“It was an imbecilic plan,” was all she kept saying from her condo in Florida. “She’ll come home when she is ready.”
But this time Viv’s disappearance was a complete fade away.
I brought the camping picture with me to the police station. When the administrator stapled it to the form, the fastener ran across my sister’s forehead. I filled out Viv’s personal information and a physical description from when I’d last seen her.
“Be sure to include unique features. People always forget that,” she said.
“Like skills?”
“Like a birthmark or scars. Dentures or a hearing aid. A missing limb, tattoos, a limp. Any attribute to help us identify her.”
When I finished, she brought me to a desk where an officer was sitting at a computer, playing solitaire and eating a healthy-looking wrap. He gave me the once-over, flipping through the form attached to the clipboard.
“This photo’s terrible.”
“It’s from an old camera.”
“You sure she’s not with relatives or friends?”
“I’m sure.”
“Has she gone missing before?”
“Sometimes we don’t hear from her for long periods.”
Wiping his hands and making a sucking sound through his teeth, he said, “Visit the places where you’ve found her in the past. Call hospitals and shelters. They usually refuse to divulge anything, but there are exceptions. What was her state of mind?”
“She was coping. She’s never been a happy person.”
“Drugs?”
“I’m not sure.”
“This isn’t the time to hold back.”
“Maybe prostitution.”
“Drugs, then.”
“She can’t afford drugs.”
“Meth’s five bucks a hit. Cheaper than booze.”
“I only ever saw her drink. And do ecstasy recreationally.”
“They all go together. Users switch up.” He checked the form again. “Says here last seen in September.”
“We were getting ready to go to India. I was collecting the money we needed.”
“You give her any?”
“Not much.” Before she’d gone on her retreat, I’d ended up sliding an envelope containing a few hundred bucks under Viv’s door, with a note telling her to dump the old duffle bag and get a new suitcase and some clothes for the trip.
He looked dubious. “Anything else?”
“She had marks. Behind her knees, even. She said they were old. And she had to use needles to inject vitamins, so it was probably just that.”
“You can inject meth. And junk, and crack. But tracks are a myth unless you shoot in the same places. Most have plenty of fresh veins to choose from. Marks mean your sister scarred easily.” He kept typing. “What else?”
“She used to be a painter.”
“Houses?”
“Pictures. She has a paintbrush tattoo.”
“Where?”
“Left shoulder blade.”
“Alcohol and cigarette brands?”
“Anything she can get, I guess.”
“Is she on meds?”
“For her liver.”
“You note her doctor here?” He flipped the page. I nodded. He handed the form back to me. “I can’t file this.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll do you a favour and put her in our registry, but I’m not filing your report.” He could see I didn’t follow. “Your sister’s not missing, missing. She’s just gone.”
“That makes no sense.”
“If facts indicated foul play, we’d investigate. That’s not the case here.”
“Of course she’s missing. We can’t find her! She could be in trouble, and you’re not going to do anything?”
“We have about a hundred reports registered here every month, miss. Walking away without telling anyone isn’t a crime. When you can prove otherwise, here’s my number. The name’s Quinn.”
“That’s it? What am I supposed to do?” My voice reverberated back at me, borderline hysterical, when he gave me his card.
“Secure her belongings. Conduct phone and Web searches. Was she active in a chat room or other social network, or did she leave behind her cell or written materials like a journal?”
I shook my head.
“If you feel the need to pursue it, hire a licensed PI.” He stood up then, opening his office door for me to leave. “Give him contact details for her dentist. And if you have a toothbrush or a hairbrush, drop them off too.”
* * *
IN THE GALLERY’S heart, through the trees and flowers of the garden court, hidden from view unless one really looked, lay the entranceway to the Rideau Chapel—a sanctuary saved from demolition by volunteers, and reconstructed piece by piece.
I walked by angels made from pine and stood under the fan-vaulted ceiling. The sound sculpture Forty-Part Motet played there on a loop. Spotlights flooded in through stained glass windows in simulated sunlight, torching the altars and balcony, the marbled columns and stencilled walls.
