Page 58 of Gifted & Talented

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Eilidh was still breathing hard when she answered Arthur’s call. “Hello?”

“Quick question,” said Arthur. “Is it dark where you are?”

“Uh. Yes,” said Eilidh, glancing at the barely perceptible outline of Dzhuliya, who was sitting beside her on the steps outside the funeral home.

“Okay, cool. Also, did you do this?” asked Arthur in a pleasant voice, like he was wondering if he had her vote, but no pressure, she should vote her conscience, it was really just about doing whatever felt right according to her personal ethics.

“It would… appear so,” Eilidh confirmed. She glanced at Dzhuliya again, who even in the darkness looked to be lost in thought. Part of Eilidh wanted to reach out and rest the pads of her right fingers on each of the knuckles of Dzhuliya’s left hand, as if such a thing might heal her wounds in some small but significant way.

The other part of her continued to feel as if the world was ending, with no room for amicability, much less intimacy or fondness or light.

“Oh! Okay, well.” Arthur seemed to consult with someone else for a moment. “Where are you?” he said when he returned to their call. “Lou thinks we should probably meet up somewhere.”

“Well, I’m headed back to Dad’s,” said Eilidh, in lieu of saying where she actually was.

“Oh, right, the lawyers,” said Arthur with an abbreviated sigh. “Oh, sorry Eilidh, hang on, I’m getting a call. We’ll see you there, okay?”

“Okay,” said Eilidh, wondering as she always did if she should say I love you, or how exactly a person usually bid farewell to their siblings; like, generally speaking, did people say things with affection, and what if one of them died on the way home, would she regret not having said it? Presumably not if she was the one who died, but anyway Arthur had already hung up so Eilidh turned to Dzhuliya and said, “I guess we should go.”

Dzhuliya seemed hesitant, as if she wanted to say something to Eilidh before progressing onward. She settled on “Are you all right?”

“Me? Well, you know, why wouldn’t I be,” Eilidh said, aiming for wry and arriving somewhere grotesquely off base, like bitter or maybe resentful, or Listen here, Missy, I just made a day of endless night, how exactly do you think I’m doing, are you functionally comatose or only half alive? Which Dzhuliya was not stupid enough not to hear.

“You know,” Dzhuliya said slowly, “all of this has been so sudden, and you must still be reeling—”

Eilidh stood up, suddenly unable to bear the possibility of platitudes. She wasn’t sure what they would be, actually. She’d never known what to make of death herself. Funny, for someone who thought about death so often and play-acted it almost obsessively on the stage, Eilidh had never imagined the possibility that one day she’d be old, old enough to have complicated feelings about her father, old enough to have children she’d done wrong by, old enough that a stroke could be sudden but not necessarily tragic, though in Thayer’s case it would always be tragic because men were always young enough to reinvent themselves, even at the tender age of sixty. Eilidh would be old at… thirty-five? Forty? Invisibility seemed to be rocketing toward her, obsolescence hurtling like an asteroid through the sky. At least for now she could still inspire desire, it was still acceptable to be lost, to be working a middle-management job with no real eye on promotion because honestly, what was the point? Vacation days, retirement, all things she didn’t have the capacity to long for, things that relied on some Future Time she didn’t even believe in, like falling out of love with God. Soon it wouldn’t be cute anymore, this feeling of disillusionment, the Wild West of her youth buried deep in the sandstorm of time. Fuck!

“I’m not reeling,” said Eilidh darkly. “I’m fine.”

It all seemed very obvious and painfully on the nose at the moment, the whole emotional blackout over the epiphany of her father’s uneven love, the likelihood that she’d been doomed by his desire to keep her dependent and docile forever. Worse than her lifelong confinement to girlhood was the suddenly unignorable possibility that Thayer had loved her mostly as a possession, a thing he kept a close eye on rather than a person with any sort of agency or will. It now seemed to Eilidh that maybe if Meredith had ever done anything Thayer had asked her to do, then he would have loved her more for having successfully stomped the willpower out of her, finally crushing her down to a manageable size. Or if Arthur had bought more boats and fucked more bitches then maybe Thayer would have loved him most.

