Page 45 of Gifted & Talented

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Of course, Arthur didn’t get that text because he was with me. Monster had woken me early that morning by kicking me several times in the diaphragm. His motor skills are really something.

Monster got his nickname by the usual means. He was a nightmare child right from go; from inside the womb, even. Did you know that during pregnancy, a woman’s body changes so drastically and miraculously, so fast and so dangerously that her eyeballs change shape? A common symptom of pregnancy in the second trimester is chronic nosebleeds. Did you know that? Sure, you know about the nausea and the vomit, and maybe you know about “baby brain,” the thing where your body slows production on your brain cells so it can offer those resources devoutly to the baby instead, like some kind of deranged patriarchal tithe. For almost a year of my life I was so incredibly stupid that I had to take pictures of everything I did, just in case I forgot where I was parked and had to sit down and have a little cry about it, which everyone ignored, because contrary to popular media-driven belief, most people don’t give a fuck about your pregnancy. When you’re just an unfuckable woman wandering around undesirably, it’s amazing how many men can see right through you, as if you magically don’t exist.

The full extent of my vocabulary never came back, either. I routinely forget the word for… the thing, the thing in the kitchen, you know the one. And then, after the sciatica and the expensive year’s supply of daily contacts I could no longer wear and the nausea that lasted the entire time (some people don’t get their energy back in the second trimester, FYI) and the carpal tunnel that formed my fingers into claws each day like a badly transformed velociraptor, then Monster, an incredibly active fetus, tore out of me an incredibly sleepless baby who did everything in his power several times a day to merge his body back with mine. He would only sleep if he was on top of me, wrestling with me every time he woke up like he was trying to shove himself back into the womb. His father—yes, Monster has a father, though obviously I didn’t tell Arthur that right away, purely for the giggles—was useless, through no fault of his own. Monster only wanted me.

And for that I love him to the point of insanity, to the point of emergency. To the point of invention. It was for Monster that I started working in magitech again after I swore it was all a waste of time, which it was. Participation in capitalism is its own form of doom—it can only end pointlessly no matter what you do, we all go into the ground. I know this isn’t new, because before this there was industrialization and the likelihood we’d all die of asbestos in a factory fire for an overlord we’d never live to set eyes on, and before that we could have all been peaceably going about our lives until some guy showed up in a boat and started shooting off cannons and throwing smallpox our way.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What the point is of anything. If I hadn’t had Monster, I probably would have just kept working at the Wrenfare store because honestly, why not? I owned my house, with my mom’s help I could afford childcare and put food on the table, and hey, at least I had health insurance. There’s nothing quite like the question of whether a sickness or injury is bad enough to merit the cost and wait time of the ER, and for so much of my life that was the tipping point I’d always known, existing beside my doom on the lancet of a needle.

Anyway, I figured I had woken Arthur prematurely because of the message I sent around five in the morning instructing him to meet me, a trickle-down effect of toddler-induced sleep deprivation. And I didn’t question it when he replied that he’d only need twenty minutes, because how much time do men really need? It turned out, though, that Arthur hadn’t slept at all. He’d gone to bed early, alone, though instead of falling asleep he’d just lain there thinking about death, and then eventually someone crept in and Arthur held his breath, thinking for a second it might have been Philippa coming in to finally tell him the truth, or possibly even apologize. But instead it was Gillian, in her usual pajamas and the silk hair wrap that made her look, to him, completely and utterly glamorous, like some kind of 1920s movie starlet who was born to be in the pictures. She’d laughed when he first told her that, a very Gillian laugh where she covered her mouth and seemed to mostly twinkle around her eyes. Arthur felt a pang of something at the thought, loss and affection and the usual intestinal twist of agony. But oh well, what did it matter, things were what they were. And then he couldn’t sleep. He picked up his phone and scrolled his social media, the one thing he knew he shouldn’t do under circumstances of debilitating malaise.

CRITICISM OVER EAST BAY HOUSING DEBATE INTENSIFIES AS WREN ABSCONDS T…

@FRANKIE267 TAGGED YOU IN A POST: WREN PRETENDS HE CAN’T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING HE PROMISED BECAUSE HIS HANDS ARE TIED BY CONG…

So he was awake when he got my text, and he rose quietly, more quietly than usual, hoping not to wake Gillian because if she looked him in the eye—if she asked him even one single question—he would blurt out something inadvisable, and there was really no telling what it would be. I’m leaving you for Philippa and Yves because they love me in a way I understand, because they want a family in a version that my silly little brain can actually imagine? I’m staying right here with you because I still want something from you that I’m not sure you’ll ever be willing to give, but selfishly I still want to try? Either way it felt more like levying a threat, which wouldn’t help matters for either of them.

