Lizzie Borden (25 page)

Lizzie sat next to him on the step. Andrew puffed on his pipe.

“Been thinking about fishing, Lizzie,” Andrew said.

“Me too.”

“Been thinking we ought to go one of these days. It’s been a long time.”

“A long time.”

“Too long.”

They sat in silence for a while, Andrew puffing great clouds that were borne away on the early summer breeze.

“I’m going to tell you no on buying the house, Lizzie.” He found he could not look her in the eyes.

Lizzie slumped.

“Let me tell you why.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lizzie stood up.

“It does matter. Sit down.”

“I’ve got things to do, Father.”

“Lizzie, please. It isn’t right for two unmarried ladies to be living by themselves, not when they have family. It isn’t right. It wouldn’t look right for the Borden name.”

“I’m miserable, Father, Emma’s miserable, Abby’s miserable, you’re miserable. But the Borden name is right. The Borden name has always got to be right.”

“Yes, it does. Misery passes, Lizzie, but scandal never does.”

“Plenty of women live alone.”

“Not when they have family.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Bordens don’t. You’ll have plenty of life, both of you, when Abby and I are dead. Then you can do as you please.”

Lizzie walked away, back to the barn, without a backward glance.

Andrew’s Fridays were secure for the time being, but at what price? He felt as if he had lost something else, something perhaps even more precious. He tapped the ashes out onto the step and put the pipe back into his pocket. It was time for his nap.

When the sun slanted in the barn loft window, Lizzie knew she had to leave and make ready for the church meeting. She was probably already late.

She hated to leave the barn, but she had to. The church’s Christian Endeavor Society, a fancy name for the church council, met at seven o’clock, and she had to make her report. Her committee was “Bringing the Message to the Orientals,” and since she was the only one doing anything about it by teaching a Sunday school class to the little brats, she had to attend.

She’d much rather stay in the barn.

She was still overwhelmed by the experience of having dived off the loft. Having dived off the loft and yet not. And then after the little talk with Andrew, it had happened again.

She carefully hid all the things she’d taken to the loft, then climbed down the ladder. She shook the hay from her clothes, patted down her hair, and then opened the door into the yard.

It was indeed late. She quickly crossed over the yard and knocked on the screen door. Maggie let her in.

Lizzie grabbed two muffins from the steaming stack that had been laid out for supper and trotted through the sitting room and up the stairs.

Andrew had turned down her request for a life of independence. It infuriated her that he used that same, worn out old excuse of maiden ladies living alone. And the Borden name! Bah! The real reason he didn’t want Emma and her to leave had more to do with Abby. He didn’t seem to care much for that hippopotamus, and no wonder. If Lizzie and Emma left, well, then, that would leave Andrew and Abby and the Borden name. Scant comfort to an old man in his seventies.

When he’d told her that, her first reaction was that of resignation. She’d known it would be that way; she hoped against hope that it would be otherwise, but she knew that his ultimate answer would be no. Kathryn knew it, too, and this was what made Lizzie the unhappiest: Kathryn knew it, too.

After their talk, she’d gone back to the barn, where her anger again began to burn. She started kicking hay and kicking at the wall, and suddenly she could see herself walking in town, with long, purposeful strides. She stared at the loft corner, unpainted planks nailed together and covered with dust and cobwebs, but while she could see them, she could also see herself walking in town. She wore the same clothes: the white waist with the blue patterned silk skirt, her hair was done up the same, but this was no daydream, this was something else, for she could see out this Lizzie’s eyes.

And other people could see her! People on the street nodded as she strode past.

The barn wall looked flat and dull, as if she was seeing it through a thin dark film. The street in town seemed extraordinarily bright, as if suffused with a little of the sparkling heat waves she saw when a headache approached.  She walked down Main Street, then turned onto Third, where she stopped. She looked quickly around her, noticed that no one was looking, and then all of her was back in the hayloft, staring at that same corner. The vision was over. The
something else
had come back.

As before, a cold sweat covered her brow, her breathing came heavy and rapid, and she collapsed, stunned, and leaned against the haystack.

She didn’t know what to make of it at all. She could not control it. And she wondered: could it speak? Could it move things around? Was it just an apparition? Did other people really see it as well, or was it a hallucination? Did this happen to anyone else? Why had she never heard of anything like this before?

Lizzie ate a muffin on her way up the stairs. The day felt so strange, as if she had just been living through a very vivid dream. She could hardly believe that those things had really happened. She rinsed her face in the washbowl in her room, tidied her hair a bit and changed her clothes. She didn’t want to go to a church meeting at all, at all, she wanted to stay home and ponder what on earth could have caused her to be so odd, so odd.

But she was duty bound to go. She locked her bedroom door behind her, flew down the stairs. “Going to church,” she said to nobody as she unlocked the three front-door locks and stepped into the warm evening.

It was still daylight as Lizzie strode toward the church. If Emma had been with her, she would have said, “Take more care, Lizzie, you’re beginning to walk like a cowboy.” And then Lizzie would have given her a look and Emma would have said, “It isn’t ladylike.”

Ladylike. Bah. Sometimes one just had to walk hard. Loosely. Feel the muscles. Something Emma never did. There were a lot of things Emma never did.

Lizzie strode hard and looked forward to the meeting, because as soon as it was over, she could leave again. She only joined this Christian Endeavor Society because changing churches created such a scandal that she thought Andrew ought to have something to say in explanation. So she joined the council and offered to work on a committee to reach out to all the newly transplanted Orientals—Chinese, mostly—who had come to Fall River to work in the mills and in the laundries.

