Chapter 10 Anima #6
“Thank you,” Maisie says. Then she peels back to look at Laurel. “God, I hope I’m not being insensitive. My girls are still here.”
My girls are still here: the phrase doesn’t make sense. Maisie wouldn’t know about Silas. Laurel tucks the question away. She and Eli need to stay focused. Whatever Maisie meant had to do with Laurel Two, not her.
“Of course you aren’t,” says Laurel. It’s easy to be loyal: her love for Maisie is as effortless as ever. She wipes Maisie’s tears the way she did when they were teens, bringing her thumbs to the lashes to catch any smeared eye makeup. Maisie stands still, docile; she even smiles weakly.
“You know what it is?” she says. “I just disagree with this part of life.”
“Which part?” Laurel asks.
“The dying one,” says Maisie.
—
The next day, Laurel drives to Progress Senior Living. It’s a bright, modern facility, with glass walls and fig trees in planters.
The receptionist greets her pleasantly. “Are you here for the tour? It leaves on the hour.”
Laurel joins a group of middle-aged people.
A chipper male employee leads them through each floor.
Level One, postnatal care, is laid out like a hospital.
The second level features skilled nursing and early education.
They pass double and triple bedrooms, as well as a classroom whose lights have been dimmed.
A young woman—the teacher, presumably—taps a tablet while students nap on mats.
“Some families choose to bring their relatives home after care at Level One or Two,” says the employee, as they climb to the third floor.
“For those who remain, Level Three offers more independence. Each resident has their own room, along with sign-out privileges, and buses provide easy access to local high schools.”
The seniors on this level are closer to the age of Laurel’s students. One couple sits on a bench along the windows, holding hands. While the tour guide fields questions about Medicare, Laurel slips back downstairs.
—
The other Clare lives in an apartment with Walter.
Their college diplomas, earned two years earlier, hang in the living room.
Both work at the Madison Symphony Orchestra—Walter in development, Clare as the conductor’s assistant—and when Clare picks up the phone, Laurel hears classical music at top volume.
The other Laurel had cosigned her mother’s lease, and a younger neighbor once called Laurel to complain about the noise.
“She’s only mad that it isn’t her kind of music,” Clare sniped. “That generation is totally biased against classical, but trust me: it’s going to be huge.”
Laurel and Clare meet for lunch every other week. In warm weather, they eat outside; today they’ll sit indoors to escape the driving rain. When Laurel arrives, Clare waves from their favorite table. She’s already ordered Laurel’s coffee.
Laurel has been surprised by how much she looks forward to these meetings.
Sometimes she even feels guilty, as though she’s betraying Clare One.
Laurel’s relationship with her mother was complicated by history: the death of Laurel’s father, the sale of the orchard.
Looking back, Laurel is racked by regret.
Pete’s death should have taught her to take nothing for granted.
Her relationship with Clare Two feels like a clean slate.
They hug across the table. After a server takes their order, Clare says, “I have something to tell you.”
“Oh?”
“Walter and I are getting divorced.”
Clare seems to brace herself for Laurel’s reaction.
“Oh, Mom.” Laurel doesn’t often use that word here, but Clare looks unusually fragile. “I’m so sorry.”
“You aren’t upset?”
“Of course not. It’s your life. I want you to be happy.”
Clare expels a long sigh. “Maybe it doesn’t come as a shock. You’ve probably noticed the tension.”
Laurel last saw Walter at Eli’s birthday party.
Clare and Walter bickered, but Walter treated Laurel with special fondness.
Eli’s parents, meanwhile, seemed anxious for Eli and Laurel’s approval.
Twice Leo asked if he had made the Rosen birthday cake correctly.
Janet described the subject of her current research, a hybrid Spanish-Mandarin language from the twenty-second century.
Frequently she scanned Laurel’s face, as if to gauge her interest level.
“I want everything to stay the same between you and Walter,” Clare says now. “He’s always been like a father to you. We’ve just grown apart, and the separation has been amicable. In fact, we’re having an unwedding in May.”
Laurel lowers a hunk of brown sugar into her coffee with a spoon. “An unwedding?”
“In May,” Clare repeats, distracted: a fit-looking man in his sixties is jogging past the window.
