Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

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 should 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.