Lizzie Borden (13 page)

The next day, Lizzie was home when her father came home at noon. Lizzie, bored and missing her classmates on her first day of leisure, made him a fine meal and served him in the sitting room. She took off his boots and rubbed his feet. She waited on him and fluttered around him like a little bird.

When he finished his eating, Andrew folded his napkin and set it on the tray next to his plate.

“That was very good.”

Lizzie beamed.

“Come sit next to me, my dear.” Lizzie snuggled up to him, and he put his long arm around her shoulder. “Have you decided against school, then?”

Lizzie nodded.

“It’s just as well,” he said. “There are better things. Education causes more trouble than it cures. You stay home here and let Emma and Abby teach you how to be a good woman, a good wife, a good housekeeper. Those are skills that will do you more good in the long run.”

Lizzie nodded against his chest.

“I love you, Lizzie. You are the most beautiful thing that has ever come into my life.”

Overcome with affection for this man who so rarely spoke of love and beauty, Lizzie slipped the gold ring from her finger and put it on his. It only fit his pinky. But there she left it, and she never saw him without it again.

Surely he valued her, surely he approved of the woman she had become. Otherwise, he would put the ring in the drawer, or conveniently lose it, or something—wouldn’t he? Of course he would.

Though he loved her, Andrew would never approve of Lizzie, because Lizzie was not a boy. Andrew wanted a son so badly he named her Lizzie Andrew Borden in disappointment, for he knew that she would be his last child. He would have no son to pass the family business to, he would have no son to teach the ropes of wealth accumulation. He would have no son, and he would have no grandson, and he was bitter and resentful.

Try as she might, Lizzie would never gain her father’s approval. She was guilty of far too many infractions.

Emma had never approved of Lizzie, and never would. Emma had her own ideas of how Lizzie should behave at all times. Emma had
standards
, and Lizzie would never rise to meet them. They were far beyond her. Emma had been charged with Lizzie’s upbringing by their dead mother, and she had taken that task so totally to heart that it had left her mirthless, ruthless and disapproving at every turn. Emma didn’t have a hard heart, but her heart had cooled over years of life’s disappointments.

Lizzie had not the taste, nor the good manners, nor the good breeding that Emma thought she ought to have, nor did Lizzie have the inclination to gain the same. Lizzie loved Emma, was devoted to her, but Emma wanted a small model of their mother in Lizzie, and Lizzie clearly had little in common with their mother. And even if she had, Emma had risen their mother’s memory to goddess proportions, so Lizzie could never match her expectations. And Lizzie, in fact, had little enough in common with Emma.

Abby Borden would never see the family resemblance of a Durfee or a Gray in Lizzie’s face. Lizzie knew how terrible it must be to have to raise another woman’s children, to never be able to see one’s likeness in the face of a child. Abby was forty-five years old when she met and married Andrew Borden, a last minute move that saved her from the curse of spinsterhood. She was too old to begin raising another woman’s children at that age; she resented Lizzie. She tried only to have Andrew’s attentions
and Andrew’s money
, and other than that, she paid little attention to Emma and Lizzie. She was busier with her duties as midwife assistant, and with her young half-sister who was more like a daughter to her than the Borden girls.

Sarah Whitehead, Abby’s half-sister, was a year younger than Lizzie, but had made some poor choices in life and Abby seemed to take on Sarah’s life as a puzzle that must be solved once and for all. For all the good it did. Sarah continued to get herself in the family way, something which Abby had never done, something which exasperated her no end. It secretly delighted Lizzie, and openly delighted Emma. Emma gloated over every little wrong turn in poor Sarah’s life.

Abby had her own interests and they did not include Lizzie.

Lizzie had only herself to please. She would claim her rightful place in the order of the Universe. She need please no one else but herself and Beatrice, for Beatrice had no preconceived expectations.

Bold, adventurous, self-assured. From now on, Lizzie would do as she pleased and hang the lot of them.

Lizzie looked out the barn window. It was a beautiful spring day. Yes. The weather had turned, and while it was still cool enough to wear a coat in the barn, soon it would be summer, and she could while the entire day away in the loft.

She wet the wicks of the candles to be sure they were out. Emma would like nothing better than for Lizzie to set fire to the barn, so she could say “I told you so” about candles in the hayloft.

Lizzie took the candles, candlesticks, scarf and book, and hid them all under the corner of the haystack.

Father would be home soon from collecting his rents, and he would have picked up the mail in town. Perhaps he would bring home a letter from Beatrice.

Then the good idea came to her. The
great
idea.

Why not do the second exercise three times a day like the first? And why not keep doing the first along with the second, just adding the newest lesson as she went, until she were finally performing all of the lessons three times a day?

It was a wonderful idea, she agreed—and besides, what else had she to do besides iron Father’s handkerchiefs?—and she sat down, uncovered her ritual implements, lit the candles and opened the book. . . .

“Maggie? Where has that Lizzie got to?”

Bridget Sullivan stopped dusting the top of the china cabinet and looked down on Emma from the top of the ladder. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I don’t know, Miss. Outside, I think.”

“Don’t give me that exasperated look, if you please. You have plenty of work to do, so I suggest you get on with it.” Emma spun on her heel and went back to the kitchen. She looked out the window at the barn. Yes, Lizzie was undoubtedly inside. Emma was overcome with curiosity about what Lizzie could possibly be doing in there, but she hadn’t asked. A million times the question had poised itself on the end of her tongue and she’d always bitten it off. She wanted Lizzie to offer the information without being asked. She wanted Lizzie to confide in her. She wanted so badly for Lizzie to be her friend that she would rather die of curiosity than to have to dig the information from her little sister. At least that had been her attitude.

