Chapter 13 Sparks #2
Laurel stares beseechingly, hoping against logic that Gloria will know her, too. Gloria pauses. Her eyes are wizened but intrigued.
“Have we met?” she asks.
This shouldn’t be a blow, but it is. Laurel longs for a glitch in the matrix, just once—for the person she knows to punch through.
Well, Gloria might have said, this is worth coming out of retirement.
And Laurel could say, I got your letter.
But this Gloria is confused, and waiting for an answer.
“I think,” Laurel says, stalling, “that maybe, one of my colleagues—”
“—mentioned me?” Gloria finishes. “I’ve been badgering Samir Ali all summer. He said I’m out of luck, but I’ve been told that I’m persistent.”
She leans on a simple wooden cane. Laurel’s wealthier students opt for the iCane, which senses obstacles, responds to vocal commands, and comes in three colors: platinum, rose gold, and a matte black called coal.
Gloria’s model has seen better days. Atop the handle is one of the novelty attachments that are all the rage among Laurel’s freshmen. This one is shaped like a lion.
“Please,” says Laurel. “Sit down.”
She clears a stack of paper from the armchair. Gloria wears a black linen dress, puckered by mending, and a pair of lace-up boots. She holds a canvas backpack in her lap.
“Can I offer you coffee?” Laurel asks.
“Oh,” says Gloria, with yearning.
In the antiuniverse, coffee is a relatively new invention.
Before 2080, it was too hot for the Coffea plant to survive.
In 2075, an Ethiopian farmer found it growing wild.
After environmental efforts yielded a drop in temperatures, the Latin American coffee belt expanded.
Laurel can only assume that the reverse will happen in her world.
(“We’ve been using the wrong tactics,” she told Eli.
“Americans don’t care about droughts and extinctions.
Just tell them that climate change will take away their coffee. ”)
While she heats the water, Laurel collects herself. She’s afraid that Gloria will mistake her silence for rudeness, but when she turns, Gloria is watching her with reverence. It’s the same way that Laurel once looked at Gloria One.
“Are you a student here?” Laurel asks.
“A prospective one,” says Gloria. “I graduated from high school in the fall with my equivalency. I was accepted here; that isn’t the problem. I’m trying to decide between offers.”
Gloria looks older than most of Laurel’s students, which means, in this universe, that she is younger. An equivalency degree implies that she graduated early.
“That doesn’t sound like a problem, either,” says Laurel, pouring the coffee. “Sugar?”
Gloria’s eyes widen. “Please.”
Laurel passes the sugar bowl. Gloria heaps three tablespoons into her mug. She is thinner than Laurel’s Gloria, who was reedy in old photos but had, after Lyme, become plump.
“Which other schools are you considering?” asks Laurel.
“UC Berkeley. Cornell. Yale.” Gloria seems torn between pride and bashfulness. “With scholarships.”
“That’s wonderful.” For a moment, Laurel’s delight is such that she does feel like Gloria’s elder. But if tuition isn’t at issue, she can’t imagine why Gloria would choose Wisconsin. After finding her at last, Laurel will have to let her go.
Gloria picks at the hem of her dress. Her knees have a fine coating of dirt. “The problem is that Mr. Ali said there’s no space in your lab.”
In her shock, Laurel nearly laughs. She sees her blunder right away: to Gloria, her reaction seems dismissive.
“I can show you my transcripts,” Gloria says. “I graduated with a perfect GPA. I have a high honors score from the GED and credits for college-level coursework. And I was a finalist for the Regeneron Science Talent Search.”
Regeneron is the most prestigious high school research competition in the country. Placing in the top three hundred virtually guarantees admission to a student’s school of choice.
“I have no doubt that you’re incredibly gifted,” says Laurel hastily. “And I’d love for you to join the lab. What Samir meant is that we’ve planned our budget for the year.”
“I’ll work for free.”
“I couldn’t let you do that.”
Gloria grips her mug. “Why not?”
“You might be surprised by what scholarships don’t cover. Food. Books. Sometimes even room and board. It isn’t right.”
Gloria deflates. At this distance, Laurel can smell the mildew of her dress. Below that is a more complicated odor—not quite unclean, but of the body.
“Forgive me for asking,” Laurel says, “but do you have a place to live?”
“Yes,” says Gloria. “At the Sunrise Home for Women.”
Despite its cheerful name, the Sunrise Home isn’t.
At Progress Senior Living, where Clare was enrolled, premier services come with a commensurate price tag.
Elders who can’t be raised by next of kin—or whose relatives can’t afford a facility like Progress—are funneled into state-funded welfare institutions.
Some are merely spartan; others are actively neglectful.
