Page 78 of Gifted & Talented

“Of course you do,” said Yves.

“No, I love him,” Gillian repeated.

“Yes, Gillian, that is—”

“Ilovehim,” she half screamed, and then suddenly she was crying, like, actually sobbing, full-on weeping, which was not a thing she ever did. She was crying so hard she stopped the car right there in the street, in the middle of a very steep road, because she couldn’t see. It was shocking, actually, the sheer vastness of emotion, which Gillian made an effort not to identify or feel, because Gillian was quietly filled with a horrible, trying ugliness. She’d had so many siblings, so many siblings, all these children relying on her, her mother who needed her to process everything quickly and move on, her mother’s latest marriage that seemed to follow the same trajectory each time, everyone needed something from Gillian, everyone, everyone, it was so fucking exhausting all the time being Gillian, or it had been until she met Arthur.

Arthur! Whom she had liked right away but not realized she would love, and when she married him she thought she was safe now, she wouldn’t need to worry anymore because Arthur would take care of her and she’d take care of him and it would be pleasant and transactional and she honestly wouldn’t mind if he had sex with other people because she didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about with sex and he would never force himself on her, god, he wouldn’t dream of it, so she had this image of them growing old in a fond, contented way, and she would help him and at the same time be able to focus on her studies, to center her passion on academia itself. She would have no thoughts in her mind about nurturing anything aside from her work, which was what she really loved.

And then, for the love of god, Arthur! He was so noisy, so essentially full of noise, he was always so physical, always in motion, but he knew she liked a certain amount of distance and he never subjected her to anything she did not like. He spoke about the future so beautifully, so poetically that she believed him, oh god, she believed him. Shebelievedhim! Arthur Wren said the world could be better, that itshouldbe better, and Gillian listened withglistening tears in her eyes and wanted to make everything softer for him, softer and sweeter, kinder and better, she loved him! Fucking Christ, but she loved him! She wept and wept until she was sure she’d be sick, she’d throw up over the side of the car, directly out onto the street until it blew into the face of the officer who’d gotten out of his vehicle and stood there knocking on her window, oh fuck.

“Ma’am,” said the cop, but Gillian couldn’t speak, she was too busy crying. She was a danger to herself and others because it was too late now, Arthur didn’t know and she didn’t know how to tell him! How do you express to someone that you didn’t necessarily love them when you said so at first but now, years later, after you have already made it perfectly acceptable for him to love other people becauseyou said you didn’t need it,that now you want him to devote himself to you on bended knee? Not even, and that was worse! She didn’t need anything from him! She was completely content to love him this way, heartsickly, for the rest of her life and it made her gag, she retched into her palms, the police officer looked alarmed and Yves was negotiating from the passenger side as if over the crimes of a terrorist and Gillian didn’t care. She loved her husband so much she was physicallyin pain,how could anything else possibly matter?

Eventually the cop helped her out of the car and drove away, and all the while she was hiccuping with effort, doubled over on the side of the road and struggling not to fall down one of the staircases that led into town, which she couldn’t properly see because her eyes were swimming. Oh fuck, the pain of it! And the policeman had called her “ma’am,” like she was eighty fucking years old! It was wretched, everything was catastrophe, Gillian Wren was having a mental breakdown and her heart was in shredded slivers in her palms, death by emotional papercut!

“I,” she gasped, “love,” another gasp, “him,” and of course the part of the sentence she couldn’t complete was I love himbut I can’t touch him,or I don’t really want him to touch me, or maybe it’s both, I’m not sure exactly, but it seems kind of a problem, logistically speaking.

“Oh yes, I see,” said Yves worriedly. “Shall we do a little practice, then? I could teach you, if you wanted?”

Gillian nodded her head with great difficulty, as by then she had a terrible headache. She had cried more in that one breakdown than she had for several years, and for the rest of the day she was unusually subdued, to the point where it almost seemed like a good idea to let Yves be some sort ofsubstitute for Arthur, the man she loved so fiercely it pained her, who did not really notice her because Philippa was there. And truthfully, Gillian did not dislike Philippa. She envied that Philippa knew what Arthur liked, what Arthur wanted, but Gillian also knew she loved a man who honored her love, or whatever he knew of it, which wasn’t very much, which was what made it altogether more painful. Because she wanted him to be happy and if Philippa and Yves made him happy then who was she to judge? OH GOD, THE PAIN!

But now it had been a couple of days and Gillian was acutely aware that she liked Yves, she liked him a great deal, she could see why Arthur would love him, could even see why Arthur would want him, because Yves had sensual hands and was, even for someone not especially won over by the concept of sex, a person who exuded it. Sex, that is. It seemed to come so naturally to him.

For example: “Arthur’s particular language of love is most certainly touch,” Yves told Gillian now, redwood branches rustling in the dark above the glass skylights. “He likes this; it means something to him.”

He stroked the place behind Gillian’s ear and she was mortified by how thoroughly she hated it.

“Well, I think it’s hopeless,” she replied, sitting back on the sofa with a sigh. Arthur was somewhere in the house with Philippa, Meredith had snuck out (not very successfully, considering they’d both seen her go), Eilidh was with Dzhuliya, and while Gillian didn’t know me very well yet, she knew I existed somewhere with a toddler in El Cerrito, and felt a profound pang of envy for me that she couldn’t yet explain.

“Maybe the problem is not you,” Yves advised, taking a seat beside Gillian and affectionately patting the air above her hand. “Maybe the problem is thatIam not Arthur.”

True, there was a glow of something from inside Gillian when she thought of Arthur touching her. Not a long embrace necessarily, but the moments their hands brushed when she fastened his American flag pin, or the way his eyes met hers whenever he heard something funny, a little crinkle of laughter that she supposed was not technically a touch, although it felt like it was. It felt like the sort of sweetness she wanted to dunk the whole world in until it came out better, more lovely, just for him.

None of which seemed worth mentioning aloud. “I thought you’d be spending more time with Philippa,” Gillian observed tangentially.

“No, things with Mouse have been fading for some time,” said Yves with a shrug. “She and I, we want different things. I expect I will have to tell her soon.”

Gillian felt a shock of unkindness. “You brought her here just to break up with her?”

“I didn’t bring her here,” Yves corrected gently. “I came to be with Arthur. Mouse decided she wanted to come along, and who am I to stop her? Although I do not think she is being truthful with him.”

“But what happens to the three of you, then, if there’s no you and her? Wait, sorry,” Gillian added belatedly, “I’m sure that’s very personal, and I’m afraid I don’t know much about, you know, ethical non-monogamy—”

“Oh, Gillian, this is hardly a shining example,” Yves told her with an ironic look that was almost unendurably handsome. “Arthur may love both of us and we may both love him, but the circumstances for us being together has never been what I would call unimpeachable.”

“What?” asked Gillian, feeling shocked.

“Oh darling, it’s nothing to be upset about,” Yves assured her, misunderstanding completely in a way that made Gillian feel disturbingly fond. “It is only that Mouse hates me passionately but cannot relinquish the person our relationship has made her.”

“What?” asked Gillian again, slightly squeakier this time.

“Mouse’s family is very poor, Gillian,” Yves said solemnly. “Well, not truly poor, not in the sense that she could ever be impoverished in any meaningful way. But in the fashionable scheme of things, you know, she is… How to put this? Completely destitute.”

“What?”

“And unfortunately Mouse is getting on in years and has very little to show for it,” Yves added with a genuine tinge of sadness, as if he hated to say it but couldn’t not, as he was under oath. “If I do not marry her then she will be thirty-two years old and unmarried, which is, you know, unacceptable in her circles.”

“What?”

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