Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

Ah, this cat. Halfway between Rocky and Jessica: in her body, given over to pleasure, self-centered, fussy about the details. She’ll bite me, we both know that. In the meantime, we love each other.

I once knew a girl who said that the cat you owned was like you. A daughter of a lady who ran a boardinghouse, this girl, and some other man had told her so. For instance, she liked food too much, she liked to cook and eat, and her cat liked food too much too. When fed, the cat was loving; otherwise, under the sofa. “Oh,” I said, emptying the box of chocolates that had prompted this confession into my pockets (all of my pockets, though who had the money for laundry?), “is that true?”

“Yes,” said the girl, reaching.

And so maybe Thisbe and I are alike. Still, cats are like horoscopes in this way: any interpretation is relevant, if you look.

What started me thinking: Rocky junior came to the house six years ago. He calls himself Charles now, since both “Junior” and “Rocky” sounded too childish for a guy in his forties. Somehow he’s grown to look just like his old man, despite his adoption: a good bit taller, black hair that’s his own, but heavyset and snub-nosed.

“I’m making a movie about you guys,” he told me. He was a director of commercials, but I knew he had other aspirations. We sat out back of the house, drinking coffee. Like Rocky, he couldn’t sit still. He turned the cup around in his hands, laced one index finger through the handle, then the other. My good cast-iron lawn furniture had been stored in the shed — somebody had mowed the lawn and hadn’t moved it back — but I had a couple of cheap webbed lawn chairs in the trunk of my car, and those I could lift myself.

Rocky junior’s creaked as though it would fold up. “Well, I haven’t decided whether it’s going to be about my dad, or the act, but either way: would you be willing to help me?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll even play myself.”

“A documentary,” he said quickly. Joking, I thought. “But it just goes to show you: the two of you still think alike. That’s what my dad said, when I told him.”

“Your dad.” Had Junior sought out his birth parents? “Your dad —”

He said, “I found him.”

I’d been warm, ten years before: Rocky had been living in Reno, which Penny knew perfectly well. A twenty-four-hour town, strippers, drinks, gambling, girl singers. I’d forgotten that there was more than one town in Nevada.

He lived, his son told me, in a trailer outside the city limits, and had indeed worked in a casino as a dealer for a while, though eventually arthritis made him quit. Like his son, he’d taken a new first name, the same one, and through no fault of his own Junior was a junior again, though his father went by Charlie as much as anything.

The lawn was very green and confusing.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Old,” said Charles. “Not in the best of health, but who thought he’d live this long? I guess only the good die young. No offense.”

I waved aside the insult, though I didn’t know if it was about my age or my goodness. “None taken. Is he married?”

“There’s a lady,” said Charles diplomatically. He crossed his legs and stretched out in his chair, which tilted to the right. I tried to remember whether he’d played football in school, because he looked like a prosperous retired athlete. “We didn’t delve into the legalities. Her name is Gertrude. She’s tough. Very German.”

“Does she know who he is?”

“Actually, I think she thought he was lying until I showed up with my video camera. Then she seemed impressed.”

We had our backs to the house; suddenly its presence felt oppressive. My kids kept telling me I should sell it, move to an upscale condo nearer stores and restaurants. That and the car: they wanted me to give up things. Their caution made me more reckless. “Let’s go,” I said to Rocky junior.

“Where?”

“Take me to Reno. I’d like to see him.”

“I’m not sure,” he said, though he sounded sure: No .

“We won’t ask. You know how he is — he’ll say don’t come, and by the time we get there, he’ll have the door barred out of pride.” The more I spoke, the better this idea sounded to me. Sure. One thing to sit around when I didn’t know where he was, but now I was ready to ride off into the sunset looking for him. No, sunrise, I knew my geography. Riding off into the sunset in California would only get you wet. “We’ll take my car,” I said.

“Thing is,” said Rocky junior. “Hmmm. I interviewed him when I was down there. Asked him questions about his life and the act. He was pretty hard on you.”

“Of course he was,” I said. “That’s Rocky. And then things didn’t go well for him, and they went well for me — I know he’d have a hard time swallowing that. I don’t care what he said. Look, I’ve already forgiven him, and I don’t even know what he said.”

“I’ll give you the tape. You can watch it. Then decide. If you still want to go—”

“We’re old men,” I said. “We haven’t seen each other in thirty years. What could he possibly have said?”

“Watch the tape,” said Rocky junior, “and then call me.”

The Interview

Q: So where did you go when you left Hollywood in 1957?

A: I went to drink.

Q: To drink?

A: To drink? Yes, that’s what I said: I went away to drink. Young men drink so they can be around people. Old men drink to be alone.

Q: But couldn’t you—

A: I went away to drink unimpeded . People kept telling me to stop. And if they didn’t tell me to stop, then they just avoided me. I mean, I was drinking a lot already, sure, and I’d call people up in the middle of the night.

Q: I remember. Why’d you do that?

A: I missed them, I guess. Or I wanted to settle scores. Bad behavior. So I emptied my bank account, and I went to live where there were no phones.

Q: Which was where?

A: You’re too literal minded. But, okay, cheap hotels. There are hotels where you don’t have a phone in your room. And in bars there are pay phones, but I never had change. I went out of my way not to have change. I tipped the bartender with it. I gave it away to panhandlers. I always hated loose change anyhow. I thought it was an insult to my pocket. Later I’d be mad at myself, when I was running out of money — all those quarters would have added up to — well, to a lot of whiskey.

Q: Why did you drink so much, do you think?

A: I guess I was thirsty.

(SILENCE)

Q: What did you do during the days, then?

A: I drank. I drank all the time. I slept, and drank. Maybe something interesting happened to me in there, but I’ve forgotten. I forgot most things. I got beat up once, but I only know that because my nose was broken, in a way — said the doctor who set it, I met him in a bar the next morning — that was caused by a fist.

Q: You could have been killed.

A: Yes, I could have been. Wasn’t.

Q: You’re smiling.

A: I didn’t care. I still don’t. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing, some has-been gets killed in a barroom.

Q: It wouldn’t have been the worst thing if your life ended in tragedy?

A: Ah, but you see: it already had.

Q: But—

A: It’s a long end. It’s a very, very, very long end. Longer than I would have liked, and longer than anyone would have guessed. It feels endless, but that’s probably the nature of unhappy endings, right? Don’t kid yourself. The past thirty years have not been the rest of my life, they’ve been the end of my life, and as it happened my life has ended in tragedy.

Look: I don’t buy that bullshit, that life is precious. This planet’s full of life, overfull of life, if you believe what the papers say. Everywhere you go, there it is, Human Life, walking down the street smug and stupid. A thing is precious — by definition, look it up in the dictionary — by being scarce. People call life precious because some of them like it too much. I could claim whiskey’s precious. But life? More to the point, my life? The market’s glutted.