Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  The Peace Bridge was familiar, traffic jockeying for the right lines.

  “‘Nothing to declare,’” Kenneth read. “That would be us.”

  The irony was too much, and Emily looked out her rain-beaded window at the other cars, taillights flaring as they inched up to the booths. She could declare so many things.

  Her life was no more tragic than anyone else’s. All these people in their warm cars would lose the ones they loved, ultimately, or die themselves, leaving their dearest behind. Cities would fill and empty, buildings crumble under the wrecking ball. It went without saying, and only a fool or a moony teenager would see something horrible in it, like Margaret thinking Duchess dying in the chives was the end of the world (it was the end of the chives for that year, nothing more, and the next spring their green spears peeked out again).

  The first time she’d crossed this border, how little she’d appreciated time, thinking she’d defeated her childhood, shed it cleanly, like Kersey, the awkward girl she’d been and the unloved town left to starve in the wilderness. And then when she returned triumphant, she found the town was the same, and the girl, her mother’s house drawing memories from her like blood—spankings and bad report cards, the night she and Laurel Saunders had been arrested for drinking brandy by the football field. And ugly—it made her sick to see the downtown with its pitiful ladies’ shops where her mother’s friends bought their dresses. She’d been so ashamed that she never wanted to go back, but did at Henry’s calm insistence, holiday after holiday as the children grew and the streets and the cramped corner stores lost their meaning, until she missed the place she’d grown up, and then her father died, and then her mother, and there was no reason to go back, only the shells of houses, the elementary school that had been turned into apartments, the movie theater whose marquee now advertised hardware, and in the cemetery two plots like twin beds separated by a chaste strip of crabgrass. She had not gone for years, and this seemed wrong. She had barely been to Henry’s grave, even though it was close. She would go when she got back, she promised—and to her parents’ too, a pilgrimage while there was time. The Olds could make it that far.

  “What do you declare?” Ella asked beside her.

  “Money,” Kenneth said, “or merchandise.”

  “Anything valuable,” Lisa added.

  “Guns?”

  “Guns,” Kenneth echoed. “Any kind of advanced technology. Animals that might have diseases. What else?”

  He was asking Emily, checking his answer with her, a habit passed on from his father.

  “I think that about covers it,” she said.

  Plants and produce came to mind, agricultural hazards and hitchhiking insects, but she wasn’t interested, and turned back to the cars, the scudding clouds. She was glad it was raining. She couldn’t imagine facing this on a sunny day.

  Just the thought transported her to Henry’s Chevy, the vent window tipped out all the way backwards to funnel air into the stifling box of the car. And still it was a beautiful day, and they were happy, as if the weather, like the songs on the radio, was meant for them, stemmed somehow from their love, the rest of the world a backdrop for its two most popular stars. The sun made the day sharp and promising, as if they might drive forever, only stopping to make love and eat. It had seemed that way, though they must have waited in line like this, and sat at stoplights, and fussed with the luggage. She remembered only the best of them, compensation for the months she’d spent at Henry’s bedside, memories that caught her walking across the living room or washing out her teacup at the sink, leaving her useless and fretful for the rest of the day.

  “Mom,” Kenneth was saying from the front.

  “What is it?”

  “I was asking if you knew what the exchange rate is.”

  “I haven’t the faintest. A dollar forty? That’s where it usually is.”

  “That’s not bad,” Lisa said.

  “Everything’s expensive,” Emily said, “that’s the catch. And not just here, it’s the whole country. If you don’t do the math you can easily be fooled.”

  It was Ken who finally said, “I don’t think we’re going to be doing much shopping.”

  “You don’t have to. See how much lunch costs. You’ll be surprised.”

  “The kids have to eat,” Lisa said, as if she’d suggested they didn’t.

  It reminded Emily of Margaret as a teenager, waiting for the littlest slip, as if they were locked in some kind of contest. She chose to ignore her and look out the window. The mist in the trees beyond the tollbooth made her think of Monet, one of his studies of light they had at the Frick this spring. It was noon, but it felt like three or four, the sky an uncertain color.

