The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  A smug fool. Ariah hated her.

  (No, Ariah wasn’t “close” with her mother, though the Littrells drove frequently to Niagara Falls to visit at 7 Luna Park, and, at least once a year, the Burnabys drove to Troy for one or another “festive” occasion. Ariah gritted her teeth and played her role as a Daughter who’d become a Mother, to her parents’ approval. She supposed that Mrs. Littrell believed that she and Ariah were “close” but it was a misunderstanding on the older woman’s part. Ariah had talked it over with Dirk rationally: “Chandler and Royall need grandparents, and these are devoted grandparents. So I think we should continue to see them, for the boys’ sake.” Dirk appeared shocked by this casual argument. “But I thought we all liked one another, Ariah? I thought we’d agreed we were all friends?” Ariah shook her head, bemused by her affable husband. “Of course we ‘agreed,’ darling. I always agree. But it isn’t so. We do what we do for the sake of the children.”

  (At least there was no possibility of a misunderstanding on Claudine Burnaby’s part. There was a woman who had cut herself off completely from Ariah. What a relief!)

  Two little boys in the Burnaby household. One, the younger, so clearly took after his daddy; the other, the older, possibly resembled his mother. In temperament, at least.

  Chandler did very well in school. His grades were high, but he never seemed satisfied. Even in grade school he was always turning in extra-credit assignments to his teachers, usually on scientific subjects like the Ice Age, woolly mamoths and saber-toothed tigers, Neanderthal Man, Haley’s Comet, the Solar System. (For a replica of the Solar System, Chandler designed an ingenious wire-collage contraption in which the sun was a grapefruit, and the planets smaller fruits culminating in a grape, which was Pluto. For a replica of the orbit of Haley’s Comet, Chandler designed a yet more ingenious mobile contraption in which the comet was a spark plug and the planet Earth a painted rubber ball. For this, Chandler won a prize at the Niagara County Science Fair, competing with children ten years and younger.) Dirk was proud of Chandler, and Ariah supposed she was, too. But the child annoyed her so! He had not a shred of musical talent, though he was always at the piano, in emulation of Ariah’s younger pupils. Ariah pressed her hands over her ears begging him to cease: “Honey, my pupils don’t play any better than you, but at least, listening to them, Mommy gets paid.” Chandler’s shirts were often misbuttoned, even when Ariah could swear she’d buttoned them herself, with care. He came back from school looking like a street urchin, with shabby clothes, old dried food stains on his trousers, when Ariah had sent him off in freshly laundered, pressed trousers. His shoes were always muddy, it seemed, even in fair weather. His shoelaces were often untied, he tripped on his own disproportionately long feet, fell down stairs and opened a terrible cut on his chin, which turned by degrees into a white, fossil-like scar. In this climate of perpetual shifting skies, sudden rains, sleet, hailstones, where healthy natives seem to have developed antibodies for colds and flu, poor Chandler was always coming down with respiratory ailments and stomach flu. He ran sudden fevers out of sheer perversity, knowing how his mother was terrified of meningitis and polio. Yet, with a temperature of 102.2°F, Chandler insisted upon trekking eight blocks to school in the rain because he feared “falling behind”; he put up such a protest, Ariah had to give in. “But if you come down with meningitis or polio, Chandler Burnaby, Esquire, you can take yourself to the emergency room, and you can dig your own little grave, and on your tombstone you can carve: SMART ALECK. I wash my hands of you.”

  Dirk chided Ariah for fussing over the boy too much, making him self-conscious about his health, which was fine for him to say, he and Royall were brimming with health. Ariah protested, “Who else is going to fuss over that child except his mother? Who else gives the slightest damn whether that child lives or dies except his mother? Because his mother is the one who will be blamed if he doesn’t. Doesn’t live.” Dirk laughed at her, she was funny as Lucille Ball on TV, another redhead but not so scrappy and sharp-witted as Ariah. “Oh, Ariah, what is going to happen to Chandler? He’s a perfectly healthy good-natured little boy. A little scrawny in the chest, maybe.” Ariah flared up. “Are you blaming me that your son is underweight? Malnourished? He doesn’t eat, his nose is always in a book. Maybe he has a tapeworm.”

