The Heart Specialist (6 page)

The words were French but the accent, I realized, was not. He stepped closer and I found myself staring into the face of a stranger.

“
Mais qu’est-ce que vous faîtes là?
”

He was as scared as I was. He had probably mistaken me for a thief prowling among the garbage cans. I did not answer right away so he switched to English, speaking again with a foreigner’s precision. “This is private property.” He was German, I guessed, recently arrived.

A dog came tearing toward us, barking. It reached us so fast I had no time to protect myself. I fell forward spectacularly onto my hands and chin, the impact sending my glasses flying. The alley was suddenly a blur.

The dog had slobbery pink gums — that much I could see — and made threatening sounds even after the man grabbed it by the collar and pulled it off me. I had never liked dogs. My grandmother had said it was because of Galen, the animal my father had kept when I was small. It had been nervous and bitten me. The man must have seen my fear for he raised his hand as if to strike the animal. After it quieted he turned back to me and for the first time seemed to see who I was.

“But you are a girl,” he exclaimed, his eyes taking in my clean hair and school uniform. “A young girl. I am so sorry,” He reached out his free hand but had to retract it to keep hold of the dog. “Come inside,” he said, yanking the animal toward the front door. “She is a guard dog. You must excuse her. But please, come in and rest. My wife will prepare something for you.”

His spine curved like a shepherd’s crook and he was balding. He looked nothing like my father. He opened the front door and ushered me in, then tied the dog outside to a post.

Stepping over the threshold I felt like a thief. The old man had no idea what it meant to me to be inside his house. I remembered everything as if it had stayed inside me, intact, just waiting to be remembered. The smells were wrong but everything else was deeply familiar. I could have led him without difficulty to the kitchen, where his wife would fix us coffee. The corridor that stretched out before us was long and dark with a runner covering its entire length. I had dreamt of this hallway and of this very rug, I realized with a start. I knew the wide oak staircase leading to the bedrooms on the second floor and the smaller, darker set of stairs that continued to the attic. We passed the parlour first, where my parents had welcomed doctors and professors and their wives. I peered into it but did not stop. The place I was after was located at the back of the house in the more private interior.

It was a shock when we reached it. The room itself was the same but its contents were so changed that, at first glance, I recognized nothing. The window I had tried to peer into let in little light, which contributed to the difficulty. The shelves were still there, but instead of holding jars they were piled high with bolts of cloth, the round ends gaping like surprised mouths. There was a central table, perhaps the same one my father had once used for his dissections, but now it was strewn with dress patterns and strips of fabric. Two sewing machines sat in a corner.

“You like dresses?” the man asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

“You want I should make you something? My wife can fit you.”

Just then an older woman with worried eyes came down the hall. She examined me suspiciously, but after the tailor, who introduced himself as Mr. Froelich, said something in German her face softened. “The dog jumped on you,” she said to me in English. “We are sorry for that.”

I told her I was fine, even though I’d knocked my chin badly enough that it ached.

The woman noticed. “You are bruised,” she said, touching my jaw. “It is swelling. Come to the kitchen and I fix you.”

I did not want to leave the workroom but could see no way to object, so I followed her down the hall. She sat me down at her kitchen table, producing chips of ice in a hankie and then prepared me a snack. “Mandelbrot,” she said, laying down a plate of eggcoloured cookies and a mug. “A little sweet won’t hurt you.”

The coffee was so strong my fingers tingled, but it helped. The woman smiled. “You are a student? We have a client from this school,” she said, indicating my uniform. She turned to her husband and asked for the name.

“Something with banks,” he answered.

“Banks Geoffreys,” I said, horrified that Janie might have set foot here.

“That’s it!” the woman laughed. “You know her? A sweet girl.”

I drank my coffee and lowered my eyes. The mandelbrot, with its hints of apricot and almonds, was delicious.

“You need a gown for graduating, maybe?” she asked when the conversation lulled. From her pocket she extracted a yellow measuring tape.

I shook my head. She and Mr. Froelich had been hoping I was a client. Now that I had indicated I was not they would expect an explanation as to why I had been prowling in their alley. “I did not come to buy anything.”

