Lizzie Borden (26 page)

Then the committee reports were finished, there was no new business to be discussed, the minister said a blessing and the meeting was adjourned.

Lizzie suddenly froze in her seat, distracted and panicky.

Then there was a touch on her shoulder. She whipped around to see the woman next to her standing, with one finger on Lizzie’s shoulder. She smiled down at Lizzie, tapped her once on the shoulder, and then walked away.

Lizzie almost turned her chair over in her hurry to catch up with her, but by the time she collected herself, the woman was walking slowly with the minister, deep in conversation. Lizzie went over to Alice Russell, who was picking up the leftover cookies.

“Alice.”

“Hello, Lizzie, say you’re doing such wonderful work with the Orientals. We’ve needed someone to do that type of ministry for a long time. Bless your heart for taking it on. It must be terribly time consuming. I know just the secretarial dut—”

“Alice, who was the woman sitting next to me?”

“Next to you? Hmmm.” Alice tapped at her head. “I can’t seem to recall—”

“Short hair. Graying. Her face had been in the sun.”

“Oh, Enid Crawford. You must mean Enid Crawford.”

“Enid Crawford,” Lizzie whispered.

“She’s very active in the church. Has been since long before her marriage. She was a Fall River girl, you know, parents died just after she married Charles—”

“She’s married?” Lizzie struggled to keep her voice even. She took cups and swept cookie crumbs to act casual.

“Oh, her husband died a few years back. She has two sons in college up in Boston. Wonderful woman, Enid. Quite an inspiration, the way she works so hard to put those boys through school. They’re both going to be lawyers, she says.”

Enid Crawford. Lizzie was sure she’d never heard that name before. But she would never forget it.

She looked around. Enid was gone. Alice was still prattling on about how expensive it is to rear children, never mind college, and Lizzie just let her continue talking and wandered off. She shook hands with the minister, and then went out into the soft summer night.

Enid Crawford. Enid Crawford. Enid Crawford.

I must have her, Lizzie thought.

JULY

“I swear this is the hottest I’ve ever been,” Sarah Whitehead said as she poured a glass of cool tea for Abby Borden. “Can you imagine how hot it is, Abby?”

Abby mopped her forehead with her handkerchief—freshly ironed this morning and now damp and gray from the sweltering humidity and her own perspiration. Abby picked up the tea and drank it right down. “Pour me a little more, child.”

Sarah dutifully refilled the glass. Abby sipped at it, then wiped her face again. She didn’t tolerate the heat well at all. Never had. Sometimes it felt as if her heart were swelling in all this heat, and she worried—walking on around town the way she did—that one of these hot days it would just up and burst and she would fall dead on the walk.

“Yes indeed, if you think it’s hot now, Abby, you just wait until August! You know it’s always hotter in August, and it’s just been getting hotter and hotter all month long.”

Just the talk of it brought more perspiration out on Abby’s face.

“Sebastian calls these ‘dog days,’ isn’t that funny? I mean what could that possibly mean? Dogs don’t like this heat any better’n the rest of us, now, do they? He also says that this is the weather where people go crazy. He’s a policeman, you know, or at least he used to be, and so he would know. He says that when the heat gets bad, it turns the world into a pressure cooker and people start popping their seams. Isn’t that a funny thing to say?”

Abby felt a little dizzy. She set her tea on the coffee table and tried to catch her breath. She mopped at her face again.

“You look a little peaked, Abby. Let me get you a little something.”

Sarah left the room and Abby leaned back against the sofa. Her breaths were coming in short—like panting, she thought. Maybe that’s why these hot days are called dog days. They make people pant. But the humor was lost in the discomfort. She would like to have shared that with Sarah, it’s the kind of thing that would make her little sister laugh and laugh, and her light little laughs were joyful and the sole reason Abby visited her so often. There was so little laughter at the Borden house. Sarah had her manifold troubles, and still she laughed.

