Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Mirror-shards shifting, sliding, glittering in her brain.
As, the previous week, she’d clumsily dropped a mother-of-pearl hand mirror on the carpeted floor of her parents’ bedroom, perversely the mirror bounced from the carpet and onto a hardwood floor and cracked, shattered at once—the frightened bride and the stunned mother-of-the-bride staring in dismay at this portent of ill luck in which, as devout Presbyterians, neither was allowed to believe. “Oh, Mother. I’m
sorry
.” Ariah had spoken calmly though thinking with stoic resignation
It will begin now. My punishment.
Now the muffled thunder of The Falls had entered her sleep.
Now the muffled thunder of The Falls, ominous as God’s indeci-pherable mutterings, had entered her heart.
She’d married a man she had not loved, and could not love. Worse yet she’d married a man she knew could not love her.
The Roman Catholics, whose baroque religion appalled and fascinated Protestants, believed in the existence of
mortal sins.
There were
venial sins
but
mortal sins
were the serious ones. Ariah knew it must be a
mortal sin,
punishable by eternal damnation, to have done what she and Gilbert Erskine did. Joined in sacred matrimony, in a legal contract binding them for life. At the same time, possibly, it was a very common occurrance in Troy, New York, and elsewhere. It was something that would “get over with, in time.”
(A pet expression of Mrs. Littrell’s. Ariah’s mother uttered it at least once a day, she seemed to think it a cheery sentiment.) Ariah stood unsteadily on a dusky pink plush carpet. She was barefoot, sweaty yet shivering. She began to itch suddenly. Beneath her damp armpits, between her legs. A flamey itch like an attack of tiny red ants in the region of her groin.
The Falls
X 15
My punishment
. Ariah wondered if she was a virgin, still.
Or if in the confusion of the night, in a delirium of part-nudity and bedclothes, open-mouthed kisses and panting, and the young husband’s frantic fumbling, she might have become . . . might somehow
be
. . . pregnant?
Ariah pressed her knuckles against her mouth.
“God, no. Please.”
It wasn’t possible, and she wasn’t going to think about it.
It was
not possible.
Of course, Ariah wanted children. So she said. So she’d assured Mother Erskine, and her own mother. Many times. A normal young woman wants children, a family. A good Christian woman.
But to
have a baby!
—Ariah recoiled in disgust.
“No. Please.”
Ariah knocked timidly on the bathroom door. If Gilbert were inside, she hardly wanted to interrupt him. The door wasn’t locked.
Cautiously she opened it . . . A rectangular mirror on the back of the door swung toward her like a jeering cartoon: there was a disheveled, sallow-faced woman in a torn nightgown. She turned away her eyes quickly and the fine broken glass inside her skull shifted, glittering with pain. “Oh! God.” But she saw that the bathroom was empty. A spacious luxurious blindingly white room with gleaming brass fixtures, perfumy soaps in tinsel wrappers, coyly arranged monogrammed hand towels. An enormous claw-footed white porcelain tub, empty. (Had Gilbert bathed? Showered? There was no sign of wet in the tub.) The room smelled frankly of vomit, and several of the thick white terry cloth towels had been used. One of them lay on the floor.
Above the elegant sunken ceramic sink, the heart-shaped mirror was spotted.
Ariah picked up the soiled towel and hung it on a rack. She wondered if she would ever see Gilbert Erskine again.
In the mirror a ghost-female hovered, but she didn’t meet its piteous gaze. She wondered if possibly she’d imagined everything: the engagement (“My life is changed. My life is saved. Thank you, God!”); the wedding ceremony in her father’s very church, and 16 W
Joyce Carol Oates
the sacred marital vows. Ariah’s favorite movie was Walt Disney’s
Fantasia,
which she’d seen several times and it wasn’t such a step from
Fantasia
to being married.
If you’re the spinster daughter of Reverend and Mrs. Thaddeus Littrell of Troy, New York. A dreamer!
“Gilbert?” She raised her voice tremulously. “Are you—
somewhere?”
Silence.
