The Speed of Sound

by Eric Bernt

  “Yes.” He turned to Jerome and spoke mechanically. “Thank you, Jerome, for expressing your sorrow that I did not get to know my mother.”

  Jerome glanced at Ida to make sure it was okay to continue the conversation. “You’re welcome.”

  “Did you know your mother?”

  “Yes, I did. She was one pretty amazing lady.”

  “Did she die?”

  Jerome nodded. “Seven years ago next month.”

  Eddie calculated the approximate number of days in his head: 2,525. “Do you miss her?”

  Jerome nodded. “Every single day.”

  Eddie nodded, imitating Jerome. His nod was followed by a brief but awkward pause. “I’m going to hear my mother sing one day. Did you know that?”

  Jerome hesitated, not sure what to say. Ida intervened. “Yes, he did, Eddie. Just as soon as you get your thingamajig to work.”

  “You mean my echo box.”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Now go enjoy your meal before it gets cold. I don’t want to get no poor marks for temperature just because we stood here gabbing for too long.” She motioned to the binder tucked under his arm.

  “Don’t worry, Ida. I will take into account the extra time spent on this conversation.” Eddie moved on to a table where he sat alone, some thirty feet away. He placed the binder next to his tray and then methodically began removing the plates. Each plate was spaced evenly around the table.

  Ida eyeballed Jerome as Eddie went through his mealtime ritual. She spoke quietly but intensely to her subordinate, never taking her eyes off Eddie. “How fucking stupid are you?”

  “Won’t happen again.”

  “You’re goddamn right it won’t. I should fire your ass right now.”

  Jerome turned to her, looking her straight in the eyes. “You know I need this job.”

  She studied his face long enough to make him squirm. Ida knew the man and wasn’t about to fire him. “Then don’t be such a numbskull. I know you were only trying to be friendly, but just keep your mouth shut, okay?”

  Jerome nodded, looking around the room, anywhere but at her. A man dealing with what he was dealing with had no choice but to acquiesce.

  She looked at him with compassion. “How’s Marla doing?”

  “Shitty. I don’t know what’s harder for her, the nausea or going bald.”

  “Nausea, women know how to deal with. It’s in our childbearing genes. But going bald is a whole other thing. You telling her she looks beautiful?”

  “Every night.”

  “Keep doing it.” She put her hand on his shoulder and moved on, only to stop suddenly when she heard Eddie repeating their entire conversation. His imitation was monotone and his cadence mechanical, but his inflection was perfect.

  “Won’t happen again. You’re goddamn right it won’t. I should fire your ass right now. You know I need this job. Then don’t be such a numbskull. I know you were only trying to be friendly, but just keep your mouth shut, okay? How’s Marla doing? Shitty. I don’t know what’s harder for her, the nausea or going bald. Nausea, women know how to deal with. It’s in our childbearing genes. But going bald is a whole other thing. You telling her she looks beautiful? Every night. Keep doing it.”

  Never looking up, he focused on his meal ratings without expression. His scale was one to five. Ida moved to him, checking to see that the tissue was still stuck in his ears. “No way.”

  Eddie still did not look up. “What are you saying ‘no way’ in reference to, Ida?”

  “Even with cotton in your ears, you can still hear like that?”

  “It’s not cotton. It’s tissue paper.”

  She stifled her smile. “Eddie, just because you can hear something does not mean you should repeat it.”

  Now he looked up. “What does it mean?”

  She paused, trying to use just the right words. “I mean, when you hear something, you need to use your best judgment as to whether or not you should repeat it.”

  “What is my best judgment?”

  “It’s when you consider the feelings of other people before you just go and repeat what they say.”

  “I am not good at understanding the feelings of other people. I have considerable trouble with my own feelings.”

  “People don’t like it when you eavesdrop on them, Eddie. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just hear. Everything. I can’t help it.”

  “You didn’t have to say anything, though, did you?” She searched his face, studying his reaction, as he finally shook his head no. “So next time, just keep your mouth shut, and no one will be the wiser.” She winked at him.

  He attempted to wink back, then took a sip of his fruit punch and cringed. “Ick. Too watery.” He rated the beverage a three. The meat loaf had already been scored a five, which upped the item’s average for the year to 4.27, he calculated in his head. It also explained why he finished the entrée so quickly. But the chocolate-chip-cookie dessert was not up to par, and was only given a two. Eddie didn’t eat anything rated less than a three, so he spit out the bite of cookie, carried his tray to the “Dirty Dishes Here” sign, and placed it on a conveyer belt beneath it. He counted steps as he returned to his room. It was 113 steps, which was a prime number, and he liked that.

  CHAPTER 10

  Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, May 21, 9:32 p.m.

  It had already been a fourteen-hour day. Most of Corbin Davis’s staff looked exhausted, even his workaholic chief of staff, but the camera-ready senator from Indiana looked like he had just stepped out of the shower. He had used his good looks to marry into money, which served to finance two unsuccessful congressional bids, before he finally succeeded by outspending his opponent four to one. It was clear to all who worked for him that Corbin wouldn’t slow down until he got the Big Job. And if he did get it, that would be very good for all of them, which was why his six key staffers worked so tirelessly day in and day out. Like tonight.

