Read Online Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCracken - Free Book Online Page A

long, I’m off to seek my fortune. He’d tell me no, and I’d have to sneak out of town anyhow. “I’ll try,” I said.
    â€œMose,” he said. He gave his head a tiny, tragic shake. “You’re too young to have so hard a heart.”
    The problem was, it wasn’t hard. The problem was, the minute my father looked at me, I was ready to kick off those oxfords, hem my pants instead of cuffing them, give up all those clothes no workingman would ever consider even trying on, and assume my position behind the counter at Sharp’s Gents’. If I did that, my heart would harden for real. People who manage to turn things down, jobs and marriage and children, love and steady meals, have hearts soft as velvet, hearts—like my new fine duds—never meant for work. These people cry at movies and weddings and funerals. They compose sentimental songs crooned across country, and letters to long-gone lovers. (But only lovers who will stay gone.) They paint. They write poetry. They star in movies. Believe me, I know. Their voices make fun of their own bad habits—a love of money or liquor or pretty girls in skimpy dresses—on living-room radios turned louder by strange teenage girls who laugh in all the wrong places.
    History remembers the velvet hearted. I hoped to remain one of them.
    But the Cow Wasn’t Armed
    Two days later I worked at Sharp’s Gents’ for the last time. Ed had taken the day off. He might have worried that he’d suddenly blurt out the details of my escape. At five, my father and I closed the store. Something had gone wrong with a shipment of gloves: the factory had thrown them in a box, all sizes, each glove separated from its partner. So for an hour after five, that’s what we did; we sat in the back of the store and married gloves. I had to open each glove to find the label, but my father could judge size by a glance. He sorted them as though he was shaking hands with dozens of strangers, as quickly as a politician at a campaign whistle-stop: good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
    â€œWho teaches the business course at school?” he asked. “You’ll take it?”
    â€œMiss Kemp,” I said. The school year started in a week. Of course he assumed I’d be there.
    â€œA woman,” he said. “You could teach it better. Ah, well.”
    The brown canvas of the gloves dried out my fingers. “Miss Kemp’s smart.”
    â€œShe is not a businessman,” said my father. “She is not like us. Well, you’ll get an A, and then after college, maybe you’ll teach the class.”
    I tried to break the news. “I don’t know where I’ll be in four years,” I told Pop.
    â€œHere,” said my father.
    â€œI’ll go to Iowa City,” I lied. “And then maybe—”
    â€œListen.” My father looked at me. He never wore glasses a day in his life, though he lived to be ninety-four. His brown irises were gold flecked. “This is your store.”
    â€œNo, Pop, it’s your store.”
    â€œIt is not. This store belongs to you. Do you know how old I am? I am seventy-eight years old. There is nothing on the earth that belongs to me. I am done with it: this store, this town, this life. Anything now I use, I borrow. I borrow from you. Do you understand?”
    â€œYou’re fine, Pop,” I told him.
    â€œToday, yes. Tomorrow, who knows? I have come a long way, Mose. I am nearly finished. You are just getting started. Don’t let this go to waste.”
    â€œI don’t know how to run a business.”
    He stopped matching gloves for a minute and touched me on the shoulder. “You think you don’t,” he said gently. “You’ll meet a girl. You’ll get married, you’ll have children. You have this store, then your son will have this store. You needn’t wander around.”
    â€œBut if I want to—”
    â€œDon’t,”