The Gallery of Lost Species (30 page)

She was in more decent shape than I'd expected. It was obvious she'd once been beautiful. Her seaweed-like hair was as blond as Viv's. Her waxy skin was almost transparent, but her nose was raw and red, as if she had a cold. Even through the Vaseline you could see the pipe burns on her lips. Under her nearly invisible eyebrows, her lids were closed. Quinn confirmed her eyes were an aqua blue.

The face wasn't Viv's and I told him so.

He touched my arm. “Take your time. People don't look the same in death.”

“It's not her.”

“You're sure? You haven't seen the tattoo.” He pulled some photos from a folder, of a melted black flower on a bluish-white shoulder.

“That's a rose.”
You fucking asshole.

“Cheap tattoos are prone to smudging.”

“It's not my sister.” I glanced at the girl once more. She seemed bloated to me now, an obscene corpse.

“This is traumatic. Families misidentify.”

“Vivienne has a squiggly scar on her cheekbone,” I retaliated. “I forgot to put that on the form.” I tugged on the skin of my cheek for good measure. Then I was at the door and he was behind me. “I could sue you for putting me through this,” I told him. “Please don't call again unless you find her.”

When I turned back to confront him, he was scribbling something in his idiotic notebook.

“What if no one claims her?” I added.

“She'll be moved to the
PFPU
—the Provincial Forensic Pathology Unit—for longer-term storage until she's ID'd and claimed for disposition.”

“What if you can't identify her?”

“Depending on the circumstances of the death, the coroner might retain a decedent for years until we ID them.”

“But what if no one claims her even then?”

“If no one comes forward to claim the body and no next of kin, neighbour, or friend is willing to accept financial responsibility to bury her, the municipality where she died would bury her.”

“How did she die?”

“Toxicology found enough alcohol and methamphetamine in her system to kill a horse.”

I pictured a horse galloping across her body. My brain wasn't working right.

“Where did you find her?”

“Snowbank.”

I'd read somewhere that when dying of hypothermia, the last sensation was one of warmth. At least there was that.

*   *   *

A
S
I
FILLED
out paperwork in the waiting area, the antiseptic smell of the body fridge wouldn't dissipate, as though it had leached into me.

I ran to the washrooms and locked myself in a stall, hyperventilating. My airway was closing off.

“Are you okay?” The receptionist knocked on the door.

I was unable to speak more than a short word. “Ffffine.” I searched for my Ventolin. I couldn't find it. There was oxygen all around me, yet I couldn't get enough air. The muscles in my neck were stiffening. My fingertips and mouth started tingling. I was breathing too deeply, taking too long for an inhalation offering no air, no relief, a stunted exhale. The pain in my shoulders was acute.

“Are you having a panic attack?” the receptionist asked, unfazed.

“Nnn-nnn-nnno, asth-ma,” I sputtered, pursing my lips and grabbing my throat before everything went black.

When I came to, my head was in her lap and the stall door was open. She'd crawled under and had my inhaler in her hand. She shook it and brought it to my mouth. I pushed it away. “Your lips aren't blue anymore,” she told me. “But I'm taking you to the Emerg wing, it's not far.”

“I'm fine,” I said, sitting up.

“Are you sure?”

“This happens. I'm all right.”

She assisted me with my coat and helped me to the lobby. Officer Quinn was already with another family. I thanked her and walked slowly across the icy parking lot to the old Buick.

I went home and lay down, feeling as if I'd been punched in the chest. Barely four-thirty, it was already dark outside.

What did it matter that the mermaid-like girl in the morgue wasn't Vivienne? She was the prelude to my sister's own death song, whether in one year or two. What other outcome could there be?

Old Vespers glowed on my nightstand. I picked up the chunk of moonstone, missing three of his four limbs from the times I'd dropped him through the years. The alligator still gave off an astonishing incandescence. I thought he would have an expiry date and decompose like plastic toys. It must be that something that sacred and ancient, made from solidified rays of moon, retained its afterglow.

