Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

“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.

I N 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 called 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.”