by Brandy Purdy
When the constant curiosity, the shunning and hostile silence, the knowing that I could not even visit a shop with my veil down without being gaped and gawked at and gossiped about and reading all about it in the newspapers the next day with all manner of embellishments, became so unbearable I thought I couldn’t stand it a moment longer, I would order my trunks packed and leave for a while. I loved to lose myself in the bustle of a big city and become just another face in the crowd, to be able to sit in a public square or park and feed the pigeons in peace with my veil up and no one pointing or staring at me.
I would go to Boston or New York, Chicago, Washington, or even San Francisco, or New Orleans, book myself a suite in the city’s most prestigious hotel, and spend my days shopping and visiting museums and strolling idly in public gardens, and every evening at the theater, opera, or dining in fine restaurants and my nights basking in silk-sheeted luxury. And not always alone. That lovely illusion was one more thing money could buy.
In Washington one spring, in a pink silken suite at the Cochran Hotel, while the cherry blossoms fell outside, a beautiful young woman who bore a striking resemblance to Lulie Stillwell at seventeen made all my secret, forbidden fantasies come true, for a fee of course. I gave her a gold and diamond pendant shaped like a heart and a sable wrap for her snow-white shoulders as a token of my gratitude in addition to her hourly wage and a week’s worth of private steak and lobster suppers. Every year after that I longed to be in Washington, back in the pink suite at the Cochran Hotel, when the cherry blossoms were falling, and sometimes I was; after all, price was no object. The only thing missing was my one true love to share it with. Even in ecstasy, I could never forget that this companionship came at a price that I paid; it was never a gift given freely to me out of love, respect, kindness, or even pity.
Sometimes I thought I had made a friend. But their interest was always motivated by macabre curiosity, every last one of them wanted to be the one who would pry the truth out of Lizzie Borden, and when I refused to oblige them they dropped me. After all, they didn’t really need me anymore. They had what they wanted; they could continue to dine out on the story of how they had once known the notorious Lizzie Borden for the rest of their lives. I had been reduced to a dinner table anecdote and newspaper item instead of a human being with a beating heart and feelings that could be hurt. If I was in the news again, because I had been seen about somewhere or the anniversary of the murders was near, their reminiscences were enough to get their names in the paper, columns of print they could clip and paste into their scrapbooks.
Sometimes they wanted money. Sometimes I obliged, if I liked them and thought their need was genuine, but most of the time I refused; I really wasn’t the spendthrift fool Father always took me for.
My life was not entirely a selfish one, I gave much to charity, though always in secret; I didn’t want people to think I was trying to buy their good opinion. I loved animals; I firmly believed that they alone amongst God’s creatures were the only ones capable of unconditional love, in that way these dumb animals were so much smarter than humans, so I gave thousands of dollars away every year to various societies for the protection and prevention of cruelty to dogs, cats, and horses.
Sometimes those I encountered baited their hooks with the promise of love. Sometimes I succumbed even though I saw through their tricks. I was lonely, longing for a human touch, a warm body next to mine in bed, the feel of naked limbs entwined and lips covering mine. There was always the hope that they might, during the time they spent with me in luxurious hotel suites where discretion was included in the price truly come to care for me as something more than just a carnal conquest or a story to tell, a name to drop, to thrill and impress their friends. Sometimes I refused and turned a cold shoulder to their hot advances; just the thought of the disappointment to come left me feeling sad and so unbearably weary. Knowing it was all pretense didn’t ease the hurt any. I tried so hard to harden my heart, to turn it to stone, and just be a body enjoying another body, like a wild animal in heat, a purely carnal creature, but I could never quiet the longing screaming out, LOVE ME! from the depths of my soul. I wanted to be loved, by a man or a woman. By that point it didn’t really matter which; it was love, real love, the kind that is true and lasts forever like in songs and storybooks that I was after.
