Page 34 of Gifted & Talented

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The house was small, with another small apartment building around back, such that they weren’t sure which building was intended to represent the address they were given. The house was a stucco Spanish revival, a gray or beige or simply dirty white, though it had a big window out front that was shaded by a mature oak, its front yard mostly sundried dirt with patches here and there of passionless grass. It wasn’t ill cared for, exactly, though the houses beside it were overrun with flora, such that vines from the neighbors’ yards had crept out onto the sidewalk, rendering it unwalkable. Meredith parked the car and got out, and then Eilidh got out, and then Arthur said I thought Gillian was going to handle this and Gillian said yes I can do that and Meredith said I just wanted to get out of the car Brother Micromanager calm down. But it was clear they all wanted to get closer to the house; to sniff it out and see if it had an air of something. Magic, maybe, or the opposite. Whatever it took to make errant magic behave.

As Gillian took the initiative to walk up to the house, Eilidh lingered by the car and Meredith hung back to take a phone call, beginning to pace along the sidewalk as she answered in clipped tones. Arthur, meanwhile, stood in front of the house and pondered it.

It occurred to Arthur that the place Lou had grown up—an apartment on the outskirts of Mill Valley with two bedrooms, one shared by Lou and her mother and the other by her two grandmothers—had probably not looked dissimilar, though in Arthur’s memory it was warmer, homier than this. He remembered the feeling of walking inside, uncertainty mixing with hope that an answer might be waiting for him, left on a gentle simmer on the stove.

In this era of leapfrogged maturity and responsible home ownership, Arthur could see the house before him needed tending to; that it was one of the only affordable places still remaining in the Bay; and that from where he stood on the street he could see bars on the bedroom windows, a surefire sign of neighborhood crime. He remembered that Lou’s mother had had her car broken into several times while they were growing up, which always cost her more money to fix than the value of anything the thieves had taken from the car’s interior. Lou’s Lola, who hated Arthur, had still taught him how to reconfigure the wiring for the new-old detachable radio unit, and afterward Abuela told him that it was because Lola could secretly no longer do that kind of magic herself—she was getting too old to hold it on her own, and he was a good and clever boy who listened well. Then she fed him rice and beans until he couldn’t comfortably sit down.

“Cahhhhhhhh!” exclaimed a small voice.

Arthur was still staring at the house when he realized someone was waiting on the sidewalk for him to pass. A boy, no more than two or three, was holding hands with his mother, pointing at the vehicles lining the street. “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Arthur vacantly, and stepped aside.

“Lost?” asked the mother.

“Oh, no, not really. Well, no.” Arthur looked down at the boy, who wore a vibrant green T-shirt that read DINOSNORES . He was dark from late summer heat, bruised around the knees, tufts of sun-lightened copper dappling his chocolate-cherry hair. “That’s some high-quality weaponry,” Arthur said, pointing to the bow and arrow in the boy’s hand. The tips of the arrows were suction cups.

The boy instantly hid behind the mother’s knees, peering up at Arthur in wide-eyed silence.

“They’re not really military grade,” offered the mother. “More for feats of strength.”

“Makes sense,” said Arthur. He took a longer glance at the mother, whom he had not really been paying attention to until then, noting only that she seemed near his age; she had shoulder-length black hair and wore an oversized Cal T-shirt. The boy resembled his mother strongly, although his eyes were a different color, hazel or maybe green where hers were deep and dark. She wore a faded black baseball cap on her head, a faint look of amusement playing idly around her mouth.

“Are you anticipating any sort of tournament?” Arthur asked the boy.

The boy said, firmly, “Dahhhhhh.”

“I think probably a quest,” the mother translated.

Arthur smiled. “For treasure?”

The boy got shy again, leaning against his mother’s thigh.

“He’s not really ready to talk about his quest preparations,” the mother said as the boy buried his face in her denim shorts, looking stressed in the way young children sometimes did. Arthur wondered if Riot would do the same thing someday; become mired in the existential anxiety of her quest preparations. Hopefully not. Hopefully she would be firing arrows because she understood the world didn’t wait for you to take the time to draw.

The mother patted the little boy’s head. “You’re fine,” she informed him. “Don’t worry. Arthur won’t be staying long.”

Arthur blinked with surprise, then looked more closely at the mother.

“Oh my god,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, because yes, it was obviously me. “This is really embarrassing for you.”

“Dsdjhbkebrbu?” said Monster, looking up from my shorts.

“This is Mommy’s friend from a long time ago,” I explained to him.

“Mommy?” asked Arthur before he could stop himself.

