The Man Without a Shadow (35 page)

“Most of our family was at Lake George at the time, just after
Fourth of July of 1929. Eli was five years old. It was believed that he was the last person to see Gretchen, before she went away with Axel. He insisted he hadn't seen Gretchen all day though she'd been watching over him and his brothers—Gretchen and another older girl. Eli was very upset saying he hadn't seen her but later he said he saw her in a canoe ‘going across the lake.' But Axel didn't take Gretchen across the lake . . . There was a search for Gretchen immediately. Everyone was mobilized except the youngest children. My father—Eli's grandfather—insisted upon flying his little prop plane over the lake, and over the islands in the lake, looking for Gretchen. He was a very strong-willed man. He took Eli with him in the plane at least once. My brother and his wife—Eli's parents—didn't want him to go with my father, but somehow—my father took him . . . Something went wrong and he had to crash-land on one of the islands. I think my grandfather and Eli were out all night. Along with the anxiety about Gretchen, and the search for her, this was too much! It was a nightmare time and how many hours it lasted, I don't know.

“Gretchen's body was found in the woods, in a stream, about two miles from the lake. She had been strangled and her head struck against rocks and then she'd been dragged to the shallow stream. There was blood on some rocks, which was where she'd died. He'd done things to her—to her body—that terrible boy, Axel. He'd done cruel things, we were never exactly told. At least, I was never told. Maybe some in the family knew. Men might've known. But women and girls weren't told, and we did not want to know.

“The boy Axel had been behaving very strangely during the search. He'd hidden away in his family's house on the lake and no one knew where he was. When they found him he was immediately arrested. There was blood beneath his fingernails and his arms and face were scratched. He
was not
the bishop's grandson,
but everyone seemed to want to think that he was. As if it was a worse thing, that a grandson of an Anglican bishop had done such a thing to Gretchen, than someone else. Axel never exactly confessed—he insisted that he ‘couldn't remember' anything that had happened and that Gretchen had been the one to take him into the woods to look for a ‘baby fawn.' Later, he contradicted himself, and still later, he told another story. At one point he said that it was Gretchen who was ‘kicking and clawing' at him and he'd had to ‘hurt' her to make her stop.

“Among those who knew the McElroys it was said that the death of Gretchen Hoopes was the parents' fault—they should not have allowed this mentally disturbed boy to come into our midst, to mingle with young children. There were many terrible recriminations and accusations—for a long time. For decades.

“The younger children were never told what had happened to Gretchen. There were not adequate words to explain such a terrible thing to children, at that time. Or any other time. For dear God, what do you
say
.

“Eli had nightmares for years. He never talked about his cousin, or asked about her. His parents worried that he might have some kind of epileptic condition. He had spasms, convulsions. But when he was tested, he seemed to be normal. He often behaved ‘normally'—he was a popular boy in grade school. But one day he ‘confessed' to his brother Averill that
he was the one who'd hurt Gretchen,
and Averill told their parents. They asked Averill why on earth would Eli say such a thing when it wasn't true, could not be true, and Averill said that Eli often said ‘crazy things' that weren't true, or were true in some way that was all twisted. Averill said that Eli told him ‘I was the one who hurt Gretchen but nobody knows, and they haven't punished me'—and that he'd started laughing . . .

“By this time Axel McElroy was in a youth facility, a psychiatric hospital for the ‘criminally insane' in upstate New York.

“As for my nephew Eli—he has seemed to be a ‘normal' person much of the time. He made himself into quite a popular boy at school. He made himself into an athlete. He was afraid of water as a little boy yet he forced himself to learn to swim well, and to dive, and he became a canoeist at Lake George. At the same time, he was a moody boy at home, with his family. When his parents confronted him with what he'd said about ‘hurting' Gretchen, he denied he'd ever said anything like that. It upset him terribly to hear Gretchen's name. Of course, we rarely spoke her name—‘Gretchen' was not a name any of us spoke. It was all too painful, and too awful. Even now, sixty years later, I wouldn't dare speak of Eli's cousin to him. You probably have no idea, at the Institute, where Eli is on his good behavior and everybody makes a fuss over him, how quick-tempered he can be, how easily upset and agitated. Some of us thought that Eli enrolling in the seminary and participating in civil rights protests was some way of his of doing ‘penance' for Gretchen—not that he had any reason to do ‘penance' of course, but that he might have thought he had. Because he was the last person to have seen the girl alive, except for—well, except for her murderer . . .

