Page 56 of Gifted & Talented

“Oh, definitely,” Meredith agreed. “She thinks we’re fucking assholes. But canyouthink of anyone else who could possibly help?”

The three of them looked at each other then.

The ghost of Lou that had been lingering in Meredith’s periphery was gone.

Why stay? They’d already invoked the real one.

“All right,” sighed Arthur. “Then I guess let’s go find Lou.”

Another Brief Note from God

I may not have been completely honest with you about my position of objectivity in the narrative.

The Life and Times of Meredith Wren

On December 16 at 9:00AMsharp in the midst of an unseasonably warm wind, Meredith Honora Liang Wren is born with wide, incisive black eyes, a shock of black hair, a helplessness to her parents’ slavering Anglophilia that will only be exacerbated over the years with other, more intense commitments to aesthetic, and a healthy wail of indignation. The world rejoices, for thusly an earth-shaker walks among us! Blessed are the eldest daughters for they shall inherit the generational burdens, et cetera, et cetera—what can possibly go wrong!

Meredith begins to walk at the tender age of eleven months. Shortly afterward, on November 21, her brother, Arthur, is born. Meredith says her first word a month later. It is “no,” and seems to apply generally, without specification.

When Meredith is four and Arthur is three and both have grudgingly become used to the presence of the other, their sister Eilidh is born on a lovely spring day in early May. Meredith immediately assumes her rank as family lieutenant and is assigned (by herself) care of the brand-new infant. Eilidh is a quiet baby who doesn’t walk until she’s nearly two, partially because Arthur keeps pushing her over and partially because Meredith insists on trying to carry her, but also because who in Eilidh Olympia Liang Wren’s position would deign to walk, like a common peasant, when offered so many fortunate alternatives?

It’s summer when Meredith’s mother dies, hot and bright and forever undermining Meredith’s childlike belief that bad things can only happen in bad weather. By then the family has moved from their home in Palo Alto to the gloomy, shadowed house on the forest floor in Marin County and their father has begun to withdraw from the daily mundanities of Wrenfare Magitech, choosing instead the remoteness of being willfully unreachablefor his tyrannical captaincy of the ship. By the time Persephone Wren is discovered post–heart attack by their housekeeper, nine-year-old Meredith is waiting patiently for an adult outside the bedroom door as if to guard her mother’s enchanted sleep. It is unclear to the housekeeper and to Meredith’s father whether Meredith understands what has happened to her mother, though if Thayer had been paying attention, he would have known that Meredith was so advanced in school that her parents had been advised to advance her through both the first and second grades. Persephone declined on both parents’ behalf, stating that just because her daughter was precocious didn’t mean she was necessarily ready for the realities of life. When Thayer Wren is called in for Meredith’s parent-teacher conference that year in the weeks following his wife’s demise, he is advised to advance Meredith from fourth grade to fifth, so that a more challenging curriculum might coax her out of her grief. He agrees. Meanwhile, Arthur’s teacher advises that although Arthur has an incredible aptitude for schoolwork, it might be best that he stay back and repeat the second grade, just to catch him up with the other kids emotionally—Arthur is dealing poorly with the loss of his mother and has begun to hit and kick the other children and occasionally himself in moments of frustration. Thayer declines, instead enrolling Arthur in baseball camp, to more pragmatically deal with his hypermasculine rage. Eilidh is, of course, a perfect angel. Why wouldn’t she be?

At the local Marin elementary school, all of the children hate Meredith—except for one.

Her name is Maria Odesa Guadalupe de León and there are two main things wrong with her. One, she is ugly. Two, she is poor. Okay, three, her clothes are shabby and too big and for boys, because they belonged first to her mother’s older cousin’s baby, who coincidentally is now fifteen. Four, she brings food to school and it smells weird, not like pretty Meredith’s neat little prepackaged lunch that Thayer oversees in a managerial way, from on high, but doesn’t personally pack. Five, she keeps calling herself a witch and cursing the other children, to the point where the teachers are concerned she has developmental problems. She should haveoutgrown behaviors like that by now and her parents have been called in multiple times but her mother is always working, her father is no longer (perhaps never has been?) in the picture, and her two grandmothers who hate each other attend these meetings together and proceed to bicker in separate languages the entire time. It’s impossible to tell which grandmother speaks better English or is more, you know, reasonable. They are both very Catholic and almost identical, so it’s unclear why they don’t get along.

