I rolled my trolley to his table to prepare the Gauguins for re-shelving. Curious, I opened the top file to see which print he’d examined.
The woodcut was of a long-haired woman squatting on the ground beside a large bird. Next to the bird there was a dog biting into the bird’s back. There was a set of eyes in the background, and two other female faces—one cloaked as if in prayer and one tilting her head back as if in elation. The text Le Sourire was written above the dog. Evidently our curators didn’t care much for the print. According to the file, it hadn’t been viewed in more than ten years.
I packed my purse and locked up, detouring down the glass ramp to get outdoors. I passed under Maman and ran my hand along one of her legs. Her bronze was warm from the afternoon sun. “Hey, spinner,” I said as I leaned on her limb before moving on.
Hey spinster, she replied.
* * *
I FOUND VIV outside the Laff, talking to a guy in a toque whose jeans were so low-riding I wanted to pull them up for him. I called to her from across the street. She pecked him on the cheek and ran over. She was so thin her purse looked like it weighed more than she did.
“Garbage head,” she said breathlessly.
“Huh?”
“That guy. He’s a garbage head.”
“What’s that?”
“A junkie.”
“You don’t do drugs, then?” I stopped walking and stood in front of her.
“Hell no.”
“I found a pipe in your room once.”
“That’s a lifetime ago.” She turned to keep walking.
I grabbed her wrist. “Promise?”
“Yes. Let go.” She wrenched her arm away, pulling sunglasses from her purse and checking a cellphone.
“How can you afford a cell?” When she didn’t respond, I studied her protruding cheekbones. “Why are you so gaunt?”
“I have a fast metabolism. You know that.”
I didn’t warn her that Liam was staying with me. I needed him to see her as she was now. So he’d be over her once and for all.
When we got home, Viv asked if she could use the shower. I offered to put her clothes in the laundry and I made up the pullout. Then I ran to the pizza place on the corner. By the time I returned, Liam was storming out of the house.
“What the fuck!”
“You’re early. I was going to tell you—”
“What’s she doing in the bedroom half naked? What the fuck!?” He paced back and forth on the sidewalk.
“She has nowhere to go.”
“Do you ever think before doing anything, Edith?”
Viv materialized at the door in one of my sweaters. I reached for Liam’s hand, self-conscious now that my sister was watching us.
“It’s for a few days. I couldn’t let her stay on the street.”
Liam turned to Viv, who was drying her hair. “Christ, Edith. She’s manipulating you.”
Viv smiled and waved then went back inside. Liam threw his bag through the door, got onto his bike, and rode off.
When I re-entered the apartment, I found Viv staring at her painting and our father’s beside it on the wall. I put the pizza on the kitchen counter. She turned to me as she combed through the knots in her hair.
“Nice of you to let me know,” she mumbled.
“I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”
She pulled a slice of pizza from the box and picked all the toppings off.
“Where’s the nearest liquor store?”
“Two blocks that way.” I pointed. “Shouldn’t you rest?”
She fished through her purse and slid on some flip-flops.
“You’ll catch a cold wearing those,” I said as the door clattered behind her.
I sat down, displaced. Twenty minutes later Viv came back with two magnums of white wine. The first she put in the freezer. The second she opened. There was a glugglug-glug before she brought us each a glass, carrying the bottle under one arm. She put it on the floor and took her cigarettes from her purse.
“I guess I don’t need to ask what’s new with you.” Her upper lip curled into a snarl.
“You can’t smoke in here.”
She dropped the remote in my lap, picked up her glass, and went out onto the porch.
I turned on the TV and flipped channels, stopping on a show called Birding Adventures. The episode was about red-footed boobies in Belize. I thought of that old man in the Gallery and questioned what he was doing there studying Gauguin’s crummy prints. He wasn’t fit enough to be a birder. What was his story? I wondered, watching the seabirds plummet into the ocean for fish and squid, until I heard muffled voices on the other side of the door.
