Niagara Falls All Over Again

by Elizabeth McCracken

  My sisters died, one by one. Annie, the eldest, went last: she was 102. Like her father before her, she was the oldest citizen in town, and the local schools invited her once a year to deliver a lecture on Valley Junction’s rough-and-tumble childhood.

  All this is summary. I’m from the theater, I’d rather: Act Three, ten years later, a house in North Hollywood.

  Because that’s where we are now. You know the house.

  Hollywood is not such a bad place to grow old. Everything they built back in the thirties was made to be a monument: a newsstand here is not just a newsstand, but an homage to the genre. They never changed a single thing at Musso’s, except the prices, and when I go there for lunch twice a week, I can pretend that all sorts of people who are otherwise disposed might be walking through the door. Outside, I drive around—though my kids wish I wouldn’t—past the billboards that are now, often as not, in Spanish, and I feel like my father, the immigrant, except I haven’t gone anywhere, not in years.

  I live alone. I have a comic cat, a little tortoiseshell named Thisbe. (Gilda, always theatrical, named her.) On my lap, she throws her head back. I know just where she likes to be scratched, and her eyes close and her mouth opens in rapture. Never have I seen a being so absolutely in love with what is happening to her at the moment. She doesn’t remember the last time she felt this good. She doesn’t worry that it’s me and my fingers. And after a while, at her highest point of ecstasy, she’ll snap and bite me, and I’ll knock her to the ground. Minutes later she comes back, she’s forgotten. Me too. Clean slate always, me and the cat.

  Ah, this cat. Halfway between Rocky and Jessica: in her body, given over to pleasure, self-centered, fussy about the details. She’ll bite me, we both know that. In the meantime, we love each other.

  I once knew a girl who said that the cat you owned was like you. A daughter of a lady who ran a boardinghouse, this girl, and some other man had told her so. For instance, she liked food too much, she liked to cook and eat, and her cat liked food too much too. When fed, the cat was loving; otherwise, under the sofa. “Oh,” I said, emptying the box of chocolates that had prompted this confession into my pockets (all of my pockets, though who had the money for laundry?), “is that true?”

  “Yes,” said the girl, reaching.

  And so maybe Thisbe and I are alike. Still, cats are like horoscopes in this way: any interpretation is relevant, if you look.

  What started me thinking: Rocky junior came to the house six years ago. He calls himself Charles now, since both “Junior” and “Rocky” sounded too childish for a guy in his forties. Somehow he’s grown to look just like his old man, despite his adoption: a good bit taller, black hair that’s his own, but heavyset and snub-nosed.

  “I’m making a movie about you guys,” he told me. He was a director of commercials, but I knew he had other aspirations. We sat out back of the house, drinking coffee. Like Rocky, he couldn’t sit still. He turned the cup around in his hands, laced one index finger through the handle, then the other. My good cast-iron lawn furniture had been stored in the shed—somebody had mowed the lawn and hadn’t moved it back—but I had a couple of cheap webbed lawn chairs in the trunk of my car, and those I could lift myself.

  Rocky junior’s creaked as though it would fold up. “Well, I haven’t decided whether it’s going to be about my dad, or the act, but either way: would you be willing to help me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll even play myself.”

  “A documentary,” he said quickly. Joking, I thought. “But it just goes to show you: the two of you still think alike. That’s what my dad said, when I told him.”

  “Your dad.” Had Junior sought out his birth parents? “Your dad—”

  He said, “I found him.”

  I’d been warm, ten years before: Rocky had been living in Reno, which Penny knew perfectly well. A twenty-four-hour town, strippers, drinks, gambling, girl singers. I’d forgotten that there was more than one town in Nevada.

  He lived, his son told me, in a trailer outside the city limits, and had indeed worked in a casino as a dealer for a while, though eventually arthritis made him quit. Like his son, he’d taken a new first name, the same one, and through no fault of his own Junior was a junior again, though his father went by Charlie as much as anything.

