The Conjoined

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  —

  That night, Jessica lay on a thin sofa mattress, an open book beside her on the mismatched sheets. Parminder had made up the bed while Jessica unpacked her overnight bag.

  “You can stay as long as you want,” she had said, tugging the elastic over a corner. “I know it’s small, but it’s free.” Parminder had laughed loudly. Jessica wasn’t sure if she should have joined in.

  She pulled the duvet up to her chin and stretched, her foot kicking the leg of a laminate desk. A green light on a folded laptop blinked slowly. Green. Green. Green. The room had no window, only a mirror hanging on the wall, meant, Jessica supposed, to simulate a feeling of space. The light in the ceiling was round and frosted, like a cold fake nipple.

  This den, with its thin drywall and oatmeal-coloured carpet, was miraculous to her. The architect who had designed it could never have imagined that this was where Jessica Campbell would strip away her old life and begin, slowly, to construct a new one. This entire building had been developed to maximize square footage and budget and to satisfy the predictably consistent desires of condo buyers. Every unit had granite counters, one and a half bathrooms, a balcony bordered with glass. No one had thought about the first breaths of transformation or the possibilities within windowless dens for chrysalis and birth and progress. Jessica clasped her hands over her stomach and held them tightly. If she let go, she might break into a mad, happy dance.

  Her phone rang. She peered at the screen, waiting for it to display the caller’s number. It wouldn’t be Trevor. He would be at home still, sitting on the floor, wound up tightly in his rage.

  Chris Gallo, it said.

  “Really?” Jessica whispered. She answered. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s Chris.” He spoke slowly, carefully.

  “It’s eleven o’clock.”

  Chris stifled a laugh. “I know. It just occurred to me that I haven’t talked to you in a while. You know, since the other night. So, how are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Of course, of course. Why wouldn’t you be fine?” In the background, Jessica could hear male voices, sloppy and loud.

  “Are you drunk?”

  Chris snorted. “What? No. Well, maybe a little.”

  “You’re drunk-dialling me. That’s hilarious. What are you, fifteen years old?”

  “It’s not like that. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. I was just out with my friends and I started thinking of you.” His voice was growing quieter with each word, as if he couldn’t quite understand what his brain was making him say. “So I called. Although I probably should have called two days ago. Fuck, I sound ridiculous.”

  Jessica laughed. “Yes, you sound ridiculous. And drunk. Don’t forget drunk.”

  “I mean, I should call you again tomorrow or something. You know, catch up.”

  It was the banter of courtship, the careful choosing of words so that they meant nothing and everything at once, so that the surface was easy and funny, but the subtext carried with it the weight of sex and the tumbling of feelings inside the gut. Jessica knew that he was asking her, without saying so, to take his hand if they should ever walk down the street together. He was asking to crawl into her bed at midnight and not leave until daylight shone through the window so they could see, finally, their unguarded faces lined with sleep and barely awake. He was asking her to take him on, this man who was Trevor’s opposite but also not, who could swallow her up as Trevor had until she was the police detective’s girlfriend, the one who nodded at his stories and kissed his cheeks when he came home, distraught over someone he wasn’t able to save.

  He wasn’t Trevor. But he was. She blinked and was surprised at the tear that spilled out.

  She imagined Chris lit by a dim bulb in a crowded bar, each crisp angle made blurry by shadows. His eyes gleamed brown and pulsing and generous and if she were with him right now, she could hold his face with both hands and kiss him, tasting the beer and beef and hot sauce on his tongue. She could bring him here and they could quietly, beautifully touch and fuck and giggle. She could run out and meet him. She could do it. She could.

  But as much as she had been trying to forget it, he was still the police officer who was trying to prove that her mother or father had murdered two foster girls and whose relationship with her could very well cost him his career. And she was an unemployed social worker who had just left her boyfriend because she no longer wanted the job or him or anything but the great emptiness that now, finally, surrounded her. As she sat on Parminder’s mattress and listened to the hiss of her phone in her hand, she knew that being with Chris would fill up her life again. No, she wanted to run through the space she had created. Alone.

  And what she couldn’t forget was that she had used him. Without him, she may have never left Trevor. Without him, she may have continued on as she was, hunched over with the weight of her job and her mother and an apartment she hated. She had used him and she knew she didn’t need him anymore. She shuddered with the coldness of it all, the dialogic feeling that she could love him, if she tried, but that it wasn’t necessary. It was him now, or someone else later, or no one at all.

  “I don’t think you should call, Chris. Unless we have police business to deal with, maybe we shouldn’t talk again. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute and all Jessica heard were the rhythmic sounds of a vigorous drinking game. They counted, then they cheered. She smiled.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “The post-mortem report is supposed to arrive on my desk next Monday. Not that I’m allowed to tell you that.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “You know, if things were different, I would take you out for dinner. Hell, I might even cook for you. It’s not all sex in cars, Jess. I can be a gentleman. Really.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, goodbye then, Jessica Campbell. Next time, I’ll drunk-dial your father instead.” They hung up, both laughing.

