The Double Bind

CHAPTER TWENTY

MARISSA TOOK HER little sister’s hand in hers as they fell into the swarm of people-grown-ups and teenagers and children as young as Cindy-and emerged from the darkened theater into the movie’s lobby Saturday night. She blinked once, then squinted against the brighter lights and the crowds by the concession stands. It was a little past nine o’clock, an hour past Cindy’s bedtime, but the kid was holding up pretty well. And why shouldn’t she? Her big sister and her dad had just endured this completely lamo movie about a circus clown who hated children but had nevertheless wound up having to run his mom’s day-care center. The movie had been Cindy’s choice, and so the kid didn’t dare melt down now just because what their mom’s fiancé liked to call the witching hour was drawing near.

She glanced from her dad, who was on one side of her, to Cindy, who was on the other, struck by the difference between an adult who has his act together and a kid who does not. She saw that her sister had popcorn butter all over her mouth and her bulbous, squirrel-like cheeks-it looked as if she had washed her face in the stuff-and a few small remnants of kernels epoxied like craft pebbles to the corners of her lips. Her hair, never her best feature, was frizzed up on one side like a frightened cat, and-was it possible?-she had a Junior Mint in her ear. Why was the kid putting Junior Mints in her ears in the movie? And how could she not know the candy was still there? Marissa remembered well the time Dad had had to take Cindy to the pediatrician two years ago because the kid had stuck a hard little pea up her nose. They’d been making food jewelry at the preschool-uncooked macaroni and peas and colored sugar-and for reasons no one could fathom, Cindy had wedged a pea high and deep inside her left nostril. According to the doctor, kids did this a lot. Still, as Marissa had watched the pediatrician, a nice woman who was her doctor, too, put a pair of tweezers the length of a pencil up Cindy’s nose, it gave Marissa one more reason to wish that she and her sister weren’t really related.

Recalling that visit to the doctor made her remember her toe. Her doctor had looked at it for about seven seconds, prescribed some antibiotic that tasted like bubble gum, and told her to soak it with her massive amounts of spare time (yeah, right). Still, the appointment had allowed her an escape from math hell. And, of course, it had given her the chance to bring up the idea of getting a professional headshot taken sooner rather than later.

Abruptly she bumped squarely into her dad’s side, which meant that Cindy slammed into her. She looked up and saw that her dad had stopped because he had run into someone he knew-though not in the literal way she had just bumped into him. It seemed her dad was always running into someone he knew. This time it was a woman who he was calling Katherine and kissing once on the cheek, the way grown-ups did whenever they didn’t seem to shake hands. Marissa knew that she herself preferred the shaking hands route. Just imagine if right this second you had to kiss a cheek like her sister’s? Gross. Way beyond gross.

Katherine had a man beside her whose name Marissa didn’t catch, but it was evident they were a pair, and it was clear they had had the good fortune of seeing a different movie from the loser that her family had just had to stomach. Marissa smiled politely when she was introduced and was asked the obligatory questions-she basked for a moment in the woman’s approval-but then allowed herself to fixate on the colorful movie posters for the films that would be arriving next. She was just beginning to fantasize that her name was on one-maybe the one with the hunky young film star who was on the cover of People and who had told the magazine the parts of his very hot movie-star girlfriend he liked best (the insides of her thighs, she’d read yesterday in the doctor’s waiting room)-when she heard a name that caused her suddenly to pay attention. Laurel. They were talking about… Laurel.

“I don’t know if it has something to do with her trip to Long Island, or it’s all about the pictures,” this woman named Katherine was saying. “But she didn’t come swimming with me on Thursday or Friday, and she was hardly in the office at all the last couple of days-which doesn’t bother me the tiniest bit as her boss. Really, it doesn’t. I’m just wondering what’s going on as her friend-and whether I made a mistake getting her involved with those photographs in the first place. Do you think I did?”

Her father seemed to consider this, nodding the way he did whenever he was thinking deeply about something someone had said. Marissa knew the look well. Finally, he told Katherine, “She was definitely fixated on Bobbie Crocker last night. Wednesday night, too. But last night was…worse.”

“Worse?”

“More intense. She spent a lot of time researching Bobbie Crocker on the Internet when we were supposed to be going to a movie. And she really didn’t stop talking about him all night long. Then this morning she went to the darkroom, and tomorrow I believe she’s going to Bartlett. To a church that somebody named Reese, a fellow who might have known Bobbie, went to before he died a little over a year ago.”

Katherine stretched out her hands and spread wide her fingers, her elbows pressed against her ribs, in a gesture of confusion. “I don’t get it. She’s going to a strange church miles from here because a dead person who knew Bobbie-”

“Might have known Bobbie.”