The answer, in case you’re curious, is that Bernila’s beautiful whore of a daughter has always been too good for Lupe’s precious bastard boy-king of a son, or something along those lines. As the teachers and administrators correctly observed, the two grandmothers have nothing in common except everything—their hatred of each other, their fear of eternal damnation, and the fact that they are too old, too brown, and too insane to work productive office jobs and so instead take on various positions of domestic labor, nannying or cleaning or cooking or caregiving whenever there’s cash on the table. And, of course, the daily task of caring for their granddaughter, who has unfortunately bound them to each other for life. She is Lulu to her mother, Marisa Lou to her Lola, Lupita to her Abuela, Maria to the teachers who can’t understand why a child would have so many goddamn names. But most importantly, she is Lou to Meredith Wren.

When Meredith asks Lou why she doesn’t have a dad, Lou asks Meredith whyshedoesn’t have amom. Because my mom is dead, says Meredith. Oh, that’s sad, says Lou, if my mom was dead I’d definitely bring her back. How? says Meredith. Well I’d have to ask my Lola, says Lou, but she and Abuela both say I’m a really good witch for my age so probably I could figure it out. Are you really a witch? says Meredith. Yes but it’s not really special, anyone can be a witch, says Lou. Oh that makes sense, says Meredith. Yeah, says Lou, anyone can learn to do it but it’s definitely real, I don’t know why nobody believes me, they could just do it themselves and find out. I’m not a witch but I’m a genius, Meredith says, that’s why I’m in this grade and why the other kids don’t like me. I’m pretty sure the other kids don’t like you because you are kind of mean and weird, says Lou, but it’s cool that you’re a genius. If I teach you to be a genius, says Meredith, will you teach me to be a witch and bring my mom back? Yeah I guess so, you can come over to my house after school if you want, I’m not really busy on Wednesdays, says Lou.

Bernila, Lou’s maternal grandmother, doesn’t necessarily take to Meredith right away, but when Lupe says very explicitly to Bernila’s daughter (Lou’s mother, Daniela-called-Dani) that she does not like Meredith and should no longer allow Meredith in their house because she’s a very bad influence on Lou, Bernila is morally obligated to take the opposite stance and instead become very attached. It is Bernila who teaches Meredith how to soften a person’s heart, how to change their mind, to find the pliable part of a person’s soul and weave them into submission, which forces Lupe to take Meredith aside and tell her that Bernila is just a stupid village witch who doesn’t know anything except how to raise whore daughters who corrupt precious boy-king sons, and that real magic is something you call upon like a spirit to do mainly the same thing Bernila said it did. Meredith asks how such things can coexist with Catholicism and both grandmothers tell her to be quiet unless she wants to go to hell. Lou is mostly just happy to have a friend.

Together, Lou and Meredith readThe Count of Monte Cristoand plot revenge on their ribbon-plaited bullies; they research spells on the early innocence of Meredith’s father’s internet. Meredith, Lola observes in private to Lou, has terrifying amounts of willpower. Meredith can mind-over-matter all day, to the point of near nonexistence—to the point where she is more stubbornness than girl. ButLou,Lola says, is a little bit more well-rounded—for Lou, everything is within her grasp. It all depends on how badly she wants to reach it, which is something Lou must decide for herself.

