Chapter 2
“My sweet taste of freedom,” that is how I always think of the eighteen glorious weeks I spent in Europe that magical summer of 1890. It was my one, and I feared only, chance to truly live, to fly, and soar free, before I was shut back inside my cage where the bars were the cheapest base metal and not even gilded. I stayed in fully electrified hotels equipped with every comfort, modern convenience, and luxury. There were telephones on the bedside tables, room service, impeccably mannered servants who seemed to live only to please me, and private baths with hot and cold running water where I could lie back, stretch out my limbs, and soak for hours in rose-scented water and dream I was a mermaid sunning myself on a rock waiting for my prince to come along and carry me away to his castle in the clouds. I dined every night on gourmet meals in elegant restaurants, saw the scandalous Can-Can danced at the Moulin Rouge, and had my hair done by a real French coiffeur. I swirled and glided across high-polished ballroom floors in the arms of the most wonderful man in the world and wore my first ball gown, a dress straight out of my dreams, with yards of rustling peach taffeta billowing like a bell about my limbs, and feasted my eyes on great works of art and grand cathedrals so beautiful they made me weep.
And to think I owed it all to the Central Congregational Church. That staid and proper institution that was the bedrock of every respectable maiden lady’s life in Fall River had sent me, like Alice, down the rabbit hole to my own Wonderland—Europe!
Without the church I would have had nothing to do except sit at home reading romance novels and eating Abby’s cookies, pies, and cakes and just getting fatter and fatter. Though I longed to be one of the happy, carefree girls from up on The Hill being called for by handsome boys in tennis whites, gaily skipping away, racket in hand, in a white pique skirt and starched white shirtwaist with a big sailor collar and wide-brimmed straw hat with long grosgrain streamers to ride to The Hillside Country Club in a smart pony cart for games and refreshments, and maybe a sing-along around the piano and some dancing, Father didn’t approve of ladies engaging in social activities unrelated to church or charity.
Every Monday I attended a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, where we gathered to drink tea or lemonade and heatedly denounce the demon rum between passing around plates of cookies and dainty cakes and painting a placard or sewing a banner or two for us to display once a month when we stood outside a local saloon to protest their peddling of the Devil’s elixir, frowning, waggling a disapproving finger, and saying Shame! to everyone who went in or out. Wednesdays I acted as treasurer for the Christian Endeavor Society and doled out the dollars and cents to finance our good deeds and sold cookies Abby had baked to raise funds for the Fall River Philanthropic Burial Society, to provide decent burials for the deserving poor. Tuesdays and Saturdays were devoted to my favorite charity, the Fruit and Flower Mission. First we met to discuss our mission; then, every Saturday, without fail, we brought baskets of fruit to those we knew who were convalescing at home or in the hospital and, like angels of mercy bearing bright, happy bouquets, bravely ventured into the part of town known as The Flats that was nearest to the mills, where the workers lived in the most deplorable and squalid conditions, in tumbledown tenements and hovels. It was a horrible fetid and filthy place, made muddy from the mill waste, with stagnant puddles standing deep enough to drown a small child.
Emma always said we had it backward, our charity should have been the other way around; we should have given the flowers to our friends, and taken the fruit to nourish the needy poor instead, citing something she had read about citrus fruits and scurvy sailors. But such “radical thinking” was not in keeping with our mission and she was politely asked to reconsider her membership, though the dues were nonrefundable of course.
I just couldn’t understand Emma taking a position like that! More than once I had been moved to tears when I beheld the awed expressions upon the faces of a poor family of mill workers when I bestowed upon them the regal red beauty of roses, and when, instead of a new baby, I laid a bouquet of festive autumn-hued chrysanthemums in the arms of a poor worn-out Irish woman who was already the mother of nine children, all bawling and tugging at her tattered skirt while her husband was passed out from the drink.... The look on her face was indescribable! It was truly a moment to treasure, and I knew that I had made a difference. The recipients of our floral gifts were always so stunned that they were rendered speechless; some of their dear faces actually turned red and quivered and looked ready to burst from the overpowering feelings they didn’t know how to express. But I understood; I knew exactly how they felt. Their eyes were so starved for beauty in the decrepit leaky-roofed hovels where they lived it made me happy beyond words to give them something to feast on. That was what the Fruit and Flower Mission was all about.
And then there was my Sunday school class where I stood before the chalkboard like a brave captain at the helm of his storm-tossed ship determined to imbue the Oriental heathens who worked in the town’s mills and laundries with goodly Christian virtues. I taught them to sing hymns, read Bible stories, and write their names, and every Christmas we staged a pageant in which my pupils sang Christmas carols and hymns and enacted the Nativity story. Everyone looked forward to it all year . . . except our organist, Mrs. Stowe, but that was only because she tripped over a sheep and broke her collarbone during a rehearsal of the manger scene one year, but that was not my fault, so she really had no cause to turn against me and the dear Celestials. My pupils loved me, and not just because I gave them each candies and a new pencil and a pretty card with a Bible verse printed on it every Sunday, and both the Reverends Buck and Jubb said I was a wonderful teacher who was personally responsible for saving countless heathen souls, and that the Sunday school Christmas pageant always sent the congregation home with much to ponder.
The events that would lead to my “sweet taste of freedom” began with just an ordinary meeting of the Fruit and Flower Mission. We were taking a civilized pause to cool our tempers after a rather heated discussion about which blossoms the poor Irish Catholic denizens of our city would find most uplifting. Addie Whip and her best friend, Minnie Macomber, had just astonished us all by saying they thought the gay, brilliant pink hue of azaleas would be more in keeping with “Catholic tastes” than the tired old lily-of-the-valley and lavender bouquets Ella Sheen and her sisters, Evy and Annabelle, always insisted upon. I could well understand the Irish being in the mood for something festive and new and dared to venture that I thought purple satin ribbon to bind the stems of the azaleas would be a most bright and becoming touch—imagine what vivid joy it would bring into their dismal, drab little lives! It was then that my beautiful ash-blond cousin, Anna Borden, who lived in a grand mansion up on The Hill leading the life I longed for, impulsively proposed a trip to Europe as a culturally broadening experience to relieve our ennui, and to shop for dresses, of course. It was getting rather tiresome, she said, gadding about the wrong side of town handing out chrysanthemums to cleaning women. Her sister Carrie and their friend Nellie Shore enthusiastically embraced the idea.