Fundamentally, the question that Arthur wanted to ask was what does our future look like? Because by some definition he could see it clear as day, matching pajamas for a lifetime, Gillian with laughter lines around her eyes, him losing the hair at the crown of his head just like his father had done. But there were pieces missing, a fogged-up window through which Arthur couldn’t see outside the house. Were there children playing? A dog, three cats? Did they live on a farm or somewhere dotting the San Francisco skyline? When he lost this election—and he was almost certainly going to lose this election—would he still be enough for her? Had he ever been enough, or was it always just the promise of what he, Arthur Wren, was born to be? Potential! He wanted to scream it, as if through a hysterical laugh. Gillian, I know you chose me for my future, is it turning out the way you thought it would? Gillian, was my father right, did you gamble it all on a choker, is this a roadblock or is it the yips—did life deal you a really bad hand when it presented you with me?

“Jesus, you look terrible,” were my first words to Arthur when I met him in the parking lot of Muir Woods, not long after sunrise had broken. The first thing Arthur noticed about me was my worn Berkeley crewneck, the same one I’d been wearing the previous day, and the child on my hip currently resting his head on my shoulder. Arthur felt a sudden wave of envy, followed by recognition of what I’d just said.

“Was I supposed to look pretty for our hike?” he asked me. My expression didn’t change, though he’d been hoping to make me laugh.

“Yes,” I said in what Arthur considered a guarded tone. Arthur turned his attention to Monster, who was chewing on his thumb. He’d never used a pacifier, simply wouldn’t take one. I was the only thing that would ever calm him. Me and my flesh.

“What’s his name?” Arthur asked, gesturing to Monster with his chin. As if I might have somehow been confused as to who he was talking about.

“Socrates,” I said.

“Stop it,” said Arthur.

“Aeneas.”

“Stop. What’s your name?” Arthur asked Monster, who turned to bury his head deeper into my shoulder.

“The g is silent,” I said.

Arthur sighed audibly and gestured us forward. “Into the woods, I suppose.”

“Into the woods,” I agreed, hoisting Monster higher up on my hip. I had intended to leave him with my mother, and I’m still not sure why I brought him on that particular morning. Sometimes I just really like to be with my son, even when it annoys me that he refuses to walk because it means I’ll have to carry him, and it’s not like he’s tiny anymore. I used to carry him everywhere in one of those little baby wraps, partially because it was the only way I could get anything done when he was a newborn. He would cry for multiple hours a day, who knows why, though at the same time I understood completely. I used to strip us both down and walk around naked with him on my chest. The doctors call it skin-to-skin bonding but it shouldn’t even have a name, it’s that primal. There is something animal about motherhood, about the way that the first thing Monster did when they handed him to me was shit all down my bare tits and I didn’t mind. In fairness, my perineum was split completely in half, what was there to mind about a little shit?

I was grumbling a little at Monster, which Arthur noticed because he was thinking about Riot—Schrodinger’s baby, who both existed and didn’t exist. Riot would enjoy hiking, Arthur thought. Riot would probably love the feeling of being out in nature, exploring the wild deep. This part of Muir Woods probably wouldn’t be enough for Riot! There were too many tourists, you couldn’t do witchcraft here. Arthur was thinking about how Riot would want something that felt more undiscovered, or maybe she’d want to visit the tide pools at Stinson Beach. Arthur was thinking again about what Gillian said about Philippa not being pregnant, and about the fact that it was feeling increasingly likely that Philippa had lied to him. Had Yves known that already? It wasn’t often that Arthur felt like the stupid one among the three of them, but he supposed he was. It had been a while, he suddenly realized, since the last time he even saw Yves and Philippa together outside the context of sex. But if he accepted that what Gillian had said was true, then Riot would go away, back into the ether, and Arthur couldn’t do that to her. In his mind he was carrying her, she was sleepy and he was taking her from the car up to her bedroom and she had her arms around his neck, and she was his, and he just couldn’t let her go.