Most of the time I kept to myself; I went about alone with my veil down, bothering no one and hoping no one would bother me. I had my pets, my books, the freedom and funds to travel and shop, to buy whatever I pleased, Maplecroft, my beautiful house waiting for me to come home to, my sparkling jewels, my ravishing gowns and the exquisite lace-and-ribbon-trimmed lingerie I wore beneath, banquets for the stomach and soul: evenings of gourmet feasts, grand opera, and the theater; I tried so hard to convince myself that it was enough, that luxury could fill, and fulfill, my lonely heart. I spent a lifetime lying to myself, trying to convince myself to believe the lies I told myself.
I loved to lose myself in the make-believe world of the theater, the magic the actors and actresses spun with words, gestures, and costumes. I liked the tragedies best, tales of love doomed and thwarted—Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth of England, the Virgin Queen who never married or bore a child. I thrilled to Trilby and Svengali, and, my favorite, Marguerite Gautier, La Dame aux Camélias, the consumptive courtesan, and her noble, self-sacrificing love for young Armand Duval, whose love she selflessly and nobly renounced for his greater good, so that the sins of her past would not shame him and tarnish his bright future. I watched them all countless times.
I spent a few weeks every summer at one of the fashionable resort hotels. Palatial white hotels like wedding cakes, with tiers and balconies, rising several stories, and emerald lawns spreading out as far as the eye could see, whitewashed summer palaces where I could wear ruffled white dresses and big shady hats and sit out on the veranda every day, sipping lemonade or iced tea, idly plying a palmetto fan, and dreaming while I watched the other guests play croquette and lawn tennis or return singing from clambakes and boating parties that I never dared join in. I wanted to belong, but I couldn’t—not as anything more than a novelty of gruesome notoriety. I was too proud and stubborn to register under a false name. I knew I would look a fool when the truth came out, as it always did; someone always recognized me. I wanted to be loved for myself, and I knew with complete and utter certainty that any love that began with a lie, no matter how well-meaning, was doomed. I could never emerge from underneath the dark cloud that always hovered over me. Whenever I walked into a room it stilled all the people, long enough for a tingling shiver to run the length of their spines and for the hair on the back of their necks to stand on end, and then the whispering started. There was no escaping it.
Inevitably, I returned to Maplecroft, my magnificent empty-halled mausoleum-palace devoid of fawning and adoring courtiers, where my eyes, and those of servants who cleaned and dusted, were the only ones that gazed upon its manifold comforts and luxuries. I would sit alone dressed like a queen feasting on silver trays of petit fours, chocolate éclairs, and slices of Madame Tetrault’s marvelous jelly roll making promises I knew I would never keep to start dieting the very next day, or the day afterward at most, but my dressmaker’s measurements proved that I was never capable of keeping that promise.
Little did I know when I bought it that Maplecroft would become a prison, a sanitarium, and a living tomb for me as well as the palace of all my desires and dreams. That here, behind glazed and barred windows, triple-locked doors, iron fences, and locked gates, I would hide from the world whenever the curious pressed too close, the newspapers pried too deep, and those I dared let get close to me hurt, disillusioned, and disappointed me as they were always destined to do.
The year after my trial Mr. Edwin H. Porter, the charming reporter The Fall River Globe had sent to interview me in my jail cell, published a book called The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders. I felt dismayed and so
betrayed. I ordered my business agent, Mr. Charles Cook, who dealt with all those tedious, mundane day-to-day matters attached to all the real estate, rental properties, and investments Emma and I had inherited from Father, to buy up every copy he could find. I didn’t care what it cost, I told him. “Pretend you are the Grand Inquisitor, sir, and hunt them down like witches! I want them burned!”
Late one night, after the servants and Emma were all asleep, so no one could see me cry, I burned every last one of them in the library fireplace. I never even cracked the spine to read one word. I didn’t care what Mr. Porter had written, whether he had been scrupulously honest and fair to me or wildly embellished the whole sorry, sordid saga. I only cared that he had written it. It smarted like a slap. My heart felt like he had taken a whip to it even though it had no cause; he was a hardened newspaperman just doing his job. I was just another story, albeit the biggest of his career. If he hadn’t written a book someone else would, it was to be expected, but that didn’t mean I had to accept or like it. Whoever the author was, I would have done the exact same thing—made a bonfire of the books.
