The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Ariah’s friend was a Polish Jew, born in Warsaw, in the Vilna ghetto, who’d emigrated to the United States in 1946. He, too, had been a musician, a violinist. But he had not played in years. His fingers and nerves were gone. Pankowski stared at his fingers, trying to flex them. The setter Hugo strained and tugged at the leash, nearly breaking away.

  Chandler was tempted to ask what had happened: 1946? But he knew better. One could guess what this man had survived.

  “The first music of your mother’s I heard, last June on this sidewalk, was a Chopin mazurka. Hugo and I were passing by, and we were stopped. We could not continue. Later, not that evening but another time, we would hear your sister sing, two little songs from Schumann’s Myrten. Of course, we did not know who these people were, so gifted. ‘Juliet’—a name out of Shakespeare! A shy girl but with a lovely alto voice. But you know, of course. You are her brother.”

  Chandler frowned. In fact he didn’t know, much.

  Years ago when Juliet was hardly more than a child, Ariah had tried to “train” her voice, as she’d tried to “train” Royall. But Ariah had been too demanding, and the lessons ended in tears and hurt feelings. Chandler knew that Juliet sang in the girls’ chorus at the high school, and often sang solos; but he hadn’t known that Juliet sang for Ariah, ever.

  Out of politeness Chandler asked if Pankowski lived nearby, and the older man said, embarrassed, “Not so near! But not so far.” His stitched-together face flushed. Ariah’s piano playing ended abruptly, and Pankowski seemed now eager to be gone. He stammered, “Please give my warm greetings to your mother, will you please, Mr. Chandler, I mean—Chandler. Thank you. Goodnight!”

  Pankowski walked on, stiff-kneed, tugging at Hugo’s leash. The aged setter followed reluctantly, looking back at Zarjo who barked several times in rapid succession, like a wind-up dog.

  Chandler thought He’s in love with her. God help him.

  When Chandler asked Ariah about Joseph Pankowski, she too seemed embarrassed. “Oh, him. The shoe-repair man.” Ariah tried for an air of faint scorn, not meeting Chandler’s eye. “We go to summer concerts in the park, sometimes. He’s a widower. His children are grown and gone.” Ariah paused as if to say Like mine. Chandler said, “Well, he seems like an exceptionally nice man. A cultivated man. He used to play violin, and he admires your piano playing.” Ariah laughed dismissively. “He’s told you his life history, has he? Too-lonely people talk too much.” She frowned into a corner of the room as if into infinity, with a shiver of disdain. “He was in Birkenau. He will never not be ‘in Birkenau.’ There is a tattooed number on his left wrist. He wears long-sleeved shirts but still you can see it.” Ariah paused, rubbing at her own slender wrist. “I would think you could have such an ugly tattoo removed, if you made the effort.”

  Chandler objected, “Removing tattoos is painful, Ariah. Maybe it can’t always be done.”

  Ariah said hotly, “I would do it.”

  Mother and son were breathing quickly as if they’d been quarreling. But of what? Why? Chandler had a fleeting memory of how, in this kitchen, years ago, Ariah had lunged at him without warning in a flaring-up of temper, because he’d been sidling out of the room. A spy, she’d called him.

  A spy?

  Ariah countered Chandler’s questions about Joseph Pankowski by asking him about his “married-woman friend.” Chandler said he had not seen or heard from Melinda in twenty-two days.

  Ariah was impressed. “Twenty-two! You’ve been counting.”

  “Not deliberately, Mom.”

  Ariah considered what she might say. Ordinarily she never spoke of Melinda except elliptically, as one might allude to a vague, vaguely threatening condition, like a downturn in the economy, a forecast of Asian flu. She said, “I’m sure she’s a very fine woman. A nurse. It’s always good to have a nurse in the family! But older than you, isn’t she? And divorced, already. And under such disagreeable circumstances, her husband leaving her before their baby was born!”

  Chandler knew better than to defend Melinda to his mother. How many times he’d said Yes but they married too young. Yes it was a mistake. Wanting to say Yes I love her, why is that a threat to you?

