The Double Bind

by Chris Bohjalian

  “Well, we discovered that Bobbie’s mother and my aunt were friends. Isn’t that a small world?”

  “Jordie, you never told us!” Nancy said lightly, as her youngest daughter abruptly reappeared in the sanctuary. Apparently, the drawing the girl had made for her Sunday school teacher was still in their car and she needed her mother to help her retrieve it. Nancy shrugged apologetically and said she’d be right back.

  “Bobbie didn’t like to talk about his family,” Jordie continued. “I guess they had some sort of falling out.”

  “Did he tell you his mother’s name?” Laurel asked, waiting for the confirmation she could share with David and Katherine and Talia—with everyone who seemed to be doubting her.

  “Crocker, I assume,” Jordie replied, and Laurel felt a sharp spike of disappointment. “Ladies of that generation—heavens, ladies of my generation!—always took their husbands’ last names. That’s just the way it was done.”

  “What about a first name?”

  “Oh, I can’t remember anymore. If only you’d asked me six or seven months ago. But I’m honestly not sure if I ever knew. I told him my aunt’s name, but I’m not positive he ever told me his mother’s. Lord, growing old really isn’t for the faint of heart, is it? You forget so much.”

  “Well, then, tell me, please, anything you can remember,” said Laurel. “Anything at all.” Perhaps, she thought, there would still be a surprising, corroborative detail.

  “Okay. He lived on Long Island. He grew up there, you know.”

  “I did know that, yes.”

  “And he had a sister.”

  “Did he tell you her name?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. But she was older, I am quite sure of that, and…”

  “And?”

  “And my aunt gave that girl a putter once, Bobbie’s sister, that is, when the girl was little more than a toddler. A tiny golf putter. It was a present. Bobbie said that his mother had always liked my aunt very much. Yes, very, very much. They didn’t always travel in the same social circles because his mother was married and my aunt wasn’t, but they went to an awful lot of parties together—including some at that famous bootlegger’s estate. You know the one.”

  “Gatsby’s?”

  “Well, that wasn’t his real name, of course. But, yes, that’s who I mean. When Bobbie found out who my aunt was, he said that his mother and my aunt spent a lot of time there together. Really, a very good amount, especially when they were in their early twenties. I don’t remember exactly what he said—I don’t remember anything exactly these days—but one time he implied that his mother had liked that awful man more than my aunt had. Gatsby. Gatz. Whatever. Can you imagine? I’m sure that wasn’t true. People just went to his parties because they were great big festivals. Circuses. No one actually went because they liked him. Good heavens, how could they?”

  “What about your aunt? What was her name?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard of her, young lady. Her name was Jordan Baker, and I’m named after her. She was a famous golfer on the women’s pro tour. A real pioneer. But there are still some people out there who think she was some sort of cheat on the golf course. A sneak! Well, that wasn’t my aunt, I promise you. And that’s why I wanted to know if you were a reporter. I can’t tell you how many people I have had to talk to over the years about my aunt as a result of some malicious and completely untrue story about a tournament she was in as a very young woman.”

  “Oh, no one thinks badly of your aunt,” Laurel reassured her, though she certainly had: She had indeed viewed the golfer as a cheat and a sneak. And, she realized, she was incapable of mustering much respect for anyone who had sided with Tom and Daisy Buchanan that summer of 1922.

  Jordie looked up at her now, her venerable head still quivering slightly, and repeated, “Really, Bobbie could have stayed with me. You believe that, don’t you? I have so much empty, dusty space. He could have had his own little wing with a room and a bathroom! All he had to do was ask!”

  “I’m sure he could have stayed with half the people in this church, if you’d known,” Laurel said. “He was…”

  “Yes?”

  She had started to tell her that he was schizophrenic, but at the last moment had reined herself in. Jordie didn’t need to know. “He was private,” she said simply.

  Jordie seemed to think about this. Then: “Did he come straight to you?”

