The Gallery of Lost Species

by Nina Berkhout

  “Ladies. Can I interest you in some meth or cock?” He had bloodshot eyes and the tattoo of a knife running down his neck. Raven grabbed my arm and went around him, finally walking faster.

  He spat and swore. “Fucking cunts!”

  I felt the saliva on my neck, through my blouse.

  “And that’s another thing.” She was on a rant now. “You dress your homeless up too well here. Half the time they’re so tidy that I don’t know they’re schizoids on crack until they open their mouths.”

  “Bojangles didn’t look nuts enough for you?” I asked as she pulled a scarf from her bag and blotted at my back.

  “At least back home the glue sniffers are straight up.” She threw her arms in the air. “What’s the goddamn point? Soon the shelters will be shut down and these people will be thrown into state-of-the-art penitentiaries.” She pushed through the hardware store doors. “Now, I was thinking periwinkle for the den and mint julep for the bedroom. Thoughts?”

  A nymphish, dark-featured girl grazed against me as I entered the store. She wore platform sandals and was sucking on a Popsicle, her skin thick with goosebumps in her cut-offs and T-shirt. Before disappearing back into the streets, she gave me a penetrating stare and blood rushed to my ears. There was something familiar about her, aside from the scabs and track marks. She pushed a cart piled high with her possessions. A colourless, sullied version of the cart Viv had filled with Henry’s inventory from the garage when we were kids.

  “Damn, that chick looked like you,” Raven said in a hushed tone. “I’d say you just met your doppelgänger.”

  My sister was essentially one of these down-and-outs now. But it could have just as easily been me. And this made me feel guilty, like I owed her.

  * * *

  I WAS ALREADY settled behind my desk in the viewing room when De Buuter slogged in after his lunch break. Raven had given me a spare top to wear, but it was too big and billowed in odd places.

  “That’s a tremendous blouse.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, rolling up my pirate sleeves. “Where do you eat lunch, Dr. de Buuter?”

  “Your cafeteria. I like the view—the hill and that metal ribbon. It’s quiet.”

  “That’s because the food’s terrible,” I told him as he signed the register. “How do you pronounce your name?” I asked. “Like butter?”

  “Bu—like the French u. It means pedlar.” His breath caught, forcing a halt in his speech. “My family came from a line of merchants.”

  “Dr. de Buuter, if you need anything—”

  “Please. Call me Theo.” He made his way to the back of the room where I’d already laid out his file. I wanted to continue our conversation.

  Maud and Arnold were the only other ones there. Arnold sat at the opposite end of Maud’s table. Although she didn’t acknowledge his presence, her face wasn’t as grave as she reviewed her father’s drawings.

  No one needed me, so I pulled out my book. I read through the afternoon about how the unicorn’s annihilation came when scientists discovered that a cloven-hoofed animal couldn’t grow a single horn in the middle of its forehead, because the skull bones of such a breed would be divided.

  In the 1930s, biologists figured out how to surgically alter the horn buds of calves, kids, and baby deer so that they’d fuse together and grow as a single horn. Farmers caught on and did the same, selling their hybrids to county fairs until word got out that these weren’t actual unicorns.

  You could no more turn an animal into something it wasn’t than turn a human being into someone they were not.

  People don’t change, Constance always said.

  THIRY-FOUR

  WHEN VIV LEFT THE hospital, she went back to her dingy basement apartment and I visited her regularly there, as did Dr. Black on his house call rounds.

  She’d kept her job with the phone company and had the medical paperwork to call in sick when she wanted. She mainly stayed home, resting on the twin bed I’d bought from IKEA, which took me two days to assemble.

  She was given strict orders not to consume alcohol for six months before the surgery or the procedure would be cancelled. “And believe me, they have ways of knowing,” Dr. Black threatened. “They’ll ship you straight home and you’ll have to start from scratch.”

