The Gallery of Lost Species

by Nina Berkhout

  “Quit meddling, Worm. Why the fuck you carry such meaningless baggage around is beyond me,” she said, almost with spite.

  “You’d hate her less if you’d let me explain.”

  “Yeah, right. Are those yurts?” She pointed to some circular tents. Then she got up and skipped a rock across the water’s surface. When she turned back to face me, I snapped a picture with the old Holga, which I’d salvaged before Constance could throw it away.

  From the forest, there came the sound of a sorrowful voice on a crackling record. There was opera music coming from speakers on the other side of the lake.

  Viv lay down and closed her eyes. “Tino Rossi. ‘Je crois entendre encore.’”

  “Pardon?”

  “From The Pearl Fishers opera. Bizet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Con had the CD.”

  * * *

  ON OUR SECOND night, a group of twenty-somethings put up their tents beside our site. Their campfire blazed three times the size of ours and they invited us over. The sound of beer cans opening echoed through the trees and Viv kept stealing glimpses, eating marshmallow after marshmallow as the group got louder.

  “Why did you take the paperweights?”

  “Because I couldn’t find your wallet,” she said. Then her expression darkened. “I was broke. I’ll get them back.”

  “What were you doing in North Bay?”

  “Treatment.”

  “Guess you changed your mind.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  She told me she’d been in a local facility for the last month while on a waiting list for the one in North Bay. The centre called because someone dropped out. She had to be there within two days or the next person on the list would get her spot.

  “The bus ride was eight hours. It stopped in every town. It was past nine by the time I arrived. I took a cab from the station to the building and they buzzed me in. I smelled food. I was starving. They even told me I’d have my own room.” My sister added logs to the flames. “After I filled out the paperwork, the nurse excused herself and came back with her superior, who took me into his office. ‘When did you last use?’ he asked. I told him four weeks, which was fine, you had to be clean for two weeks—they didn’t do monitored detox. His hair was like Johnny Cash’s and he had these thick black eyebrows. He fixed his beady eyes on my throat and said, ‘You’re lying.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about and I told him so. ‘What about the joint four days ago?’ he asked. ‘My doctor suggested it if I sensed the DTs coming on. I don’t even like pot,’ I said. ‘We can’t admit you with marijuana in your system,’ he said. ‘But it’s not in my system.’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘My problem is with alcohol.’ ‘Those are the rules. If we made an exception with you, we’d have to make one with everybody.’ He told me I could reapply and that the girl at the front desk would call me a taxi.”

  Viv zipped up her fleece, glancing over at the drinkers through the trees before pulling in closer to the fire.

  “If only I’d lied on the form,” she said, her voice monotone. She tied her hair into a ponytail. “I grabbed his arm and begged him to let me stay. ‘Miss Walker, I encourage you to reapply,’ he kept saying. I lost my temper. ‘What is this, fucking Juilliard? I’m asking for help, isn’t that what you people are supposed to do?’ He motioned to the security guard. I told him to get his hands off me. I grabbed my bag and tried leaving, but the doors were locked. I couldn’t get out. The admissions girl, who looked like a junkie herself, rushed over to open them.

  “I felt like a thousand eyes were watching me from inside that godforsaken place. The cab took forever. When the driver let me off at the station, it was eleven. There was no one else there and the bus wasn’t due till six. I sat down in one of the rows of hard bucket seats. Couldn’t even spread out or lie down. And then I saw it, across the road from the terminal. A sign was flashing Bar on and off like some sick joke.

  “All I had was a twenty. The centre was going to bus us back to the city when the program ended and we weren’t allowed to bring in any money. I walked over to the vending machines, but none of them took bills. And the change machine was out of order.

  “I could get change in the bar. Or I could order four pints. I could hit on whatever guy was in there and have him buy me rounds for two hours solid. Or I could go around back to off-sales. Last call would be 2 a.m. and the bar would stay open till three. I stared at the flashing sign, my body screaming. Then I called you. It was the longest night of my life.”

