The Man Without a Shadow

by Joyce Carol Oates

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Eli, hello!”

  “Hel-lo.”

  His eyes lift to hers, narrowed. He is slow to take her extended hand. And how like ice her fingers must feel, in his hand.

  “You do remember me, Eli?”

  So excited, she is trembling. Approaching his room on the second floor of the facility, ascending the stairs to the second-floor corridor, parking in the lot of the Homestead Care Center in White Oaks, Pennsylvania, and all the while thinking—He is alive, still! Nothing else matters.

  Her heart is a bell wildly rung. She has not been in the presence of Eli Hoopes for seven months, three weeks, and six days. She has not spoken to him in all this time. She sees that he regards her with that look of intense concentration that is the amnesiac’s characteristic expression—Who are you, do I know you, what does it mean that you know me?

  Is this Eli Hoopes? The man appears older than sixty-eight. There is an IV line attached to the crook of his left arm, that is badly bruised. His cheeks are sunken, the skin beneath his eyes is bruised. A red wet glisten in his eyes like the fatigue that follows madness.

  “Do you remember me, Eli? ‘Margaret Madden’—‘Margie.’”

  She has brought him flowers—an armful of strongly fragrant gardenias, recklessly purchased at a florist in White Oaks.

  He is very ill, they tell her. Months they have kept her from him, refused her permission to visit him, and now—she steps into the dimly lighted room trembling. Eli has finished an aggressive eight-week course of chemotherapy and will have a PET scan soon, to determine if the treatment has been effective in stopping the spread of his stage three (colon) cancer. His veins are exhausted, his platelets very low. He is severely anemic.

  Barely she can see the figure in the bed, foreshortened. Her eyes are aswim with tears.

  Eli is engaged with the New York Times crossword puzzle. He is using a pencil with some difficulty, with stiffened fingers. With the passage of time these puzzles, incorporating topical material, have become more difficult. When Margot first enters the room he doesn’t glance up at her at once, no doubt expecting one of the nursing staff. Though he looks weak and unwell he has cranked up his bed and has managed to hoist himself into a sitting position; Margot sees how discarded newspaper pages have accumulated on the bed, and on the floor—one of E.H.’s signature habits. He has not changed, even in illness!

  Eli is smiling now. A flush rises in his face, as of boyish hope.

  “Yes—‘Margie.’ My dear, how could I forget you.”

  He pushes aside the newspaper page, sets aside the pencil. His fingers are squeezing hers now, harder. Margot leans over him and kisses his cheek which is surprisingly warm and has been haphazardly shaved by a hand not his own.

  She is laughing. She is shaking, and she is laughing.

  How easy this is, now that she has found him! But until she found him, how utterly impossible.

  E.H. wipes at his eyes. His visitor is trying to prevent tears from running down her radiant powdered face.

  “My dear Eli! Have you been missing me?”

  “Have you been missing me?”

  “Yes, I have. Very much.”

  “Then—where have you been?”

  “Well, I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Where have you been looking for me?”

  “Everywhere! You are not so easy to track.”

  Eli laughs, pleased. He is flattered by Margot’s extravagant words—he has always been easy to flatter.

  So many years of conditioning. It is the one strategy Margot Sharpe has never recorded in the notebook.

  Eli smiles with his old eagerness. He knows this woman now—(does he?)—and he feels comfortable with her. (Though the woman is older than he by a considerable number of years, and hardly resembles a woman his age. He will be gallant about this and seem to ignore it.) Somehow it must have happened, he and his old classmate from grade school Margie Madden became emotionally involved; it’s clear to him that the smiling woman loves him, and it is his responsibility to love her.

  Eli Hoopes straightens his shoulders. Makes a swipe at his untidy, thinning hair. So strange, he is wearing a ridiculous hospital gown, that ties in the back! The effect of this visitor’s arrival upon him is not unlike a transfusion. Margot feels the impact of the blood coursing through his body in her own smaller and tauter veins.

  “My dear husband. I’ve looked so long for you, I thought they’d taken you from me forever.”

  “Well—I’ve had a setback here. You can see.”

