The Gallery of Lost Species (29 page)

“Nick,” I added before he hung up. “I haven't seen her in a long time. I have this sinking feeling. I don't know what to do.”

“Been there done that,” he said. “Unfortunately, I can't help you.”

FORTY-SEVEN

I
HADN'T REALIZED OUR
walk up to
One Hundred Foot Line
would be my last visit with Theo. But the following week, when I looked through the glass doors, he wasn't there.

When Alejandro saw me, he waved me in impatiently before grabbing his leather coat adorned with multiple zippers.

“I like your kilt,” I told him.

“Beethoven left those for you.” He motioned to a bouquet and some books on the desk. “Said he had to catch a flight.”

“He's gone?”

“Tell her ‘until next time' is what he said. I offered to get you so he could say so himself, but I guess he didn't want to see you.”

After Alejandro took off, I put my things down and unwrapped the paper cone. Ferns swayed like feathers when I lifted the bouquet from the desk. There was a single bird of paradise flower protruding from the middle like a lobster claw. I dumped my canister of gloves into a drawer and filled it at the water fountain, placing the arrangement beside my computer.

The books—
On the Track of Unknown Animals
and
The Book of Imaginary Beings
—had an antiquated feel to them. I flipped through the paperback volumes for a note, but found nothing but page after page about animals that were no longer, and animals that never were.

In the afternoon, an art history class from the university came through. I laid examples of works on paper out on the tables. I explained how light damages artifacts and I talked about climate control. Then I called Alejandro and asked him to take the students through storage.

Once the group was gone, I found
The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa
on the Internet. The man in the red cape and the women half hidden by the tree unsettled me. They had a secret they wouldn't reveal.

The bird in the bottom corner seemed almost an accidental detail. But Theo was right: it was the same bird as the one in our print.

I was analyzing
Nevermore
when Raven came charging in.

“You can't have flowers in here. What's this, Native porn?”

“Gauguin.”

“Perv. He was into prepubescent girls, you know that?”

“Theo left today.”

“You mean the old Jew?” She pulled up her leg warmers.

“He's Dutch.”

“The Dutch can't be Jewish?”

“He's gone to the island where Gauguin lived. To find this bird.” I pointed to the winged figure looming over the girl.

“Seriously? We see those everywhere when we go to Cuba. They're a nuisance.”

The table Theo had occupied appeared ephemeral with the sun coming down on it through traces of airborne debris, minerals, skin cells.

The fern stems glistened. But the old man's absence cast a shadow through me. How much longer could I carry on in my glass rooms, locked between the wings of a revolving door with ghosts pushing it in a counter-clockwise direction? Theo would become another spectre in my collection, like my father, Liam, and Viv.

“What's up, paleface?”

“I'm tired.”

“Ever check his arm?”

“Jesus, Raven.”

“Actually, Jews don't believe in Jesus.”

“He didn't discuss his personal history. What makes you think—”

“Trust me. Us minorities who hath suffered recognize one another.”

*   *   *

I
N LATE
N
OVEMBER
, a warm wind like a coastal chinook blustered through the city, melting all the snow. Then there was an earthquake. It happened over lunch. Raven was showing me pictures of her renovations in the viewing room when it struck.

“Exterior's not so hot. We'll slap some ivy onto it. Ivy always improves buildings.”

We paused at a rumbling that got noticeably louder as it gained momentum. The ground shook as though there was a subway beneath us. Baskets of pencils and magnifiers fell off the shelf above my desk. The glass panes made a squeaking, crunching sound.

Raven grabbed my arm, pulling me under the desk. Her ankle socks glowed in the dark. The shaking went on for another minute.

“I think that was an earthquake,” I said in the quiet seconds that followed.

“No shit.”

We went over to the window. Below us, staff ran on the grass and up the hill, congregating around
One Hundred Foot Line.
Then came the sound of sirens.

“We should go.”

