“You know, if you need anything…” De Luca said.
Lloyd got out of the car, the mouse cage under an arm. He was about to shut the car door when he hesitated and said, “Hey, De Luca… thanks.”
De Luca nodded with a thin smile. “My pleasure, doc.” The car slowly pulled away from the curb after Lloyd shut the door, its red tail lights coming alive as it slowed to turn at the end of the block.
Lloyd entered the apartment, set the mouse cage on the teak coffee table and got himself a beer from the fridge. He settled on the couch looking at the mouse scurrying back and forth along one edge of the cage.
“You want to come out for a while?” Lloyd said. He leaned forward, flipped open the metal grid that covered the plastic bin and scooped the mouse in the palm of his hand. He placed the creature on his thigh and took a swig of beer. The mouse rose on its hind quarters, its whiskers twitching as it sniffed the hair. It settled back on all fours and took a few tentative steps toward Lloyd’s knee.
“We should give you a real name, double-o-six.” The mouse turned around as if it were responding to Lloyd’s voice. “How about Frederic? You like that? Freddy Chopin?” The mouse scurried up to Lloyd’s hip. Lloyd took him in his hand and studied him. “Look buddy, let’s get one thing clear. I never had a damn pet before and I don’t really want one now. So don’t even think of getting emotionally attached, okay? My interest in you is purely scientific. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just temporary roommates. And good roommates don’t shit all over the house. You got that?” Lloyd placed the mouse back in the cage and took another sip of beer. “I’m talking to a fucking mouse!”
When he finished his beer, he got to his feet, picked up the keys to the Subaru and headed to the hospital in Park Ridge to see the corpse of his mother.
Chapter 36
Later in the afternoon, Lloyd called a cab to go pick up his bike from in front of Kaz’s apartment. The door to the apartment was locked and someone had secured a flimsy piece of plywood in the frame of the broken window with strips of duct tape. He tried ringing the upstairs apartment but there was no answer, so he got on his bike and rode off.
When he got home he considered scouring through the data on the computerized spreadsheet once more, but he wasn’t in the right state of mind and deep down he knew that the answers he was looking for were not be found concealed by lot numbers and dates of injection so meticulously recorded. He thought about what De Luca said. He grabbed a beer, downed it in just a couple of long drags. Then he picked up the phone and dialed the main operator for the hospital.
“This is Dr. Copeland. I’m trying to reach Dr. Todd English.”
“Please hold,” the operator said.
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played as Lloyd waited on the phone. Hadn’t Kaz wanted to name a mouse after the Italian composer? Lloyd straightened his spine and sighed. He wondered if for the rest of his life a few bars of classical music would be enough to stir up a fog of melancholy.
“This is Dr. English,” a voice said after the music stopped.
“Dr. English? It’s Lloyd Copeland.”
There was a pause.
“I wanted to apologize,” Lloyd said. “I might have gone a little overboard when –”
“Look, it isn’t my fault that you’re getting canned,” English said.
“I know. I’m not holding any grudges against you,” Lloyd said, thought it wasn’t quite true.
“No, you don’t understand. It’s not like I squealed on you. The whole thing just snowballed out of control.”
“It’s alright. Like you said, it’s not your fault.”
“Once that guy gets a hold of you, he’s like a pit bull. He just doesn’t let go,” English said.
“I’ll handle Dr. Lasko.”
“Lasko?” English said. “Hell, I’m not talking about Lasko.”
Lloyd paused. “Todd, what are you saying?”
“Man, figure it out. I’m done talking to you.”
The line went quiet and then a tone told Lloyd that English had hung up. Lloyd looked at his phone replaying the conversation in his mind when the door-bell rang. It was Erin. She stepped inside the apartment and smothered Lloyd in a long embrace. Lloyd couldn’t remember a hug ever feeling so good.
“I came as soon as I could,” Erin said.
Lloyd tried to kiss her but she put a palm out in front of his face and said, “Lloyd, we really have to talk.” She grabbed his hand and tugged on it as she led him upstairs.
