So it is that Candace goes to court, defending a father she hates to protect the children she loves, as a statement to the world that she is their mother, she alone, and no one is ever again allowed to come between them.
“HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN there’s somewhere we need to be? Let’s go!” said Judy.
“I’m coming,” Tess called down the stairs. “I was still getting ready.”
Tess met Judy in the garage, resigned but bitter.
“What are you wearing?”
Tess had changed clothes a half-dozen times, stripping outfits off as soon as she finished putting them on. There was no pattern to it. When Judy’s forbearance had stretched as far as it could, Tess finally found herself downstairs, wearing a beige cashmere sweater. No particular reason why. She said, “I was cold. This is comfortable.”
“It’s ninety degrees out.”
“Why do you care what I’m wearing? Aren’t you the one in a big hurry to get this done?”
They got in the car and headed towards BioPeek, an ultrasound imaging center in a nearby strip mall. Tess had delayed and delayed her sonogram, and finally cancelled. She claimed she was too focused on writing the article. Then that she was too stressed waiting for the article to run. But it was up now, and Tess had no more excuses, and Judy no more patience. The obstetrician couldn’t see her for another week, so BioPeek it was.
As they rode to the mall, Tess said, “It’s a lie. People will be able to tell it’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie. Why this again?”
“There were things I left out. Similarities. Lots of them. Those girls finished each other’s sentences, but I didn’t write about that.”
“Of course there were similarities. They’re all twin sisters, sort of. You’d expect there to be similarities. You and your brother have similarities, don’t you? Hell, my stepsister and I have similarities, and we’re not even related.” Judy pounded the horn and swerved lanes. “That part doesn’t matter. What you wrote matters.”
But ever since the article ran, Tess couldn’t stop thinking about what she might have missed. She thought about the uncanny moments when the children would laugh in unison. About how Florence sneezed the same truncated squeak as her mother, just higher pitched. How did she know that was just normal twin stuff? Normal daughter stuff? She’d worked so hard to be authoritative, but what could you tell from a child? How would she even know normal if she saw it?
No one could say for sure how GDS kids were going to grow up. It had never happened before. There could be clear, obvious changes, ones that only manifested with age. Everything she’d written could end up looking quaint. Laughable. Catastrophically wrong.
Tess thought of Candace’s reaction when she finally told her about Kendall. How Kendall had recognized her and why. They were sitting on Candace’s narrow balcony, eating pasta out of blue plastic bowls. Through the sliding glass door Tess could see the little blonde heads of the children, shrieking as they scurried across the thin carpet in their last ecstatic burst before bedtime.
“Just like a herd of puppies,” Candace said. “Way they run over each other.” She ate another forkful of noodles. “There were dogs all over at the camp. Always puppies around.”
The interviews were over. Tess had all she needed to write the article. She put her bowl down and said, “There’s something you need to know.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about Kenny. I’ve been writing about people like you, like the kids, for a long time. I have a lot of stories about it online. And Kenny, he used to get on the computer and go looking for things he didn’t like.” Tess paused, listened to the muffled giggles and declarations from inside the apartment. “He told me that he learned about it from my stories,” Tess told Candace. “He figured out what was happening with you because of me. So, in a certain way…I mean. I had a role in what happened. So I’m sorry for that.”
Candace hadn’t thought much of the coincidence. She tucked her hair behind her ear, hugged her belly and said, “If not you, it would have been somebody else. I was different. Kenny didn’t like things different. Something was bound to happen eventually.”
The more Tess thought about it, the more true it was. Candace was the future because the world was full of people who don’t like things to be different. Tess had argued, as forcefully as she knew how to, as forcefully as Lynette would let her, that in every way that mattered they were the same. That there were no real differences.
But what if the truth was actually that there were just no important differences? And what if unimportant but visible was really all it took? How could you know it wasn’t futile to counter novelty with humanity? How could you know that, for all your intentions, you weren’t setting yourself up for a fall?
Under the chilly blast from the car’s air conditioning, Tess was sweating.
When they got to BioPeek and signed in, Judy waved away the clipboard of forms. She produced from her bag a set she’d downloaded, printed, and already filled out. They nurses had Tess in the back and on the exam table in under five minutes.
“This is going to be a bit gooey,” said the ultrasound technician as she squirted gel onto Tess’s skin and spread it around with the end of the wand. Some of the gel got on her sweater, and Tess could feel Judy biting back commentary. Her grip tightened around Judy’s hand. The wand could have been the flat of a blade and Tess didn’t think she would feel any differently.
When Tess was sufficiently slimed, the technician started up the machine. Ghostly shadows resolved on the screen. It looked like nothing in particular, a confusion of internal architecture, until the technician pointed to a part of the haze and said, “There’s the head.” Then suddenly the image resolved into a moving cross-section of a fetus, and it was impossible to see it as anything else. The plane of the scan swept through the baby’s body, forward and back, hands and feet coalescing into view and then dissolving again. The technician pushed some buttons, and a 3-D computer rendering appeared on the screen. It looked like a clay model put under running water. She panned the image to get a view between the legs.
