The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Dirk heard himself stammer, “Mrs. Erskine—?”

  “No. No longer.” She spoke calmly, though she seemed frightened. Her fingers, with short, bitten-looking nails, fretted with a fold of the parrot-skirt. “ ‘Ariah Littrell’ I call myself, again. I wasn’t ever really that other.”

  That other was pronounced with an air of puzzled detachment, like a not entirely comprehensible foreign phrase.

  Dirk Burnaby, eloquent and forceful as a litigator, deadly as a pit bull in court, was swallowing hard, mouth dry as sand. Oh, what was happening to him! He was conscious of having spilled water on his smart navy blue blazer. “Do you—remember me? Dirk B-Burnaby. I was the one who—I mean, I am—”

  Ariah laughed. “Of course I remember you.”

  “You—do? I—wouldn’t have thought so…”

  An asinine thing to say, why was he saying it? Yet Ariah Littrell seemed to overlook his clumsiness, and invited him inside.

  There was further clumsiness, as in a scene from a Bob Hope movie, as Dirk handed Ariah the dripping, unexpectedly heavy jar of flowers. He mumbled apologetically, “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  Some of the flowers were spilling from the jar. Daisies with broken stems, a spray of pale pink wild rose studded with tiny thorns. There were exposed roots, clumps of dirt. Weeds mixed with wild flowers. Insects on the undersides of the chicory sprigs. But Ariah murmured, “These are beautiful.”

  They were in a small parlor. An upright Steinway had been pushed against a wall. On the piano were compositions by Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Irving Berlin. Underfoot was a snarled rag rug in which Dirk’s rubber-soled canvas shoes somehow tangled. The vivid lime-green of the parrot-skirt brushing against the woman’s bare, very pale slender legs was making Dirk’s vision blotch. A hollow male voice said, “I had business in Albany and thought—I would drop by to see you. Ariah. I should have telephoned first, but—I didn’t have your number.” He paused. Pulses beat in his head, in subtle mockery of a normal heartbeat. “I heard you singing just now. Out on the walk.”

  I mean that I was out on the walk, and heard you sing. What am I saying?

  Ariah murmured something Dirk couldn’t hear, and ducked into the next room, a small, old-fashioned kitchen with an ugly deep sink and rusted faucets. Dirk followed blindly. At the sink Ariah turned, startled to see him so close. Dirk realized belatedly that he was expected to stay in the other room, but it was too late now: if he turned to retreat, he would appear even more foolish than he was. He would be even more foolish than he appeared. Surreptitiously he brushed at the wet spots on his blazer. Oh, God. Some of them appeared to be blood, from his scratched fingers.

  Ariah had set the jar of flowers in the sink and was reaching for a vase on a shelf above the sink, rising unsteadily on the tips of her bare toes. How pale, how slender her feet were! Dirk stared. He had a confused thought of stooping to hold those feet; to grip those feet in his hands and lift Ariah, for surely he was strong enough, as Fred Astaire might have gripped the feet of Ginger Rogers in a glittery fantasy dance scene in a movie not yet made; or had it been made, and Dirk was remembering it? Through the thin cotton T-shirt he could see the small white bones of the woman’s vertebrae tensing like gripped knuckles and he felt a moment’s vertigo, the sight was so intimate. “Here. Let me.” He lifted the crystal vase down for her. It was one of Mrs. Littrell’s, he seemed to know. A wedding present. He saw it slip from his damp fingers and shatter in pieces on the kitchen floor, yet somehow it did not, the vase was set safely in the sink. So Ariah would take from Dirk’s shaky fingers whatever he urged upon her, and make it safe from him. He was saying, “You have a beautiful voice, Ariah. I recognized it immediately.”

  Meaning what? That Dirk had the ear to recognize a beautiful voice, which was debatable, or that he’d recognized Ariah’s voice, immediately? This was debatable, too.

  Ariah laughed, embarrassed. “Oh. You don’t have to say such things, Mr. Burnaby.”

  “Dirk, please.”

  “ ‘Dirk.’ ”

  How strange, how unmelodic a name! Dirk had never clearly heard it before. His mother had named him, surely. He seemed to know that “Dirk” was a family name, from his mother’s family, not his father’s.

  Ariah said, “My voice isn’t beautiful, it’s—”

  “For upstate New York, it is. It is.”