They sat at the dining table. Erin opened her purse and pulled out the two tickets for the gala, set them on the table in front of Lloyd without saying a word.
Lloyd stared at the tickets for a few moments. He wrinkled his brow and let his gaze drift up to Erin’s face.
“Cardio-Prime Technologies,” Erin said. “What do you know about that company?”
Lloyd studied Erin’s eyes which were darting between the tickets on the table and Lloyd’s face.
“What do you know about that company?” Lloyd asked.
“I know that Dr. Lasko was quite involved with them,” Erin said nodding.
“He’s on their speaker’s bureau.”
“Was on their speaker’s bureau,” Erin said. “And that’s not all. When I first got hired here, one of my first assignments was to oversee Lasko’s transition to Chief of Staff in terms of making sure he had no conflicts of interest. He’s the one that insisted that I monitor the process, actually.”
“And?”
“He gets royalties for some textbook chapters he wrote, and he holds a couple of patents for medical devices that nobody uses anymore, but Cardio-Prime was the big one. Not only did they pay him for giving lectures, he was also a significant investor, to the tune of one-point-two million to be precise.”
“That’s a lot of bananas,” Lloyd said.
“Beaucoup bananas. So he divested his holdings in the company,” Erin said, “as he damn well should have.”
“So you’re saying he doesn’t have any ties to the company anymore.”
“Yeah, but… it’s just so weird. The way he went about it. It was as if he was just trying to show me just how clean he was, like he was trying too hard. I mean, he didn’t really need me at all. It was as if…”
“As if what?” Lloyd asked.
“I don’t know. It all felt a little creepy. You know, like a gang boss trying to set up an alibi when someone’s about to get whacked. He wanted a witness.”
“You don’t have to tell me the guy’s a creep,” Lloyd said. “I figured that out on my own.”
“There’s another thing.” Erin paused and bit her lower lip. “When he told me that I was going to be on the IRB reviewing your research, I saw your name and I said, ‘Wait a minute. I know him.’ It just sort of slipped out, you know? He got all excited and asked me how I knew you and I told him I didn’t really know you, I just knew you as a kid. So then he tells me…”
Erin’s voice trailed off and she looked down at the tabletop.
“What did he tell you?”
“God, this sounds so awful now.”
“What did he tell you?”
“So he says something like, ‘Well, since you’re already acquainted with him, why don’t you see if you can really get to know him, you know, see what makes him tick.’”
“He asked you to spy on me,” Lloyd said.
“I can’t believe how stupid I was. I thought, well, this could be fun. I mean, what’s the harm?”
Lloyd squeezed his lips together and tapped a finger on the table. “So this was all a big joke to you.”
“God no, Lloyd,” Erin said. “Believe me. I didn’t go through with it. After I met you I avoided Lasko at all costs. I never told him anything about us.”
Lloyd thought about the last time he was in Lasko’s office. How he got a bad feeling in his gut when Lasko told him that he had spoken to Erin about the incident in the cafeteria with the medical student. He wondered how many more conversations the two had with him
as the subject.
“Well you certainly played your part well.”
“It was stupid, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s get naked but not have sex. Now, that was brilliant. Was that your idea or his?”
Erin shook her head. She pressed her hand to her chest.
“I have to hand it to you,” Lloyd said, “you really had me fooled.”
“It wasn’t like that. Listen, I never did or said anything to you that I didn’t mean. Please trust me on that.”
“Trust? Do me a favor Erin, look that word up in the dictionary before you come and talk to me of trust.”
“I’m really sorry. I never intended to hurt you.”
“I think you should leave,” Lloyd said. “Please, just leave.”
Erin waited a few moments. She got to her feet and stood there as if expecting Lloyd would get up. She reached for Lloyd’s hand but he withdrew it.
She turned and headed down the stairs. Each of her steps on the wooden stairs sounded like the rap of a gavel underscoring the sincerity of her words; each rap a blow to his soul with a two-by-four. Lloyd held his breath waiting for the pounding to stop.
