The Art of Forgetting (35 page)

              “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.”

              “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

             
A
fter 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 cranial 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?”