Liam had returned. Their discussion got louder and became argumentative. I let them have it out.
Then things got too quiet. With stealth, I approached the window. They were sitting on the front steps side by side, their skin almost touching. Viv put her hand on Liam’s arm. When he looked at her, I realized my mistake.
A half-hour later, Liam came inside, then Viv. I told him that we should let my sister rest. We said good night to her and closed the bedroom door. In bed, he didn’t touch me. Instead, he got up to go to the washroom a lot. Each time he left the room, I heard him talking with Viv.
It rained in the early morning. When the sun appeared, I went out onto the deck. Along the railing there was a web strung with quartz-like water pellets. My senses were heightened from lack of sleep.
I examined the spider and its fine weaving that had survived the downpour and the wind.
It was a miraculous insect that unendingly rebuilt what got torn down. Being near this industrious spider, which had an inner strength I didn’t seem to have, bolstered me. I felt the same way when I stood by Maman. Then I thought of Constance, our resilient and defensive matriarch. Our protector and our predator. Catching my sister in her threads, spinning her dreams and fears and desires around her to entrap her.
Viv was gone. The empty bottles were by the back door.
“Did you tell her to go?” I asked Liam when he came out, trying to hide my relief.
“I didn’t have to. That’s Vivienne for you,” he said. “She’ll be back when she needs something.”
The wind rose and shook the leaves from the trees. The leaves snapped off branches and rattled around our feet. The rusts and golds were fading like my sister’s loveliness. I stared at them intently, knowing that, within weeks, only a hint of colour would remain.
TWENTY-SEVEN
AFTER VIV’S CAMEO, LIAM was even more standoffish and moody. When I tried getting near him physically, he invented excuses and shut me out.
“What did you two talk about?” I asked one night. He’d been working at the kitchen table for hours and hadn’t said a word to me.
“Hmmm?”
“You and Viv. On the porch.”
“Can’t remember.”
I sat down beside him. “I have a right.”
Liam, morose, closed his laptop obligingly. “It doesn’t concern you, Edith.”
“Tell me,” I persisted. Our relationship had become like a towel washed too often, its softness gone.
“Fine,” he said, turning to face me. “I asked if there’d been someone else while I was with her. I always had this feeling she was keeping something from me.”
“Why are you still thinking about that?”
Liam didn’t answer. He looked apprehensive. “Let’s get some air,” he proposed.
We walked along the canal under boughs of crabapple trees, the branches weighed down by ruby fruit. Apples were ripening in the grass and turning to mush on the walkway, giving off a sour, woody odour.
“I’ve accepted more fieldwork,” he told me.
What I was hearing was illogical. I reinterpreted his words.
“Can you still bike? Is it nearby?”
He stopped walking and squeezed my shoulder with one hand, swatting away wasps with the other.
“What about our camping trip?”
I asked, staring off at the path where white wild roses clung to their low shrubs like crumpled Kleenex. It was late October and they should have been dead already.
Then Liam said he had work to do at the university. He left me to walk back alone and told me not to wait up. He would crash on his office couch.
Once home, I sat on the bed and took off my socks, rubbing my heels. I should have paid more attention to Liam’s feet. I should have drawn them. As I’d learned through Schlippenberger, one of the most difficult parts of the body to sketch was the foot. Maybe if I could have brought him to his basic geometrical form and detailed on paper what, in essence, the entirety of Liam rested on, balanced on, moved on, I would have better understood him: his contours, shapes, and shading. His angles.
That night, I hoarded all my Liam memories. The more details of him I accumulated in my mind, the more I could afford to lose, like preparing for strip poker by wearing too many layers.
My bonsai pot was a permanent fixture on the bookshelf, although the tree was no longer alive. Within weeks of Liam giving it to me, the tiny flowers had shrivelled up. I’d watered it like I was supposed to. I’d misted it and kept an eye on light exposure and still the leaves continued falling on their bed of pebbles, revealing intricate branches like lacework.
