Lizzie Borden (30 page)

Eventually, the emotion was spent, and Lizzie lay quietly within Enid’s calm. Her life was a mess, and that left a gaping hole in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t seem to be able to do anything right, any of those pitiful little attempts she made at doing anything at all. Everything turned bad in one way or another. Life, it seemed, was a terrible joke, a practical joke, played by God, in his infinite torturous ways, upon all his timid, unfortunate subjects.

“Your father said you might upchuck,” Enid said.

Lizzie was horrified. “He
did
?”

Enid chuckled.

“Oh God.” Then Lizzie found the humor in it, found the humor in everything, suddenly, and she began to laugh. “Aren’t they a pair?”

Enid began to laugh harder, and the bed shook with the two of them holding on to each other, unable to speak, wracked with laughter. Eventually, “Your mother didn’t like me.”

“She’s afraid of small people, like an eleph— ” Lizzie laughed until she cried “— elephant of a mouse.”

Enid wiped her cheeks with both hands, bouncing Lizzie’s head around. Lizzie reached around Enid, and brought her tiny body close. She felt a lot like Kathryn, but more tender, gentler, softer.

They held each other closely for a long time, now and then a chuckle escaping in remembrance.

Lizzie felt that she held within her arms the first good thing that had happened to her in her whole life. Somehow, she wanted Enid to know it.

“I love you,” she said, before she thought twice.

Enid hugged her closely. “And I am falling in love with you.”

They entwined their legs, and Lizzie watched Enid’s profile as she stared at the ceiling, until sleep overcame her and she slept.

When next Lizzie awoke, sunshine streamed in the gauze-curtained window and her heart soared. Enid was up, and the smell of bacon and eggs and fresh coffee permeated the room. The house was cool; at this time of day the Borden house was already sweltering, but the big shade trees kept Enid’s house cool enough so she could light the woodstove and cook breakfast. Including a fresh pot of coffee. Lizzie floated out of bed and into the bathroom.

Sometimes this happened after a headache, this feeling of lightness, feeling of rightness. Lizzie felt as if the world were her gleaming possession this morning, that she could do, be or have anything she wanted. She wanted to laugh in the face of all her troubles, laugh at everyone’s troubles. She wanted to sing and make light of the woes of the world.

She flushed the toilet and watched the yellowed water swirl down. She wanted one for her bedroom. Well, she would have one, too, in her new house. A beautiful bathroom. Just like this one, only better.

She washed her face and sponged the stench of headache off the rest of her, then brushed out her hair. She knotted it back up on top of her head quickly, and went into the kitchen, still wearing the nightshirt that Enid had loaned her the night before. Somehow it felt more personal, more intimate, more appropriate than the clothes she had worn to supper the night before.

“Good morning!” Enid looked as happy as Lizzie felt.

Lizzie hugged her.

“I don’t normally eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, but since you had no supper, I thought you’d be hungry this morning.”

“You were right.”

“Well, sit down, then, and I’ll fix your plate.”

Lizzie cleared a stack of newspapers from the end of the sofa and sat down. Enid brought her a steaming cup of coffee. “It’s so nice and cool here.”

“This is a nice house. It’s always been the coolest during the hot summer months. I swelter in the office all day long, and then just come home, take off my clothes, and sometimes I soak in the bathtub filled with cold water.”

That sounded like the strangest idea in the world to Lizzie. “Bathtub filled with cold water? I never heard of such a thing. Hot, soapy water, I always thought.”

“You should try it sometime.”

Shame tried to poke a hole in Lizzie’s good mood. She dare not reveal that their house didn’t even have a flush toilet, never mind a bathtub. And her baths were almost
always
cold water. Frigid water. Well water, straight from the pump. “I shall,” she said, and blew across her coffee.

