The Day the Falls Stood Still

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  “What’s not to know?”

  It was true that I had become competent with needle and thread, and that over the years she had persisted in explaining the business side of dressmaking to me. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was no reason to be anything but pleased. “You have been so kind, from the start,” I said. “You have given me so much. Tom and the boys, too.”

  She glanced away, but not before I noticed her eyes were damp. “I haven’t given you anything,” she said, “that you haven’t given me.” With that she stood up and turned away to adjust the position of a vase on the windowsill.

  Tom’s only requirement for our house was that it be an easy walk from the whirlpool and lower rapids. I wanted three bedrooms—one for Tom and me, and one for the boys, and one for sewing. I wanted a veranda, even if it was small, a place to lounge with a book and remember the days when I read to Isabel. I wanted a living room with a chesterfield where I could sit alongside Tom on winter evenings, our stocking feet extending beyond a blanket and resting on a hearth before a simmering fire. I wanted closets, those modern tiny rooms for housing linens and clothing and other bits best kept tucked away. I wanted an up-to-date bathroom, with a basin, toilet, and bath. I wanted electric light, so commonplace now that putting it on the list hardly made sense. But I had heard Tom say he preferred the soft glow of a kerosene lamp to the brightness of an electric bulb, and I needed to make sure I did not end up the only woman in town still scrubbing away soot.

  The houses closest to the whirlpool and lower rapids, on River Road, were large, with wraparound verandas and leaded glass and three chimneys, the sorts of places we could not afford. That left only Silvertown. And because I did not much like the greedy view of myself apparent in my own long list, I agreed. We would live just beneath the bluff on which Glenview sits, a neighborhood where I was sure to catch the odd summertime whiff of the privies that still existed there though almost nowhere else in Niagara Falls.

  I found a near perfect house on May Avenue and for a price we were able to pay, though there would not be a penny left for a rainy day, let alone furniture. The ceilings were lower than I had hoped and the rooms only moderate in size. The only real disappointment, though, was the stove, an antiquated wood-burning affair. The cast iron was freshly blackened, but that did little to disguise the fact that it would need to be polished again and again. In Mrs. Andrews’s kitchen, I had grown used to enamel that wiped clean with just a cloth and become a competent cook, an accomplishment surely tied to the electric burners of her stove.

  When Tom first saw the house, he looked around uneasily. “What’ll we put in all the rooms?” he said.

  “We’ll have it furnished in a couple of years.”

  “It’ll cost a fortune to heat.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  As he became ever more quiet, it struck me that while our anxiety over such a large purchase was evenly matched, only mine was offset by glee. It was I who spun in the kitchen and threw my arms around his neck in the bedroom I wanted to share with him and I, again, who smoothed my palms over the oak of the mantelpiece. He began scrutinizing the walls, pressing his fingertips against them to test the give. He examined the wooden siding and cedar shingles of the exterior, looking for rot. When he said he wondered if he felt a bit of spring in the dining room floor, he returned to the cellar to take another look at the joists. He stayed down there a long while, long enough for me to know he was through with the joists. When he emerged, he said, “They’re number one yellow pine, spaced sixteen inches apart.”

  “And?”

  “It’s good.”

  “Then there’s no reason not to take it,” I said.

  25

  Late afternoon I sit on the back stoop of our very own May Avenue house peeling apples for a pie. Jesse is busy kicking up the leaves trapped in the nook between the cellar door and the stoop. Francis is fully engaged by the fluttering leaves, and so I ignore the heaviness of the diaper drooping between his thighs.

  I glance up the bluff and see Glenview’s freshly painted eaves, also the pediment window that is no longer cracked. I do not know the people who live there, only that their name is Haversham and that their daughter gallops around the yard in lovely dresses much as Isabel and I had. Once when Mother was visiting, we went up to the house, ostensibly to leave a business card, though I suspect she had it in her head Mrs. Haversham would make a more suitable friend for me than any of the half dozen Italian neighbor women I have met. It would explain why Mother had washed and pressed her one decent dress the evening before and then badgered me into changing from my best housedress into a pretty frock that would have been just right had we been summoned up the bluff to tea before the hemlines had risen from ankle to calf. In the end, it had not mattered. A housekeeper answered the knocker, asked why we were calling, and, once I had handed over my business card, promptly shut the door.

