Another set of footsteps enter. “Ally, has Lowell stopped in? He never showed up in the cafeteria.” This is the voice of Trevor, the man who married my wife.
Alix says, “Haven’t seen him. How’s Snake?”
Trevor says, “Fine. A little confused, kind of giddy really. The thing is, he just keeps yapping about some crazy dream he had.”
“Yeah. They’ve got him on Vicodin. Stuff can make you loopy.”
“Bottom line is he signed. Very exciting. So we’ll be good to go once, uh … How’s Buddy?”
“No change,” Alix says. “Do you trust Karmichael? He seems nervous for a doctor.”
“Everybody’s nervous, Ally, just not everybody hides it.”
Trevor is screwing up the works. How can Alix concentrate on spiritual matters with his interruption?
Alix asks, “What’s an eight-letter word for a character’s new understanding? Starts with E-P.”
The shock opens my eyes but I lock them down again quick. In the flash though I see the title of the book Alix is holding: 1,001 Hollywood Crosswords. It’s one of the phone book-sized jobs like the one she worked start to finish during Brook’s hospital stay.
“I don’t know,” Trevor says. “Epidemic?”
“How is that a new understanding?”
She’s doing crossword puzzles.
Trevor says, “Check the back for the answers.”
“C’mon. Starts with an E-P. I had epilogue but that’s not right. I know this word.”
“Epidermis?” comes from the hallway. It’s that doctor coming back.
Quinn is with him. He says to Trevor, “T. W.? Is my Palm Pilot wrong or did we have a meet in the cafeteria?”
“You were late,” Trevor says. “I came up here to find you.”
“Episode?” prompts the doctor.
“Eight letters,” Alix snaps.
Quinn insists he wasn’t late. Trevor tells him it doesn’t matter, then delivers the good news. “Snake gave up his Herbie Hancock. Didn’t even read the small print.”
Quinn says, “Spectacular. Did you hear Hardy won’t leave his bedside? Slept on the floor last night. They told me that when Snake woke up Hardy cried. I’d give stock options for video of that. Think there’s any chance we could get Hardy to do it again for us?”
“In my business,” Trevor says, “anything’s possible.”
“Excellent,” Quinn says, and for a second I think that’s his guess for Alix’s crossword.
“Everything’s set then. All our ducks are in a row except …”
In the long silence that follows I feel the stares falling on my gauzed-over face. Trevor. Alix. Quinn. The doctor. I’m a piece of somebody else’s plan.
Trevor breaks the quiet. “I hate to be the one to suggest this, but our hot window is closing. At what point do we suggest casting an extra?”
Trevor wants to replace me. I’m about to be cut out of whatever puzzle is coming together. He adds, “After all, he was wearing a mask. How about it?”
“Epidural?” the doctor offers.
“Epiphany,” comes from under my pillow. The TV earplug. “The answer is epiphany.”
It’s the voice of the TV Buddy, whispering a word I immediately recall from that legend class at NC State. And I think of the headline Buddy showed me, how somehow the official story is that I’m a hero.
More piano music from the hallway, the closing-credits theme of Waves Will Crash. I picture poor lost Lauren and remember thinking that she was looking at amnesia the wrong way, that I’d pay cash to have the last four years of my life burned from my brain.
Cradling this thought, I take a deep breath, and open my eyes.
Alix shouts, “Cooper!” and squeezes my hand. But she doesn’t hug me. Not with Trevor looming above her.
Quinn quickdraws his NASA headset cell phone from a pocket and unfolds it onto his head as he steps into the hallway. Over his shoulder he hollers, “Welcome back, B. C.”
Dr. Karmichael, a little overweight and wearing glasses, shoves through to my bedside. He aims a penlight in my eyes and blasts them, then asks how I feel.
“I’m hungry,” I say. Which is the truth. None of them suspect.
He smiles. “The hunger’s a very good sign.”
I say, “Thanks. Could I ask where exactly I am?”
Alix pats my hand. “You’re in New Hanover, Coop.”
I look at all their happy faces and the perfect line comes to me: “Is Brook alright?”
