Page 86 of Gifted & Talented

“Car,” said Monster.

“Yes, car, very good. What do you see, honey? Trees? Can you say ‘tree’?”

Monster thought about it.

“Car,” he said.

“He’s a little behind, verbally,” I explained to Arthur, having forgotten I’d already said that. Arthur, meanwhile, had a faint smile on his face. His hands were tucked into his pockets, his eyes drifting upward, to the trees framing the gray sky overhead.

“Behind what?” Arthur asked.

“Behind other theoretical children,” I said. “Or, I don’t know, something.”

“I think he’s perfect,” said Arthur with a shrug. “What does he need to talk for? He knows they’re trees. It’s cars we’ve left out of the conversation.”

I’d been wondering why I’d ever felt so painfully in love with Arthur Wren, right up until that moment, when I remembered.

“So,” I said, to cover the embarrassing possibility that maybe Arthur would know what I was thinking, although I think I’ve made it clear that he was consistently very dense when it came to identifying the devotion of others, “you’ve got a case of the deaths.”

“I do come back, though, which is nice,” he said.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?”

I meant it as a joke, but Arthur took it very seriously. He turned his chin up to the sky again and—I cannot emphasize this enough—he is better looking than he has any right to be. It’s no wonder he has eight girlfriends and ten husbands. Or whatever. Let’s not focus on my opinion of this moment, though. It’s unproductive.

Arthur was thinking aboutthe problem,as if I had said it in proper noun terms.What’s The Problem?is what Arthur heard me ask him, even though, again, I was only joking.

“Do you think it’s possible to be in love with more than one person?” he asked.

Yes. For example, both the Wrens simultaneously, in troublingly inseverable ways.

I said, “I think we have a lot of different kinds of loves.”

“I might be having a daughter,” Arthur said, “named Riot.”

“Great name,” I said.

“That’s what I thought!” He turned a sunny glance at me. “Riot Wren.”

“Alliterative.”

“I know. What’s your son’s name?”

“Michael Jordan.”

“Stop. Do you think Riot Revolution Wren is overdoing it?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “That’s a solid ten steps too far.”

Arthur sighed heavily. “Damn.” The beams of the path creaked beneath his foot. We were winding our way through the woods at a glacial pace, though we had come to a bridge that crossed over a stream to another path on the opposite side.

Sometimes Monster liked to run back and forth across bridges. “Want to cross the bridge?” I asked him, hoping that might divert him from his unsteady gymnastic pursuits.

He considered it with a pensive frown. Then he returned his attention to the balance beam without a word.

“Okay,” I said a little glumly.

Arthur laughed.

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