The Memory Book (8 page)

“No, not during the summer, Benny. Instead, I’m teaching summer school here on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Coming here to visit you doesn’t take me out of my way at all. In fact, it helps me pass the time. It keeps me out of libraries and such low places. Let me think about your idea overnight.”

“Forget it, Anna. It was a dumb idea. Even I have them sometimes.”

“Do you really think I might find something?”

“It’s just part of the drill. It’s unlikely there’s anything to find, but you can’t check it off the list of things to do if you haven’t looked.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Anna. It’s just that I’m going stir-crazy in here. I need to be up and doing already. The longer I stay in bed, the weaker I get.”

Anna took my hand across the table. “Damn your wheedling ways, Benny. I should be armed against them at this late date in our relationship. I’ll go around there and have a closer look. I’ll see what I can find. And if I run into what Flora McAlpine ran into, I’ll take my lumps.”

“Who’s Flora McAlpine? The cops asked me about her.”

“Didn’t they
tell
you?”

“Tell me
what?
The name rings a very distant bell.”

“Flora McAlpine was a professor at the university. She was lying in the Dumpster with you. They found the two of you together. The only difference was that you were still alive and Professor McAlpine was dead.”

TEN

Anna and I walked across the hospital lobby. It was busy, crowded with people frustrated in one way or another. They couldn’t find where a patient was located, or they couldn’t find a proper gift for some newborn. Vaguely I admired the volunteers who tried to treat each request, however confused, with cool clarity and simplicity.

We walked outside and found a wooden bench facing a children’s playground. The toys inside the enclosure— tricycles, wagons, and kiddy-cars—were mostly broken, mangled by use or neglect.

“Tell me about it,” I said at last.

“There’s not much to tell. Didn’t your police friends …?”

“Not a word. Just her name as they went out the door. They must have been testing me. I don’t know.”

“Flora McAlpine was a teacher at one of the colleges. Properly, she was
Doctor
Flora McAlpine. She was forty-five, unmarried, and by all accounts a good teacher. She lived in Clarendon House. She also had a head injury, same as you, but hers was fatal. I don’t know any more than that, Benny. I’m sorry.”

By the time Anna delivered me back to my room, I was completely exhausted. I was less than my usual affable self when I pecked her on the cheek and waved her away. The ping of the elevator bell sounded with finality as she vanished. My shirt was wet through across the shoulders and down my back.

I must have broken some speed record when I pulled the bedcovers around me and surrendered myself to forty winks that lasted through the whole of the late afternoon. I slept through both speech and occupational therapy, waking only when the occupational therapist came to see if I was still breathing.

“I’ve been out for a walk,” I explained. “My first, as far as I remember. Sorry I missed those classes. Can I make them up in some way?” The young woman, whose name I still managed to forget, instructed me in hospital policy, and I returned to sleep for another half hour. It seemed to me that most of my day was pieced together from naps and rests and sleeps and lie-downs of varying seriousness. I guess there was healing going on somewhere in my head and I needed more sleep than normal. When I finally woke up, it was close to dinnertime. The whole day, like so many that had gone before it, had fled like retreating guerrillas before a massed attack of infantry with armoured support.

Dinnertime found me with the gourmets at the table farthest from the television set. The Czech who’d been a United Nations representative was there too, and he turned out to have an interest in crime fiction. I’d read a
bit myself, and so I encouraged him in his attempts to move the conversation away from the best place in the Dordogne to find a truly outstanding cassoulet. My new friend shut the others up saying that nobody in the Dordogne has any business looking for a cassoulet in the first place. He’d be better off looking for a superior hot dog. We all laughed, but one of the gourmet crowd was mildly injured by the remark.

I became anxious after dinner. When I had eliminated all the other possible sources, I was troubled by the knowledge that Anna might be poking around that university residence on her own. I was anxious both for her personal safety and for the scraps of information she might have come across. Anna had helped me out in the past, but usually I was with her or the situation was less sinister.

