The Art of Forgetting

by Peter Palmieri

  “He screwed you over,” Lloyd said.

  “I hold no ill-will towards my brother. As much as I loved Ellen – and believe me, I loved her dearly – I had made a covenant with God. And I knew what type of future she’d have faced if I’d have married her myself. She would have been a pariah, a social outcast. Her life would have been a living hell.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before? Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” Lloyd said.

  “Yes, I have a fairly good notion. Don’t forget I’ve walked down that same path. When I spoke to Ellen about… the arrangement, she said she’d go through with it under one condition: no one could know, not even her son. Not while she was alive.”

  Lloyd wiped beads of perspiration from his brow. “I can’t believe this shit!”

  “Lloyd.” Roy tried to put a hand on his son’s elbow. Lloyd knocked it away. “Lloyd, you have your whole life ahead of you. Embrace it. It’s not too late.” Lloyd took a step away from him. “I hope you can forgive me, son.”

  Lloyd turned and walked away.

  Chapter 38

  After walking down a few dusty blocks on Roosevelt Avenue, Lloyd stepped into a deserted donut shop. He ordered a cup of coffee from a chubby girl in a burnt orange polyester blouse who eyed him coquettishly from behind the cash register.

  When he pulled out his wallet to pay the girl whispered, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

  “Thanks,” Lloyd said. He slipped his wallet back in his pocket, picked up the Styrofoam cup and sat down in a booth of white Formica, chipped and scratched with countless initials, stained with cigarette burns, and inscribed with the cryptic message, “Look first”.

  He called a cab with his cell phone and spent the next ten minutes blowing on the ridiculously hot beverage. He managed to slurp a few bitter mouthfuls and wondered how the coffee could smell so much better than it tasted.

  “I just made it fresh,” the girl behind the counter said, “when I saw you heading here.”

  Lloyd turned to his side to face her and she smiled self-consciously. She grabbed a rag and wiped down the bare counter.

  “We don’t get too many people walking in at this hour,” she said. “I could get in trouble for brewing a fresh pot.”

  “Mmm. Well, thanks,” Lloyd said. He looked at the fine gray vapor rising from the cup before glancing back at her. She let out a short laugh, turned and headed for a back room.

  The cab pulled into the parking lot. Lloyd got to his feet, slapped a five-dollar bill on the table top and pressed the plastic lid back on the Styrofoam cup. He tossed the cup in a trash can by the door. A heavy reindeer bell banged against the glass pane as he pulled the door open and he heard the girl say, “Bye!”

  He looked over his shoulder. She was standing by the cash register, her hand raised in a stiff wave. “Come again,” she said.

  She had a pleasant smile and surprisingly fine skin. She’d make someone happy one day, Lloyd thought. He waved back and stepped onto the gravelly blacktop of the parking lot.

  Back at home, the emptiness of his apartment squeezed Lloyd with a smothering languor. He sat on his bed and replayed the conversation with Roy in his mind as he slowly unfastened the knot of his neck tie. He slipped the tie off and tossed it on the bed.

  What a joke his life had been. What a silly charade. Proud, independent Lloyd had erected a wall to protect the innocent from the invisible blight that lurked inside him. But it had all been a quixotic crusade. There was no rot at his core and the solitude that imprisoned him was a self-imposed exile. The clever Dr. Copeland turned out to be a first rate sap. The charming loner was nothing but a gawky marionette, and now that the strings were cut he no longer felt alone: he felt detached.

  His cell phone rang. He thought it might be Erin or Roy but when he looked at the display, the first three digits told him it was a hospital number.

  “Dr. Copeland,” Lloyd said as he put the phone by his ear.

  “Lloyd, it’s Mark. Listen I know this is a hell of a time but we’ve got a bit of a situation here. Beverly Spalding insisted that I call you. Her husband’s in the ER.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. He got confused, he slipped and fell and hit his noggin”

  “Is he alright?”

  “I think so,” Mark said. “But the ER doc wants to admit him for observation and Beverly’s just beside herself. She wants you to stop by and clear him to go home.”

  “You know I can’t set foot in the hospital,” Lloyd said.

