CANADIAN SIDE

3 of 5

She rode the elevator down in the morning expecting the kind of breakfast nook you found in motels, with English muffins and make-it-yourself oatmeal. Instead, the restaurant was ballroom-sized and heavy with chandeliers; the maitre’d, after leading her to a table, handed her a menu thick as a bible. The table didn’t overlook the falls, which disappointed her, and though there were empty ones along the window she didn’t ask if she could switch.

“My name is Crystal,” the waitress said, smiling wanly. “I’ll be your server.”

Only as it turned out she wasn’t. Julia had placed her order, the waitress had gone over to a computer station to punch it in, when a waiter approached, put his arm around the girl’s shoulder, whispered something in her ear—and then, with a much happier, more welcoming smile than the first one had managed, came over to Julia’s table.

“Good morning! Good morning! My name is Alejandro and I’ll be taking care of you today—but why are you sitting in such a lonely spot? Let me escort you over to the window where you can feast on the falls before feasting on our delicacies.”

So nice of him—really, she wanted to tip him right away. And it was a much better view from this new table, though fog made it hard to see out. He brought juice, though she hadn’t ordered it, then a plateful of mini-croissants and foil-wrapped cheeses, though she hadn’t ordered those either. All the other servers wore business-like expressions and rushed around like they were on roller skates, but he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, waitering just for fun, with plenty of time to talk.

“My family,” he said, taking out his wallet, spreading across the table several photos. “Our sons, can you imagine how blessed?” He tapped the largest finger with his finger. “Manuel, Jorge, Eduardo, Alejandro.”

He looked more like a chef than a waiter—burly, full-stomached, someone who liked feasting on his own creations. His face made her remember the man she saw yesterday being beaten by border guards, but she had to be mistaken—he looked like the kind who could administer beatings, not receive them. The veins on the back of his hands were the color of tattoo ink, thick as tubes.

“And you, Senora?”he asked when he brought her eggs. “Do you have children yourself?”

She shook her head. “No, not yet.”

Not yet—how stupid. But he shook his head sympathetically—absolutely nothing could make his smile disappear.

“Are you taking advantage of your freedom to visit the falls? Catching a show? Playing the tables?”

“The falls mostly. I’m hoping to spend more time there before I leave. I went yesterday, but there’s still so much to understand.” She pointed toward the window. “It’s so misty outside. I didn’t pack a raincoat.”

He snapped his fingers. “Raincoat? There is a shop on Clifton Hill where they have all you ever want. Ask for Nadia when you go in, tell her Alejandro is your friend.”

He didn’t bring her bill over when she asked for it—he pointed toward the ceiling like either God was going to pay for it or he was charging it to her room—and he smuggled her a danish as a snack she could have later.

It was nine now—already gamblers were filing into the casino. They seemed older than the ones who had been there last night, and outside idled a bus with pneumatic steps to help them get down.

“Julia!”

Asim waved from behind the front desk, but this wasn’t good enough for him, and he ran all the way across the lobby to shake her hand.

“How is your room? Is everything as you expected?”

She hadn’t noticed it last night, but he was something of a dandy. His uniform looked tailored compared to the other room clerks, and he kept stealing glances at himself in the mirror while they talked.

“It’s a beautiful room. Really. I’ve never stayed in one so luxurious.”

“You will tell me if I can help? The slightest thing?”

What she thought was fog turned out to be rain, and she waited under the marquee hoping it would stop. She hadn’t checked her messages when she woke up, but she checked them now. Twelve from Annie which she refused to listen to. Three from Nina which she almost pressed but didn’t.

Clifton Hill wasn’t hard to find since the casino sat on its crest .The Street of Fun was its other name according to a big sign, with a wax museum, the House of Frankenstein, and more souvenir shops than she had ever seen in one place. Alejandro hadn’t mentioned the boutique’s name where his friend worked, but only two shops had any clothes in the window, and only one was open.

An attractive blond woman sat behind the register staring glumly into her phone; she didn’t look up, even though a buzzer sounded under Julia’s shoes. The shop was so deep, there were so many clothes racks, it was hard to know where to begin.

“Rain jackets?”

The woman, never lifting her eyes up, pointed toward the back. She had on elaborate makeup, which made it seem like she was disguising herself, since she would have been much prettier without any. Her cell phone interested her, not Julia.

There was no one else in the shop, not at that time of morning. Every rack had a Sale! sign or Clearance! Most held sweatshirts, and she had to push past them to get to the rain jackets and parkas. They were cheap nylon, Niagara Falls inscribed across the chest, some with funny slogans. What Happens in Niagara Falls STAYS in Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is Calling and I Must Go.