In addition to the bathroom, the Rosebud Honeymoon Suite, as it was called, consisted of a bedroom and a parlor, and two closets. The furnishings were aggressively Victorian with tulip-colored cushions, drapes, lamp shades, carpets. A number of the cushions were heart-shaped. Ariah opened each of the closets, wincing with headache pain. (Why was she behaving so absurdly? Why would Gilbert be hiding in a closet? She didn’t want to think.) She saw his clothes, neatly arranged on hotel hangers, hanging in place, undisturbed. If he’d run off, wouldn’t he have taken his clothes with him?
She didn’t want to think if the Packard was missing. It had been a gift from the Erskines to Gilbert, some months before.
The parlor! A bad memory hovered here. On a marble-topped table were a vase of slightly wilted red roses and an empty bottle of French champagne, both compliments of the Rainbow Grand.
Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Erskin!
The bottle lay on its side. Ariah felt a rush of shame. A tart sweet taste rose like bile in her mouth.
Gilbert had only sipped at his glass of champagne, cautiously. He rarely ingested, as he called it, alcohol; even at the wedding reception he’d been sparing. But not Ariah.
Hungover.
That was her condition. No mystery about it.
Hungover!
On the morning following her wedding day.
Too shameful. Thank God none of the elders knew.
For Gilbert would never tell. He wouldn’t even tell Mother Erskine who adored him.
Disgusting. Frankly you disgust me
.
Never. He was too polite. And he had his pride.
He was a gentleman, if an immature boy, too. A gentleman would never upset his wife, especially a high-strung, excitable wife. His
The Falls
X 17
bride of less than twenty hours.
So Gilbert had to be elsewhere in the hotel.
Downstairs in the lobby, or in the coffee shop; out on the veranda overlooking the lawn, or strolling on the hotel grounds, waiting for Ariah to join him. (Gilbert wouldn’t have gone sightseeing yet, to The Falls, without her.) And it was still early, not yet 7:30 a.m. He’d taken his clothes and shoes and dressed quietly in the parlor. Taking care not to wake Ariah who he knew was—exhausted. He hadn’t switched on a light. He’d crept about barefoot.
Desperate to escape. Undetected.
“No! I can’t believe that.”
It was strange to be so
alone.
Even Ariah’s voice in this absurdly decorated suite sounded
alone.
She’d supposed marriage would be different.
You begin with a wish, and the wish comes true, and you can’t shut off the wish.
Like “The Sorceror’s Apprentice,” the comic-nightmare sequence in
Fantasia
. The ordeal of Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror’s hapless ap-prentice did come to a happy ending, however, when the Sorceror returned home and broke the spell. But Ariah’s situation was very different.
Home. Where was Ariah’s home? They would be “settling in” in Palmyra, New York. In a tall gaunt brick house that came with Gilbert’s appointment as minister. She hadn’t thought very clearly about this residence, and wasn’t going to think about it now.
Now: where was
now
?
Niagara Falls?
Of all places! Vulgar jokes. As if Ariah and Gilbert were hoping to be typical American newlyweds.
In fact it was Gilbert, strangely, who’d wanted to come to The Falls. He’d long been interested in “ancient glacial history”—“geological pre-history”—in upstate New York. One of their dates had been to the Museum of Natural History in Albany, and another had been to Herkimer Falls where a retired army colonel had a collection of fossils and Indian artifacts, open to the public. From Gilbert’s dinner conversation with her father, which was so much more animated and interesting than Gilbert’s conversation with Ariah, she’d gath-18 W
Joyce Carol Oates
ered that Gilbert believed it might be his “destined task” to reconcile the alleged evidence of fossil discoveries in the nineteenth century with the biblical account of the Earth’s creation.
Reverend Littrell, square-jawed and robust in middle-age, looking no-nonsense as Teddy Roosevelt in the old photos, laughed at such a notion. He was one who believed that the Devil had left so-called fossils in the earth for credulous fools to find.
Gilbert had winced at this, but, gentleman that he was, made no objection.
The way of science and the way of faith
. Ariah had to admire her fiancé for such ambition.
She’d always interpreted the Book of Genesis as a Hebrew version of a Grimm’s fairy tale. Mostly it was a warning: disobey God the Father, you’ll be expelled from the Garden of Eden. A daughter of Eve, your punishment will be doubled:
In sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Well, that was clear enough!
Ariah didn’t intend to get into theological debates with Gilbert, any more than with her father. Let these men think what they will, Ariah thought. It’s for our own good, too.