“And there we have it. It’s a girl.”
“Look at that.” Judy’s voice was a rush of astonished delight. “Decaf’s a girl. We have a lumpy little daughter.”
Tess felt the startled-fish flutter of Decaf moving, and simultaneously watched her on the screen twist her hips out of view, as if shy. A motion, Tess realized, she knew. A gesture she’d felt so many times.
“We can burn a movie of this to DVD for you to buy, if you want,” said the technician.
A noise escaped from Tess’s chest. A wracked sound that convulsed her body and scrambled the image on the screen. It happened again, and then again.
“What is it?” said Judy. “Are you okay?”
Tess started to answer, but the words got caught and bubbled in her nose. She clapped her hands to her face in embarrassment. Her cheeks were wet.
“Leave us alone for a minute,” Judy told the technician, who put down the wand and started for the door.
“No,” Tess finally got out. “Come back. It’s fine.” She couldn’t tell if the technician listened or not. Her vision was too watery to see. Under Judy’s hand on her shoulder, her body still shook with sobs.
“It’s all right,” she gasped. “There’s nothing wrong. Nothing is wrong.”
THIS IS SALEM at its oldest and spookiest: cold fog off the ocean, daylight dimming early, gables and gambrels looming at odd angles. I’m gazing out from the upstairs window of the Corwin place, from beside a case of age-yellowed cloth dolls. The streets are empty except for the tail-lights of a single car, receding.
The season ends today. I’ve already cartoned up the books and brochures and souvenir prints and stacked them under the admission desk, and returned the consignment soaps and candles to their suppliers. Mrs Gilman will come tomorrow to remove the textiles to cold storage for the winter.
I haven’t seen another human being all day
, except at a distance. I made coffee and toast in the kitchenette of my dorm, which the other students had already left for Thanksgiving. I didn’t have anyone else on duty with me since visitor count was expected to be low—and it has been, not a single tourist so far.
I ate my bagged lunch at the admission desk, spilling bagel crumbs on one of the papers I was reading for class. I’m going to have the same thing for lunch tomorrow, unless my family suddenly decides to mend fences.
The house sways and creaks around me, wind-buffeted. Water trickles down the distorted glass. I check my phone: half an hour until closing.
Someone’s struggling up the walk: a small person encumbered with a couple gigantic bags. God, I hope we haven’t forgotten to cancel a brochure delivery or something.
I scramble down the narrow stairs to hold the door open. It’s a small door built for seventeenth century people, but this girl doesn’t have to duck at all. Tiny, Asian, wearing orange Chucks dark with wet.
“I can take pictures in here, right?” she says, heaving one of her bags off her shoulder, and then the other.
“Sure, hon. School project?”
She cuts her eyes at me. “How old do you think I am?”
Voice crisp and grown-up, and oh. Shit. “I’ve seen you around,” I say. “You’re in my year, right? Sorry about that. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“Was,” she says. “Was in your year. Dropped out.” She’s looking down now, unzipping her duffels, pulling out a battered tripod and a heavy-looking camera.
“You were in my lit class.” I remember. “You gave that seminar on Lovecraft.”
“That was my last day,” she snaps.
Awkward, Paige, awkward. I grope for a different subject. “Will you have enough light to work?”
“Don’t need it.”
“You sure? It’s pretty dark in here. We keep it low so we don’t damage the textiles and documents.”
“Light meter,” she says, waving a smallish box with a window on one side. She doesn’t look at me, tight lines around her eyes as she pops open a canister of film, hinges the back off the camera and tucks the film inside. She snaps the camera shut and thumbs a lever on the top of it.
“What kind is that?” I ask. “It looks like it’s made of metal.”
“Yep.”
“I can’t even see the screen. It’s like a stealth camera. How do you see what you’re shooting?”
“It’s analog.”
“So if it’s not for school, then—”
And a couple of last-minute tourists come through the door, two middleaged women and a boy. The woman with the camera doesn’t even look, just kicks her bags out of the way a little and keeps prepping.
I don’t see her again until I’m nearly done showing the family around. I’ve got them clustered around the doll case upstairs, when I hear her clunking around in the next room. I’m partway through my tour spiel: “Several of these dolls were among the effects of the Corwin family when they sold this house to the state in 1940. They probably aren’t old enough to have belonged to the daughters of Judge Corwin himself, but—”
“Creepy,” the boy says. “Why doesn’t this one have eyes?”
“It would have, when it was new. They would have been embroidered on by hand—”
“It looks evil,” the boy says with delight. “Like it’s going to come to life and murder you!”
“It’s not,” says Camera Girl, from the doorway of the Corwins’ master bedroom. “There’s nothing creepy about it. Nothing special at all.”
The boy looks disappointed. One of the women ruffles his hair and says, “Why don’t we take a look in here, Jayden? There are some interesting herbs and things that I’m sure this guide can explain to us.”
So I have to follow them into the apothecary room and talk about blood and bile and phlegm and the way people had thought to manage them with dried rats and toads, which the boy seems to find thrilling.
