I stood from them. ‘I think it’s time to leave Lizzie alone now.’
Alice slid out from under the weight of Lizzie’s head on her lap, let her land softly on feather pillows. ‘Of course.’
When we were in Father and Abby’s room I shut the door. I felt comfort, relief that we were away from Lizzie, that I could have my friend to myself. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Alice.’
She ratcheted her head around the room, then stiffened and said, ‘What’s that strange smell?’
I sniffed. A hot room that had been closed off most of the day. I sniffed again, caught the tail end of sulphur, of singed hair.
‘It smells like something died.’ Alice pinched her nose, pinched away the putrid smell. ‘I don’t think I want to sleep in here, Emma.’
I wanted her to stay, wanted her near, wanted something familiar. ‘What if I try getting rid of the smell?’
‘I’m not sure . . .’
I searched the room—perhaps a piece of rancid meat from Abby’s late-night feedings, a dead mouse trapped behind a wall. I searched, found nothing but a used handkerchief underneath the bed.
As I pulled myself up from the floor I caught a hint of decay in the corner. I took a deep breath and let the smell momentarily take over. ‘There’s something horrid in here,’ I said, sniffed the corner again, followed the scent up the wall as far as I could reach on tiptoe. It was flooding down from the ceiling.
‘I can’t believe how strange all of this is, Emma,’ Alice said.
‘Nothing is normal.’
‘I mean, it’s so strange to believe that this all happened, just as Lizzie feared.’
I turned sharp, a knife. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Last night Lizzie told me she had a premonition. I feel like this has already happened.’
‘What did Lizzie say?’
Alice took my hand and she told me about the night before, how Lizzie had come to her after supper and reported that the entire household had fallen ill. ‘Lizzie was so very upset. It was most unexpected to see her, Emma.’
I could imagine Lizzie running across the road towards Borden Street, the way she had many times before, filled her lungs with chalk-dirt air, knees locking from the exertion. She would have rounded the corner, her cheeks rosing like she’d been running a lifetime. By the time she arrived at Alice Russell’s house, Lizzie’s heart would have been in her mouth.
Alice said, ‘I heard all this fuss and I opened the door and there she was. I said, “By God, Lizzie! You look a fright. What’s gotten into you?”
‘“Alice, someone is trying to poison the family.”’
The things that happened next: tea was made, cake was cut and Alice was appropriate: she tucked in her ditch-round chin, widened her heavy-hooded eyes, gasped like a canyon when required. ‘How do you know?’
I could see Lizzie fanning herself with her hand. ‘Father and Mrs Borden are very sick tonight, very sick. And the other day, I felt dreadful. We’re always so sick lately. I just have this feeling . . .’
‘You should alert the police,’ Alice had said, cupped her hand over heart.
‘I’m beginning to think Father has many enemies.’
Under kerosene light, Alice Russell heard prophecies of doomed Borden life. Lizzie told her, ‘I’ve noticed strangers around the street. Haven’t you?’
Alice shook her head.
‘After Mrs Borden’s necklaces were stolen in broad daylight last year, strange men have been lurking about. I think whoever robbed us knows there’s money inside Father’s bedroom. The other day I saw a man standing under the gaslight up by the church and at the beginning of spring there was a man just outside our house!’
‘My goodness! What does your father say?’
‘I’ve not told anyone, especially Father; I don’t want to frighten him. Poor old soul.’
‘And Emma?’
‘Emma’s not paying attention enough.’
Alice then reached out and took Lizzie’s hand.
‘You’ve not noticed anyone at all? Not even the tall young man with a slouched cap?’
‘No. No one. But it sounds like you’ve got good details of those lurkers to tell the police.’
Lizzie fumbled with her teacup. She let cake crumbs fall into her lap. Alice tried to reassure her that everything would be alright, but paranoia stuck.
‘I really do think this explains why we’ve been so sick lately. Even Bridget is sick.’
‘Who do you think would do such a thing?’
Lizzie shook her head.
