Chapter 16 Guest Wing #7
“Oh, thank God,” says Louis when Laurel returns. “You were gone so long I thought that you’d fallen through a portal.”
“No,” says Laurel. Eli gazes into the distance, not yet having recovered his speech.
“So what did she say?” asks Nita.
Outside, the first stars appear. Fireflies carry their parcels of light. Laurel tells them what she’s learned, keeping certain details to herself. By the end, Nita looks dumbstruck, and Maisie’s cheeks are wet.
“Yeah,” Maisie says. “That’s my best friend.”
“Excuse me,” says Laurel.
“My other best friend,” says Maisie.
“What about the portals?” asks Jules. “Did she have any ideas?”
“She wrote the letter before they left for Antarctica. They only knew about the one at Cape Evans.”
Her response settles over the group.
“Oh,” Nita says.
“Are you disappointed?” asks Charlie.
“I’m not sure.” Laurel scans the others. “Are you?”
“A little,” Jules admits. “I really wanted to figure this out.”
“I still feel like we could, with a few more weeks.” Louis takes Zachary’s hand. “But the Arizona state troopers are probably looking for us.”
They pack the next morning. Louis leaves Clare a second bouquet of her own flowers. Laurel and Eli come to the bus stop, and everyone exchanges addresses before the visitors climb into the coach. As it peels away, Louis blows a kiss to Laurel through the window.
—
June fades to May, then April. She tries to embrace the concept of dayenu, as Olive suggested. But Laurel is only human.
“I don’t want to die,” she says to Eli.
She would miss Wisconsin’s wide-open fields, with their audiences of corn.
Watching squirrels race to the base of a trunk and scramble up, up, up.
She would miss trees: symphonies, ancients, whole universes each.
She would miss music, and hot coffee, and streetlights on rainy pavement; or picking chard in the garden before dinner, the leaves as large as palm fronds and slick with the light spilling out of the kitchen.
She would miss eating and sex, cold lakes and hot baths—the capacity for touch.
She’d miss having conversations with everyone she loved.
And what of the books she’d never read, the questions that she wouldn’t answer?
She would miss learning what was learned about the world after she left it.
It is greedy, she knows. But after years of going backward, Laurel wants to grow old.
—
When Fiona Apple releases Tidal, Laurel and Maisie listen over and over. Their favorite artists are getting younger, too. No one knows which albums will be their last.
Laurel doesn’t bother to turn in her homework. She stops raising her hand in class. Instead, she doodles with milky gel pens, or checks on her Tamagotchi. In February, she is called to the principal’s office.
“I’m disappointed in you, Laurel,” Principal Carrera says. “Look at everything you’ve accomplished. You’re clearly a very bright girl. You could set an example for others.”
The wall is hung with laminated posters: Psst—You Have a Voice!; Before You Speak, THINK; Your Attitude Determines Your Direction.
“I just don’t see the point,” says Laurel.
She wonders how many other students have sat in her chair and said the same thing. The largest poster of all seems to address this particular issue.
Why choose high school?
Sharpen Your Mind: Studies have found that teenagers who attend high school sustain cognitive performance for 20% longer than unenrolled peers.
Maintain Your Body: Physical education enhances coordination, bone density, and muscle mass.
Support Your Mental Health: Social connection is positively correlated with psychological well-being.
Principal Carrera sighs. “You and your parents have the right to decide whether to keep you in school.”
But the thought of staying home all day—fighting with Clare, unable to see Eli and Maisie—fills Laurel with equal dread. Despite the indignities of high school, it offers a reprieve from rumination.
“You can waste this time,” the principal says, folding her hands. “But I’d encourage you to consider what you want for the rest of your life.”
—
What does she want for the rest of her life? Laurel walks through the orchard, dragging a fern while she considers the question.
She wants the same things she did as a child: to eat and sleep; to be soothed.
She craves cinnamon toast, macaroni and cheese, her father’s blueberry pancakes.
It calms her to disappear in a book, or watch October Sky under a blanket.
She wants to feel safe. She doesn’t feel safe.
She sleeps in the fetal position. Even Eli can only console her so much.
The truth is that she wants her mother.
Her mother. Laurel has come to think of the other Clare as a mother, or one of her mothers, but she is not the person who carried Laurel, the one who birthed and raised her.
Until now, the Duoverse’s mimicry has sated Laurel.