Sarah returned from the kitchen with a generous slice of lemon meringue pie on a plate. “It’s cold, Abby, I kept it in the ice box. Sebastian ate almost the whole thing last night, but I kept a slice out for you, because I know it’s one of your favorites.”

“You’re a dear,” Abby said, but made no move to take the pie. She needed to lie back on the sofa and rest for a while.

Sarah set the pie on the table, then sat down and picked up her knitting.

“Sebastian can’t understand how I can knit in this heat. He’s always looking at me and telling me I’m crazy for holding this heavy afghan on my lap, but it don’t seem to bother me much. Sometimes, about mid-day it gets a little warm, but toward the evening, it doesn’t hurt. I should knit some sweaters and smaller things during the summer, I guess, and leave the coverlets for winter when I really do need something over my knees.”

Abby eyed that slice of pie. Its cool yellow shimmered. And Sarah made such a fine crust. Abby had given her a goodly amount of lard that Andrew had brought home from the farm one Saturday, and Sarah made some good lye soap with half of it and saved the rest for pie crusts. And she knew how to make crusts.

With an
oompf
, Abby raised up to a sitting position, and took the plate. She cut a bite with a shaky fork and slipped it into her mouth. She looked over at Sarah, who was watching for her reaction.

“Um-mmm,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

Satisfied, Sarah went back to her knitting, and talking, prattling on about nothing in particular, punctuating her monologue with trills of laughter—at her two older children, both from her previous husband, Sebastian, her current husband, their year-old baby, and the baby that just began to show as a mound on Sarah’s stomach.

Usually, a visit with Sarah lifted Abby’s spirits. She was Abby’s only living kin, so Abby worked hard to maintain a bond between the two, even though they were on such opposite ends of society.

Sarah was thirty-one years old, the daughter of Abby’s father and his second wife. She had poor taste in men, raised her children without habits of cleanliness, and would forever be poor. She had bright eyes and a sunny disposition, but she had a habit of wearing men’s clothes and they hung like rags on her thin frame. Abby was seventy-two, grossly overweight, genteel—or so she liked to think—dressed in as rich a wardrobe as she dared to purchase with Andrew’s money, and worked hard to keep up her end of the Borden household.

Two sisters, two worlds.

Before Sarah met Sebastian, she and her babies were without a place to stay. Andrew generously gave her this nice little house, although it was probably as much of a bribe to keep them out from under his roof as it was a gift of generosity.

Abby looked around. The house
had
been nice. She clucked to herself. The damage children can do, she thought. The damage children can do.

But in this heat, Abby would not be comfortable anywhere, and watching Sarah work on that wool blanket made her skin itch. She felt heat rashes spring up all along where her underwear chafed, and the thought of walking home with damp drawers rubbing against rashes made her heart pound even harder.

She wrapped her handkerchief around the sweating glass of tea and cooled it, then mopped her face one more time.

“I better be off,” she said, and struggled to be free of the sofa.

“So soon? The children are playing over at the neighbor’s. And the baby’s asleep. Isn’t it pleasant? I had hoped you would stay a little longer.”

“Another time. Perhaps when it isn’t so hot. Thank you for the tea. And the pie.”

Sarah put away her knitting and stood to hug Abby.  “Come back again soon, dear.”

Abby nodded, her breath already being sucked away by the heat.

Sarah stood in the doorway of the house as Abby made her way toward the street. “Um, Abby?”

Abby turned, a trickle of perspiration leaking its saltiness into one eye.

“Did Andrew. . . you know. . .” she looked around furtively, “the will?” she whispered.

“Not yet, Sarah. But don’t worry, he will.”

“I know. I just wish. . .” She gestured at the squalid house she lived in with her family.

