Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

“I’m surprised your lawyer didn’t suggest you handle it in a less-antagonistic fashion,” she said to Pamela, a hint of a frown clouding her face. She was wearing a floral skirt with rickrack trim that Pamela presumed was by Kay Unger, and a casual, pistachio-colored jacket that offered (in Pamela’s opinion) far more cleavage than was appropriate.

For a moment, Pamela wished that she hadn’t opened up to Darling, hadn’t told this young-well, younger, anyway-woman that her brother had died. She regretted telling her about the reemergence of Robert’s work and his deluded, malicious attempts to expose their family secrets. She wasn’t sure why she had, except, perhaps, because she was old and tired and she was fishing for comfort. Trawling for reassurance. And, in this case, wasting her time. She was going to receive no sympathy from Darling. This cousin once removed had been born after Robert had run off, and viewed him as only a deranged family shadow.

“What would you consider a less-antagonistic fashion?” Pamela asked her finally.

Darling gently placed her teacup on the coffee table between them. “Your father could be a rather blunt instrument.”

“Oh, I know.”

“But he also knew precisely when to open his wallet. When a donation to the right charity at the right time might make all the difference.”

“Such as after the accident.”

“Precisely.” No one among the Fays and the Buchanans knew the details, but it was understood that in 1922 and again in 1925 Tom Buchanan had made generous philanthropic gifts to a variety of police departments on Long Island as well as serious campaign contributions to the neighboring district attorneys. It had been his way of ensuring that no one carefully investigated who had really been driving when Myrtle Wilson was killed, or seriously investigated the allegations that surfaced three years later.

“And you’re suggesting that I should be opening my purse now?” Pamela asked.

“I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to tell you what you should do. You know that. I was simply wondering aloud why your lawyer didn’t encourage you to make a donation to that woman’s little homeless group. COTS.”

“BEDS.”

Darling waved her hand in the air as if brushing a fly away from her face. “Whatever! It’s just a thought. It is, I’d guess, what your father would have done.”

“As blunt as he was.”

“Yes. As blunt as he was.”

“And you believe this group will give me back Robert’s work if I give them some money.”

“They might. At this point, what else can you do? What other choices do you have? You want to get the photographs back, don’t you?”

“I have to get the photographs back. I will not allow their exposure to demonize my mother again. There are two sides to every story, and I will not have Gatz deified and my mother vilified. That’s all there is to it.”

“Then buy them. Just open your wallet and buy them.”

Initially, the idea seemed tawdry to her, and not a little pathetic. Still, she guessed Darling was correct: She hadn’t a choice. She wasn’t going to live forever. For all she knew, she wouldn’t live till the end of the day. And if she wanted to get her brother’s malignant, lunatic work quashed once and for all-she could already see in her mind the carcinogenic bonfire she would have on her beach once the photographs were all in her possession-she was going to have to pay someone. The reality was that the malodorous homeless who bunked at the shelter could actually use her money. They needed it. The lawyers in T. J. Leckbruge’s firm did not. They would always do quite well, thank you very much, without it. They might miss the legal fees they would have generated obtaining her brother’s photographs, but soon enough she was going to die, and the firm would make a tidy sum then when it settled her estate.

She sighed and smiled at Darling. She resolved that as soon as this woman left, she would make the appropriate phone calls. She would instruct her attorney to make a suitable overture to the homeless shelter in Vermont. Offer, in essence, whatever it took to have every snapshot, every negative, every print returned to her.

D AVID’S THROAT went a little dry when he read the note Laurel had left for him at the newspaper’s front desk.

My sister called: Our mother went to the hospital last night. She had an appendectomy, but they’re doing more tests to see if something else might be wrong. My aunt is with her now, but I can tell she’s a little worried, and so I’ve gone to Long Island for a couple of days to check in. I’ll call tonight.

Please tell Marissa I’m sorry I won’t be taking her headshot this afternoon. But she’s a beautiful girl with a voice like a lark, and it doesn’t take a talent like mine (sound of throat clearing) to make her look great. She’s the best.

I’ll call when I can.

L.

He held it in his hand and studied the handwriting. She’d written with a blue felt-tip pen in her small, nearly calligraphically beautiful script. He appreciated that she was anxious about her mother, but he wondered if she wasn’t overreacting. If there wasn’t something else going on here. After all, she had left this note for him downstairs. Hadn’t even asked the receptionist if he was upstairs in his office.

He knew that he should have called her on Sunday. At her home. On her cell. Katherine had told him enough at the movies on Saturday night that a more attentive person-a more involved person-would have been sufficiently alarmed to do something.

But he hadn’t, and so he phoned her now. As he expected, he missed her at BEDS, and so he left a message on her voice mail. He left a second one on the answering machine that she and Talia shared at home. And then he left a third on her cell. Finally, he replaced his phone in its cradle and sat on the edge of his desk, considering what he should do. If, in fact, he should do anything.

He knew Marissa was going to be disappointed. And she was going to be alarmed. Sure, she had spent twenty minutes that morning going through the clothes she had at his apartment because of that afternoon’s much-anticipated photo shoot. But after their conversation Saturday night, the real issue in her mind was going to be Laurel ’s well-being.

And then there was Cindy. He had planned on spending the morning interviewing hospital executives about the skyrocketing costs of their building project, but he’d had to cancel when she had fallen off the swing set at the school playground and taken sizable chunks of skin off her calf and both elbows. Seven stitches in the leg and butterfly bandages on her arms. She had been made nearly hysterical by all the blood. He had met his daughter and a teacher’s aid at the emergency room (at, ironically, the very same hospital where he was supposed to be researching an editorial). Then he had brought Cindy back to his apartment, calmed her, and convinced his sister to race up from Middlebury to watch her so he could return to work.

But missed headshots and stitches might turn out to be nothing compared to the big problem: Laurel. And he really wasn’t sure what he should do about her. He knew he was a careful, cerebral man. It was a strength of his-and, on occasion, a weakness.

He understood that conceivably he could do nothing. After all, Laurel was a grown-up. She had gone home to care for her mother. Besides, it was an appendectomy-not open-heart surgery. And she wasn’t going to be there alone: She had her sister, Carol, and her aunt in the area. She didn’t need him, too. Moreover, he had always made a point of not babysitting her-of not, in fact, babysitting any woman. Not girlfriends, not wife. He hadn’t the time to babysit Laurel anyway, even if he were the babysitting type. He had a time-consuming job and two little girls, and the last thing he wanted to do was encourage a high-maintenance relationship with-and this was a term he realized he had used Saturday night while talking to Katherine- a fragile young woman .