I looked up at him, and the moment our eyes met, Arthur couldn’t believe he hadn’t placed me sooner. To him, I looked exactly the same, as if no time had passed, and at the same time, I was so much older. I’d grown into my cheeks. The shorter hair suited me. So did the lack of aggressive straightening that had been such a sign of the times.

“Am I to assume you’re looking for me?” I asked, and for a moment, Arthur couldn’t bear to admit that he had wanted something from me—that he had actually thought I might even give it, even though we hadn’t spoken in over ten years and I was a mother now and probably married and he didn’t know anything about me—didn’t know who my husband was and whether he made me laugh; didn’t know whether I knew that Arthur had gotten married, too; didn’t know that now Arthur had one of those fancy stand mixers on his kitchen counter. Not because it was a symptom of adulthood, but because he had really, genuinely wanted one.

“This is your house?” said Arthur. “What a weird coincidence!”

“Well, Lou’s not home,” announced Gillian, unfortunately choosing that moment to retreat from my front porch. “Assuming she actually lives here.”

“She does,” I confirmed, as Gillian blinked, acknowledging my presence and then making adjustments to her tone as only Gillian was capable of doing (a thing I hadn’t learned yet, but would soon enough).

“Oh, hello,” Gillian said, extending a hand. “I’m Gillian Wren, Arthur’s wife.”

I glanced briefly at Arthur before taking Gillian’s hand. “I won’t consider surrogacy for anything less than a million dollars,” I said to Arthur, because there are only so many things a married couple wants from an estranged woman that one of them once knew. “No, two million. No, actually, I’ve reconsidered. You couldn’t pay me.”

“Mygfiuosjbfjth?” asked Monster, who hasn’t been formally introduced yet. (He was ostensibly now “Lou’s son” to Arthur.)

“Yes, of course, sweetheart, go play,” I said, leaning down to kiss his forehead with such crushing fondness that Arthur felt a pang of something he told himself couldn’t possibly be jealousy. Then I straightened and said, “And if this is a weird threesome proposition”—I didn’t know yet about Yves and Philippa—“then you should know that the third person is supposed to be a stranger, not someone you fucked once when you were in high school.”

Monster, who hadn’t run off quite as quickly as I’d hoped he would, looked up at me.

“It’s a root vegetable, like beets,” I offered in explanation for my language.

“Cahhhhhhhhh,” said Monster, and then he began shooting arrows at the house’s front window, apparently satisfied with that explanation.

“That’s not the first time I’ve slipped up and dropped an f-bomb,” I admitted in an aside to Gillian. “I assume that at some point he’ll stop believing me, if he even has a clue what I’m saying now. But he’s a little behind verbally, and you wouldn’t believe how much he hates beets.”

“I’ve never cared for them either,” said Gillian tactfully.

“They’re a real faff, but they turn smoothies pink, and for the longest time he wouldn’t—well, anyway.” I turned to Arthur, scouring his face for a moment. “Well, congratulations. You didn’t peak in high school.”

“Thank you?” said Arthur.

“Also, your knuckles are doing that thing again. That streetlight just popped,” I observed aloud, and then tilted my head. “Ah, I see, that’s why you’re here. You have a magical problem.”

“No,” said Arthur loudly. “I was just—”

“Oh wow, Lou,” said Meredith, who had hung up the phone by then and joined us. She said it as if I were a public monument of some kind, or the thing she’d been digging around for in her junk drawer. “Did Arthur already tell you about the weird magical problem he’s having?”

I gave Arthur a sly, knowing smile before turning my attention to Meredith. “Hello to you, too, Meredith,” I said, seeming to Arthur quite impressively unmoved by the suddenness of her presence. “What’s it been, twelve years? Thirteen, give or take one or two instances of irreconcilable betrayal?”

“Thirteen, I think,” said Meredith.

“Great. Auspicious. Congrats on the app,” I added. “I see ads for it all the time on the bus.”

“Thank you,” said Meredith, a little uncomfortably, and with an air of surprise.

“I hear it doesn’t work,” I remarked with an obsequious smile.

Meredith’s expression stiffened.

“We’re having a bit of a problem,” Gillian cut in, helpfully redirecting the energy of the conversation. “Arthur seems to be going a bit… awry. And Meredith felt sure you were the only person who’d know what to do,” she added, selecting the tactic of flattery. Arthur was unsure as of that moment as to its effectiveness, which might have succeeded on another person, and perhaps might work on me, although it was difficult to say. “So we thought we’d try to see if we could find you.”