The artist said she wanted to climb inside the music. So she put forty speakers on stands in a horseshoe, creating eight choirs. From each speaker there came a separately recorded voice, beginning with a single chant from the first set of sculptures. Others lolled in like an undercurrent, each voice eclipsing the previous one as the fugue traversed the chapel. Then all the voices rinsed together and split apart in a torrent of sound passing through me as the choirs belted a final, harrowing culmination. All at once the voices were snuffed out until the loop commenced again.
Some said Forty-Part Motet was a clearing in the woods and the speakers were trees around its perimeter. The empty space in the core of the forest meant the absence of God.
I thought about how being killed by a unicorn would be like being killed by an icicle or by alcohol. There would be no evidence afterwards. No weapon.
When the voices rose in unison, a shrill, piercing sound escaped me until my vocal chords burned. I dropped to the floor, as the singers carried on.
FORTY
A MONTH INTO MY sister’s disappearance, I still slept with my cell by the bed. One night it went off, a melodious ring tone set to the sound of a harp. The caller ID was Château Lafayette.
There was a lot of noise in the background. Rough voices, glasses, and country music. “Viv?” I said, too loudly.
“Your sister was here.”
“Who’s this? Can you put her on?”
“Andy. Bartender. Hadn’t seen her till tonight.”
“Is she okay?” I sat up and switched on the lamp.
“I’m not a mind reader. It was busy.”
“I’ll be right there.” I checked the clock. It was 1:49 a.m.
“Don’t bother. She left.”
“What? Where?” I opened the curtains and the window. It was so stuffy in my room I could hardly breathe.
“Closing time soon. Just wanted you to know she was here.”
“Why didn’t you call me right away?” I paced and returned to the window. “You shouldn’t have let her go.”
“Listen, I can’t babysit all these freaks. Fine by me if you don’t want to hear—”
“Wait, don’t hang up!” The sound of clanking glasses was deafening. “Please, she needs to be in a hospital.”
“Don’t we all. I told her you were looking for her. Said for you not to worry.” He breathed in and out, slow and deep. “That’s the only reason I’m calling.”
“There must have been something else. What else?”
“Gimme a sec.” I heard the till opening and closing, and coins being poured into a receptacle. A tray of glasses smashing to the ground, and Andy cursing before he came back on the line. “Nothing to tell. Had a rye. Said it was her last drink. That she was going home to paint the golden lights or something. The usual drivel.”
“To paint gold? Is that what she said, to paint gold?” Beneath the shadow of the oak tree a bat shot past, then another.
Andy sounded more introspective. “That’s it,” he said, “exactly.”
I bit a hangnail and pulled the skin with my teeth. “You’re sure it was her?”
“It was her.”
She’d been ten minutes away the whole time.
When I hung up, I couldn’t loosen my grip on the phone. I sucked on my bleeding finger. Then I sped to the Market in my pyjamas, winding through the streets and alleys. Two patrol cars circulated nearby. The area was dead, everyone hiding in the neighbourhood’s hovels and crack dens.
I parked across from the Laff and sat in the dark. When the cops came to my window with their flashlight, I showed them Viv’s picture and asked if they’d seen her. The female officer’s hair was pulled back in a pageant-tight bun. With tedium she said, “Hon, you don’t belong here. Look for her in daylight.”
Daylight didn’t come. As I drove home in the blue hour—the hour of sweet light for artists, changing like the purples of a bruise—a fog was settling down over everything.
When I lay on the couch and closed my eyes, I heard my father’s supplicating voice. Find her, kiddo. It’s on you.
I showered and dressed for work. I made toast, spitting it out at the taste of rancid butter. There was no food in my fridge since she’d gone missing. I’d stopped keeping up with groceries and cleaning.
