Lizzie Borden (10 page)

The stable boy had the horse dressed and ready. Andrew climbed up into the seat and flicked the reins, turning the rig down the street and out of town.

Fall River was a small town, but even so, it had its ethnic sub-areas. There were areas filled with Poles, and the Irish had their little town-within-a-town. The Italians had a neighborhood, and Andrew rode through them all, keeping his eyes straight ahead, keeping his nostrils from breathing too deeply the odor of their nationalities. Andrew preferred town. He knew town. He owned some of town and was comfortable there. That’s where he raised his family, and that’s where he would stay until the day he died.

The farm properties were very nice, and if Andrew ever gave a thought to retiring, he imagined being on the farm alongside the creek where he used to take the family for leisurely weekend vacations and where he took the girls fishing when they were younger. But Andrew and his family belonged in town.

Remembering those earlier times, those carefree times made him eager to drive out to the country. He snapped the reins and clucked the mare into a little more speed.

The buggy he drove was not a particularly comfortable one; the springs squeaked and the leather seat was cracked and poorly patched in two places. But the bank was making money and as long as Andrew Borden had a say in its financial affairs—i.e. expenditures—the buggy was perfectly suitable as it was.

They trotted out of town onto a poorer road, one quite muddy with the spring thaw, and badly rutted. Andrew slowed the horse and found the change in countryside refreshing.

The fields were greening after being snow-covered for months. The air smelled fresh; there were even some newborn lambs curled up and sleeping as their mothers grazed beside them.  The buggy carried Andrew over a clattering bridge that covered a swollen stream, muddied with runoff from the melt. He pulled his overcoat a little tighter around him and wished he’d brought Lizzie along for company.

Lizzie used to go with him when she was just a little thing. She used to sit jostling alongside him on this very same seat leather and talk a blue streak, asking questions about everything they saw, everyone they passed. A warm knot pressed against his breastbone as he thought of Lizzie. She was, without a doubt, the most precious thing that had ever happened in his life.

He worried about her, mostly about those dratted headaches she got that made her so sick. They were the same headaches her mother used to get. Sarah, Lizzie’s mother, would have headaches so bad she would fall unconscious to the floor.  Andrew remembered Emma running to him the first time it happened, she must have been three or so, and she was shrieking and shrieking that her mama was dead, she was
dead
, she was
DEAD
! and Andrew found her lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. He carried her to their bedroom, and within a half hour, she was awake, her headache gone. In its place, of course, was a large purple knot where she had hit her head as she fell. Doctor Bowen came right over when Andrew ran to fetch him, and he prescribed a sedative, which Sarah wouldn’t take.

Doctor Bowen saw Sarah for many problems. Sarah had those headaches, and she had terrible tantrums, fits of rage so bizarre that Andrew used to take Emma and leave the house. He never knew if the house would still be there when they returned. He feared for the safety of his daughter when he was off at work all day, but nothing she did seemed to trigger her mother’s spells. That always happened when he was around to rescue Emma and get her out of range. Sarah had a mighty throwing arm and she threw everything she could get her hands on. Her face screwed up into a mockery of humanity and turned purple-red. She would rage, using foul language and all, stomping and kicking, biting and scratching when he got too close to her, and he would grab up Emma and run for a neighbor’s house.

When the storm was over, Sarah would cry for hours, sometimes days, apologizing over and over. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, she said, and her remorse was indeed pitiful. Her face would be swollen from crying, her eyes red and lost in the puffy tissue around them. Andrew couldn’t bear to see her in such misery, but she would not be consoled.

When Emma was five years old, Sarah gave birth to Alice, who screamed from the moment she came into the world. Alice screamed so loudly and so long that the whole household was set on edge. She would not stop screaming in order to eat, and Sarah grew gaunt and hollow watching her baby daughter starving to death. On the third night, as Sarah had fallen unconscious from exhaustion, with Andrew by her side, the baby died.

Sarah’s “spells” grew ever more vicious after that.

