The Conjoined

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  It was thin, the space between decisions.

  She said, with her head half-turned because she couldn’t bear to look at his face for a minute longer, “Let me grab my keys.”

  —

  If she thought ahead to what she might feel after this moment, the whole illusion that she and Chris existed in a bubble that was unbreakable, even untouchable, would rupture. She would be left with the peculiar sensation that she was simultaneously enjoying the warmth of his lips against her cheek while looking backward at it in wistfulness or with a sad, future clarity. Jessica knew this was how she could destroy the minutes she had with him. She wasn’t going to do that. She kept her eyes open, turned on his broad face, her fingers caught in the curls of his hair.

  They were parked in the lot at Grouse Mountain. The surrounding lights glowed orange and dim, illuminating a few garbage cans and one other car. Not that Jessica cared if the lot were full of hikers swallowing sports drinks out of non-toxic plastic bottles. She sat on Chris’ lap, facing him, in the backseat. There was no talking, just their breath knocking against the windows and echoing back so slightly it was as if every sound they made was simply vibrating as it tumbled out of their mouths and into the sealed, silent air. He didn’t ask her what she wanted and she didn’t tell him. They were beyond that.

  Death and grief and the lack of words simulated a past and a relationship they had never had. Maybe it wasn’t real, but, right now, in this car, with his hands on her ass, it was real and sticky and present. It was enough. Fuck it. It was way better than enough. It was fucking genius.

  —

  At midnight, she padded into the hallway on her way to the bathroom. Chris had dropped her off, making jokes about the retro nineties radio station he exclusively listened to. “I can’t think beyond Stone Temple Pilots,” he said. “If the band isn’t skinny and dirty with a lead singer who shouldn’t be singing, I don’t want to hear it.” Jessica had laughed, purposely pushing out all those other thoughts that meant she knew better, or that wanted to scream that this was the worst possible betrayal of her entire life, and kept her gaze on his wide smile that was bright and sharp and verging on feline. Not once did they mention Trevor or her mother or the girls. Not once did Chris’ face flicker with the knowledge that he had chosen this night over his job. And not once did either of them say they would see each other again. He had driven down the hill and she had watched through the window until his car turned the corner and she knew by the minutes that had passed that he was merging on to the highway.

  She knew there might be consequences. She knew no one would understand. She could think about Trevor, about how he might rage or cry or insist that she leave. She could remind herself that she didn’t know Chris’ middle name or where he grew up or what his favourite food was. But none of that mattered—not really, not now. The after-touch, that ghost of their skin on each other, burned all of that away. She could choose to be oblivious, just for tonight.

  Tucked into the small dormer window was her mother’s desk—still clean—with the pile of photo albums she had placed on its surface the night before. There was no possibility of sleep, at least not now, so, glancing at Gerry’s closed bedroom door, she walked over and sat in Donna’s cushioned chair. Every month, her mother had sat here, putting her bills in order, gluing photo corners until her fingers were covered in a transparent, tacky film. Jessica leaned back and felt her body settle into the grooves and divots Donna had left behind. Everything fit. Jessica’s arm. Her spine. The backs of her thighs. It was as if her mother had been breaking in this chair just for her.

  She reached forward and grazed the albums with her hand. She squinted and sat up, bringing her face closer to the spines lined up to the left. Each album was labelled by year. Jessica counted. They began in 1978, the year Jessica was born, and ended with 2015, the year her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She stared at one album near the bottom. 1988.

  She was breathing quickly as she pulled it out, almost knocking the others to the floor. She turned the pages as fast she could, barely even noticing her mother’s handwritten captions underneath each picture. The family snowshoeing on Grouse Mountain, January 17. Matthew and his new adoptive family on his last day with us, April 2. Jessica learning how to dive, Whytecliff Park, Canada Day. When she got to the middle, she stopped. There they were: Casey and Jamie in their backyard, digging with spades. Casey and Jamie helping us harvest the squash, September 25. And again: Casey and Jamie pressing leaves into their new scrapbooks, September 29. There were three blank spots, all of them pictures of the girls that the police had taken with them.

