Page 22 of Gifted & Talented

18

Even from a distance, Dzhuliya did not appear to have slept well. She was waiting for Eilidh in her car by 9:55 AM , double-parked behind the carport at the bottom of the drive, and was staring into space as Eilidh made her way from the house’s staircase and over the stretch of creek ambling beside the empty single-lane road. In one direction was the winding trickle back to the center of town, the city equivalent of a country lane with its sleepy coffee shops and overpriced tourist traps; in the other, a steady climb into the woods, traversing nimbly from concrete lane to steep, well-trodden tendrils of redwood-lined trails. Eilidh considered her options, then rapped on the driver’s-side window.

“Hey,” said Eilidh when Dzhuliya rolled down the window. “Fancy a hike?”

Dzhuliya’s brows furrowed a bit, traveling from Eilidh’s leather sandals and thick, woolen socks up to the bun she’d piled messily atop her head. “Won’t that be hard for you? You know, with your back and everything.”

Ah, so she did remember that Eilidh had something of a life-altering injury, how marvelous. “I can handle a reasonably paced climb, provided you don’t need me to do any pirouettes. Come on, get out.” Eilidh stepped back into the road, letting Dzhuliya clamber out of the car with a slight grimace. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, gym shorts she usually wore for twice-weekly rock climbing (not that Eilidh was keeping track of Dzhuliya’s workout accoutrements; it was just that they’d run into each other once in the bathroom on her father’s office floor when Dzhuliya was changing out of her work clothes for the gym, so, you know, amicable small talk)—and sneakers, Eilidh noted, so she shouldn’t be complaining.

For a moment, Eilidh wondered again what her feelings ought to have been about Dzhuliya—Could they, in certain lights, be considered friends? Was it normal, under the circumstances, to be friends? Perhaps not, given Dzhuliya’s less-than-enthusiastic reaction—when Dzhuliya suddenly turned a sheepish smile on Eilidh that was equal parts youthful and horribly aged. “Sorry I’m so out of sorts,” she said. “I just can’t believe he’s gone, but of course it must be so much harder for you.”

Eilidh ignored the sharp prod of a parasitic tail.

“Everyone grieves differently,” she said, thinking of how her brother’s version of grief involved having his wife and both members of his throuple around to coddle his problems while her sister seemed completely unaffected, prompting Eilidh to wonder yet again whether Meredith might actually be a complete psychopath. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s fully sunken in.”

They walked in companionable silence for a bit, the road crunching beneath their feet as they left the lane behind and ventured onto a foothill trail. Their strides were well matched; Eilidh was about the same height as Dzhuliya, though she didn’t slouch for vocational reasons and Dzhuliya now seemed to curl uncharacteristically into herself, folding in like there was a hinge in the center of her breastbone. Like one of those mahogany easels that hold picture frames.

The creek burbled a little as they went, the continuous sound of water a soothing monotony as Eilidh ran through a droning series of thoughts in her head—still desperate to talk, yet now wondering where to begin. The thing living in her chest was particularly present, sharp as hunger pangs. Not that Eilidh ever really knew what it wanted from her, but today it seemed particularly opaque, and everything seemed heightened by the mere fact of Dzhuliya’s presence.

The thing in Eilidh’s chest tightened like a cyclone around the very idea of Dzhuliya, pointing like an arrowhead, the buzz of a glaring neon sign. As if finally resolving the question mark of Dzhuliya (amicable? professional? perhaps something better or markedly worse?) might give Eilidh a sense of necessary clarity, maybe even a feeling that could be considered satisfaction, like finishing the Sunday crossword after wrestling with it for two years. There was a nagging sense of betwixtness for Eilidh when it came to the constancy, and mystery, of Dzhuliya; something not technically forbidden but not quite acceptable, either. Eilidh knew in an indeterminate way that her father lived in close proximity to whatever the answer was, and the thing in her chest gleefully wrung confusion from every battered pulse of her agonized heart.

Even that was bewildering—the way the occupant of her chest seemed at all times to have an unexpected aftertaste, part sweetness of longing, part violence of feeling. Some of it was about Thayer, probably even most of it, but it was Dzhuliya who was here now, and so for better or worse, it was Dzhuliya unto which the thing latched on. It throbbed and thudded with craving, with bestiality and zeal. Did she want to hold Dzhuliya’s hand or throw her into a river? Did she want to vanish Dzhuliya into smoke or float her gently on a cloud of her own making? Was this vengeful thunder in her chest or was it claggy, sickly sweetness?

What had sadness wrought inside her, and why wouldn’t the damn thing let her go?

“So, as far as Wrenfare goes,” Eilidh managed to say after a moment. “Is that… I mean, are you—would you want to… stay?”

