Lizzie Borden (18 page)

“I can tell you have quite a sweet tooth, Lizzie,” Kathryn said. “No, we don’t eat between meals here.”

Lizzie had flushed deeply and felt quite odd for the rest of the evening. Then she had gone home and eaten far more than she ever had, and far more than she should. Then she ate extra portions the next day as well, knowing all the while that she shouldn’t, she really shouldn’t. She
really
shouldn’t.

It happened the very next night, last night. She wandered about the house listlessly, feeling blue and bored for no particular reason, and decided that what she needed was an evening with a good friend. She wanted to see Kathryn, not to bed Kathryn necessarily, but to spend some time with a good friend. She was sick to death of Emma and her whining.

So she went over to Kathryn’s house and Kathryn answered the door in her the same burgundy colored dress she’d worn on Lizzie’s first dinner there. “Not tonight, Lizzie,” she said, and Lizzie heard the sound of company in Kathryn’s front room. She looked at Kathryn’s face, not understanding, and Kathryn rolled her eyes. “I have
company
, Lizzie,” she said and shut the door.

Lizzie stood stunned. Then she stepped over the flowerbed that bordered the walk and looked in the front room window. Kathryn had returned to her guest, Cynthia Miller.

Cynthia Miller!

Lizzie could not believe her eyes, but Kathryn was definitely sitting too close to Cynthia for it to be a casual evening together.

Lizzie felt dirty. Used. Cheated. Abandoned.

She went home and ate everything she could find. Then she went down cellar and scrubbed every inch of her body. Then, upstairs, she took all the clothes she had ever worn to Kathryn’s and put them in the laundry. They were soiled. She was soiled, and no amount of scrubbing could wash away the sins of the flesh she had committed at the behest of that woman.

Lizzie lay back against the haystack. She should be starting her lessons, but her mind was on Kathryn now, and she couldn’t quite let her go.

She should have seen it coming. Kathryn had gotten less tender and loving as the weeks went on. Could it possibly have been only two months ago, when they first began keeping such close company? Only two months since Kathryn had been so attentive? She had come to ignore Lizzie for long stretches of time, always keeping Lizzie off balance. Lizzie had never been in control of the relationship, not from the start, and Kathryn’s power over her was a powerful distraction. A distraction during a time when she needed no distractions. She had work to do. She had lots of work to do on herself. Lizzie knew it, Emma knew it, Beatrice knew it, and Kathryn knew it. Kathryn, in fact, never let her forget it.

Kathryn had become quick to find Lizzie’s faults. She had become snippy at times, and snubbed Lizzie when in public. Lizzie knew that Kathryn must keep up appearances, but there were times when a friendly, affectionate smile in public would not be construed as more than that, a friendly smile. But Kathryn seemed to use “discretion” as an excuse to ignore Lizzie, give her uppity looks, look at her and then giggle with the other women. . . and Lizzie hadn’t cared for that at all.

There was a place within Lizzie that knew Kathryn wasn’t a very nice person. That place inside Lizzie wished she would have broken it off with Kathryn first. It would have been so much easier.

But the rest of Lizzie screamed in pain. Where on earth would she ever find another lover, someone who knew Lizzie’s secret places even better than Lizzie knew them? How could she
ever
find another lover?

She never would. She would never again feel the softness of lips on her own. She would never feel that shuddering urgency. She would never gently suckle another tender breast. She would never feel another’s hands deeply tangled in her hair, or awake to find a leg thrown over her own.

Lizzie caught herself up, sat straight and rubbed her face. No, she thought. That will never happen again. I was misled. It was sinful. It will never happen again.

She opened the book to the first lesson and began to read aloud, but the picture that came to her mind was that of Kathryn Peters, someone who took advantage of her, someone who didn’t return the affection Lizzie endowed, someone who was secretive and dishonest (a drinker!), someone who was just not. . . quite. . . right.

Lizzie sat back, the lesson forgotten. I’m acting like a lovesick teenager, she thought, with little patience. What exactly did I want from this affair? What did I expect? Respectability? Marriage?

Something in her heart turned over as she realized that now she would never marry. How could she, after being so intimate with another woman? She was a freak. She would never have children. She would never move out of this house, not until Andrew died, and probably not until Andrew and Abby both died. She would never move in with another woman, she would never have such an affair with another woman—she would never have a man suitor that she could take seriously, not after. . . not after Kathryn.

Kathryn made it very clear to her the kind of lovers men made. They were rough and insensitive—not so very unlike Kathryn herself at times—and selfish. Kathryn talked a lot about how men made love, which always put Lizzie off. It seemed as though Kathryn had had a lot of men in her travels. And while Lizzie had never been very interested in men, they had always seemed a last resort means of getting out of the Borden house and from under the oppressive eyes of the family.

And now that could never be.

The loss of her dreams flattened Lizzie to the haystack. She gazed up at the cobwebs in the rafters and felt her heart beating, felt her pulse at the top of her head.

I’m no longer respectable in any sense of the word, she thought. Worse, I could be a terrible embarrassment to the family—and where would I be without them?

Her gaze settled on the blue sky out the window, then drifted down toward the little table and the
Pathways
book.

Beatrice made the world the way she wanted it to be. All I need to do is follow instructions. All I need to do is what I’m told to do. She picked up the book and hugged it to her, tears of frustration and heart sickness leaking out the corners of her eyes.

I don’t think I’m capable, she thought. I don’t think I
can
lose weight, become bolder, more adventurous, more self-assured. I am not bold. I am not adventurous, I am not self-assured. I am not in control of my life. Can this really turn me into something I long to be, but am not?

She opened the book at random and ran her finger down the broad lines of type. A little circle of heat waves blurred her vision right in the center.

