The Gallery of Lost Species

by Nina Berkhout

  My sister shot me a nasty look when she saw our mother. She shared her space with a comatose man whose forehead was bandaged. He had no visitors.

  When she fell asleep, the doctor—his name was Dr. Black—led us into a claustrophobic room that smelled of menthol, to inform us that Viv had cirrhosis.

  “Blood work indicates a possibility of coexistent autoimmune hepatitis, a disease that usually affects young females and progresses to cirrhosis if not detected early and treated. In Vivienne’s case, excessive alcohol use has exacerbated her condition and accelerated progression to the end stage.”

  From our disbelief he could see we thought this was a medical blunder, a mix-up of charts. Only lifelong drinkers and lurid old men died from liver failure. Viv had just turned twenty-five.

  “Definite proof of AIH would come from a liver biopsy, but that carries a certain amount of risk,” he explained. “And the results wouldn’t modify the actual treatment, which is transplant, since the disease has already advanced too much.”

  He told us the condition was irreversible.

  In a stupor, I watched the lips on his weary face reiterating the same speech he probably delivered day in day out to other families. “The transplant wait is two years and, frankly, people like Vivienne aren’t at the top of the list. You’re better off going to the States or India. I’d avoid Mexico and Jordan.”

  The gasp I let out sounded like laughter. Con looked at me with disgust before returning her attention to Dr. Black. The skin beneath his eyes was puffy and the rims of his eyelids were red. He looked unhealthy. Haggard and out of shape, like a veteran drinker.

  “Keep in mind, some centres exclude patients with an addiction history,” he went on. “She’ll need to take her own donor if you go out of country. A family member with the same blood type, under fifty-five years of age, preferably.” He looked back and forth at us before he outright studied me. “They’ll give her a portion of your liver, which will grow back if all goes well. And provided you’re compatible. You need an evaluation first. Blood and tissue tests, et cetera—”

  “Wait,” I interjected. “Let me get this straight. You’re asking me to pass my internal organ off to my out-of-control sister like it’s a football?”

  “Not at all,” he replied coolly. “This is up to you, not us. Many families in this situation decide to let nature take its course.”

  “This can’t be happening,” I stuttered, and looked to Constance to come to my defence, but she just reapplied her lipstick and smiled, accepting the doctor’s card. Then she asked about Viv’s strange complexion. Dr. Black said it was because her liver wouldn’t filter bile.

  I couldn’t process what I was hearing.

  We returned to Viv’s room. Con moved like an automaton as she drew the divider curtain and installed herself in the chair by Viv’s bedside. “You’ve done it, chérie!” she said uneasily, moving Viv’s hair out of the way to kiss her, leaving a red stain on her forehead.

  Viv stared at the wall. Her messy braids added to her innocent appearance in her oversized hospital gown. There was no mistaking that her skin had a greenish aspect. Her eyes had a yellow tinge to them again. And her stomach was distended like that of a malnourished child.

  A baby blue hospital bracelet encircled her stick-thin wrist as though she was a bird banded for studying. None of us talked for a while. When Con went outside to smoke, my sister turned to me, perturbed.

  “I know what Doctor Death was explaining to you and the Con. I’m not taking anyone’s liver. So no need to freak,” she said.

  But she looked petrified and, despite my misgivings, the contempt I felt for her fell away.

  “You have to eat more, Vee.” I held her bony hand and tried to be witty. “You’re like that waif from Les Mis. And FYI, your skin’s green.”

  “That’s envy,” she said. Her mouth was dry and she ran her tongue over her teeth. “You’re lucky she left you alone.” Then she made a face and said, “Screw off, Worm. I’ll gorge myself tonight. Get lost.”

  * * *

  DRIVING AWAY FROM the hospital, I suggested to Con that we start organizing our medical evaluations straight away.

  “There is nothing more we can do, Édith. Maybe one day she will grow up.”

  I slammed on the brakes and my mother flew forward in her seat. Pulling over, I told her, “This is your fault. You have to pay for it!”

