The Secrets of Lizzie Borden (38 page)

 

Headlines—the bane of my existence, the hammer striking the killing blow to my heart, shattering it like scarlet glass—
screamed
at me from the breakfast tray I had forgotten to phone downstairs and cancel.

It would surely be the role of a lifetime, more memorable even than Miss O'Neil's passionate and intense portrayal of Lady Macbeth my nemesis, Mr. Edwin H. Porter, opined.

She had been
so
sure of me, that I would do
anything
she asked, she had given an exclusive story to Mr. Porter!

I picked up the phone on the table beside the bed in my own opulent suite at the Bellevue Hotel and asked to be connected with my bank. I canceled the check that I had given Nance. Then I packed my bags, summoned a porter, and ordered a carriage to take me to the station and went back to Fall River, and my maple-shrouded haven, to lick my wounds in splendid solitude. I knew then, I would be alone for the rest of my life.

Chapter
13

A
fter Nance, I wanted to wrap my heart in barbed wire so no one could ever touch it again. It was always the same: every time I let someone in . . . they raised my hopes only to dash them, and when I lost them, when they left me, as they
always
did, the pain was
so
great, I wanted to die.

Then the telegram came. It arrived on August 4, 1905, the thirteenth anniversary of that fateful day. It was signed only
B,
but I
knew
who it was who was asking to be remembered to me from a little town I had never heard of called Anaconda, somewhere in the wilds and wide rugged open spaces of Montana.

I traveled discreetly by train, with my veil down, under an assumed name, in a private compartment. My heart felt like a hummingbird fluttering inside my chest, its feathery wingtips tickling my rib cage all the way. I shivered and shook. I was happy and afraid. What did she want? What did this mean after all this time? There were long, breath-stealing moments when I feared it was more than nervous excitement that assailed my heart but the sort of palpitations and shortness of breath that might require a doctor's attention instead.

But I held on. I sat at my window and watched the miles of countryside roll by, the trees giving way to barren spaces, the brown earth to bloodred, and I saw buffalos and wild horses running free and unfettered beneath the most beautiful blue sky I had ever seen.

The hot Montana sun made me regret my choice of a plain, serviceable navy blue broadcloth traveling suit and black hat with net veiling; the velvet violets that adorned it soon looked as wilted as if they were real. My hair frizzed wildly and my face was a sweaty, florid, mottled mess, and perspiration plastered my white shirtwaist and undergarments to my skin, making large unsightly stains blossom beneath the armpits that would leave permanent yellow stains. I was most uncomfortable and the dust made me cough and sneeze and my eyes red, watery, and itchy despite the protection of my veil. I was constantly employing my handkerchief to try to get a piece of bothersome grit out.

At the depot, I hired a carriage to take me to her.

I found Bridget on a tumbledown farm, with a roof that no doubt let in more rain than it kept out, with an equally dilapidated lean-to attached to serve as a barn for the family's cow, and a parched and pathetic vegetable garden where only straggly sunburned weeds seemed to flourish. Barefoot and smiling, radiant despite the squalor, surrounded by several small ragged, barefoot children, with chickens pecking in the dirt around her feet, Bridget sang as she wielded a rusty, weather-worn hatchet to chop logs from the woodpile into kindling.

I recognized the song at once.

But the lively and curvaceous green-eyed, raven-haired Gaelic enchantress of my youth was gone, and a broad-hipped, ample matron of thirty-eight with cheeks plump and rosy as apples and swollen ankles, wearing a loose, tent-like dress of dirty and faded flowered mauve-colored calico, stood in her place. Her condition was such that she looked as if she might at any moment have to halt her chores and send for the doctor or midwife.

“Glory be, 'tis Miss Lizzie!” She laid down the hatchet, brushed a stray wisp of dark hair back from her brow, and came to greet me with twinkling eyes and a smile that sparked so many bittersweet memories.

“I didn't know you had returned to America,” I said. “I thought you meant to stay in Ireland.”

“Aye, so I did, but things don't always go as we plan.” She laid her hand, sun browned and calloused, over my smooth pale-white one. “Don't be afeared, Miss Lizzie,” she said kindly, with a smile that put me instantly at ease. “Sure, I'm no blackmailer, ya know. It's just all these years, you've been in my thoughts, an' I've seen your name so many times in the papers, though news travels slow out here. There was times when it seemed you was standing on the brink o' happiness, only to have it snatched away from you at the last instant, like your engagement to that Mr. Gardner, he seemed a nice man he did, an' I just . . .” She smiled sheepishly, shrugged her shoulders, and shook her head as though she could not find the right words to explain. “I just wanted to . . . send my regards . . . I guess . . . I'm sorry I can't think of any better way to put it; you've just been in my thoughts, so . . .”