  Donna had never left any family moment alone. In the middle of cookie-baking or weeding, she would point a camera in Jessica’s face and demand, “Smile.” And Jessica thought she could see the discomfort in the pictures later, even as they hung on the wall or were stuffed into envelopes to be sent to Granny Beth. Still, it was something she was used to and learned to mostly ignore. But Casey and Jamie, they swore under their breaths and deliberately turned their backs, grinning as soon as they heard Donna sigh and replace the cap on the lens. It had been a game, and they were winning.

  The next set of photos was Jessica in her Halloween costume (Pee-Wee Herman) and then nothing until Christmas. She stared at the last page, decorated with holiday stickers and her mother’s wobbly illustrations of holly branches and sleigh bells. Jessica’s hands were in fists, her thumbs tightly squeezed in her fingers.

  This was the version of her family Donna wanted to remember: happy, craftsy, nature-loving. Her whole life Jessica had thought her mother wanted to remember everything, that her urge to can and preserve meant that anything could be used and reused, even memories that weren’t beautiful. But these pictures of red-cheeked contentment proved otherwise.

  Jessica, her lips pursed, yanked the very last photo, a picture of her parents at a New Year’s Eve party, from its tabs. She looked at her mother’s smiling, slightly tipsy face. Her face was full and open. How could she hide two dead girls in her freezers for so long?

  As she tried to push the corners of the photo back into place, it caught on the edge of a tab and flew up, landing face down on the album’s black page. Jessica stared at the back. Another photograph was taped right behind, its edges lined up so precisely that no one would ever suspect it was there. Jessica picked it up and examined the three faces. Granny Beth, Donna as a child, and a little boy of about the same size whom Jessica didn’t recognize.

  He had curly blond hair and stood stoutly, feet planted firmly in the front lawn of her mother’s childhood home. Carefully, Jessica peeled it away from the other photograph and looked at the back. No date, no writing, just four yellow stains where the tape had been. She squinted at the piles of albums. There had to be another photo somewhere.

  Jessica started from the beginning, 1978, and pulled every print from its corners from every page. Nothing. She kept going until the pads of her fingers began to ache, as if the skin were threatening to split, dry and spent. She looked at the clock hung above the desk. One o’clock in the morning. And twenty-seven more albums to go.

  At three, she was done. She stared at the first and only hidden photograph she had found. Granny Beth stood slightly apart, her hands on her hips. The two children weren’t touching, but the slice of air between them was so narrow, you could miss it entirely and think their arms and shoulders were glued together. Jessica shook her head. A neighbour? A cousin? She looked at Granny Beth’s face again, smiling yet unamused. Granny would know. Granny could tell her.

  She wanted to cry, not just at the idea of her mother seeking solace in her childhood self, but at the idea that she was right. There had been things that Donna had wanted to remember. Donna couldn’t help herself. Jessica put her head down on the desk and closed her eyes. She needed a minute. For once, she had been right.

  TWELVE

  IT WAS A LONG DRIVE TO LION’S BAY, ONE THAT JESSIC
A had not made very often. As she negotiated the turns of the Sea to Sky Highway, she tried to count up the number of times she and Donna had gone to visit Granny Beth. Ten? Twelve? Maybe not even.

  The sun was out, spilling thin light that pooled over the ocean on her left. She had tiptoed out of her parents’ house at seven, while Gerry was still asleep and after three hours of lying in bed, eyes open in the darkness. She had spent the night turning that old photograph over and over in her mind, half-whispering to herself, “But what does it mean?” Somehow, Jessica had convinced herself that finding out that little boy’s identity would lead to other clues she hadn’t foreseen, which in turn would lead her to how Casey and Jamie had ended up dead and curled into her mother’s freezers. By the time she padded to the shower at six, she knew the jumble of thoughts in her head made no real sense. But still, she thought—in that way that means sleeplessness has created a peculiar logic out of the illogical—she could see the eventual answers buried underneath the mess, shimmering like shiny-gilled fish at the bottom of a murky pond. As Jessica shampooed her hair, she considered that there might be no answers at all and that she was really just rushing head-first into madness. Then she remembered one unalterable truth. Granny Beth knew something about Donna that Jessica didn’t.

