The Secrets of Lizzie Borden (39 page)

Nothing turned out the way I thought it would.

Chapter
14

W
hen I returned to Maplecroft I emptied both my summer and winter closets and spread all my dresses and hats out upon the bed in each room. There were so many they spilled onto the floor and covered every table, sofa, and chair. I stood and stared for a very long time at this once-enticing array of candy pinks, sky blues, sunny yellows, the whole gamut of greens, bloody crimsons, vivid oranges, and regal purples. Whole rainbows of stripes, polka dots, plaids, and paisley. I listlessly fingered a gown of cocoa lace trimmed with silk braid and champagne-colored seed pearls, and another of cool lime chiffon floating over a white silk skirt and sleeves garnished with pearl and crystal bead dangles. They all left me cold now. Even the sky-blue hat covered with stuffed blue birds posed as though poised to take flight from the high turned-back brim.

“My life is over; nothing exciting will ever happen to me again,” I said, both sorry and glad.

I ordered the maids to pack them all up and take them away,
give
them away, I didn't want to see them anymore. It was time to go into mourning, for myself and the life and love that had passed me by. But I couldn't abide black and I had sworn after my acquittal to never wear it again. That was
one
vow at least I definitely could keep. I remembered reading in a book that white was the color the royal family of France wore when they were in mourning. Henceforth, like Mr. Dickens's tragically eccentric Miss Havisham, I would dress only in white, cascading ruffles, lace, and pearls, like the bride I never would be, entombing myself in the splendid solitude of Maplecroft, mourning the great expectations I had for my life that never came to fruition.

 

The years passed. They
always
do, whether they drag or fly by. Time waits for no one; it keeps on flowing like a river out to the sea.

I spent my days longing for night so I could lose myself in the world of dreams, the only place I could be happy, where I could rewrite history, make everything right, and blissfully be with Orrin, Nance, or even Lulie. Sometimes Bridget or my handsome young blond architect even came back to me. Or someone else born entirely of fantasy came to pass a night or fortnight with me.

Yet when I wakened, restless, with an odd melancholy feeling sitting like a rock upon my chest, I found myself impatiently longing for day, to chase the lingering trace of the dreams away because the distance between them and my sad reality only made me feel worse. They were dreams, and that was all they ever could be, never anything, or anyone, tangible I could actually hold in my arms.

I filled my life with pets. A more commonplace menagerie than Nance's—songbirds in gilded cages, dogs and cats, and the occasional bowl of goldfish, though they never seemed to last long. And I spent hours sitting on my discreetly screened porch watching the birds and squirrels feast upon the bread and seeds I left for them each day.

And I had a phonograph. I had a fine collection of classical works like Mozart and Beethoven, popular songs and soul-stirring hymns, the clever whimsy of Gilbert and Sullivan, and sparkling operettas like
Naughty Marietta
and
The Merry Widow,
and several operatic recordings. I could sit and listen to the great Caruso's magnificent voice for endless hours, losing myself in the music, the passion and feeling, remembering the time I had seen him as Rodolfo in
La Bohème
at the Metropolitan Opera House and heard his majestic voice soaring as though up to Heaven when he sang “Che Gelida Manina [Thy tiny hand is froze].” I'd never heard anything so powerful and beautiful; his voice truly seemed to touch the divine.

But there was another song that struck a deeper chord in me. Whenever he sang “Vesti la Giubba [On with the motley]” tears poured down my face like rain.

I felt a special kinship with Canio, the tragic clown of
Pagliacci,
who after discovering his wife's adultery must nonetheless go out and give a performance, only, overwhelmed by heartache and madness, to kill the treacherous pair onstage, in full view of the audience. He rips the mask off with an anguished cry, “I am a clown no longer!,” and plunges the knife in, and then he does it again. And then the broken man sobs out, “
La commedia è finita!
[The comedy is finished!]”

It took me back to a time when, my mind befuddled and dulled by morphine and panic, I didn't know what I was saying. And the life I had led afterward, bravely putting on my paint and powder and fine dresses, my own particular fool's motley, hennaing my hair a clown-bright red, plastering a smile on my face, and going out into the world, trying to live my life, as though the past were dead and didn't matter. It always made me wonder when the comic tragedy of my own life would be finished.

