The Secrets of Lizzie Borden
Page 20
“God has given me the greatest gift of all!” I exclaimed to everyone and no one. I was so happy, so very happy! Glory, glory hallelujah! It was all over now and I was truly free at last!
When I appeared at the top of the courthouse steps surrounded by Emma, Uncle John, Mr. Jennings, Governor Robinson, and the Reverends Buck and Jubb, everyone cheered and a band began to play “Auld Lang Syne,” and with tears in my eyes I declared, “I’m the happiest woman alive!” I just stood there dumbly with tears in my eyes and kept repeating it until the words lost all meaning.
Uncle John, his deplorable behavior disguised by the crush of the crowd, patted my bottom, then leaned even closer and whispered in my ear, “Lizzie, my girl, the afternoon before I arrived to see Andrew, God rest him, I visited a fortune-teller. She took one look at my palm and went white as death and shoved my hand away. She said she would not tell me what she saw even if I offered her fifty dollars, so I offered her one hundred dollars, waved it right in her face like a flag, but not even that would loosen her tongue and persuade her to tell me what evil calamity she saw in my palm. Curious, isn’t it?” Then he pinched my bottom so hard it brought fresh tears—tears of pain!—to my eyes, and tipped his hat to me. I never saw him again. As he strode down the steps, away from me, hands in his pockets, whistling a jaunty tune, I wanted to kick him, in the seat of his cheap, threadbare old pants, but I couldn’t very well risk it with everyone watching and thinking so well of me. It would not have been ladylike or at all becoming to a Fall Riverite descended from one of the first families.
As I descended the courthouse steps, with Emma’s arm clasped in supportive, sisterly fashion, around my waist, a church choir in white robes with bloodred hymnbooks appeared and began to sing, of all things, of all the songs in the world they could have sung, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
“Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightning
Of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on
“Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
His truth is marching on
“I have seen Him in the watch fires
Of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar
In the evening dews and damps
I can read His righteous sentence
By the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on
“Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
His day is marching on
“I have read a fiery gospel
Writ in burnish’d rows of steel
‘As ye deal with my condemners
So with you My grace shall deal’
Let the hero, born of woman,
Crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on
“Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Since God is marching on
“He has sounded forth the trumpet
That shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men
Before His judgment seat
Oh, be swift, my soul
To answer Him,
Be jubilant, my feet,
Our God is marching on
“Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Our God is marching on
“In the beauty of the lilies”
At that moment a little girl, all dressed in angel white, with long red curls—was it mere coincidence that she reminded me of me?—stepped forward, curtsied, and presented me with a bouquet of beautiful white lilies.
“Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom
That transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy,
Let us die to make men free
While God is marching on
“Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
While God is marching on
“Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Our God is marching on”
Hearing that song at that moment felt like a punch in the stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was being sung in celebration of my victory or to remind me that I still had to face God’s judgment. The tenor who soloed was delectable—even if he was damning me to perdition with his glorious voice—Irish, I thought, with jade-green eyes and the waviest dark hair I had ever seen. One really does think the most peculiar things at the most peculiar times!
Since I didn’t know what was intended by the choir’s singing of that particular song, I forced myself to just keep nodding and smiling and hoped no one could smell how badly I was sweating. Tears and sweat burned my eyes, my armpits were soaking, and my mouth ached from smiling. I just wanted to go where no one could see me so I could abandon all pretense. And, above all else, I wanted a cold bath!
“I’m the happiest woman in the world!” I said again, and again, to no one in particular, the smile straining painfully at my mouth, as tears streamed down my face to join the sweat soaking my black collar.
Then the whole enormity of everything I had been through seemed to strike me like a gigantic fist and I sagged weakly against Emma and laid my head upon her shoulder. “Take me home,” I whispered.
I clung to Emma and hysterically laughed and wept, as though I couldn’t make up my mind what I truly felt and must bounce like a rubber ball between one and the other, all the way to the carriage that was waiting to take us to the train station where a train would whisk us back to Fall River and, for the first time in almost a year, back to the house at 92 Second Street. But everyone seemed to understand. I was deluged with flowers, hugs and handshakes, and pats on the back, all the way to the carriage, and babies were held up for me to kiss and caress. People ran after us waving and flinging yet more flowers into the carriage. They aggravated Emma’s hay fever and she sneezed all the way to the train station. By the time we arrived, her eyes were almost swollen shut. I should have been more sympathetic. But I couldn’t help myself. I rocked back and forth on the leather seat beside her, hysterically spouting tears and spurts of wild laughter and crying out like some mad fool, “Thank God! Hallelujah! Glory, glory Hallelujah!”
If life were a theater play or a novel this is where my story would end—happily, in a spirit of jubilation, with me vindicated and set free.
But life is not like that.
