The Double Bind

by Christopher A. Bohjalian

  Well, she could appreciate that if Laurel really were insane. That would make sense. But Laurel wasn’t. She’d just been through a lot. It was too bad no one, not even her dad, seemed to understand.

  MARGOT ANN HAD asked Laurel whether she felt up to returning to work after the draining ordeal of the clarification hearing. They were standing in the parking lot outside the correctional facility, the fence with its coils of concertina wire looming high above Margot Ann’s shoulders.

  “No,” Laurel had answered. “I think I’m going to go home.”

  “Take the rest of the day off-I agree.”

  Laurel smiled wanly, hoping to convey emotional fatigue. But the truth was, she wasn’t exhausted. She was confused-but she was also energized. She didn’t like misleading Margot Ann, but she also didn’t believe she had a choice. Her plan was to have Margot Ann drop her off at the parking garage in Burlington where they had met that morning, but she certainly wasn’t about to drive to her apartment in the hill section after that. Home, in this case, meant West Egg. If Bobbie hadn’t given his son the next clue, then she would follow up on a hunch that had been growing stronger ever since she and Shem Wolfe had parted company in Serena’s diner on Sunday: Perhaps she herself was the link to the final evidence. The final proof. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence at all that she had been given responsibility for Bobbie’s images once he had passed away. Hadn’t he photographed her himself that day seven years ago on the dirt road in Underhill? Hadn’t Katherine asked her to research the images he had left behind?

  And if she were a critical link for Bobbie Crocker, then it was surely because he had understood that she had spent her summer afternoons as a girl lingering in the shade of the trees behind Jay Gatsby’s house. His father’s house. Swimming not exactly in Gatsby’s pool, but in the one that had been hollowed out in the very ground where Gatsby’s had been.

  Perhaps Bobbie had singled her out because he realized that she alone was capable of understanding both his life and his work.

  Consequently, she would return once more to his home.

  Because if she were Bobbie Crocker and wanted to leave behind the proof of who her father really was, she would place it there. Where Gatsby had lived and, yes, where he had died.

  SHE SPENT THE NIGHT in her house in West Egg. She listened to the messages that Talia and Katherine and David had left on her mother’s answering machine. They were checking up on her. Checking up on the notes she had left them.

  But she slept little that night, because she had detoured to the country club in West Egg on her way home, arriving just after the dining room had closed for the evening. There she studied the pictures on the walls, including the old black and whites of the small circuses that Gatsby called parties. As the busboys cleared the final tables and the dishwashers in the kitchen inadvertently clanged the heavy pots against the sides of the sinks-as the steam from the hot water slid like mist underneath the swinging doors-she wandered around the dining room and the hallways that linked it with the main entrance and the library. She studied carefully the images of the original swimming pool, trying to envision precisely where Gatsby had been when he had been shot, and where that smaller pool rested in the midst of the Olympic-size one that existed there now. She noticed there were no crab apple trees in the old prints and remembered a story she’d been told as a girl: A mysterious donor had given the club the crab apples. Then the trees had appeared in Bobbie’s photographs-including one picture of a tree with a small mound of crab apples beside it.

  That was, she realized with an emotion as close to elation as she was capable of experiencing in her current state, the marker. The symbol. The totem.

  By the time she climbed into bed it was midnight and her plans for the next morning were rumbling inside her head like the din inside a theater moments before the curtain is finally raised into the fly space. She had studied the print with the tree and the pyramid of fallen fruit, and knew precisely where her search was going to end.

  She awoke well before dawn, went to the garage for the long shovel her father had used around the house and her mother’s small garden trowel, and returned to the country club. She parked in the space nearest the stone Norman tower. For a moment, she sat in her car because she was crying once again, and didn’t know whether it was because she was exhausted beyond words or because no one believed her, or whether she was sobbing for a homeless man who had learned as a boy how callous and cruel grown-ups could be. How capable of delusion. Distortion. Disdain.

