The Echo Maker

  What did he know about his own wife’s life? Who she was when she wasn’t his wife. He drove home, through the snow-covered commons. The two colonial churches never failed to settle him. He made the long bend onto Strong’s Neck, the brown-green harbor at low tide. He turned up Bob’s Lane, that passage impossible for visitors to find unless they’d already been on it. The winter rains still swamped the front yard. A family of green-winged teal had, all fall, made a home alongside the temporary lake. But now that lake was frozen over, and the ducks had flown.

  Sylvie had beaten him home. She tried to return from Wayfinders early these days, ever since he’d dropped his bombshell. He hadn’t asked her to. But neither did he have the courage to tell her it wasn’t necessary. She was feeding something into the oven, eggplant casserole. Twenty years ago, he’d told her that he would gladly eat it every night, and now she remembered that buried zeal. Her anxious smile when she looked up went right through him. “Good day?”

  “Golden.” Something they used to say.

  “How did the lecture go?”

  “If you’re asking me, I believe there’s a distinct possibility that I was brilliant.” He took her in his arms too quickly, while she struggled to remove her oven mitt. “Have I told you that I’m absolutely mad about you?”

  She giggled doubtfully and looked behind him. Who did she imagine might be coming? Who could he possibly be bringing home? “You have indeed. Yesterday, I believe.”

  The TV show airs. But it’s strange. They’ve done something digital to Mark—run him through some kind of high-tech video filter. People who don’t know him would never suspect. But his friends, what few friends Mark Schluter has left, will think he’s some kind of stunt man stand-in.

  The show gets the story mostly right, at least. They talk about the crash, the vehicle that cut in front of him, the one that ran off the road behind. And there’s a great moment when the handwritten note comes up and fills the screen, and they even have subtitles, in case you can’t read or something. I am no one. I am no one. Man, that could be anybody, these days. But there’s a cash award, like five hundred bucks. With the economy down the toilet again and the whole state on the dole, somebody’s bound to come forward and collect.

  He’d like to sit around and wait for the phone to ring with anonymous tips, but there’s too much to do. The Kopy Karin comes by, all cranked because she heard about the show but missed it. When did you do this? Why didn’t you tell me? It’s a good performance; he pretty much believes she had no idea.

  He’s got a plan to test her, something he’s been thinking about forever. He asks if she’d like to take a drive, out to Brome Road, the old abandoned farm his father once tried to run. The place he lived in from eight until almost fourteen. The place his sister always talked about like it was some kind of paradise lost. Her replacement seems to have been drilled on the routine. She’s bouncing like a girl as soon as the invitation is out of his mouth. You’d think he was asking her to the prom or something.

  They drive out together, in her little Jap car. It’s weirdly warm, for two weeks before Christmas. He’s in his light-blue jacket, October gear. Greenhouse ecological catastrophe, probably. Well, enjoy the short-term bennies. She’s all stoked, like she hasn’t seen the place forever. Funny thing is, she probably hasn’t. They head up the long farmhouse driveway, and it’s like somebody dropped a neutron bomb on the front porch. All the windows, black and curtainless. The yard, a sea of tall grass and weeds, like some kind of prairie restoration project. There’s a black and orange NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to the porch, which is a joke. Nobody’s lived in the place for years. Truth be told, the Schluter family kind of ran the place into the ground, and no subsequent resident has been able to bring it back. Abandoned since ’99, but he’s never come prowling until now.

  The barn is leaning hard to the right, like it’ll ditch if it gets hit by a little microwave radiation. But before they can pull up to it, Karin Two slams on the brakes. She’s all: Where’s the tree? The sycamore is gone. The one that you and Dad planted for my twelfth birthday. Well, it shakes him up, at first. She knows what they planted, when. But then, there’s the stump sitting right there. And anybody in town could’ve told her. Those fool Schluter men, planting a big water-sucking tree, when they don’t even have water table enough to keep their beans from getting singed.

  He says: I heard they were taking it down, a while ago.

  She turns on him, her eyes all hurt. Why didn’t you tell me?

