Chapter 14 The Albatross #4
Pippa peers up at Laurel. For the first time, she is bookless and looks interested.
“Me, too,” says Laurel.
“No, you didn’t.”
Pippa’s curiosity turns to indignation. Laurel has done her the same insult as the other patronizing adult passengers. The thunder in her gaze reminds Laurel of Harry Cooke. As his child, after all, Pippa must have raised him.
And now Laurel hears Harry’s voice.
“Pippa?” he calls, and Laurel’s throat closes.
Pippa’s nose twitches at the sound, but she doesn’t reply. Instead, she walks toward Laurel.
“I know you’re lying,” she says. “Say the truth.”
They face each other. Laurel looks at Pippa’s small, set mouth and the bangs that sweep her lashes. Harry Cooke is known to entertain a carousel of girlfriends. For the first time, Laurel wonders who Pippa’s mother is.
“What if I told you that there are two universes, not one, and that I come from the other?” Laurel speaks very quietly. “What if I said that the portal is here in Antarctica?”
Pippa’s eyebrows lift. There is a reason, Laurel thinks, that you can tell the truth to a child. They’ll believe you.
“I’d say,” Pippa whispers, “that you shouldn’t tell my dad.”
Laurel hears Harry’s boots crunching through snow. She flattens herself against the dive hut.
“There you are,” says Harry, to Pippa. “Planning an escape?”
If he takes one more step, he’ll see Laurel.
“No,” says Pippa. “I thought I saw a book on the ground.”
Laurel could have kissed her.
“Oh.” The interest fades from Harry’s voice. “Well, leave it there. You have plenty of books already.”
—
Laurel hurries toward the ice pier. Eli is looking for her. His shoulders are clenched, and his expression is frantic: without cell phones, she had no way to tell him she was safe. When he sees her, he puts a hand to his chest. Only then does he raise his brows in query. Laurel shakes her head.
Eli turns slightly away, as if to absorb this news in privacy. When he faces her again, Laurel sees a flash of despair, of failure and ferocious disappointment.
Then he nods. When she joins them, he holds her close. Back on the ship, his hand doesn’t leave hers.
In the days that follow, the atmosphere on the Astralis changes. A subtle tension, built over weeks at sea, is dispelled. People mingle in new combinations. The influencer leaves her ring light in her room. When a minke whale surfaces, no one reaches for their phone.
At dinner, Laurel joins a queue of passengers and realizes that she’s spent the trip judging them.
Maybe her irritation with their covetousness, their perceived self-absorption, reflected her frustration with herself.
Haven’t Laurel and Eli been tourists in this universe, as set on acquisition—in their way—as Harry Cooke?
There was one thing they wanted: Silas. For years, they’ve been trying to extract him.
One afternoon, the Astralis passes a fusing glacier.
It looks so fragile. Healing, Laurel thinks.
Smaller pieces float nearby, ebbing closer.
The larger seams have just knitted together.
As they turn to leave, a software CEO wipes his eyes.
That evening, he sits with an investor and a biologist, brainstorming an app to incentivize water conservation.
At the bar that evening, Laurel chats with the actress, who confides that she splurged on the cruise to research a major film role.
“I could have just read about Antarctica. Watched YouTube videos. But it’s different, being here—so my performance will be different.
I think people will be able to feel that,” she says.
“Maybe it’s absurd to think that I could make a difference.
But maybe people leave the theater caring more about this place. ”
Before their final leg at sea, the Astralis stops at Macquarie Island.
Birds wheel overhead: the petrel, which appears to run on water before launching; the crescent-shaped fork-tailed swift; and the wandering albatross, which can fly for years before descending.
Because this is mating season for the albatross, strict rules are established: passengers may only observe the birds from afar.
They tumble out of the ship, loose, giddy.
Macquarie Island is halfway from Antarctica to New Zealand, but it feels tangibly different.
The temperature hovers in the forties. Tussock grass grows six feet tall.
There is, too, a native ruby-headed orchid, and a preposterous giant cabbage whose roots were boiled and pickled by explorers.
Laurel finds that she’s nervous—she doesn’t know what mating season means here—but the afternoon passes without incident. The passengers see a convention of gentoo penguins and hear the roar of elephant seals. They come upon the albatrosses from a distance, while walking back to the ship.