Arthur, who now has to spend a lot of his day playing sports but notallof his day, notices that Meredith is doing something secretive that she doesn’t want him involved in. At first she tells him to go away, but then he nearly kills himself in the crossfires of an unexplained electrical surge and thus, at Lou’s urging, Arthur isgrudgingly permitted to tag along. Lupe instantly adores him, so Bernila takes the position of harboring a lifelong grudge. (On her deathbed, she tells Lou not to ever get involved again with That Demon Wren Boy, who will surely lead her astray—Bernila can tell because she knows these things, she’s just blessed. “Okay, well, I haven’t spoken to Arthur Wren in about seven years,” Lou tells her, and Bernila uses the last of her strength to shout “GOOD, DON’T.”) During this time, Eilidh does ballet.

Meredith’s middle school teachers recognize that Meredith has an incredible aptitude for math and science, and particularly the burgeoning field of biomancy, which is a growing area of biomechanics that marries with the supercomputational advancements of magitech. They suggest a boarding school, the Ainsworth Academy, which is a Harvard feeder school and has an excellent reputation in the biomancy field. They add that Meredith seems abnormally interested in childlike things, like the use of magic for “spells,” and after Meredith has an altercation with another child (Ryan Behrend, a little shithead who had it coming, but still, the district has rules), they suspect it will be best for Meredith’s future if she gains some distance from her childhood home; her emotional growth seems to be stunted by the early loss of her mother. Thayer mainly hears “boarding school” and says oh hell yes.

You should come, Meredith tells Lou. I can’t afford it, Lou replies, having become aware by then of her position in society, which is to say her general irrelevance. Let me ask my dad if you can come with me, says Meredith.

Thayer says who the fuck is Lou? Followed by Grow up, Meredith, you have to learn to be on your own. People will always try to ride your coattails because you’re a Wren. You’re not supposed to be like other people because you’re not like them. You’ll make new friends at your new school.

Meredith, a genius, fills out paperwork on Lou’s behalf and forges Lou’s mother’s signature. Lou gets a full ride scholarship to the Ainsworth Academy and doesn’t realize that from then on, Meredith’s philosophy will beI gave you a future, so now you owe something to me. But Lou is grateful, her mother even moreso, and Lou says a tearful goodbye to her family while Meredith waits in line for security with someone from the airline, holding her back very stiff and straight like her father always tells her geniuses do.

Lest this make you feel sorry for Meredith Wren, let me remind you: Lots of children lose their mothers or have fathers who don’t really care. And many of those children do not go on to become white-collar grifters—although, statistically speaking, many of the ones born to billionaires do.

Meredith and Lou both excel at cryptography, computer science, and biomancy, though neither ever publicly confesses their secret dabblings in witchcraft, which despite the awe-inspiring age of MagicTMis not viewed with any more legitimacy than magic ever was before it became commercialized for corporate use. Magic the unofficial version continues to refer to individual practitioners in lesbian astrology communes or third-world immigrants who pray to the god of their colonizers. Meredith and Lou never speak of what they are taught by Lupe and Bernila, though they both guiltily know to whom they owe their talent, their proficiency, and their love.

Lupe dies of cancer from lifelong exposure to asbestos (in the walls of her Guatemalan primary school, the ceiling of her first American apartment, the many buildings she was hired to clean that were never up to code) during the spring semester of Lou and Meredith’s sophomore year, the same year Arthur attends an all-boys’ boarding school called Canongate Hall, some thirty minutes from the Ainsworth Academy. Meredith flies back to San Francisco in the aisle seat with her hand in Lou’s, Arthur on Lou’s other side staring quietly out the window. Eilidh is now considered a ballet prodigy, though the idea of something so unproductive now feels so distant from Meredith’s world of ambition and academic elitism that she no longer knows what to say to her, except to note with some suppressed envy that Eilidh is too skinny, like their mother was.

Meredith excels at tennis, playing in the national championships every year, lacing up her fancy, powder-white running shoes every day, pushing herself for trophies and the occasional approvinglook from Thayer. Lou has no time for extracurriculars, because free tuition doesn’t mean free books or free housing or free food or the right clothes to avoid the sniggers from the other kids in the halls. She shoplifts from time to time until Meredith catches her doing it and asks if she needs money. After all, Meredith points out with her ivory tennis pleats sharp as teeth, it would be a waste of time bothering to get Lou into Ainsworth if she just got herself kicked out.