  Worse, Chandler was an absentminded child. While Royall fixed you intensely in his gaze, smiled and bobbed his head and began to “talk” at twenty months, and by three had learned to shake his parents’ visitors’ hands and ask how they were, Chandler often drifted about in a haze of interior thinking; you could all but hear the machinery of his brain whirr. He wandered into the city or to the Niagara Gorge instead of coming home directly from school, and was returned home in an NFPD cruiser, or by strangers with out-of-state license plates. Young children unaccompanied by adults were not allowed along the river pathways of the Gorge, especially they were forbidden to cross onto Goat Island, but of course Chandler Burnaby turned up at exactly these places; afterward, he would say he was “just exploring. Seeing what’s there.” Beginning in fourth grade he turned up downtown at the Niagara Falls Public Library where librarians would discover him not in the children’s room where he belonged but in the adult stacks, “skulking” amid books “not meant for a child’s eyes.” Naturally, his embarrassed mother would be summoned to fetch him home. Ariah was furious with the child but supposed she saw the humor of the situation. “If you’re going to run away from home, mister, you’ll have to go a lot farther than downtown.” Chandler apologized but so softly and vaguely, Ariah knew he was scarcely listening to his own words.

  She was most exasperated when she caught him reading after he was supposed to be asleep. Chandler would make a little tent of his bedclothes, and hunch inside it with a flashlight, reading and surely damaging his eyes. “If you need glasses someday, don’t come bellyaching to me. And if you go blind, mister, you can get a tin cup and go begging out on the street. But don’t come begging to me.”

  Chandler cringed wide-eyed at her fury. But at once Ariah smiled, and grabbed him to her bosom. “Hey, kid: c’mon. Mommy loves you.”

  4

  A daughter. Amid these rapacious males. And our little family will be complete.

  Ariah waited.

  5

  “RIDICULOUS! Worse than fairy tales.”

  From time to time, pushing the baby’s stroller in Luna Park, pausing to talk beneath the tall splendid plane trees with other mothers or nursemaids, in her bright chattery Lucille Ball manner, that masked Ariah Burnaby’s secret disdain not only for the company she kept at such times (while her gregarious attorney-husband Dirk Burnaby kept a very different company) but for her phony, altered personality, Ariah heard tales of the Widow-Bride of The Falls. But no one recalled the name of the beautiful young red-haired bride who had searched at the Niagara Gorge for seven days and seven nights for her lost, doomed bridegroom who had plunged over the Horseshoe Falls to his death. No one could say with certainty if the tragedy had occurred a few years ago, twenty-five years ago, one hundred years ago.

  There was a young Hungarian nursemaid who assured Ariah that the ghost of the Widow-Bride still kept her vigil. “On misty nights. And only in June. They say, if you see her, don’t speak to her because she will run away. But if you are quiet, she might come to you.”

  Ariah laughed. A sliver of ice seemed to enter her heart, this was so absurd.

  Ariah laughed, hiding her face. In his handsome baby buggy, little Royall stirred and kicked.

  Politely, Ariah asked the Hungarian girl if she’d ever seen the Widow-Bride, herself. The girl shook her head of thick plaited braids vigorously. “I am Catholic, and we are not told to believe in ghosts. It is a sin to believe in ghosts. If I saw a ghost, I would shut my eyes. If I opened them and the ghost was still there, I would run away, fast.”

  The girl grinned and shivered, this was all so real to her.

  Ariah said, gently skeptical, as if she were speaking to a very y
oung child, “But why, Lena? Why run away? The poor Widow-Bride is dead, isn’t she?”

  The girl said earnestly, “The ghost is dead, yes, but she is not where she belongs. So she is a damned soul. That is what a ghost is. So I would run away from her, Mrs. Burnaby, oh yes!”

  Ariah had to admit, she’d run away, too. If she had the option.

  Chandler came home from Luna Park Elementary with tales that made Ariah’s skin creep.

  A long time ago, the Onigara Indians made sacrifices in the Niagara River above the Gorge. Each spring a twelve-year-old girl was brought to the rapids above Goat Island, locally known as the Deadline, and placed in a canoe in her bridal vestments, and a priest of the tribe blessed her, and released her, and the canoe was propelled to the Horseshoe Falls, and over; the girl was then the bride of the Thunder God who lived in The Falls.