I fixed a glance at Meredith. “My phone number is the same.”

I said it in a conclusive tone. Meaning, You could have called me and you didn’t, and now you can fuck off because I—and I can’t emphasize this enough—don’t care.

Meredith said nothing.

“Oh,” said Arthur. “I see.”

“I don’t know how to fix you anyway,” I added flippantly, brushing him off like a harmless fly. “I don’t really do that anymore.”

“You work at a Wrenfare store instead?” said Meredith. Her voice was edged with something flimsy, airy. Mockery, Arthur thought.

Then I turned to her in a slow and predatory way.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said to Meredith. “And you know that I know.”

Meredith lifted her chin.

“And you still thought I’d help you?” I prompted.

“What are you doing working at a Wrenfare?” snapped Meredith.

Gillian glanced at Arthur, her polite smile marred slightly by a divot of confusion in her brow. It was true that the conversation was escalating, but Arthur wasn’t sure how to reroute the momentum, nor did he really know how to telegraph that in a way Gillian could understand. He made a vague gesture, intending to express the conclusion that they should just keep a careful distance from the friction between Meredith and me. Gillian nodded as if thirteen years of conflict had been effortlessly translated and perfectly understood.

“What else should I be doing, hm?” I asked Meredith, crossing my arms over my chest. “Making weapons? Defrauding investors? Franchising my grandma’s fried chicken?”

“I didn’t do this to you,” Meredith said, unconsciously—or so it seemed to Arthur—leaning away, as if to calm an oncoming tiger. “You went to Berkeley. And you were a star, a fucking prodigy, just like you were at Ainsworth when you fucked yourself over. I didn’t ruin your life, okay? You did this to yourself.”

“Excuse me?” I said, dangerously.

There was a bang as my little boy shot an arrow into the house’s front window. Arthur jumped, I blinked, and Meredith stood stonily, still braced for a fight. Arthur already knew that I wouldn’t give her one. The only way to beat Meredith in the ring is to abandon her to it, and regardless of how much time had passed since the two of us had seen each other, that had never stopped being true.

“Okay, so you came for redemption,” I ruled aloud to Meredith before turning to Arthur, “and you came for help. Bummer,” I said in a bored voice. “Looks like you’re both leaving with nothing.”

“Actually,” came a voice behind us. “I have something as well.”

It was Eilidh, obviously. Arthur had forgotten about her in the midst of all the tension, and had already realized—the moment he failed to know me on sight—that I wasn’t going to help him, no matter what he said. The errand was a waste, so now the only thing left to do was see how the rest of the interaction played out.

I regarded Eilidh with a slow sweep of carefully restrained surprise. “I forgot about you.”

“Yeah, that happens a lot,” Eilidh said with a shrug. Arthur recognized that Eilidh was performing, but I wouldn’t have known that. When I had known Eilidh, she was still a tiny blob of nothing in a leotard and a hairline-destroying bun.

“So what’s your problem?” I asked, performatively squaring my shoulders. In reality, it was undermining my obstinacy, Arthur realized, not knowing how to fight back against this particular Wren.

And he was right. I can’t say now whether I regret it, but at the time, Eilidh was the tipping point. I’m like a lot of people, in the end. I respond positively to curiosity. I can’t hear the words “I keep accidentally causing apocalypses” without wanting to ask more questions. Also, I’d realized that Monster had stopped shooting arrows and was watching me at the time.

I don’t really know what I want my son to think I am. I didn’t then, and I still don’t. But it seemed important to me at that particular moment to not be the kind of person who lets one unsavory situation rule the rest of her life.

Raising a boy is really hard, actually. You have to teach him to be a man, the kind of man who doesn’t reject things just because they might be humiliating or painful. Regardless of what kind of human you choose to be, you make choices. You own them.

When the world presents you with an apocalypse, you fix it with the tools that you have.

“Your son is very cute,” Arthur said after I agreed, grudgingly, to see what I could do—to consider helping. Not right then, I added—the following day, when Monster’s daycare was no longer dealing with some flooding issues, and he could get back to his routine.

“What’s his name?” Arthur asked me.

“Archimedes,” I said.

“Is it really?” asked Gillian, incredulous.

“No,” I said. Then I walked away, calling Monster into the house, and it became apparent to the rest of them that they had been dismissed, and would now have to return home to speak to some lawyers.

They all turned to the car, Meredith handing the keys to Arthur without comment. He climbed into the driver’s seat, Meredith into the passenger seat. She looked out the window the entire drive, and didn’t say anything until they reached the Richmond bridge.