Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

“All of them,” said Annie.

“We took him,” said Rose. She pointed out the window. Annie took her finger and pushed it like a turnstile toward downtown. Rose laughed. “We took him. The Lyric removed a seat for us, to make room for his chair.”

“Some we saw twice,” said Annie.

“Three times,” said Rose.

“No kidding?” I said.

“He wouldn’t miss them!” said Annie.

“He loved you,” said Rose, who knew the limits of our father’s love.

I didn’t know that my father had ever been to a movie in his life. “No kidding,” I said, my voice cracking like a teenager’s. Pop at the Lyric in the front row, in a parking space made just for him, watching me, a kid who never graduated from anything, jump around in a mortarboard.

“No kidding!” my sisters said together.

Annie and Rose indulged me. They’d lived with my father, had seen him get sick. They might have seen him wish to die soon; they might have wished it themselves in some small way. He was ninety-four after all. Rose began slicing a rhubarb pie with the side of her fork. “I hate rhubarb,” she said, taking a bite.

“So what happened to Quigley?” I asked. Annie frowned, Rose smiled. They both shook their heads.

“That bad?” I asked.

“He hit me,” said Rose. “Once.”

I nodded. A terrible man, now gone.

“I mean, I might not have left anyhow, but I called Annie and told her.”

“I said, ‘Stay right there. I’m coming to get you.’ ”

Rose nodded. “So I packed my bags and waited. We lived in Kansas City, and Annie came on the train, which is not such a great way to make an escape. Billy figured it out and came to the station and begged me to stay. Sobbed, right there in Union Station.”

“Ugly,” said Annie. “Embarrassing.”

“But Annie carted me away. She was right. It was a mistake, marrying Billy.”

“You’re still in love with him,” I said.

“No!” said Annie.

“No,” said Rose. She was twenty-eight years old and had failed at running away from home. She smoothed her blue jeans nostalgically, not the least bit heartbroken. “Heavens, no. But some days I’m still in love with the mistake.”

Whose Dog Are You?

After my second lesson, Jessica looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, which was flanked by two porcelain dancers. “Would you like a glass of water?” she asked.

“I am thirsty,” I said, as though my thirst was proof of something.

Joseph sat with us on the back porch, drinking coffee. (When she offered me water, she really meant coffee, which was the only thing Jessica ever drank.)

“Genevieve Gold can’t dance at all,” Joseph said suddenly.

“That’s true,” said Jessica. “She dances like a half-filled gallon jug.”

Poor Genevieve, whoever she was.

“So,” Joseph asked. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m in show business,” I said.

He laughed and ladled the hair off his forehead with a hand. “I’m kidding. I’ve seen your pictures.”

I waited hopefully for some adjective.

“Doing?” Jessica said at last.

“I’m a comedian,” I said. “Part of a team.”

“He has a radio show,” Joseph said.

“I listen to music,” said Jessica.

“There’s music sometimes. He lives in Hollywood.”

“Right now,” I said, though I had no plans to leave it.

“I don’t like comedy,” said Jessica.

“I do,” Joseph said.

Okay, a setback, but maybe we could work around it. “Why not?”

She shrugged. I later found out that this was simply Jessica: there were plenty of things she didn’t like. Olives, for instance. Mothers, except for her own. Omaha.

She shrugged again. “Don’t. What kind are you?”

“Oh. Ordinary, I guess. My partner and I have a knockabout act. Sometimes I do a little singing.”

“That’s silly,” said Jessica. She didn’t sound mad, just certain. “And what brings you to town?”

“My father died,” I said.

“I’m sorry.” She took my empty coffee cup and examined it seriously, holding it, I imagined, as though it were my hand.

“How old was he?” Joseph asked.

I said, mournfully (I would go for sympathy if I couldn’t get laughs), “Ninety-four.”

But that, it turned out, was a punch line. They both laughed. “Really?” said Joseph.

I’d been looking at Jessica’s hand, her thumb on the lip of the cup where my mouth had been, and when I saw their faces I was confused. They looked oddly delighted: Not as sad a story as we thought . I was a young man, and they’d assumed that Pop’s death was premature, as their own father’s had been.

“Ninety-four!” said Jessica. And though I felt a little flood of grief — here I was with Jessica, thinking of my father — the grief began to turn to something else. My sisters had said we were lucky, but they didn’t believe it. Jessica and Joseph did, and I was convinced. I thought of my father and Rose and Annie at the Lyric, every few months suiting up to see another movie: what other proof did I need of my father’s love? My father had never renounced me. He lived a long life. Luck. Later I would understand that my guilt had been a kind of egotism: if I couldn’t be the hero of my father’s life, then I could be the villain of his death.

The Howards owned a clumsy spaniel who looked like an old man, liver spotted and red eyed. The weather was fine, and the dog wanted to play catch with a fabric ball, which, when I inspected it, turned out to be a pair of tights rolled around themselves. They were wet and smelled like the dog, but I thought about stealing them. Instead, I sat on the back steps and talked through the screen to the Howards. They told me about their beloved parents. We gossiped a little about piano players we knew around town. They asked me how I’d gotten into show business, and instead of my life with Rocky I told them about my partnership with Hattie, because it was true, and because I thought they’d like a story about an Iowan brother-and-sister act, even one that broke up before its debut.

Jessica sat on a folding chair behind me, and every now and then she kicked me in the small of my back through the screen with a pointed toe. I couldn’t tell whether this was on purpose until I said something slightly mean about a neighbor lady. Then she kicked me lightly at the ticklish part of my waist, which felt fond and primitive, as though this was how they courted in modest foreign countries: through wire mesh. Joseph, after a bit, went to bed, and Jess and I stayed there, swapping family stories. I waited for her to invite me back into the porch, but she didn’t, so I sat on the step and threw the ball to the dog, who joylessly caught it and brought it back, brought it back, like a milkman longing for retirement. I threw it again, hoping the dog would love me. Then I might manage the rest of the house. I worried it wasn’t working. The dog admired my tirelessness, which was doglike, but it didn’t seem to think that was anything special. Dogs are not impressed with what dogs do.

A Wartime Wedding

“Mr. Sharp,” she said when I showed up for a lesson the next afternoon. “I’ve never had such an enthusiastic student.”

“I expect you haven’t,” I said.

She wore a scarf in her hair, so long it nearly trailed on the floor. “Today I’m Isadora Duncan, I hope with better luck.”

We danced. Joseph played. I must have stepped on her feet plenty as I thought of California. Another Tuesday was on its way, and Durante wouldn’t be free forever while I courted a girl in Des Moines. “To the left,” said Jessica. I watched her, not her real self, but her back, her scarf — she’d bought it in Paris, she said — like water-soaked flowers in the mirror.