The Secrets of Lizzie Borden (8 page)

I woke up with a start, feeling so hot and wretched, shaky and weak, that I staggered into the bathroom with blood trickling down my legs and filled the tub with cold water and sat weeping and shivering in it until I turned blue as a penance to mortify my shameful flesh.

Nothing was ever said about the Moulin Rouge or the Can-Can: we were all too proper and polite to mention it. We never went back, and we left Paris soon afterward. On our last afternoon I defiantly went out alone to a dress shop and, flying boldly in the face of every word of fashion advice that had ever been given to me, bought the two gaudiest dresses I had ever owned—an iridescent raspberry silk that gave winks of purple and blue whenever I moved, and a caramel-and-apple-green-striped linen suit that came with a necktie and a straw boater with a matching band to wear with it. Without a comment or word of complaint I paid extra for rushed alterations as though it were the most natural thing in the world for me. I didn't care if Father dropped dead when he saw the bill.

 

Though Miss Mowbry and I could have done without the Riviera—we heard all sorts of unsavory tales about gamblers and suicides and crimes and affairs of passion—the others insisted. They were keen to see the grand casinos and parade about in their finest jewels and dresses with feathers in their hair pretending to be more sophisticated than they really were. So I let them lead me where they would. A certain ennui had by then stolen over me and I was too tired to protest; it simply wasn't worth it. My heart was no longer in this trip, but I didn't want to go home.

They had great fun—and a great laugh at my expense, I suppose—dressing me up like a life-sized doll. Albert—snootily pronounced
albear
without the
t
—a genuine French coiffeur, with a fussy, fastidious manner, washed and combed out my long red tresses, then coiled and braided and twisted them up into an intricate arrangement entwined with strands of blue-green glass beads and, as the pièce de résistance, a fan of tall peacock plumes at the back of my head, all to match my first—and only—French ball gown, a shimmering peacock satin that looked at once blue and green, with a long train and a daringly décolleté bodice covered in glass beads. A French corset, a
beautiful
Nile-green creation of whalebone sheathed inside satin embroidered with gold and azalea pink roses, that was really more like a medieval implement of torture in disguise cinched my waist so cruelly that it felt like the stem of a champagne glass and my bosom and hips overflowed above and below it. I was almost scared to sit down or breathe! For once, Anna laced
me
and I felt the impersonal, imperious touch of
her
hands flying over my skin like brisk white doves. I almost had to sit on my hands not to grab and kiss them when she used her very own pink puff to powder me. Coughing amidst clouds of rose-scented powder, I wanted to lay those lovely hands on my breasts and whisper “linger awhile!” And Carrie applied shimmering blue-green paint mixed with gold dust to my eyelids and, despite my protests that it wasn't ladylike, Nellie blackened my lashes and rouged my lips a vivid scarlet. When at last they led me to stand before the full-length mirror, I almost didn't know myself; I thought it was a stranger reflected in the glass.

We must have looked like a flock of tropical birds as we entered the casino, all painted and decked out in our bright, showy finery, not at all like the prim New England girls we really were—Carrie in her canary satin garnished with golden laurel leaves with a stuffed yellow bird in a gilded nest with blue crystal eggs perched at the pinnacle of her root-straining pompadour of butter-gold hair; Anna in amethyst and mauve satin garnished with silver-veined diamond-dusted dusky-blue lace with a stole of silver foxes lined in lilac satin about her bare shoulders, silver-gilt hair piled high in a pompadour Marie Antoinette would have envied agleam with blue and purple gems and pale pink and mauve plumes and silk roses; Nellie in sunset orange encrusted with gold and silver embroidery and gold lace swags and flounces; and me, trailing behind, looking like an exotic redheaded peacock. But they said it was all in fun, like going to a masquerade ball, and no one back home need ever know unless we chose to tell them about it.

I found it unexpectedly thrilling, watching the dice roll across the green felt, the cards being shuffled and dealt and played out, to win or lose, the stacks of multicolored chips that grew higher or lower or disappeared altogether, and the little silver ball going clackety-clack-clack as the red and black roulette wheel spun around, making or breaking fortunes.