I’d wanted so much to see it produce its orange fruit. Liam hadn’t masked his aggravation when he noticed it was dying.
“What did you do, poison it?” He took a butter knife from the kitchen and scraped a bit of bark off the trunk. Beneath the bark, the wood was greyish where it should have been green. Liam tsked and said, “I won’t be trusting you with my life!”
The dead wood sculpture still possessed an eerie beauty. This weathered tree bleached from the sun, after all else had fallen away. All that remained was a stark, bone-white hunger.
* * *
HE DIDN’T SAY when he’d be taking off and I didn’t ask. One day I came home early and it was as though he’d never been there. His toothbrush was gone, and all his clothes from the dresser. His books and his papers and his rocks. Only his bike leaned against the wall near the door, the seat and handlebars wrapped in plastic.
I poured myself a glass of wine. I removed an earring and dropped it into the saddlebag. In due course it would snag on his fingers like a fish hook and he’d think of me.
I made his favourite macaroni casserole. I set the table and put on the skimpy velvet dress that drove him mad. I poured another glass of wine then smeared on some crimson lipstick. I sat on the couch and kept drinking.
An hour went by before he pulled up in a U-Haul. “Oh, hey,” he said, coming in. He didn’t expect me to be there. In all likelihood he’d prepared a note.
“It’s your going-away party,” I told him, opening a second bottle.
“This is too much,” he murmured. He was unfocused, glancing around, looking everywhere but at me.
“Can’t have you slinking out of here without a goodbye.” I gestured for him to sit down. I turned on the radio and lit the candles even though it was still bright out. While he checked his phone, I slopped half the dish onto his plate then daubed ketchup from the squeeze bottle all over it.
“More wine?” I asked. He covered his glass as I refilled mine.
“No thanks.”
“I gather you’re ready to take off.” I gave a lighthearted giggle. The upper layer of shells was burnt. He was having a hard time swallowing. “Tell me about it,” I said too forcefully.
“Let’s not do this.” His cutlery clanked on his plate.
“What is it?” I asked, getting up and going over to him. I crouched and blew in his ear. Licked his cheek. “You want to go at it one last time?”
I increased the volume on the radio. Some down-in-thedumps jazz was playing. Moving to the slow piano, horns, and snare brush, I closed my eyes and swayed to the music as exotically as I could, stumbling once or twice. I put his hands on my waist, ran them up my body. When I peeled the top half of my dress to my hips, he stood abruptly.
He grabbed my wrist, but I kept dancing, half naked now, pressing against him until he got hold of my other arm and shook me. “Stop it, Edith. This doesn’t become you.”
His grip burned my skin. When he let go and walked away, I stomped after him. He wouldn’t turn toward me, so I removed a slipper and threw it at him. There was a small whipping sound as it slapped him in the back.
“I thought you liked your girls like this.” He stood at the window with his hands in his pockets. “Look at me, Liam. Look at me!” His composure made me want to explode.
I smashed my plate on the floor. Macaroni and pieces of ceramic went sliding across the hardwood. I took his plate and hurled it against the wall. The noodles stuck to the surface like a grotesque abstract.
That caught his attention. His eyes were on me again, so I picked up where I left off with the dancing until a sharp pain shot through my heel, causing me to yelp. Liam kept watching, not offering help as I hobbled over to the chair.
My nails were too short to pull the shard from my heel. The more I dug around, the bloodier my foot became. Soon I gave up. I felt so tired. I leaned on the table and rested my head on my crossed arms.
“Why can’t you let her go?” I said, enunciating each word carefully.
“Because you won’t let me, Edith!” Liam screamed.
I rubbed my eyes and surveyed him. He was visibly baffled. “She’s the way she is now because of you,” I told him, trying not to slur. “You destroyed her life and mine!”
He detached his keys from the ring and placed them on the table. “I was going to stay the night, but I’ll go.”
