Chapter 15 Entanglement #12
Laurel put her hands to her face. She thought of the communion she had experienced with Silas in her womb. To be without that—she could not imagine the torment.
Well, she could.
She had lived her own version.
—
Kenji walked her home.
Green had encroached on the orange of the leaves, and crickets whispered in the grass. Summer was coming—her first summer without Eli in thirteen years.
They stopped beside the moving truck.
“Thank you,” Laurel said. “I can’t tell you how much this has helped me.”
And then, because she had an instinct, a sense that he might want to see them, she showed him the pictures she’d found in the bedroom. Kenji sifted through them. He paused at an image of Laurel Two in middle age. She had strong laugh lines, and crow’s-feet feathered out beside her eyes.
As he looked, Kenji wore the same expression that he had in Laurel’s vision. It was intimate, softened by care.
With a gust of shock, Laurel realized that he’d loved her.
Kenji had loved the other Laurel. She realized, too, why he could read her own emotions, why he seemed to understand her…
and it was all so strange, so overwhelming; and she wanted him to know that she saw it now, that he did not have to shoulder such complexity alone; so she leaned in—whether because she was subject to the Duoverse’s pull, or because the desire was her own.
Laurel expected resistance. There was none. She had forgotten the ecstasy of a first kiss: how the distance closed by millimeters; the mounting pressure—a fleeting question—before the border was inexorably crossed.
Kenji’s eyes were closed. His hand reached for hers, and she held it as one goldfinch chased another, sensing the change in season.
—
Laurel moved into her new apartment without Eli, but she didn’t feel alone. With her was the other Laurel.
Like the double helix of a strand of DNA, they circled each other. They were two poles, far apart but connected magnetically. Nothing stood between them anymore: no comparison, no envy.
And she had Kenji. Her relationship with Eli had been instant and all-consuming, but Laurel and Kenji met as adults.
They both wanted to maintain their independence, and they understood that the relationship was temporary: Kenji would go to Japan in late spring, Laurel to the Center in summer.
The goal was not to know the other’s history in total, or to plan ahead.
They experienced each other simply, in the present.
Laurel was fascinated by his mind, which was unlike any she had known, including Eli’s.
Kenji’s intellect was more tolerant of mystery; it pleased him to understand something, but his happiness did not depend on it.
When they began to see each other, Laurel assumed that they would talk about the Duoverse.
She was surprised to find that neither of them felt the need.
She did not want to decode any other riddles; she wanted to sit by the lake, drinking wine and listening to music.
When Kenji left Madison, she felt the loss not of a sage but of a fellow person.
She would remember him for his own qualities: his love of comic books; his astounding homemade cheesecake; and his sense of humor, whose slyness continually surprised her.
—
Tess, Laurel, and Gloria’s results were publicized by mainstream media, as well as the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.
Their work aligned with an emerging theory called earth jurisprudence, which sought to enshrine protections for nonhumans.
After advocacy by Māori tribes, the Whanganui River had been granted legal personhood in New Zealand.
Similar bills had since been introduced in California, Vermont, and Hawaii.
Gloria and Tess hosted Laurel’s retirement party at Memorial Union.
They sat outside on the terrace. Colleagues filtered through to shake her hand and have a beer, or an ice cream in the sun.
Gloria had been hired as a junior professor.
At one point, she excused herself to get a drink.
Half an hour later, she hadn’t returned, so Laurel went looking for her.
Gloria sat on the dock that fed into Lake Mendota, swinging her feet, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. Seeing Laurel approach, she waved her hands.
“Go away!” she said. “Ignore me!”
“Absolutely not,” said Laurel, sitting. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Gloria shrugged wildly. Laurel had known Gloria Two for almost ten years; she had watched her change from a high school student into a newly minted professional. Right now, she looked as vulnerable as she had on the day she arrived in Laurel’s office.
“Everyone leaves,” Gloria said.
Laurel put her arm around Gloria’s shoulders. “I know. It isn’t fair. But just because I’m retiring doesn’t mean I’m leaving you. We’ll stay as close as ever.”
Gloria relaxed, but only slightly.
“What else?” Laurel prompted.
“I don’t know if I can handle this.” Gloria gestured to campus. “A professorship. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but now I have to actually do it.”
Laurel can’t help it. She laughs.
“Gloria, you’re going to be brilliant. I know that for a fact.”
