Chapter 7 Bottomlands #5
And she was. Laurel envied Tess’s position, but she didn’t hold it against her.
She had never had Eli’s confidence, his sense of being meant for something great.
If a grant proposal was rejected, Eli took the news as an affront; Laurel assumed that she simply wasn’t good enough.
Still, when Gloria left to retrieve a new bottle of wine, Laurel shrank from the pity in Tess’s expression.
“How’s it going,” Tess asked, “taking over for Samir?”
“Oh,” said Laurel, “it’s fine.”
Tess nodded. “It might just be for now.”
“That’s what Gloria says. But I can’t think like that. It’s too hard to hold both doors open.”
They turned in after midnight. Gloria tutted as Laurel blinked back tears (“I’ll be retired,” she said, “not dead”).
As time went on, though, Laurel felt relieved that Gloria no longer worked in the Rhizotron.
She rarely returned to her experiment. The successful results still haunted her, but she couldn’t bear another failure.
Besides, there was always someone who needed a return processed or an incubator cleaned.
“Maybe there’s a silver lining,” Maisie said, later that summer. They sat in her backyard with Hazel, Silas, and Maisie’s second child, baby Frankie. “Academia can be so up its own…”
She pointed at her backside, and Hazel, watching, said, “Butt.”
Laurel tried to be rational. Maisie was right: being a researcher meant navigating department politics and oversized egos, competing for funding and publication.
Besides, the lab couldn’t function without a technician.
She was contributing to scholarship, even if it wasn’t her own.
But when the department made a new hire—or when she visited Eli’s faculty office—the humiliation overwhelmed her.
Two years later, Laurel left for Antarctica.
She felt little further anguish. The defeat had already happened.
Eli enters the library five minutes late. Laurel and Nita wait at the back table.
“One of the IceCubes trapped me in the stairwell,” he says, harried. “Nita, thank you for entertaining this.”
Nita smiles, brief but genuine. “Off the record, you’re welcome. On the record?”
Eli pulls out a chair. “We’ve never even met.”
Nita doesn’t waste time. “The big secret is that sneaking a dive at McMurdo is alarmingly straightforward. The dive locker has all the equipment, and anyone can go inside. Cape Evans is only fifteen miles away, but getting there takes almost two hours; you have to use a PistenBully, which can drive over snow. There are always a handful parked next to the locker. We leave the keys in the ignition.”
“That seems way too simple,” Laurel says.
“Well, the dive won’t be. You’ll have to wait until summer for warmth and light; I’d recommend October.
To avoid the field trainers, you can use an open dive hole at night.
But you’ll need to physically prepare. The cold is unlike anything you’ve experienced, and you have to build tolerance.
Crank the shower to some ungodly temperature and breathe.
Add cardio and strength training, too. That’ll teach your body to use oxygen efficiently. Laurel said you have dive experience?”
“In warm water. We aren’t certified for ice diving,” says Eli.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Nita squeezes her eyes shut.
When she opens them again, she retrieves a spiral-bound document.
“This is the McMurdo dive guide. Memorize it. You’ll be using different gear: dry suits, from the locker.
Make sure they fit at the wrists and the ankles, especially on Laurel.
McMurdo only keeps a few women’s suits on hand.
The rest are unisex, but dive equipment is made for men. ”
“Is that true?” asks Eli, stricken.
Squinting at him, Nita sighs.
“Beneath the suit,” she continues, “layer up with heavy-duty polypro and fleece. You can find undergarments at Skua. Now let’s talk about the terrain.”
It’s easy to picture Nita as the captain of an expedition ship, her instincts sharpened by crisis. Laurel writes quickly to keep up.
“The area that Laurel calls the basin is roughly the same size as the Arc. They’re both one hundred and twenty feet wide, sixty feet deep in the middle,” says Nita. “Because you aren’t used to the cold, you’ll need to be as quick as possible. Are you both confident swimmers?”
“I swim most days,” says Eli. “Or I did, back in Wisconsin.”
Laurel glances up in shock. She hasn’t gone swimming since Silas died, and she assumed that he hadn’t, either.
Nita hasn’t noticed. “Okay, that’s good.
Here’s what I’d suggest. The dive hut is about four hundred feet to the right of the Arc.
You can swim that length together and then split up to cover more space.
Laurel, you could investigate the nearer side of the basin.
