The Echo Maker

by Richard Powers

  Of course, Sarah M. couldn’t drive, couldn’t walk in crowds, couldn’t even cross the street. She stood on the curb of her quiet town, paralyzed, the film stuck. A truck at a distance might mow her down, the second she placed her foot in the gutter. Still images piled up one after the other—incoherent, bisecting cubist tracers. Cars and people and objects reappeared at random.

  Even her own moving body was no more than a series of sequential stiff poses, a game of Statuemaker. And yet, strangest of all: Sarah M. alone of all the world saw a kind of truth about sight, hidden from normal eyes. If vision depends upon the discrete flash of neurons, then there is no continuous motion, however fast the switches, except in some trick of mental smoothing.

  Her brain was like anyone’s, except in losing this last trick. Her name was not Sarah. It might have been anything. She was there, in Weber’s strobing mind, when he stepped into the jetway at LaGuardia, and gone when he found himself, that same afternoon, dead center in the evacuated prairie, with no transition but a jump cut.

  He stayed at a motel just off the interstate. The MotoRest—he chose it for its sign: WELCOME CRANE PEEPERS. The utter estrangement of it: I’ve a feeling we’re not in New York anymore. He and Sylvie had left the Midwest in 1970 and never looked back. Now the rolling openness of his birthright seemed as alien to him as Sojourner’s pictures beamed back from Mars. Outside the Lincoln airport rental, he’d panicked for a moment, finding himself with neither passport nor local currency.

  Once inside the MotoRest lobby, he might have been anywhere. Pittsburgh, Santa Fe, Addis Ababa: the comforting, neutral pastels of global commuting. He’d stood on the same tawny carpet in front of the same teal check-in counter countless times before. A dozen brilliant, shiny apples sat in a basket on the reception desk, all the same shape and size. Real or decoration, he couldn’t tell until he sank a fingernail into one.

  While the check-in clerk processed his credit card, Weber thumbed the stacks of tourist brochures. All of them were flush with red-crested birds. Masses of birds: like nothing he’d ever seen. “Where can I go see these?” he asked the clerk.

  She looked embarrassed, as if his card had been rejected. “They’ve been gone for two months. They’re all up north now, sir. But you want to see them, just sit tight. They’ll be back.” She handed him his Visa, along with a key card. He went up to a room that pretended it had never been inhabited by anyone, one that promised to disappear, traceless, the instant Weber checked out.

  Every surface in the room spouted cardboard messages. The staff welcomed him personally. They offered him a full range of goods and services. One piece of cardstock in the bathroom said that if he’d like to save the earth, he should leave his towel over the shower bar, and if not, he should throw it on the floor. The messages had been put out fresh that morning and would be replaced at his departure. Thousands like them, from Seattle to St. Petersburg. He might have been in any hotel room anywhere, except for the crane pictures above the bed.

  He’d spoken with Karin Schluter before leaving New York. She’d been remarkably poised and informed. But when she phoned from downstairs, half an hour after he checked in, she was a different person. She sounded timid, nervous about coming up to the room. Clearly it was time for him to update the publicity shot. Perfect thing to tease Sylvie about, when he called her that night.

  He came down to the lobby and met the victim’s only near relation. She was in her early thirties, dressed in tan cotton slacks and rose cotton blouse, what Sylvie called universal passport clothes. Weber’s dark suit—his standard travel fare—startled her and left her apologizing with her eyes before she could say hello. Dead-straight copper hair—her sole striking feature—hung down beneath the bottom of her shoulder blades. That spectacular fall upstaged her face, which, with some generosity, might be called fresh. Her decidedly corn-fed body was heading prematurely toward solemn. Healthy midwestern woman who might have run hurdles in college. As he looked at her, she primped unconsciously. But when she stood and walked toward him, her hand extended, she flashed him a brave, side-mouthed smile, altogether worth aiding.

  They shook hands, Karin Schluter thanking him too profusely, as if he’d already cured her brother. Just the sight of him seemed to lift her. When he deflected her gratitude, she said, “I brought some documents.” She sat on a couch next to the lobby’s fake fireplace and spread a dossier on the coffee table: three months of handwritten notes combined with copies of everything the hospital and rehab center had given her. Hands weaving, she launched into her brother’s story.

