The Man Without a Shadow (17 page)

He has fallen, he has been thrown onto his back. So hard, the wind is knocked out of him.

Rough fingers grip his ankle and drag him in the dirt. He is panting, whimpering. (Where are his brothers? Why don't they come to help him?) High-pitched jeering laughter as a cushion from one of the porch chairs is pressed against his face, hard.

Can't draw breath to scream. Can't draw breath. The cushion is pressed harder, his assailant is leaning his weight on the cushion, on Eli's face.

Later it will be said—Oh Axel doesn't mean to hurt, he just teases too hard.

Later it will be said—Eli is such a timid boy. He has got to be encouraged to play with the others, and to swim. He has got to learn to swim this summer.

Beneath the porch where he is hiding he sees the girls' legs, their slender bodies in shorts and halter tops. One of them is his cousin Gretchen.

Gretchen cups her hands to her lips and calls—Eli? Where are you? E-li . . .

He will hear her voice—
Eli? E-li . . .
—like an echo inside his head.

Eli? Oh, E-li . . .

TRYING TO EXPLAIN.
It is an effort like that of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill again, again, again.

At first he has thought that the young woman is a relative of his, for she looks familiar. Then, he has thought that the young woman is a girl he'd known in grade school. Or, later in high school.

She is not his fiancée. Not the blond fiancée, or the other.

She appears to be one of the medical staff. Though not a doctor, for she isn't wearing a white lab coat, and there is no plastic ID on the lapel of her black jacket.

She has introduced herself to him, and he has clasped her hand. He remembers the warmth of the hand-clasp but he has forgotten her name.

“I have some trouble with my memory, I think.”

“Do you, Eli? What trouble?”

“I just—it's—I don't know . . . It's like a fog or a swamp, and if I walk into it, it just—dissolves . . .” He laughs, embarrassed. He would like the young woman to know that it is not at all characteristic of Eli Hoopes to dwell upon his health. Not at all characteristic of Eli Hoopes to speak much about himself as if there are not myriad other, far more crucial subjects about which to speak.

“I think it has been like this for a while—this memory ‘deficit.'”

“How long do you think it has been, Eli?”

“Well—six months, at least. It seems that I may have had an accident and hit my head—or, someone hit my head deliberately—and then when I was hospitalized I got an infection, and my brain was ‘on fire' . . .”

“About six months ago?”

“It could be longer. I'm not sure.” E.H. laughs dryly, but his eyes are pained. “I think that must be why I'm in this hospital.
Or—is this a clinic? I see people in lab coats and I see nurses but I don't see any beds—maybe I'm an outpatient?”

“Yes, you are an ‘outpatient.' Which means you arrived here this morning and you'll be going home in a few hours. You are only brought here, Mr. Hoopes—you are not
hospitalized.
”

“Well, that's good news! For a while there, I'd begun to think not only was I
hospitalized,
I was
dead
.”

Margot Sharpe laughs, weakly. She is socially conditioned to respond to remarks meant to elicit laughter; it is very difficult to resist.

Margot would like to tell E.H. that he isn't “ill”—rather, he has a “chronic neurological condition.” But she doesn't want to perplex him further, since he seems less affable and relaxed than usual. He has just finished a battery of tests that are repetitions of tests he'd taken several years ago, so that their scores might be compared, and a graph of changes plotted; of course, E.H. doesn't recall these tests, nor does his performance today suggest that he has incorporated any residual memory of the tests. A quick glance at the previous scores indicates to Margot that, uncannily, E.H. has performed almost identically today as he had in past years.

“Is it like that with you, too—‘Mar-g'ret'?”

(Margot is touched, E.H. has remembered her name—almost.)

“That I'm an ‘outpatient'?”

“‘I'm Nobody! / Who are you? / Are you — Nobody— Too?'”

E.H. recites these lines with a chilling sort of merriment. Margot believes that this is poetry, and possibly it is poetry by Emily Dickinson . . .

“I'm not exactly an ‘outpatient,' Eli. I'm a professor at the university.”