  Ariah continued, frowning, “If she wants to break off your friendship, I’d respect her judgment. She’s more mature then you are. I can see why she’d be jealous of your ‘crisis’ work. And there is something unnatural about a couple in which the woman is older than the man, when men are so immature to begin with. Royall and Candace—there was a mismatch brewing.”

  Chandler laughed. “Mismatch? You introduced them, Ariah. You practically proposed to each of them.”

  Ariah smiled. A warm flush rose into her face. She loved being teased by her sons; now that Royall was gone, Chandler must do.

  “Well. Your mother makes mistakes, too. She’s only human.”

  Only human! This was news to Chandler.

  Later, when Chandler’s visit was concluding, and Ariah seemed to be in good spirits, Chandler dared to say he’d driven out to l’Isle Grand recently. “I spoke with my aunts. Clarice and Sylvia.”

  “ ‘My aunts.’ Isn’t that cozy. Since when are those dreadful snobs ‘your’ aunts?” Ariah spoke calmly, as if bemused.

  “Aunt Clarice told me something very strange—”

  “I’m sure she did.”

  “She told me—”

  Ariah pressed her hands over her ears. “Please don’t tax my credulity, Chandler. I’m willing to believe, that vindictive old harpy who has it in for me told you something very strange.”

  Ariah was laughing, or trying to laugh. Chandler hesitated. How could he ask his mother if she’d been married twice? If her first husband had “thrown himself” into The Falls? It was all so improbable. More than improbable, fantastic. Like those long-ago tales of sensation, romance, doom once told of The Falls, in another century.

  Impulsively Chandler said, “Mom? Am I—was I—Daddy’s and your son? I mean—I wasn’t adopted, was I?”

  “Adopted! What a thing to say.”

  Chandler hadn’t meant to say adopted. In his confusion, he didn’t know what he meant to say.

  Ariah fumbled to touch Chandler’s wrist, to console him. Her eyes, only just a moment before green-glinting with fury, immediately softened. She said, in her low, sincere voice:

  “Honey, of course you weren’t adopted. You were born right here in Niagara Falls, at the hospital. You must have seen your birth certificate, I’m sure you’ve had to use it. What on earth are you saying, Chandler? At such a time! You’re an adult, twenty-seven years old. Darling, you weren’t an easy birth, I was in labor with you for eleven hours and twelve minutes and I remember vividly, it’s false to say that a mother can’t recall such things, especially with the first birth, and you were—you are—my first-born.” Ariah spoke emphatically, tugging at Chandler’s arm as if he were about to disagree. “That can never change.”

  “And my father—”

  “We don’t speak of him. He’s gone.”

  “My father was Dirk Burnaby.”

  Ariah shut her eyes, stiffening. Her mouth had gone small and pinched, snail-like. A plait of hair had come loose, disheveled onto the nape of her neck. Chandler drew a breath, as of triumph. In this house, in his mother’s presence, he’d at last uttered the name Dirk Burnaby.

  “When he died, it was an accident, yes? It was ruled an accident?”

  When Ariah didn’t reply, Chandler dared to ask, “What about Daddy’s life insurance, if it was an accident? And his will? There must have been money.”

  Ariah pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. Chandler felt her agitation, before she spoke.

  “I couldn’t accept it. Blood money. Tainted money. I could not.”

  Chandler had to think, to absorb this. What was Ariah telling him?

  As she spoke, rapidly and nervously, as if repeating words she’d rehearsed numerous times, Chandler felt the edges of his vision begin to darken, to shrink. “They tried
to make me. His lawyers. His family, even. But I refused. I had to refuse. It wasn’t pride, I am not a creature of pride. When he left us, I closed my heart to him and to all the Burnabys.”

  Chandler couldn’t believe what Ariah was telling him. Even as a part of his mind thought calmly Of course. I knew. It had to be something like this. “Mom, what? How much money did you ‘refuse’?”