  During this time, I went through several weeks of rush medical testing. I passed the evaluation and was deemed a suitable donor so long as Viv’s condition didn’t deteriorate, making her too ill to withstand the surgery. Dr. Black agreed to “recommend us”—he said it like we were auditioning for a stage production—since we needed his authorization and signature to get onto any list.

  The transplant centre was in Bangalore. I assembled paperwork on both of us, adding to the binders each day as though I was filing keepsakes outlining our life accomplishments. For a brief while this scrapbooking became my vocation.

  The surgery was the last thing I could do for her. When I’d first announced my decision to Viv, her response was, no way.

  “You’re out of options, Vee,” I told her. “Suck it up.”

  “It’s not what I want. I can’t pay.”

  “Calm down,” I said. “Just stick to your new and improved healthy routine like you promised.”

  “I’m not letting you do this, Edith.”

  “It’s practically minor surgery. Don’t be a wimp.”

  Thoughts of what could go wrong terrorized me. Ten percent of recipients died soon after the operation due to infection, bleeding, rejection, other organ failure, or cardiac issues. Viv could not wake up. I could not wake up—five percent of donors had complications leading to serious infection, blood clotting, bile leaks, and bleeding.

  “I’m not doing it to save you,” I added. “My motives are selfish. I want to get you back painting so I can make money off your art and profit from your creative genius.”

  My sister’s detoxifying body smelled of mothballs. Her appearance had marginally improved since leaving the hospital. I brought her food and drawing pads and pencils she didn’t touch.

  Eventually she stopped arguing with me. Her face changed as if she’d reached a decision, but she wouldn’t share it. Instead she became complacent and lethargic.

  “Mom tells me you won’t return her calls from Florida,” I prodded, “and that the packages she mails you get sent back to her.”

  “If it were up to the Con, I’d die.” Her mouth turned downward and her eyes moistened.

  “That’s not true,” I said too quickly, adding, “I thought we could visit the country after you recuperate. I’ll look into some tours.”

  “Great.”

  “Temples, maybe a yoga retreat?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  * * *

  ALONG WITH WHAT little savings I had, I obtained a bank loan and a line of credit. I maxed my Visa and signed up with MasterCard and American Express. I pawned the medallion from Omar, which I’d worn around my neck until then like an amulet. It still wasn’t enough for the flights and the three months we’d need to stay in India for the pre-evaluation, the surgery, and the follow-up monitoring period. Not to mention the deposit for the actual transplant, which would then allow for payments by instalment on the outstanding balance.

  Constance wouldn’t budge when I phoned her.

  “I’ll pay you back within the year.”

  “Non.”

  “She’ll die.”

  “N’importe quoi. The liver is a miracle organ. It will regenerate when she sorts herself out. What you are doing is a band-aid solution, ma fille. A dangerous mistake.”

  “You’re in shock, Mom. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “Non,” she repeated, outraged, before her cell clicked off.

  * * *

  OFTEN I VISITED Monet’s cliffs at Pourville on my breaks. It reminded me of Henry’s canvases—his frigid flowers and snow people and outcrops of ice formed by the wind.

  Rain, Pourville was an oil painting in a misty palette from 1896. It re
sided permanently in Impressionist Room C213. Although his eyesight hadn’t yet begun to fail, in the hazy details and waning shapes it was as though Monet had foreshadowed his own blindness on this canvas, and the years when he’d use only the memory of colour to paint.

  He toiled away in ferocious tempests to test his fortitude and his vision. You had to be five paces back to make out the cliffs and the windblown rain slamming down over everything inside the thick gilded frame.

  I visualized the artist setting up his easel on treacherous slopes of the Normandy Coast. Braving winter gales to capture seascapes of mauves and greys where rocks jutted out of the choppy waters.

  The painting was in crisis. It had cracks, many of them as long as the lines on the palm of my hand. Up close a red splotch on the right side of the painting became visible, in the middle of the stormy sea.

  Like the generic yellow candy bar wrapper at the grocery store checkout—I couldn’t pass the rack without seeing it—my eye was always drawn to that red mark on Monet’s painting.