Setting foot in the house on 92 Second Street for the first time in over a year, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. Everything seemed so foreign, yet painfully familiar. There was a conspicuous bare spot in the sitting room where the sofa where Father had taken his fatal nap had been, the wallpaper bore a pale outline of its back, and pieces of the carpet had been cut out, presumably to remove bloodstains as evidence or because they defied all attempts at cleaning. It made me shudder to be back in that room. I kept seeing myself standing over Father with the hatchet raised, so I quickly made my excuses and retreated upstairs.
In my room, I stood and stared at the prints and pictures, souvenirs of my Grand Tour, on the walls as though they belonged to a stranger. I ran my fingers over the spines of the books on my shelf. I had been away so long, I felt like I didn’t belong here, but then I remembered I had never belonged here, but now . . . I was a bird with wings and free to use them to fly away from this wretched, miserable place where I had known nothing but unhappiness! A merry giggle escaped me. I clapped my hands over my mouth and darted my eyes left and right, fearful that s
omeone might have heard, and then I remembered—I was FREE! Free as the air! Free as a bird! Acquitted! NOT guilty! I was no longer a prisoner! I could laugh if I wanted to! At anything and everything! And I could snap my fingers in the face of anyone who didn’t like it! I could even dance if I pleased! I threw back my head and began to laugh and spin around in dizzy, delighted circles. “I’m not only the happiest woman in the world; I’m also the luckiest!” I cried as I collapsed on the bed and gave my pillow a fierce hug.
When I changed my dress that evening to attend the party the Holmes family on Pine Street were hosting to celebrate my victory I vowed I would never wear black again. I was done with mourning and regrets! I made my grand entrance in a royal-purple satin dress, with its full skirt draped back to reveal an underskirt of crimson satin, and gracefully arcing sleek purple and red feathers in my hair and framing my bare shoulders.
My appearance in such brazen attire stunned everyone speechless; even the orchestra fell silent for a long, awkward instant before hastily resuming their rudely interrupted melody. I knew Emma, trailing behind me looking like a tired old black crow, didn’t approve; she couldn’t understand how I could be so brazen as to appear in public in such a dress when I was supposed to be in mourning, but I didn’t care what anyone thought, and that included Emma. I was sick and tired of being told what to do! Of course, she made excuses for me, about the joy of freedom going like wine to my head, trying to justify my “peculiar conduct” and “brazen choice of apparel.” She was quite right, freedom had intoxicated me, I was giddy and drunk upon it and hoped to be so for the rest of my life, but I nonetheless resented her need to try to justify me. Justice had set me free, and what better way to celebrate it than by doing exactly as I pleased?
Dr. Bowen smilingly swept me away to lead the first waltz.
“The world is yours now, Lizzie,” he whispered in my ear at the end of the dance.
“Indeed it is,” I answered coyly as he bowed over my trembling hand. He still had the power to make my knees weak!
“And I wonder just what you will do with it.” He smiled back at me.
But I just shrugged and stood there smiling like a fool. Then Phoebe Bowen was there, all elegant but boring simplicity, in her ivory satin gown—not that it wasn’t a monumental improvement over the bridesmaids’ dresses at her wedding—with a forced and frigidly polite smile straining at her lips as though being nice to me was the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. The diamonds tipping the pins in the dark pompadour of her hair were as hard and cold as her eyes. Her gloved hand reached out to rest possessively upon her husband’s arm, fingertips digging in deep as she led him determinedly away for the dance he had promised her. She never did like me, and a part of me, in the secret heart of me, always wished I were her. She was so beautiful and poised, slender and superior—no wonder Dr. Bowen loved her so much!
As the orchestra began another waltz, I strolled out into the garden. Humming and swaying my crimson and purple feather fan in time to the music, I followed the white gravel path out into the warm summer night, to stand and stare up at the stars, blissfully unencumbered by high stone walls, iron bars, and the alert and vigilant eyes of authority. Free! No more prison matrons and guards! I sighed and breathed deeply, inhaling the heady, fragrant scent of the summer roses. Free! I am free as the air, free as the stars! The full moon above was like a milky crystal ball in which I could see my future, or . . . better yet . . . a blank page on which I could write my future! I trailed my fingers through the fountain and caressed the statue of Cupid. “Free to find love!” I whispered with delicious anticipation into his delicate little marble ear.
The very next morning I put on a smart navy-blue suit with bright cherry red lapels and piping and a gay pillbox hat trimmed with a clacking cluster of red-lacquered cherries and, with a smile on my face as cheerful as my attire, and Emma trailing disapprovingly behind me in yards of weighty black silk and crepe mourning veils, went out in search of my dream house on The Hill.
I was so happy and intent upon my purpose that it didn’t quite sink in that every time I nodded pleasantly and said “good morning” to passersby they turned away and completely ignored me. I simply smiled and shrugged aside their rudeness. I thought them, like me, preoccupied with their own business. I didn’t know it then, but for the second time in my life my world had changed completely overnight. Yesterday I had been Fall River’s vindicated darling; today I was their grudgingly tolerated pariah, their resident leper. I just didn’t realize it yet; happiness blinded me. I thought all my dreams were finally coming true. Freedom, riches, unbridled luxury, limitless decadence, and, God willing, at long last—love!