“You’re dead inside like your rocks. You can’t feel anything.”
I didn’t resist when he reached out to slide my arms through the straps, pulling the dress back up over my shoulders. “Get some sleep,” he told me. He rolled his bike to the door, closing it tactfully behind him.
I rose early with a migraine. I staggered to the bathroom for Aspirin and removed the shard from my heel with tweezers. Then I lay in the dark for an hour before getting up for juice. Nothing quenched my dehydration. I wondered how Viv could drink so much, but then Raven had said real drinkers didn’t ever get hangovers. Instead, they woke up wanting more.
I wrote a long letter to Liam that I deleted. The email I eventually sent simply said, I’m sorry. I love you. Part of me believed that was all it would take.
I never heard back. I thought he’d return, but he didn’t.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ON THE SEVENTEENTH FLOOR of Sunset Towers, the door flew open and my mother drew me into her cloud of rosewater perfume while Mira yipped at my ankles. I pushed the dog away with my foot.
“Where is your sister?” She glanced down the hall.
“No idea.”
This was a lie. I’d seen Viv hanging out at the Lafayette since she’d left my place. The drinking tavern was a few blocks from the Gallery on a seedy corner in the Market. From the sidewalk the scent of warm hops emanated over vendors’ stalls of strawberries and tomatoes. Getting produce there on my lunch break, I’d gone by the Laff and spotted my sister inside at least a half-dozen times, sitting on the vinyl bench against the wall. I never went in. Instead, I rushed by, hoping Viv wouldn’t see me.
“Ah.” Con’s face dropped. She recovered with a radiant smile. “Next time!”
I eased myself onto the peach couch in the living room and slipped off my shoes, running my toes along the shag rug. Mira hopped into my lap, turning circles before settling. A children’s barrette secured the dog’s hair in a spurt between her ears.
My mother was tanned and thin. Her new hairstyle, an upsweep of blond and grey tints in a loose chignon, suited her, showing off her dancer’s neck.
“And how is Liam?” she called out.
“Gone.”
“Non! Le maudit.”
She came over to the couch and sat down beside me. When I stifled a sob, she took my hands in hers.
Suitcases were stacked beneath the pearly mantelpiece cluttered with framed pictures. My eyes fell on the blackand-white shot of a voluptuous Constance on Henry’s lap in a smoky Greenwich Village café. She kept these old ones up like artifacts among those of her and Pierre on beaches and in yacht clubs. Maybe at a certain age widowers incited each other to display their past selves. This was me in my other life. Look what I did. Look what I had.
There was a picture of me and Viv up there too, from when we were maybe four and seven. Lodged into the rocking chair on the porch, wearing cowboy hats our father found at a yard sale. We wore those hats until the straw dried up and crumbled.
There was also a shot of my teenaged sister on the mantel, in the backyard assembling an easel. In it, Viv was deep in concentration, kneeling in the grass with her chin on her knee and pieces of wood all around her. Our father’s shadow projected along the pavement. There was a strong breeze that day. You could see it in the way the uncut grass bent, and the striped curtains from my bedroom blew like signalling flags. I lay on the bed reading. Through my open window I heard our father say, “You have a gift, Vivienne, use it.” They didn’t see me peek out, as Constance put her arm around my sister. From then on I waited for my parents to tell me what my gift was, but that day never came.
“Did you have a nice birthday?” my mother asked, tearing open a suitcase and flinging a seafoam dress at me. The garment hovered in the air before landing on Mira.
I set it aside and followed her into the kitchen. She popped frozen waffles into the toaster, opened a can of mandarins, and pulled Cool Whip from the fridge.
We brought our plates into the solarium with a view to the river and the copper Parliament rooftops. The Gallery dispersed white light, clear and colourless like a diamond on the horizon. We sat in her universal plastic chairs, eating without talking while Mira nibbled on the potted herbs.
The Gallery of Lost Species Page 13