  Tell you? I didn’t even know you then.

  She pulls over on the gravel and gets out. He follows her. She walks up to the stump and just stands there, in her baggy jeans, her hands in the pockets of her little brown leather jacket just like the one Karin One used to wear. She’s not a bad human being. She’s just gotten mixed up in bad business.

  When did it go? she asks. Before or after Mom?

  The question knocks him back a little. And not just her asking it. He’s not sure.

  She looks at him, going: I know. It’s like she’s still around, isn’t it? Like she’s going to come out that side door with a plateful of pigs-in-blankets and threaten us with a belt whipping if we don’t say grace and eat.

  Well, the words really creep him. But this is exactly why he’s brought her out here. To probe the limits. What else do you remember about her? he asks. And she starts unloading all kinds of stuff. Stuff only his sister knows. Things from when they were young, when Joan Schluter still looked like the original Betty Crocker. She goes: You remember how proud she was, about that award her family won when she was little?

  He can’t help answering: Fitter Family Contest, Nebraska State Fair, 1951.

  Run by some kind of national eugenics society, she says. Judging them on their teeth and hair, like they did the cows and pigs. And they got a gold medal!

  Bronze, he corrects her.

  Whatever. The point is, she spent the rest of her life pissed off at Cappy for polluting the gene pool and producing us.

  She keeps reciting these amazing things, things that Mark himself has forgotten. Things from late childhood, before Joan was on a first-name basis with Mr. Omnipotent. Things from the bad years, when you couldn’t say boo to her without her falling to her knees and belching minor spirits. You remember that book, Mark? The one she used to carry around that always made you hysterical? Jesus Fills Your Hole? And the day she finally figured out what you were laughing at?

  The two of them stand there by the sycamore stump, giggling like teen stoners. A wind blows up, and it gets cold, fast. He wants to go up to the house, but her words now are like a snowmelt river. Things from the end, when his mother became a premature saint. You wouldn’t have recognized her, she says, like Mark wasn’t even there. You wouldn’t have believed her, so agreeable and sweet. We were talking one afternoon, after she went on the drip, and out of the blue, she started telling me that the afterlife was probably a delusion. And yet, she’d sit there, more Christian than Christ, sucking down the cheddar cheese hospital soup that I was spooning into her mouth, and saying, Oh, that’s good! That’s good!

  She’s jumbled the facts a bit, but Mark’s not going to argue. He’s freezing out here, all of a sudden. He takes her arm and pulls her toward the house. She won’t quit talking.

  You know, I’m still getting her mail? I guess they don’t forward beyond the grave. Mostly charities and credit-card apps. Catalogs from the store where she used to order those frumpy cardigans.

  They reach the front door. He tries it: locked, even though there’s nothing inside but mouse shit and paint chips. He looks at her, not volunteering anything.

  You don’t remember? she says. And she goes right to the loose slat just to the left of the front picture window, jiggles it a little bit, rusty. Finally pops it open, and there’s the spare key. The one they didn’t even mention to the family who moved in after them. It’s distinctly possible she’s reading his brain waves. Wireless scans, some kind of new digital thing. He s
hould have asked Shrinky, when he had the chance. She unlocks the door and they step into something right out of a horror film. The old living room is stripped, with a layer of gray dust and cobweb over everything. The sitting room has had the stuffing beat out of it. There’s signs of infestation, mammals a lot larger than mice. Karin Two pulls her cheeks back with her palms.

  Don’t do that. It makes you look like one of those bank robbers with the nylon-stocking faces.

  But she doesn’t hear him. She just wanders from room to room in a coma, pointing at invisible things. The puke sofa, the TV with the rabbit ears, the parakeet cage. She knows everything, and she brings it all back with such hypnotic pain that she’s either the greatest actress who ever lived, or there’s truly something of his sister’s brain transplanted in her. He’s got to figure it out, before it drives him certifiable. She’s walking around stunned, like one of those bomb victims on cable news. Here’s where we ate. Here was the shoe pile. She’s really upset. Meanwhile, he’s wondering whether it’s the original house or some scale model. She turns on him. You remember when Dad caught us playing doctor and locked us in the pantry?

