Lizzie Borden (36 page)

Lizzie’s pears had turned sour in her mouth.

“Oh!” Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. “I was right!” She smiled with glee. “I was right, oh, Lizzie, he is, he is going to leave a property to his whore.”

“No.”

“Yes! Yes! See? Right here. ‘For niceties rendered,’ he said. I’m sure! Some tart named Enid Crawford.”

Understanding struck Lizzie dumb.

She felt the blood flow from her face. Her hands were suddenly cold and trembling. She wanted to go to her room, but she couldn’t trust her feet to take her there, so she just sat, feeling sicker than she ever had, listening to Emma prattle on and on about her discovery.

And then there was a pause. A deathly pause. A pause so dramatic that it even shook Lizzie from her humiliation, her anger, her despair.

Emma said, “He’s leaving everything to her.”

“To who?”

“Abby.”

“Emma, no.”

“Yes.” Lizzie saw the fury begin to burn in Emma. She stood up, crumpling the will. Lizzie made a half-hearted grab for it, but it was too late. Father would always know that someone had been at his will. “He decided to leave Sarah stupid Whitehead out of the will and leave everything to Abby, to let her decide how to divide it.  You know what
she’ll
do, don’t you, Lizzie? She’ll leave it all to that stupid midwives organization or the church or something, and we’ll have to beg for our livings.”

“Emma. . .”

But Emma was beyond hearing. She was gone. She paced back and forth and rolled up the will, then fit it back inside the mailing tube. She took the whole thing to the kitchen and threw it into the fire.

“Emma!”

“Now, Lizzie,
now
I hope he dies. If he dies without a will, everything will go to her anyway, but nothing will go to the whore. Maybe he’ll die and she’ll die, too, and that will take care of everything. In fact, maybe they’ll both die of Sebastian Whitehead’s poisoning and then we won’t have
anything
to worry about. Ever again!”

“Emma, hush!”

“Maybe he’ll die before he can get a new will together. Maybe I ought to set fire to him while he sleeps. Maybe I’ll take an axe to both their ugly faces before tomorrow morning. Right in their beds. Right when they sleep. He’s always said he wants to die in his sleep. Ha!”

Lizzie had heard Emma rant and rave before, but never like this. This time it was evil, it was almost. . . believable. She paced back and forth by the dining room table, her hands flying out in wild gestures, banging against the walls and she didn’t even feel it. Soon she would be rubbing her knuckles on her lips and the little spots of froth at the corners of her mouth would turn pink.

Lizzie sat, immobilized by the enormity of it all. Uncle John was arriving today, and then Beatrice. Emma was a wreck, in fact she would probably leave for New Bedford to be beaten—perhaps until she was dead—Father, Abby and Maggie had all been poisoned. Enid was Father’s whore,
Enid was Father’s whore
, and all Lizzie could do was to just sit and watch her sister pace and rave.

And then she remembered that during times of emotional stress, that other thing was likely to happen to her. Where the “other Lizzie,” came out and walked around town doing God-knows-what.

Lizzie jumped up from her chair, upsetting the coffee. She pushed past Emma and ran up the stairs. She had to do something. She had to do
something
. She paced back and forth in her room for a moment, then took her towel and a clean housedress down cellar.  She took the pot of dishwashing water warming on the stove down to bathe. But this time she must not let her guard down. She must soap up, rinse off and remain consciously in the cellar the whole time.

Though it was so blistering hot upstairs, the cellar was cool and damp. Lizzie shivered as she took off her clothes and got into the tub. She mixed the cold water from the faucet with the hot from the kettle and stood in the tub, washing her body with a rag. Then she washed her hair with the same yellow lye soap, rinsed it all off and rubbed her body dry with the towel.

Maybe I could go to the church, she thought, but nothing happened at the church on a Wednesday. Maybe there’s a WCTU meeting. But there wasn’t. Solitude struck her like a hollow bell. Without Enid, she had no friends. She had acquaintances, the women at WCTU, some of the people at church, but there was no one,
no one
with whom she could talk about this problem. No one! She hadn’t a single friend in all of. . . in all of creation.

I’ll clean the house, she thought. I’ll clean the barn. I’ll do the ironing! Nobody ever wants to iron, especially in this heat, and the mound of clothes had been mounting. But the thought of it made her feel faint. Well, at least I’ll sprinkle the clothes, wrap them up and see.

But the day loomed long.

Emma was in her room when Lizzie returned, toweling her hair. She knocked on Emma’s door. “Emma? Emma, open the door.”

The door opened. Emma looked terrible. Lizzie wondered if this was the edge for her. If things hadn’t gotten just a little too much for a fragile person like Emma.  She stood quietly, not moving, not even really seeing Lizzie. She just stood there, a vacancy in her eyes, slackness in her expression. Lizzie wondered if anybody else ever thought of Emma as fragile.

“Emma, are you leaving for New Bedford?” It suddenly occurred to Lizzie that things would be much easier if Emma left again, as much as she hated to think that. And Emma could be hurt very badly this time, too. . . In fact, she might never come back, and if she stays in New Bedford under an assumed name, they might never know her fate—a frightening yet unburdening idea.

Emma’s eyes focused at the question. “No, of course not. No. No. No, of course not. No, Lizzie, I’m going to Fairhaven to see our cousins. We have attorneys, do we not? One of them is bound to know this Mr. Stockworth and I’ll find Father’s connection to him. It’s time we got some legal advice of our own, Lizzie.”

Lizzie was quite astonished to hear such lucid words come out of Emma at such a time. And yet, it was probably the most constructive thing that could be done at the time.

