The Double Bind

by Christopher A. Bohjalian

  Laurel was wearing a ball cap with her homeless shelter’s slogan on the front, “Homeland Security Begins with a Home,” and her blond ponytail rose over the plastic fit strap in the back like a fountain. It actually bounced against her neck as she raced up and down the stairs with boxes of his CDs and plastic garbage bags full of his clean shirts and socks. She was wearing a pair of pink Keds and denim capris, and he was mightily impressed by those calves. Gastrocnemius. Soleus. Peroneus longus. The muscles that were extending her feet as she moved. The girl had calves that were glorious. A biker’s calves. A swimmer’s calves. A-okay, he admitted to himself, it wasn’t merely a professional’s appreciation-lover’s calves.

  He might have become infatuated with either woman. They were both four years older than he was, and that alone was a powerful aphrodisiac. Why? It meant, pure and simple, that they were no longer in school. Any woman who actually had a job seemed indescribably exotic to him at the time.

  But it was Laurel who inadvertently cast the first spell. Perhaps because it was so unintended. So accidental. Early that afternoon, when they were just about done moving him into the house, they were standing together on his little-and little was indeed the apt word; it was more like a ledge with a railing-terrace. They’d wandered out there to catch their breath and drink their water. They were hot and sweaty and breathing heavily from their exertions, and Laurel asked him about Iowa and his family and the house in which he had grown up. She asked him why he wanted to be a doctor. She seemed so honestly-and intensely-interested in his responses that briefly he worried that she viewed him as one of the lost causes who appeared at the shelter. But then he let that fear go, because he realized this was just how this new housemate of his was hardwired. She asked about others because she cared about others-and, perhaps, because it meant that she was less likely to have to talk about herself. Regardless of the reason, she made his heart pound as he babbled on about who he was, until she did something so extravagantly intimate and unexpected that his breath caught in his throat: While he was describing for her his grandfather’s farm, she took her water bottle and sprinkled a few drops on a delicate handkerchief she had in her pants pocket, and then leaned in close to him and pressed it against his jaw. Apparently, he had cut himself at some point and the small wound had once more started to bleed, and he hadn’t noticed it yet. They stood that way, close enough to kiss, for easily half a minute.

  There was something about her that was at once nurturing and deeply vulnerable. He could see it in what she had chosen to do with her life and in her relationship with Talia: Talia was like a big sister who watched over her.

  Whit was not awkward around girls, but he had always been a little shy. He once had a girlfriend who said he was attractive in an unthreatening sort of way. He presumed she had meant this as a compliment, but then she broke up with him a week after making the observation. In college he had been considered discreet. He sometimes wondered if he’d been born a generation earlier whether he would have been every girl’s best male friend: the one who is there after they’ve been hurt by some jerk on the football team or college radio station and helps to pick up the pieces. But, of course, always goes home alone. Consequently, he was grateful he was born when he was.

  Whit didn’t pretend to understand women, and he found Laurel particularly enigmatic throughout August and those first weeks of September. They went to a couple of movies together and dancing once-as friends, nothing more, always in a group-and a few times they walked together into the downtown for ice cream. All very wholesome. He knew his Iowa grandparents would have been proud. He found her to be an enthusiastic conversationalist when they spoke about her work with the homeless, about medical school, about the films they had seen. They could talk about politics and religion, and they did-sometimes briefly in the apartment house’s hallway and sometimes for longer periods on the house’s front stoop. But other subjects seemed to transform Laurel in seconds from pleasant to distant, and he began to grow increasingly careful about what subjects he brought up. One time he offered to take Laurel biking on the spectacularly beautiful roads west of Middlebury, and it was as if he had suggested that they take in a funeral. She grew remote and then excused herself and returned from the stoop to her apartment. Another time he had been prattling on-charmingly, he supposed, in a Comedy Central sort of way-about slasher movies and the idiocy of the women and men who always get themselves killed in the woods, and she withdrew completely. Laurel didn’t ever demean or dismiss him; it was clear to Whit that she didn’t demean or dismiss anyone. But she would break off their discussions abruptly, and continue on her way to BEDS or the university darkroom or the grocery store. Other than Talia, she didn’t seem to have any friends.

