The Gallery of Lost Species (16 page)

Liam hadn't mentioned any study group. I peered into the doorway to see him leaning back comfortably in his chair, giving them that intoxicating smile he'd used on me so often. “I'll be single forever. Too much important work to do,” he told them. Then everyone was looking at me, standing there like a madwoman in my tie-dyed dress, clutching my wet shoes and sopping basket.

“Here's your supper, Professor Livingstone,” I said, dropping the wicker hamper on the floor and turning back down the hall.

“Edith, hang on!” he called out.

As I rounded the corner, I slipped on the polished floor. If Liam heard me fall, he didn't acknowledge it or come after me. I limped to the taxi stand, my hip throbbing.

The library tower glowed in the distance like a light sabre. The rain had subsided and I stood for a minute in the cold darkness, watching students in their carrels that lined the windows. I envied them in their partitioned wooden desks, thinking and memorizing, their laptops like crystal balls illuminating their faces. I had the fleeting thought that maybe I'd made a mistake, missing out on university life.

*   *   *

W
HEN
L
IAM CAME
home later, he immediately entered the bedroom and sat beside me on the bed.

I moved away from him and crossed my arms. “If you don't want to be with me, say so.”

“Let's not get melodramatic, Edith.”

“Do you regret this?”

“Of course not.”

“Why don't you mention me to anyone?”

“I don't discuss my private life.”

“You could have introduced me.”

“Let me make it right.”

He'd brought the basket on his bike even though the rain was coming down hard again. His clothes were wet and the more I tried to kick him off the bed, the more he tried to embrace me. I finally relented and we had sex and ate the strawberries. I decided to forgive him.

My hip ached for weeks. I hated having to sleep facing the wall, but lying on my side facing Liam hurt too much.

After the picnic debacle, he was always busy.

I started waiting for him to come home, adjusting my habits around that waiting. He missed dinners, alluding to mid-terms. I kept cooking my simple online recipes—flavourless casseroles and stir-fries that never looked like the pictures. I'd leave his plate out for a time then chuck the whole dish into the garbage when I didn't hear from him.

I went to bed nervous, angry, and alone each evening. I debated following him then talked myself out of it. When he'd kiss my temple while I slept, or when he brought me a rock, shaking me awake to describe its qualities to me, or if he suggested we take a midnight walk so he could tell me about his day and use me as a sounding board, all was forgotten.

I was like a circus performer, constantly working on tricks to impress him. Swanky feasts and erotic outfits galore. Clever books I left out for him to see, although I never actually read them. It worked for a while, but Liam's attention span with me was finite. I could only hold him so long, like a unicyclist throwing torches in the air, hoping they'd land back in my hands right-side up and with the flames still burning.

*   *   *

W
HEN OUR TIME
together ebbed into what seemed like interludes between parts of a larger production I didn't have a role in, it was because Liam had valuable work to do. I should expect less and accept his eccentricities, his absences. This is what I told myself the afternoon I opened the door to find him in suit bottoms, ironing a shirt.

As he explained about the awards banquet, his mother called to say they were ready to be picked up from the hotel.

I finished his ironing as he spoke to her. The dove-grey shirt was new. It felt expensive. I pressed it to my body then gave it to him.

“Are you the one getting the award?” I asked.

“Fellowship.” He wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror to straighten the knot of his tie. “It's no big deal.”

“You look good,” I said, my voice quavering. “Your parents must be proud, coming all this way.”

“They insisted.”

“No dates allowed or what?” I pursued, smiling too hard.

“You'd be bored,” he said, dropping his keys and phone into his suit pocket. He pinched my cheek as he headed for the door. “Hey, let's do something fun this weekend. Just us.”

“Okay,” I answered, reassured.