  He hadn’t meant to sound blustery, bullying. His hollow voice filled the cramped kitchen like a cheap plastic radio turned too high.

  “—it’s hardly a voice.” Ariah spoke sadly but matter-of-factly.

  She was the music expert, she was the one who knew.

  Ariah was struggling with the wild flowers in the sink. So many stems were broken, how had that happened? Why hadn’t Dirk bought a bouquet, in Albany? It had never occurred to me. Tiny clumps of dirt had to be cut off the stems of most of the daisies, by Ariah using a paring knife. The chicory was almost too tough to cut. How had Dirk torn it out of the earth with his bare hands? Ariah dropped a sprig of this weed flower to the floor and both she and Dirk reached for it at the same time. Dirk saw with a pang of excitement that Ariah’s thin freckled hands were bare of any ornament: no rings.

  He’d forgotten: the Dom Pérignon in his car.

  “Excuse me. Ariah. I—I will be right back.”

  On his way out to the car Dirk wondered if Ariah was thinking he might actually be leaving; he hadn’t explained what he was doing. Maybe she expected him to drive away as unexpectedly as he’d arrived? Maybe he should drive away? He’d brought her the flowers, maybe that was enough. Everything was happening this afternoon swiftly and giddily as a ride on a roller coaster and Dirk Burnaby distrusted such swiftness. There was nothing he hated more than a giddy sensation as of slipping-sliding, falling.

  He snatched up the paper bag with the bottles in it. Frankly, he was dying for a drink.

  When he returned to Ariah’s kitchen she’d managed to arrange most of the flowers in the crystal vase. She’d trimmed stems, and put aside broken flowers. She swatted at a fat dimpled spider that darted across the counter from a sprig of wild rose, to hide in a crack in the wall.

  Dirk cried, “Champagne! Let’s celebrate.”

  Ariah’s mouth opened in protest, or alarm, or simple wonder.

  There followed then several minutes of perspiring ingenuity as Dirk Burnaby struggled with a fork, a paring knife, and an ice pick to wrestle the first bottle of Dom Pérignon open; for of course, as he might have foreseen, Ariah had no cockscrew in her kitchen. Nor had Ariah champagne glasses, nor even wine glasses. But she had sparkling-clean fruit juice glasses for Dirk to pour the foaming liquid into. These fruit glasses were then clicked together, very lightly, in a ceremonial toast: “Here’s to us!” Dirk laughed. He’d imagined the glasses colliding too sharply and breaking, spilling champagne over both Ariah and himself, but that did not happen.

  Their mood was electric, haphazard. Was music playing? Dirk could hear it, faintly. Not the melody exactly but the cheery percussive beat. Glenn Miller. “String of Pearls.” The way Ariah glanced around, baffled and pleased-seeming, you’d have thought she was hearing it, too.

  Somehow they were in the parlor, fumbling for seats. Dirk had removed his navy blazer, he was feeling so warm. He found himself sitting on a rickety-legged piano bench between a stack of yellow Czerny lesson books and Piano Technique for the Older Student. Ariah was sitting on a cane-backed chair close by. Her bare toes twitched. She’d brought the crystal vase of wild flowers into the parlor, and placed it on the top of the piano where it loomed above them.

  Dirk said reluctantly, as if the champagne were acting upon him like a truth serum, “I didn’t come to Albany on business. I have no business in Albany. I came to Troy to see you, Ariah.”

  Ariah quickly lifted her glass and sniffed at the bubbly fizzing liquid within. Her pale eyelashes fluttered. She might have been shaken by this revelation, unless she wasn’t surprised
at all, but chose not to respond to it. Instead she said, in a murmur so quiet Dirk had to strain to hear, “I’ve had champagne only twice before in my life. But for the same occasion. It wasn’t nearly so good as this champagne.”

  She laughed, shivering. Dirk stared fascinated at her. So strangely, her small prim perfect mouth called to his mind the pinkish-mauve translucent body of a beautiful tropical fish; one of the delicate, inch-long fish he’d purchased for his boyhood aquarium at Shalott. How the mysterious little creatures with their lacy tails and fins had darted forward to eat the food Dirk sprinkled on the water for them, retreating in virtually the same instant, possessed of a minute magical life far beyond the imaginings of the boy hulking above them like a clumsy demigod.

