Empire Falls

referred to him as “dear boy,” though Miles doubted he was particularly dear to her. And she was forever pronouncing things he said “hilarious,” despite a demeanor that suggested she didn’t find them even remotely funny.
    The Planning and Development Commission office, which Miles had never entered before, was large, and along one whole wall sat a scale model of downtown Empire Falls, so obviously idealized that he didn’t immediately recognize it as the town he’d lived his whole life in. The streets were lined with bright green toy trees, and the buildings so brightly painted, the streets so clean, that Miles’s first thought was that this was an artist’s notion of what a future Empire Falls might look like after an ambitious and costly revitalization project. Only closer inspection revealed that the model represented not the future but the past. This, Miles realized, was the Empire Falls of his own childhood, and he noticed several businesses along Empire Avenue that had been razed over the last two decades, leaving in real life a rash of excess parking lots. The Empire Grill, neglected in real life, in miniature looked as if Mrs. Whiting had given Miles every penny he’d ever asked for.
    A small silver plate on the base read: “ EMPIRE FALLS, CIRCA 1959.” The actual town, of course, had never looked quite so prosperous. Even in 1959 the brick walls of the textile mill and the shirt factory—bright red on the model—had gone rust brown, even black in some places, with weather and soot. And the river that ran past them on the model had been rendered sky blue. Now that’s hilarious, Miles thought. Surely the only time in the last hundred years that the Knox had run blue was when the textile mill was dumping blue dye into it. Even more hilarious was the idea that such a nostalgic past should have found a home in the town’s planning and development office. Evidently the commission’s plan was to turn back the clock.
    Elijah Whiting, whose stern portrait overlooked the model, failed to see the humor in any of this. Like the Whitings in the other room, old Elijah wore a grim expression, and he had the same weakness about the mouth. They all reminded Miles of someone, though he couldn’t imagine who.
    When Mrs. Whiting said good-bye and hung up, she did it so perfunctorily that Miles couldn’t help wondering whether she’d really been on the phone or was just using the pretense to study him. Around her, this feeling of being scrutinized was not unusual. She now rotated in her chair, leaned back and regarded Elijah Whiting. “They were all mad as hatters, you know. In one way or another. You can see it lurking behind the eyes, if you look.”
    Miles did look, though he didn’t see what he was supposed to. There was a quality of zealousness perhaps, of bigotry maybe, but not of insanity.
    “You probably heard the stories about this distinguished ancestor when you were a boy?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “He’s said to have chased his wife around this very room with a shovel, intent on bashing in her skull.”
    “Surely nothing like that ever happened here,” Miles said, indicating the model, in which only the Whiting estate didn’t look different in quality from its appearance in real life. It suddenly occurred to Miles that Mrs. Whiting herself must have commissioned it. By idealizing the rest of the town, she had successfully obscured the truth—that its wealth and vitality had been bled dry by the generations of a single family. A cynical interpretation, perhaps, but it also explained why the house C. B. Whiting had built across the river was not represented on the model at all. Across the Iron Bridge was virgin wilderness, all lush trees and rolling hills.
    “Seeing you standing there gives me an inspiration,” the old woman said, though Miles doubted, even before she continued, that her sudden intuition would be anything like his own. “You should be mayor.”
    “Of the model?” Miles smiled. “I could just about afford that.” Being mayor of Empire Falls was a full-time job with a part-time salary, though it was often remarked that past mayors had found ways to supplement their income.
    “You’re too modest, dear boy. I’ve often thought you should run for political office.”
    Miles decided not to remind her that he’d run for school board twice and been elected.
    “Are you offering me the job?”
    “You overestimate the extent of my influence, dear boy.” She