Dzhuliya looked at her, a mark of hesitation in her brow. Perhaps because Eilidh had phrased a human resources question as casual chitchat between friends. “I only mean to ask whether you see yourself… you know… pursuing any particular advancement opportunities within the company. Because under the circumstances, I’m quite sure I could put in a good word.” Dear god! Eilidh thought. Without realizing it, she’d affected some kind of contrived musical accent, like she’d gone briefly aristocratic. “I just know how highly my father thought of you,” she attempted again, and felt even worse. What was she doing, promising Dzhuliya some kind of promotion? From what to what? And with what power? “I don’t know what I’m saying,” Eilidh concluded, which was worse and yet somehow better, because at least it wasn’t a lie. “I just want to tell you that I’m here for you, whatever happens next. Whatever… changes. Whoever takes my father’s place.” With that, Eilidh remembered what she had actually wanted to talk about, though she’d traversed too far from things like feelings, having entered the conversation through the dumbest possible side door.

Luckily, Dzhuliya seemed willing to overlook the majority of Eilidh’s mind-numbing inability to communicate, gingerly sidestepping the potholes and landmines. “Is something going on with the company? I thought you’d have heard who was inheriting Thayer’s shares by now.”

Which reminded Eilidh of her father’s apparent change of heart—a matter of relevance, if not the thing she’d actually hoped to discuss. “You would have known that he changed his will, right? You handled all his appointments,” she remarked, as if Dzhuliya would not be perfectly aware of her daily responsibilities.

Dzhuliya cast her another uncertain glance, this one more dismissive. She had begun to huff slightly as the trail grew steeper—perhaps, Eilidh thought, from all the sudden stress and slouching. “I can’t imagine you want to talk about that right now. Do you?”

Well, that was true, Eilidh didn’t want to discuss that , necessarily, whatever “that” was—her father’s unexpected secrecy, she supposed. Or was it unexpected?

She reconsidered it now, realizing she still hadn’t taken the temperature of her feelings on the matter. She supposed that for all Thayer often spoke to her about the intricacies of her job, they very rarely discussed the details of Thayer’s. She hadn’t realized she could consider herself uninformed about his work until just now, upon registering that maybe he wouldn’t have mentioned a meeting with his lawyers, because he didn’t really burden Eilidh with specific trivialities. Not in an elusive way—if she asked him about things like layoffs, he simply dismissed her concerns outright, assuring her there was no truth to the rumors. He mainly focused on the private matters of his life, reliving memories with Eilidh as a sounding board, and he usually wanted to talk about her—or, very often, her siblings.

The thing in her chest fluttered, the sudden launch of pigeon flight or psychological indigestion. Eilidh still hadn’t decided what the worst possible outcome would be when it came to the matter of Wrenfare’s inheritance. It was Meredith’s practice to be prepared for the worst, but Meredith was also incredibly talented at projecting disaster. Meredith’s worst case was easy: Wrenfare would become Eilidh’s, her father’s chance to prove at last that Eilidh was the favorite. But Meredith had always been hard on their father, and she hadn’t known him very well in his last years. This will would have come from the Thayer Eilidh had known best—the one she felt had become a different person, perhaps a little softer. Maybe filled with a little more regret.

“Do you know what he changed?” asked Eilidh, and Dzhuliya shook her head.

“I actually thought you’d know, if anyone, but—” She began to speak again, but then stopped. When she spoke, it was to say with grim finality, “I do think it’s possible your siblings won’t like it.”

What was Arthur’s worst case scenario, Eilidh wondered? Meredith’s was easy, but Arthur’s was less straightforward to predict. Until that morning, Eilidh hadn’t thought it possible that Arthur might still want to be their father’s chosen one. Arthur seemed to have changed so much, to have become so many different people, first Gillian’s husband and then the congressman and then the strangely craven lothario that now seemed to occupy the space where her brother had once been. All that was familiar or even recognizable about him now was the unexpected and eccentric, the thing he denied as being important—the occasional uncontrolled spark that made Eilidh long to ask him how different the two of them really were.

Arthur had always been a mystery to Eilidh, more so than Meredith, because Meredith was mean and that was actually quite simple as far as human characteristics were concerned. Meredith was consistent and predictable. Arthur was charming but malleable, sharp enough to be loved by Meredith and therefore a bit of a threat to Eilidh, who never really knew where he stood.

Surely he would want their father’s money. What politician didn’t want money? But did he want Wrenfare? And if so, would he try to wrest it from the others, even away from Meredith—even away from her?

Eilidh had seen what social media said about Arthur’s political agenda and thought it to be untrue. She believed, perhaps delusionally, that she knew him better than the faceless mob. But maybe she didn’t! He said he’d grown tired of Congress, but was that true or merely convenient? Was Eilidh projecting her anxieties onto Arthur, or had they always shared something Meredith hadn’t?