  In the hospital, she watched evening build, the sun withdrawing from the corners of the room, then the dull walls, leaving only the window and Henry’s bed in the whisky-colored glow—last light, which she associated with summer and the lake, the lingering end of their slow days, except as fall came on, that quiet time seemed to last only a moment, a colored lens passed in front of the sun, and then the room was a uniform gray, the skyscrapers downtown cold black shadows, the sidewalks busy with commuters, the thick, institutional pane cool and soothing against her forehead. Dinner appeared, steaming under its hubcap of a cover. The heater clinked. Henry slept in odd shifts, leaving and then returning to her, as if testing himself, getting ready.

  “You should go home,” he said once, freshly woken up, and she could not have been angrier with him.

  “And what am I supposed to do there?” she demanded, as if he might have an answer, as if he could still argue.

  He did not want her to see him like this, she understood that, but the alternative was worse. They were so close to nothing already—or so she’d thought, because afterward it was harder than she could have imagined. There were days when she got dressed fully intending to go to the hospital, but there was no one there. It was like going mad, she supposed. Everything she was so certain of, everything that held intense meaning for her, no longer existed. She spent hours pursuing pointless rituals, talking to herself or people invisible to others, addressing objects, then suddenly stopped and scourged herself for it, furious with her own emotions.

  In the midst of this came a barrage of phone calls from people she hadn’t seen in years, Henry’s old coworkers and the parents of Kenneth’s high school friends, even a grade school teacher of his. How quickly she wearied of their careful sympathy. She appreciated the words meant to console her, but hung up feeling wrung, and soon she took to leaving the machine on, screening her calls, leaning over the rolling tape, hoping it might be Louise suggesting they go see the new Hopper exhibit at the Scaife or just somewhere for coffee. “Emily,” she’d say, “Emily, are you there?” and sometimes Emily picked up and sometimes she didn’t. She’d learned to turn the volume down without feeling guilty, Louise’s sweet voice replaced by the shuttling of the cassette, then a sword fight of clicking, a new number blinking like a score piling up against her. Her record was seventeen. Didn’t they know? All she wanted was to be alone.

  They were almost to the booth. Margaret’s van was three cars behind them. Kenneth checked the mirror obsessively, afraid they’d lose her once they went through.

  He slid his window open and the breeze chilled the tip of her nose. The smell of exhaust was nauseating. Trucks idled, their air brakes sighing and letting go. On the far side, cars raced back into the States.

  “Where you folks coming from today?” the guard with the clipboard asked. He smiled but ducked down to check the backseat.

  “Chautauqua, New York,” Kenneth said, as if they lived there.

  “How long you plan on staying?”

  “Just for the day.”

  Beside her the girls were vamping for the video cameras aimed at them from all sides, and she wondered if the guard’s banter was just an excuse to keep them there while people somewhere else ran checks on the car. Even back when she and Henry crossed here, there was a
sense of intrigue, the possibility of unknown laws being broken. In an instant they were foreigners, beyond the reach or protection of their government. It seemed silly now—exotic Canada—but to that Kersey girl it was the first time she’d left the country, Europe the logical next step, and they’d made it there, to Paris, less than ten years after, staying in that narrow hotel by Saint-Sulpice where you had to step up into the round shower stall and the diving bell of an elevator squeaked and shuddered threateningly. They served crepes everywhere on the Left Bank, and she was forever brushing powdered sugar off her front. Their feet ached from walking all day, but each night they made love as if to honor the city, in the morning huddled naked together at the porthole window, looking out over the steaming rooftops, the clerks filing into the ornate office buildings. They reveled in it, not knowing when they’d be back.

