Lizzie Borden (3 page)

She hoped a headache wasn’t coming on. She didn’t want these three women to spoil her one and likely only opportunity for some real travel in her life.

And then she felt a presence at her side, a peachy presence, and Lizzie looked up into the world’s deepest brown eyes, and the woman asked Lizzie to join her for a refreshment in the salon.

Lizzie had flushed a deep crimson, she still felt the blush when she remembered. The woman must have seen or sensed her staring. She looked at the litter of bags at her feet as if it didn’t belong to her and her group and accepted the invitation. Even as she did so, she wondered at herself. She felt so terribly inadequate and was quite puzzled that a woman such as this would spend a moment of her time with an American such as was traveling in that foursome.

“My name is Beatrice Windon,” the woman said, pronouncing it Be-AT-tress.

“I’m Lizzie Borden,” Lizzie managed to say, as they were settling themselves at a table.

“Oh. American.”

“Yes.”

“Traveling with that group of women?”

“Yes. We’re a kind of a church group.”

“Wonderful. You’ll see many cathedrals and things on the continent.”

“I’m sure.”

Lizzie ordered a cup of tea from the steward and Beatrice ordered a fruit juice and they waited in uncomfortable silence until the drinks were placed before them. “British?” Lizzie finally asked, although it was a stupid question and she well knew the answer.

“Oh yes. I’m on my way to Paris to do some business for my father. He’s fallen ill, and is unable to travel.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. It happened quite suddenly, but he’s now out of danger. So until he is able to resume, I shall run his little errands for him.”

“So exciting, to just dash off to Paris.”

“It was at first, but it becomes tedious, nonetheless.” Beatrice sipped her tea. “Where in America are you from?”

“Fall River. In Massachusetts. It’s a little tiny town, in quite a little state on the eastern coast.”

“And what do you do there?”

“Do?” Lizzie couldn’t imagine how she would answer such a question. She had never been asked a thing like that before.

“Yes. Are you married? Have you children? Do you teach, perhaps?”

“No, no, no.” Lizzie’s familiar discomfort rose to the surface. She didn’t do anything. She was not well educated nor well- equipped to do anything. Everybody she knew did something, but Lizzie did nothing. Everybody thought she should be married. Everybody but she, Papa, of course, and Emma. “I live at home. I look after my father.”

“Well, that’s something we have in common, isn’t it? Is he widowed?”

“He was. . . that is my mother died when I was very young, but now he has another wife, quite a worthless one, I might add.” Lizzie surprised herself. This was the type of gossip that came from other people’s mouths, not from hers.

Beatrice leaned close. “I have a worthless stepmother as well. There’s nothing more distressing, is there?”

“No. Do you live at home with them?”

“No, no, I have a flat in the city.”

“London?” Lizzie’s imagination fired up.

Beatrice smiled. “Yes, London. My parents live well out into the country.”

Beatrice had large, full lips and Lizzie found her eyes irresistibly drawn to them. Certain sounds were almost lisped, and it was so very becoming. . .

“Do you read?”

“Avidly,” Lizzie said. “And you?”

“Yes. And I hunt.”

“Do you? I fish.”

“I love to fish. What will you see while you’re in Europe?”

Lizzie rummaged in her bag for her itinerary and brochures, notes that had been taken. It came out looking like a terrible mess, a big wad of untidiness. She looked up at Beatrice, with her peach smile and her peach dress, trussed up tightly at the bodice, and she felt foolish and inept.  “Oh,” she said, “Just probably the usual. . .”

“Do let’s see,” Beatrice said. “You look like a true traveler.”  Lizzie smiled. She’d love to be a true traveler. For the next hour, they went over all her notes, checked the itinerary and Lizzie took more notes while Beatrice told her all the best places to eat, to visit, to see and to smell.

“Europe is best seen, smelled, tasted and felt,” Beatrice said. “Remember this, Lizzie. You must be yourself and make use of all your faculties on this trip. Let nothing escape. And that will continue when you return to America.”

What an odd thing to say, Lizzie thought, yet this woman, undoubtedly in her middle-to-late thirties, had something Lizzie did not. Lizzie was happy to take advice—any advice—from a woman such as this.

