The Conjoined
Page 15
She thought she was dreaming at first, that she had fallen back asleep in the hazy morning silence. She was on a boat or a train or something that moved with a discernible beat, a one-two, one-two. She felt soft, cossetted by warmth. It was a dream. Of course, it was a dream.
But it wasn’t. It was Devin moving underneath her arm, making noises like a kitten trapped under a sofa. It was Devin, with his hand in his pyjama pants, masturbating.
At first, she thought, He must be asleep. But when she looked, his eyes were tightly shut, so tightly that his eyelids were wrinkled and the lashes pressed down over the tops of his cheeks. No, he was awake, and trying to imagine himself somewhere else.
Does he remember I’m here? I need to leave. I need to leave.
Beth began to slide out of bed, her arm behind her to feel for the carpet on the floor. She would do this quietly and he would never notice. It would be like she had never been here, and she could forget that she had witnessed anything at all. But just as her fingers grazed the carpet beside the bed, Devin reached backward with one arm and grabbed a handful of her nightgown, his grip stronger than she knew was possible. With one hand on his mother and the other in his pants, his eyes never opened, never even seemed to flicker with the acknowledgement that Beth was there with him and knew what he was doing.
She didn’t move. She stayed. When he was done, he rolled over, on to his back and sighed, his body limp and weighed down with sleep. Not until his breath was even and heavy did Beth leave the room, her bare feet cold as she hurried down the hall.
In her room, she sat down on her bed and stared out the window at the bush outside. The sun was out with a vengeance now, yellow and unsubtle and thick. She wondered if she was going to cry, but no tears came to rinse away the warm spot on her hip where Devin’s hand had rested, or the smell of his unwashed hair in that hot and narrow bed. He was only eight. Surely she could talk to their doctor; surely he would know what to do.
She reached over to open the drawer on her nightstand, where she kept her address book. She could phone in an hour when the receptionist arrived. But just as she pulled the drawer open, she remembered the whispers she had heard last year at the twins’ school. A little girl had disappeared, though her older brother was still attending. One of the other mothers had told Beth, in a mean, sharp voice, that the girl had been setting fires around the schoolyard and at home and her parents had sent her to Woodlands, an institution where disturbed children remained tucked out of sight and never wore anything but their nightgowns and slippers.
“It was for the best, really,” that other mother had said. “They couldn’t have her burn them all to death in their beds.”
Beth had agreed but was left with the image of children staring into space behind windows reinforced with chicken wire, floating like ghosts in hallways lit so brightly they seemed like shadows in comparison. Now, she saw Devin there. Medicated. Still. No trouble, but incapable of anything else besides a quiet acceptance. No one ever asked if the children were happy at places like that. The answer was obvious. Beth pressed hard on her stomach with the palm of her hand, feeling the loose skin that still wrinkled over her abdomen, the skin that had stretched for both of her children at the same time, the skin that would never contract and be smooth again.
It would be okay. She was the only one who knew. As long as it stayed here, in the house, she could manage it. The next time he cried out for her in the night, she would make sure to leave his bed well before morning. She heard Donna turning on the taps in the bathroom. The day was starting and this day, more than any other, she had to convince everyone that nothing was wrong.
—
Donna and Devin hated her. Not always and not for the same reasons, but they hated her often enough and with enough ferocity that she worried when the house grew too still. In those moments, she could feel the animosity in the air, thick. She worried about a plot, about the possibilities that the two of them might work together to run away. But then, they had never worked together for anything. They just hated her, separately.
One evening, after the children had finished their homework and Beth was putting away clean laundry, she found, in the back of Donna’s closet, a small pile of droppings. There was no doubt that these were from some kind of small, furry, brown animal, no doubt that the neighbouring shoebox filled with rags had been a bed. Beth could smell it—that undeniable smell of fur hastily cleaned by a small, pink tongue, the funk of a living creature squeaking in an airless closet. The droppings were old, were ringed by a dried, dark stain on the carpet. Whatever had been living here had long since been released back into the bush or had died.
The longer she stood there, staring at the mess, the angrier she became. It had probably been a common field mouse, the kind that snuck in through holes no bigger than a thimble. The kind that proliferated in underused garages and abandoned wheelbarrows. The kind that wasn’t worth saving and whose smell would be impossible to wash out.
Donna was sitting in the living room, curled into the yellow armchair, reading a library copy of Little House in the Big Woods. Beth walked over and placed the makeshift bed on the coffee table in front of her. Donna looked, saw the shoebox and sat up, the book sliding off her lap and onto the floor.
“What happened to it?”
Donna stared but said nothing.
“Did it die? Did you kill it?”
Beth could see the tears pooling in Donna’s eyes, but she couldn’t stop. She needed to get it out. She needed someone to hear the frustration bouncing inside her body.
“You thought you were saving it, didn’t you? You thought if you brought it home and loved it, you could fix its broken leg or whatever else was wrong with it.”