  “I did sell the house. That ridiculous house, that habitation of vanity, had to be sold. And so we moved here. And we’ve been happy here, haven’t we? The four of us. And Zarjo. Our little family.”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Well, haven’t we? We lived lives of integrity. American lives of”—Ariah searched for the word, now appealing to Chandler—“self-respect. Oh, I did ‘use’ some of the blood money, from the sale of the house. There has always been some money in the bank. Only just a little, in case of some terrible emergency, God knows what God might send when you have three children and are unprotected in the world. I wanted to spare you that other life, the Burnaby life. Whatever our lives have been, they are ours.” Ariah pleaded, “And we have been happy, Chandler? Haven’t we?”

  “How much money did you turn back?”

  “I have no idea. I refused to be informed. I refused to be tempted, Chandler. In my place, I hope you would have done the same thing.”

  Years of Baltic Street. The near-destitute Burnabys. Chandler laughed, incredulous. Would he have done the same thing?

  “No.”

  “Oh, Chandler. Yes you would. Even before the Love Canal scandal, I knew the Burnaby money was tainted.”

  “ ‘Tainted’! Ariah, you’re like a character in grand opera, not life. This is Niagara Falls, this is life. All money is tainted, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That is not true. You, a public school teacher, have higher morals than that.”

  “The truth is, you meant to punish him. Dirk Burnaby. By rejecting his money. By punishing us. As if, beyond the grave, he’d have seen, and been sorry.”

  “No. It was a matter of principle. In my place, you would have done the same thing. Chandler, tell me yes.”

  By this time Chandler’s head was seriously pounding. He saw with a kind of clinical detachment that his vision had perceptibly narrowed, as if he were at an emergency scene. Tunnel vision. A symptom of of panic, but controlled panic.

  “Mom, I’m leaving.”

  At this moment Juliet returned home, having been baby-sitting in the neighborhood. Fleet and secretive as a feral cat Chandler’s sister rapidly ascended the stairs with no more than a murmured hello, as if knowing how Ariah would have waved her away, not wanting her to interrupt the intense conversation in the kitchen with her son.

  Chandler stood, blundered to his feet. Trying to think The fact is, I am his son. None of the rest matters. He hugged Ariah, feeling how thin she was, wiry-thin, taut. When he kissed her goodnight, her skin burned his cheek. He tried to say he’d call, he’d drop by next day after school, but the words choked in his throat. Literally he was weak-kneed. Ariah followed him to the front door and called from the porch, her voice low, thrilled as a young girl’s. “Darling, tell me ‘yes.’ You would.”

  Carelessly Chandler called back, over his shoulder as he was getting into his car, as if this were a trifling matter and not one involving how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it would make him faint to calculate, “Oh Mom, sure. You know me.”

  Never would he understand his mother. And so he would have to love her, without understanding.

  There was Mommy scrubbing at Daddy’s wrist with a wire brush, hard. The two of them upstairs at the old house in Luna Park, the first house. Where Chandler was the only child. Mommy was excited, anxious. Daddy’s face was blurred but you could see it had been stitched together, mended. Chandler, a small child, crouched at the doorway, then crawled closer, hidden from the adults by the end of the bed. That big carved mahogany bed. The room was floodlit and blinding-bright yet dim, it was difficult to see. Couldn’t see the man’s face but knew it was Daddy. As Mommy rubbed the brush against the raw bleeding wrist, for there was something in the skin that offended her. Drops of blood like raindrops flew into the air and some of these fell on Chandler. He was sobbing, trying to wrench the wire brush away from his mother’s strong fingers and in the struggle woke himself, dazed and spent.

  9

  “OUR SUBJECT TODAY is The Falls. And erosion.”

  On the front blackboard of Mr. Burnaby’s ninth-grade science classroom is a simplified but accurate map of the Niagara River, drawn with rapid strokes of chalk by Mr. Burnaby (who must carry such a map, to scale, in his head). Still on the board from last week is:

  EROSION TIME EROSION TIME

  Mr. Burnaby says, pointing with the chalk, “The Falls are currently here, at Niagara Falls. Our city. A little more than two miles from this classroom. But The Falls weren’t always here, and will not remain here. The Falls is in motion.”