All I wanted to do was forget. And I wanted everyone else to forget too and just leave me in peace to live my life the way I saw fit. I didn’t go prying into their business and private lives! Why couldn’t they accord me the same respect? But I had traded the prison of my father’s house for actual prison bars, only to find when I was vindicated and freed from those that I had become a prisoner of my own notoriety and a higher judge had decreed that it should be a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Ostensibly, I was free to come and go and do as I pleased, but I would never be truly free.
Then, like a mournful black ghost who could read my mind, Emma appeared in the doorway, her dark hair streaked with broad bands of gray and a black shawl draped over her prim and proper white nightgown.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Lizzie,” she said as she stood behind me, resting a comfortless claw-like hand on my shoulder, and together, in silence, we watched Mr. Porter’s books burn.
Chapter 9
Time is a curious thing. Sometimes it seems to fly by on the swiftest wings; others it seems to have lead in its heels and just drag by oh, so slowly, like weak and weary prisoners on a chain-gang. One sultry morning in 1896 I had just sat down at the elegant little rosewood writing desk in my summer bedroom to write a letter to Mr. Cook when I looked at the calendar to inscribe the date and noticed that it was the fourth of August. Four years—four whole years!—since the deeds that had made me infamous. Four years and I had not felt anything at all. My soul, my mind, had not seen fit to mark that macabre anniversary in any way; only a chance glance at the calendar had reminded me. Otherwise it would have just slipped by like any other ordinary day. Of course, I had not forgotten, I never could forget, but Time has a way of dulling the razor-sharp edge of emotions and memories.
I decided on a whim that I would like to see the farm at Swansea again. The happiest days of my childhood had been spent there, frolicking and fishing, at that farm, and suddenly my heart was filled with nostalgic yearning for those simple, peaceful, rustic pleasures.
I could not stay at the farmhouse of course. There were tenants in residence, a big family of pleasant-faced Swedes who often sent me gifts of eggs, butter, and cheese, a grateful gesture they would no doubt have made to any landlord, but I would never force my company on them. Instead, I made arrangements to stay with our former neighbors and cousins, the Gardners. I knew they would not shrink from the thought of having me in their home and would welcome me with open arms. Caroline Mason Gardner was one of the kindest women in the world; she had sent me many kind and supportive letters and cards while I was in prison. “There but for the Grace of God,” she was fond of saying; she always lived by those words and had raised her children to always heed that guiding phrase. “It is the candle that will always show you the way,” she told them.
As soon as the train pulled into the station her redheaded son Orrin was there waiting to meet me, smiling and waving in a crisp white linen suit with a red carnation in his lapel and a straw boater with a band to match his blue-and-white-striped necktie. Indeed he was right there at the steps before the train had barely stopped, close enough to touch the skirt of my biscuit-colored linen suit, so close I literally tripped over him and fell into his arms.
When I looked into his blue eyes I felt such a jolt, like a bolt of blue lightning coursing through my soul. It was electricity! It was ecstasy! In this man of thirty with the round freckled face and unruly fire-colored cowlick of a perpetual child I recognized the little boy who used to follow me around like a kitten’s tail all those sweet long-ago summers. We had played hide-and-seek and made mud pies together and dug for worms to bait our fishing hooks and sat side by side, shyly bumping our bare feet together, waiting for the fish to bite.