If she wanted to see her mother, she could at least see someone who looked exactly like her.
She could smell her mother’s smell, hug her mother’s body—and this has strung her along over years, like a partner who gives just enough to prevent the other from leaving.
“Want to talk about it?” asks Jules.
They’ve broken into a playground at night. All of the children have already left.
“Not really.” Laurel motions to the seesaw. “Let’s just play.”
They climb through the jungle gym, a geometric dome, and take turns on the slide.
Laurel pushes Jules on the swings. He drags the merry-go-round as she stands on the edge, holding the bars, hair flying.
Jules takes a Polaroid of her, which he sets on the basketball court, and they lie on their stomachs to watch the picture form.
When the details emerge, Laurel sees that she looks like Celeste.
The approach of her sixteenth birthday fills her with stifling dread. She scribbles lyrics on the whites of her Converse sneakers. The words don’t matter; they are placeholders, as every song or novel says—at bottom—the same thing.
I was here.
Remember me.
—
“Darling,” says Clare Two. “Wake up.”
Laurel’s parents sit on the foot of her bed. Clare holds a tray with coffee, Pete a ribboned present.
“Happy birthday, chickadee,” he says.
Snow falls outside, plush and quiet. Streamers hang from the kitchen ceiling. Muffins, made with the last of Clare’s apple butter, steam from a dish on the island.
“You sneaks,” says Laurel, hugging Clare and Pete together. “I can’t believe you did all of this.”
“You only turn sixteen once,” says Clare, and Laurel decides not to correct her.
After breakfast, Eli arrives with Maisie and Noah and Riordan and Jules.
Pete retrieves a collection of sleds, as well as an ancient toboggan.
The teens whiz from Upper Orchard to Lower, snow sparkling, wind in their ears.
In the afternoon, Clare makes hot cocoa, and they pile on the sofa to watch Titanic.
That night, Laurel brings her third slice of birthday cake to the attic.
For the moment, at least, thankfulness has replaced her self-pity.
Getting younger still frightens her, but she won’t have to do it alone.
Maybe catastrophizing is like freezing a photon in flight: if you fixate on one outcome, all of the others collapse.
That’s what fear does, she thinks. It makes you pick a story.
If she stays open, the future might hold everything at once.
Clare has set an envelope on Laurel’s pillow. Beside it, a Post-it reads: Found this in the mailbox. Laurel removes a mushroom sticker and slides her finger under the flap.
Dear Laurel,
You’re sixteen today, but you’ve been on my mind all month.
Little things bring you up: finding morels in the arboretum, or working at the Rhizotron.
I miss you here. I wish you’d visit. Sometimes I worry that you think I’ve forgotten you, or even that you want me to.
I don’t know what it’s like to be your age, but there’s no one who means more to me.
I’ve moved into the house, at long last!
You wouldn’t believe how much work we had to do.
Bats were living in the attic, and the air ducts were filled with Aspergillus.
(I asked to sample it, but the mold specialist wouldn’t let me.) I refinished the floors on my own, and my boyfriend caulked the windows, but I hired someone to repair the roof and the plumbing.
I can’t believe I can pay for things like that.
Now that it’s in better shape, I’ve started decorating—I picked the bedroom upstairs for myself and turned the downstairs one into a guest wing.
I hope your birthday has included a surprise or two. Can I take you out for falafel next week?
Love,
Gloria
Laurel sets the card aside and folds her hands over her stomach.
During her time at the Center, she and Gloria kept in touch through letters.
Every so often, Gloria visited, and Laurel sent her home with a tote bag of balms and tinctures.
But when Laurel returned to Madison, the difference between them felt stark.
Gloria was entering the prime of her career, and Laurel had moved back in with her parents.
She didn’t want to be a burden. Gloria invited her to the Rhizotron, but Laurel felt self-conscious on campus; it reminded her of what lay behind her—and ahead.
Wind rattles the windowpanes. Laurel turns out her reading light and settles under the covers. But a detail from the letter nags at her: the mention of Gloria’s guest wing.
Gloria Two purchased the same house as Gloria One.
Laurel remembers the guest wing, which was where Gloria slept after her arthritis progressed.
But the phrase itself rings a bell, too.
After Laurel and her friends dreamed of the neutrino detector, wing and guest were two of the words they assembled.
They discarded the phrase, which seemed nonsensical, without much consideration.
But it isn’t nonsensical, she thinks—not when you reverse it.