The Man Without a Shadow (33 page)

“Eli? Mr. Hoopes? We would like very much to see some of
your drawings. I've seen a few of them in the past, and they are so very well . . .”

Felt that way about white racists. Often it was said of white racists in the Movement.

Easier to kill than to dissuade.

He'd had his chances to kill the enemy over the years. As a boy, he'd failed ignominiously. Too weak to kill his father though the drunk man had been sleeping flat on his back. Too weak to kill the bishop's grandson. Jeering white racists, faces ugly with hatred. As an undergraduate at Amherst he'd read of the revolt of Nat Turner and he'd felt a swoon in his soul, the exhilaration of slashing the throats of slave owners but also white women, white children. White-skinned children, screaming as they were murdered by the blades of righteousness.

“Eli? May I?”

The smiling woman has made a gesture as if to take the sketchbook from his hands.

But he is too quick for her. Grips the sketchbook tight and refuses to surrender it. Sees the startled expression in her face.

She is the one who knows who drowned Gretchen. All these years she has been hunting you, waiting for you to misstep.

“No, Doctor. Don't touch! This is private property.”

Seeing the expressions on their faces he has to laugh. As a dog might laugh, baring wet teeth and panting.

Taking out his little notebook instead, to confuse and entertain. In a grave voice intoning:

“‘There is no journey, and there is no path. There is no wisdom, there is emptiness. There is no emptiness.'” Pausing then to add, “This is the wisdom of the Buddha. But there is no wisdom, and there is no Buddha.”

DEAR HUSBAND THERE
was the hope that I would be—pregnant.

But I'm afraid now, dear Eli—that has turned out to be a mistake.

Yes, we were so happy! We were married, and living in—Rittenhouse Square.

Oh but Eli, don't look so sad! We will be happy again! I promise.

When the tests are finished we will move away—to the Adirondacks. We will live in your beautiful family home at Lake George.

I will drive you there to live with me. I will love you and take care of you all the days of your life—our life. I vow.

“MR. HOOPES? ELI?
Hello . . .”

She observes him from the doorway. She is determined not to be upset. Jealousy the most shameful of emotions. Sexual jealousy, unspeakable.

Eva, the nurse's aide. Very pretty, petite. Self-assured for a mere nurse's aide in dull-green smock and trousers.

Well, yes—
very
pretty. Her eyes are outlined in black mascara, her lips are moistly pink, her pert little body beautifully shaped though small, her legs oddly short. From a distance, Eva might be twelve years old. Closer up, she could not be mistaken for any twelve-year-old.

Before Eva there was Yolanda, the caramel-skinned beauty from the Caribbean whom he has totally forgotten. Now there is Eva, another caramel-skinned beauty from the Caribbean.

Of course at the Institute there are always nurses, nurse's aides, attendants. These are likely to be young, good-natured, flirtatious and many of them are dark-skinned, yes and very attractive.

“Absurd. You can't be jealous.
Just stop
.”

Margot Sharpe slits her eyes at her reflection in a restroom mirror: why is her skin so
white
? And now in her hair that has
always been shiny-black there are ever-widening cracks of silver, gray, even
white
.

Strange that she, who'd so often been the youngest person to give a paper at a scientific gathering, the youngest full professor in the Psychology Department, the youngest award recipient, is no longer
young
but
middle-aged;
no longer promising but
accomplished;
no longer envied but
revered.

In her smooth white skin, tiny lines, hairline fractures. You can only see close-up.

Still, she is an attractive woman. Not a beauty when young, she has acquired a solemn sort of dignity, even an air of hauteur in middle age. She prepares her hair carefully, with the signature little braid trailing down the left side of her face; she dresses in her signature black clothes, and sometimes now shiny black shoes with a small heel, to provide height. She wears silk scarves and shawls that her dear friend E.H. has given her—(that she imagines E.H. would certainly have given her if he could). She is sure that, when E.H. sees her, and is not distracted by the presence of a shapely young woman like Eva, he feels for her something more than a perfunctory emotion.

“He loves me. He loves his ‘wife.' That doesn't change.”

It isn't unlike an ordinary marriage, Margot supposes. A middle-aged marriage.

Not a surprise that E.H. forgets Margot Sharpe if his attention shifts from her for more than a few minutes but it is hurtful to her, the alacrity with which he “neglects” her when Eva is present.

Eva, with her musical Caribbean accent. Eva of the beautiful thick-lashed eyes, shapely little body and springy step. Eva who is very young, and looks younger.

It is hurtful. It is embarrassing. When Margot Sharpe is speaking to E.H., and should have E.H.'s fullest attention, how easily
E.H. is distracted by figures in the background; how openly distracted by the nurse's aide Eva, his gaze shifting in her direction, that soft-melting look in the man's eyes until at last he simply ignores Margot Sharpe, turns away from Margot Sharpe in a pretense of having forgotten her, and calls out—“Hel-
lo!
Is this—‘Eva'?” Peering at the laminated ID on the girl's breast.

Margot Sharpe thinks—
If we were married! How embarrassing.

But they are not married, and between Margot Sharpe and Eli Hoopes, so far as anyone at the Institute knows, or should know, there is only the professional connection: she is principal investigator of
Project E.H.
, and he is
E.H.
Nothing could be simpler.

Margot is too embarrassed to joke about her amnesiac subject's wandering attention, though others have surely noticed. And it is hardly uncommon that older patients are attracted to the young women who tend to them—
No fool like an old fool.

Doesn't he know, he is old enough to be that girl's grandfather!

Margot means to be reasonable. She isn't a mean person. She will not speak sharply to the nurse's aide but (perhaps) she will complain to the young woman's supervisor, and see if Eva can be shifted to another floor at the Institute. Yes, certainly Margot will arrange for this.

