The Heart Specialist

by Claire Holden Rothman

  Janie’s mouth was sensual, but if one looked closely one saw pulled-down corners. In public, with her gang of similarly pretty, popular girls, she was always laughing. In the privacy of our bedroom, however, when she thought she was alone, her sadness showed. Janie’s mother was in a second marriage. Janie was boarding at Misses Symmers and Smith’s not to learn but to keep her stepfather’s house child-free.

  My bloomers and school uniform were on the chair beside Janie’s head. I swung myself up and reached for them. Almost immediately Janie’s eyes opened. “It’s barely dawn, Saint Agnes.”

  The nickname was another thing I would not miss. I had endured it since October, when we had studied Keats and the Romantic period in English class. It was not a compliment. I was a newcomer, a country girl who in a few short months had beaten the school’s top students, earning the highest average ever for a graduating girl. Janie had coined the nickname, predicting I would be a virgin till the day I died, just like my martyred predecessor.

  “Why are you putting on that old thing?” Janie’s lower lip hung open, revealing a row of straight, white teeth. “We’re allowed to wear what we want, remember?” She rose on one elbow and grabbed her own uniform from where it lay crumpled on her bed. “Between you and I,” she added, “this thing gets burned the minute I get home.”

  I gazed at the fractured ceiling. Janie Banks had been a pensioner at Symmers and Smith’s for ten years and in that time had not figured out how to use an object pronoun. Like so many of the girls here she didn’t care a fig for learning.

  “Yoo-hoo,” said Janie, pulling me back from my thoughts. “Where do you fly away to, Agnes? Sometimes you look so utterly vacant. I just said we can wear real clothes.”

  When I shrugged she leapt off the bed as if she had scented a mouse. “Give it here,” she said, standing over me. “We’re all wearing pretty things today. You must too.”

  Janie opened our closet, revealing a large collection of dresses that belonged primarily to her. She withdrew the exception — a plain white cotton frock. “Here.”

  I shook my head. White thickened me and the tapered bodice made me think of weddings.

  Janie held it up, jiggling the hanger so it danced like a puppet. “Come now, Agnes. It is perfectly saintly!”

  I slipped my tunic over my head. “I must go.”

  Janie stopped jiggling. “What do you mean, ‘go’? You’ll miss breakfast.” Her expression changed suddenly from stupefied to sly. She sat on my bed. “What is this about, Agnes? I detect that something distinctly unsaintly is going on.”

  Janie’s mind had one track. It was almost laughable how for her all roads led to boys. I fastened my sash, self-conscious with Janie’s eyes studying me closely. “I have to run an errand. I will not have another chance.”

  “An errand,” Janie repeated. She reached for my watch and squinted at it. “At six o’clock in the morning.” She stuck out a shapely leg. “Here, pull the real one, why don’t you?”

  The tension broke and we laughed.

  “Is it a man? Come on, confess.”

  Light was pouring through the flimsy curtain. Girls would soon be in the halls, lining up for the toilets. If I were going to leave it would have to be now. “You’ll cover for me?”

  Janie smiled. “This is rich. I never dreamed you had it in you.”

  “Just say I am practising my speech if anyone asks.” I was to give the valedictory that day. It was a perfect excuse.

  Janie grinned. “Is he handsome?”

  I pursed my lips in a smile I hoped looked something like the Mona Lisa’s, grabbed my sweater and left. Rumours would be buzzing like blackflies when I returned, discretion not being in Janie Banks Geoffreys’s repertory, but frankly I was past caring. By tonight school would be done with. Let them have their fantasies.

  THE CITY WAS FULL of snow. Not real snow of course as it was practically summer, but something so close it looked like snow as I stepped into the street — pollen from the cottonwoods. I grabbed at flakes of it floating in the viscous air. Every June this happened in Montreal, and in St. Andrews East too — a sort of winter out of season.

  Misses Symmers and Smith’s School was perched on the steepest part of Peel Street in the shadow of Mount Royal. I ran down the hill, stopping only when I reached flatter ground at Sherbrooke Street. I continued a little farther south and then turned east, into the commercial district. On the corner a boy was hawking newspapers in a clear, sweet voice. A tram clanged by under hissing wires. The odours of springtime in Montreal were stronger than ever that day. This was the city of my birth. It had informed me in my earliest childhood and I loved to explore it. Because the streets were considered dangerous for girls I had not had much chance to leave the school grounds. I knew the Windsor train station quite well and the route from it to my school. I also knew the Church of St. John the Evangelist down on St. Urbain Street, where most of my classmates and I went to worship on Sundays. The instant the service ended, however, we were marched up the hill to our dormitories.