They were all in their twenties and as yet unmarried, but not without hopes like me; whereas I was but a few months shy of thirty with no hope of a savior to end my spinsterhood in sight. All three had rich, doting fathers who could deny them nothing, but I stuck out like an ugly weed in a garden of American Beauty Roses that had stubbornly insinuated itself into their majestic midst. But I didn’t care; I wanted to go out into the world so badly, to experience and see with my own eyes all the wonderful and exciting things I had only read and dreamed about. I just had to go with them; I just had to!
The Reverend Buck lent his support to the venture, wistfully recalling his own Grand Tour as a young man and lamenting that he could not join us. But, in all fairness, he stipulated, anyone who wished to come and had the means to pay for the passage must be allowed to join us, and it was essential that we equip ourselves with a suitable chaperone, and for this role he recommended Miss Hannah Mowbry. Once the most popular teacher at the high school, she had in her respectable but impoverished retirement parlayed her love of travel into the lucrative role of professional companion, paid to escort affluent and unmarried young ladies wherever in the civilized portions of the whole wide world they wished to go.
How I pestered and plagued Father night and day to let me go. I started when he came down to breakfast and ended at his bedroom door after supper. I begged; I wept; I took to my bed with a monster of a migraine and shunned all food. I went down on my knees and tried to make him see just how important this was to me. He was afraid that I would desert him in his old age, abandon him in his gray hairs for some worthless European scoundrel, some slick-haired cad I found in a casino or lurking around the halls of a castle somewhere just like a spider waiting to snare naïve and wealthy women in his fiendish web. I vehemently swore NEVER!, crossed my heart, and promised faithfully that I would always be there to care for him. Even if he lived to 105, my face would be the last he saw upon his dying day, I declared.
“We both know I cannot depend on Emma,” Father said, and I was quick to agree. By this point if Father had fallen into the sea and was drowning, Emma would not have thrown him a life preserver; instead she would have shoved Abby in after him and sought a bucket of blood to pour over their heads to attract sharks. But I, I was his little girl born to be a comfort in his old age. He had given me his name, Andrew, as my middle name since he had been denied the consolation of a son to follow in his footsteps that every man deserves.
I told him exactly what he wanted to hear, that my first duty was to him, and him alone, and never would I betray him, turn my back, or relinquish that role, not even for the most loving of husbands. Rashly, I ripped the gold and enamel class ring from my finger and shoved it onto his gnarled and hairy pinkie, the only one it would fit, to seal this eternal pledge of devotion and kissed it as solemnly as if it were a bishop’s ring. Anything to get my way, to get away!
Emma, so taciturn and disagreeable that Father actually welcomed her absence, had her twice-yearly trips to visit her friends, the elderly Mrs. Brownell and her spinster daughter, Helen, in Fairhaven, but this obedient little sheep Lizzie had never strayed from the fold. I was almost thirty and had never left Massachusetts; I wanted a taste of freedom too! I deserved it!
Finally, when I was hoarse as a bullfrog and half-blind from weeping, Father reluctantly gave his consent. He came into my room, where I was lying sick and wretched in my bed, my pillow soaked with tears, and gave me the steamship ticket and told me I should see about my passport as soon as I was able. He surprised me the night before my departure with a most extravagant gift. When he came home from his daily round of business meetings, he had a large cardboard box tucked under his arm. He sat it on the sofa and told me to turn my back to him. I heard the lid lift and a tantalizing rustle of tissue paper; then the most beautiful sealskin cape lined with lustrous chocolate satin was draped around my shoulders and a matching muff was thrust over my hand. I had never been so happy in all my life! I felt just like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon.
We sailed aboard the SS Scythia on June 21, 1890. Carrie and Nellie were fast friends, so there was no question that they would be rooming together, and Miss Mowbry always made it a proud point, stipulated firmly in her contract, that she prized her solitude and shared accommodations with no one, so I was left by default to bunk with my haughty cousin Anna. Ah Anna! She never deigned to acknowledge our kinship and put me in my place by always treating me like her maid, regally commanding me to brush her hair, do up or undo her buttons and hooks, lace or unlace her stays, or wash her back when she sat in the bath wreathed by clouds of lavender-scented steam, never guessing that just the touch of her exquisite skin, the sight of her bountiful bosom freed from the prison of her mauve satin corset, and the imperious lavender-blue flash of her eyes was like an electric thrill to me. Whenever I was alone with her in our stateroom I felt weak-kneed, like a woman sculpted of pink candle wax melting beneath a hot flame. And given her shabby treatment of me, I found it strangely comforting that I would never be a dollar sign in Cousin Anna’s eyes, just dirt beneath her feet.
Carrie, who lived for fashion, made frequent snide remarks about my clothes, observing that I was traveling very light whereas she herself had not one but five steamer trunks and planned to return with at least half a dozen more. She would inquire where my dresses had been made, if it were in New York or Boston perhaps, and implore me to give her my dressmaker’s name when she knew full well that all my clothes were made in Fall River by local seamstresses or, in the case of simpler calico or cotton housedresses and wrappers, home sewn to while away the endless hours of boredom. And she remarked more than once upon the preponderance of blue in my meager wardrobe, saying I must be excessively fond of the color to wear it so often.
