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MARGOT DOWNS A shot of whiskey her lover has poured for her.
Fire-swift, her throat illuminated like a flare. Her chest, that seems to swell with elation—the thrill of despair.
I have abased myself before this man. My shame can go no further.
Yet, she is smiling. She sees in her lover’s eyes that he wants her, still—she is a young woman, in the eyes of this man who is thirty-two years her senior.
Their time together is hurried, like a watch running fast. He tells her of his early, combative life in science: his impatience with the limitations of behaviorism, his feuds with colleagues at Harvard (including the great B. F. Skinner himself), his eventual triumphs. The several men who were his mentors, and those who were his detractors and who tried to sabotage his career (again, the “tyrannical” Skinner). His first great discoveries in neuropsychology. His academic appointments, his research grants, his awards and election to the National Academy at the age of thirty-two—one of the youngest psychologists ever elected to the Academy. He tells her of his children’s accomplishments, and he tells her that his wife is a good, kind, decent woman, an “exemplary” woman whom he has nonetheless hurt, and continues to hurt. He tells Margot that he loves her, and does not intend to hurt her.
Is this a pledge? A vow? It is even true?
Another shot of whiskey?—her zealous lover pours her a drink without asking her, and Margot does not say no.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_c1bd600b-5266-5920-b394-6b6ff07bd757)
Hel-lo!”
“Eli, hello.”
(Does he remember her? Margot is beginning to believe yes, the amnesiac definitely remembers her.)
“We have some very interesting tests for today, Eli. I think you will like them.”
“‘Tests’—yes. I am good at tests—it seems.”
E.H. rubs his hands together. His smile is both anxious-to-please and hopeful.
It is true, E.H. is very good at tests! And when E.H. fails a test, it is sometimes nearly as significant (in terms of the test) as if he had not failed.
Before they begin, however, E.H. insists that Margot try his favorite “brainteaser” puzzle, which fits in the palm of a hand, and consists of numbered, varicolored squares of plastic which you move around with a thumb until there is an ideal conjunction of numerals and colors. E.H. is something of a marvel at the Institute where no one on the staff, not even the younger, male attendants, can come near his speed in solving the puzzle; others, including most of the women, and certainly Margot Sharpe, are totally confused by the little puzzle, and made to feel like idiots desperately shoving squares about with their thumbs until E.H. takes it from them with a bemused chuckle—“Excuse me! Like this.”
And within seconds, E.H. has lined up the squares, to perfection.
Margot pleads with E.H., please no, she doesn’t want to try the maddening little thing, she knows there is a trick to it—(obviously: but what is the “trick”?)—and she doesn’t have time for such a silly game; but E.H. presses it on her like an eager boy, and so with a sigh Margot takes the palm-sized plastic puzzle from him and moves the little squares about with her thumb—tries, tries and tries—and fails, and fails—until her eyes fill with tears of vexation at the damned thing and E.H. takes it from her with a bemused chuckle—“Excuse me! Like this.”
And within seconds, E.H. has lined up the squares, to perfection.
His smile is that of the triumphant, just slightly mocking pubescent boy.
“HEL-lo!”
“Eli, hello.”
Does he remember her? Margot is certain that he does—in some way.
He doesn’t understand that he is an experimental subject. He is data. He thinks—
(But what does E.H. think? Even to herself Margot is reluctant to concede—The poor man thinks he is one like us.)
E.H. has been told many times that he is an “important” person. He believes that this fact—(if it is a fact)—both predates his illness (when he’d had a position of much responsibility in his family’s investment firm and had been a civil rights activist) and has something to do with his illness (if it is an “illness” and not rather a “condition”)—but he isn’t certain what it entails.
The “old” Elihu Hoopes—a man of considerably higher than average intelligence, achievement, and self-awareness—cohabits uneasily with the “new” Elihu Hoopes who feels keenly his disabilities without being able to comprehend them.
“Good that our hunting rifles and shotguns are kept at the lake,” E.H. has said to Margot Sharpe, with a sly wink. “And good that such weapons are not kept loaded.”
What does this mean? Margot feels a frisson of dread.
More than once the amnesiac subject has made this enigmatic remark to Margot Sharpe but when she asks him to explain it, E.H. simply smiles and shakes his head—“You’re the doctor, Doctor. You tell me.”