And then she got saddled with the stupid Sunday school class. But it was all right. The children were strange, but they also had their good points.

Lizzie slipped in the side door of the big church and went right to the meeting room, just off the side of the main chapel. The meeting was already in session. Good. She came late; she could leave early. There was only one vacant seat at the long table, she sat down as unobtrusively as possible.

The pastor was in the middle of a discussion on the summer activities for the church youth group. Good, Lizzie thought. My report can’t be far behind.

She looked around the table. In every organization, there was a central core of people who did all the work. Lizzie looked at each face. Give or take a couple of people, she would bet that ten years ago, this table had the same people around it and still would ten years hence. There was a certain appeal to that sort of commitment. But Lizzie didn’t have it. Not to this church, anyway. Perhaps that is something that comes with time. She was only thirty-two. Most of the faces around this table were in their late fifties and early sixties. Some, though, were her age. She avoided those. They might want to get chummy, and she had no time for chums.

The pastor called on the woman sitting next to her. She stood, then addressed the council in a clear voice. She gave the names of all those who had agreed to grace the altar with flowers for the next six weeks. She also reported the roster of which men had agreed to take care of the churchyard and cemetery for the coming month.

Lizzie listened to her. She was calm, self-assured and clear. She was prepared. That was something that Lizzie never was. In fact, she was never any of those things. The woman sat down, turned and smiled at Lizzie.

She was beautiful. She was petite, like Kathryn. She had a large, soft mouth, and twinkling blue eyes. The skin at the corners of her eyes wrinkled up beautifully when she smiled, and her skin was lightly bronzed from the sun. Such a refreshing change from all those who kept their bonnets on for fear of freckles. Freckles abounded on this woman’s face, and her teeth were even and white.

Gray shot through the reddish brown hair, which was cut short and brushed back from her face. She was absolutely breathtaking. And unconventional in many ways. Lizzie liked that. Lizzie was intrigued.

She heard the pastor call her name, and the woman next to her reached over and gave her hand a little squeeze. Lizzie’s heart pounded in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She stood, and felt her knees tremble and her breath come hard, as if she had been running. She wasn’t sure she could make her voice speak clearly at all.

But she did. She made her report, and didn’t leave anything out. She told that plans were already under way for a celebration of Chinese New Year next year, and that more Oriental social events were coming forth in the fall. She reported on the progress of teaching about Jesus to the youngsters, and the help the mill was giving her in encouraging the Orientals to come to church on Sunday. She didn’t mention that she’d had to beg her father to make a bulletin and have it translated. He thought all Chinese were heathens, and Godless to boot. He thought it was a colossal waste of time and had no problem expressing himself to her. But he did it anyway, and the turnout was getting better all the time.

There were now Bible-study groups for them, and once they were in the church, then they could become integrated into the church community.

It was an adequate report. She sat down again, breathless. The woman next to her turned again and smiled, then gave her attention across the table to the man on the other side of her, who then stood and began to speak, but Lizzie could not take her eyes off the woman.

There was no wedding ring on her finger. She looked to be in her early forties—perhaps Emma’s age, but what a difference! This woman was vibrant. This woman was healthy. And she had kindness written in each of those tanned wrinkles.

Nothing at all like Kathryn. . .yet. . . Yet she exuded
something
akin to Kathryn. There was that same sensuousness in her touch, there was that smile.

Could she possibly be like me? Like Kathryn? Would there be the slightest possibility that this woman could know the same kind of loneliness?

Lizzie knew she was staring, but she could not stop herself.  She could not take her eyes off the possibility of another woman in her life, a source of tenderness, of joy, of togetherness. Someone to share her life with.

The woman shifted her gaze and looked directly into Lizzie’s eyes.

Immediately, Lizzie flushed and looked away. But not before she thought she perhaps had an answer. The woman did not look offended at Lizzie’s steady gaze, she merely met her eyes.

Lizzie put both hands in her lap and struggled to take even breaths and to remove the color from her face. By the time she had done so, the man had finished speaking and another woman was talking about the Fourth of July picnic. Lizzie took one deep breath and then brought her eyes up to rest on the person who was speaking. She fought to keep from sliding around to look at the wonderful lady in the seat next to her.

She remembered her plan of escaping the meeting early, but now that seemed impossible. She couldn’t draw more attention to herself. Besides that, she might have the opportunity to meet this sparkling woman, she might have the opportunity to be touched again, by accident, perchance. She might find that the woman was interested in a friendly chat over a cup of tea—if not tonight, well, then, sometime, if she didn’t walk away from Lizzie with a backhanded comment about someone uncouth enough to stare.

Lizzie’s mind turned back to the woman’s appearance. Was her hair really short? No respectable woman wore short hair.  Those who did were either white trash, ill kempt or loose. Yet this woman carried it off. Without meaning to, Lizzie turned and looked at her again. Yes, her hair was short. Wavy and brushed away from her face. She was beautiful. And suddenly her face was very familiar. As if she’d seen her hundreds of times. As if they were old friends, but Lizzie just could not remember her name.

Lizzie called upon her Self of Fear. Help me through this, she prayed. I must be bold, adventurous and self-assured. I must speak with her after the meeting.

The meeting ground on, with Lizzie’s stomach in such an uproar she knew she would have to take some cod liver oil when she went home to soothe the agitation. She waited, her mind filled with the scent—real or imagined—of the vision next to her. She was constantly out of breath, trying to imagine her first line of introduction when the meeting ended. There was no way she was going to leave this hall without at least discovering this woman’s name. Oh, how her stomach hurt, and oh how strange life suddenly turned out to be.