Miss Lizzie (26 page)

“I only meant,” I protested innocently, “that you don't have to to tell me if you don't want to.”

“You only meant,” she said, smiling, “that since you were sensitive enough to realize that it wasn't your business, I ought to be sensitive enough to reward you by making it your business.”

I laughed; I could not help it.

“There, you see,” she said. “Caught out.” She sat back and regarded me for a moment, then said, “You do rather remind me of her.”

“Of Nance?” I was unsure whether this was a compliment.

“Physically, I mean. You're a much better person. Kinder. But you carry yourself in much the same way. And you have the same oval face. The same hair. The reviewers were always calling it
flaxen
.”

I looked down at the photograph. “She has a small mouth.”

Miss Lizzie laughed. “You're an improvement, then, upon the original.”

Her laughter pleased me, despite its having my vanity as its cause. “Nance wasn't kind?” I asked.

Miss Lizzie smiled. “And you don't give up. She didn't either.” She leaned slightly forward. “Do you really want to know about Nance?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“All right.” She sipped at her drink, and then she nodded. “All right. When I met her, she was having financial problems. She was in debt to a theatrical manager in Chicago, she was being sued by another manager in Boston, and she'd just purchased a farm in Tyngsboro. And as a touring actress, a star, she was responsible for the expenses of the company. Everything came out of her profits.

“But Nance didn't care about money. It didn't have any reality to her. Not much did. Not money, not people, not anything from the drab day to day. I think the only thing that was truly real for her was the magic she produced on stage.”

A sip of her drink. “Off stage, back in the real world, she was like a child. Wild, irresponsible, flamboyant. And thoughtless, of course. But brave too—immensely brave. Back then, that sort of behavior took real courage, even for a woman of the theater. I remember her telling me that when she was a little girl, about your age, she'd written in her diary,
Better an outlaw than not free
. And that was exactly the way she lived.”

“But if she was so wild, how come you two got to be friends?”

Miss Lizzie picked up the cigar again, puffed at it, placed it back in the ashtray. “Well, as I say, I'd never met anyone like her. She was a revelation. And I know I was flattered that she wished to have me with her, as a companion. We went to parties in Boston and we took the train down to New York for openings. We went to restaurants and nightclubs, and it was all very gay. Bright lights and music. She was beautiful and she was famous, and wherever we went, the men would turn and stare. The women would look away and—you could see it in their faces—they would simply give up. They would stop trying.”

She took another sip. “As for what drew her to me,” she shrugged, “she thought she recognized me. The roles she liked best as an actress were those of women who lived their lives alone, by choice or by circumstance. I was … well, I was alone then, most of the time, at any rate, and I think it intrigued her to be with someone she imagined was like the characters she played.”

“But what happened?” I asked her.

“Well, as I said, she was in financial trouble when I met her. I gave her some help—the money wasn't much and I was glad to be able to provide it.”

“Did she pay you back?”

Miss Lizzie smiled. “Some of it. But remember, money meant nothing to her, and she assumed it meant nothing to anyone else. And, really, in her own way she was always very generous. When she was playing in New York and I went down to meet her, we'd dine at Delmonico's, and she'd always refuse to let me pay for my meal.”

Another sip from her drink. “But then, two years after I met her, she got into more financial trouble. If she didn't have seven thousand dollars, she'd lose the farm in Tyngsboro. She asked me for it, and I told her I didn't have it. The truth was, I didn't. I could've raised it, but not without a substantial loss. Even if Nance were to pay me back, which didn't seem likely.”

A puff at her cigar. “Well, we argued. I said some things I shouldn't have. She said some things she shouldn't have. She was much more accomplished at it than I—never argue with an actress, Amanda. They have a spectacular repertoire of invective. She showed a level of cruelty, of malice, that I'd never experienced before. At least not from her.” She hesitated for a moment and then shrugged again. “And that was the end. I left the room—this was in Boston, I remember, at the Bellevue Hotel—and we never spoke again.”

She put down the cigar and lifted the glass to her lips.

I asked, “She didn't try to make it up to you?”

She shook her head. “She was a very proud woman.”

“And you never saw her again?”

“Never.” She took another sip, emptying the glass. “I closed my heart to her, sealed it shut. I was proud as well, you see.” She set the glass on the dressing table, lifted the bottle, uncorked it, and poured herself some more of the liquid. The label on the bottle said it was cognac.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

She corked the bottle, picked up her glass. “She lost her farm. For a while, things went badly for her.”

“And afterward?”

“As it turned out, she did quite well for herself. David Belasco took her on. Then, for a few years, she appeared in the cinema. She came back to the stage last year. In
The Passion Flower
.” She smiled her inward smile, sipped at the cognac. “It was a triumphant return, from what I read.”