  Weber sat next to her. After a bit, he touched her wrist. “We should probably check in with Dr. Hayes, before anything else. Did he get my letter?”

  “I spoke with him this morning. He knows you’re here. He says feel free to go see Mark, this afternoon. I have his notes somewhere.”

  The paperwork spread in front of Weber, a guidebook to a new planet. He forced himself to ignore the file and listen to Karin Schluter’s version. Through three successive books, he’d championed the idea: facts are only a small part of any case history. What counted was the telling.

  Karin said, “Mark accepts that there was an accident. But he doesn’t remember any of it. His mind’s a blank. Nothing, for twelve hours before he rolled the truck.”

  Weber raked his salt-and-pepper beard. “Yes. That can happen.” Twenty years, and he’d almost mastered it: how to tell people that others had been there before them, without denying their private disaster. “It sounds like what’s called retrograde amnesia. Ribot’s law: older memories are more resilient than newer ones. The new perishes before the old.”

  Her lips mirrored his as he spoke, struggling to stay alongside. She spread a palm on the stack of forms. “Amnesia? But his memory’s fine. He knows who everyone is. He remembers everything about…his sister. He just refuses to…” She pulled her lips against her teeth and bowed her head. The fall of red hair spilled across the papers. He could not imagine where such a refusal must leave her.

  “You say he’s talking again without struggling. Does he sound different?”

  She studied the air. “Slower. Mark was always a fast talker.”

  “Does he search for words? Have you noticed any difference in his vocabulary?”

  Her lopsided smile returned. “Aphasia, you mean?”

  She botched the pronunciation. Weber just nodded.

  “Vocabulary was never his big thing.”

  He made a stab. “You’re close to your brother?” Capgras prerequisite. “You always have been?”

  Her neck jerked back, defensively. “We’re the only family either of us has left. I’ve tried to look out for him, over the years. I’m a little older than him, but…I always tried to be around, until I absolutely had to go, for my own sanity. Mark’s not quite cut out for the world. He’s always depended on me, a bit. He and I have gone through some pretty strange family times together.” Flustered, she turned back to the file. She extracted two sheets. Her head turned, scanning the lines, lips moving again. “Here. This is what keeps nagging at me. When they first brought him into the emergency room after the accident, he was awake. He wasn’t even…Here: Glasgow Coma Scale. He wasn’t even in the danger area. They let me see him that night, just for a minute. He recognized me then. He was trying to talk to me. I know it. But you see, there’s this spike later in the morning. His intracranial pressure shoots way up.”

  She might have been studying to become a surgical nurse. He thumbed his beard from underneath. Over the years, the gesture had managed to calm almost everyone. “Yes, that can happen. The skull is a fixed volume. If delayed swelling causes the brain to expand, it can be worse than the original impact.”

  “Sure, I read about that. But shouldn’t his doctors have been monitoring? If I understand right, in the first few hours, they should have…”

  Weber looked around the MotoRest lobby. Foolish, talking to her here. She’d been so measured over the phone. In person, she presented all the
complications of need that Weber meant to retire from. But true Capgras from an accident: a phenomenon that could crown or crash any theory of consciousness. Something worth seeing.

  “Karin? We spoke about this. I’m not a lawyer. I’m a scientist. I value your invitation to come talk to your brother. But I’m not here to second-guess anyone.”

  She caught her breath. Her face flamed. She pulled at her shirt collar. She gathered her spray of hair and tied it up like a hank of rope. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I thought you…I should probably just take you to see Mark.”

  Dedham Glen Nursing and Rehabilitation Center looked to Weber like an elite suburban high school. Peach, single-story, modular—something you’d never notice, unless a loved one were trapped inside.

  “They won’t be keeping him here much longer,” Karin said. “The therapy has been great, but the coverage is topping out and he’s crazy to go home. His muscle strength is pretty much back. He’s dressing and bathing himself, getting along with people, mostly making sense. Compared to a few weeks ago, he’s as good as normal. Except when it comes to ideas about me.”