  She listened to the birdsong and gathered herself. She watched the sky lighten to the east and the textured stones on the structure of the clubhouse grow more distinct. A little before six, she climbed from the Honda and started toward the crab apple trees, leaning the shovel against the one where she planned to dig. All of the trees were dramatically wider and taller now, the branches full and broad. At least one tree had been cut down since Bobbie had photographed them, maybe two. But it wasn’t hard to see where the small pyramid of crab apples had sat, and why Bobbie had built the small mound where he had. This tree was the middle of a small group of three that had been planted near the northern edge of where the original pool had been. This newer pool, easily three times the size of Gatsby’s, had been built where the first one had been constructed, but took up considerably more real estate. Gatsby’s pool had existed roughly where the twelve-foot-deep diving section was now, and this tree was about as close as Bobbie could get to the spot where his father had died.

  The sun still wasn’t up when she first thrust the shovel into the ground, but it felt more like day than like dawn, and after sitting for so very long in the car she was relieved to stand up and take the shovel in her hands, place her foot on the rolled shoulder-the wooden handle cold against her fingers and the edge of the blade sharp against the arch of her foot-and press it into the earth. Through the grass and the roots. Into the loamy soil. She pitched the divots into a pile to her right, and then the dirt upon them. Occasionally, she would fall to her knees and root around in the hole with her arms: She wanted to make sure that she wasn’t missing something small but important. A locket, perhaps. A monogrammed wristwatch. But she was confident she was merely being thorough when she did this. Bobbie had given her no reason to believe she was looking for a specific piece of jewelry.

  She had been digging for close to half an hour and had just begun to worry that any moment a stray golfer with an early tee time would wander by or one of the maintenance men would arrive to skim the fallen leaves off the surface of the pool and check the chlorine levels in the water when she heard the blade hit something solid-but not nearly as solid as a rock. There might even have been a faint echo. Now the hole was so deep that to reach the bottom she had to lie flat on the edge and pull herself partly inside it, and even then she had to stretch out her fingers and hands. She pawed away the dirt that surrounded the object and used her nails to scrape more dirt off the top: She could feel one straight edge, then another. She reached for the garden trowel and gently but urgently quarried along the sides. Finally, she felt a clasp. A hinge. And then with both hands she was able to pull from the ground the wooden jewelry box, the one with the scalloped mirrors along the lid.

  She knew next to nothing about wood, but when she brushed off the dirt she thought it was cherry. Her parents-now her mother-slept in a bed with a cherry headboard, and it was the same color as this jewelry box. Carefully she used her thumbnail to press open the hook, her heart galloping, oblivious to the sweat that was turning the dirt on her cheeks and her forehead to mud. It was jammed with soil and rust, but finally she was able to pop it open and lift the lid. For a moment, she was disappointed. She had expected to find the inscribed photograph, the one Jay had given Daisy in Louisville, when the two had been young and in love and their lives had not yet begun to unravel. But it wasn’t there. Instead, she found an envelope-once beige, now brown. When she flipped the envelope over she saw the single word Daisy written in a man’s hand on the front,
and when she opened the flap she noticed the letter G had been embossed on the back. Inside was a photograph of Gatsby and Daisy, taken that summer of 1922. They were sitting together on the stone steps that led from his house to the pool, perhaps a mere thirty yards from the very spot where she was kneeling that moment. Daisy was wearing a black Empire dress, sleeveless, and strings of pearls. Her earrings were daisies. He was wearing a tuxedo, his bow tie slightly askew. Daisy’s arm was hooked through his, her head was leaning toward him but not quite touching his shoulder. In the image, they looked slightly flushed, as if they had just been dancing. They were smiling. No, Laurel decided, they were more than smiling. They were beaming. It was night, but their smiles alone might have been enough to illuminate the grounds.

  Folded behind the photograph was a letter, written in the same hand that had addressed the envelope.

  My Dearest Daisy,

  I can only begin to imagine what you are feeling, but you have to understand that her death wasn’t your fault. She ran in front of the car! No one could have stopped in time. No one.