“You see, the girl is a serious distraction. She flirts with our subject—she can't seem to help herself. She's very young, and very charming—and our subject is in his sixties, and vulnerable. You really must transfer her. Thank you!”—so Margot rehearses.

For she is helpless to control E.H.'s attention when she is herself not his sole focus of attention. Only when they are alone together can Margot claim the man's total attention.

Indeed, Margot Sharpe has written on the phenomenon of “attention” in amnesia—“Multiple Memory Systems, Visual Perception, and ‘Attention' in Retrograde and Anterograde Amnesia”
is the title of a forthcoming article in the
Journal of Experimental Psychology,
that will be included in the appendix of
The Biology of Memory.

Margot does not display her extreme unease, of course. Not in any public way. Margot knows how people will talk. As she has become something of a revered and even intimidating figure, Margot knows that people will talk about
her
.

She understands that the amnesiac subject, now in his mid-sixties but imagining himself thirty-seven, does not perceive the awkwardness of his behavior—how the look of
avid yearning
in his face betrays him even as he tries to smile, to banter and to laugh exchanging remarks with the girl as if their interest in each other is reciprocal.

Margot recalls how years earlier she herself had been the distraction, and Milton Ferris had been ignored. How E.H. had been attracted to
her,
clasping her hand, sniffing her hair!

Those years. She'd been the Chaste Daughter, so young.

He can't love me—can he? I am too old for him now.

She will take E.H. on a walk that afternoon.
She,
and no one else.

She will drive E.H. home to Gladwyne at the end of the day.
She,
and no one else.

By which time, Eva will be forgotten. And since Eva will be shifted to another floor at the Institute, Eva will be totally forgotten.

At last, it is time for the nurse's aide to leave. Backing away from E.H. with a cheerful murmur
'Bye now, Mr. Hoopes! You have a good day y'hear?
—as E.H. gazes with undisguised longing after her.

All this while—(though it has been less than two minutes, probably)—Margot has been waiting patiently, calmly.

Only when the girl is gone does E.H. turn back to Margot Sharpe with his usual expression of surprise and interest, and a
quick winning smile. Not sure who she is, exactly—but reasonably sure that she is someone more important than a mere nurse's aide.

“Hel-
lo!
”

“CAN THERE BE
a person without a shadow? Without a memory is like being without a shadow.

“I am that person. I think.”

Cautiously he speaks aloud. His own voice has become strange to him, in his own ears.

So trusting! Like any husband long habituated to a wifely presence.

As in a dream there is
presence
but often not a
person
.

(Margot has wanted to explore that curious mental phenomenon in dreams—why, when we dream of someone or something familiar, the visual image frequently isn't accurate; though encoded in our brain cells, these memories aren't precisely transmitted. Where “is” the dream, in relation to such memories? “Where Do Dreams Reside?”—is her projected title.)

And so, when Margot drives E.H. home from the Institute, at the end of a day of testing, the amnesiac subject takes for granted that she is his “driver”—also, in some way, his “wife.”

Though he can't remember “Margot Sharpe” yet by degrees over the years E.H. has become habituated to her aura, or her fragrance, which is always the same lilac-cologne. He will say “Are you my dear wife?” in a tender though uncertain voice, and Margot will reassure him, “Yes, Eli. Of course.”

So long as Margot remains within E.H.'s field of consciousness, he will not forget her. Her name, perhaps—but not
her.

Based upon tests with E.H., Margot Sharpe has written on the distinction between “(anterograde) recollection” and
“familiarity”—a crucial distinction, though for the average observer it is a very subtle one. For the amnesiac to survive with his sanity intact, he must create a web of associations that, lacking specificity, are at least
familiar,
therefore comforting.

And so when they are driving together if Margot feels the need to exit the interstate, to leave E.H.'s presence for a few minutes (to use a restroom for instance) when she returns she will stroke E.H.'s arm in a way to suggest
familiarity
. Through his pre-amnesiac life, and particularly in his childhood, such touching would likely have been common, thus
familiar.
And quickly she will say to him, as a way of identifying herself, “Eli, dear! Darling! How is my sweet husband?”

Scarcely missing a beat E.H. will say, “Very good! And how is my sweet wife?”

It is touching. You could say, it is tragic.

How the amnesiac will learn to disguise amnesia so that (Margot thinks shrewdly) it isn't always evident that the amnesiac understands what he is doing by instinct.

E.H.'s happiness is Margot's (secret) happiness. Margot has no happiness that is not bound up (secretly) with his.

By having studied E.H.'s yearbooks of decades ago—Gladwyne Day School, Gladwyne Prep, Amherst College—shrewd Margot Sharpe is able to construct conversations with E.H. about “mutual” classmates at these schools. She will say, “Do you ever hear from—?” giving the name of a classmate or teammate of Eli Hoopes, of long ago.

And E.H. will speak with much pleasure about this person, vividly recalling him or her. So convincing is Margot in these exchanges in which E.H. does most of the talking it is easy for her to forget that her recollection is
totally invented.
That's to say,
a lie
.

Yet it's easy for Margot, a day or two later, a month later, to pick up the conversation with E.H. who is likely to say the same things again, with the same feeling, which Margot can now anticipate. (“Remember how surprised we all were, when Claude Gervais never came back from Christmas break?”—“Scottie was such a good friend of all of us, it's so strange that we never heard from her after graduation”—“Professor Edwards was so brilliant—but so sarcastic . . .”) In these
faux
-recollections, Margot Sharpe presents herself as a friendly acquaintance of Eli Hoopes, not a close friend, or a girlfriend; a friend of Eli's friends, whom she names with unfailing accuracy.