FORTY-NINE

I
WAITED FOR
N
ICK
to phone. I suspected he never would. Yet I couldn't shake this urgency to see Viv's daughter. The child's face would not leave my mind.

He didn't answer my calls, so I sent texts. I emailed and messaged him on Facebook, cyberstalking him until he got back to me, reluctantly suggesting I could find them the following Sunday at Magnolia Park, where the kids liked to go sledding.

On the day of our meeting, I stopped off at Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's, thoughtlessly plucking a stuffed wallaby from a shelf for Amir. Then I agonized over a gift for Clair, finally settling on a Winnie-the-Pooh bear along with A. A. Milne's collected works.

I reached the downtown park as bells rang out from a nearby church tower, playing “Ave Maria.”

“Jesus Christ is born!” a cadaverous man in a Repent to Christ sandwich board shouted at passersby. “Only Jesus can save you from damnation!”

Walking down a lane of twisting, grey-barked trees, I spotted them by an open-topped fort—Clair in the same brown snowsuit, darting in and out of the whiteness, and Nick in an army parka, punching his gloved hands together to keep warm before pressing more snow onto the walls. As I approached, he saw me and jogged over.

“Listen, Edith,” he said after greeting me. He removed his sunglasses, holding back as though he was thinking twice about something. Fine-spun ice filaments extended from his eyebrows and eyelashes. “Nahlah thinks you'll get attached.”

“And if I do?”

“I move around with work. There's no telling how long we'll be here.”

“I'll hop on a plane, then.” I took off my toque and headed in Clair's direction.

“Hold up a sec.” He rushed to step in front of me with his imploring oceanic eyes. “She's also worried you'll say something.”

“She doesn't know about Viv, then.” I was confirming more than asking.

“She has no memory of her and we haven't told her. She's too young.”

We watched Clair somersaulting in the snow. I could hear his teeth clattering. “I won't say anything. But how can you be sure she can't remember her own mother?”

“She gets attached fast.”

“She's my family too.”

He decompressed a bit then. “You're right. I apologize.”

I went over to where Clair now sat on a snow seat at a snow table, making snow cups from a miniature beach bucket. She huffed with concentration.

“Hi,” I said, stepping into her line of sight. She took stock of me, undisturbed, and continued with her enterprise. “Can I sit with you?”

“It's Edith, sweetie.” Nick came up beside us, but she ignored him.

“Can you pass the scooper?” she asked in a small, hoarse voice, looking up at me again without blinking.

I knelt for a yellow shovel, placing it in her outstretched mitten. “This is a super-funky fort.”

“It's going to melt,” she replied.

“Not for a while, though, right?”

She patted the snow cup and dropped the shovel, sniffling. Then, with a mischievous grin, she pushed herself up, ran a circle around the fort, and gave my leg a punch. “You're it!”

I chased leisurely after her, letting myself slip and fall. When I opened my eyes, she was bent over my face, her gold ropes of hair brushing my cheeks.

I raised myself onto my elbows. “So, Clair Angel, can you make snow angels?”

She gave a dry, crackling squeal as she dropped down beside me and fanned out her arms and legs. “This one's Amir.” She rolled over to an unspoiled snow patch. “This one's Momma!”

Of course she remembered her mother. If only in an indiscernible way. Like a fresco preserved deep in the ground, the memories were surely there, waiting to be unearthed.

She pulled me up by my coat, leading me back to the snow table. I sat with her while Nick crossed the park for hot chocolate and Beaver Tails.

“I brought you something,” I said, retrieving the bear and the book from my bag.

“Pooh!” she trilled.

“You like him?”

“I like Piglet better.” She stationed the animal in her lap, placing his paws on the table, before she flipped through the pages with her red-mittened hands. Chewing on a hood string, she slid over to me and scampered onto my knee. “Read!” she cried, repositioning the bear.

I slipped my arm around her waist to hold her warm little body in place. Through her snowsuit, I could feel her belly moving in and out, in and out. She was so small. So trusting. I wanted to protect her. Even in her whirr of activity there was a serene aspect about Clair that allayed my fears.