  It struck me then that the dark spot in a family’s tree didn’t necessarily originate at the root but could germinate later on down the timeline. Who was to say some disorder didn’t stem inside my sister’s leaf? Viv was that tree in the park that looked from afar as if it was thriving—the yellows and greens, the golden glow—until you got closer and saw the fluorescent X spray-painted on the trunk.

  I was ten thousand dollars short. I thought about going to the casino or learning the stock market, or finding a cheaper, illegal hospital that offered the same procedure. I thought about stealing from my own mother but couldn’t figure out the logistics. I’d have asked Raven, but she was in debt. I couldn’t ask Liam because I was frightened he’d fall back in with Viv. I also couldn’t ask Liam because I didn’t know where he was.

  A visitor nearby dropped her change purse. Coins scattered, clinking like the bells on my sister’s old costumes. The hard discs shone at my feet. In that moment, I knew where I had to go.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  HEADING TO MECHANICSVILLE, I turned down our old street. A warm summer wind lifted the hawthorn branches I passed under. Our house seemed tiny now, a brick dollhouse with strangers inside.

  I stood there for a bit. Holograms of the four of us sprang from the lawn like nettles. Peeking through a crack in the tall pine fence around back, I saw a sky-blue hot tub where the painting shed once stood.

  The signage was new at Ye Olde Coin Shoppe: Best GOLD Prices—Guaranteed! Get CASH Today.

  Through the decrepit storefront, I made out a figure with headphones leaning over the counter, flipping through a magazine. The door was barred. I rang a buzzer that hadn’t been there during Omar and Serena’s time.

  Alerted to my presence, the person sauntered over. A flat, low-pitched voice came through an intercom: “State the nature of your business.”

  “Are you Grigg?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Edith Walker, a friend of Omar’s. I used to work here.”

  The person unbolted the door, and a dark set of eyes narrowed on me then widened. With expert speed a head poked out and looked up and down the road. The door opened further and a hand grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me inside.

  Omar slammed the door and bolted it and squeezed me against his chest. I pushed away to face the taller, broader version of the boy I once knew.

  The thick eyeglasses were gone and his hair went past his shoulders. The curls were scraggly now. And although it was late afternoon, Omar wore what appeared to be women’s fuzzy slippers and pyjama bottoms.

  “You’re still here,” I said, and maybe deep down I knew he would be. I was genuinely pleased to see him, and hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him.

  “You!” He moved in to hug me again. His muscular arms stifled my upper body and the hooks of my bra dug into my back where his hand pressed against me.

  Then he released me and, chewing on his bottom lip, turned almost nervously toward the cruddy window, as if to make sure no one was watching us.

  The last time I’d seen Omar was at my father’s funeral, three and a half years prior. He’d retained his olive complexion, but his profile was leaner now, nearly harsh-looking, like an imperial portrait on a Roman coin.

  Omar grinned. He walked a circle around me as he wiped the oily beads of perspiration from his forehead. A musky smell came off his body.

  I knew sweat stains were visible under my arms, through my blouse. So far the summer had been one long heat wave, and based on the oven-like feel of the shop, Omar and Serena hadn’t invested in central air.

  “Looking good, songbird.”

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I mean, I thought you moved to Omaha,” I added.

  “Life happened. Or didn’t, in my case.”

  I followed his ill-at-ease gaze around the room. Nothing in the small shop had changed. It was like stepping into a painting. The old school desk where I’d cleaned hundreds of coins was still in place, as were Serena’s tins and receipt stacks on the back counter. A scrub brush and bucket looked as though they hadn’t moved in years from the spot they occupied on the floor.

  There was a fine layer of dust over the entire scene.

  Only the light inside the Coin Shoppe seemed diminished somehow. Though the place had always been dark, it had lost its romantic Rembrandt quality and was all shadows. Like my parents’ bedroom when my dying father occupied it.

