The Restoration of Emily. Kim Moritsugu

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit pro­ gram, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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      “If you can’t say anything good about someone, sit here right by me.”

      — Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 1884–1980

      ~ CHAPTER ONE ~

      My first fun appointment of the fun-filled day ahead is at 9:30 a.m., to see a specialist about some sharp pains I’ve had for months in my right arm. When my GP diagnosed the problem as an ordinary affliction with the prosaic name “frozen shoulder,” I was tempted to go on ignoring the jabs of hurt, avoid using the arm for anything strenuous, and wait for time’s healing power (and/or my body’s ever more glacially paced self-healing capabilities) to make the problem go away. But the pain has become worse instead of better, has begun to wake me at night, and is making me crankier than my normal, pain-free, non-sleep-deprived cranky self. Hence the visit to the rheumatologist, about whose curative abilities I am skeptical, since, in my experience, competence is rare.

      My suspicions are not allayed when the doctor turns out to be markedly younger than I am. In her late thirties, I’d guess, from the bags under her eyes, the faded bloom of youth on her skin. She addresses me by my first name, Emily (better that than the sort of formality I’ve disliked since childhood), introduces herself as Joan rather than as Dr. Anything, and takes my history.

      She expresses no surprise upon hearing my birth year, does not exclaim that I look younger than my age, a line I have become accustomed to and, I’m afraid, quite fond of, from my regular doctor, a wrinkled woman in her sixties who I fear is losing her memory and mind, because I am, have been since I turned forty. Though how funny is it (not) that I never think my GP feeble when she declares my blood pressure that of a young woman or tells me I’m lucky I inherited the skin gene from my father’s side and not my mother’s, because fair complexions go old so fast, look at hers.

      Dr. Joan asks my occupation, and when I tell her, says, “An architect? Have you designed anything famous?”

      I have an urge to lay claim to a set of Mies van der Rohe skyscrapers downtown, or to a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Michigan, or to the Red House in Kent. My anti-authoritarian impulse — because she didn’t say I looked young? Sheesh — is to jolt her, to disturb her calm the way the occasional obstreperous client does mine. But I hold back, and when her polite smile seems to invite more detail, I say, “I restore old houses.”

      She shares that she lives in a loft-style condo in the meat packing district, an area filled with arty boutiques and funky restaurants built within smelling range of abattoirs. She has no affinity for old houses, in other words. Good. We are both

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