He was the first, and only, baby I had ever held. When I was a little girl of seven Caroline had trustingly placed him in my arms. I had spent that whole summer wheeling his pram around, crooning to him, rocking him in his cradle, feeding him from a bottle, changing his diapers, and pretending he was mine. And when he was old enough to walk, at first clinging to the strings of my pinafore and later on his own two feet, he became “my dear pest” and followed me everywhere I went. No matter how old we were, heedless of the seven years between us, he was always there and ready to oblige me. We used to cut the brides and grooms from the fashion plates in Godey’s Lady’s Book and play Wedding Day or couples in evening clothes going to a ball or opening night at the opera. Later, when we were a little older, we gave up paper dolls and played bride and groom ourselves, with an old tattered lace curtain to serve as a veil thrown over my hair and a crown of daisies to hold it in place. We were “married” in the pasture with the milk cows as witnesses mooing their good wishes. And on other days, we played Lancelot and Guinevere, or Robin Hood and Maid Marian, or he was a knight in shining armor out to rescue me, his lady fair. The other little boys laughed and teased him for it, but he could never say no to me or stray far from my side, and I loved “my dear pest”; he always held a special place in my heart.
I hadn’t seen Orrin in years. There was no tiff or rift, no estrangement due to the trial or anything else. We lost touch long before that, except for the obligatory yearly Christmas cards we exchanged; we just grew up and apart. I suppose it was simply the nature of things: Boys and girls lead very different lives—girls, for the most part, stay home, and boys go out into the world to make their mark upon it; sometimes they come back, and sometimes they outgrow their hometowns and head off for larger, and greener, pastures. Orrin went away to school, to college in Rhode Island, to study to become a teacher.
Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder the way it does in romance novels; sometimes it makes us forget and chills even the hottest emotions. With the passing of years the memory of the devotion that used to glow like an eternal blue flame in Orrin’s eyes every time he looked at me melted away; it just got lost and crowded out by other things. We were just little children only playing at love and marriage; it would have been the pinnacle of absurdity for me to take our youthful games and childish affection as a sign of things to come.
But that flame was still there. When I looked into Orrin’s eyes I saw it flare and spring ardently back to life again after being suppressed for so many years, like a dead heart suddenly starting to beat. And something in me answered in turn. I felt my soul sing, its voice soaring like a soprano’s straight up to Heaven.
In the years since my acquittal, I had tried to guard my heart like a miser, to make it grow hard and small. Not out of meanness, but for my own good, so it would not hurt so much when people let me down. But now, when I looked into Orrin’s eyes, I felt it change; I felt it grow and expand. Like a tight, new-formed red rosebud it suddenly unfurled, to burst into full, magnificent bloom. I felt alive again! He resurrected me!
It was almost like what I had felt all those years a
go in England. I felt my knees grow weak and tremble beneath my skirts. Orrin’s hand was instantly at my waist, steadying me. It was almost like being hurtled back through time to that magical day at Glastonbury when my wonderful handsome blond architect had kissed me under the thorn tree.
And then, standing in the station, in broad daylight amongst the bustling crowd of travelers and porters, as we stared deep into each other’s eyes, lost in our own little world, blind and deaf to all around us, I let my carpet bag fall like a stone as Orrin Gardner took me in his arms and kissed me. I entwined my arms around his neck and returned his kiss wholeheartedly. I’M ALIVE! I’M ALIVE! my heart sang.
I had only meant to stay a week, but I kept postponing my departure; I kept making excuses, saying I would stay for just one more day, and then another, and another, until another week had whirled giddily past like a drunken dervish leaving me breathless and dizzy in its wake. And all the time my happy heart kept on singing.
Caroline just nodded and smiled knowingly. “Stay as long as you like, my dear.”
Orrin and I used to sit out on the porch at night and gaze up at the stars. Out in the country without city lights and tall buildings to obscure the view it was like an infinite midnight-colored carpet onto which God had spilled a million flawless diamonds.
One such night, Orrin saw me shiver and went back inside to fetch my shawl. He draped it about me, tenderly arranging its crimson and gold paisley folds, and then he dipped his head and kissed me.
“We met again because we were meant to be together,” he said, and then he knelt, took my hand in his, and asked me to be his wife.
I didn’t even have to think! In that instant all my fears fell from me and when I looked into his eyes I didn’t see myself reflected back as a dollar sign; I only saw his love shining bright and true for me—ME! When we were children Orrin could never say no to me; now I had forgotten that there was even such a word as no. I said yes, with all my heart and soul. I said YES!