  Never, it turned out, just as they would never return to Bermuda or the Grand Canyon or Westminster Abbey. Wall Drug. Valley Forge. The Lincoln Memorial. The list seemed endless, when in reality they rarely traveled, a pair of homebodies wary of luxury. Henry inevitably saved his two weeks for Chautauqua, coming up the weekend before Memorial Day to fix things, closing the place after Labor Day. She could pay Mrs. Klinginsmith to have someone do it, she thought.

  The guard had Kenneth sign the clipboard with a pen on a bead chain and waved them through, already locked in on the next car and its occupants.

  “Nothing,” Ella declared as they passed under the sign.

  “Ha ha,” Sarah said.

  “It’s okay now,” Lisa coached, looking behind them, and Kenneth swerved to the right, cutting off a FedEx truck to pull into the gritty breakdown lane, the asphalt hatched with white stripes. Cars shot by, tall semis drawing curtains of mist.

  “Is this legal?” Emily asked, searching behind them for the police.

  “It’ll have to be,” Kenneth said in a tone she didn’t appreciate.

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “I’ve got my hazards on.”

  “We’re only going to be a minute,” Lisa dismissed her, and Emily bit her lip. In her lap she thumbed the underside of her ring, twisting it around to busy herself.

  “There they are,” Lisa said, and Kenneth tipped his blinker on and waited for a break. The girls ducked so he could see.

  Once they were going again, no one spoke. The main highway curled off for St. Catharines and Toronto, taking half of the traffic. Lisa directed them onto a divided road with geese in the median. It followed the river—calm as a pond, the rain making circles between the willows. They wound through a parklike neighborhood, Emily wondering at the fifties split-levels and ranches, certain she’d never seen them before. They must have come in some other way. No doubt the roads had changed.

  Forty-eight years, she thought, watching the river. Hadn’t they diverted it at some point because of flooding, dug a new channel? She’d seen a documentary on PBS. Henry would have remembered. She wanted to ask the car at large but knew it would come to nothing, more useless facts from the old bag. Sometimes the better part of valor was shutting up.

  The road and the river curved, an island riding along beside them, a wedge of puffy gulls standing on the bank, and then the view opened up, showing them a broad confluence, the two rivers joining forces and the sky behind it. Emily recognized the sudden transition from glassy swirls to purling rapids, but was it from their honeymoon or later, taking the children, and it might have been from the other side. The sensation of danger was the same, an ageless reflex to stay away. Downstream, a line of new blaze-orange buoys rocked in the water, warning boaters off with stenciled death’s heads.

  “We must be close,” she said, and pointed for the girls.

  “It’s creepy,” Sarah said. “It’s like the water knows it’s going over.”

  “Why is it like that?” Ella asked. “Dad?”

  “I don’t know,” Kenneth said, then advanced a theory even he found unconvincing.

  “Your father would know,” Emily said.

  “He would,” Kenneth agreed.

  “That must be Goat Island there,” Lisa interrupted them.

  Beyond it rose a white funnel of mist like a stilled tornado. Emily thought they should be able to hear the falls. Ahead, traffic had backed up, and Kenneth braked, checking the mirror for Margaret. Emily touched the button and the window slid down.

  The wind pushed the rain against her face. Above the murmur of the car, she could hear the river, and in the distance, the pour of the falls, solid as a blast furnace. She wanted to close her eyes and listen to it grow but she was getting the upholstery wet and pressed the button and sealed herself in again.

  The last mile took them forty minutes, and then they ended up being stopped short of the falls and waved into a huge new parking lot with color-coded sections.

  “We’re in H9 blue,” Kenneth impressed on everyone.

  There were only two umbrellas, so he did without, braving the rain in his Red Sox cap and yellow slicker. The boys bounded out of Margaret’s van and into the path of another car. All the way across the lot, they ran ahead, larking like dogs. Emily waited for their mothers to rein them in, then when Sam slipped on the asphalt, called them back herself.

  “Please,” she said, “we don’t need any accidents today.”

  A minute later, Margaret stopped Justin and took him by the wrist, while Lisa walked behind Sam like a guard.