In truth, by this point, though I didn’t dislike the hue, I was bored to death by blue. But Emma was convinced that blue was my best and only color. Browns, light or dark, she insisted, made me look depressingly plain and doused the fire in my hair; white for daily wear was just plain impractical; gray made me look washed out and glum; green was such a cliché on redheads any sensible woman with hair that color would do well to avoid it; yellow made me look jaundiced and stouter; black, despite the slight slimming illusion it worked upon my waist, was far too funereal and made my jaw look heavier in comparison; and the purples, pinks, peaches, oranges, and reds, all those soft sorbet and bright candy colors, my soul hungered for heightened the unfortunate tendency of my face to an ugly, mottled floridness; only blue did anything for me, though, granted, that was not saying much.
But Miss Mowbry was very kind; she spoke up for me whenever such remarks penetrated her ear trumpet. She said that I was right to favor blue, as it was clearly my best color and worked wonders with my eyes, chilling or warming them according to the shade I was wearing. Traveling light, she also thought, was very wise; I would have more room in my trunk for new dresses and souvenirs without having to spend my father’s money on another trunk to put them in. “Lizzie is a sensible girl who opts for quality, not quantity,” she said with a look that implied that Carrie, despite her seemingly endless wealth, most decidedly was not. “That girl buys and discards dresses like a bumblebee drifting from flower to flower,” Miss Mowbry whispered to me, and I could not but agree and hope that the vivid raspberry-and-lemon-striped and ruffled confection Carrie was then sporting would soon find a place amongst her discards, as I feared just looking at it would bring on one of my awful migraines.
And Nellie Shore, with her acerbic tongue, thank goodness, was largely indifferent to me. She obviously didn’t consider me a worthy subject to waste her wit and quips upon and always looked straight through me as though I were made of glass, and deafness seemed to afflict her whenever I spoke. Sometimes I was sorely tempted to rush into her stateroom in the wee hours and shake her out of a sound sleep and shout, “The ship is sinking!” right in her ear just to see if she would hear me. But, of course, I never did; it would have been behavior ill becoming of a lady and one of the Bordens of Fall River.
We were all laid low with seasickness for most of the voyage even though Miss Mowbry, the only seasoned traveler amongst us, had brought along a goodly supply of Gully’s Tablets for Mal-de-Mer, which she swore by, and we obediently sucked on them even though they tasted like solidified quicklime.
When we steamed into port at Liverpool the sky was so gray it was very near black and the rain was so dense I had to squint and strain my eyes to make out the rooftops and church steeples in the distance. My companions shrieked in dismay, but they were more concerned about ruined hats and clothes, or, in the case of Miss Mowbry, dying of diphtheria, than this rather bleak introduction to the land of our forefathers. But I didn’t care. I stood at the rail and drank it all in, letting the rain do whatever it would to my hat and drench me to the skin until my skirts and petticoats were soaked clean through and plastered to my limbs and my hair torn loose from its pins. I’m sure the others thought I was quite mad, but I didn’t care; I was determined to let nothing spoil this. It was a once in a lifetime moment that would never come again. Even if I ever did venture across the Atlantic again, it would never be the same as the first time.
At the hotel, where we were once again sharing accommodations, I was quickly rushed into a hot bath and then bundled into bed in a warm flannel nightgown with a hot-water bottle. Miss Mowbry was certain I would catch my death and even wanted to send for the hotel physician, but my will was stronger than any contagions floating about in the air, and I refused to let even so much as a sneeze or a sniffle rob me of a single moment of my time in England. There was too much to see and do to be sick!
“What a stouthearted girl you are, Lizzie! Strong as a horse!” Miss Mowbry said admiringly. “We’ll make a traveler of you yet!” Though the compliment was a trifle spoiled when she leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “You know, Lizzie, I am getting on in years and there are many girls from Fall River’s finest families growing up all the time and wanting to broaden their horizons with European travel. If your father would permit it, I should be pleased to take you under my wing. . . .”
The idea of me as a paid companion to those girls when I was just as good and rich as they were! Pride blinded me, and in her offer I saw only the shame, not the doorway Freedom was holding open for me, while eagerly beckoning me across the threshold.
The other girls quickly went their own way; they were more interested in seeing the insides of dress shops than anything of cultural or historical significance. Great cathedrals, so beautiful they could make a man weep, paled in comparison beside the couturiers’ confections in their eyes, and Michelangelo’s sculptures didn’t thrill them anywhere near as much as the hats on display in the front window of a milliner’s shop. Gems, not Great Masters, made their breath catch in wonder and their eyes sparkle. They whiled away their time batting their eyelashes at eligible Englishmen, dreaming of snaring a duke or a lord and going to live in his ancestral castle, playing lady bountiful to the tenants, and presiding over well-laden tea tables serving petit fours and cucumber sandwiches to the crème de la crème of society, and, of course, the ultimate honor of being presented to Queen Victoria in white satin and plumes.
Romance was something I had long since consigned to the land of dreams. Of course I had had schoolgirl crushes on my teachers, and a classmate or two, daydreamed over the wedding gowns in Godey’s Lady’s Book, and sighed wistfully over poetry and romantic scenes in the novels I read, but I had long since grudgingly accepted spinsterhood as my lot. But in Europe I began to feel like the princess in a fairy tale who slept for a hundred years before she was awakened by Prince Charming’s kiss. I was stirring, waking up; it was terrifying yet so exciting!
I was only just beginning to realize then what I know all too well now. Every old maid, crabapple virgin, and prim spinster lady has a story, and it is usually a story about love, but it is always a sad one, bittersweet at best, that does not end with a wedding or “happily ever after.” We are not all the innocent naïve virgins the world likes to think. We may stay at home, protected by well-meaning relatives, buffered from the real world of cads and bounders, but we have hearts and minds and bodies; we can, and do, hope and dream, and feel, often with a burning, hot intensity that, if they knew, would shock our relations to the core and consign us to the care of an overzealous doctor for one of those discreet operations to calm hysterics and free women of these libidinous demons by cutting out the source of these unwholesome and unseemly passions. But they don’t know; we’re too wise to let them. We all have secrets we keep in the heart-shaped lockbox in our breasts.
