The Falls (67 page)

In the car, seated beside him, Ariah says dryly, with dignity, “Of course I’m coming with you. How eccentric would it appear, if I did not?”

The Falls
X 469

3

S h e ’ s f i f t y- s e v e n y e a r s o l d. She lost him so long ago.

Fifty-seven! And he died, vanished, in his forty-sixth year. For a woman who accepts it that, yes she is damned, if not doomed, Ariah has lived a stubbornly self-reliant life bringing up three children in the very city of her outrage, sorrow, and shame; and never, so far as she has wished anyone to know, wanting to look back.

Saying to Chandler, “I told Joseph. You know: Pankowski, with the dog. He’s a widower twice over, fine for him. But I am not a widow.

I refuse the status. I think that self-defined ‘widows’ should commit suttee on their husband’s funeral pyres, and give the rest of us a break.” An intake of breath, a wicked smile. “Oh, the look on his face!”

(Chandler wonders: What is the relationship between Ariah and Joseph Pankowski? He has asked Juliet, who must know, but Juliet insists she does not. She doubts that Ariah knows, either.) Chandler worried that his mother would blame him for the memorial ceremony, since he’s acquainted with the organizer; not just the fact of the memorial, but its highly public, publicized nature. Yet, unexpectedly, Ariah has said nothing about blaming him, has not accused him of betraying her trust. Responding so weakly to the news, Ariah surprised us all. At first we were relieved, and then concerned.

“This isn’t normal for Mom.”

“This isn’t natural for Mom.”

“Well. Maybe it means—”

Maybe what? We had no idea.

We had no idea.

Even Chandler, who’d believed he’d been kept informed of the progress of the Love Canal Homeowners Association lawsuit.

Reading, in July 1978, the astonishing front-page interview in the
Buffalo Evening News
with Neil Lattimore, the aggressive young lawyer who’d recently made national headlines when a Niagara 470 W
Joyce Carol Oates

County jury found for his clients in the re-instated Love Canal lawsuit; and seeing, on the front page, beside Lattimore’s photograph, a photograph dated 1960 of Dirk Burnaby.

“Daddy.”

The word escaped Chandler, involuntarily. His eyes stung with tears.

It was repeatedly said that the Love Canal lawsuit had been “re-instated” but in fact the 1978 case, though built upon Dirk Burnaby’s 1962 case, was far more complicated. Many more plaintiffs were represented in the Love Canal Homeowners Association than had been represented in the original Colvin Heights Homeowners’ Association, and they were far better organized, with stronger political ties to the local Democratic party and access to the media. More industry defendants had been named including now Parish Plastics, long a major Niagara Falls polluter, and there were many more lawyers and assistants on each side. The $200 million award, the verdict after a fourteen-week, highly publicized jury trial, was a sum that would have astonished Dirk Burnaby.

Yet there was Burnaby’s photo on the front page. Through tear-dimmed eyes Chandler stared.

The photo showed a youthful, bluntly good-looking man of forty-three with a large, broad face, an assured smile, and kindly, slightly shadowed eyes. You could see that he was a man accustomed to being treated with a certain degree of respect; you could guess that he thought well of himself, as others thought well of him. Yet he was dressed casually, in a white shirt with sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was tieless, and his hair appeared to be windblown. Strange it seemed to Chandler that this man was reputed to have been a famously bel-ligerent litigator; that this man had had enemies who’d wished him dead. Neil Lattimore spoke extravagantly of him as “heroic”—“tragically ahead of his time”—a “crusading idealist”—a lawyer of such intellectual and moral caliber, he’d been “persecuted, pilloried, and driven to his death” by an unholy alliance of chemical manufacturing money, political and judicial corruption, and the “ecological blindness” of an earlier decade.

Anxiously Chandler skimmed the remainder of the interview. But
The Falls
X 471

there were no more references to Dirk Burnaby. He was weak with relief, that Lattimore had chosen to say nothing about Dirk Burnaby being blind himself to the “moral rot” of his class, and to his “falling apart” during the trial. Lattimore had said nothing about the possibility, unless it was the probability, of Dirk Burnaby having been murdered.

4

Royall. You didn’t, did you.

Didn’t what?

I realize, of course you didn’t
.
Couldn’t.

Couldn’t what, Chandler?