Then Beatrice took her pen and wrote out an address in Surrey. “Send me postcards, Lizzie. I would so love to hear of your trip. You can only see Europe for the first time once, you know. How I envy you seeing Europe for the very first time! Tell me everything.”  And when the ferry landed, they hugged. Lizzie sent her a postcard every day and when she got home there was a letter waiting from Beatrice. Before she unpacked, she wrote back, telling of her return trip, and every day since then, Lizzie had written portions of a letter to Beatrice, her best and only friend in the world, so she could share every minute detail of her life with someone who cared. She considered it her living diary. She mailed her musings off to Beatrice once a week, but it oftentimes took more than a month to receive an answer to a question, as the mail service to Britain was so slow. Sometimes she worried about what Beatrice did with all her letters; did she keep them, someday to be discovered and used against her, or did she destroy each one after it was answered?

She saved every letter from Beatrice that she received, and when she read them, each word had the flush of those succulent peach-painted lips and that soft lisp with a British accent.

Beatrice was a godsend.  And now she’d sent a book. That book.

Lizzie had had a particularly bad time the previous summer. She was plagued with the sick headaches that were so severe they made her vomit. They came upon her suddenly, frequently, with no apparent cause, and no apparent remedy. It was a torturous time, and relief didn’t come until fall, when the weather turned somewhat cooler.

Beatrice had written, “My dear Lizbeth, I am afraid for you. Three weeks have gone by without a letter (most unusual), and I am afraid something terrible has happened. Please. . .”

And Lizzie had written back a humble letter filled with graphic descriptions of the headaches, their history, their symptoms, and things she’d tried, trying to alleviate them. To her surprise, a letter came right back. Beatrice had a book, she said, a book that had changed her life. “Would you mind if I presumed to send you a copy? A gift, of course. Following the program outlined in this book has allowed me to make so many changes to my living habits, I am afraid I would be quite helpless and a sheepish person if I had never come across the principles. . .”

While Lizzie could never imagine Beatrice helpless nor sheepish, she was excited about the idea that there may be yet another method to try that would rid her of the wretched headache curse.

And now the book had come. Lizzie held the book tightly, eager to open it, yet queerly afraid to do so. If only she could be rid of her headaches. If only she could wear peach. If only she could have a figure like Beatrice’s. If only she could be as self-assured and self-contained. If only she had good, wise advice to give to others. If only she could have her own flat in the city. . .

She untied the string. Three brisk knocks sounded on her bedroom door. Emma opened it without a word from Lizzie. In her hand she held a white sheet of paper. Emma’s mouth was a firm line and there were lines between her eyebrows.  “Have you seen this?”

“Seen what, Emma?”

“This letter from Father’s attorney.”

“No, of course not. Is it addressed to you?”

“No, it was on the tea tray. I was cleaning it up and wanted to throw out the trash, but I thought I ought to go through it first.”

“Is Father still sleeping?”

“Yes.” Emma stepped in and closed the bedroom door behind her. Emma, Lizzie’s older sister, at forty-two years old, stood tall and thin, and wore the same kind of dark, heavy, clothes their father chose. She wore her brown hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch her face, trying to tame the wiry graying hairs that always sprung loose. Emma had the deep brown eyes of their father, otherwise she was the very picture of their mother, with the long, thin face, the thin nose, eyes close together, shoulders sloped. Sarah Borden, Lizzie and Emma’s mother, as Fall River remembered her, had been lively enough, and pleasant enough that people looked beyond her basic unattractiveness. Emma was not. And to compound matters, the years had not been kind to her.

“Father is deeding the farm in Swansea over to her.”

“No, that can’t be.”

“Here.” Emma flung the sheet of paper at Lizzie. “Read for yourself.”  Lizzie scanned the page. Emma was right. The new deed was being drawn up.

“But that’s
our
farm. That’s
mother’s
farm.”

“So it is.
And
a large portion of our inheritance.” Emma looked smug. Furious. Dangerous.

