Christopher Bohjalian: The Double Bind

She had been digging for close to half an hour and had just begun to worry that any moment a stray golfer with an early tee time would wander by or one of the maintenance men would arrive to skim the fallen leaves off the surface of the pool and check the chlorine levels in the water when she heard the blade hit something solid-but not nearly as solid as a rock. There might even have been a faint echo. Now the hole was so deep that to reach the bottom she had to lie flat on the edge and pull herself partly inside it, and even then she had to stretch out her fingers and hands. She pawed away the dirt that surrounded the object and used her nails to scrape more dirt off the top: She could feel one straight edge, then another. She reached for the garden trowel and gently but urgently quarried along the sides. Finally, she felt a clasp. A hinge. And then with both hands she was able to pull from the ground the wooden jewelry box, the one with the scalloped mirrors along the lid.

She knew next to nothing about wood, but when she brushed off the dirt she thought it was cherry. Her parents-now her mother-slept in a bed with a cherry headboard, and it was the same color as this jewelry box. Carefully she used her thumbnail to press open the hook, her heart galloping, oblivious to the sweat that was turning the dirt on her cheeks and her forehead to mud. It was jammed with soil and rust, but finally she was able to pop it open and lift the lid. For a moment, she was disappointed. She had expected to find the inscribed photograph, the one Jay had given Daisy in Louisville, when the two had been young and in love and their lives had not yet begun to unravel. But it wasn’t there. Instead, she found an envelope-once beige, now brown. When she flipped the envelope over she saw the single word Daisy written in a man’s hand on the front, and when she opened the flap she noticed the letter G had been embossed on the back. Inside was a photograph of Gatsby and Daisy, taken that summer of 1922. They were sitting together on the stone steps that led from his house to the pool, perhaps a mere thirty yards from the very spot where she was kneeling that moment. Daisy was wearing a black Empire dress, sleeveless, and strings of pearls. Her earrings were daisies. He was wearing a tuxedo, his bow tie slightly askew. Daisy’s arm was hooked through his, her head was leaning toward him but not quite touching his shoulder. In the image, they looked slightly flushed, as if they had just been dancing. They were smiling. No, Laurel decided, they were more than smiling. They were beaming. It was night, but their smiles alone might have been enough to illuminate the grounds.

Folded behind the photograph was a letter, written in the same hand that had addressed the envelope.

My Dearest Daisy,

I can only begin to imagine what you are feeling, but you have to understand that her death wasn’t your fault. She ran in front of the car! No one could have stopped in time. No one.

Remember: Should anyone ever ask, you must tell them that I was driving. I can take care of myself. And I can take care of us. This horrible unpleasantness will pass and we will be fine. We will be together.

I watched your house last night and I waited. I waited all night. I stayed awake by imagining our future together. It is a future where you won’t be bullied, where you won’t have to wonder where your husband has gone. We don’t have to stay here, you know. We can settle in Louisville, if you’d like. Or Boston. Or Paris. Or London. It makes no difference to me. So long as we’re together, we can be happy anywhere.

Can’t you see it? I can. I see us: You and me and Pammy and a son. Yes, a little brother for your sweet girl. And we will name him Robert, after your father. That will be our family. A boy and a girl and the most loving and loved mother in the world. That will be us. I will be the husband you deserve and the father our children deserve.

That’s precisely what I saw last night as I stood sentinel outside your house.

We will be okay, you know. We will.

I will be home all day today. Just let me know when I should come get you.

Love,

Jay

She knew she should fill the hole back in, but she was hot and tired and she felt dizzy when she stood up. Besides, it was nearing seven-thirty: In the distance, she had been hearing the sound of irons and woods striking golf balls from the first hole for close to half an hour, and at least five or six vehicles had arrived in the parking lot since she had started to dig. And so, with the box with the small envelope under one arm and the shovel and the trowel under the other, she started back toward her car with its apple cores and empty cans of Red Bull littering the passenger seat.

AS GATSBY’S OLD HOUSE and its once-sprawling sage lawns, now an antiseptic prairie of fairways and putting greens, receded in the Honda’s rearview mirror, Laurel began her long journey back to Vermont. Seven more hours. She drove briefly along the Sound, the last of the blue fog having lifted off the water, before veering toward the long strips of expendable plastic and neon that linked West Egg with the expressway. Then she was on the highway itself, rolling past the ambitionless office parks built upon the ash heaps and the remnants of a world’s fair. Past the Unisphere and the skeletal remains of the once great pavilions: the visible detritus of that era’s unachieved aspirations. Didn’t she see daily the castoffs and casualties sprung loose by an ever-spinning globe? Her eyes were small slits, her head heavy with visions and dreams. There was the vindication she anticipated when she shared what she had found to keep her awake-Bobbie’s vindication, not merely hers-but there was also her dawning awareness that her past was a part of her future. Always. It was, for better or worse, inescapable.

She arrived at her apartment mid-afternoon, and when she staggered through the front door encumbered by the cherry box and the portfolio case with Bobbie’s photographs, for a moment she thought she was feverish.

There before her was a small crowd comprised of some of the most important people in her life. Sitting on the couch was her roommate, gazing at her with a look of sodden despair, and her mother-summoned, apparently, back from Italy -in a tight black sweater today instead of a tight black T. And Whit, in the chair by the computer, looking uncharacteristically haggard and gaunt. She saw Katherine in the seat by the balcony, a cell phone pressed up against her ear. She didn’t see David, and for an instant she wondered where he was, but the moment was brief because her attention was diverted by another man-not David-who was pacing between the living room and the kitchen. Initially, it was hard for her to place him. She knew him from somewhere-at least she thought she did.

Then, abruptly, it came to her. She hadn’t recognized him right away, despite the hours and hours they had spent together since she was nearly killed on a dirt road in Vermont, because she always saw him in the context of his office where they usually met.

It was her psychiatrist. Dr. Pierce.

PATIENT 29873

Assessment: Bipolar 1 disorder, current episode manic, severe, with psychotic features; PTSD.

This deserves some comment. The unusual presentation was discussed with Dr. R-. That discussion is reviewed here.

PTSD seems fairly clear, in spite of the psychotic symptoms, given severe trauma, intense distress when viewing the bicycle photographs, and numbing symptoms, i.e., avoiding the site in Underhill, memory gaps, feelings of estrangement. This diagnosis is important in terms of functional impairment and prognosis, whatever else is going on.