Alix considers my question, then says, “Sure. Brook’s fine.”
“The seizures stopped?”
The doctor asks, “Who’s Brook?”
Trevor laughs nervously, scratches at the blond hair along the side of his balding head.
Alix’s eyes come into mine. She understands something is wrong. I feel caught up in something, like we’re performing a play. The balloons floating over my bed, the flowers along the wall, all these are props arranged by stagehands.
“Cooper, you know what the doctors figured out. You know Brook was OK all along.”
I look her straight in the eye. “Why’d you cut off all your hair?”
The doctor asks, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“A wrestling match,” I say. “Were you there?”
“Me?” the doctor says. “No.”
Everybody exchanges looks. Hard looks. When their eyes come back to me, it’s my cue to ask sincerely, “Who are all you people?”
Alix says calmly, “Buddy. You know me.”
“Of course I do, Al.” Grins all around. “You’re my wife.”
This is where the camera would zoom in on my innocent face, then cut to Alix’s shocked expression before fading to a commercial. But here in the real world, her face freezes, then drops down into her open hands. I say, “Aren’t you?”
I have to say these things. I am committed to this plan of action.
Trevor calls into the hallway, “Lowell. Lowell! You’ll want to hear this.”
Dr. Karmichael summons his professional smile, digs a pinky into his ear.
Quinn walks back in and closes the door, cutting off the last of the soap opera theme music. Trevor whispers the news of my amnesia to Quinn, who thumbs his suspenders and says, “Unexpected developments. New stratagems are required.”
Alix begins weeping. I feel filthy. I feel great.
The doctor brings his cheeky face in close. “Can you tell me your name?”
I think hard, scrunching my forehead. “Buddy Cooper.”
“Who’s president?”
Intentionally, I rub my chin. Actually, the gauze covering my chin. “Gerald Ford? No. George Bush.” Quinn winces, shakes his head.
Trevor’s hands settle on Alix’s shoulders. He says, “Ally, we should let Dr. Karmichael do his work.”
“I’m not leaving,” Alix says.
Dr. Karmichael asks me if I know what state we’re in.
“Yes,” I say, and they all smile again, hopeful. Until I say what I must. “Kentucky. We are in Kentucky.”
“Oh God,” Alix says. “Please tell me he did not just say that.”
“That’s where you pretended to be from,” Quinn explains. “When you wrestled. You were the Unknown Kentucky Terror.”
“Terror?” I say. “No. That’s not right. I’m Bull Invinso, the Invincible Man. I’m certain of that much. That, and this is my wife. Those are the two things I’m absolutely sure of. Al, why are you crying? Everything’s going to be alright. I’m back now.”
Quinn’s headset starts beeping but he doesn’t reach up to click in. Dr. Karmichael looks down at his shoes. Trevor pulls out a white handkerchief and offers it to Alix, who lets it hang in the air. From their faces I can read the horrible truth, and it settles on me like a nightmare—they believe me.
-----
A Standard Interrogation. The Significance of Twizzlers.
Unreliable Testimony. The Search for Truth.
Breakfast brings bad
food and news of impending planetary doom. I lift the plastic lid to reveal an unmarked purple carton, a hard puck of meat, untoasted white bread with charred stripes, and steamy scrambled eggs. On TV, CNN’s Asteroid Alert reports that the asteroid’s size has been upgraded from a parking garage to a professional football stadium. Its trajectory and speed are erratic, behavior that causes one scientist to express “deepening concern.” An expert with a French accent thinks the asteroid will likely strike the moon, scattering lunar matter into the earth’s atmosphere. Another argues its mere proximity to our planet will affect the tides. She predicts coastal flooding. Shifts in global weather patterns. The realigning of tectonic plates.
Yesterday, after everybody was cleared out, Dr. Karmichael returned alone and briefed me on my condition. Apparently I’ve been out for a couple days as a result of severe blunt force trauma to the head. Hardy’s Victory Belt blow is also being blamed for what Karmichael is vaguely calling “some type of mental displacement.” As for my body, the bullet clipped my collarbone, ripped a chunk from my deltoid on its way out. The arm needs to be in the Velcro “immobilizer” for a week or so, and I should expect throbbing pain, followed by thumping, perhaps thudding. At present, the wound is giving off the smell of milk past its prime, something that does little for my breakfast enthusiasm.