A counter held fleece sweaters, and since she hadn’t packed anything warm she picked one out to go with the rain jacket, held it in front of her near the mirror. She never enjoyed shopping, but it gave her a little buzz of pleasure, to find something with a pretty maple leaf emblem, something so warm. Since it wasn’t like her, she selected out two of them, one green like a spruce tree, the other red and white like the flag, CAN on one side of the zipper, ADA on the other.

The blond woman at the register still didn’t look up, even when Julia laid them on the counter next to her.

“I would like this jacket in large if you have it.”

The woman shook her head.

“Or even extra large.”

“Out of stock.”

Julia tried again.

“Could you be Nadia? Alejandro told me at breakfast I should come here to shop.”

It was startling how fast the woman’s expression changed; it was like a handsome man her age had just walked into the store and she grew all flirty.

“Of course! So you must be Julia? He called to say you would be coming. Rain jackets? Let’s march back through this jungle and see if we can fine one that’s perfect.”

She spoke with an accent that Julia thought might be Polish or maybe Romanian. She had high cheekbones and kittenish green eyes, and Julia had read once that Romanian women looked aristocratic. Her complexion, away from the register, seemed fresher, more girlish, like a disguise had been lifted or another one applied.

Apparently she was appraising Julia as intently as Julia studied her, even as they were brushing past all the t-shirts to get to the back.

“With your eyes, you would present best in brown or even black—they’ll bring out the fire. Are you committed to Canada? We have lots without Canada. But of course you can have Canada if Canada is what you want.”

She took her to a display of woolen sweaters, helped her try on four or five of them, leading her over to the mirror so both could see.

“It will snow soon—do you need a vest?”

Julia ended up buying so much it was laughable, but Nadia promised to deliver everything to her room herself once she finished work. She took Julia’s credit card, ran it through the machine, didn’t hand over the receipt.

“Have you met Rosalie yet?” she asked, walking her over to the door. “She is the only one here I would trust with hair as silky as yours. She is at the hotel. Really, how odd, not meeting her yet. And here, take this coupon for next time. We have new sweaters coming in that are cashmere and come down to the hips, and would suit your figure perfectly.”

Now that she had bought a rain jacket the weather improved. The sky in the direction of Buffalo was the color of the lint she cleaned from her dryer—gray and matted and ugly—but north toward Toronto there were already bright patches of blue. She went over to the information kiosk to ask about the Maid of the Mist boat and whether it was running. It was, but it involved crossing back to the American side which was something she was reluctant to do.

Instead, she found a restaurant on the Street of Fun called Smokes. She ordered poutines—soggy french fries puddled in gravy. She enjoyed them, just because poutines were something she never knew existed before, and for dessert she ordered pudding chameur, which she had never heard of either.

It was only noon—she had the whole afternoon to do nothing but stare out at the falls, which was fine with her. There weren’t as many people as there were yesterday, and she had no trouble finding a spot on the rail almost in touching distance of the lip.

She noticed things she hadn’t the first time, particularly when she looked upriver. A dignified brick building extending out over the water with fat, greedy-looking black pipes. A rusty shipwreck broadside to the current creating its own wall of spray. A network of high voltage wires that made her remember Miss Norian explaining how daredevils once crossed the falls on tightropes while enormous crowds paid to watch.

She wished Joseph was there to explain, he knew so much about the falls. Had he really been a major? Had he really served in Bosnia? She tried remembering all she could about it, the years when it had been on the news most nights. She knew it involved Muslims, though good ones or bad ones she had long since forgotten. Peacekeeping, he said. She pictured someone standing between two lines of peasants with his arms outstretched keeping them apart.

She remembered the pants he wore, the plush corduroy. She’d had the illusion if she touched his legs he would walk, but probably every woman her age felt that—that she and she alone could heal him.

She crossed the promenade to the rest rooms, came back after not more than ten minutes—and like a commercial break after which everything changes, there he was, his chair locked near the rail in exactly the same spot it had been yesterday. He had binoculars pressed to his eyes, aiming them toward the bridge that crossed to the American side. He lowered them, wrote something on a pad, lifted them again…spotted her, put them down on his lap and waved.

“Julia! I wondered if I would see you again. No, let me correct that. I was hoping I would see you again.”

Was he flirting with her? It made her blush to think so.

“I was staring out at that wreck,” she said, pointing. “The water splashing over it is so pretty, and yet the story must be sad.”

“It’s a garbage scow that broke its cable when it was being towed across the river in 1918. It was drifting over the falls when at the last moment it turned broadside and got wedged between rocks. Didn’t you say your great-grandmother was here in 192 7? Then she must have seen it herself before it turned rusty.”

