Noah's Compass

“Anything whatsoever involving the attack,” Liam said. “All I know is, I went to bed, I slid under my covers, I looked out the window… and pouf! There I am in a hospital room. A whole chunk of time has vanished. Someone broke into my apartment and I must have woken up, because they say I got this hand injury fighting off the… assailant. Then a neighbor called 911, and the police came and the ambulance, but every bit of that is absent from my mind.”

“You do remember other things, though,” Dr. Morrow said. “The time before you went to bed. The time after you woke in the hospital.”

“Yes, all of that. Just not the attack.”

“Nor will you ever, I venture to say. People always hope for some soap-opera moment where everything comes back to them. But the memories surrounding a head trauma are gone forever, in most cases. As a matter of fact, you’re fairly unusual in recalling as much as you do. Some victims forget days and days leading up to the event, and they have only spotty recollections of the days afterward. Consider yourself fortunate.”

“Fortunate,” Liam said, with a twist of his mouth.

“And why would you even want to remember such an experience?”

“You don’t understand,” Liam said.

He knew he had used up his time. A new tension had crept into the room’s atmosphere; the doctor’s posture had grown more erect. But this was important. Liam gripped his knees. “I feel I’ve lost something,” he said. “A part of my life has been stolen from me. I don’t care if it was unpleasant; I need to know what it was. I want it back. I’d give anything to get it back! I wish I had someone like the… rememberer out in your waiting room.”

Dr. Morrow said, “The what?”

“The young woman who’s bringing in her, I don’t know, her father, I guess, to see you. He seems to need reminding of names and such and she’s right there at his elbow, feeding him clues.”

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Morrow said, and his expression cleared. “Yes, couldn’t we all use a rememberer, as you call her, after a certain age. And wouldn’t we all like to have Mr. Cope’s money to pay her with.”

“He pays her?”

“She’s a hired assistant, I believe,” the doctor said. But then he must have worried that he had committed an indiscretion, because he rose abruptly and came around to the front of his desk. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, Mr. Pe

Liam rose too, but he couldn’t give up so easily. He said, “You don’t think I could maybe, for instance, get hypnotized or some such?”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” the doctor said.

“Or how about drugs? Some sort of pill, or truth serum?”

Dr. Morrow had a firm clasp on Liam’s upper arm now. He was guiding him toward the door. “Trust me: this whole concern will fade away in no time,” he said, and his voice had taken on the soothing tone of someone dealing with a minor pest. “See Melanie at the cashier’s window on your way out, will you?”

Liam allowed himself to be ejected. He mumbled something or other, something about thank you, appreciate your time, say hello to Buddy, or Haddon… Then he went to the cashier’s window and wrote a check for more than he normally spent on a month’s groceries.

In the waiting room, Louise was nodding and tsk-tsking as she listened to a sallow girl in overalls-a new arrival who had taken Liam’s old seat. “I’m just watering the pere

“Where has he been all this time?” Louise asked. “Everyone knows who Pavement is.”

“But he’d have thought I was nuts anyhow, because there wasn’t no music of any kind playing. It was all in my brain. This big old tangled clump of blood vessels in my brain.”

Liam jingled the coins in his pocket, but Louise didn’t look up. “That must feel so weird,” she said.

“Dr. Meecham thinks they can, like, zap it with a beam of something.”

“Well, you know I’m going to be praying for you.”

Liam said, “I’m ready to go, Louise.”

“Right; okay. This is my father,” Louise told the girl. “He got hit on the head by a burglar.”

“He didn’t!”

Louise told Liam, “Tiffany here has a tangled clump of-”

“Yes, I heard,” Liam said.

But he wasn’t looking at the girl; he was looking at the old man sitting next to Jonah, the one with the hired rememberer. You couldn’t tell, at the moment, that anything was wrong with him. He was reading a New Yorker, turning the pages thoughtfully and studying the cartoons. His assistant was gazing down at her lap. She seemed out of place next to the old man, with his well-cut suit and starched collar. Her face was round and shiny, her horn-rimmed spectacles smudged with fingerprints, her clothes hopelessly dowdy. Liam wondered how he could ever have taken her for the old man’s daughter.

Well, but consider his own daughter, rising now to grasp both of the overalled girl’s hands. “Just keep in your heart the Gospel of Mark,” she was saying. “Thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace and be whole of thy plague.”

“I hear you, sister,” the girl told her.

Liam said, “Could we please leave now?”

“Sure, Dad. Come along, Jonah.”

They passed between the two facing rows of patients, all of whom (Liam was convinced) were giving off waves of avid curiosity, although nobody looked up.

“Must you?” Liam asked Louise the minute they reached the hall.

Louise said, “Hmm?” and pressed the call button for the elevator.

“Do you have to air your religion everywhere you go?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She turned to Jonah. “You were such a good boy, Jonah! Maybe we can get you an ice cream on the way home.”

“Mint chocolate chip?” Jonah said.

“We could get mint chocolate chip. What did the doctor have to say?” she asked Liam.

But he refused to be diverted. He said, “Suppose that girl happened to be an atheist? Or a Buddhist?”

The elevator door clanked open and Louise stepped smartly inside, one arm around Jonah’s shoulders. She told the operator, “No way am I going to apologize for my beliefs.”

The operator blinked. The other two passengers-an older couple-looked equally surprised.

“Let your light so shine before men,” Louise said, “that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

“Amen,” the operator said.

“Matthew five, sixteen.”

Liam faced front and stared fixedly at the brass dial above the door as they rode down.

As soon as they were out of the elevator, Louise said, “I don’t expect much of you, Dad. I’ve learned not to. But I do request that you refrain from denigrating my religion.”

“I’m not denigrating your-”

“You’re dismissive and sarcastic and contemptuous,” Louise said. (Anger seemed to broaden her vocabulary-a trait that Liam had noticed in her mother as well.) “You seize every opportunity to point out how wrongheaded true Christians are. When I am trying to raise a child, here! How can I expect him to lead any kind of moral life with you as an example?”

“Oh, for God’s sake; I mean, for heaven’s sake,” Liam said, trotting after her through the revolving door. Out on the sidewalk, the sudden sunlight jarred his head. “I lead a perfectly moral life!”