“You didn't see it?”

She shook her head. “I haven't gone to the theater in a very long time.”

“Didn't you ever want to be friends again?”

The same smile. “Not at first. But after a while … I did, yes.”

“Then how come you didn't do anything?”

She sighed. “By then there was nothing I could've done. Too much had happened. We were both older, we were both different people.” She frowned. “She got married, I understand, six or seven years ago.”

“But I still think that maybe if the two of you had gotten together—”

“We would've been cordial, and pleasant, and perhaps we would've felt a sort of fondness for each other. But the … affection that we had was gone. We'd trampled on it, both of us. And in a way, standing there with pleasant smiles on our faces, chatting pleasantly away, would make things even worse. For me, at any rate. It would be as though both of us were denying the existence of something so much more … important.”

She sipped again at her drink.

I said, “It sounds like a shame to me.”

“Yes,” she said, and her smile seemed like a wound. “To me as well.”

We talked for another half an hour, Miss Lizzie and I. She had consumed quite a lot of brandy; and although she continued to enunciate as clearly as ever, she began to speak more slowly, more deliberately, as though the words had somehow gained physical weight and must be used cautiously lest they tumble from her lips and shatter on the floor. Finally, giving me a weary smile, she suggested we both get some sleep.

The next morning was bright and clear and pleasantly warm. Miss Lizzie, wearing her mourning once again, moved throughout the house with a slow underwater precision, like a soldier through a minefield. She explained that she had acquired rather a bad headache. At breakfast, she set down her teacup, frowned, and abruptly said, “Amanda, I do apologize for keeping you up last night.”

“Oh no, Miss Lizzie,” I told her. “I enjoyed it.”

She nodded primly. “Thank you for saying so. But please, dear, try not to attach too much importance to the ramblings of an old woman.”

“I didn't think you were rambling at all. I really had a good time.”

She frowned again. “Yes, well, I think your father would be most distressed if he learned I'd been so remiss. Let's keep it our little secret, shall we?”

“Sure,” I said. I thought she overestimated Father's distress, but with the truth of the card tricks revealed, and the existence of the fort, my fund of secrets was much depleted. I was delighted to share one with Miss Lizzie.

She smiled. “Thank you, dear.”

Father showed up at nine, and, when the two of us went outside, I saw that although there were people moving about in the street, none of them seemed especially interested in us or in the dwelling we had just left. The crowd was gone. Perhaps Officer O'Hara's rage of yesterday had frightened them away. Perhaps last night's rain had discouraged them. Perhaps, with William in jail, they had discovered a new source of fascination. Whatever the reason, the siege of Lizzie Borden's house had been lifted.

THREE

TWENTY

SEEMINGLY WITHOUT A care in the world, his legs crossed, reading a copy
of Collier's
he held braced against his chest, William was lying on the swaybacked bottom mattress of a double bunk. He looked away from the magazine, saw me standing at the bars, and grinned. “Hiya, kiddo. How're you doing?”

“I'm fine, William. How are
you
?”

“Not bad.” Putting the magazine aside, he sat up and swung his long legs off the mattress.

He appeared absolutely unchanged. I had thought that his journey to my grandparents', his stay in the fort, his trip back in Officer Medley's custody, his night in the jail, that each of these would have left its mark. But none had; not superficially, at least. His black hair was neatly combed, his black mustache neatly trimmed. His nose—which according to Father had been hurt—seemed exactly as it always had, straight and regular, with the same small cleft at its tip.

He stood up, looking strong and vibrant and very much at ease, and sauntered over to the bars. He was wearing not the seedy prison costume I had half expected, ill-fitting and grimly striped, but a white tattersall plaid shirt, pleated tan slacks, and a pair of brown-and-white saddle shoes.

“Well,” I said, “you're acting awfully calm about all this.”

He grinned. “What should I do? Roll around on the floor and scream and shout?”

“William,” I said, and put my hands on my hips, “do you know how worried we all were?”

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “It's funny,” he said, smiling, “you sound just like Audrey.”

“Well, thanks a
lot
. Father and I worry ourselves
sick
about you, nobody gets any sleep, Father drives all the way up to
Grandma's
to get you, and all you can say is I sound like
Audrey
?”

He grinned. “See what I mean?”

“William—”

“Look,” he said, smiling patiently. “I'm sorry you and Dad were worried. I told him so last night. And I want to thank you for figuring out where I was. I mean it. If you hadn't remembered about the fort, everyone would still be out looking for me. But I'm okay now. Really. And everything's fine.”