The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Ariah said, her voice trembling, “Very well then. Mr. Burnaby. Move in with ‘Nina Olshaker’—this paragon of suffering and virtue—who happens to be young enough almost to be your daughter—and her precious children. More precious to you than your own children. Move into this honeymoon cottage in pastoral Mt. Lucas. We don’t need you here. We never see you anyway. I can support us with piano lessons. Go on, go away.”

  “Ariah, don’t say such things. I can’t believe you mean it.”

  “You’ve gone outside the family. You’ve betrayed us.”

  Dirk reached for Ariah as she turned from him, all he could grab was the bottle of scotch. Ariah ran barefoot and whimpering up the carpeted stairs. “Away, away! I hate you, we all hate you, go away.”

  “Ariah—”

  Dirk stood panting and perspiring at the foot of the stairs. He could hear his distraught wife running flat-footed, now rather heavily and without grace, into the nursery—was that where Ariah went? No, she’d gone into Royall’s room, next to the nursery. She would wake the dazed little boy from his fathoms-deep sleep, and half-carry, half-drag him into the baby’s room, and there she would astonish the Irish nanny by shutting and locking the door behind her as if she and Royall were pursued by a demon. She would snatch up the sleeping baby out of her cradle, crooning to and comforting the children she was terrorizing, she would warn the frightened Bridget to stay away from the door, and if Dirk dared to ascend the stairs to knock gently and reasonably at the nursery door (but Dirk would not, he knew better) Ariah would scream at him through the door, with the fury of a mother bird protecting her young.

  In the hall outside the nursery, there poor Chandler might be standing. Barefoot too, in his rumpled flannel pajamas. Possibly Chandler would have had time to put on his glasses, but probably not. Chandler blinking and squinting at his distraught father, locked out of the nursery by fiery Ariah.

  But Dirk knew better than to pursue the woman. Bottle in hand, he fled the house at 22 Luna Place.

  Wondering would he ever return? Would Ariah want him, and would he want to rejoin her; had he the strength to rejoin her, and yet continue with Love Canal? He could not give either up. At that moment, pressing down hard on the gas pedal of his car, he could not have guessed where he was headed, what this exhausting conversation with Ariah would mean. Even his gambler’s intuition had drained from him.

  Driving in the wind-buffeted night. In the forty-sixth year of his life. At the verge of the Deadline, he was. He could feel the rapid current yet more rapidly accelerating. There was no reversing his course now, nor even swerving to the side. Driving in the large luxurious American car that never ceased to remind him at such times of a boat; a boat manned by Dirk Burnaby himself, on the River Styx. He would drive, drive. He would not sleep. East of Luna Park, away from The Falls and into the interior. Something drew him like a magnet. It wasn’t the woman but something nameless. The lewdly winking teasing lights of Dow Chemical, Carborundum, OxyChem, Swann Chemicals. Alliance Oil Refinery, Allied Steel. Pale smoke like drifting bandages. And fog. And mist, obscuring the moonlit sky. East Niagara Falls was a region of perpetual drizzle. Smells that had become visible. Rotted eggs, sour and sweet and yet astringent like disinfectant. A taste of ether. Dirk drove, fascinated. He guessed that he must be driving in the vicinity of Love Canal. One Hundred First Street and Buffalo Avenue. He’d swing around on Buffalo, to Veterans Road. He had all night. He was in no hurry. He had no destination. Lifting the bottle of scotch to drink, grateful. This consolation a man knew he could rely upon.

  Into the underworld that opened to receive me.

  3

  ONE BY ONE, in the late winter and early spring of 1962, his brothers turned from him.

  There was the day at City Hall when Tyler “Spooky” Wenn stared coldly at him, and passed Dirk Burnaby without a word. “Hello, Mr. Mayor!” Dirk called after the man’s stiff retreating back, in a phalanx of several other stiff retreating backs, the mayor’s companions. In a voice of perfectly pitched mockery Dirk Burnaby spoke.

  There was the day when Buzz Fitch passed him by. Or nearly. Pausing at Dirk’s table in the Boat Club, unsmiling, A curt nod. Fitch’s grave, gravelly voice. “Burnaby.” Dirk glanced up, and forced a smile. But he knew not to extend a hand to be rebuffed. “Fitch. Mr. Assistant Chief of Police Fitch. Congratulations!”

