Christopher Bohjalian: The Double Bind

Apparently, the therapist she was about to meet had spent much of yesterday preparing Dan Corbett for Laurel. His rights mattered, too.

THEY SAT IN A square room with orange walls and a single window that looked out upon a small, dark courtyard. There were drawings that inmates had made taped to the walls-kites and children and spaceships-and Laurel wondered if they were a part of the therapy. Four chairs had been placed in a spacious circle, and she was seated in the one closest to the door. Dan Corbett would be seated across from her, a good six or seven feet away. His therapist would sit beside him; Margot Ann would sit next to her. A correctional officer would be watching them through the glass door.

Laurel had brought select photos with her, and she busied herself while she waited for the inmate to be escorted into the room by arranging and rearranging the key ones in her lap. There was the old snapshot of Bobbie and Pamela. The photographs Bobbie had taken years later of the house in East Egg. One of Gatsby’s estate. The pair of her on the dirt road in Underhill.

She wasn’t sure in what order she would reveal them. It might depend upon whether this prisoner was Bobbie’s son, or whether that distinction belonged to the convicted murderer in Montana. Margot Ann kept reminding her that Dan Corbett was not going to be a physical threat to her, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he was still a psychological viper. He had been in counseling now for a year and a half, said Margot Ann, but she understood he was still the sort who could turn on her in a moment. And while they could prevent him from touching her, Corbett might say wounding, hurtful things before they could silence him. She hoped he wouldn’t: After all, he had written that letter expressing his remorse. But Laurel should never lose sight of what he had done seven years ago.

“You okay?” asked Margot Ann finally.

“Uh-huh,” she mumbled.

“Good.” She gazed for a moment at the images in Laurel ’s lap. Then she continued, “So, you think Corbett’s father may have taken those?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“Why?”

“Because I would rather believe the man who had taken them was related to Corbett than Hagen.”

“And, I presume, because you don’t want to go to Butte.”

“For many reasons. Yes.”

“But you would?”

“I believe so,” Laurel said.

“Is that you?” asked Margot Ann. She gestured with her finger at one of the pictures of the girl on the mountain bike.

“Yes,” she said. It still surprised her that it had taken her so long to admit this to herself. To admit it out loud. Of course that girl was her. Who else could it be?

THE FIRST THING Laurel noticed when Dan Corbett was ushered into the room-and she noticed it instantly-was the tattoo. There it was, the devil’s skull on his neck. The fangs. Her eyes slid down the arms of his navy blue jumpsuit to his wrists, just to be sure there was no barbed-wire bracelet in purple ink, too. There wasn’t. She took some comfort in this, but she knew she should be careful: Dan Corbett had tried to rape her. And while he may not have murdered that woman in Montana, something about him had nonetheless scared the hell out of Bobbie Crocker.

His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was so pale it was almost translucent: She could see small road maps of veins on his cheeks and along the sides of his nose. He looked a little cooked. But he also appeared more oily than menacing: He certainly seemed less threatening than he had six-plus years ago in the courtroom. She guessed he was fifty now. He still had an immaculately trimmed goatee, though it had grown as gray as the hair that fell in greasy curtains over his ears. She remembered something a professor had once told her class back in college: In the flesh, malice is not especially impressive. More times than not, it’s our size, it fits inside the frames of our mirrors.

“I believe you two know each other,” said Corbett’s therapist, a tall, slim fellow with a small gold hoop in his ear who didn’t look much older than Laurel. He was wearing a blue denim shirt and a casual necktie patterned with the phases of the moon. His name, she knew from their phone calls yesterday, was Brian.

Corbett’s eyes were darting around the room, taking in Laurel and Margot Ann. He had black Converse sneakers on his feet that squeaked on the linoleum floor. He wasn’t shackled.

“Yes,” Laurel said. “Hello.”

“Hello.” It took only those two syllables, but instantly she heard in her head his cloying, sinewy, disgusting little joke from the dirt road. Liqueur Snatch. The two men sat and Brian outlined the ground rules for their clarification hearing. What he hoped they would accomplish. Something about the whole situation reminded Laurel of a meeting between lawyers trying to hammer out a divorce settlement.

And then they all turned to her, presuming she was ready to start. Caught off guard, she asked the very first question that popped into her mind: “Did you ever work in a carnival?”

Corbett gave her a self-deprecating smile and looked down at the piece of lined yellow paper he had in his lap. His letter, she guessed. “Yup.” That was all.

“What did you do there?”

He shrugged. “I ran rides.”

“Is there anything you want to add to that, Dan?” asked his therapist. “Is there anything more you wish to tell Ms. Estabrook?”

“It was just a job,” he said to Brian. “Paid me a little money.”

“Tell Ms. Estabrook.”

He turned to face her across the broad circle. “It was nothing special. No big deal. Just work.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“No prob.”

“And your father. What was his name?”

“I see you got his pictures.”

“I…do.” She spoke slowly, haltingly. She felt immediate relief that Bobbie’s son was this man, not Russell Richard Hagen. She also experienced a deep and satisfying rush of optimism: In the coming moments-in this very room-she was about to learn all that she needed to convince the doubters around her that she was right and they were wrong. That her mind was sound.

Of course, this also meant that she was going to have to inform him that his father had died, and she wasn’t sure how he would respond.

“I didn’t really know him,” Corbett continued. “He showed up three, maybe four times in my life. He went by Bobbie.”

“I have something to tell you about him.”

“And that is?”

“He passed away. A stroke. I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett.”

“That why you came here?” he asked. There wasn’t even a trace of grief in his tone.

“Partly.”

“He mighta been my dad, but he was no father. I had no bones to pick with him at the end. But, oh, no, he was never my father.”

“How did he find you in Vermont?”

“We’d just run into each other at a shelter in Boston. He recognized me. I said I was goin’ to Burlington. You know, ’cause of the fair. I was meeting up with Russ Hagen, and I told him so. Russ had been a carny, too. But then he got a real job at that fitness place.”

All morning Laurel had endured an ever-thickening cloud bank of dread; she had felt her nerves thrumming inside her. Now the mere mention of Hagen ’s name-there it was, out there in the room like a thunderhead-was causing her to tremble. Little electric spasms moved through her like hummingbird wings. She felt Margot Ann’s hand on her forearm.

“You want some water, Laurel?” Margot Ann asked.

She shook her head no and continued. “Did he give you anything when he came here? A picture? A box?”

“Bobbie? No way. That man didn’t have a pot to piss in.”