The Secrets of Lizzie Borden (40 page)

Oh, how I vex them! I keep them on their toes and constantly running to complain on the telephone to Dr. Truesdale like tattletale children. But I don't care! I
refuse
to live my life such as it is now by their clock. I won't take naps, send my pets out, or lay my book aside when they say it's time, or even attempt to carry on a conversation with anyone who insists on addressing me in a condescending singsong voice as though I were a small child, or submit to enemas and sponge baths—one really
must
draw the line somewhere! —and I shove away the bland invalid foods they lay on a tray before me; if I
must
have my meals in bed on a tray they must equal or surpass the fare at Delmonico's.

I imperiously demand my daily bowl of peach ice cream crowned with crumbled golden cake and a warm, decadent, rich topping of brandied peaches, a dessert fit for a queen, as I sit propped up in bed against a mountain of lace-trimmed, gold-embroidered pastel sherbet-colored satin pillows, wearing a ludicrous, flirtatious lacy beribboned ivory silk negligee that looks laughable on a fat, florid-faced, pendulous-bosomed bespectacled woman of sixty-six with only a few lingering streaks of fading peach left in her snowy hair to remind everyone of the angry red it used to be.

My dogs and cats curl loyally up beside me so that I am not quite alone in the vast and lonely barren wasteland of this gilded monstrosity of a bed, four postered, gilt tasseled and fringed, canopied, curtained, and king-sized, fit for a French courtesan, like a valentine from Louis XV to Madame Pompadour. But the comfort of my dear pets' presence and their unconditional love cannot quite erase the sorrow of all the lovers I longed for who never came or only lingered for a while, arousing my hopes as well as my body, yet never staying.

Even my collection of souvenir spoons evokes only sadness and longing for that which is lost and, despite a lifetime of looking, never found; the way they nest together never fails to remind me that there is no one to curl up behind me and wrap their arms around me.

No matter how many spoonfuls of peach ice cream I shovel into my mouth, it cannot mask the bitter taste of regret. Or the fear that when I face Father again in whatever life of bliss or unrelenting torment comes after this mortal span he will frown, nod knowingly (
always
right, even in death!) and say,
You see, Lizzie, I was right all along. . . . No one ever did love you for yourself, only my money, and even then . . . not for long. I built a fortune that outlasted any
love—I hear the scorn drip like poison from his lips as he pronounces that word, turning it into something sinful, ugly, vulgar and wrong—
you were ever given.

Though my frail body must humbly submit, my still-proud spirit shuns and despises the nurses' ministrations. I don't want their eyes or their hands upon me, their humiliating help with my private functions, or the medicines they administer that might loosen my tongue. I learned long ago to be wary of morphine. “Did she confess?” they always whisper, thinking I can't hear them, whenever they meet to change shifts. One night I came fearfully close.

Tossing on waves of red-hot, molten-lava pain, I was given morphine. A nurse named Ruby—red, red, red, how it does run like a river of blood through my life!—was in attendance at my bedside. I was dreaming about David Anthony. He came unbidden to my mind even though I had not seen him in years except in passing, riding in fine cars with his family, his weary, wary-eyed wife with large shady hats and powder hiding her bruises, and their brood of children. I heard that he had died two years ago, that he had broken his skull riding his motorcycle out by Durfee Farm.

In my hazy, muddled morphine dream, I told Ruby that David and I had been very much in love, that we were lovers, keeping secret, passionate trysts in the barn, and that he wanted desperately to marry me. But my father did not approve because David was a butcher's son and socially beneath me, and quite bluntly informed me that I would make a laughingstock of myself if I married him, because he was ten years younger.

“He killed for me, to set me free”—I don't know why I did it, but I spun a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers for Ruby, and perhaps for myself as well, because I wanted to rewrite history and if it
had
to be, that's how it
should
have been—“because he thought my parents were the only obstacle. He was so much younger than me and didn't really understand that I also had misgivings. When I walked into the sitting room and saw him standing over Father with the hatchet . . . it was too late to stop him! I was
horrified!
Even as I bathed all the blood off him and dried his tears, I knew I would not have him. I broke off all contact with him. At first, I let him believe that we still might have a future, that the distance I insisted on putting between us was for his own good, to keep him safe from suspicion. But that was a lie; I wanted nothing more to do with him and was just too cowardly to say so. But I would never tell what he had done, because in my heart I blamed myself; if I had taken greater pains to make him understand maybe it would never have happened. I didn't want to ruin his life, to see him hang, so I took the blame. I never mentioned his name or saw him alone ever again. And in the end, he shunned me too, like all the rest. He went on with his life and married someone else and had a family and, as far as I know, a happy life. I suppose he just couldn't bear the blood between us, and maybe Time taught him that I
was
to blame, at least in part. He died a few years ago.... He sleeps now in the cemetery only a few feet from Father.”

It made a good story. Nance would have loved it. But not a word of it was true except that David Anthony had been my lover and right before the murders had wanted me for a wife even though I didn't want him. But the hatchet, my hickory-handled Great Emancipator, killed that too and set me free forever from David Anthony.

 

It has been thirty-five years since the bloody deeds that made me infamous. My body may be falling apart, but my mind is as sound and solid as the granite memorial standing in the midst of our family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery where I know they shall very soon lay me at my father's feet. A position I once scorned and rebelled against but now see as just and emblematic of a wayward daughter's humble plea for a forgiveness she doesn't deserve.

