The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The ceiling creaked overhead. Footsteps, sounding hesitant. Juliet? Her room was directly above the kitchen. Royall guessed that Ariah had sent Juliet upstairs, wanting no interference.

  Did Juliet adore him? Royall swallowed hard.

  His sister had been very upset by Royall’s news. For some reason, she’d been eager for Royall to get married. At first, typically for Juliet, she declared she would not attend the wedding: she hated “phony, fussy” ceremonies. Anyway, no one wanted her. She disliked “dressing UP”—“fixing her hair.” She was “so ugly, anyway.” But Ariah had appealed to Juliet, and eventually she’d changed her mind; lately she’d been anticipating the wedding with almost too much excitement. Instead of being a “colossal drag,” her brother getting married now was a source of deep happiness. A “new sister” was exactly what Juliet wanted, she’d said. Suddenly it had turned out that Juliet had “always wanted” a sister. “And maybe I’ll be an aunt, soon. I bet!” Juliet teased Royall, who blushed fiercely.

  But now, Juliet was devastated. When Royall spoke with her the other evening she’d ended up screaming at him, and slammed down the receiver.

  How could you! Oh, Royall! Damn your soul to hell.

  How determined they all were, Royall thought, not to lose one another. Not to surrender an inch.

  Ariah was watching Royall closely. She’d leaned over to stroke Zarjo’s back, as Royall continued to stroke the dog’s head. Soothed by the two people he loved most, Zarjo was becoming less agitated. Ariah said, “We’re having meat loaf for supper tonight, with onions and peppers. That thick tomato crust you like. And mashed potatoes, of course.”

  Royall’s favorite meal. He had to wonder if this was by chance.

  “O.K., Mom. That sounds good.”

  “Unless you have other plans.”

  Royall said nothing. Again, he heard the upstairs floorboards creak. Juliet would forgive him, too. In time. Royall, who’d come back home. Royall, who’d never left home.

  “I left word at his school, that Chandler should join us. He’s been so mysteriously busy, we haven’t seen him for days. Is he still involved with that ‘woman friend’ of his, Royall? The one who—”

  The young woman’s name was Melinda. She was married, but not to Chandler who was in love with her. Royall felt sorry for his older brother who seemed always to be taking care of others, including Royall. Why do you put up with such crap from Mom? Royall once asked Chandler, who’d stared at him in astonishment. Crap? What? Royall, what? Chandler hadn’t a clue what Royall was talking about.

  “Royall, tell me: did Chandler know about you and Candace?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you were going to break off the engagement.”

  “No. He did not.”

  “But you confide in him, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes. But not this time.”

  Ariah’s chin trembled. “If I learn that Chandler knew! That Chandler advised you…”

  “Well, Chandler didn’t.” Royall wanted to add, Why’d I ask Chandler anything about love, marriage, sex? Royall guessed that Chandler had never made love to any woman. Poor bastard, he was more his mother’s son than Royall had ever been.

  Ariah had finished her tea. Her pale cheeks were suffused with warmth. With girlish enthusiasm she said, “Well. We’ll have a cozy supper, just the four of us. I had a premonition you might be back. I prepared the meat loaf this morning, before my first student came…But if you’re going to eat with us, Royall, please bathe! You look as if you’ve been sleeping outdoors. You smell as if you’ve been with the pigs.”

  Royall laughed. He didn’t mind being teased in such a way, he was used to Ariah’s swift change of moods.

  But Ariah couldn’t smell the woman in black on him, that had happened days ago.

  In fact, Royall had fled the city to stay with a high school friend who now lived in Lackawana. In disgrace at home, he’d surfaced in the smoky industrial town south of Buffalo where no one knew him except this friend. On Saturday night they’d gone drinking. On Sunday afternoon they’d gone to the Fort Erie race track to distract Royall from guilty thoughts. There, it was Royall’s unexpected luck to win $62 on his first bet, which was the first bet of Royall’s life; to lose $78 on his second bet; to win $230 on his third bet; and, against his friend’s advice, recklessly betting most of his track earnings on a horse named Black Beauty II, an underdog at 8–1 odds, to win $1,312. One thousand three hundred twelve dollars! Beginner’s luck, Royall’s friend had marveled. Royall’s first adventure at any race track.