  With a gesture Eli indicates the hospital room, the IV stand beside his bed and the line dripping vital liquids into a vein in his arm.

  Margot is wearing the wrought silver Celtic wedding band. Out of her handbag she takes her husband’s matching band, to slip onto his finger where it fits loosely.

  “Did you think you’d lost this?”

  “No. I’d assumed that you had it.”

  Margot tells him how she has searched for him—and how finally, his sister Rosalyn took pity on her and gave her this address. She does not tell him how furious she is with the Hoopeses, and with his criminally negligent cousin Jonathan Mateson, ostensibly the executor of a trust established for his benefit.

  She does not tell him that she’d approached his sister Rosalyn not as “Margot Sharpe” but as “Margaret Madden”—“An old classmate of Eli’s from Gladwyne Day” as she’d explained to the sister.

  In her most persuasive voice she’d told Rosalyn Hoopes that she had encountered Eli a few years ago and he’d remembered her. She’d heard of his hospitalization and felt so sorry for him—“Adrift on his ice floe—‘amnesia.’ If I could help in any way . . .”

  Ingenious!—so Margot gloats.

  It must have been a measure of Rosalyn Hoopes’s desperation, Margot thinks, and her guilt, that Rosalyn failed to recognize Margot Sharpe—“Professor Sharpe”—though she’d met Professor Sharpe at the Institute some years ago. Of course, a considerable period of time has passed since then: Margot is now unmistakably middle-aged, and has refashioned her hair so that she doesn’t much resemble her former self. Brushed off her forehead, and no longer hiding her forehead, Margot’s hair is an exquisite silvery-gray, finely threaded with white. She has gotten rid of the exotic braid trailing down the side of her face. And she now wears colors other than black—muted greens, blues, beiges. She has imagined that “Margaret Madden” prefers such colors, and not black. For she is not in mourning, quite yet: Eli Hoopes is living.

  Since the abrupt termination of Project E.H. Margot has closed the famed memory laboratory at the university. Her notebooks are crammed with material that will require the remainder of her life to be fashioned into The Biology of Memory: My Life with “E.H.” She will keep only one assistant, the loyal Hai-ku; she will teach just one graduate course, on the biology of memory. She has an endowed chair at the university that assures her a high-paying salary virtually for life (for she intends never to retire) and she has become (to her own bemusement) one of the legendary figures of the renowned Psychology Department—almost as legendary as her mentor Milton Ferris.

  And so there is room in her life—there is more than room in her life—for another person, for whom she might care intimately, selflessly.

  How bizarre, and yet how understandable—Eli Hoopes’s sister had stared into Margot Sharpe’s face, and had not seemed to recognize her. Is Margot guilty of deception, and does it matter? Has she behaved unethically, as (some might claim) she’d behaved unethically through her career? She feels not the slightest tinge of guilt. In fact she is quite pleased with herself, for this has been the most ingenious, if unheralded, experiment of her life.

  Some of this she will acknowledge in The Biology of Memory but most of it she will not. Why should she? Whose business is it except hers? She has come to the conclusion that most of life is a masquerade, especially the sexual life. And what is love but the most powerful of masquerades.

 
For her visit to Eli Hoopes she is wearing muted pastel colors, her lilac cologne, silver barrettes in her silvery-white hair. And the Celtic wedding band on the third finger of her left hand.

  Margot is stricken with alarm and pity for Eli Hoopes, who has suffered unspeakably through eight weeks of chemotherapy. Yet—he might have turned a corner, as it is said . . . Worse cancer-cases have survived, if with a very diminished life, and in a diminished body. She will want to set up an appointment with his oncologist and see his chart. At least, Eli will have forgotten the hours of toxins dripping into his veins; he will have forgotten the shock of the initial diagnosis.

  It has been Margot Sharpe’s hope, that Eli Hoopes might spend the remaining years—months?—of his life with her.

  “If we were married, I could take him to the Adirondacks. It was a terrible mistake for us, not to get married.”

  Often, Margot speaks aloud. It is to the (invisible, judgmental) executor of the trust established by Lucinda Mateson to whom she pleads most frequently.