I could not begin to fathom what Lizzie’s premonition meant. Sometimes Lizzie just knew things. Alice pulled her hand away from me, shuddered from the memory of it all. ‘I’m sorry, Emma. It’s a lot to tell you.’
It was what I needed to hear. ‘If it doesn’t bother you too much, I would like to hear more about what she said.’
Alice furrowed brows. ‘I’m not sure I can remember. We kept talking but it seems like a fog. Lizzie went home not long after that.’
I thought of Lizzie returning home, whether she had looked to the moon and called out for me, whether her voice bounced off attic windows, carried from one house after the other after the next. Did she hear owls echo in trees, or choruses of crickets throbbing against night heat? Did she hear a creek follow gravity and empty itself into the river? And when she got home, did she do anything to help stop the sickness?
My body ached. ‘Alice, let’s try to get rid of this smell.’
I opened the bedroom windows and let a breeze filter through.
‘I think we need to do more. Will you help me clean the house?’ I said.
Alice exhaled, stood still. ‘I think I should go home and collect some belongings to bring back here. Why don’t you get Bridget to do it?’
My back tightened. There would be no more of Bridget doing anything; I thought of the way she had backed away from me earlier that afternoon, the disgust I had seen in her eyes as I reached out to touch her arm.
‘Miss Emma.’ Bridget’s voice deep and anxious.
‘Was I ever mean to you? Don’t pull away.’
Bridget had said nothing. I wanted to ask her if she was alright, if she needed a rest from all the questioning. Instead I asked, ‘Are you able to prepare supper for extra guests tonight?’
The stairs made a cracking sound and Bridget snapped her head towards the back of the house. I touched her arm again and she flinched, brushed my hand away.
‘I asked those police if I could leave for good and they told me yes,’ she said.
‘But I need you to stay and help me fix up the house.’
Bridget took a breath. ‘I won’t.’
‘That’s ridiculous. This is where you live.’
She took a step up the stairs, paused, and took another then another. ‘I heard her this mornin’,’ Bridget said.
‘Who?’
‘Lizzie.’ Bridget hung her head.
My heart thundered. ‘Tell me what my sister said.’
‘She laughed as I let your father in.’
‘Lizzie’s always laughing at something. It’s how she is.’
‘No, miss. She was laughin’ like a jackal as I opened the door. No one else was here.’
I took a step up to Bridget, tried to close in on her. ‘This doesn’t mean you have to leave. You’ll stay here.’
‘This house is no good, Miss Emma. It’s all sick and horror. Ya shouldn’t stay either.’ Bridget pulled her shoulders tight together. ‘And I heard that noise again.’
‘What noise?’
‘That awful chockin’. Like with the pigeons.’ Bridget shook her head and left me on the stairs. What on earth had she heard?
Bridget packed her bag and left Second Street without saying goodbye to Lizzie. I wanted to drag Bridget back to the house, the way I had been dragged back. Why should she get to leave?
Alice Russell promised to return after seven. It was up to me to clean the bloodied remains. I
went downstairs, fetched a water pail and scrubbing brush from the basement, boiled water, poured the water into the pail, added soap. Every moment dragged. When the water had cooled slightly, I made my way to the sitting room. At the closed door that linked kitchen to sitting room, I took a breath, held on to my side where there was a dull ache of dissension. I took another breath, opened the door. The room was emptied of bodies. The sofa was in front of me and I noticed it had been moved slightly from the wall and a crevasse formed the outline of maleness. I did not want to go into the room. Why couldn’t I be more like my sister? She had moved around the house with ease all afternoon. I willed myself to step in, noticed a metallic smell: of heat and of too many voices. I dry-retched. There was a bloodstain on the sofa where Father’s head had come undone. The stain had begun to overtake the room, unapologetic, as if it had always been there, and I felt like drowning. Why wasn’t anyone there to save me? Lizzie made a small laugh echo upstairs, the way she always laughs, made my body ricochet against the sound. I looked at the bloodstain, took a step closer.
I counted the times I had overheard someone mention the state of Father’s face, its new shape, or the way the back of Abby’s head was opened and released: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I touched the back of my head, felt along the bone that joined the neck. How long does it take the body to realise it is no longer breathing?