  She piloted the car toward the visitors’ spaces near the front walk. “We put our mother here, when she got ill. She passed, five and a half weeks later. I thought I’d rather die myself than put Mark here. But it was the only choice.”

  “Do you think he holds that against you?” Old habit: probing for psychological mechanism.

  She reddened again. Her skin was instant litmus. She pointed to a picture window at the building’s corner. A medium-height, thin twenty-seven-year-old in a black sweatshirt and baby-blue knit cap stood stranded in mid-wave, his hand pressed to the glass. “You can ask him yourself, in a minute.”

  Mark Schluter met his visitors halfway down the hall of his wing. He walked as if on crutches, pressing a hand to his right thigh. His face still bloomed with half-healed scars. Across his throat ran the tell-tale necklace of a tracheotomy. His black jeans sagged and his long-sleeve sweatshirt—too heavy for June—crept down his arms to his fingers. The shirt sported a card-playing, beer-drinking dog saying, What The Hell Do I Know? Tufts of returning hair stuck out from under the lip of his cap. He swung down the hall, playing at being a pendulum. He pulled up in front of Karin. “Is this the guy who’s going to get me out of this hellhole?”

  The woman’s hands fled into the air. Her knot of hair came undone. “Mark. I told you Dr. Weber was coming today. Couldn’t you have put on a decent shirt?”

  “Favorite shirt.”

  “It isn’t appropriate, when talking to a doctor.”

  He raised a stiff arm and pointed at her. “You’re not the boss of me. I don’t even know where you came from. The damn Arab terrorists could have parachuted you in here, special forces, as far as I know.” The storm blew over as fast as it appeared. Righteous indignation collapsed in sighs. He spread his palms, grinning at Weber. “You with the FBI or something?” A finger reached out and flipped Weber’s maroon dress tie. “I talked to you guys already.”

  Karin was mortified. “It’s just a suit, Mark. You act like you’ve never seen a suit before.”

  “I’m sorry. He looks like ‘The Fuzz.’” His fingers hung quote hooks in the air.

  “He’s a neuropsychologist. And a famous writer.”

  “Cognitive neurologist,” Weber corrected.

  Mark Schluter rocked on his heels. Dank laughter poured out of him. “What’s that? Some kind of shrink?” Weber shook his head. “A shrink! So, like, who are you supposed to be?”

  Weber tilted his head. “Tell me what you mean.”

  “I mean: I already know who this lady thinks she is. How about you?”

  Karin exhaled. “We discussed him yesterday, Mark. He just wants to talk to you. Let’s go back to your room and sit.”

  Mark wheeled on her. “I warned you once. You’re not my damn mother, either.” He turned back to Weber. “I’m sorry. It’s just painful to me. She has these ideas. It’s hard to describe.” But when Karin headed down the hall, he hobbled along beside her, like a puppy on a leash.

  The room was a modest version of Weber’s at the MotoRest, although hugely more expensive. Bed, dresser, desk, television set, coffee table, two chairs. A pair of cartoon Get Well cards in loud colors stood on the dresser. Next to them lay an ancient stuffed Curious George, missing one button eye. A boom box sat on the desk, surrounded by a pile of CD jewel boxes. A truck magazine sporting way too much chrome on its cover lay next to it, still shrink-wrapped. Weber flipped on his pocket digital tape recorder. He could ask permission later. “Nice room,” he prompted.

  Mark frowned and looked around. “Well, I haven’t done much with it. But I’m not gonna be here long. Sooner torch this place than move in.”

  “What kind of place is this?” Weber asked.

  Mark sized him up out of the corner of his eye. “Isn’t it obvious?” Karin sat on the foot of the bed, her hair a cape around her shoulders. Her brother eased himself into a chair, flapping his tennis shoes on the floor and enjoying the clatter. He waved for Weber to sit in the chair opposite him. Weber lowered himself to the cushions. Mark giggled. “You supposed to be old, or something?”

  “Ach. Not my favorite topic. So what exactly do they call this place?”

  “Well, Doc.” Mark inclined his head. He gazed out from under his bunched eyebrows and whispered, “Some folks in these parts call it Dead Man’s Glands.”