From the start my life seemed destined to be one of secrets—a kiss stolen in the shadows of a shady tree, a petty theft from a shop, a glass of absinthe and the loss of all inhibitions behind a locked door—doing what no proper, well-brought-up lady would ever do. I have never wagered so much as a penny on a game of chance, but I think I understand what compels the gambler. I saw the roulette wheels spin on the Riviera, and fortunes lost and won, and the high euphoria and plummeting despair that came after depending on the outcome, and I think that I, sheltered old maid that I am, understand exactly how it feels to court destruction and risk everything for a momentary thrill. Few gamblers stop once they’ve won; they always go back for more. I understand that too. How many times have I followed the lure of love, the hope of opening my eyes to a dream come true? We shall have to count them all as this story unfolds, the whole sad tally of love lost, denied, thwarted, or rejected, and trust misplaced. Let us begin with the prince who woke the sleeping princess up and aroused all the longings she thought had died in her long stagnant slumber.
I shall not tell you his name. There is no point; nothing would be served by it except prurient curiosity, and I will not let yet another innocent person be tarred and feathered by association with me; that has happened too many times already. People who should have been able to live out their lives in peace now have their names mentioned in books and lurid articles about crime because their path in some way crossed mine. And every woman is entitled to keep one secret tied up in the red ribbons of her heart, so let his name be the secret I take with me to the grave.
He was an architect, a few years older than myself. His eyes were blue and his hair was blond, like golden wheat kissed by the summer sun, and even when it was subdued by pomade and combed back had an irrepressible tendency to flop boyishly over his brow. I like to think he saw more in me than anyone else ever has before or since. Many Americans believe that the English are singularly lacking in warmth, that they are frigid and imperious as icebergs, and shun emotion as if it were leprosy, but I know this is not universally true. As I am a woman who has often unjustly been called “cold” and “undemonstrative” because I don’t give vent to impassioned displays in public places to oblige the spectators who think they have the right to know everything about me because of the infamous course my life has taken, you may trust me implicitly upon this point.
We met in a secondhand bookshop on a rainy day in London when we both reached for the same volume. It fell with a thud and a puff of dust that made us both sneeze. We laughed and bent to retrieve it at the same time and bumped heads, knocking each other’s hat off. It was not a proper introduction. Some might have mistaken him for a masher and me for a forward American girl setting her cap for an English milord—it is after all a common assumption about all unattached American females of marriageable age traveling abroad—but from the moment our eyes met neither of us cared what anyone else thought; we knew the truth and who we really were, and nothing else mattered.
He had an umbrella, a trusty black umbrella—what Englishman does not? I held tight to his arm as we crowded beneath it, being jostled by the crowd on the pavement as they stepped around us.
I asked him if the sun ever shines in England; it had been raining since the day I arrived. He laughed—he had such a merry laugh that made his blue eyes sparkle like sapphire-colored fireworks on the Fourth of July—and assured me that yes, it did upon occasion.
We went to a quiet but respectable little tearoom he favored and had tea and Banbury tarts—the cook’s specialty made from an old family recipe—that reminded me of Abby’s mincemeat. We talked for hours, of so many things; it was as if we had known each other all our lives. His world was wider than mine, but we found enough common ground to meet upon. I felt like a tight little rosebud slowly unfurling beneath the sun of his kindness and attention. I wanted only to be with him; when I was with him I thrived, I felt so alive!
Yes, Dear Reader, I know, when I read back over these words I also have to shake my head and smile. I sound so starry-eyed, like a silly girl just struck for the first time by Cupid’s dart, a Juliet ready, willing, and eager to die for love, when in truth I had just passed my thirtieth birthday and was already a confirmed spinster withering on the vine. But that is how it was. I cannot lie; that is exactly how I felt. It was marvelous and new and wonderful and made everything seem so fresh and beautiful! I had never felt so happy and alive! And awake! He made me feel as though I had been sleepwalking through life!
He threw my Baedeker into the Thames and took time away from his office to show me the sights in London and beyond. We toured the Tower, where a bold raven snatched at the hem of my skirt, and he told me stories from its bloody past, and how a sentry had not ten years ago almost been court-martialed for sleeping on duty after he encountered the diaphanous white phantom of Queen Anne Boleyn. He had challenged her with his halberd and she countered by lifting off her head and he fainted dead away. Fortunately for him, he was saved at the last moment when another guard, who had witnessed it all from a stairway above, came forward and confirmed his story.
He showed me Hampton Court, the Houses of Parliament, the tombs at Westminster Abbey, and we spent a whole day at the National Gallery, and through it all he told me stories about the places, the craftsmanship and architecture, and the people who had left their mark upon his country’s glorious past. One day he took me into Shakespeare land. We stopped at Anne Hathaway’s cottage, where the Bard’s wife had dwelled. I felt quite at home amongst the red brick chimneys and rustic Tudor gingerbread and imagined our making our home in a place just like this, a little spot of Heaven in the heart of the English countryside. I saw myself sitting on a bench in the garden waiting for him to come home from a busy day in London, reading a book while our children frolicked about, and the housekeeper prepared dinner for us and Banbury tarts for dessert. And on a ridge between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, where his family had a country home, he showed me a favorite site since his boyhood—the Rollright Stones, a circle of seventy-seven standing stones, centuries old. Legend claims they were once a king and his army who set out to conquer all Britain. But along the way they offended a wizened crone who turned out to be a witch. As punishment, she turned them all to stone, and then transformed herself into an elder tree to stand eternal sentry and make sure the curse was never lifted. If cut while in full flower, local folk said, the tree would bleed human blood. At midnight, on certain sacred nights, my beloved told me, the king and his knights are magically restored to human life, and dance hand in hand, round and round, unceasingly while the witch keeps time to the fairy music, tapping her toe, and clapping her gnarled hands with long yellow nails like talons, until cock’s crow turned them back to stone and tree again. Yet any mortal who has the misfortune to stumble upon this spectacle will go stone blind or mad. “When I was a lad,” my architect confided, “I used to sneak out at night and watch the witches gather and perform their rituals within the sacred circle of the Rollright Stones.” He saw black cocks sacrificed, held upside down as their blood was drained into goblets that were then passed around, and other acts not fit for a lady’s ears.
