Empire Falls

Fifty years later, Miles Roby runs the Empire Grill which looks out upon the emptied husks of the textile mill and the shirt factory. Empire Falls has been losing its population and its prosperity for decades. Miles works for Mrs. Whiting, now in her seventies, and his customers tease him that he stands to inherit both the Grill from her and the town in its entirety. There are rumors that “Roby” once was “Robideaux,” and thus Miles might be one of her long-lost kin. Mrs. Whiting is capricious in her generosity and imperious in her manner, but all agree that she treats Miles with some deference. He avoids their annual “State of the Grill” meeting, however, always feeling “that he’d yet again failed some secret test” (24).

Some out-of-town license plates on fancy cars are spotted at the old mill, and the locals speculate that someone might rescue the town from its destitution. Miles notes that this kind of speculation occurs just about every fall, once the children go back to school and the adults turn to thoughts of the future. His brother David comes into the restaurant to get ready for his catering gig that evening. Despite having lost most of an arm in a drunk driving accident, David managed to maintain his kitchen skills from his short stint in culinary school. Completely sober since the accident, David still worries Miles; the many attempts at rehab prior to the accident speaks to a stubborn problem Miles fears will reemerge.

Miles also worries about his daughter, stick-thin Tick, since he and his wife Janine have separated. Since the separation, Miles has been living in an unfinished apartment above the Grill. He and Tick have just come back from a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, where Miles’s college friends have a summer home, but the intimacy generated by the vacation has already dissipated as school resumes. Tick comes into the Grill, avoiding one of the customers, Walt Comeau—known as the Silver Fox—who is her mother’s new boyfriend. Miles also tries to ignore Walt. Tick and Miles share what they call “Empire Moments,” noticing the little absurdities of small town life, like a sign that reads “NO TRESSPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION” (38).

Now 42, Miles reflects on the fact that he has been working at the Empire Grill since high school. Since he took over, the place has not turned a profit. Still, Mrs. Whiting insists on keeping it open, and Miles—a competent cook—has managed to generate more business, thanks to some suggestions from David, like dinner service on weekends and the occasional catering job. Miles is considered a hardworking, decent, and kind—if bland—man, whose friends take comfort in the fact that he is the “same old Miles” (22). He finishes his shift and heads out of the restaurant, grateful to be away from Walt.

Father Mark finds Miles “around back of St. Catherine’s staring at the steeple” (44). Miles has volunteered to paint the church—except the steeple, due to his fear of heights—thinking it would save the parish money, only to find that the steeple is the most expensive part to commission. Father Mark eventually jokes that Miles should not worry about it; the church might merge with the other Catholic church in town, as the Catholic population has dwindled. Father Mark will likely be reassigned somewhere else, perhaps somewhere even more grim, due to his past liberal activism.

Father Mark and Miles head to the rectory—which they call the Rectum as a private joke (46)—to talk and drink coffee. While they are talking, Father Tom, suffering from dementia, wanders into the room and insults Miles and his deceased mother. This prompts Miles to drive over to the house he grew up in, which is still on the market after his mother’s passing. The house has deteriorated, along with others on his old block, and he cannot imagine anyone wanting to buy it. While he reminisces, a young police officer Miles doesn’t know approaches his car and asks for his license and registration. Miles responds with barely disguised insolence, and the situation begins to look bad. However, another cop pulls up—Jimmy Minty, with whom Miles went to school—and the situation is diffused. Minty drives a new-ish red Camaro in contrast to Miles’s old Jetta.

Because Miles has been told his registration is expired, he heads over to the DMV, now housed in the Whiting mansion after the courthouse collapsed in the last ice storm. He fears he will run into Mrs. Whiting, whom he has been trying to avoid. This is, of course, exactly what happens, and she calls him into her office. The two have a conversation about will, power, and will-power—Miles notes how his conversations with her often turn uncomfortably philosophical—before she summarily dismisses him.

Janine, Miles’s soon-to-be ex-wife, thinks about how pleasant the separation has been: “She’d liked Miles better these past nine months since they’d decided to separate than at any time in the previous twenty years” (64). She also muses about her new boyfriend, Walt, who gave her her first orgasm and who she plans to marry as soon as the divorce is finalized. Even though she finds his pretensions a bit ridiculous—“Silver Fox” is stenciled on the side of his van—and his intellect a bit lacking, the sexual chemistry between them is too tempting to ignore. Since she has lost all of the weight, she finds herself longing not just for Walt but for the attention of other men, as well.

Janine is also jealous of Charlene, who works at the Empire Grill and is clearly the object of Miles’s affection—though he would never act upon it, so upstanding is he. Janine compares herself to Charlene, noting that as she has gotten thinner, Charlene has gotten heavier and is starting to show her age. This leads her, however, to contemplate that middle age bears down on both of them, and it is only a matter of time before “[t]he competition for the love and admiration of men like Walt and Miles would be passed like a torch to some other girl, some kid, really” (70). But, for now, she sees herself at the top of the potential heap in Empire Falls. 