  “You mean after he left Reese’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  Again Laurel decided there was no point in telling the truth. The woman felt terrible enough as it was. And so she lied. “I think so,” she said. “He was very happy. I want you to know that. And we found him a nice apartment in Burlington and he made friends there very quickly. He was okay. Really, he was.”

  “We used to play bridge on Thursday mornings right here at the church,” Jordie continued. “That’s when the seniors get together to play games. There was Reese and Bobbie and Lida and me. It was always great fun.”

  “Yes, Nancy told me.”

  “No, it wasn’t bridge,” Jordie corrected herself. “I used to play bridge with Reese and Lida and Tammy Purinton. Bobbie hated bridge. Really, my memory has just gotten so bad!”

  “I think that’s true for all of us,” Laurel said, partly to be polite and partly because there were events in her own life that she imagined she remembered incorrectly. Even at her age the brain was an imperfect mass of gray and white tissue; even at her age there were moments in her past that her own mental health demanded she forget. Or, at the very least, revise. Everyone did that, didn’t they?

  “I just don’t know why he didn’t go home,” Jordie went on. “He must have had family left somewhere. I think his sister was still alive. At least she was a couple of years ago.”

  Laurel smiled supportively. “His sister’s fine. I’ve met her. She lives in East Hampton.”

  “Of course, he did like Vermont. That’s why he came back. That, I guess, and Reese.”

  “Came back?”

  “He had come here once before to see his son. One autumn.”

  “His son?” The surprise and the incredulity had caused her to raise her voice, and the old woman recoiled slightly. “Bobbie had a son?” she continued, trying to soften the sudden reediness in her tone.

  “I think he did. Maybe I’m mistaken.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just…”

  “Yes?”

  “He just mentioned him the one time. Maybe twice. But it was clear Bobbie didn’t want to talk about him because he had been in some kind of trouble.”

  “How old was he? His sixties? Fifties?”

  “Younger than that. And the first time that Bobbie had come to Vermont must have been six or seven years ago—when Bobbie had been younger, too.”

  “Six? Or seven?”

  “Please, you’re asking too much.”

  “It matters.”

  “But I don’t know, Laurel.”

  She thought the lights in the church, already sallow, were growing dimmer still. But she understood this wasn’t really the case. It was because the light-headedness was returning. She felt herself swaying in place and looked down at the burnished pine floor to try to regain her equilibrium.

  “Do you know what kind of trouble?” she asked finally, carefully articulating each word. “Was he in trouble with the law? Had he committed a crime?”

  “Yes, I think that’s it,” said Jordie carefully.

  “What kind of crime?”

  “I don’t know. That I never knew. But Bobbie came to Vermont to visit him. Wait…”

  “Go on.”

  “I think Bobbie came to Vermont to see him, and then something happened—”

  “To Bobbie or to his son?”

  “To his son. And Bobbie left. Bobbie didn’t come here because his son had done something. But then he left after the boy got in trouble. He returned to…to wherever it was that he came from.”

/>   “And this was seven years ago?”

  “Or six. Or eight. I just don’t know. I can’t trust my memory—and neither should you. But it was the autumn. I can tell you that. When Bobbie mentioned his child, he said he had come here that first time because he had wanted to see the leaves change colors before he died.”

  “Did he say where he was in Vermont?”

  “Underhill,” she said, and a moment later Nancy returned from the wing of the church with the Sunday school classrooms. The teacher raised her eyebrows quizzically at the two of them, now ruminating silently together, the girl stooped over as if she, too, were desperately old. Laurel reached for Jordie’s tired, gnarled hand, the flesh a little cold, and thanked her. Said good-bye. She tried to stand up a little straighter, to regain her composure. Then she found it within herself to smile for Nancy, tell her about Bobbie’s son, and allow the schoolteacher to lead her downstairs to the coffee hour that followed the service.