“And so in a way, it might be just as well for Eli to be living as he does—with no memory, and nothing to make him unhappy.”

“But, Mrs. Mateson,” Margot protests, “Eli does remember the past, of course. It's the present he can't remember—you must know that.”

Upstairs, Eli is watching TV news. The volume is high and sounds like distant quarreling. Eli's hearing has deteriorated but he refuses to wear a hearing aid for, as he says disdainfully, thirty-seven is too young for any damn hearing aid.

“Sometimes I think my nephew remembers what he wants to remember,” Mrs. Mateson says obstinately. “As he sees and hears what he wants to.”

Margot wants to protest. This is such a foolish, cruel thing to say of a brain-damaged man! Yet typical of the uninformed, to blame the afflicted.

While Mrs. Mateson continues to speak of the drowned girl of sixty years ago Margot thinks of Eli Hoopes's obsessive drawings of the girl. It isn't true, as Mrs. Mateson has said so carelessly, that Eli isn't haunted by the past; precisely because he has no present, and no future, he is the more haunted by the past.

Margot asks Mrs. Mateson if “Axel McElroy” is still alive, and Mrs. Mateson says, with a fastidious shiver, “How would I know? I should
hope not.
”

So many years, probably not. Yes, Margot is sure—probably not.

Margot has told Mrs. Mateson that her nephew has depicted a “drowned girl” countless times in his drawings, but Mrs. Mateson has never commented on this phenomenon before, and so Margot had supposed she'd had nothing to say about it. Yet, tonight, for no evident reason, she'd begun to speak in her slow, halting voice, with an expression on her face of distress.

Bringing Eli home from the Institute, as she does frequently now, Margot is always greeted courteously by Lucinda Mateson, if not warmly; though many years have passed, and Mrs. Mateson certainly trusts Margot Sharpe more than she did initially, it isn't clear if Mrs. Mateson understands what Margot's relationship is to her nephew, or that she feels for her anything more than courtesy. It is part of the ritual of their teatimes that Margot gives Mrs. Mateson a “progress report” on Eli Hoopes, but this is a report that rarely varies: “Eli is doing very well, Mrs. Mateson! He's very popular at the Institute, there is no one quite like him there.”

Margot has never told Mrs. Mateson about Eli's lapses in behavior. She has never told anyone, and she never will. No more than a loyal wife would speak of her husband's irrational behavior toward her, so long as it is fleeting, and not significant. For always Margot consoles herself—
He loves me. He has no one but me.

The previous week, when Eli lost control in Margot's car on the interstate, had been an extreme episode. The assault—the closing of Eli's fingers around her neck, his shouting at her—the fury and despair in his face—had been an aberration. An accidental sort of assault that would not likely happen again.

Eli had been fatigued from a long day of tests, Margot supposed. And frustration. For the tests were variants of somatosensory tests the amnesiac subject had been given years before at the Institute, repeated now with an MRI to track and record the neural activities in his brain—an extraordinary experiment, with very interesting results. And though the subject could not “remember” the repetitive tests, he became restive and obstinate just the same.

It is so, though Margot Sharpe doesn't want to acknowledge it, that the amnesiac subject E.H. isn't nearly so cooperative and good-natured as he'd been. Gradually, his personality has altered. Or rather, a secondary, “coarser” personality sometimes emerges, who is not the true Elihu Hoopes, and is likely to be contentious and contrarian. But Margot Sharpe can handle this Eli Hoopes.

After the incident on the interstate, when Eli fled Margot's car to stagger along the shoulder of the road, Margot brought him safely back, calming the frightened and bewildered man, walking with her arm around his waist as he leaned heavily on her.

Margot knew to comfort him by murmuring a line from one of his poems—“‘Ah love, let us be true to one another!'” Some
times this provoked Eli to recite the entire poem; at other times it simply calmed him, as with a promise of home.

