Wesley clicked his pen. “You don’t agree?”

“It’s unexpected, the change. We’re a skinny family.” I saw the look on Wesley’s face and explained I didn’t care if Stella was on the heavier side, as long as that’s how she was naturally. Pete was lean, I was on the slender side, so if Stella was becoming chunky, it likely wasn’t natural.

Wesley put his head on one side. “Only being slim is natural?”

“Of course not. I simply want her to be myself. I mean, herself.” The playroom smelled unpleasant, sweetish, like apple juice and glue sticks. I placed my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, I misspoke.”

“Are you feeling OK?” Wesley asked.

“Fine.” No need to mention that since giving up Irina’s bread, I was back to round-the-clock morning sickness. I didn’t want to seem weak.

“What kinds of things do you and Stella like to do together?”

I told him how even when I worked full-time, I’d spent as much time with her as possible. We read, we went on walks, we had secret games. “Like SkyPo,” I said. Wesley nodded and twinkled, and I explained.

SkyPo (rhyming with typo) were mysterious enemies in the sky who were out to destroy us. We hid from SkyPo under bushes and trees. The birds were sometimes on SkyPo’s side, their brains controlled by SkyPo’s birdbrain-control technology, and sometimes on our side, desperately trying to give us messages in their bird language.

I suddenly stopped, seeing Wesley’s twinkle fade away. SkyPo always seemed to transform the ordinary stuff of the world—pigeons, bushes, clouds—into an epic drama. But did I somehow make Stella afraid of the world, of clouds and birds? Maybe it wasn’t actually such a fun game.

“You mentioned some other changes in Stella that you have concern about,” Wesley said. “I mean apart from the eating and sleeping and such.”

“She hardly reads anymore, and she talks less,” I said. “A lot less. She’s always been hyperverbal. Until recently, she read constantly. Talked in elaborate sentences with subclauses. Now, it’s like…it’s like her language is declining. Like she’s forgetting it.”

Once, Stella would have listened to our conversation and understood every word, no matter what circumlocutions we used. But now, as we discussed her, she polished the stovetop, using her sleeve again, showing no sign of paying attention to us. I felt a sudden urge to quiz her. Did she remember the name of that jellyfish that could turn itself into a baby?

“Tell me, did you have her IQ tested?” Wesley asked.

“There was no need. She was using phrases like memento mori when she was five years old.”

“Have you heard of asynchronous learning?” Wesley asked. “Different parts of the brain develop at different speeds. Sometimes if one part is developing, the other parts aren’t keeping up. That’s how you get a child who can use sophisticated sentence structures but who hasn’t learned to share yet. It’s possible that the verbal part of Stella’s brain was developing really fast and now the other parts of her brain are catching up. The playing, the socializing—those are as important as reading books.”

“But it’s not like the verbal part of her brain is no longer developing as fast. It’s shutting down.”

“Being a parent can take some unexpected turns,” said Wesley. “Our young people are figuring out who they are every day. I’ve got a client whose daughter was a school refuser, didn’t go to school for a year, barely came out of her room. All she did was these incredibly realistic oil paintings of dead fish. Now she’s back at school, doing A-levels in geography and computer science. Her mother’s over the moon.”

“Those fish paintings sound more interesting to me,” I said.

“Hm,” said Wesley. He looked at his list of questions. “How is your relationship with your mother?”

What did that matter? But I didn’t want to sound defensive. So I gave my stock response when asked about Edith. “She and I were very different people.”

“She passed away?”

“About nine months ago.”

Wesley nodded and leaned forward in a way that made me think he’d learned it in therapy school. “Leaning forward at a forty-five-degree angle shows compassion.”

“That could put stress on Stella too,” he said.

“They weren’t close either. It’s when Stella found out about Blanka that she started to change. I told you. When she found out about Blanka and then about Blanka’s father.”

The room really reeked. I wished he would open a window. I pulled out my handkerchief and placed it over my nose and mouth. “Excuse me.”

Cherie once sent me a link to that famous essay about adjusting to having a child with issues. The essay compared it to thinking you’re going to Italy on holiday and then realizing you’re going to Holland. As long as you embrace Holland, you can still have a great holiday. But this wasn’t Holland. This was floating on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic. I cast about for some concrete way to convince Wesley that Stella was changing for the worse. “She started keeping a diary. She’s always writing in it. It’s like a compulsion,” I said.

