Amnesia

by G. H. Ephron

  I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t budge. I squatted so our faces were level. “Good morning,” I said. He swam over to me through watery eyes. “What are you doing?”

  “Doing?” he asked. He looked around and his attention snagged on the television. “Oh, I’m waiting for the damned TV to warm up.”

  “I’m Dr. Peter Zak,” I offered my hand. Reluctantly he looked at the hand, and then shook it. “Do you mind if I sit with you and ask you a few questions?”

  “Questions?” He shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “John Patrick O’Flanagan. Same as my dad’s.”

  I could feel myself relaxing as this familiar routine kicked in. Work had become my salvation. “Do you know where you are right now?”

  “Well, I’m … I’m …” he stammered, looking around as if seeing the place for the first time, “I’m in the Forest Hills ready room waiting for my train to be called.”

  “Do you know what day this is?”

  “It’s Tuesday,” he said, sure of himself. Actually, it was Monday. He glanced outside. “April …” It wasn’t a bad guess. April looks a lot like September in New England.

  “And the year?”

  “1963.”

  “And who’s the president?”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “John Fitzgerald Kennedy, of course. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, young man.”

  I nodded. “Mr. O’Flanagan, have you been having any problems with your memory lately?”

  “Problems? None at all. My mind’s right as rain,” he said, rapping the top of his head with a knuckle.

  “Do you mind if I give you a little test?”

  “Suit yourself. But I may have to leave if they call me.”

  “I want you to remember three things. A bat, like a baseball bat. A table, like a dining-room table.”

  Mr. O’Flanagan nodded and repeated the words, “Bat, table …”

  “And a bridge, like the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “ … bridge.”

  “That’s right. Have you got that? Bat, table, bridge.”

  He rolled his eyes at Kwan and Gloria and humored me with a response. “Bat, table, bridge.”

  “Okay. Now, remember those words because I’m going to ask you for them in just a few moments. I wonder if you’ve ever heard the expression, ‘People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard it.”

  “Can you explain to me what it means?”

  “People who live in …” He thought for a few moments and started again. “It means …” He frowned. Then a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head. He formed a little tent out of his hands and intoned, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” He paused. “Matthew Seven.” He winked at me.

  “Right you are,” I said. “You read the Bible often, Mr. O’Flanagan?”

  “Me? Nah. The wife’s the one. She’s always quoting bits of it. That’s one of her favorites.”

  “And how is your wife?”

  “Right as rain,” he said.

  “Now, can you remember those three words we talked about?”

  “What words?” he said.

  “Baseball —” I prompted.

  Reddening, he sputtered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Golden Gate —”

  “What kind of ridiculous nonsense? Why are you wasting my time when I have work to do?” He struggled to his feet. He looked around the room, baffled. “My train …” he said.

  “You’re absolutely right. Just a lot of nonsense. You can relax. We’ll let you know when it’s called.”

  The old man sank back down into his chair and dismissed me with a backhanded wave. Then he noticed the television, settled back, and stared placidly into it.

  I stood and we left the room.

  “Alzheimer’s?” our intern, Suzanne, asked.

  I shook my head. “Mr. O’Flanagan is your typical Korsakoff patient.”

  “I should have guessed from those spidery hemorrhages in his face. An alcoholic.”

  “Or what’s left of one,” I said. “Mr. O’Flanagan remembers how televisions worked forty years ago, when they took a few moments to warm up. But he doesn’t remember that he hasn’t turned it on. And he doesn’t have any idea whether he’s been waiting for a few minutes or a few hours.”

  As we continued down the hall, Gloria looked back and commented, “But he’s a pretty contented guy. Nothing in this world worries him.”

  The mind can go bad in a lot of ways, and Mr. O’Flanagan’s wasn’t a bad way to go. His world was a benign twilight zone in which each moment that passed disappeared from his memory like a snowflake melting on a hot plate. There had been times when I gladly would have switched places. But I’d thought I was past that — until Chip called.