Tick is in art class, trying to complete her assignment and listening to her friend Candace chatter about her romantic entanglements. Art class is considered a class for the “Bones,” kids whose intellect or ambition doesn’t merit taking demanding courses like calculus and advanced English. Tick works diligently on her project, a painting of her holding a snake. She is there by choice, while Candace is there because she struggles with academics—her mother repeatedly calls her a “moron” (74).

Tick has broken up with the popular Zack Minty and thus has sacrificed her access to the upper echelons of the high school pecking order. She figures out that Candace has been dispatched to try to cajole her into going back to Zack—who treated Tick terribly—not to befriend her. Tick might have considered the reunion had she not met a boy named Donny over the summer at Martha’s Vineyard who actually treated her respectfully. She decides that loneliness is better than suffering Zack’s mood swings.

Near the end of class, Candace cuts herself with the Exacto knife she has stolen from the art teacher. Blood flows everywhere, and Tick faints. When she comes to, she sees the offending knife laying on the floor and sneaks it into her backpack. The principal helps her out of the classroom, leaving the art teacher to contemplate Tick’s artwork with disdain.

Max Roby, Miles’s father, sits with his son in the donut shop in Empire Falls—one of his “favorite places because of its smoking policy, which was ‘Go ahead. See if we care’” (84). Max is badgering Miles about the church painting job: Max had once been a housepainter, and he wants Miles to hire him to help out because he needs the money—despite the fact that Miles is doing the job for free. Max and Miles are diametric opposites: “In Max’s view, Grace [Miles’s mother] had raised their son to be morally fastidious just to spite him” (88). As the two haggle, the police officer Jimmy Minty enters the shop. Miles wonders why he has been seeing his former nemesis so frequently; it is beginning to appear as if their run-ins are more than mere coincidence.

Max immediately begins insulting Jimmy’s intelligence—good-naturedly but sharply. Miles remembers how Jimmy “had the same way of taking inventory behind his eyes,” measuring each man’s relative financial worth or the attractiveness of their respective wives (91). Max wanders off to the bathroom, while Jimmy and Miles have a conversation laced with tension. Jimmy comments on how it seems strange he turned out to be a successful policeman and that Miles returned to Empire Falls instead of completing college. Jimmy adds that it must have been because Miles’s mom had gotten sick. Max returns, interrupting their conversation to insult his own son, saying he’d rather have a moron, like Jimmy, for a son than a failure, like Miles.

Later, Jimmy approaches Miles again as he is about to leave with his father. He warns Miles that David, Miles’s brother, might be growing marijuana out in the woods by his cabin. He hints that their mother would be disappointed. Miles becomes enraged, threatening Jimmy if he ever speaks of his mother again, but he calms down quickly, wary of the power Jimmy wields. As he drives off with Max, Miles remembers how horrific his mother’s illness and death had been, realizing that Jimmy has been deliberately antagonizing him: “Of course Jimmy Minty had heard those screams. Miles himself had heard them all the way down in Portland [. . .] and hearing them he’d hurried home, even though she’d begged him not to” (99-100). 

Miles and Tick eat dinner at the Empire Grill, as is their Thursday habit. While they are eating, Miles thinks back to his boyhood crush on Charlene, who has been a waitress at the Empire Grill since before even Miles started working there. He still harbors faint hope for a spark between them, but Charlene has been honest about her predilection for wounded men who like to drive fast. She confessed to him, “I just don’t think I could go through life at your speed, Miles” (107). Miles has also been thinking about his failed ambitions and regrets, of which he has plenty. Still, being with his daughter Tick and thinking about her unimpeded future, as well as the sobriety of his brother, makes him momentarily grateful for the way things are.

Janine comes into the restaurant to retrieve Tick, who has not been eating her dinner—yet again, as Charlene points out. Tick evaporates to the back room to retrieve her backpack, and Janine starts picking at the mostly untouched plate. Miles offers to order Janine her own dinner, but Janine snaps at him: “You’re through feeding me, buddy boy. I’ve assumed control of my own body” (109). He asks her why she has been so tough on Tick lately, and Janine replies that their daughter has had too easy of a life; it was time for her to grow up. Miles is pained by this, but he continues to take the tack that Janine should have what she wants: He feels guilty because he never truly loved her, and Janine has always known that.