They stared toward it together—it was as if their eyes joined out over the river—and only with reluctance did she look back.

“How is your room?” he asked. “Are they taking proper care of you?”

“My room is a palace. Everyone is so friendly.”

“Well, yes, you know—we Canadians. And your niece’s wedding? Do you still have time to attend?”

She fished her phone from her purse, showed him all the message lights. “I guess I’ve caused a commotion. She’s getting married right this second.”

They didn’t say much after that, but stared together toward the water, he leaning forward in his chair, she standing close enough none of the tourists could separate them. She remembered reading once that the real test of a relationship was how comfortable the two of you were with silence, and here she hadn’t known him even twenty-four hours and they could be silent together for long minutes at a time.

Again, he read her thoughts.

“We shouldn’t stay quiet for too long. See those park policemen watching us? They don’t have much to do all day, so if you stare too long, brood, they can easily misinterpret your intentions.”

He pointed toward the water.

“People can think the falls have a personal message for them and they need to get as close as possible to hear what it says.”

“You mean they jump?”

He nodded, almost proudly.

“Only your Golden Gate Bridge tops us. That’s why those red phones are spaced along the rail. You’re scared, you’re depressed, you call, you pray someone answers…I saw a woman go over the rail once. It looked like she was hot and needed to cool off.”

She had a sudden intuition.

“You wanted to?”

He shook his head—shook it emphatically.

“I find the falls healing, not tempting…Twenty-five a year jump—or get pushed.”

He seemed like he wanted to say more, but a particularly obnoxious man crowded in and forced them temporarily apart. Empty in the morning, the promenade held lots more people now, with bus tours unloading at the curb, people rushing over to the rail to take photos before racing back.

“Look at them,” Joseph said, with more scorn than she thought him capable of. “They’re not like you and me, they don’t look at the falls to soak in the beauty—they jab a device toward it to do the looking for them. But of course it’s not really about the selfie. It’s wanting to stop things for a precious millisecond, the furious rush of life, the flux. Just for once in their lives making life stop, even an unstoppable thing, even the water over Niagara Falls.”

She nodded, but at the same time frowned. “I don’t know what that means,” she said quietly. “The word you used before. Flux.”

Briefly, with the slightest tightening of the lips, his scorn turned on her.

“Flow. Stream. Current.”

She couldn’t be as philosophic as he could be—she’d learned that already—but if he had patience she would try her best.

“Maybe that’s why great-grandmother Alice kept her eyes closed and covered her ears. To make things stop, even the happy things.”

For the first time that afternoon he seemed to look at her, really look at her, with an expression of genuine surprise.

They crossed to the visitor center like they had the first time, found the same table. She helped him off with his coat, and, instead of sitting opposite him, pulled her chair up close to his side so they could look out the window together as they talked.

It was little things mostly—he asked simple questions about her work. She told him how routine it all was, checking people in for appointments, asking their birth dates, asking about insurance. She was embarrassed that this was all she had in the way of stories, but Joseph nodded like she had brought up important points.

“Have you ever heard of Annie Edson Tyler?” he asked, dropping back into the tour guide tone that was so knowledgeable and interesting. “She was a widow, a dance teacher who didn’t make much money, and when she got older her knees went and there was nothing left for her but the poorhouse. But she had an idea, a wonderfully brave idea.”

The window was steamed over, but he reached with his napkin and scrubbed it clear.

“She decided to become the first person to go over the falls in a barrel—a molasses barrel. She stuffed a mattress in to absorb the shock, brought her cat along for company. This was 1901—she planned it for the morning of her sixty-third birthday. She paid someone to push her off from Goat Island, and it took twenty minutes before she plunged over the lip. Thousands watched, most probably hoping the barrel would be crushed. But she survived with nothing worse than a cut on her forehead, and for a few weeks she was a celebrity with America at her feet…After that it got harder. She sold pieces of the barrel for souvenirs, but ended up in the poorhouse after all.”

“I saw her picture in the visitor center. I…I liked her.”

“They made it out that she was a sad case, a pathetic figure—you’re supposed to feel sorry for her, not admire her bravery. But do you know how much courage that required? To take that sadness, that pathos, that sad wreck of a life, launch a barrel atop the loneliness, let it carry her toward something a lot more important than sadness and despair. I think about her often, Annie Edson. I would like to go back in time and talk with her. If you could understand where she found the courage you would be on to something big.”

Julia opened her purse, took out the pad and pencil she always carried, carefully printed down the name.

He pointed toward their mugs. “Refill?”

It was the first time she had seen him move the wheelchair on his own, with quick, piston-like pushes down on the rims. It didn’t take him long. He came back with a hot-cross bun they split in half.

