Empire Falls (29 page)

Though his mother never actually told him so, Miles suspected that something, or maybe a cluster of things, had happened at the hospital when she and Francine Whiting were delivering their babies, something that caused his mother to forge her belief in the psychic link between the newborns. Her logic was not so hard to reconstruct. Two children born within hours of each other into such different circumstances, one rich, the other poor. No doubt the hospital staff would’ve made clear to Grace in a hundred small ways which was the
important
baby, and such a quiet and thoughtful woman couldn’t have failed to contemplate the very different destinies in store for her child and the child of a woman whose last name was Whiting, even if not so long ago it had been Robideaux. She might even have considered the unfairness of it all and wondered if babies were ever mistakenly switched in their bassinets, fate thwarted by incompetence. Not that such a switch was likely when one child was a boy, the other a girl, but still. How could a woman in Grace’s position
not
ponder such questions?

Yet this explanation had never felt terribly compelling to Miles. For one thing, if memory served, even
before
Cindy Whiting’s accident, Grace seemed to consider her own infant the lucky one, the one God had blessed. Why? Miles had no idea. He didn’t know if his mother had been acquainted with Francine Robideaux before she married the richest man in central Maine, but he doubted it, which meant that Grace had no prior reason to suspect that Francine would make a poor mother. Any knowledge she had about the other woman would’ve sprung from their acquaintance at the hospital. Still, Grace had been a close and intuitive observer, and perhaps she’d simply seen the baby girl struggling at her mother’s meager breast and thus projected for her a hungry future. Whatever her reasons, Grace had always pointed the little Whiting girl out as someone important, someone for him to be especially kind to. The accident had not occasioned the connection but merely amplified it, so when the senior prom rolled around and Cindy Whiting didn’t have a date it fell to Miles to invite her—though by then his heart had been lost to a pretty girl named Charlene Gardiner, who was three years older than he and a waitress at the Empire Grill, where Miles had an after-school job busing dishes and washing pots, a girl who seemed to understand how devoted he was to her, who was unfailingly kind and affectionate and never allowed her many boyfriends to joke about him too harshly in his hearing, who sometimes even appeared to take his affection seriously.

Unfortunately, according to Grace, Miles had no duty to love the Gardiner girl. True, Charlene was about as pretty as girls got in Empire Falls, Grace conceded. Still, she was careful to explain something she said he was too young to comprehend just then, though one day he would. “Charlene Gardiner isn’t really a girl,” she said, causing Miles’s jaw to drop. “I know she’s not that much older, but she’s already a
woman
and you’re still a boy.”

Grace might’ve been right about the latter, but she’d been dead wrong about his not understanding that Charlene was a woman. That was what he liked best about her, and his favorite fantasies concerned the various ways in which she might make him a man. Whereas Cindy Whiting, he suspected, would never make him anything but miserable, a prediction that had been borne out over the next thirty years, right up to the present moment.

When Timmy the Cat raised her head, Mrs. Whiting obliged by scratching her neck. “I suppose I
should
put you down,” she allowed. “You’re a truly hateful little beast. Still, one does have to admire the intensity of your feelings.”

“I don’t,” Miles said. “She either scratches or bites me every time I come here.”

“Oh, it’s not just you, dear boy. She treats everyone who isn’t family with the most exquisite malice. She dug a furrow the length of the mayor’s forearm just last week—didn’t you, sweetheart?”

“You should hold a raffle,” Miles suggested. “Ten dollars a shot and the winner gets to beat her to death with a baseball bat. We could use the proceeds to help finish off the new wing of the hospital.”

The old woman clapped her hands in delight. “I don’t know why I’m always so surprised to be reminded of your sense of humor, dear boy.”

“Did I say something funny?” Miles inquired.

“You see? There it is again. You must get it from that reprobate father of yours. He called me again when you were gone, by the way. I had to threaten him with the police.”

“I’ll speak to him.”

“Does he have any clue what a funny little man he is?”

“I don’t think so. A lot of it’s lost on me, actually.”