Eilidh thought again of the tremor in Arthur’s hands, the shower of taillights like falling stars, his uncanny death and resurrection. Wasn’t that a version of her apocalypse, in a way? Or was she looking too closely for something that didn’t exist?

“Your brother and sister are vultures,” Thayer had said to Eilidh some weeks ago. Was it around a month, when he had drawn up the new will? Come to think of it, it might have been. “I can’t say I blame them. They spent more time with your mother; they’re more like her than you ever were. I never could stand it when they were young, and I suppose I took my pain out on them.”

Thayer almost never spoke about Persephone in explicit terms, something Meredith actively held against him and that Arthur seemed to agree was cowardly in some way. Eilidh always felt her siblings were too hard on Thayer, that perhaps regret was harder to face than anything else, even loss or grief. After all, Persephone had died while Thayer was still hard at work expanding Wrenfare, and to Eilidh, Thayer had always carried around an awareness that someone could have saved his wife. Someone who could, theoretically, have been him.

Eilidh’s memories about her mother were hazy, or rather, clear in a way that suggested they weren’t memories at all but just stories she’d been told to ease the fact that she hadn’t really had a mother in any of the ways that counted. People had always seen it as her tragedy—prior to her actual tragedy—and even written about her performances as if pain was something she carried in her soul, something intrinsic. That she could dance so beautifully was an extension of a lifetime’s search, her story playing out on the stage in a way that could be shared, as if the real art was always the act of communion.

Eilidh had never wanted to admit out loud that this was utter bullshit, because she couldn’t feel sad about something she’d never had. If anything, she found Persephone kind of cruel in her own way, a cruelty she must have taught to Meredith, which left Eilidh with the sense that she was mainly angry at her mother. Because wasn’t it reasonable to feel annoyance, given that Persephone had had not only the resources but the responsibility to treat herself better, to make better choices, at very least for the sake of her children, who were so vulnerable and young? Eilidh, meanwhile, kept on going; she ate food even when she was depressed, she exercised for the illusion that was her health, she went to the doctor even though she didn’t really care whether the horrors befell her. All of which made her feel a bit cheated, because wouldn’t it be nice to simply give up on herself, as Thayer seemed to feel Persephone had done?

And now Thayer was gone, too, which left only Meredith and Arthur, their dark little bond, and anyone their lives happened to touch, for better or worse. The world carried on, senseless as usual. Eilidh hadn’t expected her siblings to grieve Thayer’s loss the same way she did, but it would have been nice if they could share one single thing, such as the fact that they were now orphans. Orphans! Adults, obviously, but still. Their children, if any of them ever had any, would not have grandparents. There would be no reason to gather during the holidays—Meredith already hardly found the time to call Eilidh back. They had lost something, some foundational cornerstone on which the three of them were built, and now all that was left was…

Well, something like a trillion dollars, depending on what happened with Wrenfare.

And the possibility that her father had left everything to her.

The thing in Eilidh’s chest did a kick-flip that felt like whiplash. Eilidh exhaled sharply, pausing for a moment in the middle of the trail as the creek burbled gently below them. She felt the parasitic flutter of nausea, the sense that whatever lived inside her was in a grotesquely pleasant mood, the kind that led to pestilence. “I really don’t want to dwell on the… the commodification of it,” Eilidh managed to say aloud, trying not to burp up a plague of boils. “But I suppose you’re the closest I’ve got to an objective source. When it comes to my brother and sister,” she began, uncertain how to proceed, and then she paused.

A pause that became a full stop.

“He never spoke of them directly,” said Dzhuliya. “Never outright. Certainly not in any detail. He was—”

“Private,” Eilidh confirmed, and then winced. “Professional.” Thayer was adamant about keeping skeletons in the closet where they belonged—he would never have discussed family matters with someone he worked with. Especially not someone he considered beneath him, Eilidh thought uncharitably, for which she was punished by another thing-driven sting.

Dzhuliya hesitated, then tilted her head. “I’d say he was protective.”

“Right, yes. Protective.” That was a better, more generous word.

“He understood you were all very vulnerable from a young age,” Dzhuliya pointed out, which struck Eilidh as notable. It was true, obviously, but she’d never considered this, the specific possibility of herself existing in Dzhuliya’s eyes as someone with the erstwhile potential to be created or destroyed. “He’s always been very careful to keep any scrutiny on himself, especially as things got—”

“More difficult,” Eilidh finished for her, and paused.

In her head she replayed the last few weeks, the things that had seemed to weigh on her father’s presence. She knew he’d gruffly dismissed an email requesting a comment on what he called “fucking clout chasers,” or the series of labor-related lawsuits against Wrenfare; the closest he’d gotten to angry with Eilidh was when she brought up a recent seminar on brand reinvigoration, which Thayer seemed to interpret as a personal attack despite its obvious relevance to her field. He had actually suggested the Vermont retreat shortly after that, determining that Eilidh needed a shift in perspective.

