Page 39 of Under Story

“Please tell me that’s a metaphor,” says Charlie.

“It’s not,” Louis says. “At Bellingshausen, one of the Russian scientists knifed his roommate over a novel.”

Charlie blanches. “What did the roommate do?”

“He spoiled the ending,” Louis says.

—

The darkness comes on slowly, then all at once. By the end of April, the sun doesn’t rise at all. Outside, cold lays claim to the body immediately: skin chaps, and beards acquire icicles. Once, Laurel makes the mistake of running from the galley to the convenience store without her Big Red. Halfway there, her legs lock, paralyzed by a rabid need for warmth. She staggers into the nearest building and finds herself among bickering meteorologists, who pause to sit her down on an overturned crate and hand her a mug of hot tea.

In winter, the population is small enough for everyone to have a single, so Laurel and Charlie move out of the room they shared with Nita. Still, they stick together.

“You might think you want to be alone, but that’s not what you need,” says Louis, at Gallagher’s. “Too much quiet time and you’ll end up with the Antarctic stare.”

He gestures toward the OAE at the end of the bar, a silent, shaggy mechanic drinking vodka straight. That weekend, they attend a presentation on the signs of winter-over syndrome: insomnia, absentmindedness, aggression. The isolation and monotony magnify seasonal depression; changes in thyroid hormones can cause cognitive impairment, even memory loss.

Laurel isn’t overly concerned. Nothing she experiences here can be worse than what she’s already endured. Sometimes she shares a joint with Miles and Louis, relishing the way it smooths her edges. Her curiosity—her interest in the living moment—opens like an eye. She doesn’t forget what she did, but she can live with herself.

She watches Eli in the galley. He always avoids eye contact, as if he can sense that she wants something from him. By May, he seems more comfortable on station. The ANITA team huddles in animated conversation. At Gallagher’s, Laurel sees him laughing with Ingrid, a cook. It feels like looking into the past. She turns away from them.

One night, Louis decrees it time to go bowling, and they shuffle to Building 63. Installed in 1961 by the Navy Seabees, the bowling alley has two lanes and manual pins. In one lane are the ANITA and IceCube scientists, who seem to have called a truce: they chat good-naturedly, drinking smuggled-in beer. Eli is one of them. Though he’s never worked for IceCube, he knows the people who do: in the United States, the project is based at UW–Madison. Laurel wonders if he helped to ease tensions between the two groups of physicists here.

She goes to find a pair of shoes, determined to enjoy herself. She’ll ignore Eli, if that’s what he wants. As she ties the laces, though, he glances over with what seems like apology. Later he drifts from his lane toward hers.

“It’s no Kegonsa Bowl,” he says.

That was the alley near McFarland High, with arcade games and claw machines and a galactic carpet that hadn’t been cleaned since the eighties. Between turns, Laurel and Maisie drank blue raspberry Slurpees and ate nachos with warm neon cheese.

Laurel smiles. “No.”

Eli is watching the game with his arms crossed, but she detects a quality in him that she hasn’t seen for years.

“You’re excited about something,” she says.

He laughs. “I guess I am.”

“About work?”

Eli keeps his eyes on the game, but he smiles, too. “You’re prying.”

“I’m interested.”

“Nothing’s been confirmed. We need more data.”

A cheer goes up from Laurel’s lane: Charlie has scored a spare, putting the Nonperishables ahead. As a volunteer resets the pins, the Freshies—Louis and Miles—boo loudly.

“Salter,” Miles calls. He and Laurel have been together only once since Stewie Prom, hurried and drunk in her new single. “You’re up.”

Laurel glances at Eli. She can wait for more data. Better to ease off so that he doesn’t feel cornered.

“Well,” she says lightly, “I hope it’s good news,” and wonders if he’ll watch while she takes her turn.

Motherhood made her an animal. They named him Silas—in Latin, “man of the woods”—and when they brought him home, Laurel clutched the car seat, unused to having him out of her arms. Time was both rigidly scheduled and irrelevant. She lived in the rhythm of him: his naps and feedings, his urgent needs. Her world was sensation—pressure and suction, blood and milk—and emotion always spilling over. She thought of how the universe was said to emerge from a single point. Where there was nothing: now, everything.

Laurel and Eli’s new apartment had a screened-in back porch. After the day’s humidity wore itself out, they sat there in reclining chairs: he shirtless in boxers with his hands behind his head and she in an old T-shirt with her breasts leaking, so tenderly alive. In those early weeks, they existed in a state of radiant exhaustion, everything raw and indescribable. Laurel’s love for Eli and Silas was a binding force. What once felt like a dual relationship between her and the baby now became a triad.

Yet she sometimes felt enormous grief. She had traded her former life, which she loved, and to which she could not return. Clare sat with her as she wept.