Another step.
Outside: the faint sounds of police patrolling the perimeter of the house. My dress suddenly felt too big, my hands and feet too small. There was so much work to be done. I wished I would disappear. I took a step closer to the sofa.
Another step.
I swallowed, caught a forgotten taste on the tip of my tongue, apple marmalade. Abby’s marmalade was always too thick, never reached the same consistency as Mother’s. Between the three women who made it, mine was the best. When I ate Abby’s it always stuck to the end of my tongue, had the taste of slightly blackened apple toffee. Father had developed a liking for Abby’s marmalade though, the way he slathered it thick on stale bread, the way he licked sticky from his lips. His enjoyment.
John had said how the men were wiping blood on clothes and towels all day. ‘You couldn’t help but put your hands in it.’ Now I understood.
I sat at the foot of the sofa and placed my hands in the water. The space where Father’s head had laid open was liquid-thick, imprecise. I expected him to walk through the door and tell me, ‘I had such a silly accident; I cut myself shaving,’ or, ‘There was a disagreement but it’s all better now.’ I was surprised by expectation, these things the dead could bring you. The stain would be hard to remove. Along the carpet were signs of how Father had been escorted from the room: the shock of his carved face was signposted by a dropped handkerchief; the conversation as to where best to store the body until the undertaker arrived was marked by small congealed blood spatters by the entrance to the dining room. How long exactly was he lying here before help arrived? I looked at my hands; I should have used gloves. There was a crack and drag along floorboards above my head and I held my breath. Then: a voice. John’s low tones followed by Lizzie’s sweeping laughter. I gritted teeth, failed to see how any humour could be found on a day like today. I placed the bucket of warm soapy water at the head of the sofa and began scrubbing in small half-circles, looked at the carpet and noticed that there was at once too much blood and not enough blood for the crime committed. Why wasn’t there more of him? When we were fourteen and four, Lizzie and I believed that Father was big enough to store the whole world inside his body, that in the centre of his stomach was a map that led to a secret world: corners to wait and hide behind, desert mirages for swimming, table upon table of boiled sweets, sugar water to drink, wide gullies full of trees and creatures, ancient ruins, a mother. Then, when I was fifteen, I discovered that Father was no longer a father: he was a person, like all other adults, prone to failure. He couldn’t possibly hold everything we wanted. The disappointment.
My wrists were lashed by the warmth of being with Father for the last time, those uncomfortable remnants. What had Lizzie’s last moments with him been like?
I scrubbed the sofa, replayed the police officers’ conversations:
‘And she showed no signs of harm?’
‘None that I could see.’
‘And she told you that she had found him lying down like such?’
‘Yes. That is how Miss Lizzie had left him when Mr Borden had come home.’
‘And she told you she found Mr Borden?’
‘Yes. She had said, “Father’s been cut.”’
Mrs Churchill had told me, ‘I saw your father this morning on his way to work. He looked so nice.’ She paused. ‘I keep seeing your mother’s body every time I close my eyes. I wish I hadn’t gone upstairs with Bridget to get those stupid sheets.’
I had stared at Mrs Churchill’s bulbous knuckles. Then she had whispered quick and fast to me, ‘When I first got here, I asked where your mother was and Lizzie told me she had gone to see a sick relative but then I kept asking her and she said the strangest thing: “I don’t know but I think they have killed her too.”’ Mrs Churchill began to sob. ‘I’m not going to tell the police about that because Lizzie was in all sorts of ways. God, to think this was all happening while I was next door. Emma, I didn’t hear a thing. If I had, I would’ve rushed right over.’
I leaned across and kissed Mrs Churchill on the cheek, her ghost-cold skin. ‘Thank you for looking after Lizzie,’ I said and my body shook. Why would Lizzie have said such a thing?
Father had once told me, ‘You have a slow brain for facts.’ But there I was collecting:
I had asked, ‘Has the culprit been apprehended?’
I had asked, ‘Has anything been stolen from the house?’
I asked again, ‘How long until the murderer is found?’