  “I DIDN’T REALIZE Bobbie had any children,” Nancy was saying, as they wandered downstairs from the sanctuary into a large room filled with folding metal chairs and folding metal tables and posters on the walls for the church’s different mission offerings. There was a big crowd of adults here, milling about and sipping coffee, senior citizens and the parents whose children were in Sunday school.

  “Me, neither. He certainly hadn’t told his friends in Burlington. He hadn’t told any of us at BEDS.”

  “You sound angry—like he should have.”

  “If I had known who Bobbie’s son was, we would have had a very different relationship.”

  “You knew his son? From the little Jordie just told you? How?”

  Laurel quickly backpedaled: “I did not definitely know him. But I might have.” She was unprepared to explain who Bobbie’s son was both because she was still reeling from the discovery and because she didn’t want to discuss what had happened to her up in Underhill. Not with this new acquaintance. She never even discussed it with her mother or her closest friends.

  “But how?” Nancy asked again.

  “His son might have been a drifter. Or a bodybuilder.”

  “There’s more. I can tell.”

  “I guess I just want to know why this child wasn’t taking better care of his father. Or, at least, trying.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all,” Laurel lied. Then: “I’m sorry I made Jordie sad when I told her that Bobbie had been homeless.”

  “See, isn’t Jordie sweet? Some people find her a little unapproachable, a little off-putting, because there is just so much blue blood in her veins. But she’s actually very kind—though she used to be a killer when she played bridge. It’s too bad her mind isn’t as sharp as it was even a year ago. Trust me: You wanted to be her partner if you played.”

  “She told me Bobbie hated bridge. But I could have sworn his sister said he loved it when I talked to her last week in East Hampton.”

  “You drove all the way out to East Hampton?”

  “It wasn’t a big deal. I was already on Long Island anyway. I was visiting my mom. She left for Italy yesterday, and I thought I would drop in before she left.”

  Nancy eyed her carefully. “Is this really just about those photos that were in Bobbie’s apartment?”

  “That’s how it began,” she answered. “There is more to it now.”

  The schoolteacher reached for a pair of mugs beside a metal coffee urn and handed one to Laurel. Then she motioned for the social worker to help herself to the containers of cream and milk and the dish overflowing with packets of sugar and Splenda. “Well, here’s what Bobbie told me about bridge. He said his parents used to fight when he was a boy, and one of the ways his mother dealt with a pretty poor marriage was to play bridge—but not with her husband. It sounded like it was a ladies’ league. She started playing the summer before Bobbie was born. She’d disappear most afternoons, leaving his older sister alone with the nurse. Apparently, the game became an addiction for her. Years later, she wasn’t even home the day—or the night, for all I know—when Bobbie had some huge blowout with his father and left for good. He said he never saw the man again.”

  In some ways, Laurel thought, the pieces were fitting together as precisely as a jigsaw puzzle. She wondered what this perfectly nice woman would say if she were to inform her, Bobbie’s mother was Daisy Fay Buchanan. And she wasn’t playing bridge that first summer. She was disappearing those afternoons to be with Jay Gatsby. Bridge was just her ruse. Her cover.

  No doubt the schoolteacher would, like everyone else, smile on the outside while believing on the inside that she was either mistaken or nuts. Nancy would probably conclude that she was more paranoid than some of her clients if she knew that the man’s photographs and contact sheets and negatives were locked in a case right now in the back of her car—if the woman knew that she was going to hand them off to a waitress at a Burlington diner because there were people who wanted those pictures as much as she did and so she had to hide them some place safe.

  “You said you wanted to meet the minister,” Nancy was saying, gently leading Laurel over to him. “I don’t know what he can tell you about Bobbie, because Bobbie wasn’t with us very long. But he can probably tell you something about Reese.”

  Laurel thought the minister looked to be about David’s age. He had a high forehead beneath a brush cut of reddish-brown hair. His eyes were a little sunken, but he had a strong chin and a wide, infectious smile. His name, she knew from the program, was Randall Stone, but everyone seemed to be calling him Randy. After Nancy had introduced them, she explained to him why the young social worker had driven to Bartlett that morning. His face grew solemn when she told him that Bobbie had passed away.