“I'm not getting into any death-trap elevator. We're safer in here, the panes will fall toward the outside.”

I worried about all the works I hadn't catalogued yet, that could be decimated without record. I worried about my sister.

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT DAY
, I found out that the earthquake had caused structural shifting in some of the galleries. A couple of paintings fell from the walls. A fibreglass sculpture of a giant penis capsized. And during the night, the guard on duty informed his supervisor about a pungent odour coming from the room displaying
The Child's Dream.

I was notified of the leak when I went there on my lunch break, hoping for a quiet half-hour. At the entranceway, I was hit by the strong smell of cat urine. Dwayne the security guard came up to me, pulling his respiratory mask onto his forehead and handing me one from his pocket, telling me the area was closed off for “disinfectation.”

I peered over his portly uniformed shoulders. At the end of the corridor, someone in a white spacesuit walked by, carrying vacuum tubing.

When I asked Dwayne what happened, he told me that the crack in the case went undetected at first. Like the systematic release from an IV drip, the embalming fluid left its chamber gradually, seeping beneath the floorboards. As the formaldehyde level went down inside the vitrine, the unicorn acquired the look of a drowning beast with its partially submerged head, and then, as the level of the liquid declined, that of a drenched, ghoulish creation.

The few visitors who entered the room left without delay, gasping and covering their mouths. The day guard assigned there was new. Being an art student himself and a great fan of Hirst, he had assumed the transformation of the work and the stench were a genius component of the installation.

He went home early, complaining of headache and nausea. It was closing time, so the control room didn't replace him. For three more hours the fractured case continued leaking, until no part of the animal could forestall decomposition. When the night guard came upon the grisly scene, he sounded the alarm.

“What will they do with the horse?” I asked Dwayne.

“Inseminate it,” he said.

“Incinerate?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you remove it?”

“Forklift.”

“What about the gold?”

“Artist wants it back. He paid a contractor to saw off the hoofs and horn. They're in the cooler.” He gestured a few feet away to a container sealed with a hazardous waste sticker. “You shoulda seen those people we played back on camera—man, were they trippin'.”

Dwayne pulled his mask off, swinging it around on his index finger. “I have to ask you to please vacate, ma'am.”

I went to the water court I'd visited with Henry as a teenager. A glass-bottomed pool lined with stone benches—an austere, minimalist space fitted with desolate statues. I sat on a slab, watching maintenance staff in orange work suits in the lower reception area passing back and forth like koi under a sheet of ice and coins.

Looking through the pool, I recalled my sister's extinction by degrees. The tremors, and her dilated pupils and clammy skin erupting into a rash as the poison left her body.

I wondered where Hirst got that pony. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, our father used to say, meaning it's useless to wish. I wished for blackouts, for instance. A time when events could be sapped from my consciousness. How easy would it be to forget this whole mess for a while, with such episodes of amnesia at my disposition.

When would the past let up? Like the small bodies of birds Viv once drew, memories burrowed inside me without disintegrating. She existed in my mind as an abstraction now, as imprecise as her paintings and as lost to the present day as the unicorn. Like Theo's elusive cryptids, I thought I saw her vaguely, from distances, until I approached and realized it wasn't her.

FORTY-EIGHT

A
FEW WEEKS BEFORE
Christmas, Constance wanted to visit Rideau Hall. It was one of the only city parks she approved of, with its rich grounds and deviating pathways. Her favourite spot was the garden with a large, circular fountain and a trellis lane for roses.

Through the night, a pillowy snow had fallen, muffling sound. The streets were quiet. When I picked her up in the early morning, she had Mira under one arm. The dog wore a fuchsia cap with earflaps.

There was nobody else around as we passed through the groves, walking toward the Governor General's residence where, all those winters past, there had been a skating rink and sleigh rides. Now it was as if we were walking through one of my father's colourless canvases.

The building was closed. I wiped the snow off a picnic table and we sat in the open parkland. Mira pawed at my mother until she lifted her from the tabletop and tucked her under the hem of her coat, where she fell asleep.

