Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCracken

sorry,” I said. “I don’t get you.”
    He sighed, silently of course, and picked up the pencil. He held it for a few minutes like it was a burning match he wanted to let singe his fingers, and then wrote, in big block letters, with none of the usual elegant flourish:
    DEAF.
    He pointed to himself.
    I said, “You don’t seem so.”
    Eyebrows up. A shake of the head. On the page,
I read lips. Have since I was a child. A teacher showed me. Scares people.
    â€œScares people? Why?”
    Either I can hear and am just pretending or it’s magic. So says my parents. They were frightened of me.
He went back and crossed out
were
and changed it to
are
.
    From his suit pocket he drew out an old picture on a gray cardboard backing, a theatrical shot from the end of the last century: himself, in full tramp dress, including what must have been a red nose, no cork, just a big shaggy false beard and a matching wig bristling out from under his stovepipe hat, the familiar look of educated seriousness on his face. His hands were full of rubber balls, and he offered one at the camera, as though it was the fruit of knowledge and he thought you better not take it, in case you became as wise and desperate and down at the heels as he. At the bottom of the cardboard it said, CUTTER THE GREAT COON JUGGLER — THE GENUINE ARTICLE .
    He wrote on the pad,
Me at fourteen
. Then he picked up the picture and put it in my hand and gestured, For you.
    â€œNo,” I said, “I can’t take this.”
    He pulled out several from his pocket, to show that he had plenty. I don’t know whether he’d sold them once upon a time or they were lobby cards, but it’s true they were outdated now. It was a weird gift, but one I wanted.
    He wrote on his pad, though I hadn’t asked,
Through my feet I feel the drums. That’s how I dance.
    Farnsworth finally fired me that night, onstage—he made it a joke, I think to see if I’d go off in character. The audience figured I got axed this way every night. “Go back to Des Moines!” he bellowed, and I exited stage left, vowing that I wouldn’t. A local reference! The audience applauded. I walked straight out through the wings to the stage door and kept going, even though Farnsworth owned the dusty Hebe suit.
    I thought of myself like Walter Cutter then, proud and downtrodden. I was so proud I would not take Walter’s advice, which came in the form of
Lucky you
. I wouldn’t go to Des Moines until vaudeville took me closer, and I could show my father I hadn’t made a terrible mistake. I planned my return, honest to God I planned it, but pride—
    â€”not pride. I know that now. In my case it was cowardice, and in Walter’s case it was necessity, and that at twenty I thought we were going through similar things shows you what being twenty does to the brain. I isolated myself. I cast myself out. The tragedy of Adam and Eve, the reason we can love them, is their eviction. They had to leave, and they left weeping. They didn’t pack up and sneak away. That’s the ugliest thing in the world, I’ve come to believe, though at twenty I wasn’t done trying.
    There’s an old bit—Abbott and Costello did it later on film, and the Three Stooges: two guys onstage, one of whom is driven insane by some words. Sometimes it’s
Susquehanna Hat Company,
sometimes
Floogle Street
. In the most famous version it’s
Niagara Falls
. When the straight man hears a certain set of unlikely words, he gets hypnotized and violent. He repeats the phrase in a strangled voice, and then he beats the comic. Then somehow the straight man catches hold of himself and pulls away. But the comic is a comic: if there’s something he shouldn’t do, he can’t help doing it. He says, “I ain’t gonna say those words again.” Straight man says, “What words?” Comic: “Niagara Falls.” And the beating