  That wasn’t what we…But why start with her? She wasn’t there.

  Prisoners. For days, it seemed. And you started this whole Great Escape thing. Using a piece of uncooked spaghetti to push the skeleton key through the keyhole onto a square of wax paper that you pulled in under the crack of the door. What were you, six? Where did you learn that kind of stuff?

  The movies, of course. Where else does anybody learn anything?

  She stands at the kitchen window, looking out on the back forty. What do you remember about…your father?

  And that’s kind of funny, actually. Because that’s what he and Karin One used to call the man. Your father. Blaming him on each other. Well, he tells her. The man was no farmer. That’s for damn sure. Always a minimum of three weeks late or early. Beat the system. Defy conventional knowledge. Year he harvested anything at all was a golden era. We were lucky he got out, and into all those can’t-miss bankruptcies.

  She just shrugs, sticks her fists into the dry and dusty sink. You’re right, she says; we were lucky. The Farm Crisis would have gotten him anyway. It got everybody else.

  Ah, but rainmaking, Mark says. Nobody ever lost a buck rainmaking.

  She snorts bitterly. Who knows why? It’s only a job for her. But she’s great at it. She shakes her head. I mean, can you remember his voice? The way he walked? Who was that guy? I mean, I’m now about as old as he was, when he locked us in the cellar. And I just can’t…I remember he had a big scar on the lower inside of his right shin from some kind of accident he had when he was young.

  Railroad tie, he tells her. It doesn’t matter if she knows: they can’t hurt him with ancient history. Dropped a railroad tie on himself, working for the Union Pacific.

  That can’t be right, Mark. How can you drop a railroad tie on your shin?

  You don’t know my father.

  She starts to laugh, but then it freaks her. You’re right, she says. She starts to cry. You’re right. And he’s got to hug her a little to get her to quit. She drags him out back, to the utility room, a little overhang above the tool rack. She says: When we moved out, to the Farview house? Mom and I, we found these videos…

  What, you mean those self-employment things? Cream Your Competitors? The Big Score?

  She shakes her head, shuddering. Horrible, she says. I can’t even. I can’t.

  Oh, Mark says. The fisting stuff. Yeah, I knew about those.

  And when Mom, in shock, brings them to him and starts screaming, he just stands there and says he’s never seen them in his life. He doesn’t know how they got there. Maybe the previous owners left them. Videos! Videos weren’t even invented when we moved into this house. He just took them out back and poured gasoline on them. Bonfire.

  Tell me about it, Mark says.

  And Mom just took it all in. Points toward martyrdom. Believed he was well on the way to repentance.

  Well, Mark says. Maybe not.

  No. Okay. Maybe not.

  They go upstairs, where the bedrooms were. He’s getting used to it, to the devastation. Little scraps of crap line the hall: an old telephone bill, an empty cigarette lighter. Piece of a tarp and a couple of beer bottles. Thin carpet of plaster dust coating the floors. But a person could live here. No big deal. You get used to anything.

  She stands in his old room, pointing with her finger, going, Bed, dresser, shelves, toy chest. Her eyes check with him, seeing if she gets everything right. She does. They couldn’t possibly have trained her in all this. There has to be some kind of direct synapse transfer. Which means that something of his sister is actually downloaded inside this woman. Something essential. Some part of her brain, her soul. A little bit of Karin, here. She points out the niche in the windowsill, the tiny house where Mr. Thurman lived, year after year. Mark’s only reliable childhood friend. He winces, but nods.

  That challenge look of hers, again. Mark? Can I ask you one thing?

  I didn’t go anywhere near those damn Seventeen magazines.

  She laughs a little, like she’s not sure if he’s trying to be funny. But she presses on. Did Cappy…did he ever touch you?

  What do you mean? Used to almost break my legs. I still have the bruises.

  That’s not…Never mind. Forget about it. Come do me. My bedroom.

