Page 42 of Gifted & Talented

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“Try it again,” suggested Gillian, and so Yves bent his head and kissed her softly on the side of her knee a second time. She repressed the urge to kick him in the face. “No,” she said with sigh, “never mind, I must have imagined it.”

Yves caressed her calf gently and this time she did kick him away, albeit in the shoulder and not very hard. “I suppose it’s probably just hopeless,” Gillian said.

The day before, when Gillian and Yves had gone to the grocery store, Yves had confessed a number of things to Gillian in the car under the influence of what was essentially an edible. Gillian had been very, very focused on driving the car through the steep, winding roads of Mill Valley and so had listened sort of absentmindedly to Yves’s soliloquy, which did not necessarily rise to the level of diatribe but felt spiritually significant in a similar way.

“The thing is, she didn’t realize at first that it couldn’t be mine,” Yves said, “because I use male birth control.”

“Do you?” asked Gillian, impressed.

“So then the whole thing essentially backfired,” Yves said cheerfully, “or I think it did, although she is not being very forthcoming about the whole thing, which I suppose is understandable because she is not one to give up the game so easily. More chocolate?”

“No thanks,” said Gillian, who was feeling… not a lack of clarity, exactly. She felt exceptionally clear, which was kind of the problem. Gillian required a certain degree of haze in order to get through all her rituals for the day without the interruption of unruly thoughts, and now she was having all sorts of them. She realized, for example, that Yves had just confessed something quite personal to her, and now she was meant to confess something personal back, which was a condition she would have picked up on under normal circumstances—Gillian had a militaristic awareness of social cues—but in this case, she felt oddly compelled to rise to the challenge in a way she might not otherwise have done.

“Do you love her?” asked Gillian.

“I love love,” said Yves. “And Mouse is quite a person.”

“I love Arthur,” said Gillian.

“Of course you do,” said Yves.

“No, I love him,” Gillian repeated.

“Yes, Gillian, that is—”

“I love him,” 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. She believed him! Arthur Wren said the world could be better, that it should be better, and Gillian listened with glistening 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 because you 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 physically in 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 him but 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 of substitute 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 that I am 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?”

“I did think Arthur would do the trick for a while,” Yves admitted. “I thought Mouse and I could put aside our difficulties and share in our affection for him for quite a profound stretch of time, which I suppose we did. He is such a lovely person, very lovely—but you already know this.” He nodded sagely at Gillian, who was still trying to do very complicated math in her head. “Unfortunately, such a thing is not fair to Arthur. And while it pains me what our separation will mean for him—the lies, the deceit, the sense at various moments that Mouse would like to stab me with the nearest butter knife… I simply cannot do it anymore. My heart is, you know, not vacant, but hugely uninspired. It is tired,” Yves determined eventually. “The problem is that my heart is very tired and needs to rest.”

That part made sense to Gillian, so she did not ask “what” for the fifth time even though she wanted to, retroactively, about several other factors in the conversation. It was such a sadness that she felt she wanted to express something to Yves in a way he would understand, and so she carefully, very carefully, with extreme and meticulous slowness, reached over to brush his hair from his forehead. His eyes shut briefly as if she’d caressed him, and Gillian felt an unsteadying lightness, a slow leak of affection.

He made as if to lean forward and kiss her cheek, then to Gillian’s great relief he didn’t. He smiled and rose to his feet, wandering elsewhere in the house to be alone with his thoughts, or to use the bathroom.

“I see you two are getting very cozy.” Gillian looked up with a start to see Philippa standing in one of the darkened corridors, the one that led away from Arthur’s bedroom. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest. “I suppose you think you’re very saintly, don’t you? The perfect wife.”

I’m ninety-six percent sure I had a psychological breakdown yesterday, Gillian thought about retorting, but knew that tactically it wasn’t a very choice maneuver. Gillian had never been very good at these kinds of wars, but she understood at least one thing about Philippa, which was that fear was a very strange motivator, and one rupture—however small—could send the dominoes cascading.

Already, Gillian felt sure that something was coming undone. Secretly, she felt responsible for what was happening to Arthur. She had broken her routine, she had done things differently, and now Arthur was starting to die, things were collapsing all around her. She reached for the grip of fear and it was easy, terribly easy to find. For Gillian, it never really left.