The tension inside me evaporated and for the first time in days I drew a deep, easy breath. I had been so afraid. . . .
Blackmail,
the word had been constantly in my thoughts, hovering over me like a dark storm cloud ever since I first read that telegram.

Emma and I had given Bridget money before; we had paid her well, a small fortune for her silence, to disappear, to forsake notoriety and return to Ireland and never set foot in America again. But here she was.... Did she truly
not
want
something?

We sat on the bench by the well, sipping cool water from the dented tin dipper, and watching the swarm of barefoot children run and play, while the eldest boy took over for his mother at the woodpile, and Bridget told me of her life since she had left Fall River.

She had indeed returned to Ireland just as she had promised and had intended full well to bide the rest of her lifetime there.

“I bought a fine farm for me da an' mam an' stocked it with horses, an' cows, an' a little flock o' sheep, some lovely fat pigs, an' chickens o' course, good layin' hens fit for the table too there was. Aye, I did well by my folks, Miss Lizzie, I did, so never you think your money was frittered away an' no' put to good use. It made a lot o' folks happy, saints bless an' keep you for it!”

She had also found the love of her life in Ireland. John Sullivan. “The name's the same but no relation,” she explained, “or if he is, 'tis a long way down the road an' not worth frettin' about.” He was a big, burly, red-haired Irishman, a smelter in the coal mines and a fine singer and storyteller, though he liked to drink a drop more than was good for him sometimes, but, thank the Lord, not too often.

In 1897 they had decided to immigrate to America and “go west,” as far away from society as they could, to seek their fortune. They had heard many grand, exciting tales about “The Wild West” that seemed to promise riches galore to all who dared venture forth, “stuff an' nonsense don'tcha know about gold nuggets litter-in' the ground, just lyin' there a-waitin' for you to just pluck 'em up like daisies as easy as you please!” She chuckled at the memory.

“An' you see where it has brought us!” She jerked her head back toward the ramshackle farmhouse.

“But I'm not complainin'. 'Tis a good life, Miss Lizzie, not an easy one, I'll be the first to admit, but, Lord knows, nothin' worthwhile ever is.”

Since her marriage, she had borne a child every year, without respite, twice even twins. “My mam bore twelve children, Miss Lizzie,” she said proudly. “Now I am mam to a dozen o' me own with another on the way!” She proudly patted her big, round belly. “My John, he threw away my stays. ‘No need tryin' to get your figure back, me fine lady,' he said to me. ‘Once you're empty I'll fill you up again, an' I'll not be stoppin' till you're past breedin'!' An' he's been true to his word, he has.” Bridget patted her stomach again, and her radiant smile, the joyous laughter on her lips and in her eyes that still sparkled like emeralds, told me that this was a woman who had found happiness in its truest, purest form. “After this one's born, as soon as I'm able, we'll be goin' at it again like bunnies until my belly's big again! Aye, 'tis a
grand
life, Miss Lizzie! I wouldn't trade places with the Emperor o' China if he got down on his knees an' askt me!”

I lifted my skirt and turned back the dusty hem to reach the secret pocket I had sewn there and took out a thick envelope and pressed it into Bridget's hand. “For the children,” I said, “and for you.”

“Oh no, Miss Lizzie. . . .” Bridget tried to push it away, but I shook my head and stood up and started to walk back to the hired carriage that had brought me out to the farm, where the driver dozed with his straw hat pulled down over his eyes.

“Wait!” Bridget called after me. “Jack!” she called to her eldest boy, and beckoned him over. “No—bring that here!” she said when he started to lay the hatchet down. She took it from him and ruffled his tawny hair and smiled down at him. “Off you go.” She nodded brightly, smacked his bottom, and shooed him away to join his brothers and sisters.

Holding it in two hands, like an offering, Bridget brought the hatchet to me. I recognized it at once, though when I had last seen it, it had been shiny and almost new. There was that funny, peculiar mark in the wood that looked like a man's bewhiskered profile. “Aye, 'tis President Lincoln hisself, the Great Emancipator!” Bridget had quipped when I first pointed it out to her. But there was no shine left on it anymore; though still trusty, it had been dulled and dirtied by the years, use, and exposure to the elements, the gilt was long gone, the hickory handle was stained and well weathered, and, like all the rest of us, it showed its age.