“And your mother, as well, dear woman. Poor Grace was not blessed with a sense of life’s grand folly.” At this, Timmy shook her head, piston fashion, and studied her mistress in a way that suggested she was following this conversation with interest.

“Actually, my mother loved to laugh.” Miles hated talking about his mother with Mrs. Whiting almost as much as with Jimmy Minty. “Life may be a grand folly, as you say, but it’s harder to appreciate the joke when you’re always the butt of it.”

“Yes, I
am
aware that life is hard for some people,” Mrs. Whiting conceded, as if she’d heard this sentiment expressed somewhere before and supposed it might be true. “Still, I’ve always believed that people largely make their own luck. And you needn’t smile at that, Miles Roby.” For once she sounded almost sincere. “You think I married my luck, but that conclusion is both unkind and unthoughtful, and it does you no credit. There’s a world of skill and timing involved in marrying the right person. Especially when the girl in question comes from the Robideaux Blight.”

“By way of Colby College,” Miles felt compelled to add, since being reminded of this was likely to annoy her. People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.

“Dear me, yes,” Mrs. Whiting agreed, missing only half a beat. “Let us
not
forget Colby and the liberating effects of higher education. Though it doesn’t liberate everyone, does it?”

Meaning himself, Miles understood. One of Mrs. Whiting’s great skills was rolling with the punches. Whenever she absorbed a blow, she came back out swinging. Miles settled in, prepared for his drubbing.

“Still, a wise marriage is a rare thing, don’t you think?” she asked. “Most people make a complete hash of it. They marry the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. For reasons so absurd they can’t even remember what they were a few short months after they’ve pledged themselves forever. To the unhappily married, what it was that possessed them remains a lifelong mystery, though to observers their reasons are often painfully obvious. For instance, I’d wager you have no idea why you married.”

Miles nodded. “You mean you’d bet if you could find somebody to bet with.”

“So you admit you have no idea!” she cried. “Lovely. Now then, shall I tell you?”

“No thanks.”

“Come, come, dear boy, aren’t you the least little bit interested?”

In truth, he was. Or would’ve been, had he believed Mrs. Whiting possessed any genuine insight. What she wanted to share with him, he felt sure, was her mean-spiritedness. “So, why
did
I marry, Mrs. Whiting?”

“Oh, good,” she said. “I thought for a moment there you were going to be a party pooper. You married out of fear, dear boy.” Timmy again shook her head violently, as if to suggest she wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Shall I go on?”

“I thought fear was the reason men
didn’t
get married.”

“Don’t be absurd. Just because people are forever saying silly things, that doesn’t make them true.”

“So what was I afraid of?” Miles heard himself ask.

“You really don’t know?” She smiled. Timmy yawned widely, as if to suggest that even
she
could answer this one. “Oh, my, it’s true. You don’t, do you? Well, then. This gives us the opportunity to test the old adage that the truth will set you free. I’ve never quite believed it myself, but—”

“Mrs. Whiting—”

She leaned toward him and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You married, dear boy, to escape an even worse fate. I suspect you’re ashamed of this, but really, you shouldn’t be. You may not know this about yourself, but what I’m about to reveal to you is quite true, I assure you. By nature you instinctively seek out the middle road, midway between dangerous passion and soul-destroying indifference. Your whole adult life has been a study in deft navigation, and I don’t mind telling you I’ve long admired the way you’ve charted your course. You chastise yourself—and don’t pretend you don’t, because I won’t believe you—for making a poor marriage, but that’s foolishness. You merely saved yourself, and self-preservation is the design feature we all have in common. Bravo, is what I say.”

“Saved myself from what, Mrs. Whiting?”

