The Falls (45 page)

Usually, Royall was spared. He had to wonder why.

316 W
Joyce Carol Oates

“You. At least you’re alive.”

Royall laughed uneasily. Ariah said the damndest things. At last, the piano student had left. Ariah, walking the girl to the front door, hadn’t shown much emotion at seeing her son leaning against the porch railing, the lid of his cap pulled down low to hide his guilty eyes.

The girl, high school age, blushed when she saw Royall, as if she knew him. She murmured what sounded like
H’lo Royall
as she brushed past.

There was Ariah gazing at him with hurt, indignant eyes. She might have been deliberating should she bar Royall from the house.

Refuse to let him inside. She might have tossed his belongings out onto the sidewalk as they’d witnessed a raging woman across the street, years ago, tossing her husband’s things out for all the neighborhood to gape at, and screaming, “Fucker! Fuck-
er
!”

There came Zarjo trotting out onto the porch, whimpering and barking with excitement. He hadn’t seen Royall for several days and might have surmised from the tension in the household that something catastrophic had happened. An old dog now, thick in the torso, his wavy butterscotch hair faded and thin, and his eyes less clear, Zarjo remained puppy-like in his devotion to the Burnabys, especially to Royall. All his life, Royall had been his play-buddy, as Ariah was the one who fed him and kept him by her when the children were in school. Zarjo eagerly nuzzled Royall’s hands, tottered on his hind legs trying to kiss Royall’s face. “Zarjo, hey. Down.” Royall couldn’t help but feel that the dog’s frantic loyalty was misplaced.

Ariah turned abruptly, and walked away. But she didn’t shut the door in Royall’s face.

“Zarjo, damn I said
down
.”

You yearn to hurt them, sometimes. Those who love you too much.

Royall followed Ariah back into the kitchen rubbing his itchy, unshaven jaws, that felt as if they were sprouting quills. His clothes were rumpled and his underarms frankly smelled. Ariah put a tea ket-The Falls X 317

tle on the stove, as she usually did after a long afternoon of piano lessons. She moved with studied slowness as if her joints ached. In the overhead light, Ariah’s long pale unsmiling face was that of a woman no longer young, yet not resigned to age. Her manner was fierce and resolute. Her hair, always her most striking feature, was coiled in a loose, drooping yet regal knot and held in place with glinting pins; it was partly rust-colored and partly silver, like mica. Though she was clearly under a strain, and unhappy, Ariah had dressed for her piano students in a long tweed skirt, a black cashmere sweater with an embroidered bodice, and a bravely bright red silk scarf; items purchased for a few dollars each, and not recently, at the Second Time ‘Round Fashions Shop on Veterans’ Road. Ariah Burnaby was a woman of dignity, backbone straight and head high, in a neighborhood in which housewives frequently appeared on their front porches in nightgowns and bathrobes, hair in outsized curlers. Yet Royall imagined her teeth grinding.
Yes I am furious. Yes you have gone too far this time.

Ariah had been planning a wedding reception in this house. The first social occasion she’d ever planned, so far as Royall knew. And Royall had taken that from her.

Among other things he’d taken from her.

Royall’s instinct was to acknowledge guilt and beg forgiveness.

But something in him held back, stubbornly. He wasn’t sorry! He was God-damned glad not to be married to Candace McCann, or to anyone.

Royall saw the Western Union telegram, looking as if it had been crumpled in Ariah’s hand, lying on the kitchen counter. He tried to think what to say that wouldn’t be false, hypocritical, whiny. As if reading his thoughts Ariah said dryly, “A telegram. My first.

Congratulations to Ariah Burnaby, your son has behaved disgracefully
.”

Royall sighed. He was rubbing Zarjo’s eager head, that felt bonier than Royall remembered, as the dog, panting excitedly, licked his hands.

From long experience Royall knew that, if he didn’t speak quickly and forcefully, made no effort to defend himself, Ariah would escalate her attack. He would never forget how, summer of his junior year in high school, when he’d worked for City Parks & Recreation and had 318 W
Joyce Carol Oates

been a popular softball player on the city-sponsored team, hair grown long and flaring past his shoulders, a braided headband around his forehead, Ariah was scathing in her denunciation of him as a “rabid hippie”; and one evening in this very kitchen she’d lunged at him with a scissors, grabbed his thick hair and snipped great chunks of it off before he could stop her. And ever afterward she’d teased him mercilessly. Her
rabid-hippie
son. She said, “Well. It shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose. Any reckless thing you kids do.”