“I kept it all these years,” Bridget explained. “I never told anyone who I was, Miss Lizzie, except my John; a husband an' wife can't have secrets like that between 'em, ya know, but not another soul, I swear.” She crossed herself. “I'll take the truth with me to my grave, I will, Miss Lizzie.”

“Thank you, Bridget,” I said gratefully, “for more than you know—you have restored my faith in humanity.” But it was too little too late. I let my hand linger on her arm and leaned in to kiss her cheek before I took the trusty old hatchet and walked away.

I never saw or heard from Bridget Sullivan again. I buried the hatchet in the garden at Maplecroft on the servants' Sunday afternoon off, when they and all the neighbors were at church and there were no prying eyes about to spy on me.

On the train, as the wheels turned, taking me home to Fall River, I sat on the floor in my private compartment with my back against the wall, feeling the floor sway beneath me, and hugged my knees to my chest, and wept. I was almost forty-six. I now needed to wear my spectacles all the time, not just for reading, unless I wanted to blunder about in my vanity like a blind bat. Time had dulled the fire of my hair and streaked it with snow and I had just let it go. I hadn't hennaed it since I lost Nance; it was time to grow up and act my age. I was no longer young, and there is something to be said for aging gracefully. Or maybe I was just tired of fighting the inevitable? I had not had my monthly bleeding in over a year, and I knew that my womb was now dry and barren as the desert sands and would never bring forth life a new and precious love that was uniquely, and unconditionally, mine.

“Nothing has turned out as I thought it would!” I sobbed.

I should have known reality never lives up to the fantasy, the dream glimpsed through rose-colored glasses or gleaned from the pages of romances and plays on the stage; songs and stories only present an ideal that we all aspire to but rarely attain. I had bought my freedom with the life's blood of my father and stepmother, and I had acquired many of the wonderful things, the creature comforts, I had always dreamed of, but not the one that was dearest to my heart, the zenith of all my dreams—true and lasting love,
real
love, not fleeting, opportunistic, or casually carnal, but the kind that stands the test of time, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.

My life is a life of hard and sad compromises, cruel and brutal facts, and the splendid isolation of a millionaire leper, fated to live out my days like an aging, withering white-haired Rapunzel perched high up in her ivory tower resigning herself to the truth that her prince is never going to come and repenting her one attempt to rescue herself because it also ruined all her hopes and chances. Even as I set myself free with that impetuously wielded, fury-fueled hatchet, I made myself a perpetual prisoner, for life, and ever after, destined to walk alone under the dark cloud of suspicion.

Was it worth it? Another scandal-ridden and society-shunned scoundrel, Oscar Wilde, said it best I think: “The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.” For me,
Yes
and
No
are twins conjoined, most inconveniently, but perpetually; one cannot exist without the other. I can only tell you this, for whatever it is worth to you, all those old adages about money embroidered on so many samplers are absolutely true; it
cannot
buy happiness and it
is
the root of all evil.

Perhaps my destiny was written in the stars the day I was born? Had I not interfered, had I not taken Fate, in the form of that hatchet, into my own hands, had Father and Abby been allowed to live out the span allotted to them according to God's plan, I would have still died a lonely and unloved old maid, with no husband or children; the only thing their blood bought me was a life of
lonely
luxury. Magnificence and money, I have long since discovered, are cold comforts—gold and silver are hard and cold; satin and silk are cold and slick—they cannot hold you close like a lover or kiss you good night. There is a reason money is often referred to as “cold, hard cash”; it can buy many things, but not the warmth and loving softness, the comfort, of the welcoming arms and beloved body of a devoted husband or lover. A paid paramour, hired, transitory pleasure, yes, it
can
buy that, for an hour or a night or maybe even longer, but that is
not
love; it is only a lovely and diverting illusion, a semblance, a night of wonder and enchantment, like when you pay to watch a magic show—
voilà!
a moment's delight, then
puff!
it is gone, the beautiful, fleeting ephemeral fancy vanished into the ether, and you are left all alone again, with memories you would rather forget because they only remind you that there is no such thing as
happily ever after
.
That
is the price I paid for wealth and independence and the right to do exactly as I pleased. I did not become the creature of my dreams, a woman of the world, sophisticated and fashionable, feted and adored; I became a shunned and friendless woman alone
against
the world.