The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Those green-gasoline eyes close to igniting. The pale freckled skin tight at her temples, and nerves pulsing beneath.

  Royall, you could save on rent. I wouldn’t charge a penny.

  Mom, thanks. But I guess not.

  Let me speak with Candace. She’s got a practical head on her shoulders.

  Mom, no.

  What you save on rent, you can put away for a down payment on a place of your own. Oh, Royall! Let me talk to Candace.

  Mom, I’d rather you didn’t. You know how Candace is around you. She admires you so, and she’s afraid of you, and she doesn’t know her own mind.

  Whose mind is she supposed to know? Yours?

  Hey, Mom. Don’t let’s fight, O.K.? Candace is going to be my wife, not yours.

  Maybe that’s the problem. That poor girl needs more family. More than just a husband can provide.

  Mom, the house is too small! Even with Chandler gone, it’s too small. Juliet would be uncomfortable, sharing the upstairs with Candace and me.

  That’s ridiculous. You know very well that Juliet is brokenhearted that you’re leaving, Royall. She adores you. And she adores Candace, as a sister.

  Jesus, Mom. Please.

  Are you afraid to let me speak with Candace? You are!

  Mom, stay away from Candace.

  My music room is winterized. You and Chandler did a wonderful job remodeling. I’ll move my bed downstairs, and we’ll buy you and Candace a beautiful big double bed. And you can have that mahogany dresser, it’s an antique. Candace can pick out a wallpaper design. The choice can be entirely hers. And curtains! Flounced white curains, I think. Royall, look at me. How can you be selfish about something so important? Candace deserves all the love she can get. Family is all there is on earth. Seeing there’s no God on earth.

  By the time Ariah finished this breathless speech she was trembling, and so was Royall. He would recall afterward with a shiver of dread how close he’d come to giving in. Always, it was far easier to give in to Ariah than to resist.

  But Royall was stubborn, and refused Ariah’s offer. No, no! If his mother made his wife into a second daughter, then he, Royall, would be sleeping with his sister. Christ!

  In the end Ariah relented. But next morning offered to help pay for Candace’s engagement ring. And again Royall gritted his teeth and thanked his mother politely, and declined.

  (Luckily Ariah hadn’t known, or guessed, that Candace thought she was pregnant at that time. Ariah was never to know.)

  Thinking these thoughts, that made the pulses in his head beat, Royall sat in the idling Chevy at the edge of the high school parking lot. He was staring at the buff-brick, flat-roofed, factory-like building. Ordinary, it was, even ugly, yet at dusk, in the early evening, as streetlights came on, the building seemed to float upon the stained asphalt pavement, every window mysteriously darkened. Damn, Royall regretted now he hadn’t tried harder. He’d been such a popular athlete: softball, football, basketball. If he hadn’t had to work after school, he’d have been on all the teams. As it was, he’d been allowed to substitute occasionally, when the team was facing a tough opponent, and Royall could get off from work. He’d been so well-liked, he’d been unaware, maybe, of another way of being; as a dreamer is unaware he’s asleep until wakened. His teachers had certainly encouraged him. If he’d gone to college he wouldn’t be getting married at the age of nineteen…Well, many of Royall’s classmates were married already. Girls especially. (Secretly) pregnant before their weddings, and grateful to be married to guys with jobs at Dow Chemical, Parish Plastics, Nabisco, Niagara Hydro. Most of Royall’s male friends worked for these, or similar factories, the highest paid workers’ jobs in Niagara Falls because they were unionized. Royall had never been attracted to factory work. “Real” work, eight hours a day and five days a week, union dues, contracts. The thought of punching a time clock made him wince. Royall Burnaby, who’d been so often applauded as an athlete, and for his singing-and-guitar performances for local audiences, punching a time clock! His pride would never allow it. And his good sense.

  If he’d gone to college. But Ariah hadn’t wanted her younger son to go to college. Over-reaching. Ambition. What does it get a man, it gets him dead. Ariah had spoken bitterly, unleavened by her usual caustic humor.