These spells put Andrew in a terrible mind. He became frantic for a cure. Dr. Bowen could do nothing. He found no reason for the rages, and tried prescribing this and that, but Andrew knew that Sarah took none of the medication.

Sarah had told him there would be no more children, but when she was well, she was so beautiful to his eyes, and playful, and. . .

Four years after the infant Alice Borden died, Sarah found herself again with child. Fear took over her life. For entire days at a time, she would sit, immobilized by the possibility that the life she felt moving within her would scream itself to death. Andrew would walk Emma to her school, and Sarah would be sitting on the sofa when he left. When he returned, she would be sitting in the same place, and she would not even know that he had been gone.

Emma learned to care for herself.

Fear for the baby’s life consumed Sarah. Andrew had to remind her to eat. Emma was entirely ignored. Andrew prayed for a healthy son, one he could name after himself, one that would grow up strong to be a man for his mother when Andrew grew elderly.

A girl was born. Sarah snapped back to life when the greedy little mouth suckled so efficiently, and she was lost in rapture, cooing to the fat, pink little creature.

This would be their last child. Andrew would not have his son. He named her Andrew anyway. Lizzie Andrew Borden.

For a while, Sarah’s health improved. Ten-year-old Emma began to receive attention again, as her help was needed in the house. The baby Lizzie grew pudgy and healthy, and Sarah doted on her.

And then, about the time Baby Lizzie began to walk, the spells returned. Again, Andrew was snatching up the children and taking them out of harm’s way.

Andrew’s hopes for a normal, happy home life vanished, and he mourned those shattered dreams every day. But he loved Sarah more than he thought anybody could ever love another human being. So he lived with her rages. And her headaches. And the fainting spells that accompanied them that seemed to be more than just fainting spells. She would be fine one moment, a graceful hand to her temple, her eyes just a little bit off center from the headache pain, trying to manage her household just the same, and the next moment she would be slumped in her chair or lying on the floor, absolutely unconscious. Not in a swoon, but as if she were dead.

And then she did die. She’d fixed him a fine breakfast, seen him off to work and twelve-year-old Emma off to school and was feeding baby Lizzie in her high chair when he left. When Emma came home from school, Lizzie was still in her high chair and Sarah was dead on the dining room floor.

Emma calmly walked down the street, to where Dr. Bowen lived and maintained his medical practice, brought him home with her and tended to the baby while Dr. Bowen attended Sarah, and when summoned, Andrew came home. Emma handed him the baby and then went to pieces.

Like her mother, Emma did what had to be done in a crisis. And like her mother, Emma raged. Andrew had long ago given up on changing Emma’s behavior. A stronger will he had never seen in his life. He had even ceased to worry over her. Now, as an adult, she would go off, fueled by the fever of resentment, and be gone for weeks at a time. Then, when she returned, she would take to her bed for equally as long, recovering from whatever damage her rages had done to her. Emma was a strong one, all right. She seemed able to handle herself. And if one day she ran off and never came back. . . Well. . . that would be all right too. It wasn’t that Andrew didn’t love Emma, for he did. But she had abraded that love until it was lusterless and shabby.

Emma never got over the death of her mother. It was during Emma’s formative years that Sarah Borden put Emma through the worst tests of all, and then died when Emma was at the most sensitive age of twelve. No wonder the poor girl had grown to be a humorless woman. Emma blamed her father for Sarah’s death. She made that very clear from the first moment. He didn’t take good enough care of her, or he made her work too hard, or he didn’t hire a nanny for Lizzie when he knew that she was prone to those terrible headaches.

Andrew wasn’t so sure he didn’t agree.

As a result, Andrew and Emma always appeared to be viewing the family—and life itself—from opposite angles. They seemed to be fighting even when there was nothing to fight about. They seemed opposed on every matter. Whether they were or not, Andrew always felt as if they were.

Emma blamed him and Andrew blamed himself. Upon that one issue they did agree. Upon that one issue and no other.

