CANADIAN SIDE

2 of 5

Later, in talking to the friends she made so quickly, so miraculously, she tried describing what had hit her hardest in her very first impression.

“The beautiful road!” she gushed, embarrassed it wasn’t something bigger.

It was so smooth compared to the roads on the American side of the bridge, and the pewter-colored flecked with mica made it seem she had crossed a border into a gentler, more elegant kind of existence. To the left were the falls and to the right was a manicured sward leading upwards to the bold line of hotels. With the oak leaves blowing down, the filtered November sunlight, it reminded her of a documentary she had once seen about Monaco and Princess Grace.

She parked in the first open spot—handicapped, but for once in her life she didn’t care. Streaming exuberantly in the breeze was a red and white maple leaf flag. She took her phone out, dialed, prayed she would get the answering machine—and had her message ready, or half ready, the moment it clicked on.

“Annie? Here I am in—”

She hesitated, letting all the emotions that had been building since leaving home surge to the surface and give her courage. Indignation at being dragged halfway across the continent so people could snigger at her in a bridesmaid’s dress. Annie’s always teasing her about living like a nun. Her brother-in-law’s bad jokes—their mean-spirited politics. Resentments and slights she remembered from when they were little, and how Annie had kept all their mother’s jewelry when she died, not letting her have even a bracelet.

More than this. The thin-walled apartment where she lived back in South Bend, always having to listen to love making on one side, arguing on the other. Her job, explaining simple things to stupid people, with never a chance at anything better. The bitter news at night. The terrible wars no one could stop.

“Here I am in—”

All these things raced up her throat, but there was one new thing she could fight back with, so she all but shouted it, making a couple crossing the promenade stop and turn around to stare.

“Canada!”

Never had a word felt so good coming out—she could feel triumph buzz across her lips, something she rarely tasted. She smiled, clicked the phone off, buried it deep in her coat pocket where she wouldn’t have to hear it ring, then looked to see which was the best spot to take things in.

A walkway swelled out toward the falls, and she made for where people stood three and four deep, figuring this would offer the best views. Their coats made a barrier of wool and leather, but she wedged herself toward the rail using her elbows, not stopping to apologize, she who apologized for nearly everything.

And it was worth it, because the view was many times better than it had been from the American side. Ten feet upstream of the lip things were smooth, even placid—she could make out floating maple leaves as gracefully scalloped as the one on the flag—and even where horizontal dropped to vertical it didn’t seem abrupt and brutal like it did on the other side, but the most natural transformation in the world.

The smell was better, too. On the American side the water smelled like damp charcoal. On this side it smelled like malted vinegar topped with cinnamon.

Hundreds of feet below where things became horizontal again was a stubby little boat chugging through a rainbow at the base of the falls, with cartoonish characters in blue ponchos scampering across the deck. She didn’t envy them—she much preferred being up high where she could appreciate all the magnificence without getting wet.

“Please?” said a voice behind her—a man holding out his phone. She took his picture with his wife beside him, then a young couple came over with the same request, then some school kids, then more Asians, so for a long time that’s all she did. She had to shake her head, step well back from the rail, in order not to be pestered.

Tourists doing tourist things are hard to separate out as individuals, and it was only the sun reflecting off the wheelchair’s metal that made her notice him—there five or six yards from the space she’d just vacated, the chair parked right up tight against the rail, the man occupying it bending forward from the waist like he needed to get even closer to the water than that.

He was handsome, her age, a plush camel’s-hair coat draped over his shoulders like a cape. There was a red plastic poppy pinned to his lapel, and what looked to be a ribbon or medal. Was he military? He had close-cropped gray hair, and a rigid way of sitting that suggested military, though the beard—pointed, peppery, perfectly groomed—made him look artistic and slightly dangerous. Of all the people gathered there he was the only one whose expression seemed troubled—he squinted toward the falls as if working out a very complex problem.

She didn’t know why she stared—remembering the handicapped spot she immediately felt guilty—but then someone shouted “Eagle!” and everyone pressed back against the rail to look.

A bird, a white-edged big one, glided down the Canadian half of the river, becoming the instant focus of all the cameras. Their flashes must have scared it, because it suddenly rolled on its wing and with an angry screech that penetrated the thunder flew back toward the American side. It didn’t look like a soaring eagle anymore, not from that distance, but more like a vulture heading home.