  The group was jumping in the lake. We could hear them in the distance, the laughter, the splashing.

  * * *

  WHEN WE DROVE home the next day, Viv asked that I drop her at the apartment. She’d made a call and arranged for the key to be left under the mat since she was arriving a day early.

  She was renting a unit in a basement on a residential street known for its gangs and crime, not far from where she’d lived with Liam in Chinatown.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to that transitional place?”

  She shook her head. “There’s bedbugs. Thieves.”

  We stopped off at Home Depot and bought an air mattress, a folding card table, and chairs.

  “What about blankets and pillows?”

  “Have some.”

  “Let me get you a few things.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How long will you sleep on that?”

  “Till first pay.” She had a telemarketing job with a phone company.

  “What about food?”

  “I have what I need. Go home.”

  I helped her carry her belongings down. We set up the table and unfolded the vinyl chairs. Viv put batteries in the mattress and turned the motor on until it inflated.

  I looked around the grim space, no more than five hundred square feet. “Maybe you could start painting again, Vee.”

  She raised her arms then, like a surgeon in pre-op. They shook. “Wake up. I can’t paint.”

  “Your hands will get better.”

  “That ship has sailed, little sister.”

  “You’re still young.”

  “Edith, I’m tired. Please go.”

  I decided to get her blankets anyway. I knew she wouldn’t have money for weeks. I went to the nearby Giant Tiger and chose cheerful yellow sheets, a duvet, some pillows, and a shade plant she could hook from the ceiling. Then I returned to her place.

  Before knocking, I peered into the basement window, a habit I’d picked up since being traumatized by my father’s affair. Through the pane I caught sight of my sister in deep concentration standing at the sink, pouring a purple jellied paste from a can into a white sock then squeezing the sock she held above a glass. The Sterno cooking fuel from the box of camping supplies in the trunk of the Buick.

  She shot a glance around the room until her eyes landed on the small, dirty window. When she saw me, her expression changed into that of an ensnared animal. I shot up from where I stooped, hitting my head against the wood beam from the deck above.

  I rushed back to the car and sat with the keys in the ignition, waiting for the pounding to subside. I touched my skull and my fingers came back red. I worried about splinters in my scalp and the possibility of infection.

  The car wouldn’t start. I’d flooded the engine and had to wait outside her building on the dismal street for another half-hour.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I ROLLED UP MY sleeve and Dr. Shaw cuffed my arm with his black band, closing the valve on the rubber bulb and pumping it rapidly. He was our physician growing up. Even then he seemed old, with his caterpillar brows and wiry hair sprouting from his ears. He’d seen us through chicken pox and mumps, through stitches and injured limbs. He’d filled out the death certificate at my father’s bedside.

  “What’s the problem, young lady?” He opened the valve, allowing the pressure to fall.

  Other than having him check the cut on my head, I didn’t know how to express what was wr
ong. Liam had been gone seven months. I wasn’t pregnant. Yet everything set me off lately. I couldn’t take a walk in the park without getting choked up at passersby. When I saw families and babies, that upset me too.

  “My heart’s been racing. I’m not sleeping.”

  He ran his cold stethoscope down my back. I looked up at the shelf displaying a three-dimensional model of clean, pink lungs while he shone the head of a light instrument in my ears.

  Feeling for the glands beneath my jawbone, he inquired, “How has your energy level been?”

  “I’m not depressed.”

  “Broken heart?” He hit my knee with his little red hammer. “If that’s the case, I assure you you’ll be fine.” He reached into a jar of wood depressors. “Tongue. How’s work?”

  “We have a unicorn.”

  He laughed and scratched his head. “I think a holiday, maybe.”

  “Or sleeping pills.”

  “Are you still using an inhaler?”

  “Once in a blue moon.”

  “You grew out of that. Technically, you’re not asthmatic anymore. Do you recall our discussion about crutches?” He’d stopped prescribing Ventolins to me years ago. I got them from walk-in clinics.