“Oh, surely you suspect, given so immediate a reminder. Think, dear boy. Remember. You willingly entered a bad marriage to save yourself from a worse one. You feared that if you didn’t marry soon, you’d find yourself at the altar with my daughter, because you were certain those were your mother’s wishes. You had enough of your father in you to cut yourself the best deal you could that didn’t involve the more elegant solution of simply running away. The Greyhound terminal was still operating in Empire Falls twenty years ago, but that would never have been an option for Grace Roby’s son. All those catechism classes convinced you that no one gets away scot-free. So you attained that safe middle ground. Maybe you couldn’t have what you wanted most, which was that girl with the knockers who still works for you at the restaurant—am I right?—but you were clever enough to avoid what you feared most, which was a poor crippled young woman, who was suicidally in love with you and whose pitiful devotion would’ve made your life one long, hellish exercise in moral virtue.”

Mrs. Whiting was brushing her lap off now, Timmy apparently having jumped down at some point, though Miles didn’t recall seeing her do it.

“So, here you are, moping about, doing your duty in daily penance instead of celebrating your achievement, as any sensible person would. And I
do
wish you’d say something instead of just sitting there looking gut-shot. Believe it or not, it was not my intention to hurt your feelings.”

“What
was
your intention?”

“To give you a badly needed heads up, dear boy. To point out that despite your considerable skill, you’re back in the soup. You’re about to become a bachelor again, are you not? Surely you don’t imagine that this … situation and my daughter’s return to beautiful Empire Falls are entirely coincidental?”

No, now that he thought of it, he didn’t.

“To be frank, I’m more than a little curious to see how you’ll handle this business the second time around.”

“Curious.”

She looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “Oh, please, spare me that tone of moral superiority.
That
you get from your mother. Frankly, it was the one tiresome, disagreeable trait in an otherwise charming woman. She couldn’t bring herself to be openly critical, but she was forever using that very same tone. No doubt she shared your mistaken opinion that my intellect is cold and uncaring, whereas in fact it is simply lively. A lively intellect, so much admired in a man, is seldom tolerated in a woman—or am I mistaken?”

“Am
I
mistaken, or is this your daughter we’re talking about?”

“Actually, I thought we were speaking about you. I feel my daughter’s plight, dear boy, and have done so all her life. Believe this or not, as you choose. But forgive me for speaking the truth here and pointing out that her predicament, though poignant, is not—compared to your own—terribly interesting. Fate intervened at an early age, and since her accident, my daughter’s life has been largely determined by forces beyond her understanding and control. Pity and fear, if I recall correctly, are the appropriate emotional and moral responses. But once fate takes the reins and free will is thrown from the saddle, there’s really little to be said, is there? You, on the other hand, are an actor, however reluctant, on life’s stage. Not everyone gets to choose, as you once did. And now you get to choose again. Don’t tell me you don’t find that extraordinary. I’m not saying I envy you, but I am curious. Will you choose the same, or differently? Most of your original options remain open. You could marry again—for instance, that girl with the knockers. After all, there’s that tiny voice in your head, the one you always turn a deaf ear to, which is forever asking, ‘Don’t I deserve a little happiness? Haven’t I been a good boy long enough?’ But then there’s the other voice, the one your mother was so instrumental in forming, that accuses you of selfishness, of not thinking of others … like poor, crippled Cindy Whiting. Doesn’t
she
deserve a little happiness? And this time around, you might just listen to that voice, because it’s the one that feels moral, or would if it didn’t trail those nagging considerations of self-interest—because of course the money that would accompany such a marriage would be nice and you’re tired of straining to make ends meet. Who wouldn’t be? If you started feeling
too
guilty, you certainly could tell yourself you were doing it for your daughter, who’ll soon be ready to go off to college, and isn’t she the one who really matters? Oh, dear me, it
is
complicated. No surprise that people are always trying to simplify life. What’s that question our evangelical brethren are always asking? ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ What, indeed?”

The breeze shifted then, and Miles caught another rancid whiff off the river, whether from the near bank or from the Empire Falls side he couldn’t tell.

“Something tells me you have some advice for me.”

She sighed. “I fear not, dear boy. Beyond clarifying your dilemma, I’m afraid I can offer very little indeed. Alas, there’s only one thing I’m quite sure of.”

“And that is?”

“My daughter may have suggested to you that her doctors believe her to be well?”