  Empty sandwich wrappers and Styrofoam cups littered the coffee table in his office. The final item on the meeting’s agenda was the following day’s schedule, which always started with a breakfast when he was in DC.

  The senator thought the name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t remember exactly why. “Tomorrow’s breakfast. Bob Stenson. American Heritage Foundation.”

  “They gave us fifty grand last week. Unsolicited.”

  “What did they ask for?”

  “Breakfast.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I’m sure you’ll find out more tomorrow.”

  “What do we know about them?”

  “Not much,” his chief of staff answered somewhat uncomfortably.

  “Well, who are they?”

  “We’re not sure, exactly.”

  “Come on.” The senator was certain he was being kidded.

  “I’m serious.” The chief of staff glanced to the youngest member of their team, a twentysomething genius whom they relied on for all their due diligence and data gathering.

  The young staffer handed several spreadsheets to his bosses so that they could read the information along with him. “They’re easily the most secretive group I’ve ever looked into. Other than a post office box and a phone number that goes straight to voicemail, there’s no other information available about them.”

  The senator didn’t believe it. “How is that possible?”

  The twenty-five-year-old MIT grad shook his head. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

  “What about the guy I’m meeting with, Stenson?”

  The young staffer read the little he had gleaned. “Graduated UVA with honors, 1976, then went straight into the CIA. Had a promising career as a field agent until he was hired by the American Heritage Foundation in 1988, where he’s worked ever since.”

  “That’s it? You couldn’t find anything for the last twenty-nine years?”

  “That’s it.”

  Corbin sh
ook his head. “I thought you could find anything about anyone.” He glanced to his chief of staff, who was going to hear about this later.

  “I did, too, which is why I kept digging.” The young staffer turned to his immediate superior, clearly preferring his boss to reveal his findings to the big boss.

  The senator grew impatient. “Well?”

  His chief of staff spoke methodically, as if he, too, was struggling to wrap his head around what he was about to say. “As best as we’ve been able to determine, and I’ve confirmed this with every resource at our disposal, the American Heritage Foundation has backed thirty-seven candidates over the last twenty years.”

  The senator interjected, “So?”

  His chief of staff paused. “Every candidate they’ve ever supported has been elected.”

  Corbin Davis chortled, then realized his number one was serious. “Every one?”

  “Every one. They’re thirty-seven for thirty-seven.” The room went quiet as the chief of staff handed the senator the list. There were governors, senators, congressmen, and every president for the last twenty years except one.

  “This can’t be right.”

  “That’s what I thought,” answered his chief of staff. “That’s why our young friend hasn’t slept in three days.”

  He motioned to the recent MIT grad, who yawned as he spoke. “I triple-checked every candidate. It shouldn’t be possible. I especially don’t know how they’ve kept such a low profile, but somehow they’re managing to excise any retrievable data about them.”

  Senator Davis looked out the window at the lights of the nation’s capital. “Tomorrow’s starting to look like it’s going to be a rather interesting day, after all.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 22, 5:30 a.m.

  Eddie began his Monday the way he began every morning. With the birds. A red-throated loon and a horned grebe. He then showered for exactly two minutes and twenty-four seconds after the water reached the proper temperature of eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, which he measured with a digital thermometer. Two minutes and twenty-four seconds was an ideal time for a personal task, in Eddie’s mind, because it was one hundred and forty-four seconds, which was twelve squared. It was also two to the fourth times three squared. This was all very reassuring, so two minutes and twenty-four seconds became the designated time for all his personal tasks. Shaving with his self-cleaning Braun electric razor was accomplished in this time. So was brushing his teeth with his Sonicare electric toothbrush, which had bristles that oscillated thirty thousand times per minute. Given that the average person manually brushed three hundred times per minute, Eddie figured the device saved him nearly three hours and fifty-seven minutes every day compared to doing it by hand. This was good, because brushing his teeth for nearly four hours twice a day wouldn’t leave much time for anything else, and that would be bad.

  Three times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), the patient recreation room was converted into a lecture hall. Each of the seventy-six patients who called Harmony House home took turns presenting twenty-minute lectures on a subject of their choice to a dozen or so of their colleagues. This meant that each patient gave a lecture every six months. Of course, each patient always chose the same subject, because that’s the way it is with autism. But to date, no one had ever complained about the repetitiveness of it, and it was a near certainty that no one ever would.

  Today was Eddie’s turn. He was dressed in his best approximation of a professor, including a houndstooth blazer and an untucked oxford shirt, while the ten other patients in the room wore sweatshirts from prestigious institutions. Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, and the others watched with great apparent interest as Eddie began to fill the large whiteboard with the same complex equations that appeared in his binders.

  The sound of the dry-erase pen Eddie used to write his complicated algorithms was soothing to him. Not because it was pleasant. Far from it. But the SHRILL sound meant that he was teaching, or as close as he would ever come to actually teaching, and that made him feel good. Important. Even scholarly. At least, his approximation of those feelings. Some of his favorite people in the world had been teachers. While many of his proctors were downright overwhelmed by the challenge of handling a special-needs student with an IQ of 193, a special few understood that Eddie was unlike anyone they would ever teach again, and relished the opportunity. These were the ones Eddie hoped to emulate.

