Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

M ARISSA TOOK HER little sister’s hand in hers as they fell into the swarm of people-grown-ups and teenagers and children as young as Cindy-and emerged from the darkened theater into the movie’s lobby Saturday night. She blinked once, then squinted against the brighter lights and the crowds by the concession stands. It was a little past nine o’clock, an hour past Cindy’s bedtime, but the kid was holding up pretty well. And why shouldn’t she? Her big sister and her dad had just endured this completely lamo movie about a circus clown who hated children but had nevertheless wound up having to run his mom’s day-care center. The movie had been Cindy’s choice, and so the kid didn’t dare melt down now just because what their mom’s fiancé liked to call the witching hour was drawing near.

She glanced from her dad, who was on one side of her, to Cindy, who was on the other, struck by the difference between an adult who has his act together and a kid who does not. She saw that her sister had popcorn butter all over her mouth and her bulbous, squirrel-like cheeks-it looked as if she had washed her face in the stuff-and a few small remnants of kernels epoxied like craft pebbles to the corners of her lips. Her hair, never her best feature, was frizzed up on one side like a frightened cat, and-was it possible?-she had a Junior Mint in her ear. Why was the kid putting Junior Mints in her ears in the movie? And how could she not know the candy was still there? Marissa remembered well the time Dad had had to take Cindy to the pediatrician two years ago because the kid had stuck a hard little pea up her nose. They’d been making food jewelry at the preschool-uncooked macaroni and peas and colored sugar-and for reasons no one could fathom, Cindy had wedged a pea high and deep inside her left nostril. According to the doctor, kids did this a lot. Still, as Marissa had watched the pediatrician, a nice woman who was her doctor, too, put a pair of tweezers the length of a pencil up Cindy’s nose, it gave Marissa one more reason to wish that she and her sister weren’t really related.

Recalling that visit to the doctor made her remember her toe. Her doctor had looked at it for about seven seconds, prescribed some antibiotic that tasted like bubble gum, and told her to soak it with her massive amounts of spare time (yeah, right). Still, the appointment had allowed her an escape from math hell. And, of course, it had given her the chance to bring up the idea of getting a professional headshot taken sooner rather than later.

Abruptly she bumped squarely into her dad’s side, which meant that Cindy slammed into her. She looked up and saw that her dad had stopped because he had run into someone he knew-though not in the literal way she had just bumped into him. It seemed her dad was always running into someone he knew. This time it was a woman who he was calling Katherine and kissing once on the cheek, the way grown-ups did whenever they didn’t seem to shake hands. Marissa knew that she herself preferred the shaking hands route. Just imagine if right this second you had to kiss a cheek like her sister’s? Gross. Way beyond gross.

Katherine had a man beside her whose name Marissa didn’t catch, but it was evident they were a pair, and it was clear they had had the good fortune of seeing a different movie from the loser that her family had just had to stomach. Marissa smiled politely when she was introduced and was asked the obligatory questions-she basked for a moment in the woman’s approval-but then allowed herself to fixate on the colorful movie posters for the films that would be arriving next. She was just beginning to fantasize that her name was on one-maybe the one with the hunky young film star who was on the cover of People and who had told the magazine the parts of his very hot movie-star girlfriend he liked best (the insides of her thighs, she’d read yesterday in the doctor’s waiting room)-when she heard a name that caused her suddenly to pay attention. Laurel. They were talking about… Laurel.

“I don’t know if it has something to do with her trip to Long Island, or it’s all about the pictures,” this woman named Katherine was saying. “But she didn’t come swimming with me on Thursday or Friday, and she was hardly in the office at all the last couple of days-which doesn’t bother me the tiniest bit as her boss. Really, it doesn’t. I’m just wondering what’s going on as her friend-and whether I made a mistake getting her involved with those photographs in the first place. Do you think I did?”

Her father seemed to consider this, nodding the way he did whenever he was thinking deeply about something someone had said. Marissa knew the look well. Finally, he told Katherine, “She was definitely fixated on Bobbie Crocker last night. Wednesday night, too. But last night was…worse.”

“Worse?”

“More intense. She spent a lot of time researching Bobbie Crocker on the Internet when we were supposed to be going to a movie. And she really didn’t stop talking about him all night long. Then this morning she went to the darkroom, and tomorrow I believe she’s going to Bartlett. To a church that somebody named Reese, a fellow who might have known Bobbie, went to before he died a little over a year ago.”

Katherine stretched out her hands and spread wide her fingers, her elbows pressed against her ribs, in a gesture of confusion. “I don’t get it. She’s going to a strange church miles from here because a dead person who knew Bobbie-”

“Might have known Bobbie.”

“Because a dead person who might have known Bobbie went there?”

“That sums it up.”

The woman reached over and squeezed her father’s arm. “All I suggested she do was print the guy’s old negatives. I never asked her to become a private eye.”

“I understand.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Did I make a mistake getting her involved with the pictures?”

He breathed in and out of his nose so deeply that it sounded to Marissa like a small gust of wind. She knew that he was going to say that Katherine had. It all came down to Laurel ’s secret. The mystery that Marissa thought Laurel took with her wherever she went. Whatever Katherine had asked her to do with some pictures, it wasn’t helping. It was making that secret even noisier in Laurel ’s head.

Marissa found it interesting that secrets made noise. She’d always viewed them as physically heavy-hadn’t she seen people on the street who seemed stooped by the weight of what they couldn’t tell anyone?-but only recently had she concluded that it was actually their persistent thrum that caused people to slouch. Eventually, her father muttered, “Look, I hate to sound patronizing-”

“Oh, stop it. You love to sound patronizing.”

“Because Laurel is an adult. She’s a grown woman. But, yes, Katherine, maybe. Maybe you did.”

“You’re being polite. You think definitely.”

Before her father could answer, the man beside Katherine knelt down and said to Cindy, “I hate to be the one to break the news to you…but I think there just might be a piece of candy in your ear.” The fellow was balding and tall-so tall that even kneeling he had to bend over slightly to speak eye to eye with the girl-and he was wedged a little too tightly into a turtleneck. The result was a very bad fashion statement, Marissa decided: He looked a bit like a turtle himself. Her sister slowly reached up to her ear and ran a pudgy finger and her cork of a thumb over the Junior Mint. It was apparent that she wanted to remove it…but couldn’t.

“It’s an earring,” said Cindy. She spoke with great seriousness to the fellow because it was clear to her now that the Junior Mint wasn’t going anywhere for a while. “It just looks like a piece of candy.”