  The lawn was very green and confusing.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “Old,” said Charles. “Not in the best of health, but who thought he’d live this long? I guess only the good die young. No offense.”

  I waved aside the insult, though I didn’t know if it was about my age or my goodness. “None taken. Is he married?”

  “There’s a lady,” said Charles diplomatically. He crossed his legs and stretched out in his chair, which tilted to the right. I tried to remember whether he’d played football in school, because he looked like a prosperous retired athlete. “We didn’t delve into the legalities. Her name is Gertrude. She’s tough. Very German.”

  “Does she know who he is?”

  “Actually, I think she thought he was lying until I showed up with my video camera. Then she seemed impressed.”

  We had our backs to the house; suddenly its presence felt oppressive. My kids kept telling me I should sell it, move to an upscale condo nearer stores and restaurants. That and the car: they wanted me to give up things. Their caution made me more reckless. “Let’s go,” I said to Rocky junior.

  “Where?”

  “Take me to Reno. I’d like to see him.”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, though he sounded sure: No.

  “We won’t ask. You know how he is—he’ll say don’t come, and by the time we get there, he’ll have the door barred out of pride.” The more I spoke, the better this idea sounded to me. Sure. One thing to sit around when I didn’t know where he was, but now I was ready to ride off into the sunset looking for him. No, sunrise, I knew my geography. Riding off into the sunset in California would only get you wet. “We’ll take my car,” I said.

  “Thing is,” said Rocky junior. “Hmmm. I interviewed him when I was down there. Asked him questions about his life and the act. He was pretty hard on you.”

  “Of course he was,” I said. “That’s Rocky. And then things didn’t go well for him, and they went well for me—I know he’d have a hard time swallowing that. I don’t care what he said. Look, I’ve already forgiven him, and I don’t even know what he said.”

  “I’ll give you the tape. You can watch it. Then decide. If you still want to go—”

  “We’re old men,” I said. “We haven’t seen each other in thirty years. What could he possibly have said?”

  “Watch the tape,” said Rocky junior, “and then call me.”

  The Interview

  Q: So where did you go when you left Hollywood in 1957?

  A: I went to drink.

  Q: To drink?

  A: To drink? Yes, that’s what I said: I went away to drink. Young men drink so they can be around people. Old men drink to be alone.

  Q: But couldn’t you—

  A: I went away to drink unimpeded. People kept telling me to stop. And if they didn’t tell me to stop, then they just avoided me. I mean, I was drinking a lot already, sure, and I’d call people up in the middle of the night.

  Q: I remember. Why’d you do that?

  A: I missed them, I guess. Or I wanted to settle scores. Bad behavior. So I emptied my bank account, and I went to live where there were no phones.

  Q: Which was where?

  A: You’re too literal minded. But, okay, cheap hotels. There are hotels where you don’t have a phone in your room. And in bars there are pay phones, but I never had change. I went out of my way not to have change. I tipped the bartender with it. I gave it away to panhandlers. I always hated loose change anyhow. I thought it was an insult to my pocket. Later I’d be mad at myself, when I was running out of money—all those quarters would have added up to—well, to a lot of whiskey.

  Q: Why did you dri
nk so much, do you think?

  A: I guess I was thirsty.

  (SILENCE)

  Q: What did you do during the days, then?

  A: I drank. I drank all the time. I slept, and drank. Maybe something interesting happened to me in there, but I’ve forgotten. I forgot most things. I got beat up once, but I only know that because my nose was broken, in a way—said the doctor who set it, I met him in a bar the next morning—that was caused by a fist.

  Q: You could have been killed.

  A: Yes, I could have been. Wasn’t.

  Q: You’re smiling.

  A: I didn’t care. I still don’t. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing, some has-been gets killed in a barroom.

  Q: It wouldn’t have been the worst thing if your life ended in tragedy?

  A: Ah, but you see: it already had.

  Q: But—

  A: It’s a long end. It’s a very, very, very long end. Longer than I would have liked, and longer than anyone would have guessed. It feels endless, but that’s probably the nature of unhappy endings, right? Don’t kid yourself. The past thirty years have not been the rest of my life, they’ve been the end of my life, and as it happened my life has ended in tragedy.