Donna looked around her—quickly, desperately—as if there could only be one escape route and her mother was blocking the way.
“It was all right for a while, but then after a few days, it stopped eating. It stopped trying to run away. It just stopped.” Beth paused and pointed at the box. “You found it, in there, not moving, eyes open. And you knew you had killed it.”
Her daughter was crying, those deep, eight-year-old sobs that are both childlike and adult at the same time: rapid, deeply hoarse.
“You buried it. In a little bag outside, with a stone marking the grave. But you couldn’t go back to the closet and clean up the box or the mess. You didn’t want to remember its life or its death. You just wanted to forget.”
Beth could sense Devin behind her, his body half-hidden by the corner of drywall that bordered the hallway. It was a trick of motherhood that she could swear she heard his ears turning toward her, like radio antennae looking for the clearest signal.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about that poor, dead animal now, is there? Except clean up the shit and piss it left behind.” Beth cocked her head toward Donna’s bedroom. “You are going to clean up your closet until you can’t smell the stink anymore. When you think you’re done, you’re going to put your nose down to the carpet and sniff as hard as you can. If you can smell anything, you’ll have to start all over again.”
Donna sat, limp and curled over, in the chair. Her head nodded, just barely.
“Go on, then. The cleaning rags and detergent are in the basement. Go.”
Donna left, her blond hair matted at the back of her head. On another day, Beth might have stopped her and brushed and braided the curls into a tight French braid, but not now. Her children needed to be afraid of her, needed to know that Beth was far more than cuddling and soft. She was the one they had to answer to.
—
It was a wild November, the kind where every windstorm threatened to blow their little house off the cliffs and into the angry, tossing sea. The twins were stuck in the house every weekend and Beth kept them apart as much as she could, but they still had to eat together, still had to share the same bathroom. They were ten now, and their arguments
were no longer violent, but their voices, both strangely adult, were like knives twisting into Beth’s ears every time they bickered over the last scoop of shepherd’s pie or the toothpaste.
One night, after dinner, Beth stood at the oven, waiting for cookies to bake. If in doubt, she told herself, feed them. They can’t say anything with their mouths full. Rain struck the house at a vicious angle, leaving slashes on the windows. If there was anything outside beyond the patio doors, she couldn’t see it. For all she knew, she was in a spaceship, hovering in a starless universe, alone.
She heard Donna screaming, a wordless cry that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Their steps pounded, running and running until they burst into the kitchen, Devin first, Donna second. She was chasing him, her hair wet and dripping, and wearing only a pink T-shirt and underpants. She was sobbing so much she seemed in danger of being overcome and simply collapsing on the floor. Devin only laughed as he ran. Beth stepped forward and tried to tear off her oven mitts, but somehow they seemed stuck to her hands, glued there by invisible layers of unwashable cookie dough. She bent her head to look closer at the elastics around her wrists when she heard the patio door open. They were chasing each other on the rocks out there, in the dark, in the rain.
The fence, she thought. It won’t hold them.
When they had first moved in, Charles had put up the fence, made of thin, plastic-coated wire and skinny metal poles drilled unevenly into the rocks. Beth had said she wanted something that wouldn’t obscure the view. But now, she ran to the door, a scream forming in her mouth even as no sound emerged.
When she stepped outside, she saw Devin climbing over the fence and dropping to the rain-slicked rocks on the other side. Donna was behind him, struggling to get a foothold in the small, pliable, wire-lined holes.
Beth yelled, “Come back! Come back now!”
She reached Donna in six steps and grabbed her shoulder. When Donna spun around, Beth hissed in her ear, “What is going on?”
Her daughter’s face was flushed, patches of pink blooming, lit by the lights that shone through the windows behind them. Her eyes were wide open, so wide that the whites were visible all around her irises. Donna coughed as she tried to speak.
“I was having a bath, Mother, and singing in the tub. And he barged in. I told him to leave, I did, but he wouldn’t. And then he pinched me, all over. Here,” and Donna pointed at her chest, “and here too.” She put a hand between her legs and looked down at the rocks. “I hate him so much. I hope he dies.”
“Donna. You must never say that. Never.”
On the other side of the fence, she heard Devin’s voice. “She was pinching herself, Mother. In her privates. I saw her, in the tub, like a whore. I saw her.”
Before Beth could say one word, Donna had started climbing. Devin walked backward, making faces at his sister through the wire, calling her names.
“No,” Beth said. “Stop!”
Maybe they couldn’t hear her. The waves were crashing, crashing, an assault on the rocks and air and ears. Beth yelled louder. It made no difference. As she reached out to grab any part of Donna she could, Donna finally landed on her feet and turned to face her brother. Devin began to dart behind the arbutus, his hand reaching for the trunk. But Beth knew the tree was wet too, slick the way old wood in a storm can get. His hand slipped and he fell backward. He landed on his bum and began to slide down the rocks. He reached back and tried to steady himself with his hands on the ground, but his palms seemed to only glide over the gravel and stones as if they were coated in oil.
