Annabel was way off beam about Echo being a silent person. I guess a lot of people seem that way to Annabel, as she is mostly tuned in on herself. But the fact is, Echo is willing enough to talk; she just refuses to knock people down to make an opening, is all. You ask her something and she’ll answer. Like when Annabel was in the kitchen making the gravy, I said:

“How is it you happen to be called Echo?”

She said: “Well, Clinton, I’ll tell you. It’s because I’m kind of a parrot, you know what I mean? When I was a little girl, the way I’d learn to talk was I’d repeat whatever I heard my mother say, over and over again. See?”

“Doesn’t everybody learn to talk that way?”

“Well, now, that’s a very interesting thought. I believe you’re right. What do you think about that, Ralph?”

Echo turned her enormous eyes on Ralph. He said, “Hmmm,” and seemed to weigh the question very carefully. The way Echo looks at a person makes him feel like Oliver Wendell Holmes passing down a decision. Ralph said, “Imitation, yes. I believe that’s a very decisive factor in the learning process.”

“Wow,” Echo said. Then she turned to me. “Clinton, you got a wonderful papa.” She tapped her head twice. “What a head on him! We been downstairs workin’ a puzzle, and I want to tell you it was a pleasure just to watch.” She raised her voice so that Annabel could hear it in the kitchen: “Annabel, you mind me smokin’ cigarettes at the table?”

“Not at all!” Annabel exclaimed.

“You’re a real doll and I mean that,” Echo answered. Then she lit a long cigarette with a gold tip, and turned to Ralph. “What was that thing called, Ralph, the one with all the water in the street? The Grankin—Grankin Alla—something or other?”

Ralph passed down another decision: “The Grand Canal of Venice,”

Echo said, “That’s it! You know, it’s hard for a woman to remember a thing like that.” She threw back her head and let out a big cloud of smoke that hovered over her head like a halo. Then she turned to me. “Now what was it you ast me, honey?”

I thought for a minute. “Oh, you were tellin’ me about Ralph, and the puzzle.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, and how smart he is. Which I admire. Well, there we sat, see?” She did a little pantomime of a jigsaw puzzle being put together very fast. “Phht, phht, phht, phht,” and then she snapped her fingers and said, “There it was, together! But you better look out, Ralph, because what I’m going to do is practice!” She laughed, and then Annabel came in with the gravy.

The point is that Echo O’Brien is not some kind of a big fantastic walking brain that stops everybody cold on television quizzes. That is just a completely nother department altogether. In fact with Echo, this Grand Canal kind of thing is fairly common. She makes tons of these really stupid mistakes. But the ridiculous thing is that on her it only adds, because it makes her all the more beautiful. Boy, this is a hell of a hard thing to describe. Now for instance if you committed a murder or fell in love or got in some other kind of trouble, Echo O’Brien would know just what to do. Whereas Einstein would probably be stumped because he’d be too busy worrying about where Venice is, and relativity, etc.