Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

Across the hall from them in the smaller apartment that comprised the final third of their floor lived a first-year student at the medical school, a slim young man from Amherst who seemed to have puppylike energy. He had delicate, almost girlish features, thin bay-colored hair that was already receding, and a glib sense of humor. He was an avid bicyclist-and his friends who came by all seemed to be enthusiastic bicyclists-and since he had moved into the house in July he had twice asked Laurel if she wanted to go for a ride. He actually owned two bicycles: a hybrid and a road bike. His name was Whitaker Nelson, but he said that everyone called him Whit. Clearly, he wanted to get to know Laurel better, but he had sensed instinctively that it would be difficult to simply (and obviously) suggest they go out.

The other tenants included three women and one man scattered above and below them in four single apartments. The most interesting among them, at least in Talia’s opinion, was actually the dog owned by an aspiring veterinarian named Gwen. The animal, Merlin, was a sweet-tempered mutt from the Humane Society that was part springer spaniel and part-based on its size-draft horse. It was gigantic and looked a bit like a Shetland pony. Sometimes when Gwen was away for the weekend, Talia would have the pleasure of trying to walk the beast. Usually, it simply walked her.

Faith in Talia’s family seemed to skip generations. Her grandfather-her father’s father-was an Episcopalian minister in Manhattan, and he actually officiated at her parents’ wedding. Talia’s father, however, always called the sanctuary the First Church of the Holy Brunch, and it angered him the way attendance dropped off in the summer as the congregation migrated east each weekend to the Hamptons. He had drifted away from the church by the time Talia was in kindergarten, and so she only set foot in the place when she was staying with her grandparents. And her mother? She had always been allergic to anything that resembled religion. Talia feared that when her mother died the woman was going to want show tunes sung at her service instead of hymns.

Talia had started to return to the church after Laurel had gone home to recover from the attack early into their sophomore year of college. Suddenly, she was living alone in their small suite at the school, and she was scared. That one small voice? She heard it. This was not a Pentecost talking-in-tongues sort of voice. It was instead a gentle and reassuring little murmur, and before Talia knew it, she was-much to the astonishment of both herself and her parents-taking comfort from the fellowship of a congregation on Sunday mornings. She shopped around and wound up at the Baptist church, because they seemed to be doing so much with the fringe people-the poor and the homeless and the drug-addicted-who populated the downtown. And there she started to pray for Laurel. And for the men who attacked her. It seemed to her that it was easier to pray for the change of heart of two evil people than it was to pray for the thousands who were their possible victims. It was, in her mind, all about statistics and probability and her sense that God had to be pretty damn busy.

Initially, friends gave her grief and said she was going Baptist because the church was near the very best shopping in Burlington. That was an inducement, she would admit. But she enjoyed her Sunday mornings in the sanctuary. And the minister was a vegetarian, and she liked the way animals figured often in his sermons.

Nevertheless, when she graduated she was as unsure of what to do with her life as Laurel: She was considering divinity school, but she thought it was equally as likely she might wind up at Wharton. She did, however, know that she loved Burlington, and so when the minister asked if she would be interested in remaining in town and starting a program for teenagers in the congregation, she jumped at the chance. Fifteen months later, she was enrolled in the graduate program in theology and pastoral ministry at nearby Saint Michael’s College, driving to and from her classes each day while continuing to work with the teens at the church. Other than Laurel, her friends were incredulous. But they were also in attendance-as were most of the teens and even some of their parents from her church youth group-when she was awarded her master’s.

She had been at the church over four years now, the program was thriving, and most of the time she was having more fun than she’d ever had in her life-and Talia was a woman who’d had a great deal of fun in her two and a half decades on the planet. She had always been drawn to men with eyes that could scorch off a skirt; in truth, she had eyes a bit like that herself.

She had grown up in Manhattan and her decision to attend the University of Vermont had been a rebellion: It had meant that she was no longer going to be wearing stilettos with three- and four-inch heels that cost as much as a mountain bike, or retain any friends with the audacity (or lack of self-awareness) to actually call themselves Muffy . Consequently, she and her parents continued to have what she still considered an uncomfortable relationship at best. They viewed Vermont as an outback-like mountain range peopled largely by sanctimonious liberals in rusted-out Subarus who dressed exclusively in flannel and fleece. This was a misperception that Talia tried to correct: She reminded them that a lot of her neighbors actually drove Volvos. Still, her parents never came north, and she only returned south on the major holidays: Easter, Christmas, and the Neiman Marcus personal shopper sale (some habits died harder than others).

She and Laurel would often have breakfast together when Laurel returned from the pool at the university, and they did the morning of Bobbie Crocker’s funeral. She was reading the newspaper on the floor when Laurel arrived, her roommate’s hair still damp from her swim. She had already set out a small feast on the mirror-topped coffee table that Laurel had discovered years earlier at a yard sale. There were sliced apples and pears, bagels beside a tub of blueberry cream cheese, orange juice, and hot steeping tea.

“I think you should stay out of the water for a while,” Talia remarked, barely glancing up from the paper.

“Why, do I look pruney?” Laurel asked from the bathroom, as she hung her wet suit in the shower.

“Not at all. But water is getting awfully dangerous,” she answered. “Have you seen today’s newspaper? Just when you thought it was safe to go trudging through the swamps of Alabama, they tell us there’s a twelve-foot, thousand-pound gator prowling around. Apparently, he escaped from the zoo during the hurricane last week. Answers to the name Chucky . Meanwhile, a seventeen-foot great white shark has made the Woods Hole area of Cape Cod its new home-in water as shallow as three and four feet.”

“I don’t think there are carnivorous predators in the school pool. I don’t think I have to worry about getting eaten.”

“Maybe not by gators and sharks. But watch out for those snarky undergrad frat boys in Speedos.”

“I wear a Speedo!”

Talia folded the paper and stretched. “Speedos on women are suitably modest. Speedos on men are unsuitably…instructive. Too much information. And, somehow, the package always looks a little off. Know what I mean? It all looks so lumpy. What kind of turnout do you expect at the funeral today?”

Laurel had told her about Bobbie Crocker and the photographs he had left behind, and they were both worried about the attendance at the cemetery because the man hadn’t any family that they were aware of.

“I think it will be okay. Small but respectable. If nothing else, there will be a group from BEDS big enough to pack the van.”

“Good. Intimate, but not lonely.”