By the time the family’s had enough, I figure Camera Girl must be long gone, but once I’ve let them out, I return to the master bedroom and find her still there, pointing her box at things and shaking her head.
“Worthless,” she says.
“The Corwin House is an important historical—”
“Yeah, whatever. Where’s the magic?”
“All around you,” I say in my best spooky voice.
“Hang on,” she says, clutching at the light meter. It’s pointed toward me, and I can see the little red needle swinging. “Wait—ah, fuck.”
“What?”
“You were right,” she says, voice going flat again. “It’s too dark in here.”
And without another word, she picks up her tripod and her camera and her light meter, and lugs it all back downstairs.
I follow. It’s time to close. I staple the day’s receipts—all two of them—while she packs her duffels.
“You didn’t get the shots you needed, did you?” I attempt. “If you want to try on a brighter day, I can arrange to let you in. Some of the artefacts will be stored for the season but the furniture will stay here.”
“What do you care?” she says, turning on me. Her eyes look brilliant and dark and really pissed off. “Why are you hassling me? Don’t you have a family gathering to get to?”
“No,” I say. I take a breath to explain, or something, but it just kind of gets stuck in my lungs. “Oh. Ah. Sorry.”
“It’s fine—”
“Look at you. It’s not fine. Come on, sorry, I’m being a jerk. I should know better—”
And her arms wrap around my shoulders, gentle and firm, while I sob into my hands.
HER NAME IS Maya Wu. She tells me not to feel bad, she didn’t remember mine, either.
All I do remember—other than the intensity on her face when she led that seminar—is the camera kit, which I saw her carrying around the green a few times. I always wondered what she saw in the campus architecture.
She gives me the lighter duffel to carry and leads me toward the sidewalk.
I follow, watching the night come all the way down over Salem, damp chill moving off the water and hazing the streetlights. The keys of the Corwin place jingle coldly from my free hand; I’ve left it locked and lonely, windows dark, and I won’t see it again until spring.
Unless I let Maya in secretly for more photos. What am I thinking, offering to risk my job for a woman I barely know?
I’m about to fall back, tell her I’m going back to my dorm instead, but she stops in the doorway of a pub, holds it open for me, and inside there’s heat and the smell of dinner and a low hum of music, and she’s inviting me to go inside.
And she’s smiling.
MAYA ORDERS A salad and a Coke. “Can’t drink with my meds,” she says, when she sees my questioning look. “You go ahead.”
So I ask for a pint of Sam Adams and a burger.
While we wait for our food, Maya tears little bits off her napkin. I check my phone; nothing, as usual. Maya draws on the table with her fingertip. I clasp and unclasp my bracelet.
“That story,” Maya finally blurts. “Do you remember it?”
“The Witch House story? Well, yeah, I should—you know what my workplace is called, right? I remember the guy in it has a nervous breakdown, studying too much, and he starts seeing weird meaning in architecture, and then, like, something eats his heart?”
“Yeah, pretty much. That’s why I dropped out.”
“Lovecraft wasn’t your thing? Mine either—”
“I started seeing meaning in architecture,” Maya says, eyes dark and serious.
I don’t actually remember the story that well, except that it used the word “indescribable” to describe way too many things. So I’m not quite sure what Maya means. I take a careful breath to ask.
“I’m bipolar,” she says. “Manic episode. Had to take some time off to get my shit together.”
“Oh. So you weren’t really…”
“You’ve spent plenty of time h
ere—what do you think?” she says. “It’s a bit too much like Disneyland, right?”
“Except Disneyland wasn’t built on murder,” I say. Probably a bit sharply, from the look on her face.
“I just meant…”
“That there’s no magic here?” For some reason that kind of makes me feel like crying again.
Fortunately our food comes right then, and I have an excuse to look down at my plate while I spread mustard on my burger. When I look up again, though, Maya’s watching me. She hasn’t lifted her fork.
“You don’t think I’m crazy,” she says.
I shrug. “I mean, clinically, you are, right?”
She laughs at that, thank God, but she still waits for an answer.
I shake my head. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Good,” she says. “Because you don’t have plans this weekend, and I need some help with my research.”
MAYA’S STAYING AT the Ocean View Inn, which doesn’t have an ocean view unless you stand somewhere on top of the roof, up by the rusty old lightning rod. I hold the duffels while she pulls out the key, an old-school metal one on one of those plastic diamond keychains with the room number stencilled on it.
“Atmospheric,” is all I can come up with, surveying the room: red and beige striped bedspreads, chartreuse floral carpeting, and a clutter of esoteric equipment. Jugs of brown liquid on the counter by the sink, rectangular trays laid out on the dresser and desk. Television disconnected and tucked in the corner, replaced by some kind of adjustable lamp contraption. And are those blackout curtains over the windows?
“My brilliant plan,” Maya says, with a self-consciously dramatic flourish. “I’ve been researching how to capture magic on film. I’ve figured out a new coating for my camera lens that will magnify the refraction of magical energy through the aetheric layer—”
“Whoa, Lovecraft.”
She clears her throat. “Point is, I know I’m mentally ill, but some of what I saw was real. And I think I can prove it.”
Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction Page 29