  What had hurt him, he’d never acknowledged to any living person, was having to follow Chandler in school. Chandler who’d gotten high grades in all subjects, especially math and science. Chandler who’d been a serious student in every class, with few friends and activities to distract him. Royall’s teachers had liked Royall, sure, but they hadn’t been able to resist comparing him constantly to Chandler, to Royall’s disadvantage. What the hell, why try? Anything Royall did academically, Chandler had already done better. In some cases, much better. Fuck it! Royall got into the habit of forgetting homework assignments, cutting exams. He’d told himself that being voted best-looking senior boy was better than being valedictorian of his class like Chandler. Ask the girls.

  “Royall! You aren’t looking like your self.”

  It was the lightest of reproaches. Not a scold. Candace had run to sling her arms around Royall’s neck and kiss his cheek that was uncomfortably warm, and needed shaving.

  This long day! He was an hour late, and his breath smelled of beer. Yet Candace wasn’t going to scold outright, preoccupied with wedding plans. Candace’s sister Annie was there, and two of Candace’s friends, and the phone was ringing, and Candace was in a bright glittery mood, like an astronaut, Royall was thinking, just before the moment of take-off.

  Candace kissed Royall again, wetly on the mouth. She had a way of kissing that was exclamatory and victorious. Royall blushed, the others were looking on. If he’d been alone with Candace he would have hugged her tight and buried his face in her crinkly, curly hair. He said not a word. He’d become confused by words. The woman in black had stolen away all his words, and he’d never been an articulate boy. Cap’n Stu had bade him goodbye and good luck with a pulverizing handshake and Royall hadn’t been able to respond with anything more than a wince.

  “You can’t stay long, honey. We’re going over the food.”

  Royall didn’t want to know what this meant. What food had to do with him and Candace getting married, or, in fact, what getting married had to do with him and Candace loving each other, or believing they loved each other. Since that night last spring when Candace wept in his arms whispering how she’d die if Royall didn’t love her, he’d been confused.

  Sometimes, hearing his fiancée and his mother excitedly discussing the wedding, which was never less than The Wedding, as you’d say The Holidays, or The Falls, Royall felt like an intruder. A church wedding? Was that what they’d be having? (But Royall wasn’t at all religious. He’d only attended a few services at the Church of Christ and Apostles, a sparrow-colored shingle-sided church on Eleventh Street, to please Candace. He’d had the vague idea that he and Candace would elope over a weekend? No?) Well, a church wedding was what they were having, as Royall learned. A small private wedding. But there would be a bridesmaid, or would there be two bridesmaids? There would be guests, a reception afterward at 1703 Baltic? Quite a surprise, that Ariah who never invited anyone into her home if she could avoid it, except her music students, would suddenly open the house to “guests”; Ariah, who scorned bourgeois convention, and had many times proclaimed her repugnance, to her children, for the “outmoded institution” of marriage, would be playing the organ at her son’s wedding, and had ventured out to buy her first new dress in years, at the Second Time ’Round Fashions downtown. “Royall, did your mother tell you the latest?” Candace asked, her glittery voice quavering. “My mother is coming. And, oh God, she insists she’s bringing this ‘man friend’ of hers nobody has ever seen.”

  Royall shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. He knew he was meant to share Candace’s indignation, or anxiety, but he wasn’t up to it. “I guess you’re tired, honey. That job of yours!” Candace sighed, turning to
appeal to her sister and friends, with whom no doubt she’d been sharing her disapproval of Royall’s occupation at the Devil’s Hole. “All those silly tourists clamoring around you. Half the women draping themselves over you and having their pictures taken! And I just know that boat isn’t safe. Going into the Niagara Gorge, it can’t be safe. And it doesn’t even pay that much, to make up for being dangerous.” Candace’s words lifted like the querulous notes of a bird’s cry. The tiny diamond on her left hand winked as Candace moved her hands about in a flurry of emotion, doll-like, prettily. Candace was a very pretty girl, twenty years old, but with the manner and affectations of a fifteen-year-old; her breathy soprano voice, her every gesture communicated prettiness, and an expectation that others respond to this prettiness, as a dancer moves to familiar music.

  “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 probably 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, 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 sobering 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 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, positively 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 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?”