  “Your sister wasn’t strong like you.” She clipped on her seat belt and checked her hair in the side mirror.

  “You pushed her too hard.”

  Beneath her cashmere stole, my mother stiffened. “I did that to boost her self-confidence. En plus, j’n’ai pas d’sous.”

  “Is that why you’re with Pierre, because you have no money?”

  “Oui, Édith. That’s why.”

  I screeched away from the curb to get her back to Pierre’s. “Great job, Mom. Those pageants sure paid off for Viv and Dad. I hope it was worth it,” I said, almost sneering. “And another thing. Any decent parent would die for their child without thinking twice, and you won’t do a simple surgery? You’re still under fifty-five and you owe it to her after what you put her through. If there was a prize for worst mother in the universe, you’d win it, hands down. Bravo.”

  In her listless silence and washed-out expression, I knew I’d gone too far. She exerted herself getting out of the car, holding on to the handgrip.

  Then she turned back to me and said, “With mine she will do the same thing. It will not help her. Think, Édith. I’m not the same blood group, puis—”

  “And your smoker’s health sucks, I know. How convenient.”

  “Or she could have it. I have little enough to live for.”

  “Right. Con the martyr. Enough said.”

  She wobbled to the door like she’d twisted her ankle or her sensory functions were out of whack. Or maybe there had been an accumulation of changes in her body I hadn’t noticed, since I had been preoccupied with my own issues.

  * * *

  BEFORE GOING HOME, I went to see Peng. He was sitting behind the counter with his eyes closed when I walked in. At the sound of the door chimes, he opened one eye a fraction, registered me, and closed it again. Ancient-sounding music of silk-stringed instruments and bamboo flutes droned from the radio.

  “Hi, lady. Long time no see.”

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “Meditating.”

  “I can’t sleep, Peng.”

  He sighed and opened his eyes. Flipping his ponytail over his shoulder, he put on his wire-rimmed glasses, assessing me. Then he climbed the ladder up his wall of dried potions, taking down three jars and scooping from each of them into a paper cone.

  “Also, I’ll take some of that unicorn horn powder. Remember, you said you had some?”

  “All gone.”

  “You don’t have any? Not even a bit?”

  “Gone.”

  “When’s the next stock coming in?”

  “No more. Never. You meditate?”

  “No.”

  “Guilty conscience. That why no sleep. Too many predicament.” He gave me the bag and tapped a few numbers on his old till. The wooden drawer popped out.

  “What do I do with this?”

  “Four dollar. Make tea then bed.”

  “I’ll be up all night.”

  Peng wasn’t interested. He’d already walked away through the beaded curtain, into the storeroom.

  * * *

  ONCE HOME, I went online and read up ON LDLTS—living donor liver transplants. It seemed relatively straightforward. Viv’s diseased liver would be extracted and replaced by a portion of my healthy liver and both our livers would grow back and magically regenerate to their full sizes within a few weeks.

  Our chance of dying was low. The success rate for recipients was 90 percent, while for the living donor the risk of death was one in three hundred.

  Everyone had given up on my sister. I knew that I had no choice—no one else would res
cue Viv anymore.

  I messaged private clinics. Transplants across the border averaged anywhere between three and six hundred thousand dollars, or sixty thousand in India, where there was virtually no waiting time.

  We’d have to stay in India for three months, and I had hardly any savings.

  As I calculated the finances in my head, my fantasy of travelling the world with Liam evaporated. Up until this point, I still carried the hope that he’d send a postcard, after realizing, like in the dream, how much he missed me.

  The absurdity of the situation was too much to take in. I felt as though I was in some bad made-for-TV movie. There was a dull ache in my chest and it was worsening by the hour.

  I logged off the computer and went over to the window. Outside, the full moon’s imprint hung low and heavy like a ghostly paperweight. Tomorrow was recycling day. Here and there I could see the shades of downtown’s homeless rifling through the blue bins lining the sidewalk, ransacking the streets for bottles and cans.