MARGOT REPORTS TO Milton Ferris: “I think that—sometimes—unpredictably—E.H. is ‘remembering’ things in little clusters that, so far as we know, he shouldn’t be able to remember. For instance, last week we watched a short film on Spain, and while E.H. has forgotten having seen the film, and has forgotten me, he seems to be remembering some fragments from the film. He’s been ‘thinking of Spain,’ he told me, out of nowhere. And I think he remembers some of the Spanish music from the film, I’ve heard him begin to hum when we’re working together. And he’s been making sketches that are different from his usual sketches—‘They just come to me, Doctor. Do you know what they are?’—and they are scenes that look vaguely Spanish. An exotic building or temple that resembles the Alhambra, for instance …”
It is like a tightrope performance, speaking to Milton Ferris.
There is the content of Margot’s words, and there is the tension of speaking to him.
“Very good, Margot. Good work. Keep records, we’ll see what develops.”
Laying his hand on Margot’s shoulder lightly, to thank her, and also to dismiss her. For Milton Ferris is a busy man, and has many distractions.
Margot pauses feeling a sensation like an electric current coursing through her body. Margot swallows hard, her mouth has gone dry.
Between them, a moment’s rapport—sexual, and covert.
But soon then, disappointingly, E.H. seems to forget Spain. He stops humming Spanish-sounding music when Margot is near, and he returns to his familiar sketch-subjects. When Margot carefully pronounces “Spain”—“Spanish”—“Alhambra”—E.H. regards her with a polite, quizzical smile and no particular recognition; when she shows him photographs of Spanish settings, he says, “Either Spain or a South American country—though I guess that must be the Alhambra.”
“Did you ever visit the Alhambra, Eli, that you can remember?”
“Well! I can hardly say that I’ve visited the Alhambra that I don’t remember.”
Pleasantly E.H. laughs. Margot sees the unease in his eyes.
In fact, Margot knows that E.H. has not visited Spain. Surprisingly for a man of his education, social class, and artistic interests, E.H. has not traveled extensively abroad; the energies of his young manhood were focused upon American settings.
“Were you there, with me? Are these photographs we took together?”—E.H.’s remark is startling, and difficult to interpret: flirtatious, belligerent, ironic, playful.
Margot understands that the amnesiac subject tries to determine the plausible answer to a question by questioning his interrogator. At such times his voice takes on an almost childlike mock-innocence as if (so Margot speculates) he knows that you are onto his ruse but, if you liked him, you might play along with it.
“Yes, Eli. We were there together, you and me. For three weeks in Spain, when …”
It is wrong of Margot Sharpe to speak in such a way, and she knows it. But the words leap from her, and cannot be retrieved.
“Were we! And were other travelers with us, or—”
E.H. gazes at her plaintively, yearningly.
Margot regrets her impulsive remark, and is grateful that no one is close by to overhear.
“—were you my ‘fiancée’—is that why we were together?”
“Yes, Eli. That is why.”
“Or was it our honeymoon? Was that it?”
“Yes. Our honeymoon.”
“Were we happy?”
“Oh, very happy!”—Margot feels tears flooding her eyes.
“And are we married now? Have you come to take me home?”
“Soon, Eli! When you’re discharged from this—clinic … Of course, I will take you home.”
“Do you love me? Do I love you?”
Margot is trembling with excitement, audacity. She has gone too far. She has no idea why she has said such things.
It is a Skinnerian experiment, Margot thinks: stimulus/response. Behavior/reward/reinforcement.
A Skinnerian experiment in which Margot Sharpe is the subject.
It is clear, and she should prevent it: when E.H. smiles at her in a way that suggests sexual craving, Margot feels a surge of visceral excitement, a thrill of happiness, and can barely restrain herself from smiling at him in turn.
Instinctively—unconsciously—the amnesiac subject is conditioning her, the neuropsychologist, to respond to his feeling for her; and as Margot responds, she is further conditioning him.
She has begun to notice a twinge of excitement, yearning, in the region of her heart when she enters the perimeter of E.H.’s awareness. He does not see Margot Sharpe, whose name he can’t remember, but he sees her: a young woman whose face he finds attractive partly or wholly because it reminds him of a face out of his childhood, a comfort to him in the terrible isolation of amnesia. He is looking at Margot with such yearning you would certainly think that he is, or has once been, her lover.
“Do you love me? Do I love you?”—it is a genuine question.
Margot feels a wave of guilt. And anxiety—for what if Milton Ferris were to know of her unprofessional behavior, her weakness!
She must break the transference—the “spell.” Quickly she calls over a nurse’s aide to watch over E.H. while she goes to use a restroom; and when she returns she sees E.H. in an animated conversation with the young female aide, who laughs at the handsome amnesiac’s witty remarks as if she has never heard anything quite so funny.
He has totally forgotten Margot Sharpe of course.
When Margot approaches he turns to her, with a quick courteous smile, like one who has become accustomed to being the center of attention without questioning why, only perceptibly annoyed at being interrupted—“Hello! Hel-lo!”
