Page 85 of Gifted & Talented

“Did you say de León?” Eilidh asked, recognizing my surname. “That’s my sister’s ex–best friend.”

“I know,” said Dzhuliya. “Your dad met with her three times over the summer. He was interested in something she was developing. As far as I know, negotiations were tentatively moving forward until, you know. This.” She waved an unsteady hand at the sharedness of their circumstance. “But he had Legal draw up an offer, which is currently in his inbox awaiting approval. If he intended to pull the trigger, he would have done it this week.”

The answer was so coolly informed that Eilidh was a little taken aback. “Really? But you just made it sound like—”

“I told you, I didn’t think it was in anyone’s best interest to make Meredith angrier. Nothing I just told you is public knowledge, and if she wants to ask her friend about it, she can.” Dzhuliya’s tone and expression appeared intimately informed, the air of someone—like many of the people Eilidh worked with at Wrenfare—with a shrewd awareness of the industry.

Eilidh felt another pang of fundamental wrongness, though she couldn’t say why. She had always known Dzhuliya was part of Wrenfare’s ecosystem in a way Eilidh wasn’t; the entire purpose of Eilidh’s amicable shield had always been that Dzhuliya was a Them and not an Us. (Which of course begged the question of what remained of “us” without Thayer, the answer being something Eilidh couldn’t bear.)

There was also, again, Eilidh’s inability to imagine Dzhuliya separate from Thayer in the context of his life, while being equally unable to imagine herselfwithDzhuliya without the necessity of his death. The three of them triangulated inexplicably in Eilidh’s head—though perhaps the real concern, less urgently, was the realization that Dzhuliya knew and understood Thayer’s business in a way that Eilidh, despite the possibility of being tasked with it, never had.

“You won’t say anything,” Dzhuliya posed hesitantly, which was sort of a question, Eilidh noted, but also not.

The thing in Eilidh’s chest woke up again, gleefully cavernous, ready for any passing excuse to swarm. For the first time, Eilidh wondered just how closely Dzhuliya had worked with her father—whether Dzhuliya’s level of familiarity was somehow Eilidh’s loss.

“Of course not,” said Eilidh, shaking herself. Thayer had always been a father first when it came to Eilidh, and unlike Meredith’s tendency for obsessive micromanagement, Thayer’s long reign meant he barely deigned to open a file without an assistant’s help. Of course Dzhuliya would know more than Eilidh, if only by osmosis. She handled Thayer’s calendar, shebooked his meetings, she voiced his correspondences. Obviously Dzhuliya knew things that were never meant to be Eilidh’s concern—she probably understood countless things about his daily life that Eilidh didn’t, purely by virtue of circumstance, not design.

Unless—

Eilidh reconsidered what Dzhuliya had said, the lies she’d told Meredith about Thayer’s potential willingness to go into business with me. If Dzhuliya knew who I was in relation to Meredith, that meant Thayer must have been aware of it, too. But that knowledge wasn’t administrative, it was personal. And the possibility that Thayer would go behind Meredith’s back, maybe even betray her—was that something he would do?

Eilidh realized she didn’t know the answer. She hadn’t the faintest idea whether Thayer’s intentions could have been to taunt Meredith or punish her. Eilidh knew only what Thayer would do for her, which was protect her. Shelter her, go so far as to ensure she never felt a moment’s worry or pain or doubt, and yes, that was different than anything he’d do for Meredith or Arthur. But either Meredith and Arthur were right and Thayer hadn’t actually loved them—this Eilidh didn’t believe; it didn’t fit with her understanding of him, nor her understanding ofthem—or the lengths Thayer routinely went for Eilidh, the things about his life he was willing to divulge to his assistant but not his daughter, those were driven by… something other than love.

Suddenly the thing in her chest felt grainy, minutely particulate. Eilidh tasted disintegration on her tongue like floating ash, the shattering of an old illusion.

“Are you going to get dressed?” Dzhuliya ventured, her gaze lingering slightly southward.

Abruptly, Eilidh remembered the pointelle fabric, the louche triangulation of her breasts as she lounged in bed, waging an endless war of loyalties with her sister.

“Right,” she said, leaping to her feet. “Just give me five minutes, and then let’s go.”