I dragged the book over and she dropped a mitt onto an illustration of Winnie-the-Pooh in a green bed. A whopping tusked elephant with a pot of honey floated above the sleeping bear. I went to the start of the story and read.

IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP

One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-thePooh and Piglet were all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was eating and said carelessly: “I saw a Heffalump today, Piglet.”

“What was it doing?” asked Piglet.

“Just lumping along,” said Christopher Robin. “I don't think it saw me.”

“I saw one once,” said Piglet. “At least, I think I did,” he said. “Only perhaps it wasn't.”

“So did I,” said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.

“You don't often see them,” said Christopher Robin carelessly.

“Not now,” said Piglet.

“Not at this time of year,” said Pooh.

Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Pooh and Piglet to go home together.

Clair listened attentively, resting her head on my chest and kicking her boots back and forth between my legs. Nick returned with our hot drinks and the steaming, flat doughnuts coated in sugar and cinnamon. After a bite and a gulp she was off again, the heavy book sliding from the slick table onto the ground as she scooted back into the fort.

“I should know better than to bring a book. My dad drowned me in books when we were kids. It stressed me out,” I told Nick.

“Riiiiiiight. Your sister found that a riot. Wasn't your furniture made from books?”

“I had a book chair and book steps up to my bed.”

“Gotta give your dad points for originality.” Nick brushed some of the topping off his doughnut before taking a bite, his knees practically to his chin on the snow chair.

“How did you and Nahlah meet?” I asked.

“Pilates.”

I laughed at the thought of Nick Angel doing Pilates.

“What's so funny?” He looked amused. “I can hold the plank longer than anyone. Still can't sit cross-legged, but I'm working on it.”

I was glad for him. He deserved a redo.

“She's a health nut,” he added. “Into all that holistic mumbo-jumbo.” He wiped his sugary fingers on his jeans. “How about you?”

“There was someone, but…” I still couldn't articulate about Liam.

“The right guy will find you,” he said, patting my knee.

I hadn't thought of it like that before. I believed I was the one who'd eternally be searching.

I pulled the red-necked wallaby from my bag. “For Amir,” I said.

He thanked me, stuffing it down the front of his coat so that the wallaby's head stuck out.

“I need to spend time with her. It's important.”

“We'll sort something out,” he said, thumping his combat boots together to get his circulation going. “She has a lot of problems,” he added.

“Like what?”

“She had breathing and feeding issues when she was born. Now it's her digestion. She's already had two operations. She gets chronic pain. Sometimes she's scared to eat. I gave her a pill today so she could have a treat with you.”

Clair whirled around the white walls, oblivious to us. This living part of my sister. My elfin niece humming and chattering to herself.

“She has learning disabilities. You're seeing her on a good day. She hasn't got the alphabet down yet. She can't read or write. She wets her bed and has to wear diapers.”

“But once she feels better, this will all happen, like, presto, right?”

“Out of nowhere she'll hit and punch us. She can't tie her shoes or do up buttons or zippers. Some things may not develop. She was in foster care for two years and your sister wasn't in top form when she was pregnant. But it's pointless to torture myself over what caused this.”

The church bells started ringing once more. Through the magnolia branches was the great sledding slope. Bodies coasted down on black inner tubes, their screams of delight travelling through the music of the bells.

When Nick waved to Clair, she skipped over to us. He leaned forward so she could squeeze the wallaby's face. “Roo Roo,” she cooed, adding, “Daddy, let's go sliding!” She jumped around and yanked on his sleeve.

“Let me take her,” I told him as we stood up.

Clair wrapped herself around my leg and Nick studied his daughter. “This is rare. She's not usually keen on strangers.”

He knelt down, kissing Clair on her rosy cheek. He zipped her coat up to her neck, rewrapped her scarf, and adjusted her toque and mittens. “You two go ahead,” he said, patting the walls of the fort. “I'll keep vigil from our stronghold.”