  She glanced at her open purse, the photograph wedged between her wallet and her phone. She rolled down the driver’s side window and air blew in cold and tinged with the salty, seaweedy smell of the ocean. No music, just the hum of the car climbing through the mountains.

  After Donna had died, Jessica was the one who had called Granny Beth. There was no one else to do it, and Gerry—exhausted and grieving—had already spent three days in his pyjamas, alternately crying and sleeping. So Jessica had sat in their kitchen, dialling one friend after another, repeating the same sentences over and over.

  “She passed peacefully in her sleep.”

  “Thank you. No, we don’t need anything.”

  “The memorial will be next week. We’ll send an email.”

  “She really loved you too.”

  She had left Granny Beth to the end, flipping past her name as she turned the pages in her mother’s address book. Eventually, there was no one left to call, just the receiver in her hand and the silent, waiting space between her parents’ house and Granny’s. She dialled.

  “Hello?” Her voice was wavery, uncertain, vulnerable. In her surprise, Jessica was quiet. “Hello? Is anyone there?” This time, she sounded irritated. Jessica exhaled.

  “Granny, it’s Jessica.”

  “Good evening, Jessica. How are you?”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. If she didn’t answer properly, Granny Beth might just hang up. “I’m fine. And you?”

  “I’m doing well. I’m managing quite reasonably with the walking stick these days. Although it’s not much help on uneven ground. I suppose my hiking days are over.”

  As Jessica listened to her grandmother’s crisp summary of her general wellness, anger simmered through her body. Granny Beth knew that Donna had cancer. She knew that Donna was going to die. These were things Donna herself had phoned to tell her over the last few months. As soon as she had heard Jessica’s voice—her only granddaughter who had never called before—she must have understood what she was calling to tell her. And yet, she continued with this pretense of manners, as if how polite you were made any fucking difference at all to the people you loved and lost, or the way you cried at night holding your childhood stuffed dog to your open, screaming mouth. Fuck her, Jessica thought.

  “If you went for a hike now, you’d probably break a hip anyway,” Jessica said, staring at the fruit bowl on the counter, full of apples that were wrinkled and dry.

  Granny sucked in her breath. “What did you just say?”

  “Granny, I’m not calling to talk about hiking or your goddamned cane. Mom died on Sunday. That’s all.” Jessica heard the hard words, how they cut the air with their clarity and mercilessness. But she didn’t care. If Granny Beth cried now, good. She was supposed to. It was what mothers did.

  “Was she sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” For a minute, Granny Beth said nothing and Jessica could hear only her breathing, so measured and deliberate that she thought that Granny Beth must be trying not to weep. But then, she spoke, her voice no different. “It’s what she said she wanted.”

  Jessica couldn’t imagine her mother telling Granny Beth anything as intimate as that. “Mom told you that?”

  “In a letter. She wrote me many letters over the years. The last one arrived three weeks ago. She wrote about her death and what she wanted.” Granny Beth cleared her throat before continuing. “Her letters were always addressed to me, but I often got the feeling that she was writing them for herself, to express things she never did otherwise. They were usually full of news she would have never told me over the phone. They were,” she paused and Jessica thought she could hear her tapping a long, pointed fingernail on a table, “curious.”

