Chapter 7 Bottomlands
Bottomlands
Laurel drove to the orchard through drizzle.
A truck was parked in front of the farmhouse, so she veered down to the lot.
In the backseat, Silas was singing a made-up song and kicking his legs with excitement.
When she unbuckled the car seat, he hopped out on his own, wearing yellow rubber boots that had been hers.
They climbed the path that led up from Lower Orchard. When they reached the road, a man walked from the door of the farmhouse to the truck, which sputtered as he reversed out of the driveway.
Laurel found Clare at the dining room table.
“You wouldn’t,” Laurel said.
Some emotion moved across Clare’s face. Laurel thought it was guilt before she located it as fear. Fear of disappointing her child; fear of neglecting herself. Fear of having to choose.
“Laurel,” her mother said, standing. “Please understand.”
The man Laurel had seen was Sylvester Perkins.
His own orchard was not far off. It had always been a competitor, not because Sly operated similarly to the Salters but because he didn’t.
He had no heirloom varieties, no tolerance for blemish.
Sly packed trees so closely together that they could not stand on their own.
They had to be braced with steel wire instead.
“He isn’t growing apple trees,” Pete said once, as they drove by. The trunks were skinny as branches, the branches bowed beneath fruit. “He’s growing apples.”
“I can’t understand,” Laurel told Clare. “I cannot.”
The tabletop was chaotic: stacks of bills fanned beside coffee cups and the gray calculator Clare had used since the eighties.
Underneath was a wicker basket with needles and yarn, which she rarely touched.
She had sold the sheep several years earlier, unable to manage the work.
Laurel had protested, but she would have had to leave college—and help full-time—to make a meaningful dent. Out of the question, Clare said.
It was miserable to say goodbye to them, but Laurel and Clare had been lucky. They found a like-minded buyer: a young couple starting their own family farm. Laurel visited every so often, bringing apples for the sheep. A buyer like Sly Perkins would rip their trees out of the ground.
“Do you realize,” Clare said, “that I’ve been doing this on my own for ten years?”
“You aren’t alone,” said Laurel. The Salters could only afford part-time employees in the fall, but a handyman named Ruben helped with weekly chores. “Let’s ask Ruben for more hours.”
“Ruben is close to retirement.”
“Then we’ll hire someone else.”
“I’m getting close to retirement! Think of what you’re asking me.”
Silas looked nervously from Laurel to Clare and said, “How do we know we have a nose if we can’t see it?”
Laurel picked him up, and Clare said, “Oh, sweetheart,” and they ferried him to the sunroom, where Clare kept his favorite toys.
Laurel produced a juice box, and when Silas repeated his question, she touched his nose and said, “We feel it.” After he began to play, Laurel and Clare returned to the dining room.
“It’s not like it was when you were a kid,” said Clare, sitting. “We haven’t had a normal crop in years.”
“Why wouldn’t you come to me first?”
“I was just exploring options.”
Laurel pointed to the door through which Sly had left. “That option desecrates Dad’s memory. I wish you hadn’t let him in the house.”
Clare flinched. “A purist,” she said, “like your father.”
Laurel was proud. She crossed her arms. “You couldn’t find a single buyer with a model like ours?”
“No, Laurel, I couldn’t. We do things the hard way. To most people, that’s not a very attractive proposition.”
Laurel’s anger elbowed with guilt. She and Eli lent a hand in summer and winter, but during the academic year, weeks could pass between visits.
“Eli and I could take over,” she said.
“And continue your careers? How could you do both?”
“You haven’t given us the chance to consider it!”
But Laurel did not want to run the orchard, not really. She wanted her father to be alive, and she wanted her parents to manage it. She wanted to be the child.
“I miss him too, you know,” said Clare. “I miss him just as much as you.”
The acknowledgment defanged Laurel. It was a relief to name her father, the issue under the issue. She put her hand over her mother’s, which was cool and ridged with veins.
“I know you do,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’ve done too much for too long. I’ll try to find an alternative.”
It was five o’clock. She had planned to go straight home, but instead, she made a detour.
Gloria took one look through the peephole and brought her inside, Laurel apologizing for the lack of notice and already starting to cry.
She felt exhausted. When Gloria asked what she wanted to drink, Laurel said, “Is it too late for coffee?”
Gloria looked at her seriously. “Laurel,” she said, “in this house, we have coffee at any time of day or night.”
In an armchair, Laurel crumpled. After Gloria returned with a French press and two mugs, Laurel reported what had happened. Gloria listened with compassion, though she didn’t impugn Clare.