  He continued, “I’m in love with you, Ariah. No other reason I’m here. I think you must know this?” He heard these words with disbelief. He’d meant to say something very different, about wanting to see her again. He felt compelled to add, since she was staring grimly into her drink, “Please don’t misunderstand, Ariah. Ordinarily, Mondays are very busy days for me. Monday to Friday is work. I don’t usually go gallivanting across New York State. I’m a lawyer. I’m a litigator. I’m in private practice, with a partner, offices in Niagara Falls and Buffalo.” (Should he present Ariah with a card? He had a bunch of them in his wallet.) He said, faltering, “That week I took off to be with you at The Falls was—wasn’t—a typical week for me. I’m not a volunteer rescue worker. Ordinarily I’ve have been working, every day. And damned long days. I mean—” His tongue was too big for his mouth. He had no idea what he was saying. “I’m in love with you, Ariah, and I want to marry you.”

  There. It was said.

  He’d driven more than three hundred miles to make this absurd statement to a woman who continued to stare into her drink. Her small nose crinkled as if she were trying not to sneeze.

  Finally she spoke, severely. “Marry me! Why, you don’t even know me.”

  “I don’t need to know you,” Dirk said weakly. “I love you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why is it ridiculous? It’s love.”

  “You’d only just leave me. Like the other.”

  She spoke wistfully, and took a swallow of champagne.

  “Why on earth would I leave you? I would never leave you.”

  Ariah shook her head, and wiped at her eyes. Suddenly she seemed about to cry.

  Dirk said gently, “I know, you’ve had a terrible experience. But I’m nothing like—” He paused, not wanting to allude to the other in any way; he hoped never in their life together to allude to the other if he could avoid it. “I’m nothing like anyone else. Anyone you’ve known. If you knew me, darling, you’d know.”

  This audacious remark hovered in the air like the pollen-y fragrance of the wild flowers on the piano.

  “But I don’t know you, Mr. Burnaby.”

  “Please call me ‘Dirk,’ Ariah. Can’t you?”

  “Mr. Dirk Burnaby. I don’t know you.”

  “You’ll get to know me. We can be engaged for as long as you want. And we had that week together. That vigil. It was a very long week, I thought.”

  Like an obstinate child Ariah frowned. She seemed about to contradict Dirk, then thought better of it and took another sip of champagne. Her eyelashes quivered in ecstasy.

  Love for this unpredictable female came so strong, Dirk felt the floor shift beneath his feet. For a moment, he might have thought he was on the river in a craft so small he couldn’t see or feel it.

  “Ariah, may I kiss you? Just once.”

  Ariah didn’t seem to hear. She shook her head, as if trying to clear it. “Champagne has a strange effect upon me.”

  “How so?”

  “A wicked effect.”

  Dirk laughed. “Well, I hope so.”

  Ariah laughed, strangely. Dirk was uncomfortably reminded of that shout of laughter when she’d first seen her late husband’s bloated corpse.

  “But I’m too old for you, almost. Men prefer younger girls—don’t they?”

  Dirk said, annoyed, “I’m not ‘men.’ I am myself. And I don’t want a young girl, I want you.”

  Ariah drank champagne. Ariah smiled inscrutably.

  “The notorious ‘Widow-Bride.’ You’re very brave, sir.”

  “I want a wife I can respect intellectually. A wife who’s smarter and more sensitive than I am, and tougher. A wife who’s talented at something I’m surely not.”

  So combative! Dirk sounded to himself like a man fighting for his life.

  Ariah said, thoughtfully, “But maybe you’d leave me, too. On our honeymoon.”

  How exasperating this woman was! Dirk foresaw a lifetime of combat.

  “Ariah, why would I leave you? I adore you. You’re my soul.”

  He leaned forward impulsively and framed Ariah’s small heated face in his hands and kissed her mouth which was unexpectedly pliant, warm, friendly. He was mildly astonished that the woman was kissing him back even as she seemed to be laughing at him.