Pointless to refer to the “university,” since E.H. has not the
faintest idea which “university” this might be, no more than he knows that they are at the Institute at Darven Park.

“You are a ‘normal' person, eh Professor?”

“‘Normal'—I suppose so.”

“Yet not ‘average'—eh?”

Margot smiles, considering. This is flirtatious banter that leaves her breathless. E.H. often stands close to her, as if inhaling her scent—(she is sure that this is an acquired, unconscious way of his to help identify her); in turn, Margot can't help but inhale his scent, discernible beneath the more abrasive clinical odors as a distinctly masculine aroma, astringent, possibly cologne, shaving cream, hair oil, good soap . . . And E.H. wears the very best leather belts, shoes; supple Italian calfskin, as Margot has learned from E.H.'s aunt Lucinda who is (Margot wants to think) her friend.

Alone among outpatients at the Institute, at least those whom Margot sees in Neuropsychology, Eli Hoopes dresses with care and taste; today, he is wearing a mauve cashmere sweater over a white cotton shirt, dark corduroy trousers, “loafers.” On his left wrist, a handsome watch. (Not a digital watch of course. E.H. is appalled by the “ugly look” of digital watches and clocks, and it is a kindness to him to shield him from such.) His graying hair has been recently trimmed. His teeth look unusually white. He is—how old?—Margot can't seem to calculate for such a calculation would involve her own age as well, of which she doesn't want to think.

Soon! It will come about, soon.

What I have been waiting for.

Effort is required to recall that E.H. is a subject of scientific inquiry, and not quite an equal.

“Everyone has memory problems, Eli.”

“Do we! Or I mean—
you
.” E.H. laughs, obscurely.

This is a strange remark. It's as if E.H. knows about an incident in Margot Sharpe's life of the other day—a disagreeable incident involving memory.

Margot isn't sure she wants to share the incident with E.H., for it may cause the man to judge her harshly. It is clear from E.H.'s manner that, for all his good-natured joking, and air of naïveté, he has a strong moral sense; perhaps even, given his Quaker and activist background, deeply imprinted in his memory below the more recent layers of ruins, a puritanical righteousness. Even if E.H. will forget what Margot tells him she is afraid that some residue of memory, some smudge of memory, will remain, and color his feelings for her. Badly she wants the man to approve of her.

Carefully she says, “Eventually, if we all live long enough, Eli, we will have deficits in short-term memory, but we may remember our earliest childhood until the very end of our lives. That's a good thing, I think.”

“But why is it a ‘good thing,' Professor? Do you think that all our childhood memories are ‘happy'?”

Margot is taken aback, for E.H. has spoken just slightly sharply.

And why does he call her “Professor”?—he knows her name.

Seeing the look in her face, of which Margot herself is unaware, E.H. says, relenting, “Of course—I think it is a ‘good thing.' We want to think so, of our earliest memories.”

E.H. speaks with a measure of stoicism like one at the edge of a precipice.

He has fumbled for Margot's hand, and clasps it firmly in his as if to secure her in place.

Margot thinks—
His hand remembers another hand. My hand can become that hand.

Amber McPherson's hand? She doesn't think so.

Amber McPherson could not have been a strong enough presence in Eli Hoopes's life. No wonder he'd abandoned that young woman!

“Dear Eli! I am always happy when I'm with
you
.”

Prudently then, quick before anyone can see, Margot eases her hand from E.H.'s hand.

HERE IS WHAT
happened. It is so unfair!

Margot knows herself cruelly and stupidly judged—
mis
-judged.

She will not tell E.H. She has not wished to tell anyone—though, apart from E.H., there is really no one in Margot Sharpe's life she might tell.

Returning home from the university, and in the twilit kitchen of her house listening appalled to a rambling and accusatory phone message from her older brother Ned—
Margot God damn why the hell haven't you called back, called you and left God-damn messages five, six times since Monday, aren't you fucking
there
?
—so shocked by her brother's furious voice she isn't sure exactly what he has said, and quickly deletes the message.

