Page 32 of Under Story

They settled in a small apartment. Olga spoke broken English and knew no one, but she had European ancestry and an American husband. From her new kitchen, she could see the island where Asian immigrants underwent interrogation and medical inspection, desperate to prove that the Chinese Exclusion Act did not apply to them.

When they met, Olga was twenty-five, regarded in her village as an unlucky spinster. Now she yearned for a child, but years passed without one. An American doctor suggested a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and milk. After Olga’s thirty-fifth birthday passed without a pregnancy, she turned to the old wives’ tales she’d heard as a girl: she avoided cold surfaces, ate honey by the spoonful, refused to cut her hair. She viewed such superstition with inner querulousness. On one side was her intelligence, fortified by education; on the other was hope, wily and just as argumentative.

By the time she was forty-two, Olga had abandoned these measures. Woken, one morning, by the unpleasant urge to vomit, she did not consider pregnancy; it was four months before she learned that her body housed not one heart but two. Gloria had not benefited from exclusively warm surfaces, or a particularly healthful diet, but still she had thrived. She arrived on a fog-cloaked Sunday, her scream the stuff of operas.

In Arkhangelsk, mushrooms had guarded against famine and served as meat during Lent. Olga called them forest fruit. She told Gloria about her uncle the gribnik, a seasoned mushroom-hunter who taught her edible from poison, and how during tikhaya okhota—the silent hunt—she sank into a state like meditation. Russulas and porcini didn’t grow in Northern California, but they found petaled veshenki blooming from the stumps of dead trees. At home, Olga made them any number of ways: pickled, sautéed with sour cream, or served alongside fried potatoes and vodka, which Gloria was permitted to taste.

Laurel took a sip of cider. “How did your parents meet Seymour and Julian?”

It seemed an odd pairing: a wealthy gay couple and a half-Midwestern, half-immigrant one.

Gloria understood the implication. “Julian taught art at the same high school where my father became an English teacher. It was a terrible time to be gay, even in San Francisco. By living together, Seymour and Julian were taking a significant risk,” she said. “My parents thought for themselves. They lived near Polk Street, where gay people gathered before the Castro became what it is.”

“And your dad was from Wisconsin,” said Laurel, fitting the pieces together. “Is that why you moved here?”

“That was part of it. I wanted to experience the place where he grew up. But I also didn’t get any other job offers.”

“Idiots,” said Laurel loyally.

Gloria chuckled, then sighed. “It was the sixties. And I was a woman.”

“Was it hard to leave San Francisco?”

“Yes. But it was also a relief, after what happened.” Cygnus stretched in her lap. Stroking him, she seemed to be deciding how to continue. “They were chasing a solar storm. My mother grew up watching the aurora. All the houses in her village had large, north-facing windows. During winter, it was dark by two in the afternoon.”

Indigenous tribes, Gloria said, lived near Arkhangelsk, too: the Komi and the Nenets, who herded reindeer and read weather in the colors of the northern lights.

“The villagers saw the lights as a sign of good fortune. A child conceived beneath them was thought to be blessed, and it was not uncommon for visitors to come to the region with that purpose in mind.” Gloria smiled. “My mother was one such child, though she never thought it made her very lucky. But she desperately missed the aurora. It made her think of her parents. After she left, they wrote letters, but she never saw them again.”

Laurel tries to imagine this. She can’t. “Did you ever meet your grandparents?”

“No,” said Gloria. “When I was a child, I often asked my mother why. I understood what it meant to die. This was much more confusing. How could someone be alive, but in a place we couldn’t visit? My mother took me outside. ‘Our countries are at war,’ she said, ‘but still, we are connected. We have the same sun, the same stars. They look up at the same sky you do.’ ”

Gloria had shifted seamlessly into her mother’s accent. It seemed to surprise her as much as it did Laurel.

“Too far is what I told her. ‘Then look at yourself,’ she said. ‘Look at me. Same big ears. Same fingers. Same cheeks.’ ”

Laurel laughed. “I never noticed the size of your ears. But now that you mention it…”

“Large,” Gloria agreed. “Like my mother’s. Good for eavesdropping.”

Cygnus climbed onto the arm of Gloria’s chair, from which he jumped to Laurel’s.

“It must have been difficult to chase the aurora back then,” Laurel said, scratching his ears.

“Nearly impossible. You could look at sunspots with a telescope, or listen for radio blackouts, but it was far from an exact science. When I was sixteen, my mother heard that a farmer near Yosemite had seen green light in the sky. My parents wanted me to come with them, but I refused. I was a teenager, with better things to do,” Gloria said. “A hiker found their car at the bottom of a hillside.”

“Oh, Gloria,” Laurel whispered.

“I’ve never known what happened. Most likely they skidded out of control in a snow squall. Those mountain roads get slippery fast,” Gloria said. “I left high school to get my GED. It was too painful, being around students with typical families. Seymour and Julian saved me.”

When Laurel left that day, she paused to look at the pictures in the hallway. In addition to those of Olga and Ted, there was an old photograph of Gloria, wearing lace-up leather boots and clutching a satchel. She looked to be in her late teens. Her eyes were questioning but guarded. There was a stubborn thrust to her chin.

Laurel saw her differently afterward. No longer was she simply the unruffled sage of the Rhizotron. Gloria was also a teenage girl, alone, her old life cut off at the base.

—

Laurel’s life resumed its former rhythm. She continued graduate school; she turned her conference presentation into a paper. Occasionally she wondered whether Eli and Angela were married. On Valentine’s Day, at Tess’s apartment, she confessed the entire story.