  Chandler said, excitedly, “That’s why there are ghosts in The Falls. In the mist you can see them, sometimes. That’s why people want to throw themselves into The Falls, it’s the Thunder God. He’s hungry.”

  Ariah shuddered. Of course it was true. Or had been true, at one time.

  But she turned a derisive face on her impressionable young son. You’d have thought she was furious with him. “Bullshit. It’s not so romantic and ‘mythic’ if you know that these so-called sacrifices were probably just kids nobody wanted—orphans, or weird crippled kids. Expendable females.” Ariah spoke with passion. Chandler gaped at her. An adult’s intelligence turned ferociously upon a nine-year-old, a howitzer blasting a hummingbird to bits. Yet there are hummingbirds who are pests, and deserve to be blasted to bits. “ ‘Ritual sacrifice’—‘ritual murder’—‘becoming the bride of the Thunder God’—these are fancy ways of talking about just plain murder. Ignorant, primitive, superstitious. Like marrying off a twelve-year-old-virgin to an actual man, except worse. The God-damned Indian ‘braves’ should have been tossed into the Niagara River, too. See how brave they’d be, the bastards. They could have a big powwow with their buddy the Thunder God down in the Whirlpool.” Ariah made a spitting gesture, she was so riled-up and disgusted.

  It was uncanny: Chandler’s eyes had no color at all. Sometimes they were the glinting no-color of fish scales, sometimes a swampy muddy brown, or brown-green. When Ariah looked into his face, at times like these, the very irises of Chandler’s eyes seemed to shrink. (Oh, she knew. He was becoming near-sighted. To spite her.) “Honey, see? Mommy is just trying to train you. Not to believe the bullshit you’ll be hearing through your life.”

  Chandler nodded, as a kicked dog might nod. At least the kid was learning. He was learning not to just get straight A’s in grade school but to be thoughtful, skeptical. He was learning to take after his mother who was damned.

  6

  THESE WERE HAPPY TIMES. Ariah knew.

  Warm spring days she took Royall outdoors. In Luna Park, in Prospect Park, and along the misty Niagara Gorge which the toddler seemed to find endlessly thrilling. Already by the age of ten months Royall could “walk” when Ariah held his hand tightly. Proudly they circled the Victorian gazebo at the center of Luna Park, the flaxen-haired chubby little boy staggering and lunging and shrieking with excitement beside his mother who never ceased to murmur words of encouragement to him. “Yes, honey. Like that. Very good. Oops! Now up on your feet again, Royall. What a big, good boy Royall is, how well he can walk.” Royall’s eyes lit up, no exaggeration, when one or another observer applauded his efforts, clapping and praising him.

  Soon, the other mothers and nursemaids of Luna Park knew Royall by name.

  Royall, the beautiful, blessed Burnaby boy.

  Ariah’s heart swelled with love of the child. Now he’d outgrown his demanding infancy, now he was developing a distinctive personality, she felt a tenderness for him she’d never quite felt for his older brother. Where Chandler had seemed to cringe at the world as if overwhelmed by its profusion, Royall gazed and blinked and laughed and invited more.

  Ariah was in awe of him. This child seemed to know the world was friendly to him. Adored him. Always going to offer him more.

  Leaving the house with Royall on their morning expedition, Ariah sometimes heard Chandler call after them, “Mommy? Can I come, too?” She’d forgotten it was summer, and Chandler didn’t have school. Or she’d forgotten that Chandler was in the house. She felt a pang of guilt and said at once, “Of course, honey. We didn’t think you would be interested. You can push the stroller.” For as long as Royall’s strength held, he walked beside Ariah; when he tired, Ariah strapped him into the stroller and pushed. Unless she’d scheduled a piano lesson, she was in no hurry to return to 7 Luna Place. If the telephone or the doorbell rang in her absence, what did it matter?

  Dirk complained it was difficult to reach Ariah, sometimes. She’d decided she didn’t want “help” on the premises. Not even a nanny to help with Royall, no thank you. Ariah was all the nanny Royall required.

  It was a coolly bright autumn day when Ariah felt herself drawn to Prospect Park. Walking with her eager little puppy Royall who lunged forward and had to be restrained; had to be carried in Ariah’s strong arms across streets, and up hills, as Chandler capably pushed the stroller. They were Mommy and two sons. Missing was Daddy, and the little girl.