  Of course, he understood that if she were to examine his world she wouldn’t have seen an especially frenetic social life, either. But he had an excuse: He was just starting medical school. For biochemistry alone he could have spent his life memorizing names and structures and pathways. And, yes, he could be blushingly self-conscious around pretty women.

  Still, he had a sense there was going to come a time when he was going to regret a sizable number of the things he had said, no matter how innocuous the remarks had seemed at the moment. One conversation in mid-September was indicative in his mind. It was a weekday morning, and he was standing in his bike shorts and a black T-shirt on the terrace off his apartment that looked out over the street just as Laurel raced through the front door below him and started down the sidewalk toward the city. He was probably staring (though, he would hope later, not too feverishly). Suddenly, she turned back toward the house, swiveling almost balletically on the toe of her sneaker. She looked up, saw him watching, and smiled.

  He waved back with a pair of fingers, a small salute, and hoped the intense way he had been scrutinizing her hadn’t been obvious. Maybe that two-finger wave would look casual. It hadn’t: He could tell by the way she had glanced up at him and then quickly away that his colossal interest was evident.

  “Forget something?” he called down.

  “I did,” she said, and she raced back inside. A moment later, she reemerged. He had barely moved.

  For a second, he was unsure whether it would be more polite to show his interest by inquiring what she’d returned for, or whether he might risk embarrassing her if he did. For all he knew, she’d forgotten her diaphragm. After all, she had a boyfriend, an older man who worked at the newspaper. But after a brief pause, as she jiggled the keys on her ring after locking the front door, he went ahead and asked, “So, what was so important?”

  “A book on rock and roll. The roots of rock and roll. There’s a chapter in it about Muddy Waters.”

  “I didn’t know you were so into music history.”

  She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Trust me, I’m not. But we had a client who might have had a connection to some early rock musicians.” She had a red backpack draped casually over one shoulder, and she slung it in front of her now so she could unzip it and drop the book inside.

  “Someone homeless?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Was he a musician?”

  “Nope.”

  “A songwriter?”

  “No. A photographer.”

  “Where’s he living now?”

  “He died.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s a little sad. But he did live a long time. He was an old man.”

  “And so you’re researching rock music now because…because why?”

  “It’s complicated. I’m actually interested in the photo credits. I could tell you more, but it would take up most of the morning. And I have to be at work. I’ll fill you in later. Okay?”

  “And, yes, I have to go for a ride,” he said, hoping he sounded suitably slackeresque, but was afraid after he’d spoken that he’d sounded only cavalier and irresponsible. “I don’t have class today until ten-thirty.”

  “We do keep different hours.”

  “You kn
ow, it wasn’t all that long ago that you were a student, too.”

  “Sometimes it feels like it was.”

  He leaned over the balustrade. He wasn’t precisely sure how, but he had the disturbing sense that he was about to say exactly the wrong thing. Again. He just knew it. But he felt he had to say something, and so he forged ahead. “This is going to be a pretty short ride. I thought I might go for a much longer one this weekend. Maybe up in Underhill. There are some wonderful logging trails up there, you know. I guess I bike the way you swim. Tell me again: Why did you swap your bike for a swimsuit?”

  “I don’t think I told you once,” she answered, not looking at him at all, but focusing intently on the process of zipping up her knapsack. It was the kind of remark that coming from anyone other than Laurel would have sounded curt and left him feeling profoundly diminished. But from her it seemed merely wistful. As if, suddenly, the topic had made her tired.

  “Any interest in coming with me? I have two bikes, you know. I could lower the seat on one and you’d be incredibly comfortable. I was up there a month ago-up in Underhill-and there is one stretch where the woods just open up completely, and the view-”

  “Whit, I have to run. Forgive me,” she said, not even looking up at him as she cut him off.

  “Oh, I understand,” he said.

