Empire Falls

particularly beautiful girl who worked as a waitress at the Empire Grill, and his thoughts too often drifted from the mystery of Christ’s body and blood to the mystery that was Charlene Gardiner, though he tried not to indulge unchaste thoughts during Mass .
    Sometimes at the offertory, after taking the cruets of water and wine to Father Tom, who always insisted they be presented to him handles first, Miles caught a glimpse of his mother, often with his little brother either fast asleep or squirming in the pew beside her, and he’d wonder what she prayed for. His father was the sort of man who required more or less constant prayer , augmented, it was often remarked, by a swift kick in the pants, so it was possible she was praying for him, though it was hard for Miles to imagine the exact nature of a Max Roby prayer. If he happened to be gone somewhere, his mother might conceivably offer up a prayer for him to come home and help out. After all, when Max was in residence, Grace could at least leave little David at home during Mass. But no sooner would such a prayer be answered, and her husband returned to the bosom of his family, than Grace would surely begin to offer prayers for his removal again, Max being more trouble than he was worth. When she and Miles returned from morning Mass they were likely to find David standing up in his crib, clutching the railings with his fat little fists, his cheeks beet-red with rage and grief, weighed down by a sagging, fully loaded diaper while Max slept off the night before in the next room .
    What Miles suspected, though, was that his mother’s prayers had little to do with his father. If she was anything like himself, her prayers sought objects of their own desire much as toddlers chase colored bubbles in the air, and he wondered if his mother’s thoughts drifted off in pursuit of long-lost Charlie Mayne the way his own pursued Charlene Gardiner. But that was pure speculation. Grace hadn’t mentioned the man once since their return from Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, Miles had kept his mother’s secret so well that there were times he had to remind himself there was a secret to keep. He began to wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing, and on their way home from Mass one morning—it was probably two or three years afterward—Miles said, “Mom? Do you remember the man we met on Martha’s Vineyard? Charlie Mayne?”
    He expected her to either be or pretend to be surprised, as he would’ve been had such a question come out of thin air so unexpectedly. But Grace answered as if she herself had been contemplating that very thing, or perhaps wondering when he’d get around to asking. “No, Miles, I don’t,” she replied calmly. “And neither do you.”
    G RACE BEGAN WORKING for Mrs. Whiting in late spring, a month after the woman had been released from the hospital—much to the relief of the entire staff, who’d had about enough of her. Mrs. Whiting had recently contributed seed money for a new wing, and everyone was aware of just how important a patient she was, but had it been a democracy the staff would’ve voted as a bloc to take her down to the river at the head of the falls and release the brake on her wheelchair .
    Instead of committing her to the rising waters they gave her into the care of Grace Roby, who trekked across the Iron Bridge above the swift spring torrent each morning shortly after six, rain or shine, to attend two cripples, one temporary, the other permanent. Actually, Mrs. Whiting’s broken hip had been occasioned by her daughter, who’d lost her balance, grabbed onto her mother, who happened to be nearby, and taken both of them down. Cindy, thanks to a lifetime of practice, knew how to fall, whereas Mrs. Whiting, whose equilibrium, both physical and emotional, was not easily tilted and who had not fallen once during her entire adult life, shattered her hip, requiring her to cancel at the last moment her trip to Spain, where she’d rented a villa for the month .
    The reason Cindy Whiting, then fifteen, had lost her balance and fallen on that occasion was that the operation to repair her damaged pelvis, her fourth, hadn’t worked. The doctors had promised that if she underwent the procedure and then worked hard at her physical therapy, her equilibrium would be much improved, and she’d be less dependent on her walker for support. While there were no guarantees, perhaps by spring she’d be able to step unaided onto the dance floor at her