“Donna! Help him!” Beth was two steps away from the fence. Donna was running toward him, her legs oddly steady on the loose ground. Please, God, Beth thought. Please make sure she gets there in time.
Devin slid and slid. Donna reached down with both arms, as if she were going to grab his wrists and pull him toward her. But then she straightened up and, through the storm, Beth could swear she saw her daughter push her heel into her brother’s chest. He rolled backward, over, and was gone. In the dark, the edges of the cliff, the sky, the ocean—it all looked the same. Black. Empty. Surely he was still there. Surely he was clinging to something, even though, that close to the edge, there was nothing to grasp anymore.
Donna stood with her toes pointed out toward the ocean, her blond hair waterlogged and flat. A solid girl. One who would never be so foolhardy as to fall into the sea. One who was too strong and too practical to ever allow herself to be pushed. No, just the opposite.
When, finally, Beth had climbed the fence and looked, she could see nothing. She heard nothing but the waves and the rain and the foghorn farther down the shore. Beth was his mother. If he was screaming, she knew she would hear it. The storm continued even as she stood there, waiting for a human voice to float up toward her.
When they walked back to Hastings Street, a taxi driver saw them in his side mirror and recognized the stagger of girls who had been raped. He stopped, tucked them into the back seat and drove them to the hospital. They stayed until the next afternoon, but they would not say what their names were, where they lived or what had happened. The nurses told them a social worker was on her way, so they pulled the intravenous needles from their wrists, put on their old, filthy clothes and walked out into a city washed clean by a windstorm.
They went back to the foster home. When asked, they said they had spent the night in Stanley Park, sleeping in a gazebo by the Rose Garden, the faded petals in a cyclone around them. Their foster mother believed them because she wanted to. In her gut, she probably knew better.
Later, as the days went by, the girls knew they had changed, but the change was huge and still growing and impossible to contain. They were pissed off. They were sad. They ate everything they could find in the middle of the night. And they woke up in the morning pissed off again. It was an ever-expanding mass and they didn’t know how to stop it, or if they should. Anger, the older one reasoned, was better than sadness. They could think. They could laugh. They could push the hurt outward. And so they held onto the rage, and it was sharp and dangerous.
TWO THOUSAND AND SIXTEEN
FOURTEEN
JESSICA DIDN’T KNOW IF SHE SHOULD CRY OR STORM out of the house or wrap her arms around her grandmother’s thin shoulders. The migraine, muted with painkillers, throbbed gently behind her eyes, and she pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead. She looked at the photograph again. Devin looked hard in the eyes, like Granny Beth, but she thought she could see the uncertainty in his smile, as if he knew that his future was wavering and unformed, as if thinking about his grown-up future might be useless. She had seen that look before, with children who had been ill, or who had been homeless and were used to travelling from one thirty-day shelter to another. Donna looked as she did in every photograph ever taken: beatific, sunny, smiling as if this were the most important moment in the history of the world.
“I blamed her,” Granny Beth said, her eyes red and damp. “Even though I was never certain that she had kicked him over the edge. I was crying and the rain was so fast and heavy. Who knows what I saw? I blamed her until the end, even though she was only a child then. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t stop. She begged me to move to Vancouver, to sell this house, but I wouldn’t because it was something she wanted. I put her in an all-girls’ school down the highway, made her take choir, and she hated every second of it. When we agreed never to speak of Devin again, I still blamed her in my thoughts and, whenever she saw me, she knew it. I told her I didn’t want to see her unless I had to, and she honoured that. Later, she began sending me letters—she would try to explain the accident or write about how her life was about making sense of the tragedy and creating something good from it. After a while, I simply sent them back unopened. It was only recently, after she phoned to tell me she was dying, that I began reading them again. Death, when you’re as old as I am, makes everything else seem small and blameless.”
Granny shook her head. “They were only ten years old. Even if she had pushed him, would she have really known that he would fall all that way? Did she think ahead to what life without him meant? I’ve spent fifty-seven years trying to explain it to myself. I don’t think Donna herself knew if she had meant to hurt him or not. Not then, not later.”
Jessica knew Granny was right. What difference did it make? Except that there were two girls, twenty-eight years later, whose deaths should have made a difference and didn’t. And her mother’s past, this storm-scarred childhood, was where she had started, where she had watched her brother die, where she might have wished for his death and then kicked it into existence. She had loved him. She had tried to love Casey and Jamie too.
“The hardest thing I ever had to do was write to Charles to tell him Devin had died. He never did write me back, but he kept sending his cheques until Donna turned eighteen. He may very well be dead now too. I never tried to find out.”
“Mom told me he died when she was little.”
“Yes. I never told her differently.”
Jessica reached out and turned the picture over. “Do you want me to leave that here?”
Granny Beth looked up and stared. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and laughed, short and loud. “No. I have plenty of those. They’re in a box at the back of my closet. I used to look at them sometimes, but not in many years.”