You kids.
That stung.

Royall said, “ ‘You kids’? How d’you figure that?”

“Breaking your mother’s heart. You have your ways.”

“What the hell do Chandler and Juliet have to do with this, Mom?

It was me.”

“ ‘It was me.’ I suppose you’re proud. Selfish, vain, ignorant and deluded
male
.”

Royall winced. How did you defend yourself, accused of being
male
?

Ariah said, her voice quavering, “You’re like him. His seed is in you. To hurt, to destroy. To throw away everything. To turn from the very people who love you, who have trusted you. Oh, I hate you!” She paused, stricken, as if realising she’d said too much. Blindly she turned away, fumbling to lift the steaming tea kettle from the stove.

“Like who, Mom? My father?”

Royall waited, anxiously. He knew better than to press Ariah.

She was pouring water into a tea pot, spilling some onto the cupboard. Royall dreaded her scalding herself, her hand so shook. She said, “I can’t ever trust you again. And I loved you so.”

“Oh, Mom. Christ . . .”

“I loved you better than Juliet, who I was meant to love the very most. Juliet was my little girl, my daughter I’d have died for, but it never turned out right between us, not the way it did with you. Oh, from the first, you were my Royall! And now I hate you.”

“Jesus, Mom. You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t you swear in my presence! Slangy profanity, it’s so ‘hip’

and vulgar.”

Royall swallowed hard. “How am I like my father, Mom? Tell me.”

The Falls
X 319

Ariah shook her head curtly. Her face had shut like a blind being drawn.

Betraying the family. Going outside the family. That was it.

Daringly Royall said, “Mom, why won’t you tell me about my father? I know the man is dead. He can’t hurt us now—can he?” But here Royall became confused. The way he felt sometimes, piloting the Devil’s Hole boat, when among the passengers there were some who over-reacted, squealed and screamed as if the boat was really in danger from the turbulent water; and in an instant fear was contagious everywhere on the boat, Royall’s own heart pounding absurdly. The look in Ariah’s face was one of horror.

Royall ceased speaking. He took the tea kettle from Ariah’s shaky hand and set it back on the stove. At least, now, Ariah wouldn’t scald herself, or him. There was a long, varied, serio-comic history of “accidents” in this kitchen, some of them committed by Ariah, and some by her distracted children.

Royall tried his most winning Royall-smile. It had worked for him for nineteen years with this woman, and he couldn’t believe it wouldn’t work now. In a voice of seeming apology he said, “I know, Mom, it was a shitty thing to do. I—”

“ ‘Shitty.’ What kind of language is that? You were cruel, you were thoughtless—” Ariah broke off abruptly. Royall guessed she was about to say again that he was
male
.

“I was desperate, I guess. Something happened to me the other day. And I knew it wasn’t right, what I was doing. It would hurt Candace, and it would hurt me. If we’d had children—”

Ariah said angrily, “If I’d had grandchildren.
That
would be beyond you, I suppose.”

“What? What are you saying, Mom?”

“At least Candace isn’t expecting a baby. That’s the one good thing in all of this. If you’d abandoned her—”

Royall protested, “Mom, I wouldn’t have ‘abandoned’ her. I would never have done that.”

“Wouldn’t you! I wonder.” Ariah poured tea into a cup, steadying the ceramic pot with both hands. “Don’t pride yourself, Royall Burnaby, that Candace won’t recover from this. She was upset on 320 W
Joyce Carol Oates

Friday evening, and brokenhearted, but she wasn’t hysterical, and her religion will be a consolation to her. ‘Royall isn’t a Christian,’ she said. ‘So maybe this will be for the best.’ She’ll be wearing that beautiful dress for someone else, I predict, and soon. Within a year or two.” Ariah was working herself up into one of her prim-lipped speeches. “A girl that pretty, you’ve let go. A girl with such a pure, uncomplicated heart, and so—
sweet
.”

Royall said, disgusted, “Christ’s sake, Mom! If I wanted a ‘sweet’

wife I’d marry a chocolate bunny. I’d go to bed with fucking Fannie Farmer.”

“Royall. Your mouth.”