  Though, of course, he didn’t really. Not yet. And not at all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN THOSE FIRST DAYS after Katherine had given Laurel the photos she had found, the young social worker was fixated most on the one of the girl on the bike. She caught herself staring at the jersey, the hair, the trees behind her for long moments until-almost suddenly-she would be nauseous. She would, as she hadn’t in years, see again in her mind the faces of the two men precisely as she recalled them from those long summer days in the courthouse in Burlington. One time she had to put the photo down and duck her head between her legs. She almost blacked out.

  Certainly, she was intrigued as well by the odd coincidence that this mysterious Bobbie Crocker had owned pictures of the country club of her youth. She wondered what it meant that he might have grown up in her corner of Long Island-swum, perhaps, as a boy in the very same cove as her-and then, years later, been on the dirt road with her on the Sunday she nearly was killed. That he had photographed her hours (perhaps minutes) before the attack. But that would presume she really was the girl on the bike. And that the picture had been taken that nightmarish Sunday-versus either of the two Sundays that had preceded it. And Laurel just couldn’t be sure. On some level, she didn’t want to be sure, because that would put Crocker in a closer proximity to the crime than she wanted to contemplate.

  It was easier to focus instead on the tragedy of a man of such obvious artistic talent and accomplishment winding up homeless. Still, she tried not to obsess even on this thread too much. Other than skimming a few heavy tomes on old rock and roll and photography in the middle part of the twentieth century, she didn’t do much in the way of investigating his identity-especially when she didn’t come across Bobbie’s name in any of the photo credits in the books. Still, at his funeral she had made a lunch date for the following week with Serena, and the next day she left a voice mail with Bobbie’s social worker, Emily Young, asking to see her when she returned from vacation. Emily had cleaned out Bobbie’s apartment at the Hotel New England with Katherine, and then left immediately for a lengthy Caribbean cruise. It was why she hadn’t been present at the man’s burial at the fort in Winooski.

  And so for two more days that week she did her job, and she went out again with David, and she swam each day in the morning. She actually went bowling with Talia and a guy her roommate was considering dating, and then, when they returned home, surfed the Web with her friend so they could both learn more about paintball.

  She brought the box of photographs back to her apartment, but-with the exception of that image of the girl on the bike-she did nothing more serious with it than flip through the pictures abstractedly while doing other things: brushing her teeth. Chatting on the telephone. Watching the news. She did not begin to carefully archive the photos to see what was there or take the negatives up to the university darkroom to start printing them. There would be time for that later. And then, on Friday, she went home for a break. Neither Katherine nor Talia had to ask why. They knew. The anniversary of the attack was approaching, and Laurel made it a rule never to be in Vermont on that day. Her plan was to return to Vermont the following Tuesday, after the anniversary, and then resume work on Wednesday at BEDS.

  After breakfast, she threw some clothes and cosmetics into her knapsack, checked the stove one last time, and prepared to start south in her tired but functional Honda. She wasn’t sure whether she would try to see Pamela Buchanan Marshfield while she was home, but just in case she got the telephone numbers for both the Daytons and Mrs. Winston off the Internet and made sure that she had Bobbie Crocker’s snapshots in a safe envelope in her bag.

  IT HAD BEEN ALMOST too easy for her to find Pamela Marshfield. Laurel hadn’t even had to bring the woman up: Rebecca Winston did that for her.

  She was holding the phone against her ear in her childhood kitchen and watching the fog outside the window slowly engulf first the pines at the edge of the lawn-an edge not on Long Island Sound, but separated from the shore by a mere spit of preserved state forest-and then the wooden swing set and attached playhouse that had sat in the backyard like a great, hulking massif almost her entire life. She saw a blue jay land on the peaked roof of the playhouse and survey the grass. It was nearing lunchtime on Saturday, and she had only just woken up. She’d slept for close to twelve hours.

  Rebecca Winston had already described for the social worker the leaf-peeping bus tour she had taken five years ago through the torturous roads that crept up and over the Green Mountains. It sounded nauseating, but Laurel didn’t tell her that. Then Rebecca had volunteered her fear that all too soon she would be unable to live alone in her house, and the conversation had turned naturally, seamlessly, to Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s daughter.