“That makes you uncomfortable,” Wesley said.

“Because nobody writes in their diary about how peachy their life is, do they?” I glanced over at her to make sure she was preoccupied, and then I whispered, “She smells different.”

Wesley looked startled. “How so?”

I didn’t want to tell him about the vanilla and the honeysuckle, about my life’s most private, glorious moment. But I told him she smelled of someone else’s laundry detergent and of gomgush, even though I used the same detergent I always had, and she hadn’t eaten gomgush in days.

“I like gomgush,” Stella contributed, “but I’m not allowed to have it anymore.”

“We’re vegetarian, remember? ‘Not allowed,’?” I repeated playfully, and rolled my eyes.

Wesley didn’t smile back. “What’s gomgush—is that how you say it?”

“It’s a lamb stew,” I said. “Traditionally for banquets.”

“Sounds interesting,” Wesley said. “How—”

“We’re here to talk about Stella,” I said. “Not cooking.”

“I’d like to hear what Stella thinks. Can you come and sit with us, Stella?” She heaved herself up, shuffled over, and then lowered herself onto the sofa. I wanted to point this out to Wesley: She didn’t even move like an eight-year-old. She moved like an overweight adult.

“Your mom says you’re interested in birds,” Wesley said. “The sky police?”

“The police?” Stella looked alarmed.

“SkyPo,” I clarified. “Remember? The baddies in the sky who are out to get us?”

A muscle twitched in Wesley’s face. Stella shook her head, apparently nonplussed. “I know you remember,” I said. “You have to remember. Do you really not remember? SkyPo?”

She looked blank. The chainsaw revved as it tore through the branch. That poor tree, having one of its limbs torn off.

“So, I hear you lost your babysitter recently,” Wesley said. “How are you feeling about that?”

“I’m not lost,” Stella said, shrugging. “I’m not dead.” She said these phrases in a slightly contentious manner, emphasis on not .

I’m not lost. I’m not dead.

Like we’d been telling her that she herself was dead, and she was contesting this lie: Here I am.

I squeezed her hand. Her skin felt cold to the touch, as if she’d climbed out of an icy river. I turned to Wesley. “Please. You have to help us.”

“It’s very difficult to come to terms with change and death. It’s one of the most difficult things, in fact. It’s something we work on our whole life long.”

What was I supposed to do with that? The revving chainsaw really was unbearable. I leaned towards Wesley and whispered, “You have to help us. I’m desperate. I’d do anything for her. I’d throw myself under a train if I thought it would do any good.”

Wesley took a breath. “Stella, can you go and look at the books in the waiting room while I wrap things up with your mom?”

When she’d left the room, he said, “I have to ask you some questions, Charlotte. Do you feel that you may harm yourself or anyone else? Are you having suicidal thoughts?”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes the best way to help your child is to help yourself. I think perhaps you could benefit from therapy.”

I got up. “I’ve heard enough.”

Wesley stood between me and the door. “Do you not like me?”

“That’s not a fair question,” I said. Obviously, I didn’t like him.

Wesley studied me. “Maybe this is helping Stella.”

“Telling you that I don’t like you?”

“Bingo. Explain.”

I didn’t have time for this. It was like a one-night stand asking you to have an in-depth breakup conversation. But I also felt that if I didn’t explain why I didn’t like him, it would look like I was an unhinged woman who hated any therapist who suggested that she, not her daughter, was the problem.

I took a deep breath. “Because you say incredibly obvious things as if they’re profound insights. Because you’ve told me private stuff about your clients that I don’t think they’d want you to share. Worst of all, because Stella’s problem doesn’t fit into any boxes, instead of trying to solve it, you’re taking the easy way out, which is to act like I’m the problem. Or my mother is.” I paused. “Or her mother.”

I felt pleased that it took Wesley a minute to compose himself. When he recovered, he nodded and said, “Now we’re being honest.”

I stood up and opened the door to the waiting room, where Stella scribbled intently with a crayon. “Stella, we’re leaving.”

Wesley couldn’t help me work out what was wrong with her. But as I marched Stella down the stairs, I figured out a way: the diary. It had to contain her secret thoughts and fears. It would explain why she’d changed so much.

