Chapter 9 Elsewhere #5
“And all of them have come in since the dive. He must have emptied this account, too.” Eli sighs. “They knew what they were doing.”
“More than we did, at least. Why were they so cautious? I didn’t even think about my laptop.”
“Maybe they were more confident that the portal was real. They might have planned more than we did. More tracks to cover up, if they didn’t want to leave a trail.”
A waiter arrives, balancing a large tray between his hand and shoulder.
He spreads a white cloth over the table.
First, he unloads silverware, napkins, and ice water with dainty paper covers.
The meals themselves are hidden under ostentatious silver domes.
Eli doesn’t pay much attention, but Laurel thinks of the galley, where the kitchen staff take pride in what they do.
She understands the waiter’s choreography as a dignified performance, and she tips enough to make Eli raise an eyebrow.
The food is extravagant. Laurel can taste the cream and butter, things she’s gone so long without.
By the end of the meal, she feels lethargic.
Eli offers her the first shower, but she waves him ahead and lies down.
After McMurdo’s vinyl mattresses, the bed is a revelation: springy and thick, with a duvet instead of an army blanket.
A wide-screen TV is bolted to the wall. Laurel turns it on.
A blond woman stands beside a firepit. She wears high heels and a bikini. Facing her, six men stand wide-legged in swim trunks, their hands clasped in front. Surveying them, the woman says, “I want to couple up with this boy because—”
Laurel changes the channel. A kitchen appears, chaotically cluttered. Belongings teeter atop every surface.
“After being provided with a face mask,” a narrator says, “Beverly agreed to go back inside her sister’s house.”
Laurel watches Beverly proceed with lazy, morbid fascination.
She wishes that Louis and Charlie were here—Louis providing running commentary, Charlie injecting compassion—and then she remembers stretching in the break room, chatty and deviceless, the tension in her hamstrings melting.
When Eli returns from the bathroom, she’s turned the TV off.
Instead, she holds the wall, working on her calves.
“Sorry,” she says, embarrassed. “Long flight.”
“Probably a good idea,” says Eli.
Laurel brings her pajamas to the bathroom.
Every detail feels luxurious: the heat and pressure of the water, the thick towels, the bath mat beneath her feet.
If she and Eli were still together, she would only put on one of the plush, heavy robes that hang from a peg behind the door.
Instead, she changes into the other Laurel’s pin-striped pajamas.
When she opens the door, the bedroom lights have been turned off.
“Can you see?” asks Eli, anxious, and she realizes that he’s tried to give her privacy.
“Just fine,” she says. “Thank you.”
Without the blanket screen, they have no barrier. Eli lies on top of the other queen, pulling his right knee to the left.
“You were right,” he says. “It feels good to stretch.”
Laurel smiles. She climbs onto her bed and takes the same position.
“Try looking over your right shoulder,” she suggests.
She hears his head brush the pillow as it rotates. Then he gasps.
“Laurel, be reasonable,” says Eli. “We’re almost forty.”
“You always have to go to the extreme. Ease off a little,” Laurel says. “Then try it again, but be patient.”
Eli returns to his starting position. This time, the sound of his head on the pillow is slower, longer, Eli making little grunts of progress. At last, he sighs.
“See?” she says. “Now do the other side.”
They turn to the right together. Laurel extends her arms, feeling her shoulders open. After some time, Eli becomes quiet, and she assumes that he’s fallen asleep.
Then he says, “I should have done things differently.”
Laurel startles. “In Antarctica?”
“No,” says Eli. “As a father.”
“What do you mean?”
“I left early in the morning, and I spent evenings in my office. When Silas knocked, I asked him to wait. I said I’d come out when I was done.”
Laurel absorbs this quietly. Eli is right. And though there should be satisfaction in hearing him acknowledge it, she can only think of feeding Silas peas and want to cry.
“I let you think you were the bad one,” Eli says.
Laurel draws her knees to her chest.
“Because you thought I was,” she ventures.
“No. Because it was easier. You made the mistake in Michigan, but I made others. I was distracted. I didn’t make enough time for him—not like you did.”
Laurel straightens her legs on the bed. “My work wasn’t going very well.”
For the reality feels more complicated. Yes: she was the mother, expected to serve as the primary parent.
What she set aside was not just work but a private, musing voice that had been with her all her life.
She had less capacity for internal conversation: the call-and-response of her mind as it moved this way and that, remarking on what it saw, pursuing its own curiosity.
This was what she envied Eli most. In becoming a parent, he didn’t have to leave so much of himself behind.
Yet it was also true that her work was discouraging, that her motivation ebbed with the demotion to technician, and that parenthood fascinated her in ways she hadn’t expected. There were times when she resented Eli, but she never wanted to trade places.
“And there were good things,” she adds, “about being home with him.”
After all, what had it given her? Not just early wake-ups and cooking and bath duty, but time. Someday, when Laurel was ready, she could scroll through an encyclopedia of memories. She could tell Eli about them, but they weren’t his.
“I know,” he says. “I see that now.”
—
Laurel wakes early, unused to the sound of traffic.
She changes into fresh clothes and slips downstairs with the other Laurel’s tote bag and laptop.
In the lobby, individual yogurts have been stacked beside large bowls of fresh fruit, most of it uneaten.
There are four different kinds of milk. Dizzied by choice, wondering how much will be thrown away, Laurel brings a small plate and a coffee to a window seat.
Outside, showers unscroll from the sky. She hasn’t seen rain since leaving Wisconsin. Fellow travelers dial into conference calls or shake the newspaper open. The scene almost feels normal. If Laurel keeps close to her purpose, maybe she can find her way here.
She pulls up the other Laurel’s email account again. For the password, she tries two more apple trees without success. Only three guesses are allowed for each verification attempt, so she opts to answer a security question.
What is your favorite fungus?
A jolt in her stomach: Laurel Two must have written this question. Laurel tries Cadophora, to no effect. Pisolithus microcarpus is the species she used for her maze experiments, and she wonders if the other Laurel has studied it, too. But when she submits that answer, the password box shakes again.
Laurel looks out of the window. A hazy orange sun struggles against clouds. Which fungi have captured her own imagination? The red-capped A. muscaria is too obvious an answer.
In Michigan, while Silas slept, a pattern of black cord beckoned from a wooded path. As if following a rope, she walked away from the beach, into the trees. The memory repels her, but could it be—?
Laurel types armillariagallica. It works like a key.