  (Did Fitch pack a gun, wearing a suit and tie, dining at the Boat Club with friends? Dirk had to suppose, yes.)

  There was the day when Stroughton Howell passed him by: Dirk’s old law school friend, newly appointed Judge Howell of the Niagara County District Court, in handsome black judge’s robe worn with a theatrical flair. Yet his moist-eyed glance at Dirk was one, Dirk would afterward recall, of pained regret, as Howell moved toward an elevator in deep conversation with one of his clerks in the high-ceilinged open foyer of the county courthouse, and Dirk Burnaby prepared to leave by a side door. Howell stared, and Howell murmured what sounded like, “Dirk!”, and seemed about to say more then decided no, and moved on. “Judge Howell, hello,” Dirk called after the man.

  But Judge Howell, entering the elevator, didn’t glance back.

  Congratulations on your appointment, Judge. I’m sure you deserve it, even more than your esteemed colleagues on the bench.

  And there was the painful evening at the Rainbow Grand where he’d gone for a drink with his old friend Clyde Colborne. After one of his long days. After one of his very long days. And Clyde Colborne said quietly, “Burn. I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.” And Dirk said, irritably, “No, Clyde. Tell me.”

  Clyde shook his head gravely. As if Dirk were asking too much of him, even in friendship.

  Dirk said, “What I’m doing, Clyde, is following my instinct for once. Not the money trail. My conscience.”

  Conscience! Clyde glanced at Dirk, alarmed.

  “You can afford a consciance, Dirk. You’re a Burnaby. But that won’t last forever.” Clyde paused, suppressing a mean-brotherly smile. “The way your practice is hemorrhaging, it won’t hardly last the year.”

  “I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about justice.”

  Justice! Like conscience, this merited a look, from Clyde, of alarm.

  Clyde Colborne was fast becoming a ruin of a handsome man. He still had the rich-boy’s swagger, that never offended because it invited you to join in; he still had the hotelier’s gregarious air. But in recent years the Rainbow Grand was drawing fewer guests, and far fever rich guests, each season. You could see and feel the shift along Prospect Street, in the other old luxury hotels, as if the climate of Niagara Falls were changing. As if the air of the city were changing: instead of fresh chill winds from the Gorge, there was now a prevailing odor of chemicals, a yeasty haze to streetlamps and to the moon by night. And on the outskirts of the rapidly growing city there were ever more cheaply constructed motels, “motor cabins.” Bargain accommodations for American in packed cars and campers. Families with young children, in addition to honeymooners. Tourists on buses. Retirees. People who cared not the slightest for gourmet food and drink, or quality cabaret singers, or fresh-cut flowers in expensive hotel suites, or Irish harpists in the lobby. These were the true twentieth-century Americans, Clyde Colborne shuddered at the vision.

  Saying now, “This, what you’re doing, Burn. God damn! The publicity. It’s rotten for our image. It’s hurting tourism. Things are bad enough, in certain quarters desperate enough, and you come along. If—” Clyde paused, flushing with embarrassment. He, who’d taken three years of Latin at the Academy, translating, with Dirk Burnaby’s help, Cicero and Virgil, stammering now like an asshole cartoon character spouting dialogue unworthy of him and his friendship with Dirk Burnaby but God damn if he could think of other, more worthy words. This pained him, and he resented it. “ ‘Love Canal.’ It’s getting as much fucking attention as The Falls, or more. Every time I open a fucking newspaper.”

  The men fell silent. Dirk Burnaby, with so mu
ch to say, so much he couldn’t bring himself to say (this long exhausting day of meeting with expert witnesses, interviewing three pairs of parents in Colvin Heights whose young children had died of leukemia within the past two years), found that he had nothing to say. And seeming to know that this would be the last time he would speak with Clyde Colborne, his friend.

  A dangerous moment when Dirk had an impulse to toss his drink into Clyde’s face. But no. You don’t surrender to such impulses except in melodramatic Hollywood films. And this wasn’t Hollywood, and certainly this was no film. For, in films, there are close-ups, distance shots, “master” shots, fade-outs and quick merciful cuts. There is an under-current of music signaling what emotion you are meant to feel. In what’s called life, there is a continuous stream of time like the river rushing to The Falls, and beyond. No escape from that river.

  So Dirk didn’t toss his drink into Clyde Colborne’s face, nor did he finish it. He sat it down on the glass-topped little table between his and Clyde’s legs. He tossed down a twenty-dollar bill, and stood before Clyde could protest the drinks were on him, Jesus!