  The Falls originated downriver, north of the city at Lewiston, approximately twelve thousand years ago. Not very long ago in geological time; but earth erosion moves swiftly.

  “An inch a century? Yes, that’s ‘swiftly.’ ”

  Chandler Burnaby, master of arcane knowledge that impresses certain of his smarter students. Mr. Burnaby, ninth-grade science teacher in the Niagara Falls public school system, bravely striding across chasms of geological time, a stick of chalk in his fingers like a talisman.

  Mr. Burnaby, whom certain of the ninth-grade girls (it’s hardly a secret which ones) have crushes on.

  Mr. Burnaby, wearing his Mr. Burnaby face. Speaking his Burnaby voice.

  Telling these young adolescents, some of them looking hardly more than children, terrible heartrending profound truths of time, mortality, human isolation in a godless universe. Truths of loss, annihilation. As the red minute hand of the clock on the wall moves placidly, a wheel forever turning.

  Mr. Burnaby draws an inch-long line. How short it is on the blackboard, almost invisible. “Yes. A mere inch a century. But it’s a slow inexorable wearing-away of the riverbed along forty miles. When our man-made devices to impede erosion fail, The Falls will resume its movement. One day it will have moved all the way upstream, past l’Isle Grand, past Tonawanda, past Buffalo; one day, a very long time from now, The Falls will be at the source of the strait (for in fact the Niagara River isn’t a river, but a strait, connecting the two lakes) at Lake Erie.”

  Chandler wants to think that several of his students are absorbing this. Feeling it in their guts. The Falls, they’ve learned to take for granted, even to scorn, isn’t permanent?

  A bright boy waves his hand. Asks what the city will be called, if The Falls are gone from it? “Just ‘Niagara’? And no ‘Falls’?”

  “Probably,” Chandler says, “it won’t be called anything. There won’t be anyone here to take note of it. Like the great glaciers of the Ice Age, our city, and these other cities, will very likely have fallen into ruins, hidden in underbrush, inhabitants long gone. You’ve seen enough science-fiction to know the scenario. Things wear out, civilizations wear down, species vanish. Who knows where?”

  His students stare at him. There’s an uncomfortable silence. Who knows where? seems to hover in the air. He has frightened these young people for a few fleet seconds before the bell clamors and releases them and he seems to have frightened himself, too. Laying his chalk-stub into the tray beneath the blackboard but fumbling, it slips and falls shattering to bits at his feet.

  10

  HADN’T CALLED MELINDA.

  He could take pride in his restraint, at least.

  He’d been writing to Melinda, however. Coming to know her, and to know himself, intimately, from writing these letters though he put them away in a drawer without sending them.

  It wasn’t until after meeting Joseph Pankowski that he decided to send a few lines to Melinda. Terse as poetry:

  I am sorry.

  I think of you constantly.

&nbs
p; Yes I was wrong, to value my life so cheaply.

  I hope you can forgive me.

  How to sign it but Love, Chandler? There seemed no other way.

  He hated the many “I’s” in what he’d written. He was sick of his ego, his self trapped like a fly in a bottle.

  Yet he had to send this message. He’d written and rewritten each line numerous times, he couldn’t seem to improve it.

  Melinda didn’t reply, didn’t call. Yet somehow he felt encouraged.

  He would not harass her. He would not drive past her apartment building on Alcott Street. He would not dial her number, and listen to the ringing, and hang up quietly if the receiver was lifted.

  He would not go to the hospital to see if…Well, to see.

  He would not send flowers, with a card saying only Love, C. He believed that, to a woman, flowers from a man might be perceived as sexually aggressive.

  Instead, he sent her carefully chosen cards, scenic views of The Falls and the Gorge. These were meant to suggest an unearthly beauty. And the danger of such beauty.

  I can change, I think.

  I love you, and I love Danya.

  Will you give me another chance?

  In early May he searched for gently comical cartoon cards featuring nurses and patients, but found none that weren’t vulgar. He drew his own card, a man lying flat on his back on a gurney, a nurse extracting blood from the man’s arm.

  Melinda! I’m in your hands utterly.

  Have mercy.

  He waited.