But the day I cherish most of all is the day when the sun finally shone, the day he took me to Glastonbury. He showed me where the graves of King Arthur and golden-haired Guinevere had been discovered in the time of Henry II, buried sixteen feet down in the hollowed-out trunk of a mighty oak tree. Arthur was a giant of a man, his great and noble skull bashed in by at least ten mortal blows inflicted in his final battle, and Guinevere, small and delicate boned, lay humbly like a dog at his feet with her long blond hair tangled in her husband’s bones, like clinging golden vines twined around his ankles. When an awestruck young monk reached out to touch a lock it crumbled into dust. We rented tin cups from a vendor and drank of the red-tinged iron-rich waters from the Chalice Well that are reputed to possess healing powers. As we sipped he told me the legend. Joseph of Arimathea had brought the Holy Grail—the cup that Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper and was afterward used to catch his blood as he died upon the cross—with him to Glastonbury, to lay the foundation for the Christian faith in Britain. To hide it from tenacious pagans and thieves, he had buried it within the hill, and the waters of the spring had ever since passed over the Grail and been dyed red and imbued with miraculous powers by the holy blood. We saw the crutches and canes of former cripples and blind men that hung upon the gates as proof.
“You see, the sun really does shine in England; it is shining for you today,” he said, then added, more boldly, reaching out to caress my hair beneath the bluebell-covered brim of my straw hat, “I shall never forget the way it teases out the golden glints in your fiery hair, Lizbeth.”
With him I felt reborn, reinvented. He even gave me a new name—Lizbeth. I didn’t have the heart to disillusion him by telling him that I was born just plain Lizzie, not even traditional, ordinary Elizabeth; I let him believe it was just a family nickname.
“Lizzie sounds like a barmaid, a servant girl,” he said a tad disdainfully, scrunching up his nose as though he smelled something bad. “The world is full of Elizabeths, but Lizbeth is rarer. It has the spark of drama; in its two syllables are married elegance and grandeur! Lizzie be gone!” He snapped his fingers in the air. “To me you shall always be Lizbeth!”
He made a sketch of Glastonbury Abbey for me. I have it still, along with the book—our book—the one that led us to meet. Never believe for an instant that books aren’t magic; they have the power to bring people together. But I will not tell you its name either. Let the book have its own life; let it fade quietly into obscurity or be remembered by posterity on its own merits. No connection with me shall ordain its fate.
I remember the way his hand moved over the page of his sketchbook, so confident, so sure, the charcoal pencil leaving a black smudge against his calloused finger. He was an architect after all; he understood the beauty of a line, a curve, an arch. He told me of the Abbey’s history and made me appreciate, and see, Glastonbury with new eyes not obscured by the rosy-tinted spectacles of romance and legends of Avalon and Arthur. And we talked of other cathedrals in other countries, and when I saw them later, on my own, and purchased pictures of them to take back home with me, to cover my naked walls, I remembered every word he had told me about their creation and history.
He showed me the thorn tree that supposedly sprang from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea when he first set foot on Glastonbury and had ever since flowered every Christmas. He told me how carolers still came to sing its praises and a flowering branch was presented each year at Christmastime to Queen Victoria. We stood in its verdant shadows and I felt his hand upon my waist, so light, so delicate, almost reverent—it was a sacred place, so how fitting that his touch should be just so! Through the blue satin sash and my eyelet dress of an even lighter blue and the rigid whalebone of my corset beneath, his fingertips felt like ghosts, so feathery light, so gently elusive, and intangible that I have at times wondered if I only imagined their caress. I wanted them to burn through, to brand me, so I could actually feel his fingers against my flesh just as their faint memory is still seared there. I wanted more and I thought, in time, I would have it. So slowly that time seemed almost to stop, he leaned down and pressed his lips lingeringly to mine in the tenderest kiss I have ever known.
My experience of kisses has been limited but varied. I have had rougher, clumsier, lustier, probing kisses where tongues touched, saliva mingled, and teeth scraped, but none of them has ever matched, or even come close to, the tender kiss of the blond, blue-eyed architect beneath the thorn tree at Glastonbury.
For me, it is my one unsullied moment of breathless wonder that no one can ever spoil or take away from me. I have never told anyone. I have kept it locked close, zealously guarded, within my heart, cherished it, and lived on it every day of my life. By the time you read these words I will be dead, so I will not hear you if you laugh and scoff at this silly old maid and her romantic notions and dreams. Perhaps I am overly sentimental. Men tend to take a different view of such matters; perhaps to him it was just a kiss and he went on to kiss many other American girls beneath that thorn tree. I do not know; nor do I want to. I cherish my illusion, if illusion it was.
Later, after we had our picnic lunch, he lay back on the warm green grass with his head in my lap, his hat shading his eyes from the summer sun, and we talked of our respective countries. He had been to America before, to study and on occasional business trips, but he always pined for England the whole time he was away.
He recited a poem to me, his favorite, by a Scottish poet, Alan Cunningham, written about the Stuart monarchs, exiled from their native land and longing to return. His mother had embroidered it and had it framed for him and it always hung on his bedroom wall wherever he went in the world to remind him of home.
Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!
When the flower is i’ the bud and the leaf is on the tree,
The larks shall sing me hame in my ain countrie;
Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countrie!
The green leaf of loyaltie’s beginning to fall.
The bonnie White Rose it is withering an’ all.
But I’ll water it with the blood of usurping tyrannie,
An’ green it will grow in my ain countrie!
O, there’s nocht now frae ruin my countrie can save,
But the keys o’ kind Heaven, to open the grave;
That a’ the noble martyrs who died for loyalty
May rise again an’ fight for their ain countrie.
