The Gallery of Lost Species (28 page)

“Way to show them.”

“Then the oranges leaked all over so we had to eat them.”

My mother unleashed Mira and the dog made her way to a tree. When a breeze came, the maples released a shower of helicopter seeds on us. Mira returned. My mother bent over and snapped her leash back on.

“Aren't you going to bag that?”

“
Bof.
Fertilizer,” she said dismissively, heading toward the gate.

Mira ambled in front of us.

“Why's she limping?”

“Bad hip. You see”—and here she paused for effect—“I don't think she'll make it to Florida
encore.
”

The dog stopped in a puddle, settling down to lick a bald patch on her flank.

“There is a discontinuation in her,” she added.

“You mean her body's shutting down.”

“It distresses her to travel.”

“So drive.”

“The climate is problematic there. It affects her bronchitis and her skin.”

“Mom. I have asthma.”

“
Mais non,
Édith. She is hypoallergenic!” With this proclamation, Mira sat upright, panting at us. My mother pulled a biscuit from her coat pocket.

“Those goggles are ridiculous.”

“They protect her cataracts.” Mira finished her treat and my mother picked her up again.

“She's mangy. Are you sure she doesn't have rabies?”

She kissed Mira on the nose and raised a muddy paw, waving it at me. “Feel her footpads,
feel
them! Feel how soft.”

I poked at the padding with my finger. “She's not even barking anymore,” I said.

“She has fatigue.”

“So do I.”

“She is loyal and protective. She would be a good friend for you.”

My mother couldn't bear further witness to Mira's decline and wanted me to do the dirty work for her. “I'll think about it,” I said, then, “I still can't find Viv.”

“She will turn up.”

“It's different this time.”

“Nonsense, foolish girl.” She dropped Mira, who went ahead with more trot in her step. “How?” she asked, her tone hardening.

“It just is.”

FORTY-FOUR

T
HEO WAS AT THE
viewing room doors a half-hour before I was to open them for the public. He sat on the lone chair by the elevator. In profile he appeared older than ever, smoothing down his wild hair with an unsteady hand. I'd get in trouble if I let him in early, but I could leave; I had nothing else to do.

I suggested a short walk. It was late October and one of the last warm days of autumn, which arrived like a gift between the cold fronts and the rain. I guided Theo up the hill, past
One Hundred Foot Line
to the open-air amphitheatre. We sat on the stone seats and Theo told me more about his bird.

He was assessing the possible survival of a flightless rail in French Polynesia, in the middle of the Pacific on one of the islands where Gauguin lived. A swamp hen that had outrun islanders and naturalists for close to a hundred years.

“What does it look like?”

“A hen with stumpy wings. It has purplish-blue plumage, a green head, and long yellow legs.”

“What's it called?”

“The koao.”

“It vanished?”

“After the last one was killed and eaten. But then Gauguin documented the bird in 1902 in
The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa
—the third-to-last painting he ever made. Are you familiar with it?”

“I don't think so.”

“It's of a Marquesan man in a red cape and two women peering out from behind a tree. The koao is in the foreground in the mouth of a hunting dog.”

A flight of geese passed above us in a wishbone formation, preparing for departure. Their loud, insistent calls briefly interrupted Theo. Then he continued, “Nobody knows the source of the model Gauguin used to paint the bird. He could have done it from memory. Or it was a crazed phantasm. The bird is almost the same size as the dog. He was sick by then.”

“The bird's not extinct?”

“I've gone twice there to investigate. If a specimen is living, sooner or later I will find it.”

“And the woodcut?” I nodded in the direction of the glass dome.

“Your print has the motif of the bird in the dog's mouth. I only found that bird in one other canvas, entitled
Nevermore.
The scene of a young Polynesian woman lying on her side, nude on a bed.”

“Sounds like most of his paintings.”

“This one is unorthodox. Despite the vivid colours, the mood is solemn. I am most certain the girl is a prostitute. Ill or spurned by her lover. The bird is there by her like an angel of death.”