I’m not asking you. This isn’t a question. I have no right to ask such a question. And no reason.

Are you asking a question?

No. I’m not
.

But if you were, what’s the question?

This enigmatic exchange, Chandler has never had with Royall. He will not have with Royall. Having read in the papers the shocking news of the midsummer disappearance of Chief Justice Stroughton Howell. Formerly a Niagara Falls resident, more recently a resident of the Albany area, Howell was reported by his wife to have “vanished”—“in thin air”—somewhere between the private parking garage reserved for chief justices at the state capitol complex and his home in Averill Park; his car was found abandoned, keys in the igni-tion, on a service road near the New York State Thruway. As of September 21, Judge Howell has been missing for seven weeks.

This Chandler knows without having to ask Royall: Royall no longer works for Empire Collection Agency. He has become a full-time liberal arts student at Niagara University and his part-time employment has been on campus, as an assistant in the geology department. During the past summer Royall worked, not as a Devil’s Hole pilot, but for the university; his plan is to major in geology. He no longer carries a gun. He no longer has any need to carry a gun.

Since that evening in his apartment on Fourth Street, when the 472 W
Joyce Carol Oates

brothers spoke together so frankly, Royall has never alluded to any gun, and Chandler has never asked him about any gun. Chandler almost might think
Was there a gun? Was it real?
He’d been drinking that night, and his memory was muddled.

5

A s S t o n e c ro p h a s s a i d
They don’t live forever.

By which Stonecrop has meant to be optimistic: The Sergeant, that sick old bastard, won’t live forever. But Juliet interprets the remark as a warning to her, that Ariah won’t live forever either. She must try to love Ariah while Ariah is still living.

“Oh, Mom. You look beautiful.”

Ariah makes no reply. Doesn’t seem to have heard. Since her brave remark, settling into the passenger’s seat beside Royall, Ariah has been subdued on the drive downtown to Prospect Point. Juliet, in the rear of the bumpy car, observes the back of her mother’s head uneasily. She feels both exasperation and tenderness for Ariah. Since the beginning of the fall term at Niagara Falls High School, and since she has begun voice lessons at the Buffalo Academy of Music, Juliet has felt both detached from her mother, and more affectionate toward her; less intimidated by her, and more forgiving.
I am not you. Never
will I be you again.

“Must be my Burnaby face. No I.D. required.”

Royall has only to utter the name—“Burnaby”—at the parking lot entrance, to be waved inside and directed to a section reserved for special guests.

Crossing into Prospect Park to the Victorian gazebo where the memorial is to be held, Royall and Juliet realize for the first time how stiffly anxious Ariah is. A gathering crowd of mostly strangers, folding chairs arranged in a semi-circle in the grass. And the grass is freshly mown, as for a special occasion. Ariah clutches at both her children, suddenly pleading. “There won’t be photographers, will there? Please, I can’t endure that again.”

The Falls
X 473

Royall consoles her: Chandler has promised, no pictures. He’d extracted a promise from the organizers, no pictures without Ariah’s permission.

Though Royall wonders: how can anyone make such a promise?

How reasonable is it for the family of Dirk Burnaby to expect privacy, at a public event? And this can’t fail to be a controversial event, for local feelings run high, on both sides, regarding Love Canal, and environmental lawsuits and legislation generally. The new mayor of Niagara Falls (who’d won the election on a reform ticket, beating out veteran Republican and Democrat candidates) is scheduled to speak at the memorial, as well as members of the County Task Force on Urban Renewal, the chair of the New York State Board of Health, an officer of the Love Canal Homeowners’

Association. Lawyer friends of Dirk Burnaby will speak, one of them a fellow World War II veteran. Dirk Burnaby’s eighty-nine-year-old Jesuit Latin teacher from Mount St. Joseph’s Academy for Boys will reminisce fondly of Dirk as a schoolboy known as the

“Peacemaker.” Clyde Colborne, Dirk’s old friend, now a highly successful local entrepreneur and civic booster, will reminisce, and make the announcement that he is establishing a professorship in Dirk Burnaby’s name at Niagara University, in the new field of ecological studies. The organizers failed to locate Nina Olshaker, but one or two others from the original Love Canal lawsuit will speak.