After he left, I flipped channels until I came across a French film called
Noce Blanche,
about a young woman named Mathilde who becomes enamoured of her teacher, François. The two begin a torrid affair. François loses his marriage and his career. When he comes to his senses, he moves away, into a self-imposed exile to Dunkirk—a township in northern France, on the sea. Mathilde follows without him knowing, taking an apartment with a view of the school where François teaches. She pines after him in his classroom through a prison-like window, living as a recluse and letting herself die. But not before scrawling,
L'océan, François, il y a l'océan
on the wall of her cramped quarters.

I thought Mathilde was pathetic. Then I reconsidered. If this was revenge, she was a mastermind. François would be haunted by her for the rest of his life.

I fell asleep on the couch. When Liam got in, I sat up and watched him get a glass of water, the phosphorescence from the fridge hitting his chest in a celestial way. When he turned and saw me, he jumped.

“Jesus! You scared me,” he said, then laughed and drank.

“Where's the prize?”

He took an envelope from his breast pocket and set it on the table.

“Did you make a speech?”

“A short one.”

He took off his jacket and loosened his tie. Unbuttoned the dove-grey shirt. He was about to say good night.

“Are you that ashamed of me?” I asked before he could retreat.

He turned to the fridge again, put both hands on the appliance, and stood there spread-eagled.

“You know how to devastate a girl,” I told him.

He smacked his forehead on the fridge. Once, twice, three times, slow and hard. “I'm not fighting with you, Edith.”

I went over to him and placed my hand in his. “Congratulations,” I said, and drew his face to mine.

He made love to me in a frantic, aggressive way. Despite himself, probably. There was an inner tension in him. A complex conflict he wouldn't talk about, like an Escher drawing, light against dark.

After, we lay there not speaking. I had Piaf's “Hymne à l'amour” in my head and I hummed it.

“Please stop,” Liam told me. “You can't sing.”

“What do you think about unicorns?” I asked, kissing his shoulder.

“I used to think anything was possible.” He turned to the window, adding, “I think they're made up.”

“Do you want to take a walk?”

“I should do some work,” he said aloofly. “I have papers to grade.”

He slid his boxers on. He stood and stretched, taking a swig of water from the bedside table. He went over to the window, opening it to let in the cool night air. Then a black form shot into the room.

The bat flew erratically, lower and lower, flitting overhead, skimming the surface of the bed and furniture. I crouched down to move out of its way.

“Wait for it to land!” Liam bent down beside me.

I could hear the wingbeats and sensed its panic. Liam grabbed a towel from the floor and tried throwing it over the bat, missing several times before trapping it. The creature made clicking noises beneath the fabric.

“It's trying to bite through,” Liam said, carrying it outside rather than tossing it out the window in case it flew in again.

I pulled the glass pane down and sat on the sill. Liam walked over to a tree, shirtless, and placed the towel with the bat in it on a branch. When he took a few steps back the small body swooped down then flew off.

He stared up at the blackness for ages.

He was melting away from me and there was nothing I could do. I was like a wax artist working in a sweltering climate.

“I hope that's not bat luck,” I joked when he finally came inside.

A few weeks later, Viv called.

“I'm home, Worm,” she told me. “Sorry I haven't been in touch.”

TWENTY-SIX

I
HADN'T SEEN
V
IV
since the funeral almost three years earlier.

I left work to meet her in a grimy downtown coffee shop. My goal was to keep her visit from Liam.

It took me a while to locate her. She waved from a corner table. A trucker's cap covered her matted blond hair and there were broken blood vessels under her eyes. She had a large purse at her feet with various articles of clothing overflowing from it onto the dirty floor.

Her hygiene shocked me. Sitting across from Viv, the only recognizable part of her was her voice, though it was weakened and hoarse. She was antsy in her seat. I caught whiffs of a sharp, rank smell. My unclean sister stank.

Along with a rising sense of worry, I felt a brisk thrill. Liam would never be attracted to her the way she looked now.

“That city was toxic. I'm starting fresh,” she said.

“Are you all right?”

“Great! Listen, I'm a bit short on cash.”

I gave her what I had in my wallet, amazed that she'd let herself go to this point. “Are you still painting?”

“Definitely. No word of this to the Con, okay?”