Under the surface of my concern for Anna’s fair hide was a large ration of guilt about the way our close relationship had stalled. There had been no way to turn my job into a nine-to-five operation, and I had missed more dates and appointments. To stay alive a relationship has to grow and expand, or it dies of neglect. One night, looking in a drawer for a stamp, I found a clutch of theatre tickets that she had bought for the two of us. In each case I failed to show up. And through it all, she pretended to shrug off my habitual delinquency. Anna was a remarkable woman.

I wondered whether I could slip away from the hospital long enough to make sure she was safe. By day, she
would be fully visible to all; by night, her flashlight might attract the U of T campus police. Or she might surprise the guy who hit me.

I stopped myself. This was my bum head talking. Anna was in no danger; my encounter with the Dumpster was weeks—no, months—ago. Why couldn’t I hold on to that fact? Why did my ideas now have big holes in them?

None of this helped to relax me. Thank God, my Czech friend from the dinner table came by and asked me whether I would like to play chess. As luck would have it, I did play. The odd thing was that he seemed to know that already. I wondered whether my brain injury would give me an advantage over my partner, who had suffered a crippling stroke. The next few hours passed by quickly as I demonstrated to my friend just how badly I played the game. And as for my earlier worries about Anna, they vanished for a time as the fate of my beleaguered queen had to be dealt with.

After my new friend left, the worries returned. The outing with Anna got me thinking about life outside. Did the hospital have a course on reintegrating former patients into their neglected lives? Or was the Memory Book all I could hope for? How would I learn to pay my bills with my trick memory? How could I remember the names of my clients? I pictured one sitting across from me, telling me her problems, while my problem was trying to remember the name she gave me. I
could
install a blackboard on the wall facing me. Here I could enter the names of my clients. The client wouldn’t see it, and it
would help bolster my assurance. The idea made me feel better, and I began to invent other ways to make life away from University Avenue supportable.

My new life was going to depend on such strategies: the Memory Book, pocket notebooks, and diaries. I was at last going to have to get organized, as my teacher Miss MacDoughal kept warning me back in grade four. It was going to be a peculiar life, I had to admit: part of my old memory worked—I could still remember about the Battle of Hastings and when Julius Caesar crossed his Rubicon—but I could no longer remember the names of my many first cousins. While I was trying to list all sixteen of them, I had the haunting feeling that I had done this before. I didn’t so much mind the duplication of the work as I did the feeling that I was looking over my own shoulder to see what was going on. I could remember Anna and her father, but I had lost his first name. And in order to remember his last name, I had to go back to Anna’s, which, of course, was the same. I kept surprising myself with my own ingenuity; for instance, I was trying to recall the name Grant for some reason. I spent ten minutes going through the alphabet searching for the name. I succeeded only when I remembered that I’d once worked for a Saul Granofsky, whose daughters had changed their name to Grant. My memory was full of such filigrees of twisted silken strands. My new memory required me to build a latticework of aids to criss-cross my experience and expectation.

ELEVEN

There were days and days of tests. Some were simply physical, like the blood pressure monitor I wore around my arm for twenty-four hours. Every so often it would begin to squeeze my arm like a persistent python, then release me after a minute: a silent companion who followed me everywhere. I was able to take more pride in the tests of my mental functions. They were more involving. I was childishly delighted in my correct answers, but the seeds of depression were planted with every incorrect response.

“That was excellent, Mr. Cooperman. You got them all.”

“I wish I could read faster.”

“That’ll come. With practice and time.” The therapist that day was a woman in her late twenties. She had a pleasant manner; I didn’t feel as though I were being made to jump through hoops. She never spoke about me to another therapist while I was standing there listening. When the therapist left, I’d continue the conversation with my nurse.

“Should I be doing something about my reading?”

“You’re going to speech therapy twice a week.”

“I know, but isn’t there something more I could be doing?”

“Have you tried reading a book?”

“It takes me all day to get through
The Globe and Mail
. A book could hang me up until the Second Coming.”

“Get along with you! You’re doing very well here. But I thought you were Jewish, Mr. Cooperman.”

“I was. I mean, I
am;
but when it comes to measuring the time it will take me to recover my old reading speed, the phrase seemed appropriate. What could be longer than an unbeliever’s idea of the Second Coming?”

