Empire Falls

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MAY 2002
    Copyright © 2001 by Richard Russo
    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2001.
    Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
    Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.: Excerpts from “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” by Slim
Willet, copyright © 1952, copyright renewed 1980 by Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. All rights reserved. International rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.
Famous Music Corporation and Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “Magic Moments,” music by Burt Bacharach and lyrics by Hal David, copyright © 1957, copyright renewed 1985 by Famous Music Corporation and Casa David. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Famous Music Corporation and Hal Leonard Corporation on behalf of Casa David. Music Sales Corporation and The Estate of Dick Manning: Excerpt from “Hot Diggity,” words and music by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning, copyright © 1956 (copyright renewed) by Al Hoffman Songs, Inc. (ASCAP) and the Dick Manning Music Company. All rights for Al Hoffman Songs, Inc., administered by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Music Sales Corporation and the Estate of Dick Manning.
    The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Russo, Richard, 1949–
Empire falls : a novel / Richard Russo.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80988-9
1. Restaurants—Fiction. 2. Restaurateurs—Fiction. 3. Working class—Fiction.
4. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Maine—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.U812 E4 2001b
813′.54—dc21 2001088568
    Author photograph © J. D. Sloan
    www.vintagebooks.com
    v3.1

For Robert Benton

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    A S USUAL my debts are substantial. For space, I wish to thank Fitzpatrick’s Cafe, the Camden Deli, and Jorgenson’s. Thanks also to Perley Sasuclark, who told me a story I needed to hear, and to Allen Pullen at the Open Hearth, who reeducated me about restaurants. To Gary Fisketjon, who has labored over this manuscript so lovingly, I’d attempt to describe my gratitude in words, but then he’d have to edit them, and he’s worked too hard already. To Nat Sobel and Judith Weber, who have been with me from the start, my love. To my wife, Barbara, who reads each book more times than anyone should have to read anything, more love. To my daughters, Emily and Kate, who have been the kind of girls, and now, young women, who have freed their father to worry about people who don’t exist outside his imagination, more gratitude than I can express; this time, to Kate especially, for reminding me by means of concrete detail just how horrible high school can be, and how lucky we all are to escape more or less intact.

PROLOGUE
    C OMPARED to the Whiting mansion in town, the house Charles Beaumont Whiting built a decade after his return to Maine was modest. By every other standard of Empire Falls, where most single-family homes cost well under seventy-five thousand dollars, his was palatial, with five bedrooms, five full baths, and a detached artist’s studio. C. B. Whiting had spent several formative years in old Mexico, and the house he built, appearances be damned, was a mission-style hacienda. He even had the bricks specially textured and painted tan to resemble adobe. A damn-fool house to build in central Maine, people said, though they didn’t say it to him .
    Like all Whiting males, C.B. was a short man who disliked drawing attention to the fact, so the low-slung Spanish architecture suited him to a T. The furniture was of the sort used in model homes and trailers to give the impression of spaciousness; this optical illusion worked well enough except on those occasions when large people came to visit, and then the effect was that of a lavish dollhouse .
    The hacienda—as C. B. Whiting always referred to it—was built on a tract of land the family had owned for several