43

Monster had recently become very interested in balance-related exercises. He was constantly trying to tightrope on things, like a very preliminary gymnast, although he was not especially talented in this regard. Thus, Arthur and I were forced to make our way very slowly through Muir Woods along the initial two-mile loop that was accessible via carefully placed wooden beams. Monster held my hand, setting one foot carefully in front of the other, making a reasonable effort not to topple sideways into the clovers, or onto the delicate tangles of redwood roots plaiting the forest floor.

Arthur, meanwhile, was silent at first, thinking about children, about progeny, and about the time he’d once had sex with me, which if I haven’t already mentioned was the height of adolescent awkwardness. For Arthur, the day had been one of semi-enchanted suspension. He remembered it all in terms of sensations, the rain that fell on the skylights of his room, the way he had always felt his father’s house to be a sort of glass cage. The relief of not being alone; the piercing joy of a moment with me that did not involve Meredith. He was running the tips of his fingers up and down my bare arms, thinking about how everything would soon be different. He had an image in his head of defending me to Meredith, of becoming my knight in shining armor, of taking a broken situation and righting it, clotting the wound and thus being forever cocooned by love and gratitude or whatever Arthur expected to find whenever sex was involved.

I don’t think I need to tell you that Arthur and I had very different experiences that day. Though, for the record, it was my first time, too. I never told him that because Arthur has a way of assigning meaning to things unnecessarily. It’s very preternaturally witchy of him, and/or slightly OCD.

“Interesting choice of meeting place,” he told me as we made our way slowly over the beams, beneath the canopy of trees. “Reminds me of… you know.”

Oh god, I thought, having then forgotten about Arthur’s habit of assigning meaning. Like I said, I remember the day in question very differently. I remember thinking how fucking insane Arthur’s sheets were. Why did a teenage boy have such nice sheets? The boys at Ainsworth all had excellent bedding, better than anything I’d ever slept in, though to me, my sheets were softer for being more broken in, for smelling as much like my mother’s house as they possibly could without the constant presence of platanos frying or adobo simmering on the stove.

“It opens early and I could take Monster,” I told Arthur. “Don’t make a thing of it.”

In his head, Arthur was totally making a thing of it. He was thinking about the women in his life, the love he felt for both Philippa and Gillian, how different they were from each other, how different they were from me. He projected in his mind the imaginary future he and I might have had together, which admittedly I had thought of many times myself in the past.

There was a time I would have given anything to be a Wren—absolutely anything. Meredith was my first friend, Arthur my first love, or maybe it was the other way around, I don’t know. Even after everything fell apart I still frequently imagined it, although my renditions of what it would take to be a Wren grew increasingly vindictive. I stopped marrying Arthur in my imagination and started simply beating Meredith. As Dumas put it, “How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.” I thought about saying that one day to Meredith’s face, looking particularly hot for no reason other than to rub it in, the proof thatIwas the phoenix, thatIwas the once and future Wren, because I was actually so much better than they were. For years that single thought, that crystalline desire drove me constantly through exhaustion, pushed me limitlessly through pain. I was only properly motivated when I imagined the chance I so plainly deserved to laugh, laugh, laugh in Meredith’s fucking face.

I had to stop putting it in those terms, though, because the more my fantasies revolved around Meredith, the more agonizingly obvious it became which Wren sibling I had actually loved most.

In any case, to lose Arthur and Meredith in one fell swoop was easier to do once I was angry. I don’t think I could have given either of them up if not for Meredith running me over with her proverbial car, and where would I be if she hadn’t? Would I now be Arthur’s politician wife? And what about Meredith—what would I have been to her? Wouldn’t we always have driftedapart until I was no different from any other sorority sister she couldn’t bring herself to call?

I don’t see any of it anymore, even when I try, probably because Monster doesn’t coexist with the possibility of that branch of lives unlived. The thought of uninventing him pains me, it literally pains me, somewhere deep in my chest. So I guess I’ve taught myself in recent years that the chips simply fall where they may—which sounds an awful lot like I’m getting an A in therapy, so hearty congratulations to me.

“Mama,” said Monster. “Ball. Ball. Ball. Car.” (To Arthur, this sounded like “bahhhhhhhh” and “cahhhhhhhh,” which is fair, as he is less fluent in Monster’s particular dialect.)

“Yes,” I said. “Totally.”

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