Free The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates

carefully. She will bring waxed paper to insert between the charcoal drawings. But E.H. is finished with his art for the day.
    Crudely he laughs—“Poor bastard whoever did this, his future is all used up.”
    Alone with E.H. in the testing-room. In the corridor outside there are voices, but the door is shut.
    Margot thinks— He could hurt me. Swiftly, his hands. His hands are so strong.
    Margot thinks— What a ridiculous thought! Eli Hoopes is my friend, he would never hurt me.
    She is ashamed of herself, thinking such a thing. She is utterly baffled and dismayed at having thought it.
    â€œTHE ARTIST PRE- and Post-Amnesia: A Study of ‘E.H.’”
    This is the title of a slide presentation—(subject to Milton Ferris’s approval)—Margot Sharpe hopes to give at an upcoming meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, December 1970. Milton Ferris has read an early draftof the paper and has been guardedly enthusiastic—his concern is that Margot Sharpe, his Ph.D. student, may be “getting ahead of herself.”
    Margot wants to protest, this is ridiculous! She has heard the cautionary expression more than once, applied to other young scientists who assist Ferris—“Getting ahead of himself.”
    Though obviously it is more reprehensible for a woman—“Getting ahead of herself .”
    What a long time it is taking Margot Sharpe, to complete requirements for her Ph.D.! Nearly five years.
    Each time she has thought she might have finished, her advisor has further criticisms and suggestions. He is always (guardedly) enthusiastic about her work, it is clear that he likes and trusts her, appreciating (perhaps) her taciturnity in the lab, her somber and diligent way of implementing experiments, rarely questioning his judgment as others might—(Kaplan, for instance. There is a volatile paternal-filial relationship between Ferris and Kaplan, which Margot Sharpe envies; she knows that Kaplan is devoted to Ferris, with whom he has been working for nearly eight years). As Ferris is the chair of her Ph.D. committee, and has taken an avuncular, if not a paternal, interest in her since her arrival in his lab, Margot knows that she must placate him in every way—more than placate, she must please.
    When she thinks of it, five years isn’t such a long time to acquire a Ph.D. with Milton Ferris who is known for helping his (handpicked, elite) former students throughout their professional careers.
    THE SPECIAL CASE. “We’ll be famous one day, Eli! You and me.”
    â€œWill we!”—E.H. smiles at Margot Sharpe affably if perplexedly.
    â€œYou are a ‘special case’—you must know. This is why we’vebeen studying you for years. We are challenging the belief that complex memories are distributed throughout the cerebral cortex—not localized in a small area. We think that you suggest otherwise, Eli!”
    â€œâ€˜Memory’—‘cere-bral cor-tex.’” E.H. pronounces these words as if he has never heard them before. As if they are words in a foreign language, incomprehensible to him. He laughs at Margot with a kind of childlike delight which is troubling to Margot, who knows that the essential E.H. is a much more intelligent person, given to irony.
    Is it a game he is playing with us, continuously inventing a personality like a shield?
    A personality that does not offend. Inspires sympathy, not cruelty.
    As if he can read Margot’s thoughts E.H. says, with a frown and a wink, “Well—if you think so, Doctor—I am happy for you. I am happy for the future of neuroscience.”
    Of course—it is not advised to speak with subjects about the nature of the experiments in which they are involved. Such exchanges remind Margot uneasily of brain surgery: the skull sawed open, the living brain exposed, but since there is no pain ( why no pain?— one has to marvel) the