The thing in her chest chittered again with agitation, the kind that felt like pins and needles, anticipation for a storm. She ought to feel afraid, she thought. There were only so many plagues. What if they didn’t repeat—what if it only escalated? The thing inside her was getting bigger, stronger. It no longer needed her consent to act out, like a toddler coming of age, learning the concept of no. The idea of setting it free, opening her mouth and letting it climb out of her like a swamp creature, like some eldritch exorcism, was appealing in a way, cathartically releasing a horror unto the world. Eilidh’s horror, her very own! She felt oddly possessive over it, her little mangled thing with claws and teeth. Why didn’t you dread me, Father? Why didn’t you fear me, for I have monsters in my heart!

But inevitably a calmer, more stable Eilidh came back to her. Her father’s daughter. She couldn’t stand it, actually, even inside her head, the thought that she might let him down. She’d gone too long craving his adoration, finding some contorted relief in knowing that even if her dream was over, even if her body was broken, her father still loved her the most. The most! He treasured her, and maybe that had come with strings, a gilded cage, but she’d worn this mask so long she no longer knew what lived beneath it. The thing in her chest, the stirring of darkness was a bug, that’s all, just a bug— she was something different, something more alive than a parasite could ever be.

Oh, how they warred inside her, the girl and the god! She, her entire she, it didn’t want to be adored. Adoration had come so cheaply. Eilidh or her monster, no telling which, they both wanted to make something tremble, wanted to unleash a nightmare, to be rendered a nightmare herself because it was what they—she—deserved.

So what if she’d read him wrong the whole time; so what if Thayer wasn’t benevolence incarnate? What was she owed for her diligence, for her loyalty, for the filial duty that only she had fulfilled? Who was to say it wasn’t everything! Maybe the reason the world hadn’t actually fallen off its axis (yet) was that Eilidh didn’t know for certain where Thayer had placed his legacy. She still hadn’t lost everything, not until the curtains closed. The show went on until the final lines of Thayer Wren were read.

“I want it,” she said. The thing in her chest became the thing in her throat, then the thing in her mouth, crawling up like vomit. “Wrenfare. I’m going to fight for it.”

“What?” Dzhuliya was looking at her with something not quite bewildered. Too sharp for that. It was a repeat that so I can hold you to it kind of a request for clarification.

“If he leaves the shares to me, I’m taking it. If he divides them, I’ll make sure Arthur’s on my side. How hard could it be?” Eilidh’s heart thud-thudded in her chest, borne on the wings of a demon, alight on the branch of demand. “Or I’ll convince him to split his shares up, and then the board can decide. The board will choose me over Meredith, I know they will.” Everybody fucking hated Meredith. Eilidh was so light she wanted to fly. It’s called a long game, Meredith! How about them apples, Sister Death! “The point is I’m going to try, I want to try.” Power, that’s what Eilidh deserved, power! Thayer was dead but Eilidh was alive, and by god, she was free! “I don’t care if it costs me everything.” What else was it for if not this, a seat at the table, the inheritance of a throne?

What else was there now but Eilidh and her rage?

“Securing a majority might not be as hard as you think,” said Dzhuliya, who was a little wild-eyed, a reflection of Eilidh’s own festering mania. Or maybe not? Either way, Eilidh’s essentialness, the thing that had so long lain dormant was alive, it was awake, she wanted to run a mile, she wanted to scream as loud as she could, she wanted to fuck Dzhuliya in the car and then tear open her father’s last wishes, casting old dreams unto the pyre. Freedom! Forget the dreamhouse of expectation, she had a monster to feed, hers was a lore built on glory! Father, forgive me. Father, release me. Father, absolve me—oh, and by the way Father, fuck you!

Eilidh rose to her feet from the steps outside the funeral home, pulling Dzhuliya up beside her, and kissed Dzhuliya full on the mouth, exuberant, bereaving. The darkness Eilidh had made was somehow animal, alive. She could feel the quiet breeding, sightless eyes blinking from deep inside the soul of her inky night.

“Grief is a real rollercoaster on you,” whispered Dzhuliya, a hot gasp in Eilidh’s mouth.

“Ride the high, baby,” Eilidh replied, and smacked her lightly on the ass.