Page 138 of Under Story

They slept fitfully, or like the dead. Days they spent in a haze. Laurel’s body was bulky and shocked. There was no easing into pregnancy this time—no accumulation, no slow growing. Instead, this sudden size, the belly leading her, preceding her, preventing her from bending, rolling over, tying her own shoelaces. Water doused her T-shirt when she did the dishes.

But if the belly was with her every moment, so was Silas. He had reappeared inside her like a seal through a dive hole. She talked to him when she was alone—for when she was alone, she wasn’t quite. The devastation she felt was tempered by one certainty: they would always be together.

When Laurel looks back on this period, she remembers discrete scenes, like cells in a hive. Gloria on the doorstep, blinking back tears and holding lasagna. Clare arriving with Walter, who had remarried but kept in touch; Walter busying himself with dishes, saying, “I just want to be useful.”

After Silas One died, Laurel and Eli felt like lepers. This time, their circumstances were both miserable and ordinary. Eli’s parents consoled Laurel like a daughter; his colleagues organized a meal train. Tess picked up their laundry, then returned it washed and ironed. A teenage boy from down the block offered to mow their lawn for free.

“I know what it’s like,” said the boy. “My wife and I had sons.”

Clare arranged a memorial at Silas’s favorite park. Whitney, the neighbor who had flirted with Eli, arrived shyly and walked straight to Laurel.

“I’m so sorry,” Whitney whispered. She held out a wedge-shaped maternity pillow. “In my first trimester, I couldn’t sleep without this.”

Beth brought her mother, Helen. Technically, Silas and Helen had been eighty years apart. Practically, though, they were peers—he was born just three years after she—and they had often enjoyed playdates. Helen ran toward Laurel, clutching a finger painting. Expressive red and purple blobs took on a vaguely human shape.

“Silas,” Helen explained.

Laurel looked for Eli, to show him, but he was standing with Silas’s first grade teacher. In those early months, well-wishers visited so frequently that they rarely found themselves alone. Maisie and Noah waited on call. The mothers of Silas’s classmates started a parents’ group. Every Tuesday night, they told stories, tears melting into laughter: Remember when Sabrina wouldn’t leave the house without her top hat? Remember when I had to feed Max tortellini during haircuts? Laurel invited Eli to come, but he preferred to stay home. The anecdotes that comforted her were too painful for him.

One cell in the hive of memory: Laurel came home from a meal with Gloria to find Eli in the backyard. He sat on the porch with a drink at his side, one hand shading his eyes.

Laurel was comforting him. Trying.

“We were supposed to have eight years with Silas,” she said. “We got sixteen.”

“We were supposed to have fifty years, sixty.”

“In a perfect world,” said Laurel. “But not either of ours.”

Another cell: they lay in bed. Laurel had noticed Eli’s stillness, which was not the stillness of sleep but that of thinking, and she curled around him as best she could, given the belly.

“I was supposed to get us out,” said Eli.

“You can’t think like that”—Laurel’s mouth at his ear, just touching the skin. “We’re a team. And self-loathing gets you nowhere. Trust me.”

“Who cares?” he said. “Nothing matters now.”

“That’s not true. Nothing matters if we always have control. Nothing matters if life never runs out. So it’s not true that nothing matters,” she said. “Everything does.”

—

Going back to work was like raising curtains: the world reappeared, and Laurel looked out. In April, she joined Tess and Gloria to visit Cedar for the first time in months. The tree tossed with leonine majesty, as if taking pleasure in its vigor. Most of the rhizomorphs had crumbled into spores. When Laurel pressed her palms to the trunk, she noticed how sturdy the bark had become.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

Spangled, sunlit diamonds filtered through crisscrossed branches. A leaf came to rest on her head.

“Come see what we’ve done in the cave,” said Gloria.

She helped Laurel through the entrance: pregnancy made it even more difficult to balance on the roots. Inside, there was a sense of backstage preparation. New networks of rhizomorphs had been studded with pins. Affixed throughout the cave, ORBs seemed to hover like bubbles. Each one contained a wisp of green gas.

“This is incredible,” said Laurel. “Green means that the volatiles are coming from fungi, right?”

“Yep.” Tess was clearly pleased by Laurel’s reaction. “Right now, the fungi are talking more loudly than the tree. But every so often, the tree butts in, and one of the ORBs turns red.”

“That only started happening on our last visit,” Gloria added.

Laurel felt a pang. Gloria and Tess had clearly become close.