Dzhuliya paused, then, too; a pause that seemed equally meaningful. “He did seem to feel that your siblings had already inherited whatever they needed from your mother,” Dzhuliya said, and broke off, or trailed off. Eilidh was too distracted to tell. The thing in her chest had become very alive, animated like a vaudeville performer, or maybe Eilidh (the thing’s external cage) had begun to feel very numb and fearful and dead. Something inside her seemed out of sync by whatever metric was used for the existential weight of being.

Maybe there was a worst case, she realized. Because what would she even do with Wrenfare? Well, easy, whatever her father wanted done, which was perhaps the most persuasive reason so far that he might have elected to leave it with her. Meredith would change things to suit her personal agenda, as would Arthur, but Eilidh had never wanted any of this. Perhaps for that reason she could be considered the safest one to carry out a legacy, because she would not deviate from the plan.

But of course, if that was the case, then Thayer had sentenced her to a lifetime of being despised by her brother and sister. Meredith would probably fight it, tying the whole estate up in legal trivialities for years, and then what? She’d disappear, most likely. They’d be estranged, which was mere breaths away from whatever they were now. The thought of it made Eilidh sick—sick er, like a plague of perpetual darkness. It made her desperate to call her father, to ask what he could have possibly been thinking. Maybe he hadn’t been in his right mind.

“The problem with Meredith,” Thayer said in Eilidh’s ear from the recesses of her memory, “is that she will always choose herself. It doesn’t matter whether she’s the right answer. It doesn’t matter if she’s made a mistake. She gets it from her mother—Persephone was always like that, and she spent the most time with Meredith.” He was clutching a martini the size of a punch bowl. “Meredith will choose Meredith and take everyone else down with her. I’d call it admirable except she’s still young, which means she’s reckless in addition to ruthless. She’s a bad judge of people because she still thinks this world is fundamentally fair, that people who work hard get rewarded, that the cream eventually rises to the top. But she’s wrong, and someday someone will prove it to her in a way she can’t come back from—and as for Arthur.” Thayer laughed again, this time splashing a little liquid from his drink onto the edge of the table, which he ignored. “Arthur doesn’t have a single real conviction in his entire body. He’d say whatever he needed to say just to stay in the light, just to keep people’s eyes on him. I can’t decide whether to be impressed he found a way to make it work for him or just guilty for raising yet another worthless politician.”

Eilidh wondered why, in her memory of the moment, which seemed so oppressively, brutally clear, Thayer wasn’t meeting her eye.

Then, belatedly, as if suddenly recalling the circumstances of a dream, she remembered that none of that had been said to her. Thayer had said it to someone else while drunk at the Christmas party, and Eilidh had been lingering nearby, hoping he would say something nice about her. Hoping he wouldn’t say her name at all.

So much for protective, she thought with a sideways lurch, the earth tilting slightly to the left with a sense that she hadn’t been looking at anything correctly; that she had missed something from where she was standing, too busy was she trying to do exactly as Arthur was doing and stay in the light. But Thayer wasn’t a monster. No, she knew him. She understood him. It was a bad moment, a dark day. If Thayer loved her more than the others it was only because she, unlike them, had forgiven him his weaknesses, and never forsaken him for his mistakes. Eilidh alone had understood that her father, like everyone, only wanted to be loved, and the elder two of his children had been too struck by the loss of their mother to actually do it. If they had been loved unequally, then surely that was Eilidh’s doing, not Thayer’s fault.

Wasn’t it?

“Eilidh?” prompted Dzhuliya tentatively, and Eilidh turned to her with the feeling that her eyes were wild, that the creature in her chest was cradling her heart in its hands, quiet and urging. She felt the presence of it again, of doomsday’s comfort. The other side of this feeling, behind a fragile, wispy veil, was carnality and blood, and Eilidh didn’t need to witness it to know for sure how that would taste. That it would be in some way satisfying—that what had driven her mother to self-destruction was magnified exponentially in Eilidh, spreading outward like avaricious craving from Eilidh’s chest. Everything, the stasis of her life stood balanced on the thinnest, sharpest edge, held aloft by nothing but her personal suspension, her ability to keep darkness at bay—which only grew more and more insubstantial as time went on and she failed to grow or change.

But thank god there was Dzhuliya, the evergreen problem of Dzhuliya, which wasn’t a problem at all so long as Eilidh didn’t have to face the answer—so long as Eilidh could just repeat the question to herself ad nauseum, never adequately persuaded to make up her mind.

Amicable colleagues! A father who loved her!

“I’m fine,” said Eilidh, shoving the thing back down, keeping it locked tight.