  Look: I don’t buy that bullshit, that life is precious. This planet’s full of life, overfull of life, if you believe what the papers say. Everywhere you go, there it is, Human Life, walking down the street smug and stupid. A thing is precious—by definition, look it up in the dictionary—by being scarce. People call life precious because some of them like it too much. I could claim whiskey’s precious. But life? More to the point, my life? The market’s glutted.

  Q: You say that, but you’re crying.

  A: I guess I’m thirsty. That usually makes me cry. Anyhow, Gert found me and I’m fine. You’ve got questions there. Ask me another one.

  Q: Everyone wonders why Carter and Sharp broke up. I’ve heard a lot of theories.

  A: Sure, there are a lot of ’em.

  Q: But I’ve never really known why. Was there one reason?

  (PAUSE)

  Q: If you don’t remember—

  A: Don’t you know? Mike slept with my wife.

  (PAUSE)

  Q: Mom?

  A: No, no. Not that I know of. I mean Penny.

  Q: While you were married to her?

  A: Sure, while I was married to her. That’s the kind of guy he was. In some cultures, if your enemy has something you want, you tear out his heart and eat it. Mike just fucked your wife. The guy had no loyalty.

  Q: I always thought he and Aunt Jess—

  A: Maybe he was faithful to his own wife. Maybe he believed in the sanctity of marriage, as long as it was his marriage. And maybe he fucked around on her too. I don’t know. I tried to forgive him, but I guess in the end I couldn’t. But we didn’t break up right away.

  Q: Are you sure about this?

  A: Of course I am. Ask him, maybe he’ll tell you the truth. You know, I did everything for that guy. He was a green kid when I found him. He barely knew how to walk. And I liked him. Well, I’ve never been a good judge of character. I brought him into the act, and I taught him everything, and I mean every single thing. I guess he’s a fancy actor now, but without me he’d be a shopkeeper.

  I loved him. I trusted him.

  Q: He loved you—

  A: Yeah. Sure. No, I know he did.

  The Family Business

  “He was pretty hard on you,” Charles the diplomat had said. Maybe he assumed his father was lying. But you did. Penny told him, she must have. Still he might have just jumped to a conclusion, might have believed I’d slept with Penny one of those many nights I didn’t. But you did. Rocky and I were together for eleven years after that single, solitary night, and he never said a word. The statute of limitations for any crime except murder had run out. But he was right. You did. Even if he knew, knew the next day, it hadn’t seemed to bother him, and maybe he only brought it up to take the blame off himself. But— Or maybe Penny told him after everything, their divorce and our divorce, at a casino in Reno or Vegas, and he thought: Ah, if I’m ever asked again—

  Despite everything, guilty as charged.

  Video unnerves me—I like the process, not the medium. I’m a film guy. Used to be I hated it because the quality was so bad, kinescoped copies especially: everyone came through blurry but harsh. Now—it’s too good, I guess. You can see everything. Back when people believed in ghosts but had never seen one (not Topper, not Hugo from What, Us Haunted?) I don’t know what they imagined, exactly. Then the spirit world started appearing in the movies, and people thought that made sense: if our loved ones managed to slip through the border patrol of heaven to hit the bricks of the real world, they’d look filmed, filmy. Like the movies projected on the walls of the buildings on Fifth Street in Valley Junction. That’s how gentle film is. It looks like a version of heaven.

  On video, though, people look like themselves. It’s too painful. I could see a perfectly square chunk of skin on Rocky’s lips, the burst capillaries near his nose. I could practically count the salt crystals in his tears.

  Of course I wanted to see him. The guy had done everything for me.

  Charles and I drove to Reno in my new Cadillac (not a convertible, I never cared for them the way Jess did), and got lost looking for the trailer park. Then we found it: Reno Acres. There was a small blond girl riding a plastic tricycle near the front gate, the big front wheel stuttering in the dust of the lot. She looked at us, then stood up, and picked up the bike and waddled off with it waggling between her legs.