“Besides,” Emma went on. “I ought to leave here before I see his face, or I’ll strangle him, I swear to God I will murder the man before—” her fists were clenched and the cords stood out in her neck.

“Pack, then, Emma,” Lizzie said. “Hurry up and go.” Emma came back to the present moment. She went to the closet like an automaton and brought out her traveling valise. Lizzie retreated to her room and sat in her rocker.

Emma was gone within the hour.

Abby Borden, wearing only her thin, cotton dressing gown, descended the stairs carefully, one step at a time, afraid she would faint and fall clear to the bottom. The only respite from the damnable heat would be the cool kitchen floor on her bare feet.

She stood in the kitchen, looking around. The stove had been heated, but that would have been Emma making breakfast coffee. She looked at the clock. It was half-past two. She felt dizzy and disoriented. She didn’t know where to begin. Then she saw Lizzie, sprinkling clothes. Good Lord, the girl wasn’t thinking about ironing! Why she’d have to fire the stove all over again to heat the flats.

“Lizzie, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine, Abby,” Lizzie said. “The sickness didn’t touch me.”

“You’re fortunate. My God, don’t know what I’m doing up. Your father insists on going to the office this afternoon, and I have to fix him something to eat. I can’t imagine eating. Where’s Emma?”

“Emma’s gone to Fairhaven.”

“Oh? Well. . .”

“Abby, do you suppose Sebastian. . .”

Abby whirled around, then held her swirling head. “
No!
No, of course not, Lizzie, how could you even think such a thing? No, it’s the flu, that’s all. Something serious going around. That’s all.  Now, where was I?”

Abby’s concentration had fled. Lizzie had given voice to that refrain that had played in her head all the day before as she lay hot and sick enough to die. But Sebastian would gain nothing by killing her. No, it couldn’t have been Sebastian. Just some illness they had caught, that’s all.

Her hands shook as she opened the heavy cover on the stove. She let it drop with a clang.

“Lizzie, would you help me, please?”

“There are cakes in the cupboard, Abby,” Lizzie said. “And cold mutton gravy on the sideboard.”

Abby spread gravy on the cakes and put them out with a cold cup of coffee for her husband. It was all she could manage. The sickness had left her feeling as if there was lead in her veins.

“Have a cookie,” Lizzie said. “Emma said they helped settle her stomach.”

Abby opened the cabinet and took a cookie. She took a small bite. “Emma wasn’t so ill, then?”

“She was yesterday.”

Andrew came down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Lizzie,” he said.

“Mr. Borden, I really don’t think you should be going to the office this afternoon.”

“There are things that need to be done.”

“But you’re so pale.” He looked pale and thin, drawn and old. Very, very old. His mortality stared at Abby and made her shiver.

“As needs be. Is this my food?”

“The best I could do.”

“Hardly looks worth eating, doesn’t it?”

“Lizzie said that a cookie helped settle Emma.”

Andrew took a cookie and bit. “Where is Emma?”

“Gone to Fairhaven.”

“Oh? Just as well. I’m off.” He put the cookie down and went into the sitting room. Abby looked at Lizzie and saw her tense. Her nose was in the air like a fox. They listened, but heard only the whine of the heat.

Then the sounds of Andrew unlocking his desk. Then the drawers opening and closing. Then the key again, and he reap-peared in the kitchen.

“Lizzie, have you seen a package? A tube? I was to mail it.”

Lizzie shook her head.

“Hmm.” He hung his head for a moment, thinking, but he looked so old. Very old. “Well,” he said, looking very old, very ill, “I’m off.” He turned and left.

Abby looked at Lizzie. Lizzie took a cookie. Abby took the cookie that Andrew abandoned and they nibbled in silence.

Lizzie was in her room, lying fully clothed upon her bed when Andrew came home and began opening and closing all the drawers in the house. Her conscience bothered her only a tiny bit, after all, it was Emma who stole the will, read it and burned it. It was quite out of Lizzie’s hands. But should she tell him? Should she tell him that his will had been burned at the fury of his eldest daughter? Should she tell him that she had been a witness, had stood by and done nothing while Emma did it all? Should she tell him that she knew all about him and Enid?

Oh, Enid. The wound opened anew and bled.

No. She would tell the old man nothing. He was to leave her out of his will. He would rather leave property to a woman who regularly prostituted herself than to his own flesh and blood. Well, good. Fine. It would be well if he had a heart seizure while looking for the blasted will. He would never find it.

Enid!
God!
They had walked down by the river yesterday and Enid had something to say, yet didn’t say it. Instead, she told Lizzie that she intended to keep sleeping with her men friends, indeed, bleeding her father dry at a rate of one hundred dollars a week! Oh, Enid. There were no tears for her within Lizzie, but her heart ached just the same.

When Andrew knocked at Lizzie’s bedroom door, she was not surprised, just startled. She unlocked it and opened it, then stepped back. The look on her father’s face was even more startling. He looked ill, very ill. Greenish.  And old.

“Lizzie, I’m missing that mailing tube, and I just can’t find it anywhere. Please think, now, and see if you can remember seeing it.”

“I’ve seen nothing like it, Father.”

Andrew stared at her and hse knew that he saw the lie.

“Emma’s room, then, have you a key?”

“No.” Another lie.

“I’ll get one or I’ll break the blasted door down.” He turned on his heel and stomped down the stairs.

In a moment, he was back. Lizzie followed him, not quite knowing how to act or what to do. She’d never seen her father like this before. Ever. He unlocked Emma’s door and banged it open. He stomped in and looked around, and it occurred to Lizzie that perhaps he hadn’t been in Emma’s bedroom since she they had moved into this house twenty-seven years ago.