Thirty-five years spent watching people I once called “friends” cross to the other side of the street in order to avoid me, and listening to schoolchildren chant in innocent cruel singsong:

Will it
never
end? God help me, I am tired of living, but even more afraid of dying. Like Canio, I long to rip the mask away and see the comic tragedy of my life come to an end, to be free of every care, pain, and woe, freed from suspicion, guilt, and ostracism. But I also know that Justice is a thing not only of this world. There is
always
a price to pay . . . for
everything,
and there is a debt of blood I still owe.
God help me!

L
izzie Borden died on June 1, 1927, of complications resulting from her gallbladder operation. She slipped away quietly in her sleep; her heart simply stopped beating. She was sixty-six years old. Though she had spent lavishly, she still left a sizable fortune, the bulk of which was bequeathed to various animal charities, “because their need is great and so few care for them.” The Animal Rescue League of Fall River was the largest beneficiary. She left nothing to Emma “as she had her share of our father's estate and is supposed to have enough to make her comfortable.”

Per Lizzie's instructions, there was no funeral. Dressed in a white lace gown with a bouquet of pink verbena, Lizzie Borden lay in state in her black coffin alone in the parlor at Maplecroft.

As the sun set, Vida Pearson Turner, the soloist from the Central Congregationalist Church, came in and sang “My Ain Countrie” in her rich contralto voice to the empty room, then quietly collected her fee from the undertaker and was told to go home and tell no one about the service she had just rendered for the deceased.

After nightfall, six Negro pallbearers in black suits carried Lizzie Borden to her final rest. She was laid at her father's feet in Oak Grove Cemetery.

After reading about Lizzie's death in a newspaper, Emma suffered a dizzy spell and fell down the basement steps of the Connor sisters' farm and shattered her hip. She never recovered and died nine days later on June 10, 1927. Orrin Gardner was at her bedside, holding her hand when she died.

Emma had been frugal with her inheritance and lived simply and reclusively, in a manner that would have made her father proud. Through thrift alone, rather than shrewd management and investments, she had nearly doubled her fortune by the time of her death. She left funds for a business scholarship to be established in her father's name, with Orrin Gardner to act as administrator; the rest was divided amongst various charities, including numerous old-age homes, hospitals, orphanages, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and the YMCA. The lone personal bequest was $10,000 to Orrin Gardner. Her body was taken by train back to Fall River and she was buried beside Lizzie in Oak Grove Cemetery.

Orrin Gardner never married. He continued teaching and eventually became a high school principal. He died in a convalescent home in 1944.

Nance O'Neil capriciously abandoned the stage, determined to replicate her success on the screen. But her vibrant stage presence failed to translate to the new medium; on film her gestures seemed too broad and histrionic. Exciting new stars, like exotic vamp Theda Bara and Mary Pickford, with her plucky personality and long golden curls, had captured the public's imagination, and Nance O'Neil was soon forgotten. Her roles diminished in both quality and quantity until the former great lady of the stage was reduced to playing bit parts, often glimpsed fleetingly as a face in the crowd, for $5 a day and a boxed lunch. She died forgotten, penniless, and alone in an old-age home in 1965 surrounded by souvenirs of her former glory. To her chagrin, whenever the occasional reporter came to interview her they were always more interested in her relationship with Lizzie Borden than hearing Nance reminisce about her life upon the stage.

 

In 1943 when she thought she was dying, Bridget Sullivan summoned a trusted friend, Minnie Green, to her bedside to hear a secret she longed to be unburdened of. Before Minnie arrived, Bridget recovered, and reconsidered. She died on March 26, 1948, at her Montana home surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She was eighty-two years old. Whatever her secret was, this time there was no attempt at a deathbed confession; Bridget took it with her to the grave.

The house at 92 Second Street still stands. Restored to appear as it did at the time of the Borden murders and rumored to be haunted by unquiet spirits that figured in the tragedy, today it is a popular bed-and-breakfast.

 

A note regarding Edwin H. Porter: Mr. Porter was a journalist for
The Fall River Globe
and the author of the first full-length book about the Borden murders, which Lizzie Borden is rumored to have bought up and burned en masse, with only a few copies escaping the bonfire. In this novel he appears as a composite character to personalize Lizzie's enmity for the intrusive press coverage that dogged her from the time of the murders to the end of her life. This portrayal should not be taken as a true indication of his actions or character.

Brown, Arnold R.
Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter.
Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991.

 

Kent, David.
Forty Whacks: New Evidence in the Life and Legend of Lizzie Borden
. Emmaus, PA: Yankee Books, 1992.

 

Lincoln, Victoria.
A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967.

 

Martins, Michael, and Dennis A. Binette.
Parallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and Her Fall River.
Fall River, MA: Fall River Historical Society, 2011.

 

Radin, Edward D.
Lizzie Borden: The Untold Story.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961.

 

Rehak, David.
Did Lizzie Borden Axe for It?
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010.

 

Spiering, Frank.
Lizzie: The Story of Lizzie Borden.
New York: Random House, 1984.

Brandy Purdy

 

 

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The Secrets of Lizzie Borden
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