Discovers then that there have been previous messages from Ned, and from other relatives—
Margot, where are you? We've been waiting for you—your mother is waiting for you—is something wrong? Has something gone wrong? Please call back, we are having a terrible time here your poor mother has tried to call you too, and you never call back—Margot?

Trembling badly Margot doesn't call her brother Ned—(whom she has always feared and disliked, he is such a bully)—but instead calls her aunt Edie, her mother's younger sister who is Margot's favorite aunt, and she is hoping that Edie won't pick up the phone so that she can leave a message but Edie picks up
the phone on practically the first ring—“Margot! Thank God.”

Upset to hear that her mother is not “doing so well”—her mother has been asking where Margot is, she has been expecting Margot to visit her in the hospital—“Margot, you'd said you'd try to come last week. You told us, and we were expecting you.”

Margot is astonished as well as upset—tries to explain that she certainly has not promised anyone in Orion Falls that she was coming home last week or anytime soon—hasn't received any calls from them at all or if she had it was weeks ago, and Mom was “doing well” then—after the surgery. It is
utterly untrue whatever Ned has been saying, accusing. Utterly untrue and unfair
.

Margot's voice is shaking, her eyes have filled with tears of alarm and indignation.

“I—told him? Told
you
? That isn't possible, Aunt Edie, there must be some terrible miscommunication, I couldn't have told anyone there that I could fly back home right now because I'm too busy—I am far too busy to take even a few days off for a personal matter—maybe I didn't explain to you that I'm now the director of a very important project at the University Neurological Institute at Darven Park—it's something of an emergency situation here also, we are working with a severely brain-damaged individual and my—my presence is—is mandated . . .”

Margot repeats, denies she'd promised a visit. Can't recall any such promise nor even any conversation with her brother Ned—in months. Vaguely she recalls—yes, but very vaguely—a conversation with her aunt about her mother's tests, and her mother's diagnosis, and her mother's surgery, and her mother's schedule of chemotherapy and radiation—she remembers being told that Mom was “doing well”—“as well as can be expected at this point”—but she does not remember subsequent conversations, and she certainly does not remember promising she will
return home anytime soon—“That is just not possible, Aunt Edie. Please explain to Mom, will you? Please.”

Such an unpleasant exchange! Margot is astonished that her aunt doesn't relent, doesn't concede she is mistaken, or that anyone there is mistaken—clearly, the Sharpes have closed rank against her, and have turned against her. The exchange is particularly painful since Margot knows that she is correct: she did not make any such promise to anyone in Orion Falls, not even half-consciously, for she would remember if she had, and she
does not remember.

The conversation is painful also because Margot Sharpe isn't a girl any longer, she isn't an adolescent to be lectured, scolded and willfully misunderstood; she is an adult woman of nearly forty, a professional woman who has become accustomed to being agreed-with, placated; she is not often challenged any longer, for she has become professor of neuropsychology at the university, and she has been named (by the distinguished Milton Ferris himself) principal investigator of
Project E.H.
—one of the great research projects in neuroscience history. Margot Sharpe is respected at both the university and the Institute. Her undergraduate and graduate students, her laboratory assistants, her departmental colleagues, the Institute staff are all respectful of her, and admiring of her, and so it is stunning—it is outrageous—that her own relatives, back in Orion Falls, Michigan, have so little idea of her accomplishments, and so little respect for her. Almost, Margot can't speak coherently, unfairly pressed to defend herself. “Whatever you're accusing me of, you are paraphrasing Ned's stupid accusations, Aunt Edie—there is just too much happening at Darven Park right now, I can't take time out. I wish I could—of course—but you say that Mom is in the hospital, and not in a hospice—you've said—so it isn't an emergency situation, in fact. Mom will understand, just explain.
You know how serious I am about my work—I don't take it lightly. There is Christmas break . . .”

“You haven't been back since Christmas two years ago. And you don't call or write.”

“Actually, I
do.
I do call Mom, and I do write.”

“Margot, what are you saying? That simply isn't true. Your mother is heartbroken, and we are all bewildered. We all helped with your college expenses, you must remember—don't you?”