When I asked why my face was wrapped up, he avoided eye contact and explained that he was concerned about an infection spreading from a wound on my chin. He hadn’t wanted to risk what he termed “an outbreak,” he said, so he had treated my skin with light rays and administered a heavy dosage of antibiotics. Sensing my suspicion, he told me I needed to get some rest, and left me alone. Thanks in large part to the drugs, I slept most of the night.
I’m watching TV now, not to stay on top of the developing threat to the planet, but in hopes of catching another look at a segment CNN put in rotation early this morning concerning the “Wrestling Riot” in North Carolina. In exclusive footage—who knows what Quinn charged for that—the gray-haired man-child stands on the ring apron in the strobing red light. He raises his arm and there is a white burst from his hand. Snake crumbles. Then the view rolls and for fifteen seconds we see flashes of the girders that line the ceiling of the Civic Center. The audio consists of screaming fans, more gunshots. Apparently, all the cameramen abandoned their posts when the shooting started. There is no evidence of what happened after that.
I stick with CNN long enough to view the segment three times, but finally I grow weary of news. I spend the next couple hours fading in and out of a Columbo marathon on A&E. It’s always been my favorite mystery show because they always tell you the murderer right away. Just after Peter Falk locks up Johnny Cash, Alix appears in my doorway. My wife is holding a pack of Twizzlers, this the only vending machine selection I ever made during the long days and nights we spent here keeping vigil over Brook before we learned the truth. In silence, my wife approaches me cautiously and offers me the candy, beginning the ritual we developed. Still without speaking, I accept the package, open it, peel off the first piece of licorice, and hold it out to her. At this moment she starts crying.
The tears are not part of our tradition. For a few seconds she holds her hands over her face. Then she reaches for the box of Kleenex on my nightstand, blows her nose, sniffles, and says, “I’m not at all sure I can do this.”
“Do what?” I ask her.
Alix shakes her head. “All this.” She wads up a blue tissue and banks it off the wall into a plastic pail, then sits in the pink chair. “I hate women who cry.” Perhaps it is my altered perception, but despite her auburn hair being shorter, despite the wrinkles spreading from the corners of her eyes, Alix seems younger too. Maybe it’s just that she’s weeping, something I haven’t witnessed in years.
“Dr. Karmichael says I’m out of danger,” I tell her.
“That’s a good place to be.” She stares out the window. The squirrel is watching.
I say, “So I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
She laughs, an anxious weepy chuckle. But after this fades, we slide again into a silence. I consider the full weight of what I’m pretending, that this woman sitting here is still my wife, that her mind still finds peace in my presence, that I am her husband and protector and lover. That our life together has not yet fractured. The magnitude of my deception fills the room like leaking gas, and I have the clear impression that any spark or movement might ignite an explosion.
Alix reaches into her purse and pulls out a wallet-sized photo of Brook, the same one I’ve got jammed into the corner of my dresser mirror downtown. She passes it to me.
“Wow,” I say. “She looks just like you.”
“She looks like us, Coop.”
From this safe first step we venture further out. I move us through a series of soft questions. “How is Brook doing in school?” “Does she have a boyfriend?” “So has she started driving?” “Has she tested for her black belt yet?” Alix falls into an easy rhythm on this familiar territory, teaching me the history I already know as we work our way through the Twizzlers. She retells the story of Brook’s disastrous first driving experience (mall parking lot—Caravan vs. Dumpster), of her rocky first semester at high school (“Does not live up to academic potential”), of her summer job lifeguarding at the Y (no rescues, lots of water-winged brats). Alix carefully edits our daughter’s past, leaving out her two runaway attempts after the divorce, her crank calls to the suicide hotline.
“I’d love to see her,” I say.
“Dr. Karmichael told me soon. It’ll be traumatic, you know?”