  Royall said, “Not pigs, Mom. Horses.” To Ariah’s surprise, he took out his wallet which was thick with bills, and began to count out money on the kitchen table. In an instant his manner had become swaggering, boastful. Royall could feel himself skidding, like a car on icy pavement. Six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred dollars…

  Ariah was shocked. “Royall! Where did you get so much money?”

  “Told you, Mom. Horses.”

  “Horses? The race track?”

  Now Ariah was staring at Royall as if she’d never seen him before.

  “After what has happened in your life, Royall, how could you do such a thing? The ‘race track.’ At such a time…”

  Royall reconsidered, and took back one of the hundred-dollar bills. This left six hundred in his wallet for Candace. And the rent on the apartment was paid for three months, Candace would remain there. Candace would resume her job at King’s Dairy where she was the most popular waitress. As Ariah predicted, within a year or two Candace would be engaged again, and this time married.

  Ariah was saying urgently, “Royall, don’t you hear me? What’s wrong with you suddenly? Have you been drinking, too?”

  “No, ma’am.” Royall frowned, pushing the bills toward Ariah. He did feel drunk, suddenly. Having trouble choosing the right words. As a young child he’d often been confused by printed words, the logic of their positioning on a page, that other children seemed to accept without question. (Or were their eyes different from Royall’s?) Sometimes he’d turned a book upside down, or tried to read sentences from the side, vertically. Other children, and his teacher, had thought that Royall was being amusing, eager to make them laugh. An affable sunny child, with fair flaxen hair and vivid blue eyes, that happy smile? No wonder, little Royall Burnaby had been everyone’s favorite.

  “Ariah. Can I ask you something?”

  It was rare for Royall to call his mother “Ariah.” She stiffened at the sound. She said:

  “I dread to think what it might be. When you’ve so clearly been drinking.”

  “Why did you name me ‘Royall’?”

  Ariah hadn’t expected this question. Clearly, she was taken by surprise.

  “ ‘Royall.’ ” Ariah passed her hand over her eyes as if trying to recall. She drew a deep breath, as if she’d been waiting for a very long time to be asked this question, and had prepared the answer. “I think—it must have been because—you were ‘royal’ to me. My ‘royal’ first-born son.”

  “Mom, Chandler was the first-born.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean that. But you, dear, you seemed to me my ‘royal’ son. Your father—” Ariah paused, stricken. But her poise was such, her hand didn’t tremble, lowered from her eyes. Her clouded green gaze never wavered, fixed on Royall’s face.

  Royall said casually, “At Fort Erie, somebody told me there was once a ‘Royall Mansion,’ a famous horse. In the 1940’s.”

  Ariah laughed nervously. “Well. I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t know anything about horses, or racing.”

  Royall said, “Hell, I wouldn’t mind being named for a horse, if it was a special horse. There are worse things.”

  Royall was behaving now as if he were about to leave. This was strange, for he’d only just come home. He said:

  “The money is for you, Mom. For wedding expenses. You paid out money of your own, a lot.”

  Ariah said quickly, “No. I can’t
accept your money. Not from the race track.”

  “From my regular job, then. I owe you. O.K.?”

  “Royall, no.”

  Ariah was on her feet. Her authority had been challenged, her sovereignty in this kitchen was at stake. She gazed hungrily at her opponent like one who has been attacked in her sleep, off-guard. She pushed at the hundred-dollar bills, and Royall stepped away. One of the bills fluttered to the floor. Royall kept the table between them. Zarjo eyed them both, haunches quivering.

  “It’s tainted money. I can’t touch it.”

  “Mom, it’s just money. And I sure do owe you.”

  Ariah had saved out dollars, quarters, dimes from her piano lessons over the years. If there was a secret fund, it was Ariah’s painstakingly acquired fund, kept in a savings account to earn a meager quarterly interest, or, Royall thought, hidden away in a dresser drawer upstairs in her bedroom. The conviction came over him powerful as the onslaught of flu: he loved this woman, his mother, and could not live with her any longer.