“Don't call her that,” I said. Regretting my tone, I asked her where she was staying.

“With friends,” she said ambiguously.

We'd become strangers, distancing ourselves with mutual relief. I still hadn't quite forgiven my sister for not flying home before our father died. Now she was back in my life and I didn't know what to do with her.

I tried not to stare at her bitten-down nails and at the squiggling scar on her cheekbone, which had stayed with her since Bella Coola like a chalk drawing of the hot springs snake.

Watching the shaky hand that held the coffee cup, I pitied her. “Don't be stupid, Vee. Come home with me.”

She didn't argue, telling me she'd wait in the Market until my shift ended. I left her near some vegetable stalls. I turned back to wave, but she was already entering the Lafayette bar.

When I got to my desk, I phoned Constance. She'd just returned from a trip to Florida with her boyfriend Pierre. She was rarely home more than a few weeks at a time these days. It was an unspoken rule that we didn't discuss Pierre even though he'd been around for almost a year. When my mother spoke of him, it was in passing. It was the same when we talked about Viv. Although we didn't talk about her much anymore.

“Come visit. We went outlet shopping. I found you the most billowy dress, I hope you haven't put on weight.”

“How long are you home?”

“Not long. I have some news—
Non,
pas là! Pas
là
, Mirabelle!
” she snapped.

“Viv's back.”

“
Quoi?
I've heard nothing.”

“She's staying with me.”

“Give me her email, Édith.”

“I doubt she uses it.”

“
Give
it to me.” The pitch of my mother's voice rose. “Let's have her over for brunch!” When the dog started yipping, she hung up.

*   *   *

I
TOOK THE
elevator to the viewing room. The afternoon shifts were the best part of my job. When the sun came through the panes, it enlightened every object and person like gold-leaf manuscript illustrations. When it rained hard, it was like being in the undercut behind a waterfall.

I hoped there wouldn't be any researchers there. I was cataloguing seventy-nine variations of a foot by Hans Schlippenberger and I wanted to finish my notes so I could move on to a more interesting series. But when I came in to relieve Alejandro, there was a figure stooped over a table at the back of the room.

“He has the Gauguin file, so no breaks.” Alejandro swept up his magazines and walked out before the glass doors swung shut. By the time he reached the elevator, he had a cigarette in his mouth and was squeezing a hand into his leather pant pocket in search of a lighter.

I settled in and scanned the register. Dr. Theo de Buuter. Nobody I knew, probably a volunteer. Gallery volunteers were a territorial subculture of wealthy retirees not to be interfered with. The staff avoided them and they ran the place in their own parallel universe, leading tours, holding silent auctions, going on art-themed trips through Europe. Once, I took water from the cooler by their lounge and they sent me a reprimanding note.

I walked over to the old man's table. A couple of prints were laid out in front of him. We owned twenty-two Gauguins of moderate artistic merit—one sculpture, two oils, some woodcuts, and a few zincographs. With the exception of the sculpture and the oils, these stayed in storage for the most part. Sometimes smaller institutions borrowed them, headlining
Gauguin Masterworks!

He was bent over, scribbling away with one of those tiny pencils we supplied—the ones barely long enough to rest on the soft expanse of skin between the thumb and index finger. I cleared my throat until he removed his glasses and closed his notebook.

He tried pushing his chair back, but it kept catching on the carpet. Once he stood up, he towered over me, though part of his height may have been due to his outrageous hair.

His pencil rolled off the table, landing soundlessly. He bent over to pick it up, grunting. He wore a blue bow tie, the only splash of colour on an otherwise dreary palette. A professor, I re-evaluated.

“Hi. If you need anything, let me know.” His nod implied, is that all? Gulls cackled through the thick panes above us. “We close at four,” I added, then went back to my desk.

I catalogued five more feet. Logging off Avalon, I looked up to find old De Buuter staring. Not at me but through me, as though I were a hologram. There had been talk of holograms around the Gallery. Senior management wanted to put all the collections into storage and have virtual holograms on display instead, so nothing got damaged.