  I boiled some water for Peng’s tea. But the infusion tasted putrid and after a few sips I poured it down the drain.

  Eventually the unicorn book helped me fall asleep. I read how in Florida in the 1560s there was believed to be a river inland that had healing properties, because unicorns drank from that water and dipped their horns in it. Explorers wrote about the locals wearing pieces of alicorn, found in that area, around their necks.

  I nodded in and out of consciousness, thinking how, if I could get one of those therapeutic hunks of horn for my sister, our dilemma would be resolved.

  THIRY-THREE

  A BANNER OF A nude went up against the glass ramp to promote a nineteenth-century French photographs exhibition. Before a gaudy backdrop, a young woman stared into the camera, kneeling on drapery in a provocative pose.

  As I neared the parkade leading to the curatorial wing, there was old Theo de Buuter, his eyes on the picture. When I approached, he looked over, gave a wave of recognition, and closed his notepad. I sat beside him on the bench.

  “Hello. I was just considering my lost youth.” He removed his fedora and placed it between us.

  I glanced up at the plump girl, her creamy skin and breasts and auburn hair brushed in sepia tones.

  “Would you like a date bar?” He secured his coffee cup between his knees and produced a tinfoil square from the pocket of his corduroy blazer. His hands trembled as he unwrapped the packet and extended it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing over at the black felt hat, the lengthwise creases deep and worn. My father had owned a similar hat. Once, I left it on my parents’ bed and he went mental.

  “What is it with hats on beds?” I asked Theo.

  “They foretell death. Like a hooting owl or a bird flying into your house.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I believe the worst happens without omens.” He removed his glasses to dab his eyes with his handkerchief.

  “What brings you here?” I looked to the church across the street. He didn’t respond, instead following my gaze. I took a bite of the square, the oatmeal topping crumbling onto my skirt. “What are you researching?” I raised my voice a bit.

  “Oh. A bird.” He opened his notepad, turning to a page where he’d made a rough sketch of Le Sourire. “In one of your woodcuts.” He put the tip of his pen down on the bird in the dog’s mouth, circling it. “Gauguin’s mystery bird.”

  “So you’re an ornithologist.”

  “I study birds and other animals. I am a cryptozoologist, actually.”

  “I see.” Only I didn’t. I’d have to Google it. “Your accent. Are you—”

  “Dutch.”

  “I always liked salt licorice.”

  “Dropjes.”

  “You can find it at Sugar Mountain in the Market.”

  “I did not know this.”

  “And you can buy those windmill cookies at the German delicatessen.”

  He continued watching the church. As the bells rang the hour, a priest in robes emerged from the carved doors like a figurine from a cuckoo clock.

  “Who’s your favourite Dutch painter?” I asked.

  “Vermeer.”

  “Me too. We don’t have any here.”

  “No,” he concurred. The wind picked up and he replaced his hat on his head and adjusted his bow tie, pale green like beach glass.

  “He puts his women near windows a lot.”

  “This is true.” Theo smoothed out his piece of foil and folded it.

  “His paintings are calming. The warm light and quiet scenes. I like his purples.”

  “He attained those shades by underpainting his reds with lapis lazuli pigments.” Lapis. Of course. “With Vermeer paintings, objects acquire luminosity by soaking up the colours that are near them.” Like some people, I thought to myself.

  I gave him directions to the candy shop. I suggested he walk over since he still had an hour until the Gallery opened to the public.

  Theo made his way across the plaza, through Maman’s legs. He idled in the middle of the sculpture, tilting his neck back at the underbelly of the spider. When he saw me watching him, he tipped his hat in my direction then carried on.

  * * *

  I SPENT THE morning in storage, measuring a donation of wave drawings. They were skilfully rendered and I took my time with them, examining each watery movement, the flow lines, the slow churns and swirls.

  But thoughts of Liam distracted me, and triggered a keening in my chest like the ocean inside a shell. To boot, my asthma had flared up and I was having a tough time breathing.