If Lou hadn’t been sixteen years old, she probably could have understood that Meredith, who has never had a friend except for Lou and the annoying brother Meredith pretends she can’t shake because it’s easier than acknowledging that she actually adores him, does not want Lou to jeopardize her own future. But Lou is getting tired of being told about Her Future, about how bright it is,if—andonly if—she says the right things and ignores the parts of her background that are unsavory, the pieces of her heart that don’t contribute to anything Productive, the position she holds in society and the capital importance of her Getting Out. Out of what—Marin? Lou has been the poorest fish in all the most opulent ponds, kept afloat by the quicksilver charity of rich people, and the fuckery of it is that she actually does long for their approval. Shelikesbeing told that she’s special. She doesn’t mind the threat that if she doesn’t succeed, she’ll go back to being nothing, as if “nothing” is a thing she has honest-to-god once been. The truth is that to Lou, her mother’s life, the lives of her grandmothers, her absent and constantly down-on-his-luck father—itisscary! Itdoesseem pointless and worth fearing! The idea that she could fall from grace, itterrifiesher. So even when the townies mock her for being a rich person’s pet and the rich people mistake her for being a cheap townie, she can ignore it because The Future is calling. Someday, Lou can afford things her mother never could—that her grandmothers could barely have dreamt of—if she just meetstheirmetrics, if she followstheirrules. If she simply jumps when she’s told to jump—if she does it perfectly, the best jumper in class—then how can anyone ever deny her? A graduate of the Ainsworth Academy goes to Harvard, then they work on Wall Street or something, Loudoesn’t know and doesn’t care. She knows that Ainsworth means money, which means safety, which means freedom. She will never have to worry about how to pay the rent. She will never have to wonder whether a cough is bad enough to see the doctor. She will never have to hear a landlord tell her he’ll call ICE if she complains about roaches, about the gas line that seems to constantly leak, about the way a fleeting whim can suddenly make their shitty house untenably expensive. Poverty is in a thousand ways a death sentence, and Lou, who’s had a happier childhood than Meredith, understands this deep in her soul, and it’s a bone-chilling fear, the idea that if anyone ever casts her out of Eden, nothing she knows how to do is of any real value. The fear that being gifted only matters if you, yourself, are the right gift.

But Lou is sixteen and Meredith’s being a bitch, so when someone offers Lou a lot of money to write an essay, Lou uses it to buy new shoes that don’t squeak in the halls, and then a hoodie that has the right label, and then a pair of jeans that make the right boys look more closely at her Rubenesque third-world ass.

Meredith’s eyes look a little glazed over when she saysWhat if we could invent something that could actually make people happy. “You said you were a witch,” Meredith says in a quiet voice, “and you promised you would help me bring my mother back.” Which wasn’t spiritually true, because Lou was like nine years old when she said that and even magic has its limits, but more importantly, it’s just so fucking morose. They’ve been drifting apart ever since Abuela died, maybe because it’s becoming more real to Lou, the idea of mortality. The idea that she has to cash in this golden egg for something—that she has to make it worth it, fit in, find her way to The Future, because otherwise she’s just a dumb girl who wasn’t there when the grandmother who raised her died alone, still working, still scrubbing floors on her hands and knees. At the time Meredith says it, Lou is late for a date with the football captain who doesn’t look her way in the halls but tells her he loves her under the bleachers, when her bra is off, while Lou tries to feel something like desire, which is a sexier form of fear. Desire is desperation; it’s looking for signs; it’s if you look at me right now it means you actuallydolove me, you’re not justusing me, you wouldn’t touch me like this if I was nothing to you, if I was actually nothing then wouldn’t I know? Choose me and it means everyone else was wrong, I am choosable! Pick me and it means that somehow, by some ineffable metric, I win!

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