Gloria wiped her nose. “What do you mean, ‘for a fact’?”
“I can’t explain it. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Gloria rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You keep saying that.”
—
Before she left for the Center, Laurel had dinner with Maisie and Noah. She helped her mother in the orchard, and she went to a horror movie with Tess. But there was still someone else to say goodbye to, and that was the tree. For the first time in years, Laurel drove to Cedar on her own.
She thought of the activists who had encircled the redwood in protection.
To their opponents, that was just one tree, no different from any other.
But Laurel knew that every tree was as distinct as any human being.
She quickened, excited, at her first glimpse of the canopy.
Then the woods opened up wide and she saw it, resplendent in bloom.
As she came closer, the leaves gave a little shimmy.
Laurel took this as a greeting, even though it could be explained by wind.
It was easy to project one’s emotions onto trees.
But they were what—or who—they were. Great.
Unknowable. Watchers of the earth as it changed over decades, centuries.
There were cypress trees in Chile at least five thousand years old.
Trees couldn’t speak their wisdom, but they had other ways, if you used your senses.
Today, Laurel did nothing but sit in its shade.
May 1999
Nightfall.
The sun, a white half circle, floats at the horizon. Laurel has counted three cars, but none of them have been Eli’s.
And then a blue Acura comes around the bend.
Laurel drops the bag she’s holding. She can’t wait for him to pull into the lot—she runs to him, spontaneous, shameless. Eli veers to the side of the road. The sun is in Laurel’s eyes, so she cannot see his face—not until he parks, crooked in his haste, and steps out with open arms.
She tackles him. He’s laughing. He looks so young. She pulls him across the road, into the woods, where hickory trees offer shelter.
They’re on the ground, like puppies. He clutches her around the waist, and they hold each other, skin-to-skin.
It isn’t possible to be as close as she wants.
Eli puts his hand inside her underwear—puts his thumb to the place that is already swollen, holding it there, pulsing it barely.
She softens and tenses both, liquid, warm.
Later he moves her into a new position, one they’ve never tried, without leaving her body.
She does not know where he learned to do that; the implication of another person makes her jealous and excites her.
Another person! Never again. She won’t let him out of her sight. She bites his bottom lip, which makes him laugh again.
—
Eli props his sweatshirt behind Laurel’s head. He finds her jeans behind a tree.
“What’s this?” he asks, feeling something hard in the pocket.
Laurel shows him the chocolate. “Magic mushrooms.”
The last of summer’s crickets chitter softly. Wind moves through the trees.
“Magic mushrooms,” murmurs Eli. “I bet you do them all the time.”
“No,” says Laurel. “I never have.” Eli traces his finger from her forehead to her chin. She feels wild, loosed from a pen. “Do you want to?”
It is almost the blue hour: a slate curtain chases the last streak of red. Eli raises his eyebrows.
“Forget it,” Laurel says.
Eli extracts the chocolate for inspection. Then, as she watches, he eats half of it.
Laurel covers her mouth. “Oh my God.”
Eli moves her hand down. He puts the remaining half on her tongue. With one finger, he tips her jaw up.
I.
“Nothing is happening,” Laurel says.
They lie on their backs. A dragonfly—always so much larger than she expects an insect to be—hovers beside them.
“The sun looks kind of rainbow,” Eli says. “What’s left of it.”
Laurel squints. Possibly she sees other colors, but more likely, she’s inventing them.
II.
The stars appear. The Big Dipper, most famous of constellations. Centaurus, finely legible in May. Jupiter, which drifts through the zodiac while orbiting the sun, is now in Pisces.
“What if,” Laurel says, “we look up at the other universe’s stars? Like—we see their stars, and they see ours? What if the sky is…a window?”
Eli doesn’t respond. Laurel giggles. Maybe she is high.
Her eyes soften in their sockets. Pine needles rustle. Jupiter seems to be moving.
The gas giant has become dislodged from Pisces. Laurel knows that this is impossible: Jupiter completes an orbit every twelve years. But how can she deny what she sees? The planet floats past Virgo and traces the edge of the moon.
Then it descends, as a spider drops from silk.
Hypnotized, she watches it draw closer. Larger and larger it looms, growing in detail as well as size: she can see its pleated, pearly gases and its Earth-sized storms.
“Eli!” Laurel cries.