The Falls (6 page)

He’d known she hadn’t loved him. Of course he’d known.

Yet he’d believed (almost!) that he loved her.
He would come to love
her, his lawfully wedded wife. In time.

As his father had come to love his mother, he supposed. As all men came to love their wives.

For had not God enjoined mankind to
Increase and multiply.

Run! The shame of it would paralyze him otherwise.

Champagne at the reception, and in the hotel room. He had not known. Had not guessed. This delicate-boned woman drinking thirstily as a day laborer. Ignoring his tactful suggestions that maybe she’d had enough. Giggling, wiping her smeared mouth on the back of her hand. Kicking off her shoes. When she tried to stand she’d swayed, light-headed; he’d jumped up to steady her. She half-fell, pushed herself into his arms. How different from the stiff-backed minister’s daughter he’d known. Ariah Littrell in her white ruffled blouses, her Peter Pan collars and crisply ironed shirtwaist dresses and flannel skirts. Neatly polished high-heeled pumps and spotless white gloves. That Ariah was nearly three years older than G. secretly pleased him. It was like a trump card, for he knew she had to be grateful he’d chosen her. And he didn’t want an immature woman for a wife, he understood that he would be the immature spouse. Ariah would take care of Gilbert as his adoring mother had done for twenty-seven years. If he was hurt, sulky, irritable, disappointed, Ariah would understand and forgive. If he flared up in a childish temper, she would forgive. All this he was counting on. An ambitious young minister requires a canny, mature, responsible wife. Attractive but not overly attractive. And Ariah was gifted, in the way of small town, sequestered talent: he’d been impressed by her piano playing, and by the quality of her soprano voice. At a Christmas recital there was Ariah Littrell singing “Silent Night, Holy Night” so beautifully
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you saw her as beautiful. The sallow skin was radiant! The rather chill, shrinking eyes were green-glowing as emeralds! The small pursed mouth was gracefully opened to shape surpassingly sweet words.
Silent night, holy night
. . . G., seated with Reverend and Mrs.

Littrell, was taken by surprise. He hadn’t expected to much enjoy the recital but as soon as Ariah stepped out onstage, nodded to her pianist-accompanist and began to sing, he felt a thrill of—something.

Pride? Covetousness? Sexual attraction? This beautiful, coolly poised young woman singing to an audience of admirers, strikingly dressed in a long wine-colored velvet skirt with a sash, and a long-sleeved white silk blouse. Her eyes were uplifted as if to heaven. Her narrow tapered fingers were pressed to her bosom in an attitude of prayer.

The hair that in ordinary light was dull, faded, limp, was lustrous in the stage lighting. Subtle spots of rouge enlivened her face.
All is
calm, all is bright
. . . G. clenched his fists thinking yes, yes he would love this remarkable woman. He would make her
his.

Run for your life.

The wedding ceremony had passed in a haze like landscape glimpsed from the window of a speeding lurching vehicle. Though D.

was not present, hadn’t been able to attend, G. persisted in seeing him in the corner of his eye. D., smiling and nodding encouragement.

Yes! Good! I’ve done it, Gil, and so can you!
At the reception she’d begun drinking and on the drive from Troy to Niagara Falls she’d fallen asleep, her head lolling against his shoulder in a way that annoyed him, it was so intimate and yet unconscious, brainless. And in their hotel room she’d drunk most of the bottle of champagne that awaited them. She chattered nervously, her words slurred. She giggled and wiped at her mouth. Lipstick on her teeth, her clothing disheveled.

Rising, she became dizzy and lost her balance; he’d had to jump up to steady her. “Ariah, dear!” Preparing for bed she giggled and hiccuped and stumbled to him. When he stooped to kiss her wet, parted lips he tasted alcohol and panic. His heart was lurching and kicking. The bed was ludicrously large, the mattress so high from the floor, Ariah insisted he “boost” her. Heart-shaped velvet cushions everywhere, lace coverlets like nets to catch unwary fish. This was a shrine to—what?

Ariah lay in the bed like an awkward sea otter in her ivory silk night-36 W
Joyce Carol Oates

gown, hiccuping, jamming her knuckles against her mouth and trying not to burst into laughter. Or was it hysterical sobbing.