“Because a dead person who might have known Bobbie went there?”

“That sums it up.”

The woman reached over and squeezed her father’s arm. “All I suggested she do was print the guy’s old negatives. I never asked her to become a private eye.”

“I understand.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Did I make a mistake getting her involved with the pictures?”

He breathed in and out of his nose so deeply that it sounded to Marissa like a small gust of wind. She knew that he was going to say that Katherine had. It all came down to Laurel ’s secret. The mystery that Marissa thought Laurel took with her wherever she went. Whatever Katherine had asked her to do with some pictures, it wasn’t helping. It was making that secret even noisier in Laurel ’s head.

Marissa found it interesting that secrets made noise. She’d always viewed them as physically heavy-hadn’t she seen people on the street who seemed stooped by the weight of what they couldn’t tell anyone?-but only recently had she concluded that it was actually their persistent thrum that caused people to slouch. Eventually, her father muttered, “Look, I hate to sound patronizing-”

“Oh, stop it. You love to sound patronizing.”

“Because Laurel is an adult. She’s a grown woman. But, yes, Katherine, maybe. Maybe you did.”

“You’re being polite. You think definitely.”

Before her father could answer, the man beside Katherine knelt down and said to Cindy, “I hate to be the one to break the news to you…but I think there just might be a piece of candy in your ear.” The fellow was balding and tall-so tall that even kneeling he had to bend over slightly to speak eye to eye with the girl-and he was wedged a little too tightly into a turtleneck. The result was a very bad fashion statement, Marissa decided: He looked a bit like a turtle himself. Her sister slowly reached up to her ear and ran a pudgy finger and her cork of a thumb over the Junior Mint. It was apparent that she wanted to remove it…but couldn’t.

“It’s an earring,” said Cindy. She spoke with great seriousness to the fellow because it was clear to her now that the Junior Mint wasn’t going anywhere for a while. “It just looks like a piece of candy.”

Marissa smiled, hoping she could salvage a small portion of dignity for both her and her sister, and added, “Cindy has always been her own girl when it comes to fashion and food.”

The man nodded equally as earnestly, and then looked up at her father because of something her dad was saying. Instantly, Marissa looked up, too.

“She’s fragile, Katherine,” her father was telling the woman. “You know that. You’ve known her a lot longer than I have.”

“Which makes it even worse, in your opinion, that I asked her to do this.”

“Yeah, I think so,” her father said, and Katherine seemed genuinely troubled by this idea. It looked to Marissa as if her father were about to say something more. He even went so far as to open his mouth, but at the last moment he must have thought better of it because he remained silent.

“There’s nothing that should have been disturbing in those pictures. Right?” Katherine said. “Some old movie stars. Some snapshots of her old swim club and some nearby house. I guess there were a few Bobbie took up in Underhill, but still…I don’t know, I just saw a project that I thought might be fun for her. And, yes, good for BEDS. That’s all. I would never have suggested this to her if I’d thought the images might upset her. Never!”

Katherine’s discomfort was so tangible that the man she was with stood up, forgetting completely about Cindy and her mint-which, Marissa feared, might result in some serious acting out on the part of her sister-and started rubbing the woman’s back and shoulders in great, slow, circular motions.

“Look, I don’t know what it is about the pictures that got under her skin,” her father said. “I have no idea what she sees in them. But the sooner we can get her off this task and onto something else, the better.”

“I just saw the pictures as publicity, David, that’s all. Maybe a little cash for the organization-assuming the collection is actually worth something. But it’s all proving too much trouble, isn’t it?”

“Could be. It certainly doesn’t seem worth the anguish it’s causing Laurel.”

“As you said: She’s fragile.”

Her father looked down at her and Cindy and smiled, as if he had suddenly remembered they were there. Right away he noticed the Junior Mint.

“Cindy, sweetheart, do you know there’s a Junior Mint in your ear?”

“It’s an earring,” said Cindy, and she offered him what she must have presumed was the cutest, most pixielike smile in the world.

“Yeah,” Marissa said, unable to contain herself a moment longer, “and the popcorn beside your mouth is a lip ring.”

Her sister stuck her tongue out at her. She rolled her eyes, but decided everyone would be better off, including her, if she took the high road and put her arm around the kid. Her sister was as shaken as she was by the reality that soon Mom and Eric were getting hitched. “When we get home, Dad and I will help you take your earrings off-if you want us to. Sometimes, it’s hard, you know.”