  Remember: Should anyone ever ask, you must tell them that I was driving. I can take care of myself. And I can take care of us. This horrible unpleasantness will pass and we will be fine. We will be together.

  I watched your house last night and I waited. I waited all night. I stayed awake by imagining our future together. It is a future where you won’t be bullied, where you won’t have to wonder where your husband has gone. We don’t have to stay here, you know. We can settle in Louisville, if you’d like. Or Boston. Or Paris. Or London. It makes no difference to me. So long as we’re together, we can be happy anywhere.

  Can’t you see it? I can. I see us: You and me and Pammy and a son. Yes, a little brother for your sweet girl. And we will name him Robert, after your father. That will be our family. A boy and a girl and the most loving and loved mother in the world. That will be us. I will be the husband you deserve and the father our children deserve.

  That’s precisely what I saw last night as I stood sentinel outside your house.

  We will be okay, you know. We will.

  I will be home all day today. Just let me know when I should come get you.

  Love,

  Jay

  She knew she should fill the hole back in, but she was hot and tired and she felt dizzy when she stood up. Besides, it was nearing seven-thirty: In the distance, she had been hearing the sound of irons and woods striking golf balls from the first hole for close to half an hour, and at least five or six vehicles had arrived in the parking lot since she had started to dig. And so, with the box with the small envelope under one arm and the shovel and the trowel under the other, she started back toward her car with its apple cores and empty cans of Red Bull littering the passenger seat.

  AS GATSBY’S OLD HOUSE and its once-sprawling sage lawns, now an antiseptic prairie of fairways and putting greens, receded in the Honda’s rearview mirror, Laurel began her long journey back to Vermont. Seven more hours. She drove briefly along the Sound, the last of the blue fog having lifted off the water, before veering toward the long strips of expendable plastic and neon that linked West Egg with the expressway. Then she was on the highway itself, rolling past the ambitionless office parks built upon the ash heaps and the remnants of a world’s fair. Past the Unisphere and the skeletal remains of the once great pavilions: the visible detritus of that era’s unachieved aspirations. Didn’t she see daily the castoffs and casualties sprung loose by an ever-spinning globe? Her eyes were small slits, her head heavy with visions and dreams. There was the vindication she anticipated when she shared what she had found to keep her awake-Bobbie’s vindication, not merely hers-but there was also her dawning awareness that her past was a part of her future. Always. It was, for better or worse, inescapable.

  She arrived at her apartment mid-afternoon, and when she staggered through the front door encumbered by the cherry box and the portfolio case with Bobbie’s photographs, for a moment she thought she was feverish.

  There before her was a small crowd comprised of some of the most important people in her life. Sitting on the couch was her roommate, gazing at her with a look of sodden despair, and her mother-summoned, apparently, back from Italy -in a tight black sweater today instead of a tight black T. And Whit, in the chair by the computer, looking uncharacteristically haggard and gaunt. She saw Katherine in the seat by the balcony, a cell phone pressed up against her ear. She didn’t see David, and for an instant she wondered where he was, but the moment was brief because her attention was diverted by another man-not David-who was pacing between the living room and the kitchen. Initially, it was hard for her to place him. She knew him from somewhere-at least she thought she did.

  Then, abruptly, it came to her. She hadn’t recognized him right away, despite the hours and hours they had spent together since she was nearly killed on a dirt road in Vermont, because she always saw him in the context of his office where they usually met.

  It was her psychiatrist. Dr. Pierce.

  PATIENT 29873

  Assessment: Bipolar 1 disorder, current episode manic, severe, with psychotic features; PTSD.

  This deserves some comment. The unusual presentation was discussed with Dr. R-. That discussion is reviewed here.

  PTSD seems fairly clear, in spite of the psychotic symptoms, given severe trauma, intense distress when viewing the bicycle photographs, and numbing symptoms, i.e., avoiding the site in Underhill, memory gaps, feelings of estrangement. This diagnosis is important in terms of functional impairment and prognosis, whatever else is going on.