  At the time, Jessica was still so angry that she felt as if her chest might heave outward and spill its hot and hard contents all over the counter in front of her, so she told Granny Beth that the memorial would be held next week and hung up. She didn’t wait for an invitation to visit. She didn’t wait for Granny Beth to say she would come and help clean out Donna’s clothes and books. It was no use. Granny Beth would never offer those things and, even if she did, Jessica would never accept.

  Now, as Jessica drove onto the exit for Lion’s Bay, she wondered if she should have comforted her grandmother, told her that Donna loved her and kept a photograph of the two together by her bedside until the very last breath. But these would have been lies—big, fat, transparent lies. And Granny Beth would have known it.

  The driveway to the house curved to the left, the paving stones outlined in bright green moss. Everything was as Jessica remembered it. The stubby rhododendrons. The stone St. Francis of Assisi standing by the front door. The covered windows that always made Jessica think of eyes that had been blinded by knives or shrapnel. The house was grey and short, neat and ageless. Jessica knocked.

  A thin Filipina woman opened the door. She blinked at Jessica and said quietly, “Yes?”

  “My name is Jessica. I’m Beth’s granddaughter.”

  “Oh?” The woman tucked a long strand of black hair behind her ear.

  “We’re not close. In fact, I’m sure she’s probably never even talked about me.” Jessica shifted on her feet. “But I really am her granddaughter. Maybe she’s mentioned my mother, Donna. She died not too long ago.”

  “Yes. Donna. Mrs. Worth told me she had cancer. I’m so sorry.”

  Jessica waved her hand. “That’s all right. Can I come in?”

  The woman stepped aside and held the door open, silently watching as Jessica removed her shoes and hung her coat up on the hook in the hall. When Jessica turned around, the woman smiled.

  “I was making breakfast. Come into the kitchen. Mrs. Worth is still in the bathroom.”

  As Jessica followed her through the living room, she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t ask your name.”

  “Dolores.”

  “How long have you worked here? The last caregiver I met was Maria.”

  Dolores lifted the lid off a small pot and stirred the oatmeal inside. “Four months. Maria retired.”

  “I hope my grandmother is being nice to you,” said Jessica. She laughed but it sounded too loud and empty.

  Dolores tilted her head to the side and squinted at Jessica’s face. “Mrs. Worth is very fair.”

  She almost replied, My mother fucking hated her, but instead she rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. Her eyes felt like they were being pricked with needles. A migraine, like the ones she had as child, was coming.

  It had been early October and Jessica stood in the middle of the playground, the yell
s and pounding of recess beating around her as she stuffed her hands as far into her pockets as she could. In the corner by the chain-link fence, Mrs. Wakabayashi was staring at the looming rain cloud blowing in from the west. Jessica needed to walk over to her and tell her she was sick and that she wanted to go home, but it was an extra fifty steps. She looked behind her. The gate to her house was the opposite way. Home, she thought. I need to go home. Now. She turned around and, weaving through the groups of children huddled around the play equipment, walked through the gate and down the street.

  The front step. Jessica wanted lie down right there, but she knew if she did that, she would be there for hours, or until her mother walked out at two thirty to pick up Casey and Jamie, as she had been doing lately to make sure they actually attended classes. Breathing through her mouth, she unlocked the door and pulled herself up the stairs, shoes and coat still on.

  “Mom?” she called. “Mom, I need you.”

  She heard nothing, just the soft hum of the bathroom fan. As she walked down the hall, she saw a trail of wet footprints from the bathtub all the way to her parents’ room. Jessica bent down and touched the carpet with her finger. Water pooled as she pressed. Maybe the tub had overflowed. Maybe her mother had hurt herself in the bath and had dragged herself into her room. Jessica walked faster and pushed open the bedroom door without knocking.

  Donna sat on the floor with the quilt from her bed draped over her shoulders. She was dripping with water—from her hair, her nose, her ears. There were dark stains where the quilt was already soaked through. Jessica blinked. Her mother’s legs were bare, sticking out like a marionette’s from under the quilt. Donna was naked.

  “You just missed them,” Donna said.