  But even if Mrs. Haversham had opened the door and mistaken me as someone belonging to her set, even if I were invited in, my isolation would have remained much as it is. I am stuck somewhere between my new life and my old, not truly fitting in with my Silvertown neighbors, who grow tomatoes in their front yards and collect dandelion greens from the side of the road and haggle with the ice cart driver though the price is set, not truly fitting in with society. After running into Lucy Simpson, whom I had been friendly with at Loretto, that much had become abundantly clear. She had astonished me by inviting me to a luncheon at her house. “You’ll know everyone,” she said.

  I gathered she meant the guests had gone to Loretto and said, “Will Kit be there?”

  “She isn’t much for parties midafternoon. She prefers work. Poor Leslie, with half the town thinking he can’t support his wife.”

  “Everyone knows he’s with the Hydro, the chief hydraulic engineer,” I said, a little bewildered to find myself irked on Kit’s behalf.

  “Well?”

  “I’ll have to see about arrangements for the boys,” I said. It was an excuse.

  “Come,” Lucy said. “You can tell us all about your famous Tom Cole.”

  And then in the evening, Tom said, “You should go. You could use a friend.” It was not anything I had not thought myself. Still, hearing it aloud made me feel pitiable, and I had no wish to be, and so I nipped and tucked and fussed over one of Isabel’s old dresses and set off for a luncheon I did not much want to attend.

  In Lucy Simpson’s grand dining room, I told the boys’ ages and said that, yes, of course I was afraid when Tom was out there on the ice bridge. There were more questions, about other rescues, and then finally about the bodies he pulls from the river. Lucy called them floaters and made a joke about the stink, and I knew there was no point trying to explain about the care he took. It bothered me, too, her tactlessness, the way it seemed she had entirely forgotten about Isabel, and I began making less of an effort to join in, which was hardly a chore. I had nothing to say about the latest ball at the Clifton House and I had not traveled to New York and I knew nothing about the fund-raising dilemmas of the Lundy’s Lane Historical Society. Nor would my old classmates have wanted to hear that I had found a yard goods shop in Toronto that carried lace from Burano, Italy, for a fair price, even less so that Garner Brothers hardware had washboards on sale for sixty-five cents. It occurred to me, afterward, that Kit would have saved me from the banality, and it caused me to miss her very much.

  I walked home by way of Erie Avenue and peered into each of the shops the Atwells owned, looking for her. But no matter that for once I had worked up the resolve to talk to her, even plead, if that was what it took, she was nowhere to be seen, even as I made a second pass, daring to step into each of the shops.

  After a while Francis grows bored with the fluttering leaves and his squawks become insistent. I whisk him into the house and set him on the bench that substitutes for kitchen chairs. In the way of furnishings we have little more than the tablecloths and serviettes from the trousseau Mrs. Andrews had given us. One
hand on his belly, I deftly unfold a clean diaper and slide it under his bottom. While I rinse and wring the old diaper, I balance him on a hip and glance around wistfully, thinking I should put the apples aside a moment and get the breakfast dishes cleaned up. And the floor needs to be swept. And the stove needs to be blackened yet again. When he rubs his eyes, I return to the stoop, hoping he will nurse. If I am lucky, he will drift off and the apples will be peeled and the dishes washed and the floor swept before Tom comes in from work. The stove will have to wait.

  Six days a week I sew from early morning straight through to midafternoon. I am able to manage it only because a neighbor called Mrs. Mancuso looks after the boys. Under her watchful eye, Jesse has learned to differentiate basil from mint, and to say when a tomato is ready to be picked. He can turn the handle of a pasta machine and knows fusilli is like a corkscrew and penne like a tube. She coddles them, though. For instance, she shoos the boys out the door after lunch and clears the table herself, which means I am back to reminding Jesse to put his dirty dishes in the sink. And he does not see why he should eat beef stew for supper, not when Mrs. Mancuso made him meatballs for lunch after he turned up his nose at the macaroni she had first served. But there is never a fuss in the morning when we walk to her house, and the boys are returned to me midafternoon clean and well-fed. What is more, her house is only an empty lot over from our own.