Chapter 8
The moment I saw the big white house on French Street nestled amongst the maple trees I knew it had been waiting for me all my life; that was why it was vacant at such an opportune time. This was my house! My home! The one I had always dreamed of! This was where I belonged! Welcome home, Lizzie! the maple trees whispered like a bevy of ardent beaus as a caressing breeze gently stirred their leaves. Maplecroft—the name sprang unbidden to my lips the moment I set my foot upon the first gray granite step. I knew then that as soon as it was mine I would send a stonemason to chisel that name into the top riser, facing boldly out onto French Street in big capital letters: MAPLECROFT! When the moment came, I didn’t even haggle over the cost; I paid it without comment: $11,000; I would have paid ten times that if they had asked me to.
We put the house at 92 Second Street up for sale, determined never to set foot in it again, and had a hired girl come in to box up everything that had belonged to Abby and send it on to “that slattern Sarah,” as a remembrance of her sister.
The ink was barely dry upon the deed before I set to work decorating the palace of my dreams. There was nothing cramped or dark about my Maplecroft; it was all spaciousness and light, fourteen big rooms, with high ceilings and an abundance of windows to welcome in the light. I ordered stained glass for some of them and the light poured in, blissfully clothing me in all the jewel-vibrant colors I had longed for all my life.
I swore that this would never be a house of dark, ugly secrets, shameful, sinister shadows, and lies; beneath this roof I would never be anything but my true, honest self. This above all: to thine own self be true, I ordered carved above the fireplace in the room I chose for my winter bedroom—yes, it was the height of ostentatiousness, I know, but I had two bedrooms: one for summer, and one for winter, on opposite sides of the house.
It was luxury every inch, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in Maplecroft, even in the servants’ quarters, kitchen, pantry, and laundry the floors were golden oak with dark-walnut wainscoting for contrast.
Throughout the house there were parquet floors, crown moldings, and high white linen ceilings, either painted, embossed, or creamy clean; some I even had adorned with gold maple leaves. The woodwork, golden oak, maple, mahogany, rosewood, and rich deep-red cherry wood, was beautiful, smooth as satin or ornately carved, and the walls were all papered in silk. What fun I had choosing the patterns! I chose ice-blue silk with an elegant gold lattice pattern framing bountiful clusters of purple and green grapes and bouquets of white roses for my winter bedroom, and rich chocolate silk with bold gold stripes alternating with rows of bright pink flowers for my summer bedroom.
There was a grand piano in the parlor although I didn’t play, heavy rose silk drapes lined in ice-blue silk, rose and gold brocade upholstered sofas and chairs, matching cushions on the window seats, and, eventually, a large, gilt-framed portrait of me, gowned in ice-blue satin, sapphires, and pearls, with a white lace shawl draped loosely about my shoulders and a deep-pink rose in one hand as I leaned pensively against the pedestal of a Grecian statue of lovers embracing.
The artist had flattered me and minimized my shoulders, waist, hips, and heavy jaw, making me more beautiful than I ever had been or ever would be in real life. But I was grateful that he, with his artist’s eye, could also see the
Lizzie of my dreams, or Lizbeth as I had secretly called myself ever since my architect had so christened me. And, for one brief moment, it made me feel a little less alone. Long after I knew it was a dream that could never come true, I used to stand before that portrait and imagine myself making a grand entrance down the sweeping, elegant cherry wood staircase embellished with carved and gilded maple leaves to greet a parlor full of guests, all eager and happy to see me, the men vying to kiss my hand and the women to embrace me.
But Maplecroft, at least, was no longer a dream—it was solid and real, the embodiment of all my dreams. There were Italianate arches, pillars, and Turkish and Aubusson carpets, and a billiard room even though I didn’t play, but I fancied it the epitome of elegance to have such a room and imagined it filled with handsome gentlemen enjoying fine cigars and sipping brandy from fine etched-crystal glasses as they stood around the green felt–topped table.
My library, one of the largest rooms in the house, and yet also the coziest, had every wall lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves that it gave me immense delight to fill with leather-bound volumes. I had never owned so many books in my life—Father thought it a waste of money since one generally read each volume only one time—and spent many happy hours pasting my specially designed monogrammed bookplate inside the cover of each one.
There were four bathrooms with toilets like thrones, Queen Victoria herself I’m sure never sat upon a finer, and the sides of the gleaming pearl-white porcelain claw-footed bathtubs were painted with exquisite floral motifs to match the rugs, curtains, and wallpaper. And there were colorful cakes of perfumed soap in floral-painted and gilt-edged white porcelain dishes in each one. The soaps in my summer bathroom were pink and molded in the shape of roses in memory of that lovely, long-ago day I had shared with Lulie. The soaps in my winter bathroom were white or ice blue.