The Double Bind

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

PAMELA MARSHFIELD spent most of Monday morning on her living room sofa, feeling older than she ever had in her life. There was an ache in the upper part of her spine, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if her physician told her at some point in the coming winter-after, no doubt, an almost killing battery of modern tests-that it was cancer. She was finding herself uncharacteristically short of breath. And her hip-replaced fifteen years ago-was throbbing. In addition, nothing had tasted very good at breakfast. The truth was, nothing had had any taste at all.

Across from her in one of the metallic gold easy chairs that her mother had picked out seventy-five years ago-the chrome siding meticulously restored not once but twice since then-sat Darling Fay, eldest daughter of Reginald Fay of Louisville. Reginald was her cousin, long deceased. His father had been Daisy’s older brother. Darling, like most of the Buchanans and the Fays, was remarkably well preserved for a sixty-two-year-old, in part because of those fabulous genes, in part because she’d never married or had children, and in part because twice a year she flew to Manhattan so a cosmetic surgeon could shoot her face full of Restylane. This was why she was in New York now. This morning she was making what Pamela understood was an onerous and obligatory journey to the tip of Long Island to see her father’s doddering cousin, but if Darling wanted to come all the way out here Pamela wasn’t about to stop her. The two women were sipping tea, though only Darling was enjoying it.

“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.