“It’s my mouth, not yours! I want a wife I can talk to, for Christ’s sake. Talk to, and laugh with. A wife who’s smarter than I am, not dumber. A wife for when I’m older, and ready. A wife who doesn’t want me to get a ‘real’ job at a fucking chemical plant and destroy my fucking brain cells, what few I have. A wife who’s—” Royall drew a deep breath, suddenly inspired. “—talented. At some thing I’m not.”

Ariah was staring at Royall. Again that look of horror came over her. Her lips moved silently, she seemed about to faint. Royall was frightened for her, and said quickly, relenting, “Mom, I just know it’s better this way. I think Candace knew, too, but once the wedding plans started it was hard to stop, like the wedding had a life of its own, and was the point of what we were doing. I didn’t want to disappoint you, I guess. So few things seem to make you happy . . .”

These words hovered in the air. Not an accusation, a statement of fact. Ariah, recovering from her shock, managed to laugh indignantly.

“Oh, now he can blame me! My blameless son, blaming his mother.”

Royall was thinking for the first time that his mother and father must have been in love, once. A long time ago when they’d gotten married. And for how many years afterward? Then, something had happened. He wanted to know what! He had to know. But seeing the look in Ariah’s face, he knew it wasn’t going to be this evening.

“Mom, I’m not blaming you for anything. It’s my own fault. I guess I’m weak, I like making girls feel special, and happy. Even if it’s kind of unreal, like a masquerade.”

The Falls
X 321

“Life outside the family is a masquerade,” Ariah said flatly. “You kids will learn.”

But not inside the family?
Royall shifted his shoulders uncomfortably.

There was Zarjo, for whom no ethical, moral, metaphysical questions existed, only an anxious dog-concern that his young master might abandon him. Zarjo, adept at decoding tensions in the household, sometimes before its inhabitants, was nuzzling Royall’s hands, trying to press up to kiss his heated face. “God damn, Zarjo get
down
.” The dog fell back, toenails clicking on the linoleum floor, hurt as if Royall had struck him. So naturally Royall had to pet and stroke him, reassuring him that yes, Zarjo was loved.

Half the world desperate to be loved. Half the world desperate to be free of being loved.

“What happened to me, Mom—”

“Yes. What happened to you? You look as if you’ve been drinking for days, and sleeping in your car.”

This was cruel, and inaccurate. Royall hadn’t had more than two or three beers that day. He hadn’t been sleeping in his car since the first night, Friday.

“—I realized that I couldn’t marry Candace because I—I didn’t love her as much as I can love a woman.” There, it was said. Royall licked his lips, having uttered this enormity. He’d never been a boy who contemplated himself, let alone the possibilities of this self; since boyhood he’d envisioned the future with the same affable amne-siac vagueness with which he envisioned the past. “It wouldn’t have been fair to Candace . . .”

Dryly Ariah said, “Oh, and why? Because you’d have been unfaithful to that poor girl?”

Royall felt his face burning. Talking of such things with his mother! “Well, things like that happen, don’t they? If you marry too young. You meet somebody you really love, in a way you can’t love the person you married. And then—”

Ariah drew herself up to her full height of about five feet seven inches. A moderately tall women for her generation, she was much shorter than Royall, and had to exert her authority over him by fixing him with her famous green-gasoline gaze. Oh, you dreaded igniting 322 W
Joyce Carol Oates

that gaze! Chandler, and Royall, and Juliet, and no doubt Zarjo cow-ered in terror of igniting that gaze. “Are you saying, Royall Burnaby,
you’ve
met someone else?”

Royall hesitated. No. This was an error.

Never could he speak of the woman in black to Ariah. Never to anyone.

Ariah said derisively, “Oh, aren’t we proud of ourselves! You
male
.

Your sex would be amusing, if you didn’t carry venom in your loins.”

Royall shuddered at the thought. Venom in his loins!

I want to love. I will love. With my body, and not dishonestly. Never again
.

Royall meant to change the subject. He was sweating inside his clothes. He said hesitantly, “I could go back to school, maybe. Night school. I could get a high school regents diploma. Then—”

Ariah was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping at her tea. A moment of crisis seemed to have passed, she could exert her authority more easily now. She laughed, not unkindly. “You. Royall, you barely graduated with that local diploma.”

“—I could go to college, maybe in Buffalo. Chandler did.”