CANADIAN SIDE

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For once in her life, just once, she intended to talk faster than her sister—and so she pressed the phone to the cold spot on her cheek, poured into it a torrent of words, a cataract, a cascade.

“Niagara Falls, across the street from me! I saw a sign on the interstate and it’s still so far to your house I needed a break and drove him on a whim and you know I never do anything on a whim. It’s November so there’s hardly anyone here—I found a parking space under Christmas lights. Grandma’s mother spent her honeymoon here I think in 1927 when she was a flapper—did you ever hear that story? I’ve already gone and taken a peek and it’s so windy it’s like watching sequins fall, mostly silver but some gold. Niagara Falls! Everything goes from horizontal to vertical in the space of a second and watching makes you giddy. I’ve always wanted to do this, Annie. I really really really always wanted to do this.”

She could tell it took her by surprise, the excited rush, but Annie never took long to recover. A minute into the call and she had already adopted the hectoring tone a younger sister uses with an older sister when the younger sister has for many years been the boss.

“Listen—Julia hon? That’s very nice, what you ‘re doing. You deserve a treat, you work so hard as a medical secretary or whatever the term is now. But we’re expecting you tonight for the rehearsal dinner, and Boston’s still seven hours. We all wish you felt braver about flying—is it terrorists that scare you? You’re the only one of the bridesmaids who hasn’t been fitted, and Nina has enough on her plate without worrying about that.”

Julia’s cheek had gone numb. She pressed the phone deeper into her flesh, but the excitement was already beginning to slip away.

“Can’t I just do a reading? I’m too old to be a bridesmaid.”

She wasn’t far from the falls—she could see the grassy border that sloped down to its lip—and the sequins, growing airier, blew against her face and popped.

“Why do you always belittle yourself? You’re her favorite aunt. Of course you’re going to be a bridesmaid, that’s always been a given.”

“Niagara Falls,” Julia said, softly this time.

“Isn’t that where all the pesticides end up? Isn’t the town something of a disaster area? We all know how unwordly you can be in that respect. Dad though you would always make a great nun.”

Annie always left out sentences to fill in yourself. Left out was And you’ve lived like a nun ever since.

“I’ll be on the road in an hour, I promise. How can I say I’ve lived in America all my life and never seen Niagara Falls?”

“Well get it out of your system then. I’m glad you’re seeing something besides that precious old Indiana of yours. But be careful? Stay away from the edge? Nina is counting on your being here for her….Viagara Falls is what Pete calls them. Isn’t that cute?”

As always when talking to her sister, the phone left a bruise on her cheek, and she had to rub it with her mitten until it softened. Behind her stretched a row of souvenir shops, most already closed for the winter. In the distance, crossing the street in a pitted brown T was a boarded-up hotel that must have been new in the 1920’s. Had her great-grandmother Alice stayed there on her honeymoon? She tried picturing what it must have looked like back then, but with the empty streets, the sad-looking Christmas lights, it was impossible.

She pulled the collar up on her jacket, looked both ways, crossed to the park that abutted the falls. There was more life here than in town, with sightseers grouped in clusters. Five soldiers in desert camouflage looking frozen. Four women wearing hardhats holding blueprints. Three beefy men in Buffalo Bills jackets. One noisy school group. They all seemed done with staring, and were now heading for the refreshment kiosk for something to warm up.

Julia crossed to the low wall that kept people from falling over, wiped the spray from her eyes, started blinking. She’d had that peek when she first arrived, but now she wanted to take her time, look her fill.

Again, what struck her most was the suddenness of it all—how a horizontal world, finding the lip of rock, became a vertical world, one with unimaginable depth. The water upstream of the falls, so turbulent and chaotic, seemed to sense this was about to happen—the whitecaps went stiff with fear—and she couldn’t help feeling a moment of pity, that anything, even molecules had to suffer such brutality.

As a girl, when she first learned about Niagara Falls from her third-grade teacher, she pictured a river rushing through a wide gate with wooden soldiers guarding the sides, making sure the water knew where to drop. It was disappointing, not to find them there. It was all a bit sloppy to her eyes. Things really could be neater.

That was her first reaction, the silly reaction. The second was all involved with the sound. Right in front of her was a high-pitched whooshing noise that reminded her of the hand dryers they had in restrooms now, pitched to the level of a jet engine. Lower, far lower, all the way down to where the water found the rocks, was a deeper sound that rose like a huge marble column, never losing its thickness or solidity. It was percussive enough to enter her body more through her chest than her ears—it came in just below her breast, forcing her to hold tight to the rail to keep from toppling backwards.

She listened more than looked, at least for the first few minutes. The sound seemed preacher-like in its solemnity, repeating the same two-syllable word over and over again, though try as she might she couldn’t make out exactly what it said. It was an exhalation of some sort, desperate and sudden—the sound that emerged after breath was held to the bursting point.

It was cruel how little time she had t here. A charming little bridge crossed to an island in the middle of the falls, but she worried how long it would take to walk there and back.

“HOMES,” Miss Norian taught them back in third grade, counting off on her fingers. “Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. All five Great Lakes flow over Niagara Falls.”

In moving down the railing to try a different angle she did something she should have done right away—looked left toward the north. And there, a half mile away but set in an entirely separate world, was the real falls, the Horseshoe Falls, the ones depicted in all the postcards and calendars. There was no sun where she stood, but there was sun over there, and it made the curtain of water shine with a green that was as vivid as any green she had ever seen, with the white curl at the top emphasizing the emerald even more.

Majestic, she thought, fighting down the urge to say it out loud. MAJESTIC. She pictured the top of the letters being made of water and toppling over just like the falls.

Was that the Canadian side? Miss Norian told them it was much more dramatic than the American side. Judging by what she could see from the railing this was true—and not just the Horseshoe but the prominent hill on its edge, upon the crest of which rose tall silvery buildings she assumed must be hotels, as opposite from the shabby derelicts on the American side as it was possible for buildings to be.

MAJESTIC. The word wasn’t water now but steel.

She was edging carefully to her right to see even better when a whistle sounded from a factory behind her, which meant it was noon. Walking backwards, never stopping with the staring, she retraced her way to the car.

The route back to the interstate was confusing, and she must have immediately taken a wrong turn, because the streets only got meaner and shabbier, with infuriating one-ways that led her in circles.

Thoroughly lost now, fighting off the panic that always came over her in these situations, she turned left, intending to ask the next person she saw for directions. Before that could happen, she went bouncing up what she thought was the entrance ramp to the interstate. There was wire mesh overhead, cameras pointing down like cannon barrels, and through a rail on the side she could see the vanilla chop of the river far below. She was slower on the uptake than she should have been. A bridge—yes, that was obvious now—but if it was a bridge where did it lead?

In the opposite lane under an enormous American flag was something that looked like a toll booth, and outside it cars were backed up waiting. There was a commotion, something bad happening—man in fatigue uniforms wearing masks surrounded a man in coveralls cowering on the pavement like he didn’t have money for the toll. Off to the side were three little kids crying their eyes out being led away by a woman wearing the same green fatigues and high black boots as the men.

Julia wanted to stop and help, but there was a second booth now, a gated one directly in front of her, and before she understood what was happening, a friendly moon-faced man was sliding his window open and asking very politely to see her license.

“Welcome to Canada!” he said, waving her through—and just as easily as that, without even intending it, she entered another country for the first time in her life.