Chapter 37
Lloyd had expected that the sight of his mother’s casket being lowered in the earth would have overwhelmed him with unspeakable sadness. Instead, as he stood by the grave witnessing the lid of the coffin setting past the horizon of the chrome supporting brace to the insipid ratcheting sound of a hand crank, all he felt was a hollow numbness. He was so devoid of feeling that when mourners shuffled past him expressing their sympathies, he almost felt a need to apologize to them. He would have left the funeral by now, would have retreated to the succor of his solitude had he not arrived in a funerary limousine.
Erin was there, too. As the rest of the mourners headed for their cars, she walked up to Lloyd. He put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight to his back foot.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Lloyd stared at the ground and said nothing.
“I’m sorry about everything,” she said, “and I want you to know that I’m here for you, if you need me.”
“Don’t feel like you have to put yourself out on account of me,” Lloyd said.
From the corner of his eye he saw her shaking her head. “If only you knew how much I care for you.” She reached out and put her hand on his elbow. “Let me take you home.”
Lloyd looked up at her, tried to stare her down with a stony look, but what he saw in her expression was simple kindness; a disarming warmth. He blinked with surprise when he felt a warm wetness streaming down his cheek. He was even more shocked when his stomach heaved with a suffocating sob.
Erin embraced him. “Shh, it’s alright. Everything’s going to be alright.”
Lloyd hadn’t cried since the day his father died, hadn’t even shed a tear at his funeral and made a pledge to himself that he would never cry again. Now, he held Erin and sobbed in her shoulder. He tried to regain his composure by taking several deep cleansing breaths.
“Let me take you home,” Erin said.
“I can’t. My uncle wants to talk to me.”
“Will you call me at least?”
“Yeah,” Lloyd said wiping his face with the back of his hand.
“You promise? You’ll call?”
Lloyd paused. “Yeah, sure.”
She leaned next to him as if she were about to whisper something in his ear, held his hand for a moment then turned and walked down the cypress-lined path. Uncle Roy was standing a distance away, his hands clasped behind his back.
He approached Lloyd, smiled and said, “Ready?”
The two men walked past shiny red granite headstones, past statues of winged angels, squat obelisks and monuments carved with the usual passages of scripture.
“I love this old cemetery,” Uncle Roy said. “I love the statues, the angels, the sleeping cherubs.”
“Isn’t it all a bit gaudy?” Lloyd asked.
“But that’s what I love about it. You see, it’s a window into the human psyche. It displays the common notions that people have of their idea of heaven. They envision angels flying among cotton-ball clouds, a white voice choir singing round-the-clock and everyone wearing dazzling bleached gowns traipsing around a vast meadow of marigolds chanting unending praise to the heavenly Father. No conflict, no wants, no hunger, no desires, not even the craving for sex. And they call this bliss, though it’s precisely what they abhor while they’re still alive.”
“And how do you envision heaven?” Lloyd asked.
Roy glanced up at the sky, sighed and rubbed his palms together. “I see heaven as a state of understanding. If in life we’re bogged down by doubt and ignorance, heaven must be a place of lucidity, clarity, of ultimate knowledge. Whereas life is marked by forbearance and endurance, heaven is a place of true acceptance.”
“Sounds very Zen-like,” Lloyd said.
“Perhaps.”
Uncle Roy put a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder as they kept walking. Up ahead, a squirrel stopped in their path, poked its nose in the air, jerked its scrubby tail, turned and scampered up the trunk of a massive live oak in wide spirals before stopping to spy down at them from a knotted branch. Roy clasped his hands behind his back again.
“Will you be heading back to Rome?” Lloyd asked.
“Yes. As soon as I put a few affairs in order.”
“Do you need help with that?”
“A real estate agent will be calling you. The house will be listed soon. If there’s anything there you need to pick up, you’ll want to do it soon. Everything else will be donated.”