Later, Miles and David are talking in the apartment above the restaurant. David questions Miles about his future: He feels that Miles is wasting his time, waiting for Mrs. Whiting to die and leave the Grill to him. David suspects that Mrs. Whiting does not intend on leaving the restaurant to Miles. However, Miles feels that he owes the old woman: Their mother had worked for Mrs. Whiting, and whenever Miles needed money for college, he suspects that Mrs. Whiting helped out. David responds by reminding Miles that their mother never wanted Miles to be stuck in Empire Falls, and that Mrs. Whiting might have other motives. As he leaves, Miles suggests that their mother had plans for David, too; the burden of her expectations didn’t fall only on him. David acknowledges this, saying that their mother told him exactly what she wanted David to do before she died: “Look after your brother” (121).

Max is drinking at Callahan’s, the tavern run by Miles’s mother-in-law, Bea Majeski. Bea detests the old man, but he is her only customer this time of night so she tolerates him—not that he will actually be paying, as he, like most of her regulars, keeps a running tab. Horace Weymouth of the Empire Gazette comes in to have a quick drink. He, too, isn’t interested in having a conversation with the old man, but he has seen something startling—it has “rattled him to the core” (124)—after his car breaks down and he must walk back into town. Thus, he sits a barstool away from Max and offers him a cigarette and a beer.

While they talk, Max is mostly thinking about his lack of transportation; he wants to get down to Key West for the winter, where the bars are close together and he is often mistaken for a disheveled local. Max talks about how Hemingway used to live there, thinking it would ingratiate him to the more literary man sitting beside him; in truth, he is trying to finagle another beer). After Max insinuates he actually met Hemingway, Horace remarks that Hemingway shot himself in 1961, several years before Max had visited Key West. He then mentions that it reminds him of C. B. Whiting, who also killed himself in such a manner. Max immediately replies, “Twenty-three years ago March” (128). Both Horace and Bea wonder why Max knows this.

Horace leaves, so Max finishes his beer and falls asleep at the bar. Bea eventually ushers him out, and Max decides to visit his wife’s grave at the cemetery: “Strange that he should feel so content and peaceful in Grace’s company now, since he never had when she was alive, so full of hopes and dreams it hurt to look at her” (131). He is taken by the sudden urge to urinate, so he directs his aim at the nearby grave of C. B. Whiting. He is startled by the presence of a cat atop the gravestone, though he believes it to be a statue.

Miles recounts his memories of the summer he and his mother Grace spent vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard when he was nine. Before leaving, he made an accidental save during a baseball game at school, and he insists on bringing the glove that his father bought him on the trip. Once there, he realizes that, as his mother had warned him, there isn’t really any place to play baseball. Nevertheless, he enjoys his time with his mother, noting how beautiful and carefree she looked. He also notices that they are different from most of the people on the island, with their worn suitcases and casual clothes. Miles feels that something is not quite right, especially in those moments when his mother seems distracted. He assumes that she is waiting for his father to join them.

One evening, she requests that Miles dress up for dinner. They are going to dine in the fancy restaurant at the resort, which they have previously avoided specifically because of the expense. Once there, an older gentleman at the table next to them strikes up a conversation, and Miles is surprised when his mother both welcomes the conversation and accepts the invitation to dine with him. He introduces himself as Charles Mayne, spelling the last name to differentiate it from the state. Grace is solicitous in a way that Miles had never seen her be with other men, including his father, and “it occurred to Miles that they [his mother and Charlie] made a couple in some strange way that Grace and his father did not” (140). Charlie takes them out to the beach after dinner, driving fast in his sports car, and Grace allows Miles to wander along the beach by himself. When he returns, he sees his mother’s head resting on Charlie’s shoulder.

The next day, Charlie joins them for lunch at the beach, and Miles begins to grow angry at his mother; she is not as attentive to Miles when Charlie is around. When they return to their room to get ready for dinner, Miles lashes out at his mother, threatening to tell his father about Charlie. Grace appears not to mind at all; instead, she informs Miles that his father is in prison for being a “public nuisance” (146). She also tells Miles that everything will be different when they return home, and thus he had best accustom himself to this new arrangement. He runs off to the beach, angry and frustrated, and throws his baseball into the ocean. Charlie tries to talk to him, telling him how wonderful his mother is and how “she makes everything look new” (147). But Miles is still angry and only shrugs when Charlie says he will take them to dinner.

At dinner, Grace tells Miles not to eat too many clams lest he get sick. Miles retorts that she should worry about herself, because “he wasn’t the one getting sick every morning” (147). Charlie “blanched when he said this,” and his mother grows quiet (147). The next morning, as Grace and Miles are to leave on the ferry, Charlie comes to say goodbye. A tense conversation ensues, and much is left unsaid—partly because Miles is there, watching and listening. Charlie assures Grace not to lose faith, adding that things will only take a little while to resolve. Miles is unsure what any of this means, but as the ferry leaves and they watch Charlie waving from the dock, his mother says that she was wrong about what she said earlier: “Nothing’s going to change. Not one thing” (150). Miles is both comforted and disconcerted by this admission. He realizes, too late, that he has left the baseball glove his father gave him on the nightstand at the hotel.