  Approaching the display cases, I saw that they were mostly empty. Some contained a few coins, but they looked new and valueless. The ancient pieces were all gone.

  “Grigg didn’t want the shop,” Omar said, offering me a stool and pulling another one up next to mine. He took a bowl of cereal from the counter and slurped from it. I found myself looking up at the ceiling and listening for Serena’s footsteps.

  “Nobody wanted it,” he went on, sucking back the last of the soggy flakes before putting the bowl down. “Mom left for Omaha two years ago, but I stayed. And here I still am.”

  “You look well,” I said, even though he didn’t seem all that healthy.

  “Nice try.” A fly buzzed around us and landed on his hand. He studied it without moving.

  “So your mom’s in Omaha with your aunt?” I asked, relieved.

  “Yep. Residing there unlawfully, with her pills and her disillusionment.” He smacked the fly and wiped the insect’s body on his pyjamas before looking at me, expressionless. “But it’s good she left. It was excruciating to live with someone that depressed. Not to bring it up, but she had a real thing for your dad. She was never the same after that fiasco.”

  I’d long ago figured out that Serena, and her come-hither home-wrecking ways, wasn’t the destructive force behind my parents’ marriage. Serena was an unessential ingredient in my parents’ unhappiness, but their broken relationship predated her. Even so, I’d never stopped to consider that she might have actually loved my father.

  “On the bright side, I grew out of my epilepsy.” Omar pepped up.

  “That’s great,” I said with false enthusiasm, my thoughts still on Serena.

  “So tell me, Miss Edith. What brings you to the ’hood?”

  He reached out to touch my hair. The gesture, though meant to be affectionate, was off-putting. I tried to calm myself down enough to make my crass request. “You’d mentioned if I ever needed anything, that Grigg…”

  “You need money.” His voice fell flat.

  “My sister’s sick.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten grand. I have a steady job at the Gallery,” I told him, “so I can pay you back within the year.”

  “I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I’ve kept tabs. I know you work there.”

  “That’s creepy,” I said, glancing toward the door.

  But then he gave me a reassuring smile. “You’re in the online directory, that’s all.”

>   “And you never stopped in to say hi?”

  “I thought about it. A lot.” He blinked. His eyelashes were still so long.

  I reverted to small talk. “So what have you been up to aside from running the store? Did you go to university?” Omar had been one of the smartest teenagers I knew.

  “This is it. My kingdom.” He opened his arms wide around the lightless room. “You know what’s funny?”

  “What?”

  “I had the biggest crush on you.”

  I shook my head and averted my gaze without responding. Omar still had a way of unsteadying me. I sensed him watching me intently, in an almost predatory way.

  “Know what else is funny?” he asked, as he balanced on the back two legs of his stool. “Sometimes, I think, had the circumstances of our meeting been different—like, in another life—you’d have fallen in mad love with me.”

  “That’s sweet,” I told him, unsure of what else to say. “Anyway, I’ll sign a contract or whatever paperwork,” I added. We were getting off topic.

  He folded his arms and sighed as the stool’s front legs hammered the floor. “What’s wrong with your sister?”

  “I’m taking her to India. For a liver transplant,” I explained.

  Omar burst out laughing. “You gotta be shitting me.”

  I looked away.

  “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, cupcake. Straight up, what do you need it for?”

  “For my sister,” I reiterated. “I’m giving her part of my liver.”

  He started laughing again, shaking his head. He laughed so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes.

  “You don’t have to be cruel.” I stood to go. “I came here because you’re my last resort. Forget it.”

  “Wait.” Omar moved ahead of me to the door, serious again. “It’s just—you might want to change your story. It’s too far-fetched.”

  “Will you give me the money or not?” I entreated, taking hold of his hand. I was desperate.

  He looked at me skeptically. Then he disarmed me by reaching for my other hand, stepping in close as if he wanted to kiss me. He looked out the window again. It was nerve-racking how much he checked that window. “Come back in a week.”