  The psychosis part is more difficult. There is no language/behavior disorganization, in spite of the patient’s wordplay. Mood symptoms, including moderate ongoing irritability, sleep loss prior to admission, and unusual persistent activity, i.e., disappearing from her family and friends, the frenzied travel and searching before admission, her current writing, seem most compatible with a bipolar 1 disorder, which could certainly be associated with psychoses. (Valproate appearing to lower the activity level and mood to a fairly moderate state, in any case.) Main difficulty is that it is unusual to have delusions persist when the mood symptoms are more or less resolved.

  One example in the DSM for psychosis not otherwise specified is “persistent non-bizarre delusions with periods of overlapping mood episodes that have been present for a substantial part of the delusional disturbance,” and this fits. Since there is only one manic episode-not “periods” plural-it makes sense to go with a mood diagnosis for now.

  The construction of the delusions is intriguing. She has written an entire book chronicling those weeks in September, which she considers a true story, but including characters she has made up completely or derived from an 80-year-old novel: Pamela Buchanan; T. J. Leckbruge, an anagram created from the name of an optometrist on the fictional billboard. Shem Wolfe-apparently Meyer Wolfsheim. Then there is Jay Gatsby.

  She also has fabricated or revised conversations with her aunt, her mother, and a neighbor from Long Island.

  And perhaps to justify her boyfriend distancing himself from her, she seems to have made up two little girls and given them to him. She insists these two fictitious children are the reason her boyfriend has, apparently, broken up with her. (Am exploring how much of the girls are drawn from her own childhood memories and her relationship with her older sister.)

  Re-how encapsulated the delusions are. Although persisting in spite of minimal mood symptoms now, they do not appear to extend much beyond the Gatsby idea. They extend to the homeless man for whom she provided services, who is, of course, deceased. But the case is not closed from her point of view, because the homeless man was indeed the father of one of her assailants. Consequently, I would not yet stop the antipsychotic risperidone.

  Am adding to the list of visitors her housemate Whit Nelson. Like her friend Talia, he seems to have a moderating effect on her behavior-and clearly he cares for her.

  What is really unusual is the patien
t’s capacity to have false beliefs, yet to maintain a remarkable empathy for the people in her “memoir” who do not share them-all the while walling off from herself her painful memories of how brutal the attack was. Her characters’ observations toward the end of her story, what she herself has written, imply a dawning realization of how violent the attack was. Nevertheless, at this time she still insists that she escaped years ago with a broken collarbone and a broken finger. She claims to have no conscious recollection at all that she was mutilated and left for dead in the woods…

  From the notes of Kenneth Pierce,

  attending psychiatrist,

  Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, Vermont

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WANT TO THANK RITA MARKLEY, executive director of Burlington, Vermont ’s Committee on Temporary Shelter, both for sharing these images with me and then for inviting me into her life to see the shelter she manages.

  In addition, I could not have written this novel without the wisdom, guidance, and unfailing patience of two advance readers: Johanna Boyce, a psychotherapist with her master’s in social work; and Dr. Richard Munson, a psychiatrist at the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, Vermont.

  I am grateful as well to the following people for answering my specific questions about mental illness, the homeless, and the law: Sally Ballin, Milia Bell, Tim Coleman, and Lucia Volino, of Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter; Shawn Thompson-Snow, of the Howard Center for Human Services in Chittenden County, Vermont; Brian M. Bilodeau, Susan K. Blair, Thomas McMorrow Martin, and Kory Stone, of the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton, Vermont; Doug Wilson, a psychotherapist with the Vermont Treatment Program for Sexual Abusers at the Northwest State Correctional Facility; Rebecca Holt, of the Burlington Free Press; Jill Kirsch Jemison; Dr. Michael Kiernan; Stephen Kiernan; Steve Bennett; attorneys Albert Cicchetti, William Drislane, Joe McNeil, and Tom Wells; and, finally, the Probate Court of Chittenden County, Vermont.