  Weber blinked, and Mark barked with pleasure. Karin sat despairing on the bed, picking at her slacks.

  “How long have you been here?”

  Mark shot an anxious glance at the bed. Karin averted her eyes, looking back at Weber. Mark cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll tell you. Pretty much forever?”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Do you mean why I’m here and not home? Or why I’m here and not dead? Same answer, on both counts.” Mark pulled his sweatshirt taut and leaned forward. “Read the scriptshirt, man.” The card-playing, beer-drinking dog asking, What The Hell Do I Know?

  “You don’t have to perform for him, Mark.”

  “Hey! What do you care? You’re the one who wants me here.”

  Weber asked, “So what do they do for you here?”

  The boy-man turned contemplative. He stroked his bare chin. They might have been talking politics or religion. “Well, you know what this is. It’s—well, you know: a nursery home. Where they take you when you’re banged up and no good to anybody?”

  “You got banged up?”

  The face yanked back, snorting. “Put it this way? The doctors claim I’m not exactly what I was before.”

  “Do you think they’re right?”

  Mark shrugged. A spasm shot through him. One hand tugged the baby-blue cap over his brows. The other thrust out. “Ask her. She keeps telling them what I was.”

  Karin pressed one wrist to her temple and stood. “Excuse me,” she apologized, and stumbled from the room.

  Weber persisted. “You had an accident?”

  Mark considered this: one of many possibilities. He slumped deeper into his chair, toeing the floor in front of him. “Well, I rolled my truck, you know. Totaled it. At least that’s what they tell me. They haven’t actually produced the evidence or anything. They’re not real big on evidence here.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Are you?” He sat up and leaned forward again. “Fantastic ’84 cherry-red Dodge Ram. Rebuilt engine block. Modified drive shaft. Totally pimped. You’d love it.”

  He sounded like a typical American man in his twenties, from any of the big, empty states. Weber hooked his thumb toward the empty hallway. “Tell me about her.”

  Mark’s hands picked at the knit cap. “Well, Doc. You know? It gets pretty complicated, pretty fast.”

  “I can see that.”

  “She thinks that if she does a perfect imitation, I’ll take her for my sister.”

  “She isn’t?”

  Mark tsked
and waved his index finger in the air, a stubby, pink window wiper. “Not even close! Okay, so she looks a lot like Karin. But there are some obvious differences. My sister is like…a Labor Day picnic. This one’s a business lunch. You know: eye on the clock. My sister makes you feel safe. Easy. This one’s totally high maintenance. Plus, Karin is heavier. Actually a bit of a tub. This woman is almost sexy.”

  “Does she sound at all—?”

  “And they messed up the face a little. Know what I’m saying? Her expressions, or such. My sister laughs at my jokes. This one’s scared all the time. Weepy. Talk about hair trigger? Real easy to freak out.” He shook his head. Something long and silent passed through him. “Similar. Very similar. But worlds apart.”

  Weber toyed with his ancient wire-rims. He stroked the crown of his balding head. Mark unconsciously fingered his cap. “Is she the only one?” Weber asked. Mark just stared at him. “I mean, is anyone else not what they seem?”

  “Jesus, you’re the doctor, right? You ought to know that nobody’s ‘What They Seem.’” He hunched, peeking out through the scare quotes he formed next to his ears. “But I know what you’re saying. I’ve got this buddy, Rupp. That bastard and me do everything together. Something weird has happened to him, too. The fake Karin has him brainwashed or something. And they swapped my damn dog. Can you believe that? Beautiful border collie, black and white, with a little gold around the shoulders. Now what kind of sick person would want to…?” He stopped playing hockey with his toes. His hands fell to his lap. He leaned forward. “It’s like some horror flick, sometimes. I can’t figure out what’s going on.” His eyes filled with animal alarm, ready to ask even this stranger for help.

  “Does…this woman know things that only your sister should know?”

  “Well, you know. She could’ve learned that shit anywhere.” Mark twisted on his cushions, fists near his face, like a fetus warding off the world’s first blows. “Just when I most need my real sister, I’m supposed to accept this imitation.”