  When there is more sewing than I can manage, I save the handwork for the evenings. On occasion I have sat overcasting what seems a never-ending stream of buttonholes and thought I would like to take on less work. But we have agreed to the schedule of repayment set out in our mortgage contract, and the expense is large, mostly on account of my long list.

  In the evening, I collect a blouse with cuffs to be hand-stitched from the sewing room and head for the kitchen, where I expect to find Francis contentedly toppling blocks, and Tom and Jesse playing dominoes or Chinese checkers, or whooping it up with Tom on his knees and Jesse on his back. But Tom is alone, sitting at the kitchen table, writing in a small notebook. “Where are the boys?” I say.

  “The Mancuso girls were over, begging to take them for a walk.” He closes the cover of the notebook.

  I slide in beside him on the bench and poke my chin toward the notebook.

  “It’s nothing,” he says.

  I move a hand toward the notebook but stop short. “Nothing?”

  “I’m tracking the river’s height at a couple of spots.”

  “Some sort of record?”

  He nods, and the nod seems sheepish, as though there is a good chance I will not approve. “It bothers me that I couldn’t say for sure what happened to the ice bridge.”

  “You’re tracking what the Queenston-Chippawa project is doing to the river? You’ve hooked up with those men you met at the Windsor way back?”

  He places his hands flat on the table, spreads his fingers wide. “Bess, I’m a workingman, not the sort they’d ask to join their meetings.”

  “What’s it for, then?”

  “It’s just for me,” he says, tapping the notebook. “It’s the least I can do.”

  He has never given me cause to doubt his word. I remind myself of it again and again, as I stitch the cuffs, as I kiss Jesse good night, as I pace the main floor with Francis in my arms and my lips against his downy hair.

  Still, try as I might, the notebook is firmly lodged in my thoughts.

  26

  Queenston powerhouse under construction

  My coat is the same one I wore my final winter at Loretto, seven years ago. Twice I have raised the hemline, but there is nothing to be done about the worn cuffs and unfashionably nipped-in waist. For the past several years I have put off wearing it until the snow flies and then packed it away at the first sign of a thaw. As a result, I have spent many a cold morning shivering in a sweater, thinking I really should get down to the business of sewing myself a decent coat.

  The coat I am making is narrow at the midcalf hem, broad through the waist, broader still through the hips. My first thought was velvet, but my practical side overruled and I am using a chestnut wool, as soft as cashmere but not nearly so dear. I had not quite made up my mind about the fabric for the collar and cuffs, but then Tom showed up with a typeset invitation, and I knew I would cut them from silk. If I was to wear the coat in the company of Premier Drury and Sir Adam Beck, it needed to be more than just warm.

  Tom brought the invitation home from work on a Tuesday. Mr. Coulson had hand-delivered it to him that afternoon and said management thought the workers ought to be represented at the official opening of the Queenston powerhouse. “We’d like to include everyone,” he said to Tom, “but we can’t, and you’re the one we chose.”

  I was delighted, but as Tom spread the invitation on the kitchen table, he said, “I’m not so sure.”

  We get few invitations, certainly none as grand as the opening. There were to be speeches and pomp at the powerhouse, and then dinner and dancing in the ballroom of the Clifton House. I wanted to go. “I don’t think Mr. Coulson would understand if you declined,” I said. “It’s an honor to be picked.”

  “I’d get mixed up about which fork to use.” I had explained it to him once, about starting with the utensil farthest from the plate, and he had shrugged his shoulders but never since made a mistake.

  I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the truth.

  “I’d feel like a phony, celebrating.”

  I shifted my attention from the invitation to the saucer I was wiping dry. “You can accept or decline,” I said, aiming for nonchalance. “I won’t bother you about it either way.”