“Hel-lo!”
“Eli, hello.”
Does he remember her? It is very tempting for Margot Sharpe to think yes, he remembers her.
Though she knows better of course. As a scientist of the brain she knows that this terribly damaged man cannot truly remember her.
This is a day when Margot Sharpe has come to the Institute alone. She has driven alone in her own vehicle, a Volvo sedan; she has not ridden with the other lab colleagues, as usual; she is feeling somewhat agitated, after a night of disturbing dreams, and is grateful not to have to talk and relate to anyone else.
She is particularly grateful that she has been scheduled to work with the amnesiac subject alone that day. For being with the amnesiac subject as he takes his interminable tests is not like being with another person, even as it is not like being alone with oneself.
(It is not a very happy day in Margot Sharpe’s life. It has not been a very happy week in Margot Sharpe’s life, nor has it been a happy month in Margot Sharpe’s life. But Margot Sharpe is not one to acknowledge personal problems when she is performing professionally.)
More frequently in recent years, Milton Ferris has designated Margot Sharpe his surrogate in Project E.H. Ferris trusts Margot Sharpe “without qualification”—(he has told her, and this is greatly flattering to her)—and behaves as if she were now his favored protégée at the university; he has been responsible for Margot being hired in a tenure-track position in the Psychology Department, and at a good salary. Of his numerous younger colleagues, Margot Sharpe seems to be the one Milton Ferris trusts most in the wake of the departure of Alvin Kaplan.
There has been some good news for the university memory lab—a renewal and an expansion of their federal grant, the elaborate proposal for which Margot did much of the work. And now Milton Ferris has become a consultant for a popular PBS science program and is often in Washington, D.C., at the National Institutes of Health; and he is often traveling abroad, with a need for someone like Margot in the lab whom he can trust as his protégée, his emissary, his representative. At the present time, Milton Ferris has embarked upon an ambitious lecture tour in China under the auspices of the USIA.
Alvin Kaplan, Ferris’s male protégé, has recently left the university. He has been promoted to professor of experimental psychology at Rockefeller University—a remarkable position for one so young. Like Margot Sharpe, now assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the university, Kaplan has co-published numerous papers with Milton Ferris.
Both Alvin Kaplan and Margot Sharpe delivered papers on their groundbreaking research in amnesia at the most recent American Association of Experimental Psychology conference in San Francisco.
Saw your name in the newspaper!—occasionally someone will call Margot Sharpe. Family member, relative, old friend from the University of Michigan. Sounds just fascinating, the work you are doing.
Sometimes, Margot will receive a call or a letter—Why don’t we ever hear from you any longer, Margot? Do I have the wrong address?
Once, Margot couldn’t resist showing E.H. a copy of the prestigious Journal of American Experimental Psychology in which the major article appeared under her name—“Distraction, Working Memory, and Memory Retention in the Amnesiac ‘E.H.’” Her heart beat rapidly as E.H. perused it with a small wondering smile.
(Was she behaving unprofessionally? She would have been devastated if a colleague found out.)
Gentlemanly E.H. reacted with bemusement, not resentment—
“Is ‘E.H.’ meant to be me? Never knew I was so important.” He asked if he might take the journal home with him so that he could read it carefully—to try to “understand what the hell is going on inside my ‘scrambled brains’”—and Margot said of course. And so Margot placed the journal on a table in the testing-room for E.H. to take home with him.
(Confident that the amnesiac would forget the journal within seventy seconds and she could easily slip it back into her bag without him noticing.)
Since then Margot has several times showed E.H. journals with articles about “E.H.”—some of them co-authored by Milton Ferris and his team of a half-dozen associates including Margot Sharpe, others by just Milton Ferris and Margot Sharpe.
By degrees, they have become associated with each other as scientists. Collaborators.
It has been years. Has it been years?
In the memory lab, time passes strangely.
It was only the other day (it seems) when Margot was first introduced to “Elihu Hoopes”—who’d stared at her with a kind of recognition, hungry, yearning, and squeezed her small pliant hand in his.
I know you. We know each other. Don’t we?
We were in grade school together …
E.H. squeezes Margot’s hand in his strong dry fingers. She has been anticipating this—she doesn’t pull her hand away from his grasp so quickly as she does when others are in the room with them.
“Mr. Hoopes—‘Eli.’ I’m so happy to see you.”
“I’m so happy to see you.”
There is something different about this morning, Margot thinks.
Margot thinks—But I can’t. It would be wrong.
Still they are clasping hands. With no one else in the testing-room to observe they are free of social restraint. Between them, there is but the residue of instinct.