  Homestead Care is a very modern facility providing assisted-care living, a nursing home, and a hospice. It is a beautiful, weathered-looking stone residence set back in a small park, formerly a convent belonging to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary, in the affluent Philadelphia suburb White Oaks. Here, Eli Hoopes has a private suite on the second floor and even a small balcony overlooking, at an angle, a pond meant to resemble a woodland pond, that has attracted a noisy contingent of mallards and geese; he shares a wing with individuals suffering from milder mental disabilities—not the most severe cases of dementia, senility, depression. In other wings are schizophrenics and paranoid madmen whose families pay lavishly to hide them away.

  The nursing staff at Homestead seems very friendly, welcoming. A visitor to Eli Hoopes on the second floor is (it seems) something of a rarity.

  Rosalyn Hoopes had said to Margot, all but stammering with eagerness, “Oh yes—‘Margie’—Eli might remember you. His memory is strongest for people and things out of his deep past. If you went to grade school together he’ll remember at least something about you and that will be encouraging to him. You would make him very happy, Margie, if you visited him. Yes!” You would make me very happy the sister seemed to be pleading.

  Margot finds it easy to impersonate Margaret Madden—a kind of sister-self. Almost, Margot thinks she has met “Margie”—she has managed to unearth pictures of the woman as an adult; so far as she could gather Margaret Madden is no longer living. Margot has cultivated a way of smiling with one corner of her mouth, and turning her head toward Eli as if she were just slightly hard of hearing in her left ear; where Margot’s voice is a neutral voice, readily adaptable to a lecture hall, Margaret’s voice is sweet, sibilant, and soothing.

  “We were in grade school together at Gladwyne but not such close friends as we were later—when you were at Amherst, and I was at Bryn Mawr.”

  “Yes. That is so.”

  “We went to different high schools. But we never forgot each other, and kept re-meeting . . .”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Of course—we were young when we first fell in love, and we made mistakes. Regrettable but not irremediable mistakes.”

  “‘Margaret Madden.’ We loved each other—did we? I am so happy that you’ve come back to me. And you’ve brought me such beautiful flowers—I remember these, I think.”

  Eli speaks so sincerely, it is clear that he remembers—something.

  Margot will have to ask an attendant to bring a vase for the gardenias which she has let fall onto a table. Their fragrance is so sweet—almost overpowering.

  Since entering the hospital room she has felt as if she is entering a sacred space—a dimension of profound happiness. Of all the places in the world Margot Sharpe is in the right place at last.

  “When you’re feeling stronger, Eli, we will drive to Lake George. You have a key to the house, I hope?”

  “Of course! Of course I have a key.”

  “And is there someone there, at the lake, who oversees your property? I can contact him, when we know more definitely when we will be there.”

  “Al Laird—Alistair. I think Al is still there, in Bolton Landing.”

  “You were there not long ago, I think? You were at your family house last July, when you got sick?”

  But Eli is frowning now, not so certain. For some reason he squints at his fingers, whose nails are discolored and oddly split.

  “Well. I think it might have been longer ago than last July. A few years, maybe. I think it has been.”

  “But the house is still there at the lake, of course. And we can stay there, and be alone together. Would that make you happy, Eli?”

  “Of course—I’m very happy right now. I didn’t realize how lonely I was. Are you my dear wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will never abandon me, will you? Please?”

  Eli speaks so wistfully, Margot comes to him with a little cry. She presses herself into his arms, taking care not to dislodge the IV needle attached to his left arm. She kisses Eli, and he kisses her in turn, eagerly, hungrily.

  She slips her hands inside his loose-fitting hospital gown—how gaunt Eli has become, how prominent his ribs, and how scanty the white wiry hairs on his chest. He slips his hands beneath her peach-colored quilted jacket. “My dear wife, my darling”—he murmurs to her, in a transport of happiness.

  She will curl up beside him on the hospital bed. It is very strange to her—it is vertiginous—to be lying down here, and so disarmed; how without defense, when we are lying down. She tries to recall what Rosalyn told her of Eli’s illness—his “condition”—but a kind of buzzing intervenes. He is being treated for metastasized colon cancer—“aggressively.” She thinks that that is what she has been told. In Lake George, that might present a problem—arranging for good medical care. Margot might drive Eli to Albany for radiation therapy, if that’s prescribed.