  “You’ve got your heart set on going.”

  “I wonder if Kit might be there with her husband.” Foolish or not, I was hopeful. It had been four years since Edward was killed, four years since I had seen the hostility in her gaze as she sat listening to the Niagara Falls Citizens Band. What is more, I came upon her in the street a short while ago and as usual she glanced away, but afterward I was almost certain of a moment’s hesitation before she did. Maybe enough time had passed.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind shaking Drury’s hand.” Since he became premier, Drury’s government has set out policies more sweeping than Ontario has ever seen for replanting forests and conserving water, and Tom very much approved. Still, I knew he had changed his mind on account of me.

  I smiled. “I’ll finally get going on a new coat.”

  “But I like your black one,” he said.

  We drive along River Road in the Packard Mr. Coulson sent for us. The walk from Silvertown to the powerhouse is four and a half miles, and Tom regularly makes it on foot. But today the road is muddy and rutted, and the slush along the sides is at least six inches deep. Had we walked, we would have been spotted with dirt long before we arrived.

  I made Tom’s overcoat as a Christmas gift the year before, and his suit has hardly been worn since our wedding day. The seams were ample, and I let out the trouser legs, also the waist of the jacket. His figure is as trim as ever, but a boxier sort of tailoring has come into style. I bought him a charcoal gray bowler with a small, speckled feather tucked into the band. He says he looks a fop in it, but he is wrong. Without trying, he is elegant. A quick shave and a comb through his hair. That is all it takes.

  I had plenty of dresses to choose from and tried on one after another, remembering Isabel in the frock, heading off to a tea or in solemn procession at her graduation. When I got to my white concert dress, the memory was of me, hauling a trunk at Loretto, a section of skirt hiked up and tucked under the sash around my waist. A too long hemline is easy enough to fix, but women cast off the boning and lace collars and heavy skirts of the dresses ages ago, during the war, once they had learned to hoe potatoes and grind the noses of artillery shells.

  There was no time for an entirely new frock, not if it was to have a bit of beadwork, but hidden away in my old trunk was the gown Isabel had meant to wear on her wedding day. Mother h
ad put hours of work into beading the overskirt. I had never forgotten how lovely it was, with swirl upon swirl of seed pearls aligned end to end. It had always seemed such a waste.

  So I am decked out in a midcalf-length chemise with an outer layer made from the overskirt of Isabel’s wedding gown. The frock was a cinch to make with the beading already done. The underlayer is pale pink, a silk georgette that feels luxurious against my skin, even more so when I think of the low whistle Tom let out as he saw me coming down the stairs. “I’ll have to make sure some rich fellow doesn’t run off with you,” he said. Because the dress easily stands on its own, I wear no jewelry other than Isabel’s aluminum bracelet, which is always clasped around my wrist.

  Two more of my designs will debut tonight at the Clifton House. Mrs. Harriman chose a chic suit of sea green, sequined French serge, which Mrs. Coulson had insisted on inspecting when I made the mistake of mentioning it. She had traced a finger along a lapel and let out a satisfied humph. “Lovely, but I prefer my own,” she said. I decided against showing her my chemise. The beadwork is exceptional, and what is more she is curvaceous and the newer styles are more suited to women with the flat chest and narrow hips of a boy. At long last my figure is in style and my dress is perfect and Tom is handsome in his bowler and we are being driven in a Packard to the party of the year.

  Before descending to the powerhouse at the river’s edge, Tom leads me over a series of planks to the rim of the gorge. Nine immense troughs have been at least partially gouged into the cliff face. Only two have been laid with the giant pipes through which the water will fall. Solid walls exist for the southern end of the screen house at the top of the gorge. The northern end is a hodgepodge of girders and scaffolding roughly marking out what has yet to be built. And at the base of the gorge the massive building meant to house the turbines and generators is as ramshackle as its counterpart above. “It hardly seems ready,” I say. I am not disappointed. The newspapers are correct; it will be another five years before all the generators are switched on, another five years of steady income for Tom.