  Juliet, Ariah would name her. Was there ever so beautiful a name as Juliet?

  In high school, Ariah was convinced that her life had begun to go wrong when her parents baptized her with such a ridiculous name. Some old maiden aunt of her father’s, long deceased.

  They hadn’t been walking half an hour before both the heels of Ariah’s feet began to blister. Damn, she’d worn impractical shoes. In the grass, she could walk barefoot; on pavement, she was wary of tossed-down, still smoldering cigarette butts, pebbles and bits of glass. And there were such swarms of tourists near the railings overlooking the river, she was in danger of being trod upon. So Ariah sat at a picnic table with Royall while Chandler ran to fetch them root beers. It was their custom to have root beers on these expeditions. They were close by the churning upper rapids, near the pedestrian bridge to Goat Island. Newlyweds were having their photographs taken on the bridge. A family of barn-sized individuals, laughing and talking in midwestern accents, trooped by. Ariah wanted to warn them not to underestimate The Falls, just because it was midday, and noisy. Beneath the noise, you could hear something finer, like a vibration. If you looked carefully, you could see phantom rainbows winking and glittering above the river. Ariah shivered, and smiled. The roaring of the American Falls, close by, seemed to enter her soul.

  This is your happy time. Thirty-nine years old. You won’t have these beautiful young children forever.

  (Had God spoken to Ariah, this time? She thought so. But she couldn’t be sure.)

  Well, it was so. Children grew up fast. Nearly everyone Ariah met socially, friends and business associates of Dirk’s, had much older children than the Burnabys did. Some of these children were virtually grown.

  Ariah thought how disapproving these people would be, how they’d look upon Dirk Burnaby’s eccentric wife with distaste, if they knew how badly she wanted another baby. Oh, yet another!

  Chandler returned with their cold root beers. But Royall was too excited to drink more than a few sips. Brimming with energy, he began to run in circles in the grass, shrieked and stumbled and fell and picked himself up, and ran in another circle, tireless. His fine flaxen hair glowed in the pale sunlight. His perfectly shaped, chubby little arms pumped, helping to keep his precarious balance. How purely instinctual this child was, fascinating to watch. The flame of life seemed always at the surface of Royall’s being; his skin was heated with the hard, firm coursing of his blood. No one could mistake this child for a little girl, despite his wavy hair. Ariah recalled how, the previous evening, she’d given him his bedtime bath; how he’d teased her by splashing water onto the floor, and onto her. Washing him gently she’d found herself, not for the first time, dreamily contemplating his soft, small penis
that floated in the soapy water. So clean, perfectly shaped. And the tiny sacs of flesh that cushioned it. (Did these sacs, in the sexually mature male, contain the seed?—the sperm? Ariah didn’t know enough about male anatomy. She might have asked Dirk, at one time.) Strange that Royall had the potential to disturb his mother, as Chandler had not. For Chandler’s sex was but an appendage to his thin, awkward body, a body that reminded Ariah of her own, while, in Royall, sex was the center of his compact little body. Sex was the point of his being, or would be one day. His father’s virility, reborn. But strange and disturbing, in a boy so young.

  “Royall! You’ll put yourself in a fever.”

  At last Royall tired of running in circles and barking like a deranged puppy, but still he was restless, pushing at Ariah when she tried to cradle him in her arms to nap on the park bench with her. No, no! Royall wasn’t ready for a nap. So Chandler offered to push him in the stroller around the park, and Ariah strapped him in, and adjusted his little visored baseball cap, for, like his daddy, Royall was susceptible to sunburn; Ariah warned Chandler not to push his brother too fast, not to go too far and above all don’t go anywhere downhill. She called after them, “And don’t get lost. D’you hear?” But the roaring of The Falls toward which Chandler was moving was so loud, already he was beyond hearing.

  Within seconds Chandler and the stroller disappeared amid a flock of camera-laden tourists, heading for the Maid of the Mist cruise. In the near distance, a high-flying American flag whipped in the wind at the edge of the Gorge.

  Thanks to God, these blessings.

  Ariah sighed, yawned, stretched like a big lazy cat and lay on the park bench in the sun. Wriggled her bare, white toes. Oh, this was heavenly. She deserved this. So tired! Comets danced against her shut eyelids.