Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

“It’s possible that his son has the picture, isn’t it?” she said. “Or some proof of some kind?”

“Sure. But how do you even begin to find the boy? All you know is that he might have done something awful. You don’t even know for certain he’s in a jail somewhere.”

Oh, but I do, she thought. I just don’t know whether the jail is in Montana or Vermont.

PATIENT 29873

I brought up the book this morning. I expected enthusiasm, but patient was defensive and derisive instead. Eventually settled down. When I asked for elaboration, was told I didn’t know what I was talking about.

At this point, the benefits of discussing the book outweigh the risks.

From the notes of Kenneth Pierce,

attending psychiatrist,

Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, Vermont

W HIT HAD BEEN EXHAUSTED when he’d had dinner with his aunt and uncle on Saturday night, but the serious paintball-induced pain was still a half day away. By Sunday morning, it had come in with the sweep of high tide. It wasn’t, in all fairness, a searing, debilitating, white-lights-dancing-against-his-eyelids sort of pain. But his day in the paintball woods had left him limping gingerly around his apartment. There was a steady throb in his lower back, his calves were almost too sore to stretch, and he felt a sharp dagger slicing into his side whenever he tried to breathe deeply. He wondered if he had cracked a rib. Still, it was a beautiful morning today and he had an evening in the library before him, and so about twelve-thirty he decided he would hoist his bike onto the top of his slightly battered Subaru (battered because his mother was a careless driver, oblivious to curbs and parking meters and great cement columns in parking garages, and the vehicle had been hers before she had passed it along to her son), and drive out to Underhill. He hadn’t gotten there the previous weekend as he’d hoped, and so he figured he might as well head out there today. He guessed the most difficult part would be lifting his bike onto and off of the car’s roof rack. But the frame was so light he figured even that should be manageable.

He hadn’t been out to Underhill since early August, perhaps a month after he’d moved into this house. That day he’d spent time in the state park and then ridden for a while on the logging trails in the nearby woods. He liked the way a ride there was peppered with long stretches beneath a vaguely claustrophobic canopy of leaves, followed by picture-postcard-like vistas of Mount Mansfield and Camels Hump.

Tentatively, he tugged his bike shorts over the grapefruit-sized black and purple bruise on his hip, and then held his breath and closed his eyes as he pulled a tight long-sleeved jersey over his chest. Reflexively, he moaned aloud. He wondered briefly if this ride really was such a good idea, but he couldn’t imagine spending a day like this inside. Not with seriously cold weather barely a month or two in the distance.

As he was passing Laurel and Talia’s front door, he paused. He heard music inside and decided to knock. He wanted to ask Laurel about yesterday, inquire why she hadn’t joined them for paintball. Talia answered, and it didn’t appear she had been up very long. He guessed she had walked the pony that their neighbor Gwen claimed was a dog and then gone back to bed for a couple of hours, because her hair was wild with sleep and she was wearing a pair of pink and black polka-dot pajama bottoms with the drawstring so loose that they hung far-erotically far, hip bone low far, a wisp of mons pubis far-below her waist and a silk camisole that neither matched her pajama bottoms nor hid the vast majority of her breasts. He felt far more guilty than aroused, however, because in the long strip of flesh between the bottom of her top and the top of her bottom he saw a machine-gun line of welts across her abdomen. Even her navel looked bruised.

“Well,” she said, her voice thick and tired and in desperate need of a drink of water, “if it isn’t Sergeant York.”

He motioned toward her stomach. “I think I know when that happened. I have a bad feeling I even know who did it. It was when you came over the top of that rusty jeep and didn’t know I was there, right?”

She looked down. “Usually, I have a silver flower in my belly button. A little Celtic charm. It dangles. It’s very lovely. If I hadn’t had the foresight to take it out before we played, you probably would have shot it through my intestines.”

“I’m really sorry. I guess I got a little out of control.”

“Are you serious? You can’t be serious. Yesterday was the most fun I have had in a very long time. It was fabulous. You were fabulous. I was fabulous.”

“You make it sound like sex.”

She shook her head. “Oh, as I told Laurel, paintball is better than sex. At least most sex. I am so glad you were there. Really, Whit, thank you.”

“I had fun, too. Is Laurel home?”

“Nope. Left this morning at the crack of dawn. Enter the crib and I’ll tell you the little I know.”

He hadn’t thought about the possibility that only Talia might be here, and he realized he was looking at a lengthy detour. But he did want to know what had happened to Laurel, and suddenly he liked the idea of commiserating with another grown-up who had spent the previous day mercilessly abusing her body.

“You can’t possibly feel up to a bike ride,” she said, motioning him inside, waving her arm ironically as if she were fanning it over a wall of game-show prizes. “If you do…then you’re a bloody superman. I can barely walk. Really, come in.”

The place was a mess: There were blue jeans and tops and bras and thongs (or at least very small bikini panties) wadded up on the couch and the coffee table, and the floor was awash in CD cases and fashion magazines and books, some of which had titles like The Powerfully Contagious Christian and Teen Saviors.

“So, I guess you just got up?” he asked, wondering for a moment where he should sit. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to move her clothing and her lingerie or sit on top of it. Quickly, however, she scooted in front of him and gathered her underwear and her jeans into a ball and heaved them through the door to her bedroom so he had a place to sit down.

“Just got up? Are you crazy? I just got back from church! I was about to go back to bed, if you want to know the truth. But, no, I suck it up, thank you very much, and get my butt to church every Sunday morning. I am-and this does horrify some people, I guess-a role model. At the moment, of course, I might be a role model who looks like she just spent the night at some nightmarish frat party. But I was in bed last night with the lights out by ten. And this morning I was cleaning and organizing before church. Gwen’s dog sort of trashed our place yesterday, and when I was tidying up I decided to do some serious organizing. Even clean out my drawers. Hence, the…the chaos. You want some coffee?”

“No, I’m good.”

She nodded. “Right answer. It would mean getting dressed and going to Starbucks.” She plopped herself down on the couch beside him.

“So, did you see Laurel before you crashed?” he asked.

“I did. And it wasn’t pretty.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your crush is losing her shit.”

“ Laurel is not my crush!”

She ducked her chin and looked at him over the tops of her eyes, a glimpse that conveyed in an instant her incredulity. “You have serious longing issues for that girl-and, I might add, ones with little chance of fruition given that she seems to have an older man jones.”