He hadn’t known what to expect, hadn’t wanted to think ahead, but, dear God, he hadn’t expected this. She drew him to kneel beside her aroused and trembling as in a fever dream of lurid degradation.

Beneath his hesitant weight she squirmed and moaned. Suddenly clasping her arms around his neck—tight!—tight as an octopus’s tentacles—and kissing him full on the lips. Was this Ariah Littrell the minister’s spinster daughter? Clumsily seductive, one of her eyelids drooping. He couldn’t bear it, her hot hands swiping blindly at him. She was moaning his name, that in her mouth sounded obscene.

Groping against his chest, his belly and groin. His penis! That any woman would touch him there, like that . . . In a guttural moan pleading
Love me, why can’t you love me for God’s sake
.
Do it! DO IT!
The bared gums, damp exposed teeth. A ragged swath of rust-colored hairs between her clutching thighs. She was ugly to him, repulsive.

Damn you please what’s wrong with you DO IT!
Bucking her groin against his. Her bony pelvis. He wanted to strike her with his fists, pummel her until she lost consciousness and had no further knowledge of him.

He too was moaning, pleading
Stop! Don’t! You disgust me.
In fact he may have slapped her, not with the flat of his hand exactly, flailing out in instinctive self-defense, knocking her back into the oversized pillows. But she’d only laughed. Unless she was crying. The brass bed jiggled, creaked, lurched and careened like a drunken boat. His elbow raked against her breast. There was something offensive, obscene about the small hard breasts, the inflamed-looking nipples. He shouted and spat at her to leave him alone yet blindly she swiped at him, grabbed at him, her strong fingers gripped his penis as in the most lewd of adolescent sex-fantasies. To his horror a sharp shuddering cry escaped from his lips even as his milky seed leapt from him piercing-sweet like a swarm of honeybees. He collapsed upon her then, panting. His brain was extinguished, like a flame that has been blown out. His heart pounded dangerously. Their sweat-slick bodies held fast.

Later he would hear her gagging and vomiting in the bathroom.

A delirium of sleep washed over him like filthy frothy water. In
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the confusion of a dream he believed he might have murdered the woman whose name he couldn’t remember.
Lawfully wedded wife. Death
do you part.
He’d snapped her neck. Smothered her in the smelly bedclothes. Pounded and clawed between her legs. He was trying to explain to his father, and to his friend D. whom he’d betrayed. He could not bear it. Never again.

Run, run!

Crossing the plank bridge above the rapids. His bare feet in leather shoes were hurting. He’d dressed hurriedly, carelessly. His zipper had jammed. A voice lifted in his wake—“Hey, Mister? Tickets are fifty cents.” Someone was calling after him. Fifty cents! G.

didn’t so much as glance back. He’d had a reputation, he’d prided himself in his reputation, at the seminary, for being rather aloof, even arrogant. D. was his only friend, D. was truly Christly, good. D.

would understand his desperation and forgive him even if God would not. He hadn’t a penny for a ticket. Where he was headed, proudly he had no need for a penny. And possibly it was the Devil who teased him in the guise of a gray-haired gatekeeper. As it might be the Devil who teased mankind by placing “fossils” in the earth. Tempting him to turn back. Tempting cowardice. But G. in his headlong plunge would not succumb for G. had vowed to see this through. To God he’d vowed. To Jesus Christ (whose salvation he repudiated) he’d vowed.

In a dead hour of the night before dawn, by his gold Bulova watch nearing five o’clock, he’d knelt on the painfully hard mock-marble tile floor of the bathroom. Steeling himself to endure the woman’s odor.

Vomit, sweat. Odor of unclean female flesh. He’d bared his soul to his maker, that it be extirpated by the roots. For he had no need of a soul now. This act would be his crucifixion. A man’s death and not a coward’s. D. would see. All the world would see.

D.’s heart would be broken at last. The world’s heart would be broken.

And no possibility of survival.

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Joyce Carol Oates

Behind him the gatekeeper shouted. Barely G. could hear the man’s voice over the roaring of The Falls. At his left hand the Niagara River was wild, deafening. You would think, as local Indian tribes had thought, that it was a living thing that must be placated by sacrifices.

A hungry river, and insatiable. Its source must be unknowable. And the massive falls ahead. The Falls stretching in a horseshoe curve, as far as the eye can see through curtains of rising mist and spray.