Lizzie felt all the wind go out of her sails. A headache was coming on. She sat, immobilized by her impotence. She knew she should get up and get down the ladder, into the house, and into the dark, cool bedroom before she was unable to do those things. She had perhaps ten minutes to prepare for the pain, because once the pain came, there was only the pain, the all-consuming pain. The pain and the vomiting and more pain.

Instead, she sat laid back into the haystack, feeling the crinkle of the dusty hay beneath her, feeling the little pieces of it poke her, feeling the soft cover of the book, watching the little swirly parts of the headache precursor.

And then she remembered taking the jewelry from Abby’s dresser. And the money from the drawer.

She sat up, her breath caught in her chest. No, no, it was impossible, it was wrong, how could she. . .
why
would she. . .

She quickly hid the book under the corner of the haystack, pushed the table up against the wall underneath the window. She climbed down the ladder as rapidly as she dared, her sight unsteady. Then she stepped gingerly across the junk-strewn floor to the barn door.

All the while she remembered. She could see herself, her hand, as it took the bedroom key from the mantle, as she walked up the back stairs and opened the bedroom door. She saw herself pick up the jewelry, and go directly to the drawer that held Abby’s emergency fund. Lizzie had seen her take money from that envelope a thousand times when she was a little girl. It was no secret, that envelope. She took it all, tightly clenched in her fist, and she went to the barn.

Lizzie could remember it all, she could see it all, but as the circle of wavy lines receded past her vision, the pounding pain began to fade in. She stopped in the kitchen and put both hands up to her forehead. “Please stop,” she whined. “Please.”

But the migraine was relentless, and it increased a thousand fold in intensity. Weak-kneed, Lizzie made it to the stairs, then very gently, she climbed the stairs, her hands on both walls of the stairwell for balance.

She fumbled at the lock on her door, entered, pulled the blind and the curtains, slipped out of her clothes, put the chamber pot in a handy place in case she needed it quickly, brought the towel from the wash basin over, and slipped, wearing only her drawers, between the cool sheets.

The headache seemed to subside for a moment while she moved with purpose. She got into bed, and had time for only one more thought. How strange that she could remember—barely remember—taking the jewelry and the money, but she could not remember why.

Sometimes Andrew Borden wished his whole damned family would just go away and leave him alone. This was one of those times. Usually, he prayed for peace under his roof— “the Peace of the Lord,” as he liked to put it. He prayed for the Peace of the Lord to be within Emma, Abby and Lizzie. He would like nothing better than to come home from work, have Lizzie rub his feet and read to him, then sleep, awaken to a well cooked and palatable meal, then relax with fine humor with his family. But his prayers hadn’t been answered for some twenty-five years now, and the only prayer left to him was that they would just all go away and leave him alone. Sometimes he even included Lizzie in that prayer.

But this prayer was not likely to be answered, either. And in addition, there was no peace of the Lord in Andrew, either. Too many other matters pressed on his mind these days.

The mill was not as profitable as it should have been in the past three quarters. Costs were up, income was barely holding, and it was up to Andrew to affect a management change. That was to be a time-consuming job, finding replacement personnel, especially if he had to handle the reins himself while he found the new managers.

Lizzie was acting queerly again, spending all her days in the barn and all her nights out somewhere with God only knew who. When questioned, Lizzie professed quite convincing innocence. Kathryn Peters, she said, always volunteered her home for WCTU committee work. That’s where Lizzie could be found most nights, she said, and Andrew had no call to disbelieve her. But it had become almost every night. Andrew didn’t approve of outside interests that required someone’s attention every night. There were family matters that needed attention. The home. The home came first.

But Andrew had learned that his daughters were headstrong and had almost outgrown caring about his dissatisfactions. He learned to save his criticism for important issues. They knew very well where he stood on family propriety, and he had to trust in their judgment, even though none of them had ever shown him very good judgment in any matter whatsoever.

Like Lizzie and this barn business. It was downright peculiar. He’d been out there to Lizzie’s hayloft study, and seen nothing out of bounds, but just because the eye doesn’t see something doesn’t mean that there isn’t trouble under the surface.

He was still trying to find the time of a Sunday morning to fake explanations to all the parishioners who asked about Lizzie’s sudden change of churches. That was a slap in the face to all Bordens, but she didn’t seem to give it a second thought. They all dressed in their Sunday clothes, left the house at the same time, but Lizzie turned right on Second Street, and Andrew and Emma and Abby, when she had a mind to go, turned left. It infuriated him every week, that she would go downtown, to worship with the Polish and the Italians and those uppity hill people, instead of
up
town, with the Anglos like was proper for a Borden. And to teach the Chinese! Heathens!

He didn’t have the time to think about it all. He didn’t have time for the guilt, either. It had been his badgering that made Lizzie change churches. He knew that as well as he knew his own name, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. There didn’t seem to be anything he
could
do. It made him more than furious. It hurt him. It gave him chest pains.

And then fancy Emma stealing Abby’s jewelry and her ten dollars. That was just so strange as to set Andrew’s head spinning. Being in business the way he was, he was used to personality conflicts in employees, backbiting, petty jealousies and even violent outbreaks. But this stealing of the jewelry and money and putting it into an old, rusty meat tin and leaving it in the barn was just too bloody strange. It verged on the incomprehensible.

Emma did it, of course Emma had done it, she protested too loudly to not have done it.

And Andrew was in the middle of it all again, for Abby had his ear on the pillow at night and she talked far into the night about the girls. He was beginning to believe that he was indeed too old to deal with such pettiness, and if Lizzie had to go with Emma in order to get Emma out of the house, then perhaps that would be the best idea of all.