Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
The Falls
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“This sweet girl I’d like you to meet”—Ariah’s description of Candace McCann. “This girl at church who’s so pretty, and so—well,
sweet
.” As if Ariah had wracked her brains and there was nothing more to say of Candace.
There was an edge to Candace’s sweetness, Royall had discovered, that Ariah didn’t yet know. One day, Ariah might be surprised.
Candace’s most striking feature was her strawberry blond hair, worn in a wavy-curly tumble to her shoulders and held in place with butterfly barrettes and clips. Her face was small and heart-shaped.
She had a squealing little laugh, and a habit of clasping her fingers together in a gesture of childlike enthusiasm. Her fingernail polish always matched her lipstick, coral pink. She had a sweet if uncertain voice and often sang aloud, church hymns, popular songs. At King’s Dairy, which was the predominant dairy and ice cream parlor in Niagara Falls, Candace McCann was the most popular waitress, and the most lavishly tipped; in her daffodil-yellow uniform with white collar and cuffs, and starched white cap pert on her head, she reminded older male customers of—who? Betty Grable, Doris Day?
Another era, before the 1960’s, when women began to defy men, and ugliness became a mode of self-definition. Not Candace McCann!
When they went out together, Candace and Royall were an attractive couple who drew strangers’ admiring eyes. Which made Royall uneasy even as it flattered Candace. “I always think, the two of us might be discovered, someday,” Candace said, with a little shiver.
Royall joked, “Discovered doing what, honey? And by who?” Candace slapped lightly at his wrist as if he’d said something risqué.
The phone rang. Annie answered it, and Candace took the receiver from her with a nervous giggle. “Oh, gosh. Mrs. Burnaby.”
Candace’s voice sobered, it was Ariah.
Royall saw Candace and Annie exchange a glance.
My future
mother-in-law. Oh, God!
Royall took advantage of this distraction and slipped into the tiny kitchen to repair a leaky faucet Candace had been complaining about.
He’d brought along handyman’s tools. Such household tasks comforted him, especially when he was feeling edgy. His father had been a lawyer, which meant his father had been a man of words, and proba-304 W
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bly not a man who’d used his hands, and Royall liked to think how he differed from that disgraced father he’d never known.
After the faucet, Royall examined the refrigerator, which Candace complained made strange noises and didn’t “smell right.” This was a chipped-enamel Westinghouse that had come with the rented apartment like most of the other kitchen appliances. Royall couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with the refrigerator except it was old, and its motor thrummed and vibrated like a wheezing, living thing.
There was a six-pack of beer in the refrigerator for him, but Royall took out a quart of King’s Dairy milk instead and filled himself a full glass. Plain white milk, he’d been drinking it by the glass all his life.
Ariah had made him drink three full glasses a day while he was growing up. She’d made each of her children swallow down teaspoons of cod liver oil in orange juice, at breakfast. When they protested, gagging at the taste of the cod liver oil, Ariah said sternly, “Strong teeth, strong bones. The rest will follow.”
Royall tried not to listen to voices in the other room. He hoped to hell that Candace wouldn’t put him on the phone to speak with Ariah. His voice would tremble and betray him.
I can’t marry her. I
don’t love her. God help me.
Of course Royall would marry Candace. He loved her, and that was it.
He’d given her an engagement ring, the wedding was the next morning at eleven, they had honeymoon plans. Ariah approved.
Candace adored him.
That was it.