  I scanned the heads bobbing in front of me on the raised wooden sidewalk. Nearly every time I walked downtown I saw him. Today would likely be no exception, although my glasses had changed things a little. For it was not actually him that I saw, not that this dampened my pleasure or my pain. I would catch a glimpse of a dark head or a shoulder and stop dead in my tracks. Sometimes it was not looks but the way he walked, or even the rakish tilt of his hat. Those first seconds when hope surged were so good they made up for the regret when he finally turned around, revealing a face I did not know.

  No one was paying me the slightest attention. They never did. It was my one consolation for being short and unprepossessing. I could walk unobserved through the city’s streets pretending I was just a pair of eyes detached from my woman’s body. No one would think to interfere with me.

  I loved walking in Montreal, where people did not know my name. Many times over the course of this year I had wondered what it would be like to live here and make my home in so big a place. There was little chance of this, of course. Grandmother had made it plain that I was needed in St. Andrews East for the coming year, not to mention all the years that would follow.

  While Misses Symmers and Smith’s School had enabled me to leave my childhood home, it had been a mixed success. The curriculum included a daily course in domestic arts, in which I was made to cut and sew things. I was working hard in mathematics, but it was the only subject that challenged me. Science at this school did not involve empirical observation, dissections or microscope work. For most of the year we learned the names of distinguished men and the dates on which they had made discoveries. The Latin course was so basic that after four or five classes I was granted permission to sit outside in the corridor and read novels. Miss Symmers and Miss Smith tried hard but they were no match for my governess and I began to understand how lucky I had been in having Miss Skerry come to our home.

  In early October, when the leaves started to drop from the trees, my grades began dropping too. Miss Skerry tried everything to rekindle my interest, but I was too disappointed to heed her. In November McGill announced that it was looking for women to enrol in its undergraduate arts program for the third year in its history. Miss Symmers told us that a purse would be given to the girl in the graduating class with the highest overall academic average so that she might continue her studies.

  It was what I needed. I started to apply myself with as much effort to domestic arts as to memorizing stories about Sir Isaac Newton and his apple. In March I wrote my university entrance exam and was accepted.

  There was only one hitch: my grandmother. Even after I had told her of the purse and assured her it would not cost a penny to send me, she would not accept it. The idea of my living alone without her chaperoning skills in the city of my father was beyond her ken. Miss Skerry told me not to worry. She said I must do my best at my studies and things would work out. I was not so certain. Once Grandmother formed an opinion she
stuck to it.

  The smell of baking bread pulled me from my thoughts. Pain frais, announced a hand-painted sign hanging in a bakery window. Fresh pain, I thought, playing with the language, as opposed to the stale kind I was so accustomed to. My mouth watered for a simple roll or a croissant, but I had no money.

  St. Catherine Street was shabbier than I recollected. I squinted at addresses, repeating the one I was searching for like an incantation. I became so involved I walked right past the unassuming greystone. From the street it seemed small, but it was one of those buildings that makes up in length for what it lacks in breadth. The stones were stained black except for a small pale patch near the door where a little bronze plaque had once been affixed with my father’s name engraved on it. A wooden sign now hung over the door with a picture of a needle and a spool of thread.

  The windows on the lower storey were barred, giving the place a slightly forbidding air, but up above they were open. My gaze continued upwards to the topmost rooms just below the eaves and I wondered if whoever lived there knew the building’s sad history. People were walking toward me on the sidewalk so I slipped past garbage crates into an adjacent alley.

  The alley was so narrow that I could reach out and simultaneously touch the stones on either side. There were only two windows that looked into it from my old house, both lined with bars. I pulled myself up to the back window, but the pane was so filthy that all I ended up seeing was my own dusty reflection. A dog began to bark so I dropped back down and retraced my steps to St. Catherine Street. I was within a few feet of the light and noise when a voice called out for me to stop. A man had stepped out of the house. In the morning light he sort of shimmered, more ghost than human. I could not see much more than his profile. He was not tall but made up for this by his girth. I was straining forward, trying to make out his face, when he spoke again.

  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.”