Sunrise has a reputation for the latter.
It pains Laurel to think of Gloria there, but it does make sense.
In Laurel’s world, Gloria didn’t have children; here, there was no one to raise her.
Some elderly adults are adopted out of care, but this clearly hadn’t happened to Gloria.
“Well, that’s good,” says Laurel. The Gloria she knew was not averse to much, but she did recoil from sympathy.
“Right now,” Gloria adds, “I’m traveling.”
“Anywhere interesting?”
“State parks, mostly.”
Her cane leans against the wall. Laurel wonders how well she sleeps: it can’t be easy to camp with physical limitations.
Gloria’s stubbornness strikes her as typical of any young genius.
But young people often leave institutions like Sunrise with behavioral challenges, too.
Laurel has students who struggle to work collaboratively, or who become overly attached.
For others, a hard exterior shields tender self-reliance. Gloria probably hasn’t had many allies.
And here she is, asking for one.
“This might sound funny,” Laurel says, “but would you like to join me for dinner? A colleague canceled, and I’m craving falafel. We could keep talking.”
Laurel is fibbing, but she’s good at fibbing now. For the first time, the other Gloria grins.
—
Before they leave the office, Gloria’s phone rings. She retrieves a battered Android.
“It’s my college counselor,” she says. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” says Laurel.
Laurel is glad that she seems to have an advocate. Gloria steps into the hallway. While waiting, Laurel texts Eli.
I just met Gloria.
Eli starts typing immediately. A string of emojis arrives: shocked face, party face, exploding head.
About time, he writes.
I offered to take her out for dinner, types Laurel. Can you feed S?
She puts her phone in her pocket. After Gloria returns, they ride the elevator downstairs. Library Mall is eternally under construction, so Laurel suggests that they turn right on Park Street. Her phone buzzes as they pass the W-shaped tulips in front of Humanities.
Sorry for delay, Eli wrote. Silas just . Re: dinner—he inserted a thumbs-up emoji, followed by a plate with silverware. I suspect he’ll pass, but otherwise, I’m on it.
Laurel brings Gloria to the Levantine café on State Street. The atmosphere is casual, with tiled floors and vinyl tablecloths, but Gloria toys self-consciously with a hole in her dress. She brightens when dinner arrives: tangy hummus, crisp falafels, couscous with dates and almonds.
Laurel asks about her travels. “You must have seen some interesting fungi.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Any favorites?”
“I found a cluster of Xylaria polymorpha growing out of a wood barrel in Grant County. Pretty spooky.” The common name of Xylaria polymorpha is dead man’s fingers, which is exactly what they look like; in the antiuniverse, panicked hikers often mistake them for composing bodies.
“And coral fungus, at Kohler-Andrae State Park. Clavaria…?”
“Was it purple? Zollingeri,” says Laurel, after Gloria nods. “I’ve always wanted to see that in the flesh.”
“It really looked like something out of the ocean. And you know,” says Gloria, “there are all kinds of species here in town. Last week, I found three puffballs in somebody’s front yard. Just sitting there—like white rabbits!”
“Those make a good pizza crust.”
“Do they?” Gloria asks. “Oh! Up north, I saw this.”
She shows Laurel a photo on her phone. At the foot of an oak tree is a dime-sized orange cap. The mushroom reminds Laurel of Amanita muscaria, but its yellow spots suggest a rarer species.
Gloria flips through subsequent photos. “I think it’s Frost’s amanita.”
“Good guess,” Laurel says. “But I might vote flavoconia.”
“Ye-es,” says Gloria—flavoconia is a more common muscaria look-alike—“but at the base, do you see…?”
Gloria spreads her thumb and index finger, enlarging the mushroom’s spongy collar.
“You’re absolutely right,” says Laurel. “Frost’s amanita. Great work.”
Gloria beams as she puts the phone away.
“How long have you been on the road?” Laurel asks. “And have more pita. I’m getting full.”
Serving herself, Gloria smiles. “All summer.”
“Does it get tiring?”
“I like living outside. You can’t get in a fight with a tree.”
Laurel laughs. She knows that she shouldn’t show favoritism—Gloria isn’t the only student who wants to join the Rhizotron—but she can’t stop herself.
Perhaps the connection she feels is only a projection of her bond with Gloria One.
But maybe Laurel and Gloria would find each other in any universe, in any combination.
“Listen,” she says. “Our grant runs through the fall, which is when we’ll apply for a new one. I could offer you placement as a sophomore. If I’d had more time, I could have tried another angle, but this close to the semester…”
Gloria shuts her eyes as she absorbs this disappointment. “Mr. Ali said you were on parental leave. I didn’t want to bother you.”