  7 July 1950

  She would say yes. Yes with her eager wiry little body like a nerved-up cat’s fitting itself to the man. Yes to his large handsome face like a moon. Yes to his startled nickel-eyes. Yes to his voice, a deep-chested effortless baritone. Yes to what she shrewdly perceived as the man’s goodness, his decency. Yes to his mouth that could be wounded by a careless word of hers. Yes to his bravery. His audacity. For she’d been another man’s bride, if not another man’s wife. Another man had wed her, if not loved her. She was a virgin in love and a virgin in the flesh though she’d felt her young husband’s hot acid seed like spite spilling onto her belly, and into the damp bushy hair between her legs. But yes, she would marry Dirk Burnaby. Yes to the wild flower bouquet. Yes to the caresses of his big gentle hands, and his tongue. Yes to the astonishing heat, weight, solidity and size of his penis. That, that would have seemed to Ariah an hour before, before two quick glasses of champagne, the most forbidden of thoughts. Now the most luxuriant and lovely of thoughts. Yes to his kissing, mauling mouth. Yes to his just-slightly fatty-muscled shoulders, back, thighs. Yes to his hair falling into his face, and into hers. Yes though a part of her knew he would leave her, too. Yes though a part of her knew she was damned. Yes though, being damned, she didn’t deserve such happiness. Yes though, being damned, she didn’t give a damn whether she deserved happiness, or whether she was damned. Yes to the man’s obvious intelligence. Yes to the man’s good manners, and his sense of humor. Yes that he made both himself and her laugh, unintended. Yes that his laughter was a deep belly laugh, heating the blood in his fair boyish face. Yes to his weight easing on her. Yes to that ease, that she would not have anticipated. She would not have imagined. Yes to the risk of pregnancy, which no more concerned Ariah in the suddenness of this moment than it would have concerned any female creature in the heat of first copulation. In the heat of first love. In the heat, frenzy, madness of first love. Yes to the risk of pregnancy with a man she scarcely knew. Yes though (in her morbid-minded way) she was in terror that she might already be pregnant, from her disastrous wedding night. From the single spilling of hot acid like spite. But yes to this man’s raw desire for her. Yes to the smell of him like yeasty baking bread. Yes to what shone in his eyes, his love of her. Yes to the fact (she knew!) that he scarcely knew her. Yes to the flamey sensation in her loins. Yes that it was lifting higher, yet higher, like a fountain-jet. Yes that it was making her moan, scream. Yes though her mouth must be ugly, so gaping. Her lips drawn back from her clenched teeth. Yes to the man who made such lovely love to her, filling her body that was both small and infinite, inexhaustible.

  Part II

  Marriage

  They Were Married…

  1

  They were married.

  A hasty marriage, in late July of 1950.

  “No time for an engagement. Dirk and I don’t believe in such bourgeois customs.”

  Ariah spoke breathlessly,
biting her lip to keep from laughing.

  And, as Dirk Burnaby said, more somberly, “When it’s love at first sight, you may as well give in. You’re doomed.”

  Doomed to happiness! So the lovers believed.

  They were married, to the astonishment of everyone who knew them. Especially those relatives, friends, acquaintances of the Littrells of Troy, New York. “Of course, no one approves,” Ariah said, “but we’ve decided not to care.” She wanted to say we’ve decided not to give a damn but held her tongue.

  Being in love with Dirk Burnaby, being so happy in love, Ariah had to bite her tongue often for fear of speaking intemperately. For fear of speaking brashly. For fear of speaking truthfully.

  In her thirtieth year Ariah had discovered not just love, but sex. Not just sex, but sex with Dirk Burnaby. Lovemaking it was called. Making love. Oh, aptly named! It could inspire you to speak bluntly, to shock and offend. It could inspire you to say things you’d never dreamt of saying before, when you’d made the effort (well, most of the time you’d tried to make the effort) to be decorous, well-behaved, a minister’s daughter, a “lady.”

  Dirk said, “We can’t care that others disapprove. Your family, my mother.” He paused, suddenly staring with too much interest at a spot on the floor. For he was thinking of the other. The first husband. The Erskines. “No. We can’t care, and we don’t. We’re married, and that’s that.”

  Ariah said, “No. That is this.”

  Touching her husband in that way of hers. The “secret tickle” she’d about perfected. His gaze, meant to appear stern, serious, swam with sudden desire.

  They were married, and Ariah laughed: “We can do this all the time, can we? My goodness.”

  “My goodness, you mean.”

  Tickling her in that secret way of his, that made her pant, scream, beg for mercy as she’d never done, or imagined, as the minister’s daughter in Troy, New York.