And there were books, always books. Romances, adventure stories, and collections of poetry. I began to keep a scrapbook of sorts, a blank book, like a diary, into which, on dragging, dreary afternoons, or long sleepless nights, I wrote or pasted snippets of prose or verse that struck a chord within me, words of wisdom I wished I could live by, a path of letters I hoped might someday lead me to peace of mind and contentment. Things like:

And these lines by Alexander Pope:

And a touching snippet of a Christmas poem by Edith Matilda Thomas:

Once, just once, I dared attempt to reach out to Nance. I sent her a poem I copied out of a book,
The Wings of Icarus
by Susan Marr Spaulding:

I enclosed it in a pebbled-leather folder with a gilded clasp shaped like a heart that I found at a stationer's shop on one of my increasingly rare trips to Boston. The deep-red color was called “Heart's Blood.” It seemed like a good omen. At the height of our passion, I had given Nance a heavy golden ring set with a large heart-shaped pigeon's blood ruby. She said she would wear it forever. So I sent the poem and waited, but she never replied. By then she was the darling of Broadway under the personal management of impresario David Belasco. Faithless as ever, with not even a shred of loyalty clinging to her heel, the moment Belasco beckoned Nance had abandoned her mentor, McKee Rankin, the man who had made her a star. It was all about who could do the most for her career. Sentiment, Nance firmly believed, had no place in the life, or the heart, of a star. Rankin promptly sued her of course, but there was a whole muddy tangle about contracts and borrowing money on her jewelry and in advance against her salary, and a lot of ugly bickering back and forth in the newspapers, but it was all sorted out eventually and Nance stayed with Belasco. But she would leave him eventually, the moment a brighter prospect appeared upon the horizon.

I kept my promise to myself and never let love into my life again. I kept everyone at a distance, even those who looked my way and smiled and made overtures. I couldn't trust their intentions or believe in anyone's sincerity anymore. I didn't want to be an anecdote, a footnote, in someone's life, or the dollar sign in men's eyes. And it was already too late for me to be a mother, and the passage of the years and the reflection in my mirror told me the only alluring thing left about me was my fortune. No, I was done with love, and lust, forever. Fantasies were better; I made a diligent effort to convince myself I was content with those and to live vicariously and idealistically through novels and songs.

 

As the decades rolled past, my body began to wear out, just as Fall River itself went into a decline. The mills began to fail in the 1920s; the once grand and prosperous “Spindle City” simply could not compete with the cheaper cotton-producing facilities down south. Every day it seemed like more and more mills were closing. Jobs were lost, and the wages of those still fortunate enough to have employment plummeted, until the antiquated machinery finally ground to a halt and the massive brick buildings stood empty, and the immigrants who once worked in their humming, thrumming interiors began a mass exodus to the South to find work in the mills down there.

It seemed like my fate and Fall River's were indelibly entwined; we had, in a sense, grown up together, and now we were both falling apart at the same time. I no longer bothered to fight the ravages of time or worried about my weight. I grew quite stout. In my white dresses I looked just like a big marshmallow that had sprouted a snowy head waddling about with stubby, stout little arms and legs. But I didn't care anymore. I ate what I liked. And if one more piece of cake made my lonesome plight more bearable, so be it.

 

In 1926, I had to go into the hospital for a gallbladder operation. It simply could not be postponed any longer. I chose the prestigious Truesdale Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and had myself admitted as Mary Smith. But of course everyone
knew
who I was. As I felt myself groggily emerging from the fog of the anesthetic I heard one nurse whispering to another, “Do you know whose abdomen you just had your hand inside?
LIZZIE BORDEN'S!
” She shuddered and spoke my name in a delighted whisper-squeal.

I proved a difficult patient. As soon as my wits had fully returned I demanded that my gallbladder be brought to me in a glass jar. I was afraid that if I didn't it would soon be touring the country, the star exhibit of many a county fair, sitting on a table in a tent, under a spotlight, while a man in a straw boater and striped jacket stood outside shouting,
See Lizzie Borden's gallbladder—only five cents a gander!

I flatly refused to eat the dreadful bland hospital food. They actually expected me to breakfast on a single raw egg floating in a dish of milk, and for luncheon there was some indescribable mush I shuddered just to look at. I insisted that my chauffeur bring me meals three times a day from the finest restaurants in town, with orange sherbet for dessert. I also disdained the bedpan. I didn't care one whit if using it would make things easier on the nurses; when Nature called, my dignity demanded to be supported and escorted to the bathroom. Soon all the doctors and nurses had had enough of me and I was allowed to go home to Maplecroft to convalesce, though Dr. Truesdale insisted I must have round-the-clock care from experienced nurses. By that point, I was so eager to go home, or anywhere, to get away from there that I would have agreed to anything.

Blissfully back in my private sanctum, I continued to relish the role of difficult patient. I doubt even my thorny rose Nance could have played it half so well as me. The nurses came and the nurses went. I couldn't keep the same one a fortnight. An
enfant terrible
verging on seventy, “the devil with white hair and granny glasses,” they called me.

But at least they came, my money ensured that, and dying ensconced like a queen in my own bed at Maplecroft is far better than dying in a stark, sterile, white hospital. Here I can breathe my last safely, comfortingly, cocooned by my dearly bought velvets, satins and silks, heirloom laces and quality leathers, polished oak, parquet, maple, cherry wood, and marble, fine china and crystal, stained glass, silver, and gilt, all purchased upon the credit of my eternal soul, in this magnificent mausoleum of a mansion, my ostentatious Maplecroft, this palace devoid of fawning courtiers, the house on The Hill I spent my whole life dreaming about.