  “You don’t have to. He’s not in our ER. He’s out in Hinsdale.”

  “I don’t have privileges there,” Lloyd said.

  “Look, just drop in as a visitor and have a friendly chat with the ER doc. That’s all. It’ll make her happy.”

  The receptionist at the Emergency Room eyed Lloyd wearily when he inquired for Cecil Spalding.

  “Are you a relative?” she asked.

  “I’m his neurologist.”

  Her eyes traced over his chest as if to point out that he didn’t have a badge. “What did you say your name was?”

  A voice at the receptionist’s back called out, “Dr. Copeland!” It was Alan Birch, the ER doctor who had tried to revive Kaz. He jutted his thumb to his right as if he were trying to hitch a ride. “Come around.” The receptionist shrugged and her attention returned to the Sudoku book she had hidden under a vinyl clipboard.

  Lloyd stepped up to a heavy fire door that unlocked with a click and opened automatically. Dr. Birch shook his hand. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

  “Me either,” Lloyd said.

  “You here to see someone?”

  “One of my private patients,” Lloyd said.

  “What’s the name?”

  “Cecil Spalding.”

  “Oh. Man, am I glad you’re here!” Birch said.

  “What happened?” Lloyd asked.

  “Bumped his head, sustained a small linear lac I already closed with a couple of stitches. But his mental status…”

  “Yeah, I know,” Lloyd said.

  “He can’t remember a darn thing.”

  “That’s his baseline.”

  “That’s what his wife tells me,” Birch said. “But you gotta admit, it’s hard to believe… So I scanned his head.”

  “And?”

  “No fracture, no bleed, no mass effect,” Birch said.

  Lloyd jerked up his eyebrows as if to say, “I could have told you” but ended up saying, “Well, that’s good news.”

  “Still, I feel sort of funny letting him go home.”

  “You mind if I take a look at him? Strictly as a visitor, I don’t have privileges here,” Lloyd said.

  “Hey man, be my guest. By the way, I saw the autopsy report on your technician. You were right about the mercury.” Lloyd nodded. “What’s up with that?”

  “I’m still working on it,” Lloyd said.

  Upon seeing Lloyd, Beverly Spalding looked up to the heavens and let out a sigh that was either a sign of relief or exasperation.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said.

  Lloyd shook her hand.

  “Well, hello there,” Cecil Spalding said in his usual way. An oversized bandage was heavily taped to the side of his head.

  “Hello Mr. Spalding. I’m Dr. Copeland.” Lloyd extended his hand. Cecil Spalding shook it without hesitation. Lloyd pinched his lips. The implicit memory of the pin-prick had completely evaporated.

  “How are you feeling?” Lloyd asked.

  “I feel like I’ve been waiting an eternity to speak to the doctor.” Cecil Spalding reached for the bandage. His wife caught his hand in mid-air.

  “He keeps trying to pick at the stitches,” she said. “He just can’t help it.”

  Lloyd nodded. He grabbed an ophthalmoscope from its wall mounted cradle, straightened its curly black extension cord with a gentle tug and flashed the light in Cecil’s eyes. He deftly tested Spalding’s cran
ial nerve function and the muscle strength of all extremities. Finally, he looked at Beverly and asked, “So how did this happen?”

  “Sweetheart,” she said to her husband, “I’m going to step outside for a moment to speak to the doctor. You can look at us through the glass.”

  Cecil Spalding’s chin dropped. He looked at Lloyd, then at his wife again. He licked his upper lip from side to side before saying, “Sure. Fine, fine…”

  Lloyd and Beverly Spalding stepped out of the room and slid the glass partition shut. Beverly’s facial muscles tightened.

  “He left the house,” she said. “I was taking a shower and when I came out, the front door was wide open and he was gone.” She shook her head and her face softened. “I ran out and searched the neighborhood on foot, calling out his name like a madwoman with a bath towel still wrapped around my head. But I couldn’t find him. So I run back to the house, get my car keys and start driving around aimlessly. I spotted him on a park bench.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I walked up to him and I said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to come home now?’ And… and he looked at me and said, ‘Who are you?’ So I scolded him. I said, ‘You’ve stirred up enough trouble for one day. Stop playing games!’”