  2

  MY BEEPER went off at ten minutes to five. I hoped it was Chip calling to cancel. I blinked at the readout. My mother’s number blinked back. I swallowed the panic that I knew was irrational. I ducked into the nurses’ station and dialed the phone. I held my breath and counted rings. One … two … the phone picked up. “Ma?” I said.

  There was my mother’s reedy voice. “I’m fine,” she said, getting that out of the way.

  I breathed. “You beeped?”

  “Petey, dear —” she started. I cringed. She’s the only person in the world who calls me Petey and it’s useless to protest. “Listen, about tonight.”

  “Tonight?” I’d forgotten. My mother had invited me to eat dinner with her. A nice break from the usual tuna on Styrofoam I’d get at the hospital cafeteria.

  “You wouldn’t mind, would you, if we make it tomorrow instead?”

  My mother lives in the other half of the two-family side-by-side that Kate and I bought just after we were married. It’s in the heart of one of the more blue-collar Cambridge neighborhoods. My parents moved in after my father got sick more than five years ago. So coming to dinner involves going out my door, standing briefly on our shared porch, and going in my mother’s door.

  “What, you got a better offer?”

  “Actually,” she hesitated, “actually, I have a … date.” Her voice cracked over the last word.

  “A date?” My mother was sixty-eight years old, and since my father died four years ago, her weekly mah-jongg game and dinner with me had constituted her goings-out.

  “And why shouldn’t I have a date?”

  “With a man?”

  “No, dear, with a chimpanzee. Of course with a man.”

  “Anyone I know?” Here was a game we’d often played, but with the roles reversed.

  “Mr. Kuppel,” she said, “from the video store.”

  “Ah,” I said. That explained how, as electronically challenged as she usually is, my mother had so quickly mastered the VCR I bought her a few months earlier. Mr. Kuppel was a round, avuncular fellow with a neatly clipped beard and mustache and a completely bald pate. He repaired VCRs and was a connoisseur of vintage films.

  “You don’t mind, do you, dear?”

  Too bad I hadn’t remembered earlier. It would have made the perfect excuse to give Chip.

  My mother, attuned to every nuance, quickly turned the tables. “So what is it? You forgot? You’re not feeling well? You have another engagement?” The last one was delivered with that hopeful, upward inflection at the end.

  Multiple choice. I didn’t rush to answer. I savored the moment. It felt good to slip back into our familiar roles, the thrust and parry of nagging mother, beleaguered son. Each answer had its downside. I forgot: I didn’t care about her. I was sick: I’d need round-the-clock deliveries of chicken soup and ginger ale. I had a date: I’d be hounded for details.

  None of the above. But telling her the truth was out of the question. If she knew I was even marginally involved in a homicide case, she’d freak and maybe even cancel her date. I sidestepped. “Actually, it’s been so hectic and I’ve g
ot tons of paperwork to finish up before I call it a day. Tomorrow is better for me, too.” I glanced out the window. The sky was overcast, and in the early gloom Chip and Annie were walking up the hill toward the building entrance. I hit the button that sets off my own beeper. “Mom, my beeper just went off.”

  “You sure everything is all right?” She should be the psychologist, not me.

  “Everything is fine, just fine. Gotta run.”

  “So run! Do what you have to do. Don’t forget to turn on the outside light when you come in so I know you’re safe.” Click.

  Safe. Would “safe” ever again be a word I’d use to describe myself?

  When I looked out the window again, Annie and Chip had disappeared into the building. There wasn’t time to meet them in the lobby so I headed for the stairs. I was in the middle of the second flight when I realized that what I wanted to do was turn around and run the other way. I slowed down, pushing myself to put one foot in front of the other. Was that an echo, or another set of footsteps just after mine? I paused. The stairwell descended into silence. When I finally reached the third floor, I leaned against the door to the hall and breathed evenly, trying to slow down my heart. With the back of my hand, I swiped away the perspiration that glazed my forehead. Then I entered the corridor. I had to walk to the end. My office was just around the bend. The hallway seemed to stretch out before me, the end getting farther away rather than closer with each step, until suddenly I had turned the corner and there they were.

