Christopher Bohjalian: The Double Bind

“Dear Ms. Estabrook,” he began, holding the paper before him with both hands, as if it were a hardcover novel. “I am writing you this letter to say I am sorry for what me and Russ Hagen did to you seven years ago. I was on drugs, but that’s no excuse. I left home early, but that’s no excuse neither. Neither is the time I spent just drifting around. I take full responsibility for what I did. And that means I take full responsibility for hurting you. These are hard words for me to write because they are so evil. Sodomy. Rape. Mutilation. But they say the truth will set you free and I will not mince words. And so while I don’t remember everything, I remember enough. And I know what came out in the investigation. It’s all true, I know. That means that first of all I am sorry for the ways we broke your collarbone and your fingers and your foot. And I am sorry for holding you down while Russ raped you in those two places. I am sorry I raped you there, too. And I am sorry that we forced you to have oral sex on us. And most of all I am sorry that I held you by your arms while Russ Hagen cut you so badly. I do not believe that he really planned to cut out your heart, and I did not really believe it then. But I know I was scared you would be able to figure out who we were, and so I think a part of me was hoping Russ really would kill you when he cut off your breast. And so much of you was bleeding so badly when we left, I thought you really might die back there in the woods. But I was glad then and I am glad now that those men on the bicycles found you and you are alive. I am sorry about your breast and the other scars. I wish I could make it up to you. I wish I could go back in time and not do those awful things to you. But I can’t. And so all I can do, Ms. Estabrook, is say that I am sorry. Sincerely, Dan Corbett. P. S. I will never do this sort of thing to another person. I promise.” When he finished, he glanced over at Brian. “Do I give this to her?”

“You stay seated. We’ll give it to her,” the therapist said.

Beside her, Margot Ann’s eyes were closed. She was, Laurel realized, fighting back tears. Brian was staring down at the floor. There was again the pulse of her heart in her head and she felt herself sweating. She felt oddly, unaccountably naked. And she wondered why this inmate had been allowed to fabricate so much in what was supposed to be a letter of clarification.

PATIENT 29873

…patient showed me a copy of The Great Gatsby, the paperback with the deep blue cover and the flapper with the nymphs in her eyes, and yet continued to dispute that it was a work of fiction. Referred to it as a memoir, a true story. Little reaction when shown the publisher’s page with author, publishing date, fiction disclaimer, etc.

The diagnostic problem has been referred to before. Regarding stressors preceding this episode (whatever it’s an episode of), there are photographs of a young woman on a dirt road on a bicycle in the collection that appear to have been taken near the spot seven years ago where the rape and mutilation occurred. It is beyond current knowledge to determine whether it would cause the delusions by being found among images of the childhood swim club, i.e., suggesting to the patient a biographic or even karmic connection…

From the notes of Kenneth Pierce,

attending psychiatrist,

Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, Vermont

P AMELA HAD NEVER told anyone what she had seen, not even her confidant and attorney, T. J. Leckbruge. Partly, this was because she sometimes wondered if she really had seen anything at all. It might have been a memory that in point of fact she had conjured completely. Still, it was vivid, crisp, altogether cinematic in her mind.

One excruciatingly hot summer afternoon, James Gatz was at her parents’ home, and her nanny, the young Irish girl with the hair as red as a crayon, was going to walk her down to the cove so she could dip her young charge’s pudgy legs into the water. Tom Buchanan was gone somewhere for the day. Gatz was wearing a suit as sparkling white as Pamela’s little smock dress, and sitting in a chair opposite her mother, his legs crossed. Daisy Buchanan was draped languidly across the couch as if she were a model who was about to be painted. They both had drinks in tall glasses resting on the coffee table, but the ice had long melted and there was condensation running along the sides and actually puddling atop the coasters. Daisy looked especially enervated, her body seeming to melt into the cushions of the couch.

The nanny had waded into the water with Pamela, holding her fingers as she lifted the child in and out of the surf, dipping her up to her waist, then her shoulders. The day was so steamy that even the cove had reminded Pamela of a tepid bath, and neither she nor her nanny had been especially refreshed by the dunking. Moreover, they had neglected to bring either her small floating boat or her toy seal because the plan had never been to submerge themselves completely-to go for a real swim-and so she had quickly grown bored.

Fortunately, her nanny had brought a stale baguette, and she broke off little pieces for Pamela to feed to the seagulls they’d seen from the house. There may have been a dozen of them, maybe more. The birds swooped down around the child’s ankles and at first Pamela had been afraid, but once she understood that all they wanted was the bread she had a delightful time and felt like a circus performer with a flock of trained animals around her.

And then, all too soon, the bread was gone and once more she was aware only of the oppressive heat of the afternoon. She would guess later that the bread had lasted barely five minutes when they returned to the house.

They entered through the living room, one of the many rooms that overlooked the bay, slipping through the French doors that were slightly ajar. They were both still so hot and tired-they were, perhaps, even more uncomfortable than when they had left because the long walk up the hill to the house had been completely in the sun-that they hadn’t spoken since they had emerged from the water, and they moved almost noiselessly across the terrace.

In the living room, Pamela noticed instantly that Gatz was no longer on the chair. He, too, was on the couch. And he was hovering over her mother, lifting his head from hers as if they had been…telling secrets. That was how close his face had been to Daisy’s. Abruptly her mother bolted upright so she was sitting beside Gatz, rather than lying beneath him, the pencil-thin straps of her crepe dress dangling close to her elbows instead of slung tight over her shoulders. She looked more flushed than before they had left as she sheepishly tried to adjust the straps, while-and here was a part that led Pamela to wonder if she were embellishing the details much later in her mind-covering her bare breasts with her forearms as she worked to compose herself.

Sometimes the image was fuzzy, as if it were only a dream Pamela had concocted as an adolescent; other times, however, it was as clear in her mind as if it were happening that very moment. Eventually, she would begin to recall (or, perhaps, to imagine) that she had actually seen James Gatz’s hand emerge from underneath her mother’s dress. In college, when she would think back upon that afternoon, she would even begin to conjecture that her half brother had been conceived that very day. It was possible. She was immediately taken upstairs for her nap. Her father didn’t return home until after dinner.

And the nurse? Soon, very soon, after that she was replaced. This, Pamela knew, was not a detail that was subject to the frailties and vagaries of memory. That nurse had disappeared completely from her life.