In the car he'd been sweetly docile. He'd allowed her to buckle him into his seat without protest. He had forgotten his alarm about his sketchbook—he'd forgotten the sketchbook, which Margot discreetly returned to the backseat. Soon, as Margot resumed driving, he'd slipped into a doze.

Next morning, Margot was surprised to see unsightly bruises around her neck, beneath her chin, darkened to the hue of ripe plums. But very easy to disguise the impress of the man's fingers beneath a black turtleneck sweater of a fine-textured material like cashmere. Over this, a black-and-white-striped silk scarf.

In the mirror, before she'd left home she had made herself look quite normal. Smiling at her reflection, like one with a precious secret.

Mrs. Mateson is speaking to her: “Margot? Will you have a little more tea?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Is it hot enough? Or—a little lukewarm, I'm afraid?”

“It's fine, Mrs. Mateson. Earl Grey is my favorite.”

In fact, Margot hates Earl Grey tea. She hates caffeine, which affects her sensitive nerves and will prevent her sleeping that night. Very much would she prefer a glass of wine, or whiskey, but Mrs. Mateson never offers anything alcoholic.

Over the years, Margot has befriended Lucinda Mateson. She drives E.H. home frequently from the Institute—her explanation is, she is saving money from the grant; she is known for her frugality, in refusing to spend money lavishly as certain of her (male) colleagues in the department. She has, not entirely deliberately, and yet not altogether innocently, insinuated herself into the life of the widow who'd been in her fifties when Margot had first met
her, and was now presumably in her late seventies. Now white-haired, and somewhat ethereal, Lucinda Mateson has become a beautiful older woman of the kind Margot most admires, one who appears to be poised and unself-pitying, and not obviously eager for company. Her skin is still freshly powdered, and on her sunken cheeks are faint spots of rouge—Margot thinks it's touching that Mrs. Mateson takes care with her appearance. Even when her visitor is only Margot Sharpe, she dresses tastefully and expensively; she wears shoes, and not house slippers; she wears stockings, and not socks. Her beautiful sparkling rings have grown loose on her thin fingers, like the watch around her wrist, threatening to slip off as Margot observes, fascinated.

(Margot has tried to ask Eli about his aunt but his knowledge of the woman with whom he has lived now for nearly thirty years is fractured and incomplete: Eli “knows” his aunt Lucinda only as she was before his illness. It is an interesting phenomenon, about which Margot Sharpe has written, that the amnesiac seems to incorporate post-amnesiac knowledge into what he knows of a subject, unconsciously; in regions of the brain adjacent to the damaged areas, neurons must be absorbing such information haphazardly. Eli Hoopes is never surprised by the elderly woman who greets him when he returns to the house, though in theory he believes Lucinda Mateson to be much younger; as the amnesiac subject is not [evidently] startled seeing his mirror reflection each morning, which has become that of an older, if not “elderly” man.)

Not from Eli but from Lucinda herself Margot has gathered that Mrs. Mateson was widowed young, in her mid-fifties, and never remarried; she'd been, of a generation of ambitious Hoopes siblings, the daughter, who'd attended only a year or two of college, had lived mostly for her family, and had lost an active interest
in the world after her husband's death and her children's departure. Now, as she likes to tell Margot, her life revolves around church (St. Luke's Episcopal Church of Gladwyne), maintaining the house and property, and “taking care of my disabled nephew who would be lost without me.”

Margot is fascinated by Lucinda Mateson, and wishes that Lucinda Mateson would like her better. Somehow they have become old acquaintances without ever having become friends.

It is true, Lucinda Mateson reminds Margot of her (deceased) mother, and of older Sharpe relatives. Margot feels a stab of guilt at such thoughts, and at once she is on the defensive—
I had no choice. I have my work. I can't shirk my work, I can't always be flying back to Michigan.

Margot brings the elderly widow flowers. A big armful of flowers is a generous gesture, she thinks. And Eli is impressed, and leans over to sniff the flowers which are likely to be fragrant—lilacs, gardenias, and lilies are her favorites. “You are a dear, thoughtful wife—my companion in the netherworld.” Sometimes, his eyes fill with tears. Sometimes, he laughs.