Silas runs ahead, and Eli follows him. Smiling, Laurel hangs back to take her jacket off. If there is one similarity between Wisconsin and Antarctica, she thinks, it’s that forty-five degrees qualifies as T-shirt weather.
She startles at the sound of a nasal whinny. Eh-eh. Two albatrosses sit in a field to her left. They have downy white heads and button-black eyes. Like Laurel, they must have separated from their group.
She veers right, to give the pair a wide berth. They bray at her a moment more; then, assured that she poses no threat, they return to their ritual.
On the Astralis, Laurel learned that the albatross flies in its sleep, that it can circle the globe without stopping.
Mates remain faithful for life. The birds nip fondly at each other, their putty-colored beaks making clicking noises.
One perches slightly higher than the other.
It might be positioned on a nest, though Laurel can’t be sure. Her view is obscured by grass.
Then, as she watches, the elevated bird stands.
For their privacy, as well as her own peace, Laurel should keep walking.
She knows this, and she cannot explain why she doesn’t.
Some fathomless instinct. The old, cunning desire to know.
As the albatross shifts from foot to foot, adjusting its wings, Laurel looks down at the nest.
It is a cup-shaped mound: stable, if not quite tidy, and made of grass and soil. Inside is a very small, very young bird. The creature has mauve skin and yellow hair so pale it glows, the beak curved and bobbing with breath.
Laurel can only see its head and shoulders. The rest is enclosed in matter: a brownish-tan paste casing, spackled evenly around. The effect is of a shell-like swaddle. Inside, the infant’s wings are folded down.
“Oh my God,” Laurel says.
For the parents are making an egg.
In most places, the paste has hardened. At the ragged top edge, it is softer, and the adults use their beaks to press it tenderly in place.
Smoothed, the substance creeps higher; soon, it will surround the baby’s neck.
The adults trade places, so that the second bird is poised over the nest. As it descends, the baby makes a peaceful little shudder.
Laurel staggers backward. In shock. Some horror.
And a brutal, base respect—for the life cycle, the dying infant, and for the effort of the parents, charged with this shared duty, which they must carry out until the end.
When she leaves them, the two are sitting wing to wing, their feathers moving with the grasses in the wind.
—
She loves something different about every age.
At six, Silas is always crafting: a purse out of a cracker box, or a medallion to wear around his neck.
A section of the bookshelf in his room is now devoted to his own creations.
Laurel staples small pieces of paper, and he colors on each page.
After he can’t write his own text, Silas dictates the words to her.
Five is the age of enthusiasm. When they return home from an outing, he walks to the front door, bends down, and shouts “Hello, house!” through the mail slot.
He is sick throughout the winter, with chicken pox and pneumonia back to back.
Even so, he loves to dance nude around the Christmas tree.
He sings throughout the day, mostly made-up songs.
In June, the orchard comes on the market.
Laurel, Eli, and Clare pool their savings.
After the sale goes through, they walk the property together.
Laurel tries to keep her tears back, worried that the other Clare won’t understand, but Clare puts an arm around her shoulders.
The shape of the land is the same, and Laurel recognizes some of the varieties as heirlooms. Still, they’ll have to make changes over years.
The previous owner packed trees together to increase production, and the orchard is showing signs of stress.
Clare moves into the farmhouse in April.
On the first night, all four of them sleep there together.
Memories spring up in 3-D: Laurel can see things, touch things, that she thought she never would again.
She takes Silas to the attic, her old bedroom.
After they put him to sleep, Laurel leaves a note for Eli and walks to Upper Orchard alone.
She settles on the ground with two blankets, putting one under her body and one on top.
She used to do this as a teenager, back when her joints didn’t mind.
This time, she suffers for a week, but it’s worth it to fall asleep under the trees, her old friends.
—
Eli begins the next year with renewed energy: IceCube has hired him to run the project at UW–Madison. Their goal is to explore the link between neutrinos and dark matter.
Every second, billions of neutrinos stream from the sun toward Earth. As they travel, their masses oscillate. IceCube is sensitive enough to detect unusual oscillation patterns, and these could indicate the presence of high-energy neutrinos. Eli will interpret the results from Wisconsin.