The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

both of us now.
    In this new, impersonal place. Not the showy luxury of the honeymoon hotel but an ugly fluorescent-lit room where strangers addressed her urgently. “Mrs. Erskine?” And again, as if this was her name, “Mrs. Erskine? We have something to tell you, please prepare yourself.” The gentlemanly man from the hotel whose name she’d forgotten seemed to have disappeared and she was left now with these strangers, identified as police officers though they were not in uniform. One of them, unexpectedly, was a woman: a “matron.” You would need a female police officer to deal with female criminals, victims. This one was middle-aged, with a blunt ax of a face, a faint dark mustache on her upper lip, in a gray serge suit that fitted her bulk snugly. The woman was saying—what? Ariah tried to listen through the roaring in her ears.
    Gilbert Erskine might have “fallen” into—what? Where?
    “The Horseshoe Falls, a witness has reported. At about six-thirty this morning.”
    Ariah heard these individual words but could make little sense of their significance. And the woman had, amazingly, the wallet photo of Gilbert, too. (How had she gotten her hands on that picture of Gilbert, exactly like one Ariah had in her possession?) Ariah said, slowly, “My husband wouldn’t have gone sightseeing without me. He might have left me, but he wouldn’t have gone sightseeing without me. For weeks we’d been planning this trip. He was planning it, mostly. He’d marked off the tourist sights and the ‘geological’ sights we were going to visit, he even numbered them in the order we’d be seeing them.” She said, stubbornly, “You’d have to know Gilbert Erskine, to know that he wouldn’t have done such a thing.”
    The woman in the gray serge suit, busty and big-shouldered, was trying not to be argumentative, you could see. But there was an argument brewing here.
    “Mrs. Erskine, we understand. But this photo of Mr. Erskine has been identified ‘almost certainly’ by the witness who saw the man at The Falls this morning. On Goat Island. Shortly after the time you’ve said Mr. Erskine disappeared from your hotel room.”
    The Falls X 61
    “Did I say that? How could I say that?” Ariah asked excitedly. “I’m sure I said I didn’t know the time. I had no idea of the time. The time was not a concern of mine when I was asleep. Someone must be lying.”
    “No one is lying, Mrs. Erskine. Why would anyone be lying? We want only to help you.”
    “If my husband is gone, he’s gone. How can that be helped? How can you help me ?”
    “Since your husband is missing, and since a man was witnessed at the Horseshoe Falls—‘falling’ into the river—”
    “Gilbert wouldn’t do such a thing. I know what you’re saying: by ‘fall’ you mean ‘jump.’ I know what you mean. But Gilbert would never have done such a desperate thing, he’s a man of God.”
    “We understand, Mrs. Erskine. But—”
    “You don’t understand! Gilbert turned his back on me, but he wouldn’t have turned his back on God.”
    Ariah spoke adamantly. It seemed to her that these ignorant strangers were deliberately provoking her. Wanting her to admit her complicity in Gilbert’s fate. Wanting her to confess.
    One of the male officers said, clearing his throat, “Mrs. Erskine, had you and your husband—quarreled?”
    Ariah shook her head. “Never.”
    “You had not quarreled. At any time, ever.”
    “Not at any time. Ever.”
    “Was he upset?”
    “ ‘Upset’ in what way? Gilbert kept his feelings to himself, he was a very private man.”
    “Did he seem to you upset? During the hours preceding his ‘disappearance’?”
    Ariah tried to think. She saw again her husband’s contorted, sweaty face. His teeth locked in a grimace like a Hallowe’en jack-o’-
    lantern. She heard again the bat-shriek that escaped from his lips. She could not betray him, his shame as profound as her own.
    Ariah shook her head, with