“You’ve got a point.”

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to read again?”

“I’ve seen all sorts of progress on this floor, Mr. Cooperman.”

“Call me Benny.”

“And you’ve forgotten my name again.”

“I forget it
all
the time. I know it rhymes with something, but I can’t hold on to it. It’s not just you; I can’t remember anybody’s name. I was never great at names, but this is ridiculous!”

“My name is Carol McKay and it rhymes with ‘day.’” She repeated the name and the mantra that went with it. For me at least it was a mnemonic trick with a flat tire. I repeated it with her. I planted it in my heart of hearts and there, a moment after she left the room, it vanished. I felt stupid, as though I’d just listened to an hour-long lecture and come away without a thought in my head and no
words to explain what it had been all about. It wasn’t that I forgot who she was or that I forgot what she said to me. It was just the name itself.

There was a ringing in my ears. I tried to shake it away, but it persisted.

“Hello?” Jerry, my roommate, waited for a moment while the caller identified himself. I could follow it all. I just hadn’t noticed before that I had a phone next to me. Then I remembered my wrangle with the unhelpful telephone operator.

Jerry handed me the receiver, then wheeled himself back to his side of the room.

“Hello? Benny?” It was Anna. “Are you okay? Benny?”

“I’ve got a phone beside my bed, Anna!”

“I know. I’ve seen it. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. What have you got for me?” I had not forgotten my earlier worries about Anna’s safety. I should have asked whether she was still in good health. It would have shown me to be a good and caring friend and sometime lover. But I was more interested in what she had to tell me just then. The bang on the head had rendered me no more considerate than I used to be. I still cut to the chase.

It also hit me that today must be either Tuesday or Thursday, Anna’s teaching days in Toronto. Some small things were beginning to stick in my mind again. It was a good feeling.

“Benny, are you still there?”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry, Anna. I was woolgathering. Is this long distance?”

“No, I’m still in town. Why?”

“No special reason.” I heard a sigh descend on me down the telephone line. “I went through the alley where the Dumpster is located. I nosed around, as you like to say …”

“And?”

“And I felt stupid. I’ll be honest, Benny. Too much time has gone by, and the cops have been all over that thing a dozen times. I didn’t expect to find anything and I didn’t.”

“Now that I think of it, I’m not surprised.” What really surprised me was the fact that I sent her on such a fool’s errand in the first place. The crime scene was cold by the time I came to the rehab. I could feel my energy for this conversation leaching out of me. I tried to hold on. After all, Anna had tried. I owed her for that at least.

“Benny?”

“You shouldn’t have gone there alone, Anna.”

“You think the guy who conked you and poor Flora is staked out to conk just anybody?”

“No, I just don’t want you to get hurt. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you in a dark alley while I was cooped up in here. It’s bad enough being flat on my back; putting you in the way of danger makes me …”

“Yes?”

“… want to get out of here faster and get back to work.” Anna sighed again. Right away, I was sorry I had said that. I cleared my throat and looked out the windows.

“It’s not a dark alley. You’re thinking of B movies, Benny. There’s busy traffic on two sides. Well, almost.”

“Just don’t take chances. I’m a worrywart where you’re concerned.”

“Benny, what are you trying to say?”

“There’s no coverage for you in my business insurance plan. So don’t take any more chances.”

“Any other orders?”

“You are going to be here Tuesdays and Thursdays, right?” I was showing off. But if she had asked me whether this was Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, I wouldn’t have been able to help her. Even without a mind with holes in it, the normal hospital routine tended to make one day seem much like the last. I went on. “Could you get my office key from Frank Bushmill—he’s in the office next door to mine—and see what you can discover about my reasons for being in Toronto in the first place? I don’t think that you’ll get hit over the head on St. Andrew Street in Grantham. My desk isn’t as tidy as a pin, but I’m sure that you’ll be able to sort out my system after a minute or so. Look for the yellow legal-sized pads. Call me from the office phone. Tell Frank that I’m okay, okay? I hate to lumber you with all this, Anna, but I think getting back to work will help me get clear of this place faster.”