Page 25 of Under Story

“Gloria’s duckling,” said Seymour, putting a hand around the man’s waist.

“Oh!” said the other man. “Laurel, isn’t it? I’m Julian. How is she?”

Laurel smiled. “Really well, for the most part. She wanted to come, but she’s not so mobile nowadays.”

Julian nodded sympathetically before he glanced at Seymour. “Do you know, the last time we saw her…”

“Yes, at the Fairmont!” Seymour said. “In the bar, which was filled with very official-looking people, businessmen and politicians—”

“And Gloria wore—would you call it a hat?” Julian asked.

“Of a fashion,” Seymour said.

“This great big bird on it. Black, of course—a crow, or a raven.”

“Wearing a necklace around its neck!”

“Well, a crow is rarely seen without its necklace.”

“And it had a crystal for an eye!”

Laurel was laughing. “That sounds like Gloria. I’ll have to see if she still has it.”

“She looked just like her mother. Walking through the bar with her head held high,” Seymour said. “We were so proud. She was our duckling, you know.”

The champagne was warming Laurel already. With Seymour and Julian at her side, she didn’t feel so out of place.

“Gloria said you lived together?” she asked.

Seymour and Julian nodded in unison. Then Julian turned to Seymour with a sadness Laurel hadn’t expected. “A different life,” he said.

“We were all so young,” said Seymour.

“Gloria especially,” Julian said. “I can still see her at sixteen, with all that red hair. And we weren’t much older. We felt like children with a child.”

“Sixteen?” asked Laurel.

Before UW–Madison lured Gloria to the Midwest, she had studied at UC Berkeley. Laurel had assumed that this was when she lived with Seymour and Julian.

“After her parents died,” said Seymour, nodding. “It was just awful. They were our closest friends.”

Laurel thought of the photographs that lined Gloria’s hallway. Most of them featured the same two people. The first was a man with a high forehead, a ready grin, and an air of youthful enthusiasm, at least when he was young. In later pictures, his expression was guarded, and he turned his face to the left so that only the right side was visible. The second person was a dark-haired woman with a mole below her right eye. Her expression conveyed shrewdness and amusement, even merry provocation. Although Gloria never spoke of them, it was clear to Laurel that these were her parents: she had the man’s smile and the woman’s eyes.

“Oh,” said Laurel now. She was horrified, and somehow embarrassed. “Gloria didn’t tell me about that.”

Julian and Seymour glanced at each other.

“I’m sure she doesn’t like to talk about it,” Seymour said.

“Shall we go upstairs?” asked Julian. “You’ll want to meet the young people.”

—

Laurel followed Julian to a curved staircase with a carved wooden banister. The walls were hung with paintings, nearly life-sized: a Black ballet dancer in a printed headscarf, a pianist with a parrot on his shoulder. One young man stood in front of an easel scattered with color. There were blots of purple on his chest.

“Did you make these?” Laurel asked. Gloria had told her that Seymour’s partner was an artist.

“Oh, yes. Friends, every one—most no longer earthside.”