At the start of October, Candace had moved into this one-bedroom apartment in a brownstone building on Fifth Street in which the newlyweds were going to live. They’d paid a sizable deposit and the first three months’ rent. Candace and her girlfriends had found the apartment, and Royall thought it was fine. Small, a little shabby, but, for the price, fine. It was on a busy street, a bus route. A five-minute walk for Candace to King’s Dairy, a five-minute drive for Royall to the Niagara Gorge. In the off-season, Royall would probably be working for Empire Collection Agency, which paid a commission; he’d been offered the job by a friend of Stu Fletcher, who knew and liked Royall. But now the time was approaching to begin his new job,
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Royall was feeling uneasy. Did he have the temperament for calling strangers on the phone, or boldly dropping by their homes to harass them into paying debts they probably couldn’t pay? Was Royall the swaggering-pirate type to “repossess” a car, a boat, a TV set or fur coat whose hapless owner had fallen behind in payments? He was beginning to wonder. The previous year, he’d worked at Armory Bowling Lanes, sometimes bartending. He’d been restless in that indoors job, after the excitement of the Devil’s Hole. He’d been thinking about Niagara General Hospital where he could be an attendant, not a great-paying job but the emergency room appealed to him, and riding in an ambulance, helping desperate people. And there was the Police Academy, he’d have liked to be a policeman, maybe, except you had to carry a gun, and might have to use a gun, and that was a sober-ing thought. Royall might have looked up a Buffalo record producer who’d given Royall his card, having heard him playing his guitar and singing in a summer arts festival in Prospect Park in August, but Royall guessed that nothing serious would come of any “audition,”
and probably he’d lost the producer’s card. He might have looked for employment in a high-quality hotel or restaurant in the more affluent Buffalo area, Candace thought he’d make a handsome maître d’, but mostly she urged him to quit the Devil’s Hole permanently and get a real job, like most of their male married friends who worked in the factories of East Niagara Falls, North Tonawanda, Buffalo. “Especially when we start a family, Royall. I’ll be quitting the Dairy.”
Royall swallowed a large mouthful of milk. His jaws ached from the cold.
Shutting his eyes and seeing again a stark, whitish shaft of sunshine in the cemetery. Like a knifeblade piercing his eyes, his groin.
The woman in black lay back in the matted grass and opened her arms to him.
We know each other don’t we. We know each other.
If only Royall were married to Candace right now: there would be no turning back.
(But Royall wouldn’t have made love to a strange woman in a cemetery that morning, would he? If he and Candace were married?) Royall was thinking he might be living here, in this apartment, right now; except Candace hadn’t wanted him. He might have moved 306 W
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in with her at the start of the month and by now they’d be settled.
But of course they hadn’t been married yet, and Candace worried what people would think. In Candace’s world, everyone knew everyone else and was eager to transmit “news.” And relatives on both sides would have been indignant, scandalized. Even Ariah who scorned convention would have disapproved, and the infamous Mrs.
McCann who was said to be “openly living with” a man not her husband. Candace herself was strict about ushering Royall out of the apartment at a “decent” hour. What was the point of getting married, Candace wanted to know, if you lived together, slept together, saw each other at breakfast, anyway?
Royall smiled. Well, yes? What was the point?
Candace came into the kitchen, fussing with butterfly clips in her hair. She was fluttery, frowning. Royall could see in her pretty-doll face a somber bulldog face taking shape, in the lower jaws and pursed mouth. She was chattering breathlessly about Ariah’s change of mind over something-or-other, and how many guests were absolutely, posi-tively coming. Royall tried to be sympathetic, but Candace seemed to be uttering words in a foreign language he’d never heard before, all sibilants and vehemence. Her hands flew about like startled birds, the tiny diamond on her ring finger winked. Royall wished that he and Candace were alone together in the apartment, all others banished, including phone calls. (The phone was ringing again in the other room.) Oh, this long day!
But Candace wasn’t in a mood to be touched right now. The conversation with Ariah had set her off.
Royall said with his sweet-sexy smile, in a voice like Candace’s favorite Johnny Cash, “Honey, why don’t we run off tonight? Forget all this wedding crap and elope?”
Candace’s eyes widened as if Royall had pinched her. “ ‘Wedding crap’! Royall Burnaby, what did you just
say
?”
Royall shrugged. It seemed like a God-damned good idea, to him.
Or, if they couldn’t elope, if they could be alone together in the apartment. This was their home-to-be, the double bed with the American Heritage pine headboard was theirs, a wedding present from Ariah. Everybody out! Phone receiver off the hook! Royall
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wanted badly to grab Candace in his arms, and lie down with her as they sometimes did, not to make love but just to kiss, hug, snuggle, comfort each other. It didn’t matter what nonsense passed between them, like the lyrics of a song whose music has snagged in your head.