  Royall rubbed Zarjo’s head again, in parting. The dog’s eyes lifted mournfully to him.

  “Tell Juliet I couldn’t stay, Mom. I’ll be calling you.”

  Ariah said calmly, “Royall Burnaby. If you leave this house, you’re not welcome to return. Ever.”

  “O.K., Mom.”

  Strange that Royall was leaving without supper, when he was very hungry. Strange, he hadn’t known until this moment he would be leaving so suddenly, when a part of him, dreamy Royall, the child Royall, wanted so badly to stay. He would leave without taking the much-needed bath his mother had commanded for him. He would leave without going upstairs to take anything from his room; and when, next morning, he returned, he would find his belongings in a heap on the front porch, spilling over onto the sidewalk—clothes, shoes, boots, the guitar with the broken string, Niagara Falls High School ’76 Yearbook, portable radio, record player and dozens of records in their well-worn covers. In one of his scuffed cowboy boots Royall would discover, to his dismay, seven hundred-dollar bills neatly held together by a rubber band.

  And not even Zarjo would emerge to acknowledge him this time. The front door locked, and all blinds drawn.

  5

  Tell me about him? Our father?

  Royall, I can’t.

  Yes you can. Chandler, c’mon!

  I promised her. I gave her my word.

  When the hell was that? When we were kids? We’re not kids now.

  Royall, I—

  He’s my father, too. Not just yours. You can remember him, I can’t. Juliet can’t.

  Royall, I promised Mom. When he died. The police came, it was in all the papers. I was eleven. You were four and Juliet was just a baby. Mom made me promise I—

  How did he die? A car accident, right? In the river? It was raining and his car skidded—and his body was never recovered—is that it? Tell me!

  I said I can’t! She made me promise I would never talk about him, ever. Not to you, and not to Juliet. To other people we were supposed to say it all happened before we were born.

  But it didn’t! We were kids! You knew him! Tell me what our father was like.

  She would never forgive me if—

  I will never forgive you, Chandler! God damn.

  I gave Ariah my word. I can’t go back on that.

  She took advantage of you, being so young. That’s why we’re so lonely. We grew up, people looking at us like we’re freaks. Like cripples who can dance, and seem happy. People like us that way, they don’t have to feel sorry for us. God damn fuckers! It’s been going on all my life.

  Royall, Mom just wanted the best for us. It’s her way, you know what she’s like. She loves us, she wants to protect us—

  I don’t want to be protected! I want to know.

  Nobody can stop you from knowing whatever you can discover. But I can’t be the one to tell you.

  Why did she hate our father so much? Why was she so afraid of him? What kind of man was he? I want to know.

  Royall, we could talk this over in person. On the telephone, it’s a strain.

  No! If you won’t tell me anything about him, I don’t want to see you. It will only fuck me up more, to know that you know things and I don’t.

  Royall? Where are you calling from?

  What the hell do you care? A phone.

  Mom said you’ve moved out. You broke off the wedding, and you’ve moved out? If you need a place to stay—

  Go to hell.

  Furious, Royall hung up the phone.

  6

  “IT’S—UNDERGROUND?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  This was a surprise, somehow. Royall associated the downtown public library with its Doric columns and rotunda and the open space of its circulation desk. Underground didn’t fit in. But it was “old newspapers” Royall sought, and these were stored in the “periodical annex” on level C.

  The librarian regarded Royall doubtfully, yet politely. He might have exuded the air of a young man who’d spent as little time in libraries as he’d been able to manage until now. “What are you looking for, exactly?” Royall mumbled a reply, and backed off.

  As soon as Royall left the first-floor, well-lighted area of the old library, he found himself alone. His hiking boots made clumsy noises on the spiral metal staircase, like hooves, and a smothering smell, like sawdust mixed with backed-up drains, lifted to his nostrils. He felt his first moment of panic. What was he looking for, exactly?

  Since dawn it had been raining steadily. Dreamy October had turned from mild and sunlit to autumnal chill and a smell like wetted newspaper. In the distance above Lake Ontario thunder rumbled ominously, like a great freight train gathering steam. Royall hoped the storm would hold off until he was finished at the library.