The great now are gone, a’ wha ventured to save,
The new grass is springing on the top o’ their grave;
But the sun through the murk blinks blythe in my e’e,
“I’ll shine on ye yet in your ain countrie.”
Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!
Despite all the rash promises made as I knelt at my father’s feet before I left home, I would have gladly stayed in England with my beloved forever if only he had asked me to. No one will ever know how much I wanted to. I would have, I know, regretted being seen as a traitor, disloyal to my blood, but I wanted a life of my own—a life of color and excitement and wonder and love! I was tired of seeing the world through the window of printed words and pictures frozen in time. I wanted to see it all with my own eyes in vibrant, rich, full, blazing color—living, breathing, moving life, not just still black-and-white or sepia images capturing only one motionless moment in time. I wanted to reach out and touch life with my own hands, and to breathe it all deep into my lungs. I wanted to have my own experiences; I was tired of making do with the siphoned, secondhand recollections of others who went out into the world and actually did things, wonderful, exciting things, while I stayed home like a good and obedient daughter and just read about them in memoirs and magazines. And Love . . . I thought Love had forgotten me, and long ago passed me by as unworthy, I never thought, I never expected, that it would remember me, and bring me someone who suited me so splendidly. If I had dreamed him he could not have been more perfect! He was like the hero of a novel stepped out from between the covers of a book—he was the architect of my dreams!
That night in the ballroom of his uncle’s London house I wore my first ball gown—a delicate shimmering peach taffeta with yards of trailing skirt and a bustle in back, with ruffles on the sleeves and skirt, and matching satin dancing slippers with roses on the toes and peach silk stockings. Anna, despite her disdain for me, loved to play with hair, and deigned to arrange mine in a mound of glossy, gleaming red curls artfully woven through with peach ribbons and strands of delicate seed pearls, leaving one long ringlet to fall over my bare right shoulder.
I danced all night in the warm circle of his arms. I thought it was the safest and most wonderful place in the world and there was nowhere else I wanted to be. I am happy here! my eyes and my heart kept blissfully sighing.
I stood on the terrace at his side with his cloak draped over my shoulders, the white silk lining icily delicious against my bare skin, and, together, we watched the sun rise. And then I went back to the hotel and to bed, though I wasn’t the least bit tired and was much too restless to even think of sleeping. The waltzes we had danced to still played in my mind, and my legs would not stay still; I twisted and turned in my bed and hugged my pillow close, as if I still danced with him. And while Anna slept obliviously in the bed beside mine, so close I could have reached out and tweaked her proud patrician nose, beneath the covers I boldly lifted my nightgown all the way to my chin and touched myself and pretended that it was his hands upon me, boldly and tenderly by turns caressing my passion-inflamed breasts and the hot pink petals of my womanhood.
He never told me that he loved me, that is true, and I was never bold or shameless enough to tell him that I loved him, but even without the words, we both knew. Tentatively, I confided my hopes by letter to Emma; my heart welled to bursting and I needed the relief of confession and there was no one else I could trust, but she betrayed me. Just like Judas, my sister betrayed me, for nothing, not even a pittance of silver. I was dismissed as a fool, a gullible girl who had read too many romance novels, an innocent abroad who knew nothing about life, love, the world, and the liars and beasts called “men.” She made my wonderful, kind, gentle, courteous, thoroughly respectable architect sound like the worst kind of cad. My cheeks still burn at the memory of her stinging words even after all these years. She—and Father—never let me forget what they called “my foolishness” and how I “lost my head” over “that Englishman.” Their words fairly dripped with scathing scorn like venom whenever they spoke of him.
The last time I saw him he was walking away from me, after seeing me and my party safely aboard the train that would take us on the next stage of our journey. He was most solicitous and even brought a selection of newspapers and magazines and a box of chocolates to help us pass the time. And he had thoughtfully written out a list of sights for us to see in France and Italy, but it was of interest only to me; the others could talk of nothing but dresses and hats and the high-society beaus they hoped to catch.
I can see him now, walking away from me, out of my life, his broad shoulders bent against the wind, his right hand holding his derby clamped tight upon his head, and his stormy gray overcoat flapping like wild-goose wings about his legs. I couldn’t stay and he couldn’t go with me; we had to say good-bye. He promised he would write to me, and there was something in his eyes and the way his lips lingered when he kissed my hand that told me I would one day soon see the words I so longed to hear set down in black and white. That he would say the words that I, as a woman, could not say.
In Paris everyone seemed to be in love, or at least in lustful thrall, and brazenly unafraid of showing it. It seemed everywhere I looked I saw couples strolling arm in arm, women laying their heads upon their escorts’ strong shoulders, or sitting opposite them at small tables for two in sidewalk cafés, leaning toward each other, holding hands, or even boldly daring to kiss in broad daylight on the boulevard or a park bench.
Carrie, Anna, and Nellie turned up their noses at the notion of visiting the Louvre and Notre Dame, and instead rushed off to the dress shops. They could not hail a cab or find a post office without imploring help from some English-speaking bystander, but they could say “Where are the dress shops?” in four different languages. And poor Miss Mowbry indignantly took to her bed and refused to leave it for days after an “impertinent waiter” suggested she try the escargots. When she accepted his recommendation “with pleasure” he smilingly set a plate of snails before her, bidding her, “Bon apétit, madame.”
“Young man, in America we do not eat snails; we step on them!” she witheringly reprimanded him. “Take these away and dispose of them properly!” she commanded, then, nose high in the air, retreated grandly to her hotel room and ordered tea and toast sent up.
But we all had a weakness for the sweets. The French pastries—chocolate éclairs, cream puffs, marrons glacés, and chocolate bonbons stuffed with decadent creams, supple caramel, or rich fruity syrups.