  Even if Eli is in remission he will have to have periodic examinations by an oncologist—blood work, PET scans. She will find the very best oncologist in Albany and she will pay for his treatment herself—Margot Sharpe has plenty of money.

  Margot has noticed that there is no notebook in sight here in Eli’s room, and there is no sketchbook. She has no idea what this means. She tells him excitedly of her plans: she intends to curate an exhibit of Elihu Hoopes’s pencil and charcoal drawings. She will approach the Philadelphia Museum of Art, whose director will surely be interested—for not only are Eli Hoopes’s drawings significant works of art, but the Hoopes family has long been one of the museum’s prominent benefactors. There are hundreds—thousands—of these remarkable drawings, which Margot assumes are in storage somewhere. Of these, many are of unusual interest. She has already spoken to his sister Rosalyn who is “very supportive.” (This is true though Rosalyn seemed unsure of the exact location of the sketchbooks.) She will begin work as soon as she can. Perhaps she can bring some of the major drawings with them to Lake George where she will write a preface to the exhibit brochure—“The Art of Recollection in Amnesia.”

  “Yes. As soon as I am feeling a little better. The doctor has told me next week sometime, probably I will be discharged.”

  “Really!”—Margot knows that this can’t be true.

  “I will have to have therapy. ‘Physical therapy.’”

  “Of course. I can drive you to the clinic, if you need transportation.”

  “I can drive. But thank you, dear.”

  Margot wonders what it means that Eli does not ask her more questions about this exhibit, or about his “thousands of remarkable drawings.”

  They lie together in Eli’s bed, awkwardly but companionably. As Margot talks, Eli sleepily concurs. Yes, yes! Margot has never felt so suffused with happiness. There is a faint odor of something acidulous, chemical in poor Eli’s breath. In his thin, scant hair. Yet she kisses him, she tells herself she does not mind.

  After some time, however, she must dise
ngage herself from her husband, to use a restroom at the end of the corridor. She moves as carefully as she can, not to wake him. She shuts the door when she leaves. And when she returns she is struck anew by the powerful scent of the gardenias—almost, the smell is too strong. It is as if the beautiful white flowers are sucking the oxygen from the room. In Margot’s absence Eli has dragged a pillow up behind him and taken up the newspaper again, and the pencil, and is squinting at the crossword puzzle which is only half-completed. This is a good sign, is it?—Eli is restless enough to be doing the puzzle, and not sleep? Except the lighting is poor, why doesn’t he simply turn on an overhead light? There is a switch beside his bed which he surely knows how to use.

  As Margot approaches the bed Eli glances up at her in surprise and bewilderment—no doubt he expected one of the nursing staff since he can see that this is a hospital setting. What is painfully clear is that he has never seen Margot Sharpe before in his life.

  Eli lowers the newspaper and tosses the pencil aside. At once his expression is eager, hopeful. His bloodshot eyes seem to lighten. It is the identical expression (Margot is certain) she saw in his face on the first morning they met long ago in 1965.

  If the amnesiac notices that his visitor—(a slender, attractive silver-haired woman with a pale, lined face, alarmed eyes)—is crying he is too gentlemanly to acknowledge what he sees.

  “Hello? Hel-lo?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Among the numerous valuable books and articles which have been useful in the preparation of this novel the most significant is Suzanne Corkin’s Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesiac Patient, H.M. (2013). Also consulted were materials by Brenda Milner, Larry Squire, and Nicholas Turk-Browne.

  Thanks also to Clare Tascio for reading this manuscript with particular thoroughness as Hertog Research Fellow at Hunter College, and thanks as well to Greg Johnson for his continued and cherished friendship, sharp eye and ear, and impeccable literary judgment.

  And I am grateful as always to my “first reader”—my neuroscientist-husband Charlie Gross—whose close scrutiny of this novel from start to finish, and whose enthusiasm, support, and sympathy throughout, have been inestimable.