Chapter 15 Entanglement #4
She closed her eyes and breathed slowly.
When her thoughts became quiet, so did her ego.
What remained was a probing awareness. She looked up at a wall of compartments.
They were roughly one foot square, the contents visible through glass.
Each was locked. Laurel had a key. She held it in her right hand; in her left was a Post-it.
She opened a compartment and put the Post-it there.
Laurel gasped, which broke the spell. She sat in the bedroom again. A thin fleece of snow had settled on the ground.
She waited for the next overlap, for that was how they felt: a second reality laid over hers like a piece of tracing paper. One morning, while eating breakfast, Laurel looked across the table and saw Kenji’s face instead of Eli’s. He wore a rumpled T-shirt, and his smile was tender.
“Laurel?”
The illusion collapsed. Eli had risen out of his chair.
“What happened?” she asked. The sight of Kenji made her feel confused, even guilty.
“Your eyes got unfocused. Are you feeling okay?”
“I think so,” Laurel said, but she wasn’t.
The visions felt like a game that she’d taken too far.
She felt overly perceptive, attuned not just to the other Laurel but to other forces.
Days later, while walking to the Rhizotron with Gloria, she felt an urge to go home.
There was no reason to turn around—nothing except a nagging pull, as though a hand were in her hand, or a voice were saying Don’t.
“I forgot my laptop,” Laurel said.
“That’s okay,” said Gloria. “We can use mine.”
“Didn’t you say it’s been buggy?” asked Laurel. “You keep going. I’ll run home.”
The clouds were low and silver. Gloria watched, open-mouthed, as Laurel caught the next bus west. Some tension was forming, as pressure builds before a storm. No one else seemed to notice: a teenager looked out the window, and an older woman fiddled with her iPod Nano.
The temperature was typically mild for early fall, but Laurel felt overheated.
At home, she took off her clothes and ran a cool shower.
The garage door opened as she stepped into the tub.
Odd, she thought: Eli usually spent all day on campus.
Next came a familiar succession of sounds: the car door popping open; a chipper beep, as it was locked; footsteps in the entrance by the kitchen; the whine of the staircase; a knock.
“Yes?”
Laurel drew the curtain back just barely, enough to shield her body. Eli cracked the door.
“Hi.” He looked troubled. “You okay?”
“Fine,” said Laurel. “Why?”
“I’m not sure how to explain it. I was sitting in my office, but then I got this feeling that I needed to come home. I didn’t know what it meant. I thought something might be wrong.”
“I had that feeling, too.”
Eli looked at her keenly. “Did you?”
“I couldn’t parse it, either. But I don’t think something is wrong, exactly. More like…”
Laurel paused. She had cracked the window so the mirror didn’t fog, and a breeze swelled behind the curtain.
“Something is happening,” said Eli.
The water was still running.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Still holding the curtain, with self-protection and some pride, Laurel watched him take off his clothes.
Then she opened it just enough for him to join her.
She still felt wounded, and held herself back, but her resistance dropped away when he opened his arms. His hardness, so immediate, aroused her.
It had been months. She braced against a cleft of porcelain, the built-in soap dish. Slippery, he found her opening.
His urgency was contagious. He kept his face close to hers, his mouth at her ear.
No matter what their bodies were doing, noises excited her most: the grunts and gasps, the little groans.
They felt like missives from another world, his inner one.
Emitted helplessly, they disclosed. In them she took possessive pleasure, but she listened soberly, too. Sometimes he almost sounded like a boy.
It was wonderful, cathartic, to cry in water: tears flowed away as soon as they appeared.
Afterward, he took the bar of soap and cleaned her everywhere.
His hands ran over her neck, her breasts, her armpits, each foot.
Then she took the bar and did the same for him.
It was late morning; there was nothing to hide behind; and though clouds muted the sun, pearly light flowed through them.
Eli climbed out of the shower first. He dried himself and opened a towel for her. When she stepped inside, he bundled Laurel the way they used to bundle Silas. It came to her in a burst: what happened was his unconception. Silas’s embryo was gone, split into something else.
They looked at each other. What Laurel thought was: We did it.
She scrolled all the way back to McMurdo—God, it seemed so long ago—seeing the Arc, dreaming of the basin, convincing Eli to join her.
They learned to dive and found the octopus, rose back up into this world.
Then came the waiting years, the learning years, feeling their way here like children.