  “We’re done here.” He pulled the curtain, dividing me from his desk heaped with manila files. He was one of the few doctors who hadn’t made the switch to computers yet. “No concussion, no stitches. You won’t die.”

  “This office was so big to me when we were kids,” I told him, pulling the curtain back and lacing my runners. Dr. Shaw gestured for me to take the chair across from him.

  “The universe has a way of shrinking as we grow older, doesn’t it.” He blinked up at the lungs. “How is your sister?”

  “She’s an addict. We lose track of her sometimes. I’m sure my mom told you.”

  “I wasn’t aware.” His expression didn’t change as he wrote in my chart. “Well, my dear. Do yoga and cut back on caffeine. Stimulants cause palpitations.” He paused before adding, “And take some time off.”

  “From what?”

  “From whatever gave you the goose egg.” He was out of insights to offer. He retrieved a sucker from the jar on his desk and handed it to me the way he used to do when we were small. “So that adventurous mother of yours is back from Florida, is she?”

  “She is.” I pulled the candy from its wrapper. “But not for long.”

  * * *

  WHEN I ARRIVED to replace Alejandro in the viewing room, the old man with the unkempt grey hair was there again, along with a few regulars. “Have fun,” Alejandro said, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair and his Hello! magazine from the desk.

  I decided to get my rounds over with so I could work through the afternoon uninterrupted.

  “Hi, Maud, need help?” Maud was the daughter of a renowned Canadian cartoonist who hadn’t left his family anything; it had all gone to the mistress, who donated it to the Gallery in her will. A retired schoolteacher with a dejected air, every week Maud came in to audit her father’s drawings with a magnifying glass.

  “I’m fine,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

  Arnold was at the next table over and he only came to the viewing room because of Maud. They’d met at a volunteers’ luncheon. The sun came through the skylight onto his reddening, bald head. “Arnold, do you want to move? You’d be cooler over in the corner.”

  “No, no, Edith, I’m content here.”

  “What are you reviewing today?”

  “Oh, whosits and whatsits,” he replied, opening a portfolio onto a flat sketch of rotting fruit beside a pocket watch.

  Dorothy was farther back, grumbling to herself as she took notes on Dürer. She was my least favourite client—a curator forced to retire, who came in nearly every day.

  “All good, Dorothy?”

  “I need more place markers.” She held up the empty box without greeting me, shaking it. “And these pencils are unacceptable.” Elaborate layers of clashing fabrics swathed her obese body. I took the box and moved on to the table at the very back, where the old man sat.

  “Hi. Dr. de Buuter, right?” It had been a few months since his last visit, but I remembered him. He glanced up and nodded before returning to his notebook. His worn leather shoes reminded me of a Van Gogh painting and his watery eyes bordered on black, like mine.

  “What did you say was your name?”

  I detected an accent. “I’m Edith.”

  He stood, lifting his chair and moving it aside easily this time. “A pleasure to meet you.” He gave me a solid handshake. I’d expected a frailer grip.

  I took a step back to give him space. There was this great stockiness about him. His hands, feet, and shoulders were all too big, and his features were off kilter—the wide jaw and the aquiline nose, his sunken eyes and arched brows set on a low, deeply lined forehead.

  I found it hard to make eye contact with him for more than a few seconds. I moved my gaze to the table. He was studying the same Gauguin woodcut.

  “His better work is in the Post-Impressionist room,” I ventured. “I can show you if you’d like.”

  “Thank you, but I have seen all of Gauguin’s œuvre.”

  “All of it?”

  “Unless some are in hiding.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  I wondered if something was wrong with his tear ducts. I’d heard about such a condition that came with ageing.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” I told him, rolling my trolley away.

  I catalogued some shoddy still lifes. For the last half-hour of the day I read my book on unicorns. I’d set it aside and had only recently returned to it. Growing up, when Constance told me that in times of duress the first thing that went was the ability to read, I thought it was a pretext for her not to peruse anything longer than the two-page features in her fashion magazines. Yet ever since Liam left, I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes.