  Hang on, he says. Do you? You’re not trying to seduce me, are you?

  She slugs him in the shoulder. He follows her obediently, snickering. Always worth a laugh. They stand in the rotting gray room, playing more quiz. Bed. Wrong. Bed? Wrong! Dresser? Not quite.

  Well, how the hell should I know? She was always changing it around.

  Karin Two puts a hand on his wrist, stops his arms. She tries to look him in the eye. What was she like? Tell me what…she was like.

  Who? You mean my sister? You’re really interested in my sister?

  Gone so long that she can’t ever be coming back. And something must be wrong with Mark Schluter, something from the accident that not even the hospital knows about, because he stands there bawling like a goddamned child.

  They stood alone together in the abandoned Brome house, reconstructing the past they no longer shared. There came a moment, amid the trashed rooms and shaky memories, when it struck Karin that they’d have that day, at least, that one sunlit afternoon of confusion in common, if nothing else. And when her brother started to cry and she moved to console him, he let her. A thing they’d never had, before.

  They went outside, into the warm December. They walked the length of their father’s old field, not knowing who farmed it now. In the crush of stubble under their feet, she felt those summer mornings, waking before daylight, going out to walk beans while the dew was still on them, hacking weeds with a hoe so sharp she once almost sliced off her big toe, right through the leather of her work boot.

  Mark tagged alongside, head down. She felt him struggling and was afraid to say a word, afraid to be anyone, least of all Karin Schluter. Oddest of all, she was okay with holding back. She’d gotten used to the doubling, to being this woman. It let her start from scratch with him, even while the other Karin improved so drastically in his memory. A chance to rewrite the record: in fact, two chances at once.

  They rolled over the stubbly black rise. She felt all over again, as she had as a child, the vicious treelessness of this place. Not a scrap of cover in sight. Do anything at all, and God would spy you out. Off on a slight crest in the middle distance, cars and trucks whipped back and forth on the interstate like scythes. She turned to look at the house. This time next year, it would be gone, collapsed or bulldozed, never to have existed. The open-book roof, the slanting cellar door propped up against the brick foundation, the square-shouldered white stump of a box, jutting up from the bare horizon. Protection from nothing.

  “You remember when you and Dad tried to clean out that backed-up cistern?”

  He pounded h
is head, as if the disaster had just happened. “Don’t remind me about shit you can’t know.”

  She didn’t know how hard to push. “Remember when your sister ran away?”

  He folded his hands over the crown of his head, to keep it from flying off. He started walking again, studying the rill in the soil that his feet followed. “She was a godsend, all those years growing up. She kept me out of a heap of death. Oh, she had her little quirks. Don’t we all? But she just wanted to be loved.”

  “Don’t we all?” Karin echoed.

  “You two really are a lot alike. She used to sleep around a bit, too.” She swung toward him, violent. He gaped back, mocking. “Hey, chill. I’m just bashing you. Man, you are even easier to get a rise out of than she was.” She slapped him in the chest with the back of her hand. He just laughed that mirthless laugh. “But, hey, I have to ask you—that guy you’re currently doing?”

  She dropped her eyes and studied the plow cut. Which one?

  “Why are you with him, anyway? Is he entirely sexually normal?”

  She couldn’t help snickering. “What’s normal, Mark?”

  “Normal? Man, woman, front door. Nothing that’s going to get you arrested.”

  “He’s…pretty normal.”

  Mark stopped and knelt down on the ground, over a dried carcass. He prodded it with his toe. “Pocket gopher,” he declared. “Poor thing.”

  She pulled him away. “What do you have against Daniel, anyway? You were such deep friends, all those years. What happened?”

  “What ‘happened’?” Mark traced the quotes in the air. “I’ll tell you what ‘happened.’ He tried to queer me. Out of the blue. Sexual harassment.”

  “Mark! Come on. I don’t believe you. When did this happen?”

  He spun around and raised his hands. “How am I supposed to know? Like, November 20, 1988, five o’clock in the afternoon?”