But it had gone on long enough now. Things were missing from the house, and Emma knew that Lizzie had taken them out to the barn. Lizzie seemed to be slowly moving out of the house, piece by piece, only instead of moving to some place respectable, she had taken up residence in the barn. At least she still slept in the house, but Emma had begun to wonder about Lizzie’s mind.

As she stood, hands on the counter, looking out at the barn, she heard her father’s key in the lock and the front door opened. He was back from collecting rents. Emma closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Things had gone on long enough, she thought. Best apprise Father.

Emma walked into the sitting room, where her father sorted through the mail.

“Hello, Emma. There’s a letter here for Lizzie.”

“Father.” Emma took the letter. It was from that woman in Britain. “Father, have you noticed that Lizzie is acting rather peculiar lately?”

“Hmm? No. Why?”

“She spends all her time in the barn.”

“Making herself a study, she told me.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Cleaning up the place, adding a few touches, said she needed a private place to read and study. I told her I thought it was fine idea.”

“Oh.” Emma had more to say on the subject but just then Lizzie came in the kitchen door. She appeared in the sitting room doorway, flush-faced and smiling.

“Hello, Father.”

“Lizzie,” he said, opening another letter. Emma handed Lizzie the letter from Beatrice and left the room. She had no stomach for what the two of them did together every afternoon. Lizzie rubbing the old man’s smelly feet, then reading to him and listening to his moans and groans of old age. It was revolting. It was terrible. It was unnatural.

Emma went back to the kitchen, got down the big mixing bowl and a cake of yeast. Might as well bake some bread. She stoked the fire in the woodstove and went to work.

There was more to Lizzie’s oddness of late than her propensity for spending days in the barn. She seemed always to be smiling. She had stopped going to church with Father, had joined another church, which had scandalized the town, not to mention Father, and had begun teaching a Sunday school class for Chinese children, of all things. Chinese children! Where on earth did she get such an idea? Emma hadn’t even known that Chinese people could be Christians.

She heard the maid moving furniture and the ladder around in the dining room, and knew she was getting ready to clean the chandelier. That would take some time. She heard Lizzie’s voice droning on in a cadence that could only mean she was reading to their father.

Emma had time.

She untied the apron from her waist and slipped out the back door. She would see what Lizzie had been up to in the barn—something shameful, she supposed, why else would Lizzie keep it so tightly to herself?

But the barn was locked. An old hasp and padlock that Emma remembered seeing in one of the old cartons of junk inside had been resurrected, reassembled and secured to the barn door. Emma gave the lock a shake, but it held fast. She would have given the door a kick, too, but she didn’t take the time. She walked quickly back to the kitchen, where Lizzie held the screen door open for her.

At first, Emma was ashamed that she had tried to spy on Lizzie, but the smirk on her sister’s face was too much to bear. “Why is the barn locked?” she demanded.

“It’s no longer the barn,” Lizzie said. “It’s now my study. And I need my privacy.”

“Privacy! Hmph.” Emma shouldered her way past Lizzie and returned to her bread baking.

“Why, what did you want out there?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to see what you’d been doing out there.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Because you’ve been so obnoxiously secretive about the whole thing.”

“So you waited until you thought you could spy and not get caught. Not very nice, Emma.”

Emma slowly turned, willing the flush to leave her face. “I’d been hoping you’d tell me, Lizzie, but since you hadn’t, I thought I ought to take a look for myself. A barn is not a proper place for a young lady to spend her days. You should be practicing your needlework. Or. . . Or a thousand other chores that could be done around this house.”

“Anything but keep secrets from you, right, Emma?”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“You have
all
forgotten that I am an adult.”

“Yes, Lizzie, I guess we have. You so rarely act like one.”

“And your behavior qualifies you as a
lady
?” Lizzie’s pale eyes, usually calm and peaceful, now smoked.

“I don’t care to discuss it further,” Emma said, her heart pounding. This was definitely new behavior for Lizzie, and Emma didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. She turned from Lizzie and put her floured hands back into the dough.

“Well,
I
do care to discuss it,” Lizzie said, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She leaned up against the counter so Emma could not avoid her.

“All right, Lizzie,” Emma sighed, giving up. “What is it?”

“You accuse me of secrecy, when all I want is privacy. I want to tell you that all I’m doing is fixing myself a place of my own where I can read and study undisturbed.”

“What are you studying? That book from that woman?”

“Beatrice is her name. Yes. That’s one of the things.”

“Well, I’m sorry if my presence upsets you so. I had no idea that you needed to be so far away from me.”

“It’s not that,” Lizzie said. “It’s not
you
, although you
are
always in and out of my room.”

Tears built up inside Emma. Nothing ever goes the way one wants it to. She shook her floured hands into the bowl, then pushed past Lizzie into the washroom where she rinsed them in bone-aching frigid well water. The blast of cold helped her get a firm grip on her emotions. She never wanted Lizzie to see her cry. Never. “Perhaps it would suit you if I moved.” She turned and faced Lizzie again, in control.

Lizzie’s face began to melt. “No, Emma, that’s not what I mean, you’re misunderstanding me. It’s not at all what I want. You’re fine. Coming in and out of my room is fine. I just want to have a place in the barn where I can go to read. Really. It’s nothing about you. Nothing.” Lizzie began to tremble and Emma heard the catch in her throat.

A close call, Emma thought.

“Well, all right, then, Lizzie, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep it locked. Sometimes one needs to get in and out of the barn.”

“Yes, Emma,” Lizzie said, and head down, walked through the dining room. Emma heard her walk quietly and slowly up the stairs to her room.