“Remember your raccoon fur, Mom?” She'd given it to Goodwill when she emptied the closets of Henry's clothing, saying it was too heavy. “Viv wore it here once. She was like a queen in it.”

Constance pulled up the collar of her parka. “It's been years. Why have you not spread your father's ashes?”

“I will.” I'd kept the urn on my kitchen windowsill, with a view to the wild gardens of the back lane.

My mother rubbed her hands together to keep warm. “I'll email you
les numéros de téléphone.
Are you sure you won't come for a few days?”

“Raven and Zach invited me over.”

I sensed her watching me, but I kept staring straight ahead. I knew what was coming. Take a holiday. Relax. Stop waiting. Viv had been missing for close to three months.

“She could be dead,” I said. “She needed medical treatment.”

“Don't be absurd.”

“Unidentifiable bodies are always turning up.”

“Just because she is not present does not mean anything.”

“We'd have heard from her by now. For money.”

“You can't prove it.” Her reaction was like that of a child. “She's fine.”

Con told me then that she allowed herself ten minutes at the start of each day to think about Viv. Ten minutes. No more. Every day. And one email per week, on Sundays. No matter where she was. Even if she was writing to an unused or terminated account.

Mira awoke and whimpered. She gave the dog a hard, heart-shaped biscuit, breaking it into bits that Mira licked from her hand. When I told her I'd take the little mongrel on a trial basis, she gave me one of her scintillating smiles.

The sky was the colour of my ageing mother's hair. Someone flew a red kite. As it soared and glided, I followed the invisible line downward, across the field where there should have been the runner. But there was no one. When I looked back up again, the bright form had vanished behind the clouds. It might not even have been there in the first place.

*   *   *

T
HE CALL CAME
not long after Constance flew away for good.

It was a sunshiny Saturday morning and I sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper and coffee, Mira nuzzling my feet. Waxwings chirped and faint voices filled the air through my closed windows as families populated the streets, pulling children on toboggans, ornamenting their yards with snowmen.

I didn't recognize the caller ID. The man said he was Officer Quinn, but I couldn't place him.

“Did we meet? This is about my sister, right?”

“You completed a report with us.”

“And you wouldn't file it. Did you find her?”

“You said she had a paintbrush tattoo on her left shoulder blade.”

“Right.”

“You should sit. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“We have a body that fits the general description you gave us. We couldn't get a match through fingerprints or dentals.”

“A dead body?” I'd played this scenario out a hundred times already. I should have been prepared, but I wasn't.

“It's up to you whether you want to come down. We can keep trying to ID her, but it might take time.”

“I thought this just happened on TV.”

“Afraid not. I'm here till six. Forensic Pathology Unit, general campus of the Ottawa Hospital. Need the address?”

“I know it. She's been there.”

I hung up and readied myself at a snail-like pace, overcome by an inexplicable drowsiness. You're getting dressed up for your dead sister, I thought. If you think it's her, it won't be her; if you don't think it's her, it will be.

*   *   *

A
PUG-FACED WOMAN
with a beehive sat behind the Plexiglas entrance desk. She wore a bubble-gum-pink turtleneck that hurt my eyes. She buzzed me through and checked my belongings. Her tired, worn-out voice brought to mind the Dial-a-Bottle lady's voice. Maybe she had two jobs.

Officer Quinn appeared and shook my hand and led me into the fridge with its wall of steel units, not dissimilar to the shelving system we had for precious metals at work. A hospital morgue staff member greeted me with a subdued nod. He wore a white lab coat just like the one I put on every day at the Gallery. Probably his deep pockets were filled with prohibited snacks, too.

“She had no personal effects on her. There's only the tattoo.”

It addled me, how swiftly the morgue employee opened the drawer then—not giving me any time to change my mind. It must have been a tried-and-tested method, pulling the body out fast like tearing an adhesive bandage off a wound.