She knew she should return to the car and start driving if she had any hope of reaching Boston by midnight. I wanted to drink my fill—she had her excuse all ready if Annie called—but it wasn’t just an excuse, it was the reason she couldn’t leave. Though she stared and stared and stared, the water was always renewing itself, finding the lip and cascading down into the concave bowl of its own rainbow, and she felt there were all kinds of things to learn from the spectacle, if only she concentrated and drank through her eyes even deeper.

Turn the water off and I’ll go, she said to herself. Let it run and I stay.

She was the last left on that part of the walkway—the last but one. The handsome man in the wheelchair was still there, only now his chair was turned around and he was bringing the same intensity he’d used in staring over the rail to staring straight at her.

Me? She almost said it out loud she was so surprised. She mustered all her courage to stare back at him, and mustered even more to take the six steps necessary to reach the wheelchair’s side.

The man nodded, as if expecting just that, but something was wrong because his cheeks above his beard were white as cotton, and the eyelashes above them were coated in ice as crystalline as sugar.

He mumbled something she had to lean down to hear.

“Excuse me?”

“Fuh..fuh…fucking frozen,” he stammered. The plaintiveness made it sound like the saddest condition in the world.

There was no resisting that, even with her shyness. Automatically, like she was back at her hospital, she stepped behind the wheelchair and started pushing him across the promenade. The visitor center was a Victorian building made of old stone, with lights on inside, so she assumed there must be a cafeteria or snack bar where they could go to warm up.

They came to some steps—she was confused as to what to do—but he pointed left to a wheelchair ramp and after that it was easy. “Coffee?” she asked, and he nodded gratefully. She found a table near a radiator, left him there, went over to the cafeteria line, came back holding two cups.

He had already thawed—the color was back to his cheeks, and the spray had melted from his eyebrows. He looked younger, stronger, now that he was inside, and it seemed like only a complete misunderstanding could have led him to being confined to a wheelchair.

His pants were fine-waled corduroy, with enough ribbing to suggest braces. He tightened his lips, like he knew what she was thinking and had his answer all prepared.

“Bosnia,” he said, tapping the corduroy. “Peacekeeping,” he said, tapping the wheelchair. “Canadian forces,” he said, tapping the medal. “Shit happens,” and he smiled.

It was witty, well-rehearsed, disarming. And, like he had drawn from her something she had no idea was there, she answered wittily herself.

“Indiana. Driving to a wedding…Coffee’s disgusting.”

The both laughed, and now the ice was really broken, there was no need to wipe it off their foreheads.

“I saw you looking at the falls,” he said—his tone was deep and assured, like the best of the surgeons she worked for back in South Bend. “Really looking. Not many do that. Most are content with a selfie.”

Julia took another sip from her cup, this time without grimacing.

“My great-grandmother spent her honeymoon here in I think 1927. The story is that she kept her eyes shut whenever they stood near the falls. They had fun, they did all the touristy things, but every time her husband walked her over to the falls she clamped her hands over her ears and closed her eyes and refused to open them until he led her away.”

She expected a smile, but he brought his hands up stiffly, seemed to struggle to make fists, then let them fall onto the armrests in a wistful kind of surrender.

“I spend my days watching people watch the falls. You’d be amazed at the different reactions. But that’s the way it’s been here right from the start.”

He twisted his head around like the overcoat was chaffing him, so she got up and peeled it back off his shoulders, making sure the lapel with the poppy and medals remained facing outwards. He seemed larger with it off and steadier—wherever he was wounded it wasn’t in the shoulders.

“Ready for some boring factoids? I’m a walking encyclopedia. Well, not walking, but you get my drift…The first European to ever see the falls was Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan missionary. This would have been in 1678, and it’s said that the Mohawks brought him him deliberately just to terrorize him back to France. And the odd thing is, even Hennepin, when it came time to write his report, claimed this side of the falls was much more impressive than your American side.”

He glanced over at her—it seemed a test.

“Much more impressive,” she said, nodding.

“The French always loved the falls. Napoleon’s brother Jerome brought his bride on their honeymoon in 1804, starting the tradition that brought your great-grandmother here a hundred years later. History doesn’t record whether the beautiful princess covered her ears.”

Was he teasing? He was hard to keep up with, his tone went from serious to humorous so fast. She tried thinking of something she could add herself.

“My teacher liked to say it’s the longest undefended border in the world.”

“She told you that? Of course she did.”