···

That evening, while Stella was downstairs crocheting, I stole into her room. I’d promised Pete not to read the diary, but Stella’s well-being hung in the balance. It sat right there on her desk. Almost like she wanted me to read it. I opened it at random, partway through. The room seemed to tilt, and the diary fell to the floor.

Then I heard the front door opening and Pete coming up the stairs, two at a time. I put the diary back on her desk, but I didn’t have time to get out of her room.

“Just doing a sweep for dirty cups and plates,” I told him as I met him in the doorway.

“She didn’t have any?” Pete said.

I shook my head, but he was looking over my shoulder: that morning’s porridge bowl was on the floor by her bed, next to a half-full juice glass.

His face darkened. “Were you reading her diary? Is that why you were in here?”

I looked at the floor. Pete was livid. “We talked about this. We agreed we wouldn’t read it even if it was open. She needs her privacy.”

“From me?”

He stepped into the corridor. “Let’s go into our room so we can be more private.” I followed him, and he continued, “I saw Stella downstairs. I asked her what you did this afternoon, and she said you took her to see someone called Wesley. I’m guessing that is Wesley Bachman from my Google Doc? We agreed therapy is not a good idea for her right now.”

“ You agreed. I didn’t,” I said. “I’m sorry I went behind your back. I was planning to tell you.” At the right time. “I thought if I went, Wesley would confirm that she needs help.”

“And did he?”

I was silent, and Pete took a deep breath and blew slowly out through his mouth. “I’m worried about you, obsessing about Stella. Can you not just take a break? You need time for yourself. Do some more coloring, you’re good at that.”

He hadn’t even meant this as an insult, and that hurt more. “I’m also good at being a mother,” I said.

“Maybe I should call my mom, since you’re still feeling sick this far on in the pregnancy. You need to feel better and start eating. She could come and stay for a while.”

“I don’t want another person in the house right now.” Judging me and how I parented Stella. Pete’s mom, Dianne, would surely say that Stella was “looking great.” Then she’d lay a hand on my arm and invite me to do some chakra-opening breathing with her.

Pete flexed his hand, made it a fist, flexed it again. “This would be so much easier if we still had Irina.”

“I told you why I got rid of her.”

“But you didn’t even bother to ask me what I think. You make your parenting decisions unilaterally.”

“Because I’m the one who’s with Stella all the time! If you want to have an equal share in the decision-making, you should have an equal share in the childcare.”

Pete took my shoulders. “Then let me do more. The school’s closed tomorrow—that teacher training thing. I’ll take her for the whole day. You go and see Cherie, or something. Go to yoga.”

I thought about how I’d tried to convince Wesley by focusing on her changed smell. Of course, Wesley was in no position to judge this, but Pete was there when she was born. He’d smelled the caramelizing sugar, the honeysuckle.

“What about her smell?” I said. “You must have noticed the change. How do you explain that?”

Pete scratched fiercely at his beard. “Her smell ?” He sounded confused, almost afraid, but what did he have to be afraid of? That made me even more desperate to convince him that I was right. But the more I tried to sound calm and rational, the more I sounded like I was protesting too much. I thought for a moment.

“Look, I know you don’t have my pregnant sense of smell, but it’s so obvious. I can smell it in here right now.” Lamb and chlorine and something sweetish, not in a good way. “Can’t you smell it?” I pleaded.

Pete inhaled doubtfully, and I said, “Remember how she smelled, that first night? So wondrous. I lay awake all night breathing it in.”

“The first night? I did notice the smell, yes.” Pete looked sheepish. “I always thought she smelled like, um, the birth canal. Maybe it was your hormones that made her smell so good to you.”

I stared at him. Pete clearly didn’t understand what I was talking about at all. That night was the closest I’d got to the molten core of love at the center of it all, to my true purpose in the scheme of things. It was more than just oxytocin. I’d always assumed we loved Stella the same amount, but I now saw that his love for her was not as powerful as mine.

Pete stayed up late to work, and I went to bed alone. When I closed my eyes, I could see her handwriting, so small and careful, like someone was going to whack her hand with a ruler if there was a pen stroke out of place. But few of the letters she had formed were ones I recognized. Stella didn’t care about leaving the diary in plain sight, because she wrote in code.