“Would you like a drink, Philippa?” asked Gillian.

Philippa’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t,” she said with an air of weaponry. “I’m pregnant.”

“Are you?” Gillian countered coolly.

“Yes,” said Philippa. “It’s Arthur’s.”

For a moment, at the possibility of such a thing, that something so precious and transformative could be treated so casually, Gillian felt a stab of pain. Not the same kind of pain that she’d felt over loving Arthur, because that was a deeper ache, something worse and more corrupting; it was a pain she acted on daily, because love was an ailment she couldn’t cure. Philippa was trying to use jealousy as a weapon, but Gillian refused to cut herself on any blade she hadn’t forged herself. Besides, she knew what pregnancy looked like.

“I’ve seen this one,” said Gillian quietly.

“What?” said Philippa.

“With my mother,” Gillian continued, louder. “A few times. A lot of different versions. She loved soap operas. Though I have to say, a baby? With times as they are, politically speaking, you really shouldn’t play around with that kind of thing. Reproductive autonomy is very important to Arthur.” Gillian felt increasing pain when, after mining the entire contents of her marriage, she still could not be sure if a baby was something Arthur wanted. He had never brought it up to her, as they did not usually engage in reproductive activities, so Gillian didn’t know if it was something that mattered to him, which felt worse than any tactical miscalculation. The idea that maybe it did and she’d let him believe something else about his life and the things he was allowed to have in it was suddenly iron-wrought and cold.

“I’m not lying,” said Philippa.

“Okay,” Gillian generously allowed.

Philippa let out a heavy sigh, then fell sulkily onto the sofa beside Gillian. “It wasn’t a lie at first,” she said, and then grimaced. “Damn. You really are a good wife.”

“And you are a terrible mistress,” said Gillian, miming a toast.

“I’ll drink to that, if you won’t tell Arthur.”

Ah, the pain was back. Because how indeed to tell Arthur—how, now, to soften his world as Gillian wanted so badly to do? It was a constancy, the difficulty. It was so… unsexy, the tenderness she felt, the raw wound that was her love for a grown man who already understood the nature of life and disappointment. If only personal success would salve it; the longing to set everything right, like tending a garden so it always bloomed, evergreen and everlasting.

“Be careful with Arthur,” Gillian said.

“Because he’s fragile?” asked Philippa, sounding dryly amused.

No, because he’s mine, thought Gillian. Mine to love, mine to care for, mine to lose.

But Gillian had a keen sense for when a situation wasn’t about her. So while Philippa shamelessly unburdened herself of a month’s worth of lies, Gillian fixed them a companionable pair of drinks, ever the selfless hostess. Gillian had never cared for melodrama, personally; considered herself well above it, choosing instead to regard the woman who had lied to Arthur as a sympathetic figure, even a friend.

“So you see, the problem is and has always been the patriarchy,” Philippa concluded with a conspiratorial sigh, to which Gillian offered a nod of reflexive feminism, participating in the call and response of womankind. You go, girlboss! Yaaaaas, queen!

But couldn’t Gillian have an agenda, too? She’d been so good for so long. What could it hurt to try a tiny little ultimatum, as a treat?

“Tell him the truth,” Gillian delivered to Philippa with a tactical sip, “or I will,” and then neither woman spoke again.

The next day, when Gillian woke up in the bed she shared with her husband, she reached out to brush his hair from his forehead. By then, that particular show of physical affection had been adequately rehearsed and a degree of performance anxiety had meaningfully eased, given that it had worked once on Yves and might very well work again now, when it counted, on Arthur. Her fingers were nearly unfurled when she realized, cruelly, that Arthur wasn’t there.

She thought for a moment she might have overslept. Then she checked her clock and saw that no, she hadn’t, it was six thirty just as it usually was, and it was Arthur who had risen unusually early.

Gillian felt a stab of dizzying confusion, the hurt of a broken routine. The peril of it, the unknown. Who was she when she woke after Arthur, when his toothbrush was wet in the sink before hers? It was like pigs flying. What had Eilidh said about plagues, about apocalypses? Gillian felt one now, overrun by the terror of whatever unplanned calamity was to come.

Which would only get worse when she realized that Philippa was gone.