  “I know there are some very nice retirement communities nearby, but I love my home. Right now I’m looking out at the water-as we speak. It’s lovely. Soothing. Especially with the mist. And I have resources. Obviously. But I couldn’t possibly bring in all the help that someone like Pamela Marshfield can. Did you know she has nurses who live with her? Two!” the woman was saying.

  “Where is she living now, Mrs. Winston?” Laurel asked. “Do you know?”

  “You must call me Becky.”

  “I couldn’t possibly,” she answered. Mrs. Winston was somewhere between three and four times her age.

  “Please?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Let me hear you say it. Indulge an old woman.”

  “Mrs.-”

  “Come on!”

  “Okay.” She swallowed. “Becky.”

  “Was that so bad?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you know where Mrs. Marshfield is living now?”

  “Now her you’ll have to call Mrs. Marshfield.”

  “I understand.”

  “She’s living in East Hampton. I hear she has a spectacular place.”

  “More spectacular than her old estate-the one next to you?”

  “It’s not quite as big. But who needs six or seven thousand square feet when your husband has passed away and you don’t have any children? Still, it’s not petite. And people tell me that the view of the water is absolutely breathtaking. I’ve got this little cove filled with boats and houses. I used to watch you kids take out your Sunbirds from the club. Capsize your kayaks. Pamela, on the other hand, has a long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean and her own private beach. Someone told me when it’s warm they carry her onto the chaise on the terrace, and she watches the waves.”

  “She’s that infirm?”

  “No, she’s that wealthy.”

  “Would she mind if I calle
d her?”

  “She’d probably prefer you wrote. She’s of that generation that still writes letters. And she is a particularly eccentric letter writer. She’s known in some circles for long, formal letters that are chock-full of opinions and stories. We corresponded for a while after she moved.”

  “Do you still have the letters?”

  “Oh, I doubt it. We lost touch a long time ago.”

  “I’m only here for a couple of days, so I think I’ll risk the telephone,” Laurel said, and Rebecca gave her Pamela Marshfield’s telephone number-although, because it was unlisted, Laurel had to promise that she would share it with no one. And then, as soon as they had hung up, she dialed the Marshfield estate in East Hampton.

  LAUREL NEVER UNDERSTOOD precisely what Tom Buchanan saw in Myrtle Wilson, the woman with whom Tom had that ridiculous affair in 1922, and who Daisy would accidentally run over while driving her own lover’s car. Tom Buchanan might not have been very nice-he might, in fact, have been an abusive bully who once broke Myrtle’s nose-but he was handsome and he was rich. Laurel knew the house. She knew where he had kept his polo ponies. But Myrtle Wilson? She had never met anyone who actually knew her. But clearly the woman was neither particularly bright nor especially kind: She was a dowdy screecher with a tendency to put on airs. She wasn’t even all that attractive. Obviously, she didn’t deserve to die the way that she did. No one did: Laurel, too, had nearly been killed by a car-run over while clipped to her bike. Like Myrtle, she had been left for dead as the vehicle sped away. But Laurel still didn’t view Myrtle as a kindred spirit. She just didn’t see why a man like Tom might be attracted to a woman like her. She always presumed that his next lover was a more predictable trophy catch.

  Laurel found herself thinking about Tom and Daisy most of the next afternoon, Sunday, since on Monday morning she was going to meet their one daughter. A woman, either a nurse or a personal assistant of some sort, took her call on Saturday, put her on hold, and passed along her message to Mrs. Marshfield. Laurel actually apologized for phoning instead of writing. But she explained who she was and told the woman that she had some snapshots of the old Buchanan estate and what she believed was Mrs. Marshfield when she’d been a little girl. Laurel added that she wanted very much to bring them by and introduce herself. She made no mention of the boy in one of the photos or Bobbie Crocker. After a moment of silence, the woman returned and said that Mrs. Marshfield would be delighted to see her on Monday at eleven.