“I like sitting here with you,” she said. “It helps slow down the flux,” and they both laughed.

He started telling her how the falls were harnessed for power, with explanations about transmission lines, diversion channels, penstocks, but it wasn’t as interesting as the lady in the barrel, and she spent most of the lecture studying his face.

Not the handsome part—she already knew he was handsome. He was square-jawed, sharp-eyed, formidable—he looked like a recruiting poster for peacekeepers everywhere—but maybe he was tired of looking like that, hence the pirate beard, the irony that never completely left his lips. His eyebrows seemed dyed, they were so much blonder than his hair, and his eyes moved about a lot faster, more restlessly, than his calm, even manner would lead you to expect. They missed nothing—and now, catching her own eyes, they narrowed into displeasure.

“I’m boring you.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m keeping you too long.”

“I have nowhere to go.”

It was bold of her to say that—not like her at all. She wanted to go even further, ask him what he was doing for dinner, but that was too much not like her, way too much not like her.

He pushed his coffee mug up against hers. “I’ll wait here like yesterday so I can watch you through the window as you walk back to the casino…I like watching you kick through the leaves as you walk, like a little kid. It’s the one thing I wish I could still do myself.”

Wow. That’s what she said to herself—Wow. Even more than before she wanted in some way to help him.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” he asked when she got up. “We can stare at the falls some more, and I can continue terrorizing you with trivia.”

***

Alejandro was waiting for her with a menu when she went down to breakfast. He made a graceful bow, then led her to the same booth as yesterday, the one with the best view.

Once again he smuggled her a tray of little muffins and croissants, not just the omelet and toast she ordered. Again, he seemed in no hurry to wait on anyone else, and he had plenty of time to tell her more about his boys.

Manuel owned a restaurant in Winnipeg that had been awarded three Michelin stars. Jorge played baseball for the Blue Jays—a speedy second-basement with a strong arm. Eduardo was the black sheep of the family—a wonderful boy but sometimes wild. And Alejandro….

“Alejandro attends Harvard University in your own country. My boy, my namesake. He studies coffee growing there, and his ambition is to one day own a farm in Oaxaca state and bring Eduardo down to help.”

By the time that first week ended she had established a routine she would gladly have followed forever. The morning started with Alejandro fussing over her at breakfast, then Asim waiting in the lobby to ask if everything was satisfactory with her room. Visiting Nadia at her shop on the Street of Fun was next, listening to her stories about the small Romanian village she had grown up in. Some stories about gypsies—”Roma,” she called them—were a little on the mean side, but they were so funny Julia laughed anyway.

She enjoyed poutines now, so all her lunches were at Smokes. After that she would walk down the promenade and spend at least an hour just staring at the falls. She now favored a viewing spot further upstream where the angle was flatter and she didn’t have to see the American falls, which, compared to the glories of the Canadian side, looked like a garbage chute leading down to a dumpster.

Joseph would appear in the afternoon—appear out of nowhere it always seemed. She’d be staring out at the Horseshoe, sense a vague tremble in the walkway, hear a rubbery braking noise, look around, and there he was, his wheelchair in touching distance, even though, peering around a few seconds before this, there had been no sign of him whatsoever.

He said little at first—it was like he needed to calibrate his eyes to the larger scale of the falls, not spoil the moment with anything mundane—but gradually they began talking. There were always changes to the falls, they were never the same from one day to the next, not in the color or pattern of spray, and after they discussed these it was time for another history lesson.

“There was a battle fought here, did your teacher ever mention that? Invaders from New York crossed the border in 1812 and fought us just ten miles from here. A complete butchery, and it was only by luck that reinforcements came and drove you back over the gorge.”

After the history she always wheeled him to the visitor center for coffee. Eventually the tour-guide tone would soften, and in its place would be real concern and interest.

“Does anyone in your family know you’re here? Will your sister be getting worried about you? Would she ever drive across the border to find you?”

It was her turn after that. She told him about the tourists she had seen in Smokes, though there was nothing remarkable about any of them. In talking to him, she always felt like she was about to say something interesting, insightful, or even profound, but she never quite got there; it was like her thoughts led to the kind of hurdle they had in track, only with an added six inches of barbed wire on top, a hurdle she could never surmount.

Maybe this time I’ll be witty for him, she always thought. Maybe this time I”ll say something he’s never heard before. With him, she felt closer to clearing the hurdle than she had ever come, all it would take was enough time and enough concentration and surely she could fly.

So this was her routine. Except for some loneliness at night—nothing worse than she experienced at home—she had a week of pure enjoyment, and when the changes came the second week they made her even happier.