The Falls Read online

  Gilbert was susceptible to sore throats, respiratory infections, sinus headaches, Mrs. Erskine informed Ariah. He had a “delicate stomach” that couldn’t tolerate spicy foods, or “agitation.”

  Mrs. Erskine had hugged Ariah, who yielded stiffly in the older woman’s plump arms. Mrs. Erskine had begged Ariah to call her “Mother”—as Gilbert did.

  Ariah murmured yes. Yes, Mother Erskine.

  Thinking Mother! What does that make Gilbert and me, brother and sister?

  Ariah had tried. Ariah was determined to be an ideal bride, and an ideal daughter-in-law.

  A clamor of church bells. Sunday morning!

  In a strange bed, in a strange city, and lost.

  A female voice chiding in her ear, and a smell of Mother Erskine’s talcumy bosom. If you’ve never drunk anything stronger than sweet cider, Ariah, do you think it’s wise to have a second glass of champagne—so soon after the first?

  Possibly it hadn’t been Gilbert’s mother but Ariah’s own mother. Or possibly it had been both mothers at separate times.

  A giggly-shivery bride. In satin and Chantilly lace, fussy little mother-of-pearl buttons, a gossamer veil and lace gloves to the elbow that, peeled off after the luncheon, left small diamond-shaped indentations in her sensitive skin like an exotic rash. At the luncheon, held in the Littrells’ big, gloomy brick residence adjacent to the church, the bride was observed nervously lifting her champagne glass to her lips numerous times. She ate little, and her hand so trembled she dropped a forkful of wedding cake. Her rather small, almond-shaped pebbly-green eyes were continually misting over, as with an allergy. She excused herself several times to visit a bathroom. She freshened her lipstick which was bright red as neon; she’d powdered her nose too frequently, and granules of powder were discernible from a short distance. Though she tried to be graceful she was in fact ungainly and gawky as a stork. Pointy elbows, beaky nose. You’d never have thought her an accomplished singer, her voice was scratchy and inaudible. Still, some pronounced Ariah “very charming”—“a beautiful bride.” And yet: those Dixie-cup breasts! She was well aware that everyone stared at her bosom in the exquisite Chantilly lace bodice, pitying her. She was well aware that everyone pitied Gilbert Erskine, to have married an old maid.

  Another glass of champagne?

  She’d graciously declined. Or, maybe, she’d taken it. For just a few sips.

  Mrs. Littrell, mother-of-the-bride, relieved and anxious in about equal measure, had conceded to Ariah that, yes, it might seem strange to her, a full corset to contain the tiny 32-A breasts, the twenty-two-inch waist, and the thirty-two-inch hips, yes but this is a wedding, the most important day of your life. And the corset provides a garter belt for your sheerest of sheer silk stockings.

  Ariah laughed wildly. Ariah grabbed something, a swath of silk from the astonished seamstress, and blew her nose into it.

  Though she’d obeyed of course. Never would Ariah have defied Mrs. Littrell in such matters of feminine protocol.

  Later, on the morning of the ceremony, being dressed by Mrs. Littrell and the seamstress, she’d prayed silently Dear God, don’t let my stockings be baggy at the ankles. Nowhere it can show.

  And, as the ceremony began: Dear God, don’t let me perspire. I know I’m starting, I can feel it. Don’t let half-moons show at my underarms. In this beautiful dress. I beg you, God!

  These eager girlish prayers, so far as Ariah knew, had been answered.

  She was feeling stronger by degrees. She forced herself to whisper, “Gilbert?” As one might sleepily whisper to a spouse, waking in the morning. “Gilbert, w-where are you?”

  No answer.

  Gazing through half-shut eyes she saw: no one in the bed beside her.

  A crooked pillow. Wrinkled linen pillowcase. A bedsheet turned partly back, as if with care. But no one.

  Ariah forced her eyes open. Oh!

  A German ceramic clock on a mantel across the room and shiny gilt numerals that meant, for several arduous seconds, nothing to Ariah’s squinting eyes. Then the clock’s face showed 7:10. The fog outside the hotel windows was fading, it appeared to be morning and not dusk.

  Ariah hadn’t lost the day, then.

  Hadn’t lost her husband. Not so quickly!

  For probably if Gilbert wasn’t in the bathroom, Gilbert was elsewhere in the hotel. Gilbert had let it be known he was an early riser. Ariah guessed he was downstairs in the lobby with its Victorian dark paneling, leather settees and gleaming marble floor; or possibly he was having coffee on the wide, regal veranda overlooking Prospect Park and, a short distance beyond, the Niagara River and Falls. Frowning as he skimmed the Niagara Gazette, the Buffalo Courier-Express. Or, his monogrammed silver pen in hand, a birthday gift from Ariah herself, he might be making notations as he leafed through tourist brochures, maps and pamphlets with such titles as THE GREAT FALLS AT NIAGARA: ONE OF THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD.

  Waiting for me to join him. Waiting for me to slip my hand into his.

  Ariah could envision her young husband. He was quite attractive in his stern way. Those winking eyeglasses, and nostrils unnaturally wide and deep in his long nose. Ariah would smile gaily at him, greet him with a light kiss on the cheek. As if they’d been behaving like this, so casually, in such intimacy, for a long time. But Gilbert would dispel the mood by standing quickly, awkwardly, jarring the little rattan table and spilling coffee, for he’d been trained never to remain seated in the presence of a woman. “Ariah! Good morning, dear.”

  “I’m sorry to be so late. I hope…”

  “Waiter? Another coffee, please.”

  In charming white wicker rocking chairs, side by side. The honeymoon couple. Among how many hundreds of honeymoon couples in June, at The Falls. The uniformed Negro waiter appears, smiling…

  Ariah winced, climbing down from the bed. It was a Victorian four-poster with brass fixtures and a crocheted canopy like mosquito netting; the mattress was unnaturally high from the floor. Like a creature with a back broken in several places, she moved cautiously. Tugging at a strap of her silk nightgown where it had fallen, or had been yanked, over her shoulder. (And how sore, how discolored her shoulder was…A plum-colored bruise had formed in the night.) Her lashes had come unstuck, though barely. There were dried bits of mucus in her eyes like sand. And that ugly acid taste in her mouth.

  “Oh. My God.”

  Shaking her head to clear it, which was a mistake. Shattered glass! 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 indecipherable 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.

  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 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 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 apprentice 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 gathered 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 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. ARIAH HADN’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.