I walked in early, reaching the Gallery before the fog lifted, while the city was still muted. The taiga garden at the mouth of the parkade was breath-catching, like a painting evading clarity. Hardly anyone noticed it, but the rocky site—the dry undergrowth and stern trees, the neglected stretch of deep earth tones—was inspired by the Group of Seven’s Canadian Shield imagery.
Through the dim air I heard a rhythmic clomping. Then Theo emerged from behind some stunted poplars. With his walking stick, he made small jumps on one leg, landing on the same foot and bending down now and again to scout the ground. I watched him a while longer then called out to him.
“What are you doing, Theo?”
“Investigating tracks,” he said, breathless. “And the distances between them.”
“What are they?”
“Possibly cougar.”
“In the city?” I scaled the rock and approached the bog rosemary.
“Ecotone.”
“What’s that?”
“When two ecological worlds collide.”
I bent to touch the tracks in the dirt, approximating those of a large dog. “These are dried up,” I told him. “Whatever it was is long gone.”
“That does not mean it will not return.” Theo rubbed the imprints. “There is a saying: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You see the space between the markings? A dog cannot leap like that.”
I pictured an alien big cat stalking up the Gallery’s glass ramp. Theo’s mind was a bestiary. From what he told me, he hadn’t actually found any of his animals. He’d spent his life trying to reverse extinction, yet it seemed to me his occupation of resurrecting lost species was a futile one.
He gestured toward the Great Hall dome, though we couldn’t see it. “I keep hearing voices.”
“That’s the Forty-Part Motet.”
He was still absorbed by his discovery. “Edith, you are living in an era of animal kingdom casualties,” he said, staring down at the track. “In your lifetime, fauna once common will be eradicated. The whale, the elephant, the gorilla, the tiger. One day they will be illusory, like Gauguin’s bird.”
“How did he die again?”
“Hmmm?”
“Gauguin. I forget how he died.”
“Inconclusive. Presumably arsenic and alcohol.”
The fog was lifting. The savage plot unfurled itself before us.
“I have a sister who’s dying like that,” I blurted through some windswept pines. “Her name is Vivienne.”
“Vivienne,” he repeated with slowness, “derived from the Latin vivus, meaning ‘alive.’” His look held compassion. “I hope for you she will be all right.”
“She used to be a great painter too.” I slid down from the rock and straightened my skirt. Sensing my throat tightening, I grappled with my inhaler, afterwards taking Theo’s stick and offering him my arm. “The trees are different today.”
“Yes.” Theo nodded. “Shadows are cast through fog in three dimensions.” Then he eyed the dome again. “Those voices,” he said. “They drive me to despair.”
FORTY-ONE
WHEN NOTHING CAME OF my random late night visits to the Laff or waiting across from the bar through my lunches, I hired a private investigator named Bruce, using most of Omar’s money to cover the fee for services, which came to nearly seven hundred dollars a day.
Bruce was in his fifties and had a bleached blond buzz cut, a fake tan, and a small hoop in one ear. He smelled strongly of cologne and wore pants and pastel shirts that had a sheen to them, as if he’d been imbued with a high-gloss lacquer. A toothpick often stuck out of the corner of his mouth, a habit he took up after quitting smoking, he said. The toothpicks were flavoured. When he spoke, bursts of cinnamon, lemon, and spearmint came off him.
I told him about the sighting at the Laff and I mentioned Nick and Liam. At his instruction, we put up posters across the city, hundreds of them on phone poles and light posts and construction site barriers. In restaurants, gas stations, cafés, and bus terminals and any other public space that would let us use their bulletin boards. We set up a blog with a message board and a contact number. Bruce was the contact person, not me, and only he could log in to the messages because he said we’d get pranks and vile notes.
Bruce checked out all the Jane Does in jails and holding cells. Then he scoured the city’s hospitals and clinics, parks and shelters. He got hold of Viv’s cell records, but the phone hadn’t been used since before she’d disappeared. He made calls to his friends on the force in Vancouver. He had access to confidential databases. He had people and connections. But he found no trace of my sister.