Mrs. Froelich’s eyes narrowed.

I could not think of a convincing lie so I ended up telling part of my story.

“What did your father work at?” the woman asked. She was still wondering if she should trust me.

“Medicine,” I said. “He was a doctor who taught at McGill.”

“Yes,” laughed the tailor. “That is correct. When we moved in there were many strange things he left. Do you remember, Erika?”

The old woman shuddered. “Remember? I had nightmares for months. Things in bottles. Things cut from the bodies of the dead.”

“That room just next to the kitchen,” I said. “Your workshop …”

I never finished my sentence, for Mr. Froelich interrupted, saying it had been the worst room in the house. “It was your father’s office. My wife hated it. To this day she swears it is inhabited by ghosts.”

I looked at his wife, but really I was remembering another woman who had also hated it. My mother had even given it a name — the Room of Horrors. I had not thought of it in years.

“What happened to the specimens?” I tried to pose the question casually, even though casual was not what I was feeling. My father had left many of our possessions here when we fled to St. Andrews East, including the contents of that room. I had no idea what arrangements had been made. Maybe the Froelichs had simply taken possession of everything, in which case some of my father’s things might still be here.

Mrs. Froelich was looking at me with a queer expression. “It was all properly done. There was a deed from the notary.” She was worrying that I might make a claim. I took a moment to reassure her.

“We are only renters,” added her husband.

“Tenants,” corrected the old woman, whose English was more precise.

“So you do not actually own the place?” I asked.

The old man shook his head. “Another doctor bought it from your father. William Howlett is this man’s name. He is our landlord. Perhaps you know him?”

The name meant nothing to me. I was more interested in my father’s possessions and directed the conversation back to them. I could not help picturing the little skeleton with which I had once played, wondering if it had ended in the rubbish.

“We packed them all away,” the old man finally said. Then he looked at his wife and corrected himself. “I packed them. My wife refused to touch them.”

The old woman shook her head. “I am sorry, but these things upset me. I was happy when it was done.” She shrugged, shaking her head again. “I am a simple woman. I could not sleep with those things in my house.”

“You threw them out?” I said, my heart sinking.

“No, no,” said the tailor. “I packed them up, like I told you. The other doctor took them.”

“The other doctor?”

“The owner. Dr. Howlett.”

The old woman glared at her husband and kicked him under the table. It was obvious that she did not wish him to divulge any more.

“We did keep one thing of your father’s,” she finally admitted, either to divert me or perhaps out of kindness. “This we can give to you.” She went to a drawer near the sink, which clinked when she pulled it open. From what I could see it was their junk drawer, a place for all the lost and misplaced things that collect in a lifetime. She rummaged for some time and finally extracted a blackened metal square. “I knew we still had it,” she said, holding it up to the light. “It needs a polish, of course.”

Mrs. Froelich sat down at the table and proceeded to rub at the soot until her rag was black. Four words shone through:
Honoré Bourret, Medical Surgeon
. She handed me the door plaque. “He is still alive?”

I nodded, although I had no way of being sure. The old woman was about to ask me more, but now it was my turn to be tight-lipped. Perhaps they knew nothing about my family and I did not particularly wish them to find out.

“Thank you,” I told her quite genuinely, taking the plaque and standing up. “You have been most kind.”

The tailor asked one last time if he could fit me for a dress, but I shook my head. I could probably have used one that day, but this was beside the point. Mr. Froelich and his wife had given me something far more valuable, which perhaps they suspected as they showed me to the door.

BY THE TIME I
made it back to school it was past ten. What a strange morning it had been. I had hoped to lay something to rest but instead it felt more alive than ever. The Froelichs’ shop had stirred memories I had not even known I had and a longing so sharp it made me feel weak.

I entered the school from the back. In the yard girls were arranging tables and cutting lilacs to place in pots on the auditorium stage. The girls in my class had all fixed their hair and dressed, and for the first time in my life I noticed what they were wearing. I wondered if any of these dresses were the work of the bent old tailor. When I entered the auditorium a girl by the door stopped me and said I was wanted at the main office.