Enid dressed and left for work, leaving Lizzie a light kiss on the lips to remember, and an invitation to stay as long as she liked. First, she poked through Enid’s things, and found all her cabinets to be as filled as the open flat spaces. The Borden cabinets were filled, as well, with China, with useless things that were always “too good” to be used for every day, yet the special occasions were so rare as to hardly warrant cleaning them when the time came. Enid’s cabinets were filled with tools, books, magazines, newspapers and gadgets, piled in profusion and disarray. Everything looked like it was useful, although Lizzie couldn’t identify half of the items. It was a joyous, crowded house.

Lizzie fingered the clothes in Enid’s closet. They were of good quality, but less expensive than the clothes Lizzie wore. Most were cottons; there were a few silks. One bedroom had two beds and the clothes closet in there was filled with men’s clothes. Lizzie closed the door quickly on that one; she didn’t know if the clothes belonged to Enid’s deceased husband or to her two sons. It didn’t matter. She was comfortable fingering Enid’s belongings, but the men in her life were a mystery to Lizzie, and they were best kept mysterious.

When she had snooped to her heart’s content, she heated enough water to both wash the dishes, and take a bath.

Soaking in the tub was a thrilling luxury. Enid had perfumed soap crystals, they looked like a gift from someone, and it didn’t appear as though Enid partook. Lizzie knew that Enid wouldn’t mind if she did. She generously sprinkled the salts into the water, swirled them into oblivion with her foot, then lay back and relaxed as the scented steam rose about her.

“I now claim that which is divinely mine,” Lizzie said to the wallpapered ceiling. “Enid. Enid is divinely mine. I claim absolute control over each fragment of my personality, to be strengthened through purposeful, conscious unity.” She knew the words by heart, but this time she wanted only to have Enid Crawford for her own, and if that was the purpose toward which each fragment of her personality had to strive. . . so be it. It made good use of these stupid lessons, she thought. “I now will that the divine power which motors the universe now deed me the control over my own destiny with Enid. I now claim that I, and no other, am the architect of my future with Enid. I now command my rightful, unique place in the order of all material. In Enid’s tub. So it is, so shall it be.”

She soaked until her fingers puckered and the water chilled. Getting out of a chilled tub was even better, for the day had turned warm, even in Enid’s cool house. She dried, dressed, and, reluctantly, went home.

I must have my own home, she thought as she made her way quickly through the heat. Perspiration soaked right through her dress shields, and trickled down between her breasts. She wanted to be home quickly before her enthusiasm dampened, before anyone noticed her evening wear on this hottest of mornings. She wanted to get home and get a lighter cotton duster on before she perished in the heat. The heat was awful.

Her own house would be in the shade of the trees, just like Enid’s. And she would have a clawfoot tub as well. And a large bathroom, with a flush toilet, and a private yard with lots of fruit trees. Particularly the pears. Perhaps she could have someone grow a piece of the Borden house pear tree, and she could put it in her back yard. That tree yielded the tastiest pears ever. It was the only good thing about that terrible, stupid house.

The Borden house had once been divided into two apartments. When Andrew and Sarah Borden bought that house, they did no remodeling at all. Therefore, the layout was bizarre, the rooms small, unconventional, cramped, and inconvenient. Lizzie longed for a house that made sense, a regular house with nice large rooms. It would be absolutely divine if her house could be on the Hill, near Enid, where she could enjoy a view of Fall River, the church, the river, the farms. But all she really needed was a home of her own, even if Emma had to live there with her. She could invite Enid over for dinner with Emma there. She could have Beatrice for the weekend with Emma there. She could do neither of those things while living in the Borden house. That terrible, terrible house.

Lizzie turned the corner and looked at that tiny, narrow, ugly little house on Second Street. It was shameful to live in that squalid little building. Lizzie stopped dead in her tracks and looked at it, as if for the first time, and she could smell the interior. It smelled of old, musty dust. It smelled of mildewed, sour cellar. It smelled like Emma and Andrew and Abby and all that was wrong with the world, and Lizzie didn’t want to go inside.

She looked around her. She had nowhere else to go.