As we got up to go, Viv entered my mind. The last time I saw her, she was lying in her awful basement bed, nearly lifeless.

“Have I upset you?” Theo asked as we zigzagged down the hill's pathway.

I smiled and told him no.

When we reached the viewing room and I held the door open for him, I said, “I enjoy our conversations.”

“I do as well. But my work here is finished.”

“You could volunteer.”

“I am not one for organized groups. And I am leaving for the island soon.”

“You'll be back, though?”

“I am eighty-six, my dear girl. I do not plan ahead.” Then he added, “You are welcome to visit me on Hiva Oa. Mind you, it is not easy to access and my accommodations are far from luxurious.”

“That's not much of an invitation.”

He chuckled and became serious again. “I want you to see something at the Museum of Nature. Go there and ask for Jonathan Cole. I told him that you would visit. He will show you a phenomenal thing.”

“Sure. I'll do that.”

Through the afternoon, Theo jotted things down in his notebook and examined his folder of prints with a magnifying glass. He took no interest in the living things surrounding him. He was like Don Quixote in his search for animals whose existence was questionable—dream-creatures arising from conjecture. While peaceful, he didn't strike me as someone at peace.

Then again, maybe in the end we were all cryptozoologists. Trekking around in our own black forests, getting hopeful on a trick of the light. Hunting down lost species that are always just out of reach.

FORTY-FIVE

W
E LOST OUR SPOT
on the transplant centre's list. They reimbursed my deposit and I poured the money back onto the line of credit and the credit cards.

Then I settled up with Bruce. He told me he was moving to Vancouver because business was better there. We met in the Gallery's charcoal-grey stone enclosure, where rows of deep-plum flowers with spiky leaves were planted like crosses.

“Keep an eye out for my sister.”

“No problem.”

“I'm thinking of submitting a complaint to the police.”

Bruce disagreed. “Not worth the paperwork. That'll take years to process.”

“What if she was kidnapped or murdered?”

“I didn't get that impression.”

He'd completed his investigation on Viv in under two weeks. He told me he'd be stealing my money if he kept looking for her. It doesn't take long to figure out cases like your sister's, he had said.

“If I volunteered in a soup kitchen, I might find her.”

“You wouldn't last an hour.”

“I should try.”

“I'd say get on with your life.” There was disappointment in his gruff voice. He closed his notepad, preparing to leave.

“Do you think she went far?”

“Your sister was gone before her physical disappearance,” he told me, offering me one of his toothpicks. “People always think there'll be a revelation at the end. Most times there isn't.”

*   *   *

A
FTER MY VIEWING
room shift, I locked up and stopped in on
The Child's Dream.
From the corridor, I heard a school group. Sprightly children jumped around the vitrine, slapping the glass and pushing each other. The young teacher tried in vain to restore order, then ushered them away.

I wondered at the need to create such a creature out of the unknown. It was hard to believe that sightings of this little horned horse with no skeletal remains had caught the attention of historians, explorers, and scientists for thousands of years.

As for Damien Hirst and his formaldehyde menagerie—the calf, the sheep, the zebra, the shark, and the unicorn, to name a few—what were these but the theatrics of a billionaire terrified of death, as were his diamond-encrusted skulls and his “cabinet series” of cigarette butts and pills.

How maddening it must have been to Hirst that, despite his works of art assembled in factories, despite his industrial units and aircraft hangars manufacturing his creations made by hundreds of staff, despite his three-hundred-room Gothic mansion and his line of jeans costing four thousand dollars a pair, he would die and, at best, be preserved in formaldehyde like his beasts.

*   *   *

I
WALKED TO
the Coin Shoppe at dawn the next day. Before me, a dull sun rose and washed out the stars, looking like Omar's pawned medallion in the sky.

From a block away, I saw the For Lease signs plastered on the storefront.

