Lizzie Borden (40 page)

Lizzie pounded herself as she imagined the pounding to Abby, the thrusts to herself more and more brutal. She loved it, she hated it, she wanted to hurt, bite, squeeze, kill. She rolled, curled over, in the hay, muscles twitching and throbbing as the hatchet continued to lay blow after blow on her stupid stepmother’s head. The orgasm shuddered to a violent conclusion.

When it was over, she cried.

Andrew Borden felt uneasy all morning at the office. Around noon he received such a jarring pain in his head that he thought it had split in two. He closed his eyes and waited for the ensuing headache, but the pain was brief and it left no lingering aftereffects. It had to do with the illness, he thought. There was still some of the illness left in him.

Well, he would try very hard not to succumb to it. He could possibly leave early today, go home, have Lizzie rub his feet and read to him, and have a little lie-down on the sofa, and he would be as good as new. He must take care not to have a relapse. Tomorrow was his time with the Widow Crawford.

But the uneasiness Andrew felt had little to do with the sickness, or the pain in his head, even though those were a part of it. The uneasiness had more to do with the feeling that the reins of control were slipping from his hands.

In business, he was relinquishing control a little bit, taking a lesser role in management, and a greater role in  profits. Let the younger men do all the hard work. But at home. . . at home, Emma was certainly out of control, Lizzie was. . . well, Lizzie was quite devoted to her sister. Abby was sweet Abby, as always, but there was something about the character of the home life that was slipping away from him. It may have started when Lizzie changed churches. Their relationship hadn’t been the same since.

And Emma. Poor Emma.

Andrew made a note to himself to visit the law office in person on Monday and have a new will drawn up. He would include and exclude who he wished and let the tongues wag.

He rubbed his hands over his sweating face and looked out the window. It was wide open, but not a breath of air stirred. Flies buzzed lazily. It was even too hot for the flies. Underneath his black wool coat, Andrew sweltered. He looked at the clock.

Perhaps I’ll go home soon, he thought, and see what Lizzie’s been up to.

Lizzie came in from the barn, feeling weak, dizzy, and profoundly guilty. She went down cellar and discovered blood in her drawers. For a moment, she thought she had injured herself, and then she realized it was just time again for her monthly. She rigged up a pad, then splashed cold water on her face and rubbed it on her arms. It was mildly refreshing, but she couldn’t quite shake the guilt. Such terrible excitement, imagining Abby’s death.

Lizzie feared that there was something seriously wrong with her mind. She went upstairs, hoping to run into Abby, hoping to make things right with her, somehow. Maggie was washing windows in the dining room.

“Didn’t you just wash those windows, Maggie?”

“Yes, miss, but Mrs. Borden can’t seem to have them clean enough.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not so well, miss. Not well at all.”

Lizzie wandered around the kitchen, looking for something to eat. Except for the leftover biscuits Abby made this morning, nothing had been baked for weeks. The cupboard, which Emma was in charge of, held only a plate of store-bought cookies. And that would be a fine meal to feed Uncle John for dinner. Oh well. That was Abby’s problem, wasn’t it?

“Your friend came.”

Lizzie stopped, her blood cold. “Beatrice?”

“The Brit.”

“What did she say?”

“I just told her like you told me. That you weren’t home and weren’t expected.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Pardon?”

“What was she wearing?”

“Kind of a dark green dress.”

“Silk?”

“I don’t know, miss.”

“Did she look cool?”

“No, miss, she looked as hot as the rest of us.”

“Will she be back?”

“No, miss, she said she had to leave for New Bedford to catch a boat back to England. She had a lovely carriage.”

“Yes. . .” Lizzie slumped down into a chair. There was nothing to worry about with Beatrice. She was hot like everybody else, and she couldn’t stay overnight anyway. It would have been fun to see her. Lizzie hadn’t needed to hide in the corner of the hayloft to avoid her, and now she would never write again and that friendship would be lost.

Well, it was not the only friendship lost in the past few weeks. Lizzie gritted her teeth.

It’s that book, she thought. That book is heartache. She got up from her chair and let the screen door slam behind her. She went into the barn, choked in its stillness, went up the ladder and found the book under the edge of the haystack, where she kept it hidden.

She looked at it, rubbed her fingers over the cover. She had loved this book. It had meant so much to her at first. But now she thought that perhaps it was not good. It taught the wrong things. It taught independence and self-reliance, everything that the family and church was against. It let loose the beasts—the demons—of Anger and Lust. Fury and Hate.

I never touched myself
like that
before this book. I never touched another woman before this book. I never,
ever
would have thought of doing anything
like that
to Abby before this book.

I’ll burn it.