Ariah decided to call the front desk. Bravely she picked up the pink plastic receiver and dialed “O.” She would ask if—if a youngish man was anywhere in the lobby? Or—out on the veranda? In the coffee shop? She wanted to speak with him, please. A tall thin young man weighing perhaps one hundred fifty pounds, with a parchment-pale skin that looked too tight for his facial bones, round wire-rimmed glasses, neatly dressed, courteous, with a distinctive way about him of seeming to be waiting patiently to be pleased; or, revealing how charitable he might be, how willing to compromise his expectations, though secretly he was displeased . . . But when the operator said cheerily, “Good morning, Mrs. Erskine, what can I do for you?” Ariah was struck dumb. She’d have to adjust to being called
Mrs. Erskine.
But it was a greater shock to realize that a stranger knew her identity, the switchboard must have lighted up her room number. Meekly Ariah said, “I—was just wondering what the w-weather is? I’m wondering what to wear this morning.”
The Falls
X 19
The operator laughed in a friendly, practiced manner.
“Though it’s June, ma’am, it’s also The Falls. Dress warm until the fog lifts.” She paused for dramatic effect. “If it lifts.”
3
7:35 a.m. A r i a h h a d n ’ t yet discovered the farewell note, on a sheet of dusky-rose Rainbow Grand stationery, neatly folded and propped against the vanity mirror in the bedroom. It was a small oval gilt-framed mirror into which, in her stricken state, Ariah couldn’t bring herself to look.
God, no. Spare me. What Gilbert must have seen, while I slept
.
Of course, it was a relief that Gilbert Erskine wasn’t close by.
After the frantic crowdedness of the previous day, so many suffocating faces brought close to hers, and a nightmare lunacy of smiles, and the intimacy of the shared bed . . .
A bath. Quick, quick before Gilbert returned!
Ariah would have taken a bath in any case. Of course. Ordinarily she bathed every night before bed, but she had not bathed the night before; if she missed a night, she bathed in the morning without fail.
Sometimes in the sticky humidity of summer in upstate New York, in this era before air-conditioning, Ariah bathed twice daily; yet was never convinced, she didn’t
smell
.
Nothing appealed to her more than a bath. A soaking hot bath in the sumptuous bathroom, in a luxury tub she wouldn’t have to clean afterward with Dutch cleanser and a scrub brush; a bath fragrant and bubbling with lilac bath salts, courtesy of the Rainbow Grand. Her eyes filled with tears of gratitude.
Give me another chance! God, please
.
Of course there was hope, still. Ariah didn’t seriously believe that Gilbert Erskine had
run off.
For where, after all, could a twenty-seven-year-old Presbyterian minister, son and son-in-law of Presbyterian ministers, run off
to
?
“He’s trapped. Just like me.”
Ariah ran bathwater from big brass faucets until every mirror in the bathroom was steamed over. Luscious warm suffocating perfumy 20 W
Joyce Carol Oates
air! And water hot as she could bear, to cleanse away the dried sweat and other stains from her body. The smells of her body.
And his body, too. Where she’d clumsily touched him. By accident. Or somehow in the confusion, she’d brushed against him, or pressed against him . . . She couldn’t remember exactly. And whatever had happened, what milky fluid leaping from the man’s rubbery thing onto her belly, and into the bedclothes,
no she could not remember.
The man’s shocked high-pitched cry. A bat-cry. His convulsions, his whimpering in her arms. She could not remember
and she was not to
blame.
Ariah would shampoo her hair, too. It was snarly and sticky at the nape of her neck. Her hair that was wanly-wavy and faded-red, so fine and thin as to require constant care. “Pinning up” with bobby pins, foam rubber hair rollers. (She’d brought a cache of these on her honeymoon, hidden in her suitcase. But obviously she couldn’t wear such trappings to
bed
.) This morning she wouldn’t have time to curl her hair, she’d brush it back into what Mrs. Littrell called a “chic French twist,” and fluff out her languid bangs on her forehead. And hope she’d more resemble a ballerina than a spinster librarian or schoolteacher.
She would wear a pink rose bud twined into the French twist.
She would wear very light makeup, not the cosmetic mask of the previous day that had seemed required. Not vivid red lipstick but coral pink.
A different sort of femininity. Seduction.