  “And you met him through your work with BEDS,” he said to Laurel, not a question but a statement. He was, clearly, enduring precisely the sort of guilt that Jordie had experienced just now when she had learned what had happened to Reese’s friend after the old editor had died.

  “Yes. But he didn’t stay long in the shelter before we found him an apartment. His place wasn’t palatial, but it was a bed and it was warm and it was his own.”

  The minister ballooned his checks in exasperation, then exhaled. “He told me he was going to move in with his sister.”

  “Did he say where she lived?”

  “Long Island. East Hampton, maybe. The last time I saw him was at Reese’s funeral. I really should have gotten a better handle on his plans. We all knew he was more than a little off.”

  “Off?”

  “I’m not sure where he’d been living for most of the years before he showed up at Reese’s doorstep like a stray cat, but his address immediately before moving in with Reese was the Vermont State Hospital.”

  Laurel had chosen not to tell Jordie the specifics of Bobbie’s mental illness, but she saw no reason not to share these details with the pastor. “Bobbie was a schizophrenic,” she said. “When he was medicated, he could more or less function. Not completely, of course. And like most schizophrenics, he didn’t believe he was ill—and so sometimes he would stop taking his medicine when he wasn’t supervised.”

  “Do you know if he ever married?” he asked. “I couldn’t get a simple yes or no answer when I asked him that one day when he was here playing Scrabble.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I don’t think he did,” Nancy answered. “He and Reese had some inside joke about a ballerina he was seeing in the 1960s, but I guess Bobbie wasn’t exactly the commitment type.”

  “But he might have had a son,” said Laurel. “Jordie Baker believes that he did.”

  “That’s a news flash for me. I had no idea.”

  “So he just appeared in Bartlett one day? Reese had no idea he was coming?”

  “As I understand it, Bobbie came to Vermont looking for Reese a little over two years ago, but something happened and he wound up at the state hospital. Reese wasn’t expecting him. While he was there, someone on
the hospital staff located Reese, and Reese was extraordinarily magnanimous. He invited Bobbie to move in with him when the hospital team said he was ready. I gather Bobbie had lived with him once before—years ago, when Reese was married. Reese grilled him a couple of times about where he’d been since then, but the answers were inconsistent. Sometimes Bobbie said he had been in Louisville, sometimes he said he had been in the Midwest. At least once he said he had been near his sister on Long Island. I’m sure he had other answers, too. But in all of his stories, he never once mentioned a son.”

  “Did he say why he was always on the move?”

  “I asked him that when we met. He made a joke about having to stay one step ahead of the hounds.”

  “It probably wasn’t a joke. He might really have thought he was being pursued,” Laurel said. And, she thought, it was possible that someone really was trailing him for those photos.

  “Is that a symptom of schizophrenia?” Nancy asked.

  “Paranoia? Often.”

  Randy jumped in. “Whoa, I don’t know if Bobbie actually meant anything by that remark. It might have been just a joke. I mean, another time when we were chatting he said something like ‘Guests are like fish. You keep them around too long and they start to smell.’”

  “As far as I know, Reese was a photo editor and Bobbie was a photographer,” Laurel said. “Bobbie used to work for Reese. Is that how you believe they knew each other? Or is there more to it than that?”

  “Reese was a successful photojournalist, too,” the pastor said. “He worked for newspapers, magazines, even Life in its heyday. This was the Life that my parents—and your grandparents—pored over weekly.”

  “And what about Bobbie?” she asked.

  “Well, like you said: He took some pictures for Reese. For Life. The problem was that he wasn’t very dependable. Both Reese and Bobbie made jokes about that, too. The man was his own worst enemy in terms of a career.”

  “Because of the schizophrenia,” she said.