She took it down the ladder and back into the house, through the dining room. Bridget was taking a break at the dining table, her head down on her arms. Lizzie hid the book, but Bridget didn’t look up. Lizzie took it up into her bedroom, where she wrapped it in that old paint-stained dress that Emma had been after her to burn. The next time there’s a fire in the stove, she thought, this goes in.

~~~

When she heard her father’s key in the front door lock, Lizzie leaped up from her rocking chair. She needed some company. Scant comfort though she may be, Emma did provide plenty of company for Lizzie, and Lizzie sorely missed her when she was gone. She missed her and she worried about her.

Lizzie unpinned her hair and brushed it quickly, then knotted it back up. When she was finished, her father was knocking on the front door. He couldn’t manage to open it. She hoped he wasn’t sick.

She looked down from the landing, but Maggie had beaten her to the front door, a expression of great inconvenience on her face. Lizzie laughed in spite of herself, and the maid turned and gave her a look that said she didn’t appreciate her or her father.

Andrew walked in the door looking at the key in his hand. He didn’t look particularly ill, but he didn’t look very well, either.

“Hello, Father.”

“Lizzie.”

“Any mail for me?”

“Not today.”

“Come in and sit down. Are you well? Would you like to read?”

“Some cold water, Lizzie.”

Lizzie got him a glass of water, and put two cookies on a plate. By the time she returned from the kitchen, he was already lying down on the sofa. She handed him the water, he sat up and took a couple of swallows, then she took the glass away from him. She unlaced and removed his boots. The more she looked at him, the sicker he looked.

“Are you all right, Father?”

“Just tired, Lizzie. Read to me, please.”

She got the book and began to read. Within minutes, he was snoring softly, but she continued to read. There were only two pages left to go in the book and then they could begin another, so she kept reading, her voice lowered, reading aloud only to herself.

Andrew stirred, and Lizzie interrupted herself to look over at him. His eyes were slitted, but they were open, looking straight at her.

“You’re all I’ve got,” he said quietly. “You’re the only one who will take care of me in my old age.” Then he closed his eyes again.

Lizzie looked at the pages of the book, but the words were blurred. She closed it, patted his knee and got up.

She went to the kitchen, but the burning sadness was too much for idle wandering, so again, she went to the barn. She picked up some fallen pears on the way and closed the heavy door behind her.

I am all he’s got, she thought. I’ll end up washing his  bedpans for the rest of my life. I’ll never have time to go fishing.

Fishing.

That was exactly what Lizzie needed. She needed to go fishing.  She needed fresh air. She needed a diversion. She needed to sit in the quiet, with only the birds and the fish and the insects to entertain her. She needed her little green room cut out of the center of a willow tree. She needed some privacy, some quiet, she needed everybody to leave her alone, just leave her alone for a little while. She stopped pacing, set the pears down on a box of junk on the floor and began hunting through the junk for iron to use as sinkers. The last time she went fishing, she didn’t have any sinkers, and the bait floated downstream and caught on the weeds. If she had a nice piece of iron to tie on to her line, then the worm would wait at the bottom of the stream and she would be able to catch a nice trout.

Trout for dinner. That would feed Uncle John.

She began to paw through the boxes of useless junk, but there wasn’t anything suitable. Everything was either too small or too large. She should go to the hardware store and buy herself some right sinkers.

She picked up the pears and sat on an overturned bucket. She rubbed them, one at a time on her skirt.

If she lived alone, she could go fishing whenever she pleased. If she lived alone, she wouldn’t have to deal with Father, or Abby, or Emma. She would only have to instruct the maid as to cleanliness, guests expected and menus. She could be a woman living along; she wouldn’t have to be a
spinster
. She wouldn’t have to deal with Emma’s rages, or Father’s insults, or his lifelong dream of enslaving her to his bedridden incontinence.

Old people are such a bother, she thought. If he were dead, she wouldn’t have to deal with any of the problems he brought her. She would be free, and rich, and happy. If he were dead, she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about having such thoughts. If he were dead, she would never have another problem. She could come and go as she pleased.

If he were dead. . . If he were dead.

If
only
he were dead!

Sadness welled up and filled her eyes. She rested her chin on her fist and rubbed a pear up and down her leg.

“I don’t want to be all you’ve got, Father,” she said softly, and then she was in the room with him, much brighter than the barn, and she looked down upon him from what seemed to be a great height.

She could see the graying of his skin, thin, wrinkled with a thousand creases. His hair was thin, too, long and white. His eyes were closed, but behind the lids were brown eyes, brown like Emma’s, only they had turned blue around the edges of the irises, and they seemed to float instead of holding solid. She loved the face. She hated the face.

She thought if she had a little hatchet, a little kindling hatchet, she could split it right down the center.

She crunched a big bite of the pear.

She would split one of those loose eyes right down the middle like a grape.

She crunched another bite, and the juice ran down her chin.

Again, and again she would hit him, just hit him and hit him, feeling the bones crunch

like a green pear

watching the blood spurt

like sweet juice

pieces of brains would fall

a chunk of pear landed on her lap

and she would never, never,
never
,
NEVER
have to deal with the old man again. Never. Ever.

She stood up and screamed. “Never!” And threw the pear against the barn wall. It splattered.

She looked around herself. Oh God, not again. Shame burned her face. Twice in one day, she’d thought about killing her parents. Thought about it in vivid detail.

I love you Papa, she thought. I’m sorry.

Pear juice covered her hands, and rivulets had run down her forearms. Dust from the barn was sticking to it, leaving dark trails.

There’s something wrong with me, she thought. Surely other people didn’t think about their parents in the same way.