What had I expected, why had I gone back? I thought Omar and his felon friends could track my sister down if I returned what remained of his money.

I stepped up close to the barred door. The store looked as if someone had been through it with a baseball bat. There were holes in the walls and the display cases were smashed and tipped over, their antique legs broken. Serena's teapot was in pieces on the floor and her dragonfly tin lay upside down and emptied beside it.

Omar had skipped town. Maybe he would outfox whatever chased him. Reinvent himself in a new country, go to university, become successful and rich. Maybe not.

In a way, I was relieved he was gone, especially after our last encounter. What filled me with sorrow, though, was the defaced state of the shop. The place where I'd spent quiet moments as a kid, where stories lay in gold, silver, and bronze beneath layers of grit, was no more.

FORTY-SIX

B
Y
R
EMEMBRANCE
D
AY, WE
had two feet of snow. The ploughs didn't come, but I put my boots on and went to Confederation Park anyway, to watch the old war vets receive their honours.

There was a children's event on at the arts centre. Cutting through the crowds, I saw him standing in line at the ticket booth. Even among hundreds of other identical poppy-adorned uniforms, it was unmistakably him.

“Nick!” I said, in the same instant seeing a child in a brown snowsuit attached to his arm.

He looked at me then at the child and back at me.

“How are you?” I asked, filling the dead air as he pulled a toque off the child's head, smoothing down her hair full of static electricity.

She was about five years old. I saw my sister's traits in her. The thick waviness and treacly colouring of her hair. Her inquisitive violet-blue eyes framed by remarkably long lashes and the straight-edged nose suited more to an adult than to a little girl. Had I compared her with a photo of Viv at that age, it would have been difficult to distinguish them. Like Viv, she had a calmness about her as she surveyed the other children entering the theatre.

An attractive, dark-skinned woman came up to Nick then, holding an infant boy in her arms. He was enveloped in a fluffy blue coat and had the same curls and caramel skin colouring as his mother.

“This is my wife, Nahlah. And these are our kids. Clair and Amir.”

Clair. “Au clair de la lune,” the only melody Viv ever asked Constance to sing to her.

He turned to Nahlah then. “This is Edith Walker. Vivienne's sister.”

Nahlah gave a cautious nod. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” I could not take my eyes off the girl.

Clair leaned closer to Nick's leg and stared back at me as her father extracted a Kleenex from his sleeve to wipe her nose. Then she crouched down and clapped her hands on the ground, wet with melting snow and gravel.

“Not here, sweetie,” Nick said as a pack of children passed by, almost trampling her.

Clair glimpsed up at Nahlah. Tremulously she queried, “Can we go, Momma?”

Nahlah moved toward the building's entrance with the kids, but Clair came back, tugging at her father's arm.

“Sorry,” Nick said, removing his toque and rubbing his forehead as if he had a headache.

“I understand,” I told him. But he didn't hear me. His back was already turned, being led away by his daughter.

Dr. Black would have known. Maybe he hadn't disclosed this because of a doctor–patient confidentiality agreement, when Viv and I went through all that medical testing. Then, in spite of Viv trying to tell me about Clair when she said she couldn't make amends, I hadn't probed her. All I would have had to do was ask, only I hadn't picked up on her lead. Instead, I'd cut her off with some pretentious feel-good crap.

When I got home and phoned him, he picked up immediately.

“What about Clair?” I asked.

“Your sister tried taking care of her. It didn't last.”

“When was she born?”

“A few months after your dad died. I was in Vancouver then. We had her for a year together.” His voice caught. “I was on training in Chilcotin when she left Clair in her crib and walked out the door.” I heard the sound of children's laughter near him. “A neighbour found the baby a day later. Child services took her. I got her back two years ago.”

“Did she see her again?”

“A few times. But with the incessant quitting, her DTs got so bad there were hallucinations. She thought things were crawling all over her. I couldn't bring Clair to visit anymore.”

“I want to know her.”

“Let me talk to Nahlah. I'll call you.”