“Bob and Lois could only manage a trip to the courthouse—no closure. Thank goodness it isn’t like that with us.
Walter and I were so young when we met. I thought I wanted someone like me, with the same interests and tastes, but now I’m not sure. ”
Clare is sixty-six—according to public record, she was born at ninety, in 2040—which means she’s been alive for twenty-four years.
“You don’t have to be sure right now,” says Laurel. “There’s plenty of time to figure what makes you happy.”
It feels good to see the tension leave Clare’s face. When the check arrives, Clare reaches for her wallet.
“Please, let me,” says Laurel. Clare has an assistant’s salary, and she’ll soon be without Walter’s income.
“I want to,” says Clare, proud, and Laurel decides simply to thank her.
—
That summer, Laurel helps Clare to find her own apartment.
She and Walter lived in a modern complex, with a parking lot, a common room, and a pool for Clare’s water aerobics.
Her new unit is shabbier—a garden apartment, half underground, in a brick building on the east side—but Clare can pay for it all by herself.
They drive to Target for essentials. Clare cranks the music up, her gray hair blowing out the window.
The unwedding will take place at Orton Park in May. Laurel coordinates a potluck; Walter’s son, who manages a brewery, donates cider and beer. Clare and Walter devote their budget to a bluegrass quartet.
Clare chooses a Druid officiant. In the antiuniverse, monotheistic religions are less popular than earth-based traditions. Still, they exist, despite the fact that Christ and Muhammad won’t be born for thousands of years. On a walk to Picnic Point, Laurel and Eli contemplate this paradox.
“The concept could come before the person,” Laurel says.
Her only hypothesis is that the universes are connected in ways she doesn’t understand, ideas routing through a collective unconscious that spreads below the mind’s awareness.
“It’s like—someone is anointed, picked to embody an ideal.
It could be an honor. A responsibility, too. ”
“That’s clever,” Eli says. “And it could apply to other examples. In our universe, the Americas were named after an explorer, weren’t they? Amerigo Vespucci? So here…”
Laurel picks up the thread. “Maybe Vespucci will still be an explorer, but he’ll be named after the Americas.”
It’s early, the sun just rising over the lake: they still sleep at odd hours, as if beset by cosmic jet lag. If Eli’s hand were in hers, instead of in his pocket, this walk would be just like the ones they took when they were dating.
Eli is nodding. “That makes sense. Parents choose names based on stories, or attributes, that already exist.”
Laurel thinks but does not say: Silas, “man of the woods.”
—
Laurel spends the morning of Clare and Walter’s unwedding grading quizzes.
She just finished teaching a particularly detailed module on dehydration-compensation reactions: in decomposition, hydrolase enzymes use water to break the bond between molecules, but here, water is released when molecules form, which sets the groundwork for electrical circuitry.
She has relished the challenge of learning her old knowledge backward, but the freshmen in her lecture course nodded off all week.
After multiple admonitions, Laurel gave up: it seemed crueler to rouse a seventy-year-old student than a seventeen-year-old one.
The quizzes are as dismal as she expected.
She takes a run and showers, feeling her muscles soften.
Wrapped in a towel, she surveys her double’s closet.
Laurel chooses a floral dress and a pair of sandals.
She takes time with her makeup, lining her eyes with brown pencil, patting a berry tint on her lips.
After summer, her hair is lighter, and the warmth has come back to her skin.
“Wow,” says Eli when she walks downstairs. “You look nice.”
“So do you,” says Laurel. It’s true: he’s handsome in well-fitting pants and an oxford, unbuttoned at the neck.
They arrive at Orton Park as the band sets up.
Walter’s son waves from the bar, and Clare’s girlfriends thread lights through the trees.
Clare and Walter stand by the potluck table, hanging a banner that reads Just Divorced.
The mood between them is brittle: when Walter drops the banner twice, Clare snaps and asks Eli to help.
Instead, Eli pulls them aside to talk. Afterward, Clare and Walter share a hug.
The officiant arrives at dusk. Her robes are silver-green.
On the chest is a jagged-line insignia, which could be a branch or a bolt of lightning.
Laurel and Eli take seats in the front row, next to Walter’s son.
Walter and Clare are tearful during the ring return.
When the officiant pronounces them unmarried, they smile bashfully at the cheers that come from the audience.