Eli would swim to the opposite end and then make his way back, toward you. ”
Eli looks at Laurel. “What if we lose each other?”
“The water is incredibly clear,” Nita says. “There’s a downline in the dive hut, but you won’t even need a tether.”
After Nita leaves, Laurel and Eli walk down the hallway together.
“What do you think?” she asks.
Eli shakes his head. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“I think you want to do it,” she says, quiet.
He laughs dryly. “Want is a strong word.”
They say goodbye at his door. From there, Laurel will walk back to her room on the first floor. Before she enters the stairwell, though, Eli calls her name.
He’s still standing in the hallway. His expression catches her off guard. He seems to be asking something. Whether they’re making a mistake. Whether he can trust her. The responsibility is crushing.
Laurel shakes her head briefly. I can’t make you, it says. I can’t promise anything. They can still read each other. Eli looks away.
She takes several steps back toward him. “You have to want this, too.”
Eli seems reluctant, as if afraid to admit something he feels he shouldn’t. Below that, Laurel detects something else: the excitement—even the relief—of giving in to temptation.
“I know,” he says. “I do.”
—
Occasionally, after the wedding, Laurel dreamed that she and Eli were divorcing. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t something she worried about then, when Silas was alive. But the dreams were vivid. Once, she woke in tears.
All this, she had been thinking: their inside jokes, their private world. I have to give all of this up.
Now Eli’s life is a mystery to her. Laurel can’t picture him at a pool, doing laps.
Aside from the diving they did on their honeymoon, he had never shown interest in swimming.
That was like him. He only wanted to do the exceptional version of an activity.
When he was eight, Eli had told Laurel, he begged to take gymnastics. Within six months, he quit.
“Why?” asked Laurel. “You didn’t like it?”
They sat at an east-side pub with subpar food but excellent ambiance. She and Eli had only been dating for weeks. They came for the walleye sandwich—the only good dish on the menu—and for the board games that were stacked in a bookcase.
“No, I liked it,” he said. “It was fun.”
But the other boys his age had been training for years. Eli lacked the upper-body strength required for the rings and pommel horse. He lost interest when it became clear that he wouldn’t make it to the Olympics.
“That’s ridiculous,” Laurel spluttered.
“I know,” said Eli good-naturedly. He was able to laugh at himself. Still, Laurel could tell that he was proud to have been that kind of child. It meant that he had character, or it described what kind of character he had. Later she wondered if this was why he didn’t have hobbies.
If Eli had been ambitious for ambition’s sake, Laurel would have found him obnoxious.
What she respected was that he was fueled by monk-like vocation.
In her life, work was one thread among many.
But Eli’s purpose was a bright clear beam that guided and protected him.
He didn’t mind being alone. To think was transporting.
He liked long car rides, long bus rides, long walks: intense and private pleasures.
Laurel begins to go to the gym before her shift at the galley. One morning, she sees Eli on the stationary bike. He’s always been lean, but now his back ripples with muscle.
She grabs a jump rope, self-conscious. When Silas was alive, she used to run. Back then, she took pride in her strength, but she’s lost weight, and muscle with it.
“Take the bike,” Eli offers. “The jump rope will drive you nuts.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Laurel says, but she quickly becomes tangled.
“I took a jump rope class last summer,” says Eli. “I guess I was trying to get out of my comfort zone. Everyone else looked like they were in The Matrix, and my glasses kept flying off.”
Laurel laughs. When Eli joins in, it feels like therapy. In the opening this creates, she says something impulsive. “Where do you swim?”
Eli looks jarred, but he answers. “There’s a pool on campus.”
“Oh.” She nods. “When did you start?”
“Two years ago.”
Laurel does the math. They were still together at that point, and she never knew. Eli must have packed a swimsuit when he went to work. He might have showered at the pool. Either way, he had decided not to tell her. Then again, Laurel hadn’t noticed.
She says, “Can I ask why?”
Eli dismounts the bike. There is a faint smile on his face: part matter-of-fact, part wistful. “Because Silas loved it.”
Laurel swallows. It was simple: water had a charge. That charge had repelled her. To Eli, it did the opposite.
“I see,” she says.
When Laurel arrives at the gym the next morning, Eli is using the treadmill.
After that, without discussing it, they continue to come at the same time.
Some days, they only smile in acknowledgment.
On others, they chat lightly, trading notes about the dive guide or how to withstand the cold showers.