“Think of every good thing your family did with that land in the past,” Gloria said. “That was real. It still counts.”
“What do the good things matter if someone else comes and undoes them?”
“I think it matters very much. You created a model—a trial—and it worked,” Gloria said.
“You have data: how to grow heirloom trees, how to manage pests without traditional pesticides. You could share that with researchers, or other growers.” Cygnus rubbed against her leg.
“I don’t mean that this isn’t a loss. You’ll need to grieve.
But ideas travel. You can make sure that they survive. ”
Laurel finds Eli eating breakfast at a table full of physicists.
“I need to talk to you,” she says.
“Can this wait?” asks Eli.
The scientists look at Laurel, who feels acutely aware of her uniform. “No.”
She leads Eli to the empty grab-and-go area.
“I think I’ve figured something out,” she continues, “but I can’t tell you here. Can you meet me tonight? Nine o’clock, in the library?”
Laurel has never been to the library; she’s still working her way through the Le Guin collection from Skua. Still, it seems like neutral territory.
“Okay,” says Eli. Several of the physicists are watching, and he seems eager to leave as soon as possible.
Laurel spends the day in the dish pit, wondering how she can convince him of what she learned in her dream. An idea forms while she scrubs vats of crusted oatmeal. At eight, she brings two bowls of soup to Nita’s room.
“Is one of those for me?” says Nita. “You’re an angel. I haven’t left my room since breakfast.”
A virus has been making its way through the station. Laurel fell victim last week.
“Feel up to company?” she asks.
“Sure. But I blow my nose like a foghorn. You’ve been warned.”
Laurel takes off her baseball cap and settles against the wall. Stevie Nicks plays from Nita’s iPhone while they talk about Sam, who has started work at an organic farm in Humboldt County.
“I should let you rest,” says Laurel, when Nita’s voice becomes hoarse. “Quickly, though: funny question. Have you ever dived in the water off Cape Evans, near the Arc?”
Nita nods. “A few times.”
“What was it like?”
“Unusual. Typically, when it’s dark, you need a clip-on flashlight; the downside is that it scares away the animals.
The Arc was so fluorescent that we could see just fine without one.
What was even weirder,” Nita adds, “is that animals seemed to be drawn to it, even though the Arc was brighter than a dive light by several orders of magnitude. Octopuses usually live alone. I’d never seen so many in close proximity. ”
Laurel tries to restrain her excitement. “The seabed, under the Arc. Does it sort of—curve downward? Like a semicircle?”
Nita’s gaze sharpens. “How do you know that?”
—
Louis is sitting cross-legged outside Laurel’s door with one of Charlie’s adult coloring books. He hops up when he sees her and says, “Let’s go bowling.”
Laurel squeezes his hand. “I have to go to the library.”
Louis balks. “Whatever for?”
“I want to get a book.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you. The library is where people go to hook up.”
“I thought they use the sauna for that.” Laurel glances longingly at the nondescript blue door every time she passes it.
“They go to the library if the sauna is occupied,” Louis says.
After she opens the door, Laurel coughs to announce herself. There is shuffling, then shushing. Laurel pretends to inspect a tome on urology. A sweaty couple emerges from the rocks aisle and sulks toward the door.
The library is surprisingly cozy. Tall shelves are filled with donated books, and maroon chairs tuck into study desks.
Between armchairs is a side table with a chess set, as well a vase of fake flowers that look passably real from a distance.
At a larger table, a cup of popcorn has tipped over.
Laurel cleans it instinctively, sitting just as Eli arrives.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” says Laurel.
He takes the seat across from her. It is still surreal to see him here—even to see him at all.
For years, his presence was a constant in her life; when they separated, she felt as though she was going through withdrawal.
His hair is longer now, and he wears a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that Laurel hasn’t seen before.
She turns her Mead notebook to face him. “What if it’s not an Arc? What if it’s a circle?”
Laurel has made a drawing. A wavy horizontal line represents the ocean. Above is the Arc, in green colored pencil; below is a second semicircle.
“Does this remind you of something?” she asks.
Eli pauses. Then he says, “The Duoverse.”
Laurel nods. She writes UNIVERSE over the Arc and ANTIUNIVERSE under the lower semicircle. It’s the same image he drew for her on a napkin twelve years earlier.
“Where did you find this?” asks Eli.
“I thought of it.”
“How?”
What could she say? It came to me in a dream. She would lose him immediately.