Who he did find was Liam, unlisted and living in the suburbs. Once he ruled out Liam’s involvement with my sister’s disappearance, he gave me the street address.
In a daze, I went to his house unannounced. He’d gone to the farthest outlying neighbourhood of the city, to a rocky place where no plants or trees grew. My body shook in my thin coat as I rang the doorbell. When he opened it, he showed no emotion at seeing me. He just stood there, slack-jawed.
He’d put on weight and his skin was the colour of clay, as though he didn’t get out in the sun anymore.
“Edith. How are you?”
“You told me you were leaving the country!”
“I’m going in a few months.”
He offered no further explanation. I waited for him to invite me inside.
And the longer I waited, the more pitiful he seemed to me. His feverish look was proof of his unremitting passion for my sister. Since the day he saw her in Lake Louise, all those years ago, nothing had changed.
It was irrelevant that I’d been similarly haunted by Liam since that day. His feelings for Viv were unalterable. I wanted what he didn’t have to give me. Mine was a one-sided child’s dream.
“She never felt the same way. You wasted years on her.”
“I know.”
I took his hand in mine. “Did you ever love me?”
“I tried.”
His words stung. I turned away from him on the steps, to stand under the sun’s tireless, incurable light. It wanted something from us. I stared straight at it, thinking how I would have carved it out of the sky for him. That was how much I loved him.
Then I released his hand and said goodbye.
* * *
LATER IN THE day, I wandered purposelessly through endless rooms of paintings and sculptures, until I reached Portrait of a Young Man.
Liam no longer resembled the boy who’d left me speechless, like when I saw the great grey peaks of the Rockies for the first time. And now I saw that the young man in the painting was agitated,
not pensive.
Two men walked by with ladders. The galleries were being revamped. The small oil on mahogany would soon be removed, leaving a pale emptiness on the wall.
In the vaults, I retrieved the unsalvageable wave drawing from the bottom of its box. I stood in a corner where the overhead camera couldn’t see me, tearing the rectangle into even strips, pressing a ruler down over it and pulling in a lengthwise movement in the direction of the grain.
The strength of the sound was unexpected coming from so weightless and delicate a thing. The bunker-like room amplified the vibration of the fibres as they broke apart.
I swallowed each piece as though it was a thin slice of cake. The paper tasted of age and dust. Each bit stuck to the roof of my mouth like a Communion wafer.
I rubbed out the accession number pencilled on the mat board. Then I disposed of the board and the tissue paper, in a stack on the floor where faulty frames and glass panes were set aside for cleaning staff to clear away.
The dryness of the paper stayed with me, as I sat wrapped in my double layer of lab coats in the half-light on the cold stepping stool. My mouth and throat were parched, my tongue swollen. I wondered what it would be like to die of thirst.
FORTY-TWO
IN A BARN ON the city’s Experimental Farm, there lived two goats. These were no common goats. They were genetically modified silk-spinning goats.
Theo said I should see for myself, so I asked if he’d accompany me there on Saturday morning. I looked forward to our outing all week. Other than Raven, I had no friends. Yet in my serendipitous encounter with Theo, I’d made an ally of sorts, regardless of how few words we’d exchanged.
I drove past the arboretum and botanical greenhouses, parking along the road by a cornfield where farmers sold pumpkins and gourds, displaying stupefying oranges and deep yellows against a grey sky. I was early, so I walked around to where families sat at tables, scraping the thick shells in preparation for a carving contest. Children made a spectacle of scooping out the insides and throwing the muck onto newspapers.
The smell of fresh pumpkin reminded me of our damp Mechanicsville basement, and I got wistful for the years when Henry would drive us to a patch outside the city limits, to pick out our Halloween lantern. The breeze carried the scent of burning leaves, and the pumpkins on the roadside—some whose flesh was broken to pieces in the gully—ignited a homesickness inside me. An ache for a distant time I couldn’t get back.
The Gallery of Lost Species Page 20