  All but one of the people currently in the recreation room had already heard his lecture multiple times, but they didn’t seem to mind, just as he didn’t mind listening to their lectures when it was their turn to teach. The staff called it academic therapy. Another brainstorm of Dr. Marcus Fenton. Like kids playing house, only this was neurologically diverse people playing university.

  Today, Eddie was the professor, and the other patients were his students. Two were adolescents. The oldest was in her sixties. The other seven were somewhere in between. Some appeared to be neurotypical, like anyone you’d expect to see attending a lecture on acoustics by the world’s leading authority. Others, like the guy picking his nose with a disturbing vengeance, could never fool anyone for an instant in the outside world, former Mensa chapter president or not.

  Among the other patients, specialties included string theory, cold fusion, biomolecular construction, silent propulsion systems, and machine learning. Among the staff supervising the proceedings was Gloria Pruitt, whom all the patients called Nurse Gloria. She had worked at Harmony House since 2007 and had a natural air of authority about her. She carried the wisdom that came from age and experience. Gloria stood steadfast by the door with her hands clasped behind her. She had already heard Eddie’s lecture a great many times, but you never would have known it from her expression.

  Also in attendance was the one person in the room who hadn’t previously heard Eddie’s talk. She was the new medical resident he had just been introduced to.

  Earlier that morning, after a breakfast of Froot Loops (with the purple loops removed) and orange juice that both rated a four, Eddie had recognized her footsteps well before Dr. Fenton knocked on his door and asked if they could come in. Right away, he knew what he wanted to ask her, which he did before even seeing her. “What were you feeling last Friday afternoon when you left Dr. Fenton’s office?”

  The old man smiled as he opened the door. “Eddie, I would like to introduce you to our new medical resident, Dr. Skylar Drummond.”

  She knew not to try and shake his hand. Many people with Asperger’s cannot stand physical contact, particularly with a stranger. Skylar raised her hand and waved very slightly. “Hi, Eddie.”

  He stared at her for a moment. His face was, of course, without expression. He didn’t say a word.

  Dr. Fenton grew concerned. “Eddie, are you all right?”

  The patient stared at his new doctor without blinking. “You’re pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  Fenton glanced over at a framed photo of Eddie’s mother and father sitting on his desk. The similarity between Michelle Parks and Skylar was unmistakable. And no coincidence.

  Eddie kept staring at his new doctor. “People who are pretty get told that a lot. Do you get told that a lot, Dr. Drummond?”

  “No, not really.”

  He made a BUZZER sound like the response on a game show when a contestant gives the wrong answer.

  Fenton turned to Skylar. “Eddie is a walking polygraph. It’s pointless to be less than truthful around him.” He paused as if to say, Yes, really. “You’ll get used to it.”

  She turned to Eddie, doing her best to conceal her amazement. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  No buzzer. She was speaking the truth. “Thank you,” he replied mechanically. He liked the sound of her voice. It was soothing. Warm. He repeated his question, asking what she had been feeling the first time he heard her footsteps.

  “Dr. Fenton had just hired me, and I was feeling happy.”

&
nbsp; “Did you feel like you were going to be happy for the rest of your life?” Eddie hoped her answer would be yes.

  “Well, maybe not for the rest of my life, but I knew I was happy in that moment, and probably would be for the foreseeable future.”

  Eddie jotted down her exact words in one of his binders, then paused. “Exactly how long would you say the foreseeable future is?”

  Edward Parks was just as Dr. Fenton had told her he would be. “Well, I expected it would last at least until the end of the day.”

  Eddie nodded, seeming satisfied with the answer. “Dr. Drummond, would you like to attend my lecture this morning?”

  “Yes, I would, Eddie. But, please, call me Skylar.”

  “It starts at nine o’clock sharp, Skylar.”

  “Then I will be on time.”

  He looked at her without emotion. “I will, too.”

  As Skylar and Fenton walked away from Eddie’s room, her expression was the same one that most people had after first meeting him. Dr. Fenton glanced at her. “That was a big deal, you know.”

  “What was?”

  “For him to invite you to his lecture. It usually takes Eddie quite a while before he feels comfortable enough with someone new to share his work with them.”

  “Why did he want to know what I was feeling?”

  “So he could say what you said the next time someone asks what he is feeling.”

  “But he never saw me.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He heard you. Just like he can hear us now.” They were over fifty feet away from Eddie’s closed door.

  She glanced behind them. “You’re joking.”

  “When the opportunity presents itself, ask him to repeat this conversation. Eddie’s sense of hearing is astonishing.”

  “Is there a connection to the Asperger’s?”

  He nodded. “Having one of their senses heightened is commonplace among patients on the spectrum. We believe those on the lower-functioning end simply can’t communicate what they are experiencing, which compounds their feelings of being overwhelmed and frustrated. That’s what makes Eddie so unique. He can tell us.”