Grandmother, Laure and Miss Skerry were standing in a group, looking starched in church clothes. Running was out of the question so I walked fast, eyes latching onto the figure whose letters had bolstered me for the past eight months. It was strange to see Miss Skerry outside of the Priory. She was smiling warmly, but on her head was a derby hat with an elastic under the chin that made her look ridiculous.

“Good heavens,” said Grandmother as I approached. Laure stood beside her, her mouth frozen in an awful, forced smile.

“I cannot say that they are flattering.” Grandmother’s eyes were the colour of forget-me-nots, with pinprick holes at the centre. “Do you wear them all the time?”

She had not even said hello. “I take them off when I sleep,” I said. My glasses had been a point of contention from the start. Grandmother had a country woman’s preconceptions on the subject of eyes.

“Surely it is unhealthy to keep them on so long,” Grandmother said. “I have heard it warps the eyeballs.” The headmistress, who was standing with us, tried to explain that this was not the case and that no damage would come of it, but Grandmother would not be swayed. “She will not wear them on the stage today. She must look her best, Miss Smith. People will be watching.”

Miss Smith said she thought the glasses were flattering, but that it was entirely up to me and my family what I should wear. “She is our top girl, after all,” Miss Smith said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “She has a duty to look her best.”

The discussion over the glasses and my appearance did not end there. Grandmother, Laure and Miss Skerry followed me to my room, which was empty, I discovered with relief. The thought of Janie Banks Geoffreys watching me while I dressed was more than I could bear.

Laure immediately started rummaging in the closet, cooing over my roommate’s dresses. She found the white Sunday frock Grandmother had made for me and laid it on my bed. “How do you want your hair, Agnes?” she asked, turning me around and eyeing me thoughtfully.

I hated every second of it. I had many positive attributes but my looks were not among them. No new dress or hairstyle was going to hide this fact.

Despite my protests Grandmother confiscated my glasses and manoeuvred me into the white frock. Laure, meanwhile, began twisting and braiding my hair. Miss Skerry took no part in these operations, but occupied herself by flipping through my year’s worth of exercise books and scholarly manuals. I interpreted this as a subtle form of solidarity, although it was hard to say for sure. Miss Skerry’s face was now as blurry as everything else in the room.

“My brain has won the prizes,” I observed.

Grandmother shot a meaningful glance at Miss Skerry. “This school,” she said, “has not been an unmitigated success, Georgina. Agnes’s time here has done little to smooth her edges.”

“That’s unfair,” I shot back. “What I need is a real place of learning, where substance is valued, not appearance.”

“Form is as necessary as substance,” said Miss Skerry, who in the four years that I had known her had never shown more than a rudimentary concern for her clothes. “The two are halves of a whole.”

“A school tunic is fine apparel for an educated mind,” I shot back. “Just as glasses are fine for eyes that like to read.”

Miss Skerry shook her head. “As the French say, Agnes, there is no need to crash through open doors. You are at the centre of the honours today. I am afraid I have to agree with your grandmother. You must look the part.”

Just before eleven they led me down the stairs to the main floor, where a crowd milled outside the auditorium. A couple of girls waved, but they were so blurred that I could identify only one of them — Felicity Hingston, the sole student at the academy who came close to being a friend. Over six-feet tall with skinny, hairy arms and legs, she was difficult to miss. She had been top-ranked in academics prior to my arrival.

The blur was a comfort in its way. It reminded me of childhood, when all I could make out were basic shapes and I had not suspected there could be more. My dress was now transparent in spots with sweat. We all trotted up to the front to get our diplomas, but then I was forced to rise a second time — and a third, and a fourth — until the sweat was running freely down my sides. I won all the academic prizes that year.

Each time my name was called I had to rise from my seat and walk up the centre aisle through throngs of girls. I was aware I looked ridiculous. My dress was too tight, exposing a body I usually hid in my loose-fitting tunic. The auditorium was as hot as my grandmother’s kitchen on pie day, and people were getting audibly restless. By the time I was summoned up for my final prize and valedictory speech, a few of the girls actually groaned.