None of us, except Anna, were brave enough to make a wager, but we all watched, entranced by the games of chance.

And the men! There were a few Americans and Englishmen, many older men, some accompanied by fawning, clinging women young enough to be their granddaughters, but most of them seemed an altogether different breed. Tall and dapper in immaculately tailored evening clothes, with black hair slicked back and shiny as patent leather reflecting the electric lights, they clicked their heels and bowed suavely over our hands. They were very bold in approaching us. Every one of them was a count, a duke, or an exiled prince, all impoverished, alas, each with a tale of woe they were eager to tell about family fortunes lost, castles burned to the ground by invading armies, and so forth.

Some of them hung on the arms of much older women, holding their fluffy little dogs while they played roulette, fetching them glasses of champagne, draping a fur wrap about their shoulders, leaning in close to nuzzle and kiss their ludicrously rouged withered apple cheeks or sagging necks and whisper in their bejeweled ears. Those who were not already attached to someone were very attentive to us all—even Miss Mowbry in her funereal black velvet and snowy needlepoint lace was approached by a “prince” young enough to have been her grandson!—asking us a myriad of questions about ourselves and our lives in America and who our fathers were and what they did for a living. One of them, a duke with hungry eyes, actually proposed to Nellie when he found out her father was the major shareholder in the Crystal Springs Bleach Company! My father sat on the board of directors too, but I didn't deem it worth mentioning; I just stood there gaping with all the rest as the duke dropped to his knees, grasping Nellie's hand like a lifeline, and began serenading her with “My Nelly's Blue Eyes.” I supposed it could still be accounted a great compliment even though her eyes were in fact hazel.

I understood then that more games were being played here than cards or roulette. These impoverished “noblemen” were shopping for rich American wives. It was a game of barter—
my title to impress your American relatives and friends in exchange for access to your fortune
. This was a game of titles and bank accounts, not love.

I let the other girls chatter away and play what games they would and wandered out alone onto the terrace.

How eerily white the marbled terrace glowed in the silvery-blue moonlight, lined with Grecian nudes of hard men and soft women, standing there like frozen, vacant-eyed ghosts. I stood between the two, one hand resting upon each heart, and felt myself
desperately, hopelessly
torn, longing for a man's strong arms and hardness tempered by tenderness and chivalry, and a woman's softness, sympathy, and secret places.

I never understood why I should be tormented by such thoughts. My eyes were always open wide to the danger of desiring either sex. I liked men well enough; I always thrilled to the heroes of the romance novels I read and the actors strutting handsomely across the stage to sweep their lady love up in a passionate embrace and smother her with kisses. I would always gasp and sigh along with the other ladies in the audience and pretend it was me in the actors' arms. And tenors with beautiful voices soaring up as though upon divine wings to Heaven always sent me into weak-kneed raptures. Yet I was always a little afraid of them.

Caution
always
tempered my desire. Every day of a woman's life from the cradle to the grave, by word, deed, or example, it is drummed into our heads that men are our masters, that we are born and bred to serve them. A woman belongs first to her father and then to her husband—he rules the roost and controls the purse strings, and she is entirely in his power; any freedom she is given is his gift to her,
not
her God-given right. Most women accepted this without complaint or question, so why did it frighten me so?

I suppose I was afraid that I would end up with someone like Father. People change with the passage of time, and if I married in love I might wake up one morning to discover that my loving, adoring, and indulgent husband had suddenly turned as tight-fisted and begrudging as my father, and I couldn't bear that. I
wanted
love. I wanted romance. I
craved
the ecstatic physical expression of passion, to be held and touched and caressed, to feel like I belonged to someone body and soul, but the coldhearted legalities attached to the formalization of that sweet submission made me quail back in uncertainty and terror.