I scrubbed, blood covered hand. The brush in the water, the brush on the sofa, I scrubbed.
Father’s blood was thicker than I’d first thought. It had seeped into the carpet, watered the floral pattern and stained the wood below. I put the brush back into the water and rinsed, all the red, rinsed again. I absent-mindedly wiped the sofa legs with my fingers then wiped my cheek. I closed my eyes, heard a heavy thud upstairs. I gazed towards the ceiling, towards the place where Abby had been found, thought of what would have to be cleaned up there. My knees dug into the floor. I wanted Lizzie to come down and help. Another thud. Laughter.
I scrubbed the carpet, my scalp itched from sweat and heat and I stopped scrubbing, took stock of my work, all that was yet to be done before the funeral. My hands drowned in water, a faded red ring formed around my wrists, the blood that kept coming. I took the bucket outside, past the police lining the perimeter of the house, and threw the water onto the pear arbour. Over the fence I heard Mary and Mrs Kelly:
‘I didn’t see a thing, Mrs Kelly,’ Mary said.
‘Imagine that poor daughter having to come home to all of that!’
‘That family . . .’
Why did this have to happen to my family? I waited for the conversation to end and when it did, the women went away and I was on my own. I walked back inside, refilled the bucket with warm water. Back on my hands and knees I cleaned the wall behind the sofa, noticed hair-fine cracks along the skirting board and tried not to think about Father, but he was all around me. I scrubbed harder, knowing that behind the wall, Father’s and Abby’s bodies were rigid from disbelief. The heat trapped in the room ran across my fingers. I wiped them on my dress, afraid of what the air was carrying.
A strange wind howl whipped from the floral carpet; a lost child, frightened animal, a haunting. I scrubbed, my throat tight and sore, a strangulation, and the howl came again, so loud it filled my ears, stung my eyes, shocked the hair on my arms into tiny needles. The howl. The howl was me. How had I forgotten what grief would sound like? I was no stranger to it.
Then there was movement along the ceiling and a door opened
. At the top of the stairs Lizzie sighed and cleared her throat before walking down and I dragged my head towards my sister: arms folded across her chest, head tilted to the side.
‘Emma, don’t cry,’ Lizzie cooed, took a step closer.
I pulled back. Lizzie looked at the dining room door. Her fingers twitched, mouth opened and she stared at the mess in front of us. The bucket of blood-water hummed. Watching Lizzie, my strange, strange sister, she became a shadow. I could smell the secrets on her, that mushroom scent. Eyes on each other, Lizzie’s hand licked the dining room door handle.
‘Lizzie, don’t open that door.’ I wiped my eyes, caught sulphur swim from my fingers.
She looked down at the bucket of bloodied water, her hand across her stomach. ‘Did all of that come from him?’ Like a child in wonder.
‘Yes.’
‘It doesn’t seem real,’ Lizzie whispered.
I wanted to ask her, ‘How much blood did you think there was going to be?’ but thought better. A suspicion shouldn’t be acted upon. Lizzie came to me, kneeled beside: her, me, us, like children looking at caught tadpoles. Lizzie stuck her hand in the water and closed her eyes. ‘Why is it so cold?’
I took her hand out and held it in mine.
‘Emma, I think I told a lie. The house wasn’t locked all day. The basement doors were open.’ Lizzie was monotone, a hint of defeat.
I knew there had to be something. ‘When?’
‘I left them open this morning.’ Lizzie in a tiny whisper.
‘Have you told anyone?’
Lizzie was pale. ‘No. Should I?’
The clock went six. ‘No. Doors can be opened, doors can be closed.’
Lizzie’s cheeks flushed colour. ‘Yes, they can.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I’m frightened I might have done the wrong thing.’
I stroked her skin, stroked away the blood-water. ‘It’s okay. I’m here.’
Lizzie tucked her chin, couldn’t quite look me in the eye. ‘Do you still love me?’
I hardened: ribs ached, fingers tired, shrivelled. It always came down to love. I wanted to say, ‘No.’ Then, ‘Not always,’ then, ‘Sometimes I wish you were dead.’
See What I Have Done Page 24