“What are we to do?” Lizzie was flabbergasted. For anyone but Emma and her to own that property was unthinkable. They had spent summers at that farm when they were children, and while it had been rented now to tenants for twenty years or more, it still evoked strong childhood memories. Lizzie frequently daydreamed of going back to the farm to live, where life was peaceful and rhubarb pies cooled on the windowsill.

“I don’t know what
you
are going to do, my dear, but I won’t stand for this. Not for a moment. That horrendous woman has that poor man so flummoxed he doesn’t know which way is up. She and her poor relations. This is somebody’s terrible idea and I intend to put a stop to it this instant.”

“What will you do?”

“Think, girl, what will happen if I do nothing. That cow will have us as penniless as her kin when Father dies, and I won’t stand for it.” Emma snatched the letter from Lizzie’s lap and whirled on her heel. She slammed the bedroom door so hard the walls shook.

Lizzie listened as Emma stomped down the stairs and began to argue with their father.

Lizzie held the package, still unopened, string dangling, to her breast and rocked back and forth, listening to the sound of angry voices, her stomach knotted so tightly she was afraid to move. Within a few moments, a little wavy spot appeared in the center of her vision. She closed her eyes, but the spot remained. Lizzie sighed, and a tear escaped the corner of one eye. A headache approached. The spot enlarged and became a ring as the center cleared. A ring of what looked like crazy-colored heat waves. The ring slowly expanded.

“No, no, please no,” she said, and put her palms to her temples, but the ring remained. It got larger and larger, and soon was out beyond her vision.

And the pounding in the base of her skull began.

The sound of her father’s footsteps up the back stairs as he went up to his room echoed in Lizzie’s head. Somewhere, she realized that meant that he had had enough of Emma, which wasn’t unusual, and that he was going upstairs to finish his nap. She heard him sigh in the next room. It was as loud as an elephant’s trumpet. She heard his change jangle as he removed it from his pocket and placed it in a little bowl on his dresser. It sounded like tools clanging into a chest. Then the bedsprings creaked as he lay down, and Lizzie saw him in her mind’s eye, a tired, worn out old man who didn’t know how to deal with life any more.

She felt like running out and thrusting her head into the snow. She thought if she did, the snow would sizzle and melt in the heat of the headache.

She could understand Emma’s feelings—after all, the two of them had a right to that money, more right than their step-mother had, yet it was truly Father’s money, wasn’t it, and even though he’d promised it to them. . . it was his to do with as he pleased.

Yet Emma had no call to argue with him the way she did. She found any excuse, any excuse at all to keep the emotional pot boiling in the house. She sometimes had no shame, that woman, and while Lizzie loved her with a fierce devotion, there were times when she not only did not understand Emma, she did not like her. Not at all.

This was one of those times.

Lizzie rocked back and forth in her chair. She heard Emma downstairs talking to Bridget, the maid, their voices thundering echoing in her migraine, and then the kitchen door opened and closed. A chill ran up Lizzie’s legs. The winter outside was a raw one, and the lick of cold air flew through the house, up the stairs and under her door in an instant.

Emma’s cooking sounds began. Lizzie shivered.

Lizzie wanted to go into her father’s room and comfort him, she wanted to yell at him, she wanted to ask him why, gently and tenderly, and hope for a rational, reasonable answer.

She wanted to go downstairs and throw something at Emma, she wanted to sit at the kitchen table and sympathize with her, plan retaliation toward their father for his actions.  She wanted to leave this house, move to a new town, adopt a new identity, where no one would know she was even remotely related to Emma and Andrew Borden, and begin a new life, teaching, perhaps. Wearing peach colored clothing.

The lure of the freedom was delicious to contemplate, but she had lived in this house for twenty-six of her thirty-one years and would grow old in it, probably. Her family was too important, and anyway, women did not just run off, leaving their elderly parents to strike out on their own.

Besides, she had no money. And—so it would appear, if Abby Borden had her way—she would never have money. No money of her own, at least. She and Emma would forever be dependent upon the graces of their stepmother and her family.

Lizzie rocked, empathizing with Emma’s fury, yet unable to fabricate fury of her own. There had been too many years of understanding, too many years of mediating, too many years of loving the man who held her hostage. It was easier to ignore. It was easier to have no opinion.

It was easier to be crippled by a headache.