  They waited at a crosswalk, the falls still hidden, so close Emily could smell the river in the mist, the well-like, mineral scent of wet rock. The roar was all around them now, and the air was sodden. That first time, the drenching had been a welcome relief from the heat, Henry laughing at his ruined shirt, and then later, in the caves, they laughed at themselves because they were freezing. They would have laughed at anything, the day was so rich, the whole world theirs when all they needed was each other.

  The light changed and they crossed with everyone. The girls were lost in some private joke; Margaret and Lisa finally had the boys under control. As they followed the other tourists down a broad plaza, Emily tried to fit Kenneth under her umbrella.

  “It’s not too crowded,” he encouraged her.

  “No, it’s not too bad.”

  “Thank you,” she added, hoping he knew she wouldn’t have come by herself.

  “Sure,” he said, and she thought he understood. He was like his father after all.

  Ahead, the plaza rose. It was built like a stage, raised and stepped so people could see the falls from anywhere. It was new, like everything else, and foreign to her. She wished she could recall the road that had gone along here, and the restaurants and parking lots, the souvenir stands with their racks of postcards—because there must have been some then.

  The crowd fanned out, sidestepping puddles, and suddenly there it was across the gorge, the solid white curtain familiar as a carved monument or the face of a coin, to the right the prettier, more human-sized plume of Bridal Veil Falls.

  Yes, this was it, that first fresh glimpse again, how it lived up to its promise. The view was no different than it had been when Henry drew her to him at the rail and kissed her and the crowd had clapped because they were young and in love, but what she recalled now was not that moment but the day before, in church, the low, near-funereal thrum of the organ and the old folks’ coughing echoing over the pews as she waited, cloistered in the rectory with the choir robes as if she were backstage in some chorus girls’ dressing room, late for the big number. All morning people had been asking her if she was nervous, and she’d lied and told them no. She was not superstitious, but since she’d put on the dress, everything was bad luck. Outside the door, her father stood solitary guard as if she were a condemned prisoner. Her waist was cinched so tight she couldn’t take a full breath, her bosom pushed up to appear more impressive. Henry had proposed to her three times before she said yes, a fact she’d heard enough of at the rehearsal dinner, but now she wasn’t sure why she’d given in. Jocelyn didn’t
like him. Plus, Jocelyn argued, Emily was so young, and he was so … she didn’t know—average, meaning he was from Pittsburgh and had no ambition to live the high life in New York, Jocelyn’s fixed idea of success. Emily knew at heart it was true. He was earnest and dull and nice, and the whole thing was a terrible mistake. She was sorry, but she would have to call it off. It would break his heart but it was the right thing to do. They couldn’t spend their whole lives hating each other because of one bad decision.

  Her father opened the door, stiff in his rented tux, his thin hair brilliantined as if it were still the Roaring Twenties, his dentures ill fitting. It was like a nightmare she was gliding through, down the dark hall and into the rear, where her maids of honor were processing to the music her mother had picked. Her father kept Emily off to one side so no one could see her, and then he started forward and she followed, her arm in his, drawing even with him so she could see the faces all turned to her, drinking in her dress and her ridiculous cleavage. She had a bouquet clenched in her hands, though who had given it to her was a mystery.

  A flash bloomed, and she looked up, puzzled. There, far up the aisle, Henry waited, standing straight, wearing his carnation.

  She wanted to stop and discuss this with him, lay out her objections reasonably, but she was walking, keeping pace with her father, trying to smile at Aunt Ingrid and Mrs. McKenna and Carol Darling as they passed, and then her father let go of her hand and she was standing in front of Henry, the candle flames wavering all around her, and before she could stop herself she threw her arms around his neck and broke into sobs, unsure what they meant but holding on to him, pressing her face against his hard chest, saying she was sorry.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  Just the sound of his voice was enough to calm her. He was kind, he was good. She was being an idiot, and rubbing at her tears with the back of one hand, she pulled away from Henry and turned to face the minister, snuffling but chastened, sure now, ready to begin their life together, whatever that might be.