I nod my head, though I’m not certain if she means traumatic for me or traumatic for Brook. “I’ll be out in a day or two. Once I’m free, I want to go to Greenfield Lake, OK? Just the three of us?”
Alix reaches for the Kleenex. Fully in character now, it seems perfectly natural to me that the three of us would visit Greenfield Lake and take out the paddleboats. Afterward we’ll drive back to Asgard Lane, Brook will ride her ten-speed, leaving Alix and me alone for what we always jokingly called “afternoon delight.”
“These days Brook’s really excited about a new dance instructor, Jhondu,” Alix says, deliberately changing the subject.
“Is that his first name or his last?” This is something I’ve honestly wondered.
“I’m not sure. The girls and the dance moms all buy into this philosophy of his, the Arrow’s Path Complete Life System. Something like that.”
“Doesn’t sound too dangerous.”
“Last night Brook was chanting. This morning she told me drinking coffee multiplies my negative rhooshies and will lead to chaos in my mind.”
At this, we both laugh. The sight of my wife’s smile makes me bold. “Al,” I say. “What about the two of us? How are we getting along these days?”
Her laughter cuts off. The Twizzler knots in her hand.
“Brook and me. We’re still close and everything, right?”
“You and Brook? Oh, you’re still peas in a pod, Coop. She loves her Poppa-San.”
We chat for a while longer, though only about Brook. It’s like we’re defusing a bomb, picking our way from safe topic to safe topic, careful to avoid anything that involves us directly. Between us we sense our joint mission. We know that sooner or later we’ll have to choose the red wire or the green one, and we have no way of knowing for sure which one will kill the countdown and which one will trigger detonation. After half an hour, we just stop, exhausted. Alix stands up suddenly and says she has to go. “I’m still working with the studio. You remember ReelWorld, right?”
I nod, then ask, “Promise me something?”
She hesitates before she answers, but finally says, “Anything, Coop.”
“When you come back tomorrow,” I say, “bring more Twizzlers.”
I smile and find myself leaning forward, pushing my bandaged face out in the invitation that comes naturally when man and wife part. Caught off guard, Alix freezes for a moment, but the
n she steps in, lowers her face and slips her lips into the opening, pressing them softly against mine. In the last six months, we have had sex on a dozen Thursday afternoons. No moment compares with this.
Not long after Alix leaves, a nurse named Arthur arrives for my afternoon wound-dressing. He talks nonstop, telling me about his mother, who’s gambling away his inheritance across the border in South Carolina, and his sister, who runs a volunteer group that guards sea turtle hatcheries against ecotourists. When he finally leaves, I scan the channels looking for TV Buddy, hoping for a chance to report in or something. I want to see if I’m on the right track or not. But from QVC to VH1 to ESPN2, he’s nowhere to be found. Where am I when I need me?
Finally I stop my surfing and settled in for today’s Waves Will Crash. Lauren’s been released from the hospital in the hopes that returning her to familiar surroundings might resurrect dead memories. I wonder if perhaps they will try this therapy with me. Longley leads her from room to room, elaborating shamelessly about the happy times they’d had in each one. He even shows her their wedding album, but none of it helps; she still doesn’t feel close to him. The dramatic conclusion finds her standing at the bathroom mirror, staring at her own forgotten face. From second one, I know that mirror is doomed, and sure enough, Lauren smashes the glass with a silver-handled hairbrush. She looks down at the shards in the sink and two dozen jagged faces stare back at her.
At this crucial moment a black man dressed in a sports jacket walks into my room. He looks at me, then back at the television. I click the TV off and say, “Can I help you?”
“That,” he replies, “is exactly what I’m hoping.”
He introduces himself as Lieutenant Tyrelli and informs me that he’s working the case. Those are his exact words: working the case. Immediately I distrust Tyrelli because he likely has access to files from my former life. He stands at the window—no sign of my squirrel—and says into the open air, “I thought we might go over Friday.” He has no notepad, another detail that concerns me, in the same way I’m unnerved by waiters in fancy restaurants who memorize elaborate orders.
“The thing is,” I explain, “I don’t remember the incident at all.”
Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Page 13