  “Peter!” Chip said and thumped me on the back. I tried to return the favor but stopped short after the first halfhearted thump. I backed off. He felt as if he’d forgotten to take the cardboard out of his shirt.

  He reddened with embarrassment. “Sorry, I should have warned you. Bulletproof vest. I’ve been wearing it ever since …”

  It made him look thicker, chunkier than usual in his dark, three-piece suit. “Not just in honor of a visit with me?”

  “I wear it all the time,” he admitted.

  And does it make you feel safe? I wondered. Nice to know I wasn’t the only one who felt as if my world had gone haywire.

  “About what happened at the funeral,” I said, wanting to get that out in the open. “I’m really sorry. You know I didn’t mean anything by it … .” The words trailed off.

  “I understood. We all did,” Chip said, adjusting his tie and looking uncomfortable.

  “Hey, Peter,” Annie said, coming around from behind Chip, “we’ve missed you.” She gave me a light kiss on the cheek.

  Annie and Chip were a mismatched set. He oozed corporate conservatism and she was something else in sunglasses, jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt under a beat-up aviator’s jacket, a leather backpack slung over her shoulder. Annie slipped off her shades and smiled the kind of smile that has pity lurking just behind its upturned edges.

  I fumbled in my pocket for my keys and unlocked the office doors — there’s an inner and an outer door with an air pocket in between for privacy. I followed them inside. I stooped as I walked around behind my desk to sit, avoiding the sloping ceiling punctuated by two little dormer windows.

  Chip flipped opened his briefcase. Annie sat back in a chair and scanned the room. Her eyes flickered over the crayon drawing of the brain I’d produced at age eight — my mother framed it as a graduation present. She swallowed as she stared at the photograph of Kate hanging alongside. I’d taken the picture at a gallery in the Leather District where she’d had the first show of her ceramics.

  Today, my office seemed dingier than I remembered. Even the duct tape that held the gray carpet together here and there was frayed. Books seemed to tumble out of overloaded bookcases. The pinkish walls were badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. My Wines of Provence poster stood propped against the wall, a crack running through the glass. I couldn’t remember how long ago it was that I’d brushed past and knocked it down.

  In the past there would have been kidding, gossip to catch up on. Today, Chip cut to the chase. “This case, it’s a murder that happened not too far from you. Six months ago. A man was killed and his girlfriend was shot and left for dead in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Maybe you read about it?”

  “I did, actually,” I admitted. I can’t help myself. I read about every murder I can lay my hands on and this one stuck with me because the woman survived and because it happened so close to my home. She’d been found near the cemetery’s seventy-foot Victorian stone tower. I used to climb that tower every spring to prepare for the crowded and raucous rowing race that Kwan and I dubbed the “Toe of the Charles,” to distinguish it from its pedigreed namesake, the Head of the Charles. From the top, I could see most of the river’s 2.5-mile course. We used to race the Toe, decked out in tuxes and top hats, arguing until the very last minute about who got to stroke.

  “Annie, why don’t you give Peter the details?” Chip said.

  “Right,” Annie began, her serious gray eyes trained on me. I leaned back, covered my mouth with my hand, and braced myshelf. “At dawn on March 9 of this year, a birder walking through the cemetery finds a woman’s body. He thinks she’s dead, runs out, calls 911, and when they get there, it turns out she isn’t dead at all. This forty-year-old woman, Sylvia Jackson, an automobile insurance appraiser, has been shot in the head.”

  Annie waited a moment. I was processing what she said but I wasn’t feeling squat. Good thing I’d been trained all those years to listen to the horror stories patients tell without getting emotionally sucked in. I nodded for her to continue.