  Maud exited and Arnold followed shortly after. At five to four, Dorothy waddled out. In my peripheral vision I could see De Buuter slowly packing up. When he arrived at my desk, I noticed he was using a cane. He tucked his notepad under his arm to sign the ledger. I put down my book and he paused when he saw the cover.

  “‘The unicorn lived in a lilac wood.’”

  “Pardon?”

  “‘The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.’” His coarse lips stretched into a smile. “The Last Unicorn. Have you not read it?”

  I shook my head. “A lot of cultures still believe in it,” I remarked, thinking of Peng.

  “Yes.” He gave me a contemplative look. “There have been sightings, as recently as a few years back.” He leaned his cane against my desk to adjust his glasses. “There is usually an explanation, though. A lot are rhinoceroses. Or gazelles, seen far away from the side.” He pointed to the book cover, adding, “Often there is no comprehensible boundary between memory and imagination.”

  * * *

  I’D STOPPED COOKING after Liam left, reverting to my old habits.

  When I got home that night, I made a grilled cheese sandwich and heated a can of soup. Then I read about the highly regarded German naturalist of the seventeenth century, Gottfried Leibniz, whose belief in unicorns was based on a skeleton excavated in a mountain quarry in Germany. Leibniz sketched the skeleton in his book on fossils so his brute could take its place in the natural classification system.

  I took a bath and before going to sleep I examined the ludicrous drawing. It had no hind legs, so it stood on two feet with its tailbone resting on the ground. The skeleton was later proven to be a fake made out of rhinoceros and mammoth bones. Leibniz the great scientist was ridiculed.

  Turning off my bedside lamp, I thought about this animal that had gone from the highbrow discipline of science to the bedrooms of girls across North America, in the form of mass-produced toys accompanied by fairies. Viv had a crown with an enamel unicorn on it, which Con embellis
hed with rhinestones. Whenever she wore it, the unicorn jutted from her forehead like the adornment of a prophetess predicting a dazzling future.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I STARTED HAVING THIS recurring dream.

  Liam is at my door. When I open it, he says, “I’ve fallen back in love with you.”

  I tell him, “I know this is a dream because no one ever says they’ve fallen back in love. It doesn’t happen.”

  “I was testing you,” he replies from his shaft of light.

  When he steps toward me, his hands and feet are made of hard blue stone. He tantalizes me with kisses and says, in a whisper that gets progressively louder, “Your sister is dying your sister is dying YOUR SISTER IS DYING YOUR SISTER—”

  One night, after waking from this scene, I was unable to sleep. I started reading about the unicorn’s demise. In Biblical stories, unicorns were thrown from the Ark, into the deluge. Or they were expelled from the boat by Noah himself because they were too high maintenance. Other historians insisted unicorns swam ashore and still existed in their lonesome hinterland. Then there were those who said that civilization would never see a unicorn again because they weren’t granted passage on the Ark, but no one knew why. Or they stubbornly avoided boarding. Like in that Irish Rovers tune played at Finnegan’s pub, where Liam and Viv used to sneak me in.

  They had barrels of peanuts at Finnegan’s that you scooped up with straw baskets, the saltiness making patrons thirstier. The floor of that place was slippery, littered with shells. People kept falling.

  In the song, the unicorns missed the boat because they were frolicking in the rain. As the Ark sailed, the singing slowed to an ominous narrative. The unicorns were stuck on rocks in the rising flood. The unicorns were drowning.

  * * *

  ONE WARM JUNE day, I came home to three messages asking me to come to the hospital. I was my sister’s emergency contact.

  I called Constance, who happened to be in the city that week. When we arrived, Viv was complaining that she couldn’t feel her arms or legs.

  “That’s the least of your problems,” the doctor said, consulting her chart. He blandly explained that the painful tingling and numbness was caused by a vitamin B deficiency. Viv’s body could no longer absorb and store thiamine, which was affecting her nervous system and her heart.