It seemed to irritate him, hearing this. He pointed to a wall clock.

“It’s getting late. It wouldn’t be wise, driving at night. Where is the wedding?”

“Boston, Massachusetts.”

“Not wise at all. Besides, it can be difficult, crossing to the American side so late. The pigs come on duty then. The bullies. They enjoy making women feel uncomfortable.”

He pointed to a blue sheen on the window glass.

“May I make a recommendation? I’m staying at the Sheraton, but they charge more than it’s worth, and you’d be much better off at the Casino. It’s only a short walk.”

He read her hesitation.

“No, it’s not like that at all. Gamble? Yes, you can if you want, and I sometimes do myself, but it’s because of the gamblers that the rates are so reasonable. There’s a front desk clerk I know who will make sure to give you a room overlooking the falls. Asim it will say on his name tag, but you’ll have no trouble recognizing him. He’s the one who looks like a terrorist.”

Was he being funny? Again, it was so hard to tell.

“Thank you. I know his name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Joseph.”

She stuck out her hand. “Julia.”

“I’d escort you personally, but i’m going to stay here and contemplate life for a while longer,” he said, drawing out con-tem-plate long enough for irony. “I’ll watch you out the window to make sure you get there safely. There’s a serial killer loose on the American side. Sixteen he’s up to now. He might one day take it in his head to visit Canada.”

She did exactly what he told her to do, this man she had known all of thirty minutes. This isn’t like me at all, she told herself, but nothing that had happened since leaving the interstate had been like her, and she enjoyed the feeling, wanted to keep it going for as long as possible, never do anything like herself ever again.

A well-lit path led up the hill toward matching blue towers pulsing in spotlights, and she wasn’t sure which one was the casino until she came to a big neon sign, Christmas On Ice, with giant dice rolling back and forth under the letters.

It was quieter, more sedate than she thought it would be, and what few people milled about the atrium lobby were mostly her age or older, dressed like they were going to church bingo.

She walked right to the front desk before shyness could take hold. It was easy to spot Asim, since he was the only man on duty. He was young, frail-looking, with thick glasses and slicked-back black hair. He didn’t look like a terrorist, but an exchange student, or one of those polite Pakistani doctors who trained at her hospital.

“Good evening, Ma’am,” he said, with an extraordinary smile.

“Are you, Asim? Joseph suggested I book a room here.”

He bowed his head, touched his hand to his heart.

“Of course. We have a room all prepared facing the falls. Tenth floor? Luxury class? Is that satisfactory? I’ll scan your card and we’ll have you on your way. Vehicle?”

“It’s parked right across from the falls. It’s in handicapped. I meant to move. Hyundai, Indiana plates. I can never remember the exact number.”

“Color?”

“Silver mostly. There’s rust I need to have fixed.”

He made a note on his pad. “If you have the keys, we’ll send someone right out.”

He went to the printer, folded the registration in half, handed it over with the key card in a classy-looking sleeve.

“Welcome to Mohawk Tower Casino, Julia. We hope you’ll let us make your stay memorable.”

“Thank you.”

He hesitated now—for just one second he didn’t seem reading off a script—and something like shrewdness flashed across his face.

“And how is the major?”

The major?

“Well, he’s fine. He knows a lot about the history here.” She tried thinking of something more. “He can drink a lot hotter coffee than I can.”

She knew how dumb it sounded, but she didn’t care, not once she took the elevator up to her room, her amazingly spacious room. A wicker gift basket stuffed with fruit sat on the end of a king-sized bed, but she ignored it for the time being, went over to the window and pulled open the drapes.

Yes, the falls were right out there, seemingly in touching distance. Spotlights shown down on the lip, turning it crimson, and the color bled the water so it stayed red all the way down to the base. After a few seconds the red turned to pink then blue then silver, so it was obvious the spotlights were spinning. She like the silver color best—it made the falls look like flowing stalactites or melting tinsel. And she liked that the water’s voice was somewhat softened by the glass.

She hadn’t asked Asim how much the room cost. Luxury, he said. But it was only for one night so she could splurge.

There was a knock on the door, a bellman bringing her one small piece of luggage, and then all she wanted was to take a bath and go to bed, leaving the drapes open so she could sense the falls out there in the night, endlessly renewed, drawing all that blackness down from the huge reservoir of the lakes, and with the simplest of tricks shredding it apart into beauty.