  “Yes. Love Canal is hurting us. Goodbye, Clyde.”

  Had to admit, he missed poker nights. God damn there was a hole in his heart, he missed those bastards.

  There was one of Dirk’s brothers-in-law. The one who’d married Sylvia. Small shrewd eyes and an oily skin glistening like a seal’s hide. Dirk had a moment’s panic that this brother-in-law was intent upon inviting him home for a family dinner out on the Island, haven’t seen you in a long time, miss you, Dirk, and so does Sylvia, but it wasn’t that at all, no invitation to dinner on the sleek brother-in-law’s mind, instead he gripped Dirk’s elbow urgently: “ ‘Love Canal.’ That’s a Negro neighborhood, isn’t it? Over on the east side?”

  Politely Dirk explained to the brother-in-law no, Love Canal was not a Negro neighborhood.

  “And if it was?”

  Seeing the expression on Dirk Burnaby’s face, which was ordinarily a cordial face in the company in which the two men were accustomed to meeting, the brother-in-law released his grip on Dirk’s elbow, and backed off. He stammered a few more words, and goodbye. Yes he’d say hello to Sylvia. Yes he’d report to the relatives that Dirk Burnaby was a changed man, an angry dangerous man, it was exactly as everyone was saying of him. A traitor to his class.

  The framed, autographed glossy photo of Dirk Burnaby was still there, on the celebrity wall at Mario’s. No one had suggested to Mario that it be removed, yet. Possibly Mario would never remove it.

  When I win, I’m going to win big.

  Watch me.

  One night Dirk drove to l’Isle Grand, where he hadn’t been in months. Estranged from Claudine. Estranged from l’Isle Grand Country Club. Yet curious to know, if he went to the Club, if anyone would speak to him? Acknowledge him? He’d have a late dinner at the Club, on a whim.

  “Mr. Burnaby. Hello.”

  The gravely smiling maître d’ glanced over Mr. Burnaby’s broad shoulder to see how many in Mr. Burnaby’s party. No one?

  The elegant dining room was still three-quarters full, at just after 10 P.M. Couples, tables of six and eight, no one who seemed to recognize Dirk Burnaby, or glanced up smiling in Dirk Burnaby’s direction. And not a face he knew. Blurred and indistinct these faces were, like smudged thumbprints. “In the bar, I think. I’d rather be seated in the bar.”

  It was the gentlemen’s Cigar Bar. In fact, Dirk would dine at the bar. As an experiment. To see if any of his old friends and acquaintances would join him.

  No one joined him. Even the service was slow. It was the kind of service you might designate as lightly ironic.

  Lightly ironic is not the kind of service a man expects, at a club to which he’d been paying dues for decades.

  Dirk ordered a scotch straight up, and waited for some minutes while the bartender prepared it. He was thinking possibly he’d skip dinner. It was getting late for a T-bone steak. Or a twelve-ounce ground-round burger on kimmelwich, a speciality of the Cigar Bar. He had not returned home for two days. Ariah was too proud to formally expel him and yet: he knew himself expelled.

  Wanting to grip Ariah’s shoulders and plead with her I can’t choose, I won’t choose, between my family and my conscience how can I choose!

  Of course, Dirk could return home whenever he wished. If he could bear it. For Ariah had given him up. Given him over, in her heart, to the other woman.

  Though the other woman was a phantom of Ariah’s own contriving.

  (Of Nina Olshaker, Dirk tried not to think. The woman’s anxiety about her children, and Love Canal. The woman’s anxiety about the future. Always Dirk Burnaby had protected himself against the anxiety of his clients, except not now. Except somehow, not this time. “What will happen to us? What if we lose? We can’t lose, can we? Mr. Burnaby, can we?” The other woman pleading with Dirk Burnaby as you might plead with a savior.)

  (But no. One never pleads with a savior. Isn’t that the promise of the savior, no pleading? No abject anxiety?)

  (Impossible to think of such things. No wonder he had no appetite for red meat. Another drink, instead!)

  “Mr. Burnaby?”

  “Yes, Roddy?”

  “The gentleman has sent you this drink. With his compliments.”