They drove to Cedar eating their unsatisfying Culver’s.
They were terrified and distant; how could they imagine what lay ahead?
The water. Finding Silas there. Spitting and gasping until they reached land.
They taught Silas to walk. They taught him to eat, crawl, run, count, talk.
They gave him the best life they could—over now.
But Silas had not been a half-life.
He had had two.
They had been lucky.
May 1999
At the Center, every new member is apprenticed to another, though Laurel didn’t know that when she arrived. In the summer of 2003, she drove the hour from Madison in a state of agitation. Twice, she drifted over the median, and Clare shouted “Laurel!” to keep her on their side.
Winding along county roads, she almost missed the first sign.
“What was that?” Clare asked, and Laurel reversed.
An engraved piece of wood had been staked in wild, climbing grapes. The text read: Keep going.
The second sign appeared around the next bend, this one beside a spruce tree. Laurel slowed.
Almost there.
Laurel began to feel calmer. She parked in the grass at the edge of Big Meadow. It was an overcast evening in August, the sun a ragged white hole amid gray. Clare walked with her to the Hub. A third sign was affixed to the door.
You made it.
Laurel knocked but heard nothing. The handle was unlocked. She opened it and stepped inside, Clare following cautiously. Hung high on the wall, below the intersection of two beams, was a symbol made of twigs. It looked like a wheel, or maybe a web: a circle with sixteen spokes.
Members milled in the Longhall for dinner. No one would notice if Laurel turned back around.
“You know I’d love to have you in the farmhouse,” said Clare. “There’s too much space for just me, and plenty to do in the orchard.”
“I know.” Laurel’s eyes smarted. She couldn’t explain why she felt compelled to join this group of strangers. She only knew that living in Madison without Eli seemed intolerable. “Do you think I’m nuts?”
“No.” Clare tucked a strand of hair behind Laurel’s ear and smiled. “You just need some time on your own.”
Esther caught sight of Laurel while walking back from the dessert table.
“We have a new one!” she cried, and women turned, murmuring, curious. Esther and Nell bustled over to the door.
“Welcome,” Nell said.
“What’s your name?” asked Esther.
By bedtime, Laurel had been given a cot, topped by Susie’s old yellow quilt.
She felt woozy at her change in circumstances. Once again, she had entered a new world. The next day, Laurel met with the leadership circle.
“Everyone has a different role here,” Bev explained. “Is there something you feel drawn to?”
Laurel felt paralyzed by the question, which reminded her that she was starting over.
“No matter,” said Bev. “Take some time to get acclimated. The right answer will come to you.”
After working as a steward, Laurel defaulted to the kitchen.
But Rox had a surplus of dishwashers, and the pod that needed help most—carpentry—was not Laurel’s skill set.
She spent the next week helping to build a new cottage.
Her task was to assemble wall framing, but she couldn’t nail the studs as marked: they slipped to one side or twisted out of place.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, the third time she had to pull a nail.
“You’ll get there,” said an experienced teen named Elise, though the look she cast another carpenter implied that Laurel might not.
That evening, Laurel sat alone in the Longhall, wondering whether she’d made a mistake.
She felt superfluous at the Center, and her mind kept drifting to Eli.
She wandered toward the door with a cup of nettle tea.
Tucked into an alcove was a table that she hadn’t yet investigated.
Tins, jars, and bottles sat on top, each neatly labeled: Goldenrod extract, Yarrow spray, Calendula balm, Arnica oil. A handwritten sign read Self-Serve.
“Try the lemon balm,” someone said. “One dropper. When I first got here, it was the only thing to settle my stomach.”
Laurel turned. Beside her stood a woman with freckles and dark, curly hair, shaved on one side. She wore a pair of denim shorts, Velcro sandals, and a T-shirt that read Introverts Unite: Separately, in Your Own Homes.
The woman extended a hand.
“Olive,” she said.
After Laurel introduced herself, she considered Olive’s shirt. “Is it possible to be an introvert at a commune?”
“I keep trying,” said Olive.
Laurel had her doubts about the lemon balm. Her sadness was Eli, and no herb could treat that. Even so, she put a dropper in her nettle tea.
The next day, at breakfast, she found Olive.
“It helped,” Laurel said.
Olive looked amused. “You sound surprised.”
Laurel said, “I didn’t think anything could.”
“Why don’t you come to my workshop tomorrow?” asked Olive.