Page 142 of Gifted & Talented

Meredith: What are you going to do while I’m in prison?

Eilidh: No idea. Probably eat pizza.

Meredith: Cool.

She rises to her feet and exits the room.

Eilidh looks around at her father’s office with a sense of finality. The thing in her chest shifts around to make room.

Eilidh: Bye, Dad. You weren’t very good at this. But I love you.

She exits the room and closes the charred office door. The canopy-laced sun hits the panes of the wood and fades gradually into the floor until stars blink again in the blackening sky.

End scene.

82

Lest you think I’ve forgiven the Wrens entirely, I don’t know. I don’t think life works that way. Certainly giving me a large sum of money is helpful. Consider that as a modellable tactic if you have people in your life with which to make amends.

It’s not like forgiveness is some single-use act, like swiping a credit card. I think it’s more like a policy. I agree to letting bygones be bygones on a routine basis in order to enjoy some communal peace. Not unconditionally! Fool me twice and all of that. Forgive but never forget, as Lola would say, usually as a threat.

I do think it will be a daily exercise, the whole dismissing my impulse to be one of them, the desire to slip effortlessly into their world. But as I get older, I achieve a pretty sublime form of clarity in which I accept myself, and no longer fear that my borders are permeable to the approval of others. As time goes on, I am less and less susceptible to the expectations of those outside myself, and as a result, the person I am can be more gently cherished.

This, again, is not the same thing as happiness. It’s closer to setting down a burden that I have spent my whole life piling atop my back—what am I worth, who will love me? These are questions I don’t need the answer to every second of every day (for at least five beautiful minutes, I am now allowed to know, with perfect certainty, who I am and why I’m worthy) for which I think the definition is closest to rest.

Again, not technically happiness—that’s a high ask.

But I won’t lie to you. It is pretty fucking great.

Crossing the Richmond bridge is a nightmare, of course it is. Friday traffic is enough to dissolve the boundaries of madness. By the time I make it home, I’ve already missed Monster’s dinner, which leaves me feeling like a terrible mother, because what was I doing that was so important? What am Ieverdoing that’s more important? Do you know where your children areright now? It’s not enough to simply leave enrichment in the child’s enclosure. Read more books to them, for fuck’s sake!

You see how exhausting it is, existing? Why I chose to add another member to my personal survival policy is a mystery, will always be a mystery—sometimes I think about where I would be if I could do whatever I want, and the answer is almost never what I’m doing.

But then again, sometimes it is.

I walk into the house just before seven and it smells like adobo, like garlic rice. The exoskeleton of a mango hedgehog is sitting limp on a plastic cutting board, the dishes soaking in the sink.

“No man will ever date you with your mother in the house,” Mom said when I asked her to move in with me, after Ben left.

“Good,” I believe is what I said. Ben doesn’t know how to make adobo and he buys mango pre-sliced from Demeter. Which admittedly, I do, too. Luxury is a pre-sliced mango.

Everything feels quiet. After you have a child, you develop what I call The Fear—that is, The Fear of waking a sleeping baby. Not everyone has this, I’ve noticed. Some people have babies that sleep a lot, or at all, so not everyone has stormed topless to the front door screaming at the delivery man with a kitchen knife about how the baby just got to sleep, do you think I care about the mail’s arrival? It’s a fucking shampoo I bought on subscription that comes automatically every six weeks, a total grift, I need to cancel it, I certainly don’t need to run to the door!

Anyway, the point is that a switch in me turned on and it’ll never turn off, so I tiptoe into Monster’s room, where he almost never actually sleeps. Usually I rock him in the chair for what is sometimes hours before I put him down, but inevitably, he ends up in bed with me.

I peak inside and Monster has his head on my mom’s shoulder while she rocks. She smiles tiredly at me. I move to leave, but Monster is awake—of course he is. He perks up the moment I walk into the room, as if this whole time he’s just been dicking around.

“AaaaAAAAH,” he says, which isn’t Mama. But spiritually, I get the point.

“Where’s Ben?” I ask, since it is, after all, Ben’s time.

“Oh, something came up, he said he’d be back in a couple of hours to stay the night here. I thought you were going to be gone longer,” says Mom, as Monster wriggles out of her lap and sprints over to me. He’s wearing animalpajamas. He only knows one animal sound, the monkey. Every time he does it I feel like I’m going to pass out from bliss.

“I was, but—” Monster tackles me and I nearly get taken out. “Oof.” He grabs my hands and starts using them as, like, I don’t know. Stairway railings. “Okay, okay—”

He climbs up the length of my body until I’m holding him. He stares at me for a second and then takes my face between his hands and pulls my cheeks so I’m smiling like the Joker. Then he tucks his arms in and puts his head on my shoulder.

“I’ll go when he’s asleep,” I say to my mom. “I’m not in a hurry.”

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