(Winking flirtatious little rainbows appeared and disappeared amid the spray. Like bubbles, or butterflies. Tempting the viewer to stare in surprise, admiration; tempting the viewer to smile. Such useless beauty, amid such destruction!) Scarcely could G. see but he knew The Falls were ahead. It was a site called Terrapin Point he sought, knowing by the map that it was the southernmost tip of the little island. The Falls were so loud now as to be mesmerizing, calming. Flying spray blinded him but he had no need any longer to see. Damned glasses sliding down his nose. Always he’d hated glasses, diagnosed with myopia at the age of ten. G.’s fate! In a gesture of which he’d never have been capable in life he seized his glasses and flung them into space. Good riddance! No more!

Suddenly he was at the railing.

At Terrapin Point.

So soon?

His hands groped and closed about the topmost rung of a railing.

He lifted his right foot, a slippery-soled shoe, nearly lost his balance but righted himself, like an acrobat positioning himself on top of the railing even as a part of his mind recoiled in disbelief and bemuse-ment thinking
You can’t be serious, Gil! This is ridiculous, you graduated top
of your class, they’ve given you a new car, you can’t die
. But in his pride he was over the railing, and in the water, swept instantaneously forward with the rushing current powerful as a locomotive and within swift seconds his skull was broken, his brain and its seemingly ceaseless immortal voice extinguished forever, as if it had never been; within ten swift seconds his heart had stopped, like a clock whose mechanism has been smashed. His backbone was snapped, and snapped, and snapped like the dried wishbone of a turkey clutched at by giggling children and his body was flung lifeless as a rag doll at the foot of the
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Horseshoe Falls, lifted and dropped and lifted again amid the rocks and sucked downward amid churning water and winking miniature rainbows, lost now to the appalled sight of the sole witness at the railing at Terrapin Point—though shortly it would be regurgitated from the foot of The Falls and swept downriver three-quarters of a mile past the Whirlpool Rapids and into the Devil’s Whirlpool where it would be sucked downward from sight and trapped in the spiraling water—the broken body would spin like a deranged moon in orbit until, in His mercy, or His whimsy, God would grant the miracle of putrefaction to inflate the body with gases, floating it to the surface of the foaming gyre, and release.

The Widow-Bride of The Falls:

The Search

1

Damned, she would speak of herself.

Yes you could see it. In her eyes. Poor woman!

No one among the staff of the Rainbow Grand could state with certainty when she’d first appeared downstairs in the lobby: the young red-haired woman soon to be known, in popular imagination, as the Widow-Bride of The Falls. It was about 10:30 a.m. of June 12, 1950 when some of them began to notice her, but without taking particular note. The lobby of the Rainbow Grand was spacious, and crowded. A passing bellboy may have stepped into her wavering path and nearly collided with her, quickly apologizing, but as quickly continuing on his way. A waitress in The Café would speak of seeing her—“Or someone just like her”—at about that time. But it was June, season of weddings. It was honeymoon season in Niagara Falls and the lobby of the old Victorian Rainbow Grand on Prospect Street was festive with people, mostly couples. There were lines at the regis-The Falls X 41

tration counter with its ornate gilt scrollwork and, overhead, a sun-burst clock held aloft by a smiling Cupid. AMOR VINCIT OMNIA.

In the center lobby, in cushioned wicker chairs, men were seated with crossed legs, smoking cigars, pipes. Cigarette smoking was general.

Leading off the lobby was the Rainbow Terrace, an expensive dining room serving Sunday brunch. At the rear of the lobby, late breakfast and other refreshments were being served in The Café, a casual but elegant area surrounded by potted trees and tropical flowers; on a raised platform, an ethereal long-haired young woman harpist played Irish airs—“Danny Boy,” “The Rose of Tralee,” “An Irish Lullaby.”

Frequently, guests were paged over an amplifying system by a disembodied male voice. What a commotion! Like the comforting humming buzz of a hive. Or the murmurous vibratory roar of The Falls.

Almost, you could drift and eddy in this space mesmerized, un-thinking. You could fall under the spell of the harp’s long delicate stroking notes, barely discernible above the crowd noise. You could find yourself standing transfixed in one spot not knowing where you were, or why.

She was alone. That stood out. Everyone else with someone, or in a hurry to
get somewhere. But not her.