Sometimes it was very hard for Andrew to look at his family. It was not a picture he cared to have on his desk. He did not brag about his wife and children the way other men did. He did not flaunt them about town. He used to, but those were younger, freer times. Life had taken Andrew’s grief for a picture-perfect family and twisted it tightly around him.

Andrew pulled the buggy up in front of the first farmhouse, scattering a half dozen scraggly chickens. These tenants were not to Andrew’s liking, being so private and personal about their affairs. Both husband and wife worked in the mill, and they left their children with Irish people during the day. He set the brake, found their rent bill in his pocket and got down from the buggy with weary legs.

They took care of the building and grounds, but the whole area smelled like the goats he heard in the back. The smell grew stronger as he walked toward the house.

The woman opened the door. “Mr. Borden,” she said, smiling with bad teeth.

“I’ve come for the rent,” he said, and handed the white bill toward her.

She shushed her children and slipped out the doorway to stand in the sunshine with him. She was disheveled and dumpy.

“Mr. Borden, my Howard took to his sick bed last Wednesday and didn’t pick up his pay envelope on Friday. He’s better now, and will be agoing to work on Monday. Can he drop the rent round your office then?”

Andrew thought of the husband that belonged to this woman standing in his bank office, smelling of goat and lord knows what else.

“I collect the rents on Saturday, madam.”

“Yes, I know, Mr. Borden, we been rentin’ from you now for two years, and we always had the rent on your Saturdays. But this time, well, Howard just got so sick, and you know they wouldn’t let me pick up his pay envelope. . .”

“I will confiscate his last paycheck, take the rent, plus a surcharge for my trouble, and he can pick up the balance of his pay.”

“Surcharge?”

“Yes. It costs me time and money to come out here every Saturday. If you’re not going to have the rent for me, then I must charge you for my time.”

“How much, do you think? We barely make ends meet. . .”

“One dollar.”

The woman’s hand fluttered to her throat. “A dollar? Mr. Borden, that would feed us for a week, what with raising our own goat milk and hogs and all.”

“Then you should have your rent here on time.”

The woman looked at the porch.  Andrew felt ill at ease. It was these people that made him ill at ease. He didn’t like their kind, not at all, and as soon as he could get them off his property, he would likely rent to a higher class of folk.

“Mr. Borden,” the woman said, “would you please take some goat cheese to the missus?”

“If you fetch it in a hurry,” he said.

She did, and he walked, itching, back to the buggy. He knew that she hoped the paltry gift of goat cheese would help ease the penalty. Well, maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t.

He climbed back into the seat, his ill temper making the horse fidget. He took off the brake and snapped the reins. He knew the woman still stood on the porch, but he gave her no backward glance.

Now if Lizzie were here, he thought, she would say something gay and the ride to the next farmhouse would be pleasant in this spring morning. Instead, he knew that he would grumble to himself the rest of the way, running things he should have said to his tenant through his mind, preparing what to say to the next tenant if they should try the same story with him.

He missed Lizzie on these rides, but he could understand her refusal to join him. Shame turned the spring day dark for Andrew as he thought about his sweet Lizzie and the terrible things he had done to her on these trips.

It started years ago, when Andrew worked as an undertaker. He was frequently called to the outlying areas to confer with families, retrieve corpses and collect money. More often than not, these rides were less than joyous, so he would take Lizzie with him to elevate the atmosphere. It was his job to view the dead bodies of these people, and those who died from sickness or accident didn’t bother him. It was the ones who died old that haunted all his moments. He feared for himself when age began to take its toll.

Lizzie would chatter all the way out and, little girl as she was, usually slept the whole way back, completely tuckered out from the fresh air and sunshine. She always brought along a blanket, and she would sleep curled on the seat next to him when she was little, with her head on his lap when she got a little older, and then in the back seat as she got too old to do that.

And when she was asleep, he began to talk to her. He told her things he would never tell another soul, never. He talked to her in a way that was quite surprising to himself; and every time they took off for the country, his angel of a little girl with him, he would promise himself he would not talk to her in “that way” any more.

But he seemed to have no control over the strange behavior that erupted during those moments.