Except: Royall worried that the rich dark earthy smell of the cemetery was in his hair, in his clothing. He worried that Candace could taste the other woman on Royall’s lips.
Candace’s voice rose sharply. “What’s got into you, Royall? As soon as you stepped in that door and I saw your face, I
knew
.”
Royall said quickly, “ ‘Knew’? Knew what?”
“Well, I don’t know. One of your Burnaby things. Some strange mood where you mumble, and won’t look anyone in the eye.”
A Burnaby thing? Royall had never heard of this before. And hadn’t he just been looking Candace in the eye?
Candace said, pouting, “You! Sometimes I think you don’t even want to get married. Sometimes I think you don’t even love me.”
Royall’s head was aching. The cold milk had gotten into the bones of his forehead now. A dull ache, and he had to resist hiding his face in his hands.
“Well, do you? I don’t believe you do.”
Tears shone in Candace’s eyes. Her lips were pursed prettily. In the other room, voices lifted. Peals of laughter. The phone rang.
Candace turned to leave, but Royall gripped her arm.
His voice croaked. “Honey.”
“What?
What?
”
Royall swallowed hard. Now his tongue had grown cold, and numb. These words had to be summoned from a distance, like hauling a barge along a canal. “Honey, I guess I don’t. Not exactly.”
“ ‘Don’t’? Don’t what?”
Royall shook his head miserably.
Candace’s eyes turned steely, like ice picks. Her pert little nose seemed to sharpen. In that instant, she knew.
Candace picked up the quart of milk and dumped what remained of it over Royall’s head, shrieked and screamed and slapped and kicked at him until he restrained her. “You can’t! You can’t! I hate you, Royall Burnaby,
you can’t
!”
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This long day. At last, it was coming to an end.
3
If they ask of him tell them
:
It happened before I was born
.
Royall knew better. And yet, he had no clear memory of the man who’d been his father.
He had no memory of Luna Park except he knew, from Chandler, that the family had once lived in a “big stone house” facing the park, a long time ago. There were no photographs of that house as there were no photographs of that time. There were no photographs of their unnamed father.
When Royall tried to remember, his mind seemed to dissolve like vapor. Like spray thrown up by The Falls, scattered and lost in the wind.
As a boy living on Baltic Street he’d secretly bicycled to Luna Park a few miles away to see if, if he saw the house, he’d remember it. But each time he approached the park he became strangely dizzy, his knees weak, the front wheel of his bike turned sharply, he almost toppled into the street. So he’d given up and turned back.
It isn’t meant to
be. Mommy is the one who loves you.
Royall’s memory began when he was four years old and Ariah was half-carrying him sleepy and confused into the “new” house. Up narrow creaking stairs, and into his “new” bedroom. He would share this room with his brother for the next ten years. He would question nothing, he would be Ariah’s happy, healthy boy. In the brick-and-stucco rowhouse at 1703 Baltic Street exuding its mysterious, half-pleasurable odors of old wood smoke, grease, and mildew, where freight cars emblazoned
Buffalo & Chautauqua, Baltimore & Ohio, New
York Central, Shenandoah, Susquehannah
thundered through their skulls.
Royall came home from Baltic Street Elementary with tales of The Falls.
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Ghosts came out of the Gorge at night, Royall told Ariah excitedly. Some of these were Indians, and some were white people. It was a white man taken by the Indians and made to swim in the river and the river carried him over The Falls, and there was a “red-haired young bride” who searched for him “for seven days and seven nights”
and when she found him, drowned and dead, torn into pieces by the rapids, she “cast herself ” into the Gorge, too.
Ariah who was brushing and plaiting Juliet’s long hair, that was wheat-colored but threaded with streaks of dark red, asked dryly,
“When did all this happen, sweetie?”
Royall, in third grade at the time, said, “A hudred hudred years ago, Mommy. I think.”
“Not ‘hudred,’ Royall.
Hun
dred.”
“ ‘
Hun
dred,’ Mommy. And a thousand, too.”
Like Zarjo, the child was. Adorable, and eager to please. If Royall had had a stumpy tail like the dog’s, he’d have been thumping it most of the time.