Page 77 of Under Story

“Can you see?” asks Eli, anxious, and she realizes that he’s tried to give her privacy.

“Just fine,” she says. “Thank you.”

Without the blanket screen, they have no barrier. Eli lies on top of the other queen, pulling his right knee to the left.

“You were right,” he says. “It feels good to stretch.”

Laurel smiles. She climbs onto her bed and takes the same position.

“Try looking over your right shoulder,” she suggests.

She hears his head brush the pillow as it rotates. Then he gasps.

“Laurel, be reasonable,” says Eli. “We’re almost forty.”

“You always have to go to the extreme. Ease off a little,” Laurel says. “Then try it again, but be patient.”

Eli returns to his starting position. This time, the sound of his head on the pillow is slower, longer, Eli making little grunts of progress. At last, he sighs.

“See?” she says. “Now do the other side.”

They turn to the right together. Laurel extends her arms, feeling her shoulders open. After some time, Eli becomes quiet, and she assumes that he’s fallen asleep.

Then he says, “I should have done things differently.”

Laurel startles. “In Antarctica?”

“No,” says Eli. “As a father.”

“What do you mean?”

“I left early in the morning, and I spent evenings in my office. When Silas knocked, I asked him to wait. I said I’d come out when I was done.”

Laurel absorbs this quietly. Eli is right. And though there should be satisfaction in hearing him acknowledge it, she can only think of feeding Silas peas and want to cry.

“I let you think you were the bad one,” Eli says.

Laurel draws her knees to her chest.

“Because you thought I was,” she ventures.

“No. Because it was easier. You made the mistake in Michigan, but I made others. I was distracted. I didn’t make enough time for him—not like you did.”

Laurel straightens her legs on the bed. “My work wasn’t going very well.”

For the reality feels more complicated. Yes: she was the mother, expected to serve as the primary parent. What she set aside was not just work but a private, musing voice that had been with her all her life. She had less capacity for internal conversation: the call-and-response of her mind as it moved this way and that, remarking on what it saw, pursuing its own curiosity. This was what she envied Eli most. In becoming a parent, he didn’t have to leave so much of himself behind.

Yet it was also true that her work was discouraging, that her motivation ebbed with the demotion to technician, and that parenthood fascinated her in ways she hadn’t expected. There were times when she resented Eli, but she never wanted to trade places.

“And there were good things,” she adds, “about being home with him.”

After all, what had it given her? Not just early wake-ups and cooking and bath duty, but time. Someday, when Laurel was ready, she could scroll through an encyclopedia of memories. She could tell Eli about them, but they weren’t his.

“I know,” he says. “I see that now.”

—

Laurel wakes early, unused to the sound of traffic. She changes into fresh clothes and slips downstairs with the other Laurel’s tote bag and laptop. In the lobby, individual yogurts have been stacked beside large bowls of fresh fruit, most of it uneaten. There are four different kinds of milk. Dizzied by choice, wondering how much will be thrown away, Laurel brings a small plate and a coffee to a window seat.