  I was almost finished with the drawings. As I’d done so often, I opened the last hinged frame, pulling off the sheet of tissue covering a work titled Rogue Wave. The thick white lip of rushing water—the curls, spray, foam, and base—had a mesmerizing effect. Then my nose dripped.

  The drop of mucus landed on the crest of the wave and instantly expanded on the rice paper, smudging the fine black lines for the radius of a quarter—a substantial amount for a drawing no larger than a playing card.

  I thought about hiding it in one of the reference books, which most staff had abandoned for online fact checking. No one would find it there for decades, if at all. Or I could tear it to pieces, or slide it under my sweater and take it home. What I needed to do was fill out a damage report and transport the drawing to the conservation lab. Bungling curators punctured and creased art through rough handling all the time. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to report this mistake brought on by my own absent-mindedness.

  When Raven banged at the metal door, I drew the paper back over the drawing and closed the frame on it, sliding the rogue wave under the other waves, hoping the tidal surge would erupt under all that pressure, erasing itself.

  * * *

  RAVEN PULLED HER shamrock socks up to her knees and got down to business. She needed sandpaper and sample paint pots. “Let’s take King Edward, keep it real,” she said, veering me away from the boutiques leading to the hardware store in favour of a detour cutting through the most downtrodden blocks in the city.

  She’d given me her honest opinion when I’d called her after seeing Viv in the hospital. “Let’s not sugar-coat it, your sister’s probably a lost cause,” she told me.

  Today, as we walked, I admitted, “I’ve decided to do the transplant thing for Viv.”

  “Nice try.” She whammed her bag into my arm.

  “Ow, are you carrying bricks in there?”

  “Don’t be a moron, then.”

  “It’s safe. I’ve done the research. Plus, I’ve always wanted to see India.”

  She snapped her fingers an inch away from my face. “Earth to Edith. Which planet are you on?”

  “I don’t exactly have a choice, Raven.”

  “I’d like to slap you.” She slammed her palm to her forehead, her lips tightening as she fumed at some wild swans in the park.

  When she turned to face me again, her fists were clenched and the veins around her
temples pulsated. “Your mom’s the only smart one, giving your sister tough love. All you do is enable her.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s like those imaginary unihorses you think are real,” she went on. “I shouldn’t have encouraged you with that dumbass book, which was a joke, by the way. They’re not real, Edith. In this reality, only your sister can save herself, and she’s not doing that. Open your eyes and stop being so naive. Has she shown any desire to get the transplant? Is she asking to get on waiting lists here, to find other donors, like, dead ones? Has she talked about staying clean? Course not.”

  “You’re wrong,” I snivelled, wiping my nose on my sleeve. I blinked hard and shook my head until she put an arm around me.

  “I know this sounds harsh. But I don’t want to see my best friend wreck her life for nothing. You can’t fix this.”

  We passed the Shepherds of Good Hope, where I was sure Viv had stayed. Three hots and a cot. Instinctively I scanned the faces of the men and women crouched against the buildings, asking us for change. When the traffic light turned red, half a dozen teenagers jumped up with cups, pulled off their hoods, and wove between cars, moving fast.

  Raven insisted on taking this route every few months to distribute the granola bars and cookies that she amassed in her office from the lunches Zach prepared for her. As she sprinted into alleyways here and there, I waited on the street, hugging my purse.

  When she was back at my side, I tried picking up our pace, but she was in a punchy humour and didn’t catch on. She was in one of her moods because Zach was pushing the baby question. Before getting married, she told Zach she didn’t want kids. Zach had changed his mind since they bought the house.

  “Sinister that there’s no Indians here. In Winnipeg that’s all there is.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  Some men formed a semicircle on the sidewalk. One of them wore a suit and a skullcap and had a ring on every digit. With each step he took, there was a metallic click on the pavement. He moved in front of us, blocking our way. I stared down at his beige tap shoes.