Neil Lattimore, the fiery radical, will be presiding. There is even the possibility, excitedly noted by local media, that the consumer-rights crusader Ralph Nader will appear, if his schedule permits, to speak of Dirk Burnaby’s “legacy.”

Nader! Who never knew Dirk Burnaby. Royall’s heart sinks. He resents it, this will be more a political rally than a memorial for his father.

Still, it means a validation of his father and that is what matters: isn’t it?

Royall says, “Mom, pull down your hat brim. That’s why you’re wearing that silly hat, isn’t it?”

Juliet protests, “Mom’s hat is not silly! It’s stylish, and beautiful.

Like something in a Renoir painting.”

474 W
Joyce Carol Oates

“ ‘Renoir painting’! That’s classy. Are we all in this painting, or just Mom’s hat?”

Ariah laughs, wanly. Being teased by Royall usually revives her spirits, but not, somehow, this afternoon.

Dirk Burnaby’s widow and three children had been invited to speak at his memorial, of course. Ariah had declined immediately but each of the children tried to imagine what they might say, or do; Juliet had even fantasized singing. (But what would Juliet sing? Bach, Schubert, Schumann? Or something more American, and contemporary? She had no idea what sort of music her father liked: did that matter? And how appropriate would such a gesture be? And who would be Juliet’s accompanist, out-of-doors? The audience would feel that they had to applaud such a sentimental effort, but was applause, at a memorial service, appropriate?) In the end, they’d politely declined.

“There!” Ariah speaks grimly, pointing. “The vultures, waiting.”

A few photographers in the area of the gazebo, no more than five or six. And two local TV camera crews. Juliet thinks they hardly look like vultures, only just like everyone else.

6

C h a n d l e r d r i v e s a l o n e to Prospect Park to join his family.

He isn’t to blame for the memorial but he does feel responsible.

Those hurt, stricken looks Ariah has been casting him, for weeks.

Can’t be part of this. Don’t make me. If you love me.

The pain had gone so deep in her. Chandler sees that now. Being in love with Melinda, loving Danya as if she were his own child, Chandler has begun to understand something of his mother’s grief sixteen years before. She has never hated Dirk Burnaby, only the loss of him.

Can’t speak of such loss, can’t acknowledge it, you are paralyzed, yet you must live.

Reserved parking! Chandler smiles at being so singled out as a
The Falls
X 475

Burnaby, the first and no doubt last time. He has let Melinda out of the car, she’ll be sitting with friends in the audience. He, a Burnaby, is a VIP for the occasion. He parks amid other VIPs and takes up the necktie he’d brought to wear: a gift from Melinda. It’s silvery-blue with a pattern of subtle geometrical shapes, a classy Italian silk tie he’d been so pleased to receive he’d nearly wept.

“How did you know, darling: trilobites?”

“ ‘Trilo-’—what?”

“My favorite species of fossil. These shapes here.” Chandler laughed at Melinda’s expression as she caught on, he was being funny.

“Darling, I’m just saying I love the tie. Thank you.”

Hurriedly he puts on the necktie, over a freshly laundered pale blue shirt. It is a beautiful tie, and he loves it. Seeing with surprise his furrowed forehead in the rearview mirror. His fish-scale eyes behind smudged glasses. Yet Melinda loves him: has forgiven him.

Maybe, love is always forgiveness, to a degree.

Melinda had time to think him over, the puzzle of him. His Burnaby soul. And possibly his postcards persuaded her. She’d laughed at the crudely drawn cartoon of the nurse extracting blood from a prostrate male’s arm.
Have mercy!

Chandler has vowed, he’ll change. He intends to marry Melinda within the year and adopt Danya and he intends to resign his position as a junior high teacher and go to law school and he’s feeling, yes he will do these things, and his life will change, he will become the son Dirk Burnaby deserves. Today, following the memorial, when he’s alone with his family he will tell them.

Crossing into the park, beginning to hear music, Chandler feels both dread and exhilaration. He would never have predicted that such a day might come: never, as a boy, shrinking in resentment at the careless ways in which the name Burnaby was uttered. Well, there would be no
Shame shame Burnaby’s the name
any longer.

Yes, this is good. Ariah will be upset, but the memorial is a good thing, and important. The vindication of Dirk Burnaby in his hometown. At last.