Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“Barbara…How do you do it? How do you stay loyal, when everyone’s so…?” She would lose control, disgust the woman. She looked at the aide, trying not to beg.

But Barbara’s face showed only surprise. Her mouth opened in refusal. “I’m not the one…” Not crushed, not stroked out, no lesion. “It’s not me…”

Could anyone really have so mastered herself? How did she find such maturity? What had she been like, at Karin’s age? The questions piled up, none of them permissible. The conversation stalled. Barbara grew nervous and needed to get back to work. Karin felt that this might be the last time they would talk like this. She grabbed and hugged Barbara before leaving. But whatever connection was, that embrace held none of it.

That evening when Daniel came home, she was sitting on top of her three packed suitcases, five feet down his front walk. She had been sitting there for half an hour. She’d planned to be long gone well before he returned from work. Instead, she was camped out, twenty-five feet away from her parked car, unable to move in either direction. Daniel sprang off his bicycle, thinking she was hurt. But ten feet from where she sat, he figured out everything.

He was relentlessly noble, even in being abandoned. All the questions that he didn’t ask— Why are you doing this? Are you sure this is what you want? What about Mark? What about me? — burned into her as she sat, paralyzed. He didn’t even try to guilt her with talk or stroking. He said nothing at all for a long time, just stood two feet away from her, taking things in, thinking. He hunted for her eyes, trying to determine what she needed of him. She couldn’t meet his gaze. When he did speak, it was almost without accusation. Pure practical concern for her: exactly what she couldn’t bear. “But where will you go? All your stuff is in storage. Your place has just sold.”

She said what she had been rehearsing in her head for weeks. “Daniel, I’m breaking. I can’t do this anymore. For every little thing I do to help, I hurt him in three other ways. The sight of me makes him worse. He wants me gone. I’m sick and broke and in your way, light-headed and I haven’t slept well in six weeks. He makes me think I’m invisible, a virus, a nothing. I’m falling apart, Danny. I’m floating and buzzing. Like little spiders on my skin, all the time. I’m a mess. I’m disgusting. You just don’t, can’t, you have absolutely no…”

He put his hand on her shoulder to slow her. He did not say, I know . Only nodded.

Something like excitement propelled her. “The condo doesn’t close for another ten days. I can camp out on my floor. It’ll be so simple — just the essentials. I can use the money from the sale to line up a rental. I can get my job back, start reimbursing you for everything that you’ve paid for, all these…”

He shushed her. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the row of picture windows, through which the neighborhood now watched this piece of September-evening street theater. Now, on top of everything, she was making a scene, embarrassing him. She lunged up and grabbed at one of the suitcases, to drag it to the car. Her sudden speed pitched her over, into him. He grabbed her shoulders and steadied her. He reached down to take the bag. “Here. Let me help you.”

His stupid, brute charity made her lose it. She curled away from him, pressed two fists to her jaw, and began to hyperventilate. He stepped back toward her, to give what comfort he could. She fought him off with both hands. “Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. These aren’t real tears. Don’t you see, yet? I’m not her. I’m just a simulation. Something you invented in your head.” She could not make out her own wet and rubbery words. It crossed her mind, in a seed of bright, spreading fear, that she was having that thing that she and Mark used to speculate about, in the terror of childhood: a breakdown .

But just as suddenly, all her wildness stopped, and she stood on the curb, becalmed. Something in her must have known all along: she could never get farther than going through these motions. Leaving would prove Mark right. Would strip her of every account she might give of herself. A great curiosity came over her, an impatience to learn what she might yet become, in staying here. Who she might still be, if she could no longer be the other. She sat back down on the toppled case. Daniel sat down on the lawn next to her, now indifferent to what any other human being saw or thought of them. “I can’t leave yet,” she announced. “I forgot. The note from Dr. Weber. He’s coming back next week.”

“Yes,” Daniel said. “True.” He made no show of even trying to follow her. And even that, in a way she could not name, was a small relief. They sat together on her packed clothes until the first fat drops of a sparse autumn rain began to plash around them. Then he helped her carry the luggage back inside.

The next day, Karin saw Karsh. She strolled down Central in front of his office, a stretch she’d avoided for months. The morning was glorious, one of those crystalline, dry, blue, fall days when the temperature hovers right at anticipation. She knew she would end up coming here, the moment Daniel had spoken those words during their disastrous dinner. Almost like he was daring her, flushing out all unfinished business into the open. New developer consortium. Local wheelers and dealers. You wouldn’t happen to know…? Well, she didn’t know. Didn’t know the first thing about anyone.

But about herself, there were things she could find out. She looped down the block in front of Platteland Associates, pretending to window-shop those few stores — hospital supplies, Salvation Army, used books — that hadn’t yet been euthanized since the Wal-Mart landed. He would emerge for lunch at ten to twelve and head for the Home Style Cafe. Four years would have changed nothing. Robert Karsh was habit incarnate. A first-rate mind knows what it wants. Everything else was chaos.

He came from the office with two colleagues. Flawless gray coat and burgundy tie, Brooks black slacks: overcompensating businessman, pretending Kearney was the next Denver. She turned to inspect the window of a locksmith shop, a carousel of key blanks. He saw her from two blocks away. She lifted an arm to her hair, then dropped it instantly. He gave his partners a vague meet-you-later wave. Then he was standing in front of her, not touching, but taking her in, consuming her all over again. A tourist back when travel was still hard.

“You,” he said. Voice a little deeper. “It’s you. I can’t believe it’s you.”

For the first time in months, she knew herself. The last half a year took its fingers from her throat. Her shoulders dropped. Her head lifted. “Believe,” she said, her voice like God’s own phone receptionist.

He winced, hands waving. “What did you do to yourself?” Her haircut: the one meant to trick Mark into thinking she was her. “Damn. You look amazing. Like a manufacturer-refurbished virgin. College all over again.”

She scowled, trying not to giggle. “You mean high school.”

“Right. Like I said. You’ve lost weight?” He’d called her a failed anorectic once.

She stood almost posing, savoring the payback. “How’re your kids?” She could almost do this. Capable, no-nonsense. “Your wife?”

He grinned, raking his fingers through his hair. “Good, good! Well…long story.”

Her heart, that stupid holdover, spun like a pigeon in a Skinner box. For this man, she’d once bought a book called How to Elope , even while browsing for wedding dresses. At least she’d confined herself to apricot and peach.

He kept looking at her, shaking his head in disbelief. “How’s…your brother?”