I saw the Mona Lisa on my own; I thought she looked like a woman made most unhappy by love and wondered what secrets she had kept in the lockbox of her heart. I saw love—its promises, fulfillment, the lack or loss of it, and the longing for it—in almost every painting and statue my lovesick eyes lighted upon.
I heard the bells of Notre Dame and gazed up in awe at its magnificent Gothic edifice, the first to use flying buttresses, to prevent stress fractures in the walls, my architect had told me. Inside I stood, with my arms spread wide and my head thrown back, and let a rainbow of light wash over me as the sun shone through the stained glass, bathing me in vibrant color.
And I went, alone, to see Monsieur Eiffel’s controversial tower, the tallest in the world, just completed the previous year. Some called it “an eyesore,” “a pox upon the skyline of Paris”; they thought that it was too modern, that the riveted iron structure lacked the romance and grace of Gothic cathedrals and the palaces of kings. They did not see it the way my architect did—as a triumph of engineering and mathematics—or understand the prime importance of wind resistance in its design. Though I far preferred the palaces and cathedrals myself, I still thought it magnificent. I climbed its many stairs and stood for over an hour, alone with my thoughts, staring out at the view wishing my love were there beside me.
The one place my traveling companions did accompany me was to the Moulin Rouge, the notorious Red Mill; even Miss Mowbry roused herself from her bed of wounded dignity, because she felt a chaperone was an absolute necessity if we were to venture into such a hedonistic atmosphere, though the hotel desk clerk assured us that respectable ladies went there all the time and we simply could not miss the Can-Can; we would reproach ourselves for the rest of our lives if we left Paris without seeing that. Then he kissed his fingers and launched a volley of rhapsodic rapid-fire French so dizzyingly fast that it went right over our heads but set our curiosity on fire. So away we went to the Moulin Rouge to see the Can-Can.
And it was amazing, to see the blades of the giant windmill spinning slowly against the night sky, lit up with thousands of red, gold, and white electric lights. I never dreamed there could be so many lightbulbs on one structure!
Inside, it was as big, bright, and gaudy as it was out. Amidst the rapid, carefree music and babble of voices we were relieved to see a great many women of seemingly respectable appearance, both escorted and unescorted, seated at the tables, and this eased our fears somewhat. A band in red and gold jackets played and the floor swarmed with dancers. It was the most vibrant and vivid place I had ever seen and I longed to lose myself and become a part of it.
There were bejeweled courtesans, the famed and fabled Grand Horizontals, in extravagant gowns trimmed with feathers and gems, silk flowers, ermine, sable, beads and glittering appliqués, so décolleté that every time they moved their breasts threatened to overflow like cherry-topped blancmanges. Jewels sparkled on their ears, necks, and wrists, the cold, star-bright light of diamonds and whole rainbows of vibrant colors—emeralds, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, and topazes. Their faces were rouged and painted, their lashes blackened, and their eyes lined dramatically with kohl, and they wore their hair, its color often of such a startling shade it could hardly be natural, piled high in mounds of curls, twists, and braids, embellished with feathers, flowers, and jewels. One woman even had a small gilded birdcage with a chirping canary perched on a tiny swing inside woven into her tall pompadour of very blond hair, like a modern-day Marie Antoinette. Her hairdresser must have been something of an architect himself to build such a towering mass of hair!
We were shocked to see a Negro man, his skin as black as tar, seated intimately at a table with a woman with milk-pale skin and the reddest hair I had ever seen in my life. She wore canary-yellow satin, her bare shoulders and overflowing bosom ringed with billowing yellow feathers, and what must have been a fortune in honey-colored topaz and diamonds glittering on her gown and about her neck and wrists and snaking through her scarlet tresses. The Negro boldly opened her purse, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, and took out a gold cigarette case. He put two in his mouth and lit them, then took one out and put it between his companion’s lips. We had never seen such a thing in America nor thought to see it elsewhere. In America just looking at a white woman would have been enough to get the Negro lynched, but in Paris no one seemed to think anything of it at all. Freedom, glorious freedom! the whole city seemed to scream. No one was a slave here—except to their own passions!
There was a group of women, a select society, like a club unto themselves, in which all others were unwelcome. They did not paint their faces and seemed to disdain feminine frills and flirtatious manners. Some of them wore men’s clothing, complete suits that looked straight out of the shops on Savile Row, dove gray, coffee and toffee colored, dark blue, or black frock coats with carnations in the buttonholes, beautiful brocade or watered-silk or garish checkered waistcoats, striped and flowered neckties, and tight-fitting trousers, or starkly elegant black and white evening clothes with black silk top hats and long, dashing opera cloaks lined in either red or white silk. Many of them wore their hair cropped short just like a man’s, slicked back until it shone like patent leather or else erupting in a riot of curls or waves that would have made a seasoned sailor seasick. Some of them even smoked cigarettes, pipes, or cigars and drank strong liquor! There were a few who were a tad more feminine; they dressed in proper women’s suits, but severely tailored, with mannish jackets and prominent, padded shoulders, and no feminine frills at all, not a bit of lace anywhere that I could see, or even a silk rose or a flirty feather on their hats, and their hair was plainly coiffed, severely scraped back from their faces and painfully pinned with not even a curl or a frizz to soften the effect. The only softness was in their manner to each other. These women danced together, waltzing in each other’s arms, lost in their own little word, or else sat close together holding hands, sharing cigarettes, and even daring to kiss, openly, upon the mouth, just like lovers. No men, except the waiters, ever went near them. Yet no one except us bewildered Americans looked askance; to everyone else they seemed to be just part of the scenery.
Men and women behaved toward one another with a shocking degree of familiarity, as if they had completely forgotten that they were in a public place. We saw women sitting on men’s laps and allowing themselves to be fondled and kissed. They did not even slap the men’s hands away when they dared to slip boldly beneath their skirts. Sometimes coins changed hands before these actions commenced, so I doubted whether love had anything to do with it, but it was shocking to behold just the same.
We were in complete accord that we would leave just as soon as we had seen the famous dance—the Can-Can that everyone talked so much about.