What was wrong with me?
Was it a disease of the body or of the brain? Sometimes I thought of going veiled and giving a false name to consult a doctor in another city where no one knew me; the idea had even crossed my mind once or twice in Europe, but fear always got the better of me. What if the doctor considered my condition so dire that he called the police or summoned strong-armed men from a hospital and had me taken away in chains to wherever they put such troubled and afflicted people and I never saw the light of day again? I'd heard such horrible tales of ice-water douches, of women set in tubs of ice water to
freeze
the desire out of them, or else left lying wrapped like mummies in cold sheets until their skin turned blue. And then there were the stories about surgeries to cut lust from the brain or even where it reposed nestled amidst pink petals of flesh between a woman's legs. That
terrified
me! I'd rather take my secret to the grave than have it exposed and cut out of me.

I first became aware of this strange duality of desires in my nature when I was in school. I would watch my favorite teacher standing in front of the class and dream that I was invited to spend the night at her house, and sleep in her bed with her, and that before we retired she would bathe me, sometimes even sharing the tub with me, brush my hair until it crackled like a comforting fire, and help me into my nightgown; then we would cuddle in the warm bed and hold each other under the quilt and share chaste kisses all night long. As I grew older, the dream kisses lost their chastity to red-hot ardor, and evolved into fantasies in which she took a hand mirror and held it between my legs to patiently instruct me in the secrets of my womanhood, mirroring my own private, secret explorations. But I never revealed my crushes except in hot blushes and flustered stammers whenever I was called upon to read aloud or answer a question in class and in shy gifts of flowers, fruit, and candy I bought with my pocket money, sacrificing my own greed for sweets for the even sweeter thought of the pleasure they would give my secret love.

There was a girl my senior year of high school named Lulie Stillwell who lived up on The Hill in one of the grandest houses, like a princess surrounded by gilt, marble, brocades, satins, silks, velvets, crystal, polished oak, mahogany, and stained glass, with fresh flowers in every room every day. Rumor had it that the house was actually a genuine castle, bought and shipped piece by piece from somewhere in Europe—people used to get into sedately heated arguments about whether it came from England, France, Italy, Spain, or Germany—and the sprawling emerald lawn had been imported from England rolled up and carried aboard a ship and then unfurled like a carpet when it reached Fall River. People had come from all over Fall River to watch them roll that lawn out just like a big green carpet, so I knew that was true, I'd heard so many tell of it.

Lulie looked just like Snow White stepped out of the pages of a storybook—ebony hair, skin white as snow, lips red as blood, eyes like regal sapphires. She was
almost
my friend. She invited me out for ice cream and afternoon strolls a few times, and to sit beside her and listen to the band playing in the park. Sometimes she was so moved by the music that she clutched my hand. It made my heart swell with pride to know that she had chosen me over any of the other girls from The Hill. Addie Whip, Minnie Macomber, Evy, Ella, and Annabelle Sheen, Nellie Shore, Rachel Almay, Carrietta Wold, Charlotte Grosvenor, Lotta Cork, Fannie Huntington, Alicia May Covell, Cora and Cornelia Stratford, and Sadie, Alma, Fidelia, and Minerva Remington, and my own cousins Anna and Carrie Borden would all have given their eyeteeth to walk out with Lulie Stillwell, but she had chosen
me
—
Lizzie Borden!

Once we went to visit the little museum of curiosities housed in the back room of Gay's, the town's only photography studio, and saw a hen with pink feathers that laid colored eggs, a pair of dancing turkeys, a two-headed snake preserved in a glass jar, a trout that had grown a white fur coat to protect itself from the cold that was a specimen of a species found in a singularly chilly lake somewhere in Arkansas, a dead baby with one head but two faces, and, rarest of all, a young mermaid who must have perished in agonizing pain, her features, blackened by the preservatives the taxidermist had used, were so grotesquely contorted, as though frozen in the midst of a bloodcurdling scream.

During our walks we would always stop to listen to Old Black Joe the roving balladeer sing “Down in a Coal Mine” and “Mother in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and buy a paper cone filled with gooey pink or vanilla taffy from Taffy Harry, who roamed the sidewalks in his red-and-white-striped apron selling his wares from a tray hung round his neck while his little black and tan dog barked and ran circles around Harry's ankles. Lulie and I would share our taffy, giggling as we tried to see how far we could stretch it between us, always trying, but never quite succeeding, in stretching it across the street.