  “Reno Acres?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” said Charles—I am working so hard to call him Charles—pointing at a 1940s silver Airstream trailer parked some distance from the others.

  I’d dressed several times that day, as though I was going on a date, and had finally settled on a pair of black slacks and a green sport shirt. No hat. I didn’t want to look like a fuddy-duddy, though in fact I’d never given up hats.

  I made Charles knock on the door. A tall nicotine blonde with nervous eyes answered the door. She frowned until she saw Charles. “Sonny!” she said. Then she saw me. “Hello! You are . . . ?”

  I shook her hand. “Mose Sharp,” I said, and she recoiled slightly, then let us in.

  Rocky sat just inside the door in an enormous reclining chair. For some reason I’d imagined him in an undershirt, just as I’d imagined Gertrude in curlers, according to some trailer-park dress code. But he wore a button-up-the-front short-sleeved shirt and polyester knit pants. I was an old man myself, but—a fop to the end—I’d told myself knit pants were a sure sign you’d given up. He’d shrunk. At first I interpreted the pale hair as sun bleached from years in the Nevada sun; I’d forgotten how old we both were. The shirt was butter-yellow, and the pants brown.

  He turned to look at us. First he saw his son, and smiled. Then he saw his partner.

  I watched him very carefully, waiting, as always, for my cue.

  He looked at me, then at his hands. And then he beckoned me over.

  Oh, God, he looked so bad. Old-mannish and sun cured. How presumptuous of me to pity him, when all of this was his choosing, even Gert, who’d gone outside to have a cigarette. But he was thin, for Christ’s sake, all the folds in his chin had turned vertical instead of horizontal. How could I have let this happen to him?

  Every other person I knew was dead, it seemed. I felt avalanched. I sat down at his knees on a hassock in front of his striped chair, the same colors as his clothes, butter and toast. I was ready to promise him everything: Money. A room in my house. A reunion—surely somebody would be interested in that, some late-night talk-show at least. I took hold of his hand, and then I burst into tears.

  I don’t know how long I sat there weeping. I didn’t know why I was the one who cried. Every time I looked up, he was—not stony faced, but waiting, and I cried some more. After a while he put his free hand on top of my head, the way the pope—from what I knew about
the pope—would to the head of a sinner.

  He said, “You take things too seriously, Mosey. You always did.”

  The Long Shot

  Gert came back in and served us tea and cookies. I felt slightly cheered when she brought out a whiskey bottle, and poured us both a tiny dram, the way Annie had given me coffee as a child, just enough to give my milk a sophisticated color. “Thank you, love,” Rocky said. She tickled him under the chin with scarlet painted nails. The furniture was secondhand; the television antenna was bandaged in tin foil. In the corner was a cabinet of Hummel figurines, little brown boys and girls in lederhosen and caps and yellowish braids—who says Germans can’t be simply darling? We spoke of not a goddamn thing. Well, we exchanged the information that any other old friends would think was crucial—deaths and marriages and births.

  “I keep waiting for this one to make me a grandfather,” he said, pointing at his son with a toe.

  “Keep waiting,” said Charles.

  It was all very fucking civil, Rocky would have said in another life. Very fucking civil indeed.

  “You working?” I asked.

  “Sometimes. Every now and then I emcee a drag show downtown, and they pay me under the table.”

  “A what?” I asked, sure I’d misheard.

  “Drag show. Female imps. I’m so old the only women who’ll flirt with me are men. I like it, though. At a drag show, it’s like everyone’s senile. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.”

  “I do not like this,” Gertrude said, though I already had started eyeing her with suspicion. Then we fell silent again.

  Well, what was I expecting? We hadn’t seen each other in three decades, and if I’d called ahead he would have told me not to come. I finished the licorice-scented biscuit on my plate, and wondered if I’d hug Rocky before I left or solemnly shake his hand. Then Charles said, “Let’s give them some time alone.”