The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

“missing.” The couple was from Troy, on the far side of the state; they’d booked the Rosebud Honeymoon Suite for five days.
    “They were married just yesterday ? Jesus.”
    Colborne was incredulous, incensed. He had a twelve-year-old daughter. He had a mother who adored him, forgave him his faults.
    He was sentimental about women. It infuriated him that any man, let alone a minister, could behave so selfishly on his honeymoon.
    “At least he could’ve waited till he was married a while. Give it a chance. A few weeks. Months. Like the rest of us did. Jesus .”
    Introduced to the widowed bride, Colberne thrust out his hand to take hers. He was wound tight as a spring. He was yearning for a quick drink. The young woman’s fingers were icy in his, and without strength; he had a sudden impulse to warm them energetically in both his hands. “Hello! Hel lo . Mrs. Erskine, I’m Clyde Colborne, proprietor of the Rainbow Grand. I’ve heard of your situation and I’ll be taking you to police headquarters. You’ve called your family, I assume? And Reverend Erskine’s family? And please understand, Mrs.
    Erskine, under these difficult circumstances you’re welcome to stay on at the Rainbow Grand, compliments of the management, as long as—” Colborne paused, blushing. He meant to say until the body is found, identified, shipped home. But Mrs. Erskine hadn’t yet been told about the man over The Falls. “—as long as required.”
    The red-haired woman lifted her strange glassy-green eyes to his.
    Though she’d surely been told by his employees who Clyde Colborne was, and where he was now taking her, she seemed to have forgotten.
    In a scratchy wondering voice she repeated “ ‘As long as required.’ ”
    As if the words were foreign, or a riddle.
    On the brief drive to Niagara Falls Police Headquarters on South Main, Clyde Colborne at the wheel of his flashy new car (a powder The Falls X 59
    blue Buick with whitewall tires, automatic transmission, beige leather upholstery soft as the inside of a woman’s thigh) was uneasily aware of his passenger Ariah Erskine who sat stiffly, gloved hands clasped together on her lap. (Ariah had retrieved from her hotel room a fresh pair of white crocheted gloves.) Colborne wracked his brains to think of something to say to her. Silence between human beings scared him. He was rehearsing how he’d recount this miserable experience to his old friend Burnaby. Jesus! I’d have been a helluva lot better off going to church with my family. Only when Colborne was parking his car did the woman say quietly, “I haven’t yet called my family. Or his. I have nothing to say to them. They will ask where Gilbert went, and why. And I have no answer.”
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    Foolish woman, who are you to be spared My justice?
    God’s voice taunting her. Inside her skull. In this place of strangers staring at her. In pity, and suspicion.
    “But how is it justice, God? Why do I deserve this?”
    She waited. God declined to reply.
    How long ago it now seemed, and how remote. She was standing with her thin arms lifted in a pose of crucifixion as the white satin gown with its myriad pearl buttons, tucks and pleats and ingenious lace trim, was fitted onto her like an exquisite straitjacket. Mrs.
    Littrell had insisted upon the corset, Ariah could scarcely breathe. I take thee Gilbert . My lawfully wedded husband. A sneeze would have shattered the corset, and the wedding.
    At police headquarters, the bride of the “fallen” man was clearly to blame.
    Ariah had washed her face. Rinsed her mouth where panic had left a taste as of copper pennies. How annoyed Gilbert would be to see how another time her damned “French twist” (as her mother called it) had come undone. Strands and wisps of hair made hopelessly frizzy by the humid Niagara atmosphere. Ariah saw with dismay she looked as if she’d only just wakened.
    In that pigsty of a bed.
    60 W Joyce Carol Oates
    You disgust me. I tried to love you.
    This frees