  She brought a hand up to her mouth, her eyes narrowing. “I can’t believe I said that. What an awful thing to say.” She took in a deep breath through her nose and let out a short sigh. “‘Cecil, stop playing games,’ I said and I grabbed both his hands and tried to pull him to his feet. He shot up and tried to get away from me. That’s when he stumbled and hit his head on the metal armrest of the bench. The blood just started pouring out. I crouched next to him and I said, ‘Dear Lord, what have I done?’”

  She clutched at her blouse with both hands and squeezed her eyes shut, her lips puckered. Shook her head in a brief shudder, opened her eyes with a flutter of lids and resumed her story.

  “And he sat on the floor and stared at me with a blank look on his face, his gaze bouncing side to side as if he were trying to sort everything out.” She paused. “He didn’t recognize me, Dr. Copeland. Do you understand? Do you understand that his ability to remember me is the precious little that keeps me going? It’s nearly all that I have left of him. If we lose that, well…” She put an index finger on her lips and let it slide down to her chin. “Well, I just don’t know what I would do.”

  Lloyd nodded. “I’ll tell the ER doctor he’s okay to go home,” he said. “I’ll write my cell phone number on the discharge instructions. If there’s any problem, you call me. I’ll check in on you in a couple of days.”

  “And then?”

  “Give me just a little more time,” Lloyd said.

  Beverly Spalding looked down. “Time is a precious commodity, Dr. Copeland. I just don’t know how much of it we have left.”

  Beverly returned by her husband’s bedside. Lloyd stepped away to speak to Dr. Birch. It didn’t take much haranguing to convince him to let Cecil Spalding go home, not when Birch could document on the medical record that the discharge was cleared by the patient’s private neurologist.

  “So what are you doing in these parts?” Lloyd asked Birch after writing his phone number on the discharge papers.

  “A little moonlighting, as usual,” Birch said. “I used to moonlight to pay off my student loans. Now it’s to pay the alimony. Can’t complain. It’s all in the life of an ER doc. And don’t get me wrong. I love this place: peaceful setting, great nurses, the nicest patients you’ll ever meet in your life. Gotta bring your own coffee though.” Birch tapped the top of a stainless steel thermos that looked like an artillery shell. “The management is Seventh Day Adventist, you know, but good people. Man, they’d love to have you around here. This place could use a good neurologist.”

  Lloyd placed his pen back in the inside breast pocket of his jacket and smiled. “I’m not looking for a new gig just yet.”

  Chapter 39

  A wedge of Manchego cheese sat in a drawer of the refrigerator stacked between a package of black olives and a brick of cream cheese. Lloyd took it out, peeled off the cellophane wrapper and shaved off a slice. With thumb and forefinger, he snapped a corner off the slice and placed it on the floor in a corner of the kitchen, hiding it behind a paper grocery sack.

  He walked to the living area and bit off a chunk of cheese as he peered into the mouse cage. Frederic clambered onto its hind quarters and scratched at the wall of the enclosure with his front paws.

  “You smell that don’t you? You hungry?”

  Lloyd popped the rest of the cheese in his mouth and lifted the lid of the cage. He scooped up the mouse and said. “You know where it is. Go get it.”

  He put the mouse on the floor. It scurried in a straight line to the kitchen, bulldozed the grocery sack out of the way with its little body and began feasting on the piece of cheese. Lloyd paced to the kitchen, waited for the mouse to finish gnawing the last few crumbs then picked him up.

  “So what’s it like to be you?”

  He carried Frederic to the sofa, lay down and placed the creature on his chest. The mouse walked around tentatively, its tail outstretched. When it tried to burrow inside Lloyd’s shirt in the space between two buttons, Lloyd pulled it back out grabbing it by a hind leg and said, “Oh no you don’t.”

  He held the creature in his hand and pet its head with a finger. “It looks like it’s just you and me now,” Lloyd said. “You and me and our memories.”