  As if his task would be a matter of a half-hour, or less.

  Being furious with his brother was a new experience for Royall. Being “angry” with anyone, in fact. And expelled from home. Expelled from home! Maybe he’d join the Marines. They were recruiting boys just like him. Maybe he’d change his name: “Roy” was more fitting than “Royall” if you were on your own at nineteen, nobody’s son. If you were “Roy,” you wouldn’t smile so quickly, and so affably. You wouldn’t always be whistling and humming and hooking your thumbs in your belt like a sweet version of James Dean. You’d look adults—other adults—frankly in the eye and tell them what you wanted.

  Maybe.

  On level C, Royall felt as if he’d descended into a submarine. The periodical annex was a pitch-black cavernous space where visitors had to switch on their own lights. Royall worried that someone might come along, a librarian or a custodian, and switch off the stairwell lights, leaving him stranded underground. Jesus! No wonder he’d avoided libraries all his life.

  Royall fumbled for the switch. A blurred, flickering fluorescence seemed to glare from all surfaces equally. The smell of drains was stronger here. And that melancholy smell Royall recognized from his days as a delivery boy for the Gazette, wet newsprint. Royall had forgotten how much he’d hated that smell, how bound up with a child’s helplessness it was, and how deeply it was imprinted in his soul.

  “That’s why I hate you. One of the reasons. You went away, and left me to that smell.”

  He made his way past cartons of books and periodicals in towering stacks. Some were shoulder-high, others to the ceiling. Discarded items they must have been, waterlogged from leakage and unread for decades. The floor of level C was dull dirty concrete. Here and there, books and magazines lay spreadeagled, as if kicked. Royall was put in mind of the cemetery on Portage Road. Most of the annex was taken up with unpainted metal shelves in rows, floor to ceiling, with narrow walkways between. The shelves were marked alphabetically but there seemed to be little actual order. Waterstained, dog-eared copies of Life, dating back to the 1950’s, were mixed with more recent issues of Buffalo Financial News; the Niagara Falls Gazette, the primary object of Royall’s search, had been shelved in
various places, with papers from Cheektowaga, Lackawana, Lockport, Newfane. Someone had scattered pages of the Lockport Union Sun & Journal underfoot. Everywhere dates were confused, as in the aftermath of a violent wind-storm. It was sometime in early 1962 Royall believed he wanted, but where to begin?

  The woman in black had brought him here. He felt a stab of revulsion for her. Touching him as she had.

  It would take Royall nearly a half-hour to locate any issue of the Gazette for 1962; and this issue, he saw to his disappointment, was December. A Sunday edition, front-page headlines that had nothing to do with his father, or with Love Canal. Royall let the newspaper drop back onto the floor, squatting on his haunches.

  “Shit. I’m thirsty.”

  He hadn’t had a beer that day. It was early afternoon. He’d wait until later. When he’d accomplished something.

  Royall understood that his father—“Dirk Burnaby”—had been involved in the original Love Canal lawsuit, but he’d never known details. That early lawsuit had ended in defeat, so that “Love Canal” became a local joke, but later in the 1970’s when Royall started junior high, litigation was renewed. Not the same individuals, maybe. New lawyers. New litigants. There were more lawsuits, some of them directed against chemical companies other than Swann. Royall was only vaguely aware of these matters. His friends and classmates had sometimes spoken of such things because their families were involved in them, but their knowledge too was haphazard and scattered. Royall, who rarely read newspapers, and dreamt and dozed through social studies classes, hadn’t followed any of this closely. Chandler said they were “all right” living where they were on Baltic Street; at least, he hoped so. Ariah never spoke of such matters. If the wind shifted from the east, Ariah shut windows. If soot darkened windowpanes and windowsills, you cleaned them with paper towels. Ariah held newspapers literally at arm’s length, skimming headlines with a look of dread and disdain. She expected the worst from mankind, which allowed her to be pleasantly surprised, fairly often, when the worst failed to happen.

  You. At least you’re still alive.

  There was wisdom in that, maybe. Royall was learning.