She would speak with Andrew that day
that day
and she would not relent until she had his agreement that she should have her own home. She would
not
relent.

She walked around the side of the house, along the narrow path between their house and the neighbor’s, knocked on the screen door to the kitchen, and when Maggie opened the door, Lizzie filled her lungs with the stench of food that had been left out in the heat too long, food that had been breakfast again and would be dinner
again:
the stench of the Borden home.

Monday, August 1

“Oh, Lizzie?”

“Yes, Mrs. Churchill?”

“Have you a new horse?”

“No, Mrs. Churchill.” Lizzie turned to see the next door neighbor leaning out her kitchen window.

“You’re spending so much time in the barn.”

“I know,” Lizzie said, and then opened the barn door and entered its shady interior. Mrs. Churchill kept her finger on—or her nose in—every tiny bit of information on the whole neighborhood. She kept Abby apprised of the birthings in the area, and sometimes she had some valuable information. Lizzie bore Mrs. Churchill no ill will. She hoped someday Mrs. Churchill would be the first on the scene with some really big news, so to become deified within her gossip group.

It was so hot in the hayloft that Lizzie could barely breathe. She unearthed her book, took a deep breath and began to read her first lesson. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse, and let her skirt ride up her thighs. She let the perspiration run freely off her face and arms, and watched the dark stains appear on her clothing. She read the paragraph, and when she finished, she automatically began setting up the candles and the mirror, and idly wondered if that initial lesson had any meaning left for her, or if it had all been squeezed out like the rind of a lemon. Or perhaps it had just become rote, like some of the things in church, or like furniture that is taken for granted and no longer even noticed. Perhaps she should spend some time again with that first lesson.

But she was too tired.

She moved a piece of board over the window to darken the room, lit the candles, looked at her watch, and then regarded her reflection in the mirror.

This, too, had become boring. What is the purpose of this? She watched as the edges of the mirror became indistinct, and then her face changed shape, all of it swirling a bit around her two eyes. Her eyes locked onto those of her reflection, and the many faces of Lizzie Andrew Borden faded in and out around them.

Within ten minutes, she had had enough. She blew out the candles, took the board down, shoved the box from her and picked up the book again. Lesson three. God, she was sick of lesson three.

She had tried talking to her Angry Self, but nobody ever answered. She thought that perhaps it was the Angry Self that went walking, but if it was, it wasn’t talking to her. She tried talking to her Greedy Self, too, and her Jealous Self. She had been on this lesson for months,
months
, and had gotten nowhere, except to believe that those selves did indeed exist within her.

Yet she didn’t feel like she could go on, not until she’d gotten to the bottom of the list, not until she’d gotten to talk with her Higher Self, her Healthful Self, and her Whole Self. That seemed to be of paramount importance in this program of Beatrice’s. Besides, she
wanted
to talk to her Whole Self.

She took a deep breath, relaxed, and began again. “Angry Self?” she whispered, and then waited to listen for a reply. Nothing.

“Greedy Self?” She waited. Nothing.

Lizzie threw the Beatrice Book against the wall. She began to pace. She wanted to leave Fall River
right this minute
and never return. She never wanted to hear the next chapter in the life of Andrew Borden. Or Abby. Or Emma. Or the church or the Orientals or Beatrice, or. . . Or. . .

Life was out of control. Lizzie seemed to be at the end of a long chain of people, running as fast as possible, and they were whipping her about, hoping she’d fall off, hoping they’d shake her loose and be rid of her. Well, they were close. Lizzie had had about enough.

But if she left, there would be an end to her friendship with Enid, a most uncommon friendship, something intimate and quite beyond words. Enid was the best friend Lizzie never had, she was the big sister Lizzie never had, she was the mother Lizzie never had. Enid had opened a need so deep within Lizzie that Lizzie was afraid to look down the hole. She was afraid that it went on forever, unfillable, she was afraid of what was crawling around down there in the dark and the muck of her nether selves.