  She felt the weightlessness of the dark. It just barely ruffled the fine hairs on her arm and swept like whispers across her face. Jessica had spent the entire day cultivating this sense of possibility, of runways and hallways waiting to be hurtled through. Finding the truth about her mother didn’t matter anymore. Because this—this silent, soulless room—was what she had been waiting for.

  But as her thoughts blurred together and she started to fall asleep, Casey’s face, as she had seen it in her mother’s kitchen twenty-eight years ago, flashed through her head. The girls. What about them? They had disappeared, leaving only a ripple in the space they had once occupied in Jessica’s life. No one had understood that the truth might be stranger and more gruesome than just a simple escape from foster care and the birth family that had appeared to be hurting them. The truth—before, during and after—would have meant something to them.

  Jessica stared into the dimness. Casey had gambled everything for Wayne. He knew what that felt like. Somewhere in his head, no matter what he was doing or where he was living, he remembered. Jessica sat up and flipped the light switch. The laptop sat on the desk in front of her and she pulled it close, balancing it on her crossed legs. She would have to wait at least one more day for her new beginning.

  SIXTEEN

  WAYNE WAS A GHOST. ONLINE, JESSICA COULD FIND no trace of him. Not a post on a discussion board, not a mention at a class reunion, not even a blurry face in a group photo tagged with his name. She stood up to stretch her legs and glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. Three fifty-three and still nothing.

  She closed the browser on Parminder’s laptop and, as she was about to turn it off, she saw, in the corner of the screen, the small, grey icon that all social workers used to log into the province’s databases. When they were out assessing a family or at a meeting with psychologists and teachers, they could find the files they needed with just a name or a social insurance number or whate
ver they had. She stared. That morning, before she had left the office for the last time, she had watched her boss delete her email address and password from the system. “Security,” Karen had said, frowning. “You know how it is.”

  Maybe Parminder had saved her own login and password. She tapped on the icon and a window appeared. The fields were already filled. Jessica smiled. Technology. Magic.

  Quickly, she typed in Wayne’s first and last names and waited. One file. Two. Three men that shared his name who had accessed services through the province of British Columbia. She scanned the details. The first man, born in 1991 and currently out on bail, was too young. The second was a three-year-old that had been taken into care. The third, born in 1951, had last received income assistance two years ago when he had been living at an address on Kingsway in East Vancouver. No phone number, no email. Just an address. And a note that he no longer qualified for financial aid.

  Jessica typed the address into her phone and lay down on her side, her head deep in the pillows. Wayne existed. Two years ago, he was living here, in this city, seeing a financial aid worker, trying to pay rent and eat on $610 per month. Maybe he had found this demeaning and near-impossible. Or maybe he hadn’t cared and had spent his days in his bedroom, slowly blowing cigarette smoke out his open window and into the damp, fumy air.

  She could find out today. In six hours, she would get up, shower and find him. She closed her eyes and didn’t sleep. In Parminder’s windowless home office, she wasn’t even sure when it was dawn.

  —

  She stood in the doorway, under a stained, once-white awning, and shivered as the rain dripped around her and onto the sidewalk. The apartments were on the second floor, above a bakery that looked like it hadn’t been open since 2007. Across the street, a car wash and a series of produce markets and convenience stores, all with windows fogged over with condensation. Jessica had pressed the buzzer once already and was trying to decide whether she should press it again when a female voice crackled through the air.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello. My name is Jessica. I’m a social worker. I’m looking for Wayne.” She winced as she said this, knowing that she wasn’t lying but was instead fuzzing the truth just enough.

  “Wayne doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Do you know where he’s gone?”

  Ten seconds of silence. Then, “Why?”

  “I need to ask him some questions about a case I’m working on. Please.” Jessica’s voice rose. “It involves children.”

  “Hang on. I’ll come down.”

  A woman in her fifties emerged from the stairwell wearing a chocolate brown track suit and pink flip-flops. Her yellowish, greying hair was twisted into a collapsing bun on the top of her head, and she held a black, skinny dog in her arms. She stared at Jessica through the glass doors for a moment before twisting the lock open. She stood, half-in and half-out, her hip resting on the edge of the door.

  “What did you say your name was?” The dog sniffed in Jessica’s direction and bared its teeth.

  “Jessica.”

  “A kid, huh? Wayne never had any kids.”

  Jessica pulled her jacket tighter against the wind whipping toward them. “It’s not about a child that he was ever taking care of. It’s an old case.” She could see that the woman was waiting for her to continue and was not going to answer any questions until she was satisfied it was worth her time. “He was friends with the family until the children went into foster care.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. With her face drawn in, she and the dog looked so alike that Jessica wanted to laugh. The dog growled. “Did he do something to them?”

  “No. Well, not anything illegal.”