“Don’t worry. See you soon.” Abby didn’t have the strength to reassure her further, or even to wave goodbye. She just turned her bulk toward home and began walking.

~~~

At six o’clock, Sebastian walked through the door. Sarah could smell him even before she could see him. He hung his sweat-soaked hat on the peg by the door and began to undress in the kitchen.

“Go down cellar for a bath,” she said, “and I’ll have some nice sandwiches for you when you get up.”

“Sandwiches again? What kind?”

“Cheese. Now go. You smell.”

“I need some meat.”

“We ain’t got meat. Now go bathe.”

“What happens to all the money?”

Sarah turned and looked him full in the face. She knew he didn’t like it when she did that. “Sebastian,” she said. “are we going to go through this again? I pay our bills. We don’t have any creditors knocking on our door, now do we? And we don’t even have a mortgage, thanks to Abby, do we? Sometimes we have a little extra, and I buy some meat with it. I know you need meat. So do the children. But sometimes we just don’t have enough money. And, as it happens, this cheese was a gift, so we got to just thank God about it and be done. Now go.”

She hated talking to him like a child, but sometimes that’s what he needed. And the expression on his face as he went down cellar was just exactly like that of her boy when he’d been chastised and sent to his room.

Sebastian!
Men!
They were all little boys.

She arranged the cheese on the bread so as to make the sandwiches seem a little fuller, then cut extra slices for Sebastian’s sandwiches. He really did need meat. She’d have to cut a corner somewhere else next month.

When he came back up, wearing a towel around his waist, she yelled for the children to come in.

The boy, eight, and the girl, six, pounded up the back steps, and fell to the sandwiches without even sitting down.

“Sit,” Sebastian said.

The children, chewing enthusiastically, sat.

“You ought to have washed your hands,” Sarah said, spooning oatmeal into the baby. She shrugged and looked at Sebastian, who glared at her.

Sebastian sat at the table and wolfed down his sandwiches, then drank a big glass of milk. Sarah oughtn’t have given him a full glass like that, but she felt so bad about the meat. Now the children would be hard pressed for milk on their oatmeal in the morning.

The children finished eating, then got up and slammed back out the kitchen door. Their friends had been waiting outside, and summer evenings were long and magical. Sarah smiled as she picked up their plates.

“There’s a piece of pie left, Sarah,” Sebastian said.

“No, Abby stopped by and lemon meringue is her favorite.”

“It’s my favorite, too.”

“I know, Sebastian,” she said, exasperated. “But you ate nearly the whole thing last night.”

Sebastian lowered his eyes and laid his hands flat on the table. This was a sign. He was composing himself. Soon he would gently speak to her about all the things she was doing wrong in the house.

She wished it was cooler, she could have a cup of coffee. But it was way too hot to start a fire in the stove. She sat down, moved her plate away, and waited for Sebastian to get on with his lecture. Soon it would be over and she could get on with her evening.

“I know Abby does nice things for us, Sarah,” Sebastian started out, “but I am the breadwinner in this family, and there are certain things I want to have in my house. One of those is meat for a meal at least two or three times a week. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, since I work in that sweltering mill every bloody day of my life!” He took a moment, his fingers spread wide on the table, to recompose himself.  “And when you don’t let me have meat, when your priorities run in different directions, like
wool
for a blanket in the dead heat of July — ” he put a palm up against her defense, and she closed her mouth—“then a piece of lemon meringue pie seems to help smooth things over. Do you know what I mean?”

Sarah nodded. Sebastian was a good man. He was pretty mad right now, but at least he didn’t beat her, not the way that Jonathan had. And he was so good to her children. . .

“Besides,” Sebastian continued in his slow, paced voice, “think about poor Abby’s weight. She can’t afford pie, Sarah. She’s likely to die in this heat anyway. And if she dies. . .” Sebastian’s eyes lost their focus. He paused for a long moment. Sarah waited. Then his blue eyes drilled right into her.
“If she dies,”
he said, “then Andrew would inherit all her property and those old maid daughters of his will inherit everything when he dies.”