  Dirk who’d been gazing into the sluggish mucky water of Black Creek, that was fed by swales bisecting the buried Love Canal, glanced up uncertain of his surroundings. It was strangely late, past 11 P.M. He couldn’t recall if he had eaten or not. He guessed he’d had several drinks. The Cigar Bar was nearly empty, yet rife with the stuporous odors of cigar smoke that made his eyes water as more frequently, since Love Canal, and the hours Dirk Burnaby spent in Colvin Heights, his eyes were likely to water, and sting. And a headache behind the eyes, not a rapid drumbeat headache but an andante beat, a drummer with a large muffled instrument. Dirk squinted at the far end of the polished cherrywood bar where a tall figure stood, lifting a glass in Dirk’s direction. A friend? A familiar face? A stranger? Dirk’s eyesight wasn’t so reliable lately as it had once been. He guessed that the individual at the far end of the bar, dark suit, white shirt, dark sculpted hair brushed back from his forehead, must be a member of l’Isle Grand Country Club and yet must be someone who supported Dirk Burnaby in his Love Canal campaign.

  Dirk fumbled for his glass of scotch and lifted it in a toast as the individual at the far end of the bar, in a mimicry of a mirror-gesture, lifted his glass in a toast. Both men drank.

  Through a haze of headache pain Dirk saw the stranger’s face shift to a sudden lewd grin. The shadowy blank eyes in the skull. A radium-glow to the bony forehead.

  “Mr. Burn’by! Goo’ luck!”

  Hemorrhaging money. Like time.

  How he’d become, without being aware of it, a kind of upright needle, his (empty) head the eye of the needle, through which Time flowed in an erratic but ceaseless stream. Going past, going past, ceaseless into the past.

  “Zarjo”

  On the eve of the Love Canal hearing, Dirk Burnaby astonished his family by bringing home a foundling puppy from the SPCA shelter.

  The date was May 28, 1962. The eve of the much-postponed hearing at the Niagara County Courthouse, District Judge Stroughton Howell presiding. The eve, too, of Juliet Burnaby’s first birthday.

  Did I remember? Of course I remembered.

  All my life, I remember.

  Was it a coincidence, Daddy brought Zarjo home that evening?

  Daddy protested as if his feelings were hurt. “ ‘Coincidence’?—hell, no. As Einstein says, God doesn’t play dice with the universe.”

  Dirk Burnaby who was Daddy in the household at 22 Luna Park.

  Dirk Burnaby who was Daddy, and adored as Daddy, nowhere else but at 22 Luna Park.

  As in a fairy tale the puppy came already named: “Zarjo.”

  Pronounced, as Daddy insisted, “ ‘Zar-yo.’ A Hungarian name.”

  The boys, Royall and Chandle
r, had wanted a puppy of course. Royall in his clamorous way, Chandler in his rather wistful, unemphatic way. As soon as Royall had seen dogs belonging to other children, naturally he’d wanted a dog for himself. As soon as Royall had been able to utter “pup-py” he’d been begging for one.

  Ariah, the most cautious of mothers, had been unresponsive to such blandishments. She’d known not to recoil bluntly No of course not, you’re not going to have a puppy in this house, not ever. She’d known not to laugh in her sons’ yearning faces. A puppy! Another helpless un-house-broken baby creature to love, well count Mommy out this time.

  In a delirium of excitement like Zeus emerging from a cloud there came Dirk Burnaby who hadn’t been home for two days now home abruptly just as his amazed family was about to sit down to dinner, an early dinner at 6 P.M., prepared by Ariah and Bridget companionable in the kitchen as sisters, or almost, suddenly Daddy was in the kitchen with them and in his arms a squealing, pee-piddling little furry thing. Appalled, Ariah saw and knew the worst: it was alive.

  Alive! Zarjo was more than alive. Zarjo was a firecracker of aliveness. Zarjo was an atomic fusion of aliveness. His wavy fur the hue of soiled butterscotch, black rings around his moist blinking eyes. Part beagle, part cocker spaniel, Zarjo was. And part mongrel. But “promising not to be a big dog, probably,” as the vet at the SPCA had assured Dirk Burnaby.

  One of those impulses that were increasingly ruling Dirk Burnaby’s life. One of those hunches, a fiery flash of knowing-what’s-right. Dirk had left his office nerved-up and optimistic about the next morning’s hearing, he’d intended to drop by Mario’s for a drink but instead he’d swung around to the SPCA shelter as if drawn by a magnet to Fifth Street and Ferry and there he was amid a frenetic barking and yipping of furry creatures selecting one of the smaller ones.