Lloyd shook his head.
“Lloyd,” Uncle Roy said, “speaking of putting affairs in order, there’s something I need to clear up with you. What I’m about to tell you… well, it’s not easy to say this.” He stopped and turned to face Lloyd. “It’s something that I’ve yearned to tell you for so long and yet I hoped I would never have to.”
Roy brought his hands together. Lloyd noticed a slight tremor.
“I know you’ve been going through an awful lot lately and I don’t mean to heap it on you with another shock,” Roy said.
“If a lightning bolt hit me on this spot it wouldn’t be a shock anymore the way things are going,” Lloyd said.
Roy smiled a feeble smile that quickly faded. “The day your father took his life, he came to see me while I was in church listening to confession and he told me something – a family secret, something that shook me to my core.” Roy paused for a moment. He was studying Lloyd’s expression. “Andrew told me I was adopted.”
Roy let the words hang in the air and kept his eyes locked on Lloyd’s.
“My real mother was an unwed teenager. Your grandmother and grandfather adopted me when I was an infant.”
Lloyd weighed the words. “That doesn’t change anything.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“I mean, so what? You’re still my uncle,” Lloyd said.
Roy smiled. “When I joined the seminary your father was still a bachelor. He was quite a bit older than me, you see, but he never intended to marry or have children. He said he didn’t want to pass the curse on to another generation. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?”
“What are you getting at?” Lloyd asked.
“I have to confess that I must have shared the same dread on some level. I convinced myself I had a calling to join the priesthood, but I wonder how much of that choice was… Well, your grandparents weren’t all too happy about my decision. They were worried about the perpetuity of the Copeland family name. I suspect that was part of their motivation for adopting me. They must have reasoned that I would graft a new branch on the Copeland family tree – a branch that would yield healthy new fruit.”
“And why are you telling me this now?” Lloyd asked.
“When Andrew married your mother, it was quite a surprise. It was a very short engagement, you know. She was already carrying you in her womb.”
&n
bsp; “I don’t know that I need to know this,” Lloyd said.
“Oh, but you do. It was a blessing, really. A miracle, your grandmother said. Your father would have a child now. And not just any child but a healthy boy; a boy who had no chance of acquiring the dreaded malady.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You know how I’ve always loved Star Wars. As a kid, I imagined being Luke Skywalker. I even memorized most his lines.”
“Not Star Wars again,” Lloyd said.
“Turns out I learned the wrong lines,” Roy said. “You know, some of the most famous quotes people remember are actually all wrong. Bogart didn’t say, ‘Play it again, Sam’ in Casablanca, and Sherlock Holmes never once said, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“And what’s the most famous Darth Vader line?” Roy asked.
“I don’t know. Why does it matter?”
“Say it.”
Lloyd shook his head and said, “Luke, I’m your father?”
“I am your father.”
“Luke, I am your father,” Lloyd said with a shrug.
“I am your father,” Roy said.
“Yeah, I think I got it.”
“Lloyd, I am your father.”
Lloyd’s body stiffened. His lips parted. Roy nodded.
“After entering the seminary,” Roy said, “I met your mother, quite by chance, when I went to study at the library one day. The attraction between us was undeniable. We started meeting at the library more often, all very innocently at first. Well, we fell in love, and I succumbed to my passion. When she told me she was pregnant, I was ready to abandon the seminary, to accept responsibility for what I had sown, to marry her and raise you.”
Roy looked over Lloyd’s shoulder off into the distance. “That night I confided in my brother. He said I had figured it all wrong. He urged me to stay in the seminary, that the scandal would be a stain on our family name, that the shame might kill our parents. So he devised an alternative plan. He would marry Ellen, maintain a strictly platonic relationship and raise you as his own child.”
The priest tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “You see, what he knew, but I couldn’t have known, was that you would be spared the disease, that there was no way for you to inherit the dreaded Copeland curse, because he knew I was adopted.”
The Art of Forgetting Page 24