  “They race her to the hospital, and meanwhile, the police go to her house, which is about half a mile away. It’s a mess.” Annie paused again and pressed her lips together. I closed my eyes. She continued, “They found blood everywhere — inside, outside. Broken glass. The works. There, in the kitchen, they find the body of a man. He’s not so lucky. Also apparently shot, though there are other injuries as well. Turns out the murder victim, Tony Ruggiero, is the woman’s boyfriend.”

  Catching a breath, Annie hurried on. “Sylvia Jackson remains in a coma for weeks. When she comes out of it, she can’t walk, has trouble talking, and doesn’t remember a thing about the murder. They question her other boyfriends — this woman has lots of them. They question the ex-husband, Stuart Jackson. She was at his house the day before. Brought him an envelope full of paper butterflies she made for his birthday.” I opened my eyes. I must have looked surprised because Annie explained, “Sylvia and Stuart Jackson were divorced, legally. But they were not your typical divorced couple. They continued to have what you might call a close relationship.

  “None of the forensic evidence links any of the boyfriends or the ex to the murder. But the boyfriends have alibis. Jackson doesn’t. Says he was home alone that night, sleeping off the flu. They search his apartment and come up empty.”

  Chip picked up the thread. “Then, a few months later, she’s in the hospital and suddenly it comes back to her. ‘Now I remember,’ she tells the police. ‘Stuart did it.’ Based on her statement, they search Stuart Jackson’s apartment … again. And lo and behold, this time they find a hat just like the one Sylvia Jackson claims her ex-husband wore when he shot her.”

  I couldn’t keep myself from asking, “A hat?”

  “Made of camouflage fatigue material,” Annie explained. “Stuart claims he never saw it before.”

  “Bloodstained?” I was on a roll.

  Annie shook her head. “Clean. It turns out some of the hairs found in the hat belong to Stuart. But oddly enough, some of the hairs belong to the murder victim. A blip that no one has yet been able to explain.”

  “That’s when we get involved,” Chip said. “Based on the evidence of the cap and Sylvia Jackson’s memory, they lock up Stuart Jackson. He insists he’s innocent. They still don’t have the gun. Then, two days after his arrest, he tries to commit suicide. Nearly succeeds.”

  “So they move him to Bridgewater for evaluation?” I asked.

  “Right.”

&n
bsp; I took off my glasses and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “So what you’re telling me is that the only evidence they have is a hat found in the defendant’s closet months after the murder, and the memory of a woman who was shot in the head? Nothing from the scene of the crime?”

  “No bloody glove. But we’ve got a prosecutor who thinks he’s got an airtight case.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Monty Sherman.” I didn’t know the name. “He’s the star D.A. and he’s about to run for attorney general. And with this case, he’ll be able to run his campaign from the front page of the paper. It’s got all the makings of a showcase trial — distressed damsel, jealous husband who thought he could get away with murder. Enough clichés to give the press a field day. A win here and …” Chip stopped mid-thought. He licked his lips and looked away. He’d slipped so easily into the old patter in which murder trials are a game.

  If I’d been my old self, I never would have asked the question I now asked. “You think he did it?” I looked back and forth from Annie to Chip. Even a consult was more than I was willing to give a murderer.

  Chip looked at Annie. She leaned across the desk toward me. “I’ve talked to him at least a half dozen times. If he’s a murderer, then I’m the Easter Bunny.”

  What was it she’d said two years ago about Ralston Bridges? “He’s a dangerous wacko.” It summed him up nicely. If only I’d been paying attention.

  “I’m telling you, Stuart Jackson is not a killer,” she continued. “He’s at the hospital every day while she’s in a coma. She wakes up and the cops start to question her. They tell him he can’t visit her anymore. He hangs around the lobby like a lost puppy. She accuses him of murder, they arrest him, and he tries to kill himself.”

  “Could be out of guilt and desperation. Prison’s a depressing place.”