  “That sounds about right. Wayne never actually did anything illegal. Maybe they were wrong or stupid, but never illegal.” She shifted the dog to her right arm and reached into the pocket of her hoodie. “I haven’t talked to him in two years, not since his mom died. She left him the house, you know, and a bunch of insurance money, so he didn’t need me anymore.” She laughed but then started coughing. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  She scrolled through a phone. “There. His parents’ address. I don’t know why I even still have this in here. It’s not like I ever go over for tea.” She read off a number and a street in Strathcona, just east of Chinatown.

  “Thanks so much. I’m sorry, I didn’t even ask for your name.”

  The woman smiled and swept a strand of hair off her face. “It’s Heather. You can tell that shit stain that I still hate his ass. But Pluto here says hello.” At the sound of his name, the little dog barked before Heather stepped backward and let the door fall shut again.

  —

  It was just before noon by the time Jessica had stopped to buy coffee and a muffin and pulled up in front of Wayne’s house. She sat in her car, windows rolled up, and ate, barely tasting the blueberries and cinnamon and sugar. All she could think about was what Casey would want her to say to the man she had loved but never said goodbye to. If Casey had grown up and lived through the past twenty-eight years, Jessica was certain she would no longer be with Wayne, that their relationship would have been one of those moments in a woman’s life that defies explanation, that requires a suspension of sense to even remember. But she didn’t grow up and she didn’t live, so all Jessica could consider were the wishes of a fourteen-year-old Casey, the girl who had made decisions with resources both meagre and remote.

  She would want him to know that she’d loved him. She had always intended to be with him. She had never, not once, changed her mind.

  Jessica ran through the rain to the front door, faded grey but with streaks of red still clinging to the wood. No doorbell, only an old brass knocker that she could barely fit her fingers in. Her knock was louder than she expected and she half-turned to look behind her, in case the neighbours had heard and were streaming out of their houses to watch the ruckus. But the street, with warehouses at one end and small, wood-sided houses on the other, stayed empty. She knocked a second time, more quietly, and a third. No answer.

  She stepped on the path that led around the side and to the backyard. Jessica could hear Chris Gallo scolding her in her head. This is unsafe, he said. You’re alone, walking into the backyard of a man you’ve never met but whom you know has done his share of harm. What are you doing? Of course, she knew this could be unsafe. Of course, it was possible Wayne was angry and violent. But it was also possible he was sad and forgotten, that he had been waiting, all this time, for the girl he loved to come back to him. Jessica turned the corner and found herself standing on a concrete pad just outside the basement door. There, hunched underneath the sagging porch, was Wayne.

  He was facing her, and she supposed he had heard her footsteps on the path. He looked confused by her, but nodded when she put up her hand in greeting. He was tanned, with deep lines on his forehead and around his mouth. His eyes, narrow and set close together, were ringed in red. Slowly, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from the front pocket of his denim jacket.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all.”

  The lighter flared and Wayne closed his eyes as he inhaled. “Are you with the city?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The neighbours. They told me if I didn’t clear out the weeds, they’d call the city.” He waved his hand toward the back fence, where blackberry brambles grew over the pickets, tangled and sharp. Burdock pushed up through cracks in the empty driveway.

  “I’m actually a social worker, not a bylaw officer.”

  “Social worker? Why are you here?”

  She stepped forward until she was close enough to smell the beer and smoke soaked into Wayne’s clothes. “I used to live with Casey and Jamie. In their last foster home.”

  Wayne reached out and gripped one of the mossy posts holding up the porch. Ash f
rom his cigarette fell onto his canvas sneakers, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

  “I don’t know if anyone told you, but the girls didn’t run away. Someone found their bodies a week ago. Actually, it was my dad and me. We found them.”

  She couldn’t see the expression on his face as he stood, bent over. Finally, he dropped the cigarette. “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I knew they didn’t run away. That’s what the cops kept saying, after they figured out I had nothing to do with it. I told them that we had plans, Casey and me, and that we talked about them over and over again. She wanted things. She didn’t want to be a street kid. But they didn’t listen. Why would they? I was just a pervert to them and, besides, girls went missing all the time back then, the kind of girls cops don’t give two shits about.” He paused and raised his head. “How did they die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You said you found them. What do you mean you don’t know?”

  Jessica looked to her left, at the mountains half-obscured by grey clouds. On days like this, she often felt that the city shrank, that nothing else beyond the rain even existed. “After my mother died, we were cleaning out her things and we found them in her freezers. I don’t know how they got there. The police say they’re working on it.”

  “Did your parents kill them?”

  “My father didn’t, I’m sure of it. As for my mother, I used to think that she wasn’t capable, but now I don’t know what to think.”

  Wayne nodded, as if this relinquishment of certainty made the kind of sense he understood. “The police never tell anyone anything. They don’t care if not knowing makes us want to kill ourselves. They just don’t give a fuck.”

  “Do you think about her still?”

  “All the time. Awake. Asleep. Whenever.”