  There was a tapping sound by the window. Lloyd sat up and turned to see what it was. A white pigeon with brown splotches was on the outside ledge, pecking at the glass.

  “And then there’s always someone trying to crash the party,” Lloyd said to the mouse. He put Frederic back in the cage and closed the lid. He walked to the window. The pigeon stayed on the ledge, strutting and bobbing its head. Lloyd rapped his knuckles on the glass pane and the bird flew away.

  He walked back to the kitchen, washed his hands, rolled the remaining cheese in plastic wrap and opened the fridge to put it back. He stood there a moment staring at the stainless steel doors of the appliance, placed his hand on the freezer door handle, hesitated for a few seconds and opened it.

  The carton of Rum and Raisin ice cream stood in a corner covered in a thin layer of frost. He took it out, removed the lid and peered inside. Reached in and removed a vial, held it up to the light streaming in through the kitchen window and gently shook it. He set the vial on the kitchen counter and placed the ice cream carton back in the freezer. He rolled the vial between his palms a few times before holding it up again in the column of light to look through the amber glass.

  The prion solution had always been meant for him. That was the ultimate goal of his research, the only goal: to try to stem the devastation of the disease he knew lurked inside him – dormant, but waiting for its moment to come alive to ruin him, just like it had come alive in his father, just like it had ruined his grandfather and his great-grandfather and countless other men in the dwindling Copeland clan. And now, he didn’t need it. In fact, it turned out he had never needed it.

  Would he have invested all the time and effort in its development had he known that he was not at risk? Of course not. Lloyd knew that at his core, he was self-centered, egotistical, indifferent to the suffering of others. He had latched onto a selfishness borne of a flawed ideal of victimhood. For years he had brandished a silent suffering which fed his growing sense of entitlement. He expected reparations for his pain in the form of sexual exploits, of gratuitous orgasmic relief. But there had been no persecution. Any pain he felt was the result of self-flagellation. He had never been a martyr and never would be. It was his own mind that had chained him down; his delusion of persecution that had tethered him to his psychological Calvary.

  And then there were people who really did suffer. People who managed to carry their suffering with dignity. There was Cecil Spalding, and there was Beverly. Who would relieve their pain?

  Lloyd twirled the vial between his thumb and forefinger
then quickly set it back down. If there was anyone capable of bringing respite to Spalding’s suffering and the suffering of countless others crushed by the weight of amnesia and dementia, it was Dr. Lloyd Copeland, even without the damned hospital privileges. And that ability entailed exceptional responsibility.

  Yes, the prions had always been intended to save his own hide and now he didn’t need them. But who would be better at judging their effectiveness? Who else but his own self to confirm their safety? And what if they weren’t safe?

  The temperature of the vial was sure to be rising by several degrees. It was time to put it back in the freezer. Instead, he let it sit on the kitchen counter.

  He went to his bedroom, grabbed the doctor’s bag that sat in the corner of his closet, turned it over on top of his bed and dumped its contents over the bedspread. Along with a tuning fork, a stethoscope and a half dozen individually wrapped tongue depressors, out fell a couple of syringes, packages of two-by-two gauze and a butterfly needle still in its sealed sterile package. He picked up a few items, grabbed a belt that hung from a hook in his closet and returned to the kitchen.

  For once in his life he had the opportunity to do something selfless. This was his moment. He couldn’t let it go.

  He had spent some time extrapolating the dose of prions for humans from the experience he had accumulated in injecting mice. He went over the calculation a final time in his head. A full vial seemed about right. The vial on the kitchen counter seemed just right.

  He tightened the belt around his left biceps, grabbed a bottle of vodka, uncorked it with his teeth and splashed some on his antecubital fossa, withdrew the contents of the amber vial by pulling back on the plunger of the syringe and with a steady hand, pierced his skin, bevel side up. A red plume appeared in the transparent hilt signaling that the needle had entered the median cubital vein of his left arm. He slowly pushed down on the plunger until the rubber piston bumped against the end of the syringe’s barrel. He loosened the belt, withdrew the needle, pressed a piece of gauze on the puncture mark and flexed his arm.