Katherine smiled, but it was clear that she wasn’t really focused on them. She was still thinking about Laurel. “Of course,” she continued, “it might be even worse at this point to take the pictures away from her.”

“I think it would be best if we could get Laurel involved in another project,” their dad said. “Another photography project, maybe. No, not maybe. Definitely. And I know one. It’s not very big. But it is important to someone.” His voice had brightened considerably and he sounded almost playful.

“And that would be what?” the woman asked.

“A headshot for my young diva here,” he said, squeezing Marissa. “ Laurel offered to take a headshot of my rising young star this Monday. Late afternoon, maybe. Or early evening.”

Marissa felt a surge of electricity, downright elation, and stood up a little taller against her father’s side. She hadn’t realized that her father had taken her idea so seriously. “Really? This Monday?” she asked him.

He nodded. “She offered. I said I’d get back to her. You’re done with singing lessons by four, but since you’d be the subject of the pictures, I figured I should double-check. Will Monday work?”

“Yes, Monday’s perfect! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She pulled him down by his arm and kissed his cheek. She was already thinking about the headshots she had seen in playbills and beside the résumés of the older girls she knew, and what she would wear. What she would do with her hair.

“David,” Katherine began, her voice absolutely flat. “You’re treating Laurel like a child. I think we need to confront this head-on-not try to distract her like she’s a toddler.”

“I’m simply trying to be efficient. Accomplish two tasks at once.”

“Look, I think it’s very sweet that she offered to photograph Marissa. But you can’t possibly believe for even a nanosecond that taking your daughter’s portrait could begin to replace her interest in Bobbie Crocker.”

“No, of course not. But maybe if we view this obsession a day at a time and keep her busy with other things, we can wean her from the project.”

“Wean? That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

“It’s an expression.”

Almost on cue, as if she knew on an instinctive level precisely how to drive her older sister crazy, Cindy interrupted the grown-ups. “She can take my headshot, too! I want a headshot, too!”

“See,” their father said, much to Marissa’s horror. “The project has already doubled in scope.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER, as the two girls were walking with their father down the Burlington street toward their apartment near the lake, Marissa asked, “Dad, is Laurel sick?”

“ Laurel is a swimmer, remember? Very healthy. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Why do you ask?”

“You said she was fragile. That was the word you used when you and Katherine were talking.”

“I didn’t realize how carefully you were listening,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“Oh, you weren’t eavesdropping. Katherine and I were just, I guess, a bit indiscreet.”

“So why is Laurel fragile?”

He seemed to think about this, his long strides slowing. “Well, I don’t want to scare you. But I also want to be truthful with you. Always. You know that, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Seven years ago, she had something bad happen to her. She’s fine now. Mostly, anyway. She’s just been a little delicate ever since.”

“What happened?”

He glanced down at Cindy, who wasn’t listening to a word they were saying. She was far too busy licking the tip of her finger. For a moment Marissa wasn’t sure why, but then her sister brought the finger back to her ear…and then back to her tongue. And then she got it: The Junior Mint was starting to melt, and Cindy was scraping her fingernail against the chocolate and cream and tasting it. She shook her head. On the one hand, she was appalled. There was nothing-Just nothing!-this kid wouldn’t eat. On the other hand, at least this meant that she and her dad wouldn’t have to get out the tweezers to extract the piece of candy. Body heat was actually doing the heavy lifting on this one. Thank God it wasn’t a SweeTart or something hard. Then they might have had to go back to the doctor tomorrow.

Her father was saying-quietly, so Cindy would have to start listening actively if she wanted to hear-“I know at school you’ve learned about strangers and how you shouldn’t get into cars or vans with them. Right? In health class, you watch all those movies about how to stay safe. How there are really bad people out there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, seven years ago, when she was in college, Laurel went biking in Underhill. She was on a dirt road and it was pretty deserted.” He paused, but only briefly, to make sure that her sister was still safely ensconced on Planet Cindy. Then, after a long sigh, he resumed his story. Marissa could tell that he was condensing it to all but its basics, abridging it considerably: He was trying so hard to convey the tale in a way that would not make the world unbearably frightening to her that she really wasn’t completely sure what had occurred. Still, it sounded scary, and when he was finished she found herself folding her arms against her chest as they walked. She understood that he had told her even the barest bones of the tale because he was trying to answer her original question, explain to her why-in his opinion, in Katherine’s opinion-Dad’s athletic young girlfriend was fragile. Nevertheless, it was still a profoundly ominous story to hear as they strolled down the sidewalk in the night, and somewhere in the back of her mind she was dimly aware of the crackle of newspapers as they blew in the wind and the scuffle of footsteps before anyone would pass them on the street.