All of a sudden the music stopped and the floor cleared before it struck up again, with an insistent, pulsing, lively, infectious rhythm as six women rushed in, shrieking and shaking their skirts wildly, black plumes billowing on their bonnets. The crowd began to applaud, raucously; some of the men whistled and stomped their feet or screamed out names, presumably those of the dancers they liked best.
The dancers’ costumes were the most revealing I had ever seen a woman wear in public. Their ruffled white blouses were so sheer their nipples glowed through like hot pink embers, and their pink skirts were so short they barely grazed their calves. In the center of the floor they paused for one tantalizing, teasing moment to lift their skirts to show row upon row of white ruffles sewn onto their petticoats and gossamer white pantalets trimmed with ruffles and dangling pink silk ribbons that danced along with them; then they began to kick their legs high into the air, higher than I would have ever thought possible, fast and free to the music, while emitting exuberant shrieks.
Miss Mowbry was so mortified that she fainted, and some sailors from the next table tried to revive her by throwing her skirts up over her head and fumbling with her corset. She came to her senses with a cheeky young rogue’s hands groping around inside her flannel drawers as though he was looking for buried treasure. She almost slapped his head off and, red-faced and weeping, she forgot all about her duties as chaperone and immediately fled, beating a path for herself through the gay and laughing crowd with her trusty black umbrella.
I had never imagined that the Can-Can would be so risqué! I sat there dumbstruck watching the dancing beauties’ black-stockinged legs rise and fall in time to the music, captivated by the coy and joyful smiles that lit up their faces as they swiveled their trim ankles in the air, making the laces on their black ankle boots dance. Their drawers were so sheer I was certain I could see dark triangles of hair beneath, and a blazing hot blush set my face aflame. But I could not look away. I sat there staring, mesmerized. And I felt the strangest sensation in the pit of my stomach, and lower down, a sweet, frightening fluttering, something I knew I should not be feeling, followed by a sudden sharp aching wetness between my thighs. Instantly I knew what it was. The pain that followed and nearly bent me double made it quite clear. In my distraction, I had completely forgotten the calendar, useless as it was with my maddeningly erratic monthly visitor. It might at least have given me some inkling when to expect its arrival so I could have strapped on a towel or at least worn a darker skirt!
The music soared in a dizzying crescendo and the dancers kicked and spun as pain gripped me in a series of stabbing, squeezing, clutching cramps, as if the pain were determined to wring every drop of blood from my womb. I knew the longer I sat there the worse it would be. Soon the blood would seep through my underclothes onto my pale blue satin skirt. It’s not going to get better; it’s only going to get worse, I kept telling myself over and over until the words began to blur and jumble and lose all meaning, yet I was powerless to make myself move, I just sat there staring at the dancers’ tantalizingly veiled crotches and feeling shame flood my face as my nipples hardened. I shouldn’t be feeling this, I told myself. It isn’t right; it isn’t normal! But I could not leave or look away.
I’m sure my anguish must have shown upon my face; it was all I could do not to burst into tears. I was so ashamed and confused I didn’t know what to do. And someone did notice my distress. One of those mannish women approached me—an older woman, with deep lines etched around her eyes and mouth. Her thick, cropped, curly black hair was liberally peppered with gray and she wore an English tweed suit and a lemon-colored waistcoat and kid gloves and spats of the same vivid shade. She stubbed out her cigarette on Nellie’s dessert plate, narrowly missing the remaining half of the chocolate éclair lying there leaking custard filling, and bent down as if to speak to me, but instead her lips lingeringly grazed mine. I was so stunned I could not react. I just sat there, blinking my eyes, surprised that my tears didn’t start to boil against my flaming face.
“Surely it cannot be as bad as all that, mademoiselle?” she said kindly in heavily accented English. The same words Bridget used to always say to me!
I heard laughter all around me. Whether they were truly laughing at me, I do not know, but I felt like they were. I could not even turn and meet my companions’ eyes; I did not want to see the expressions upon their faces. Oh, the horror! The shame!
Life surged back into my limbs and I bolted up and ran, plowing through the crowd as if I were running for my life, certain that everyone was staring at the big red stain blossoming on the back of my skirt.
I don’t know how I got back to the hotel; somehow I found a cab. I filled the bathtub and scrubbed my skirts as best I could, then gave up and left them for the laundress. Then I tried to scrub the shame from my skin. I lay on the bathroom floor, huddled in my flower-sprigged nightgown upon the chilly tiles, with a towel pinned to the homemade blue calico waistband clutched tight between my thighs, curled up and bent double with cramps, and cried and cried as if my world were about to end and the sun would never rise and shine for me again. I don’t know how long I lay there before I finally dragged myself to bed.
All that night I was troubled by dreams of beautiful Can-Can dancers, taunting me with their raised skirts and veiled crotches and breasts, their diaphanous blouses and drawers suddenly dissolving before my astonished eyes like sugar crystals in the rain, and mannish ladies who were not afraid to put their lips, and hands, on me even though we both knew it was the dancing beauties with their feminine frills and hourglass figures, delicious and decadent as French pastries, that I truly hungered for. But I had to make do. What else could I do when the beauties only tormented and teased? Reminding me with every shake of their pink skirts and glimpse of what lay beneath that they, these glorious creatures, were not for me. Beauty wants beauty and only suffers plain or ugly to touch it if the dazzle of dollar signs and diamonds, the promise of opulent rewards, blinds its eyes. Suddenly their ranks parted to reveal one who was all in gold with yellow feathers and diamond-tipped pins in her raven hair. She was wearing black silk stockings and golden slippers with high diamond-encrusted French heels that flashed with every movement of her dainty dancing feet. She teasingly shook her skirts right in my face, the white ruffles and yellow silk ribbons on her petticoats tickling my nose, and I looked up, startled, to see that it was Bridget Sullivan, rouged and painted as I had never seen her before. The gold paint on her eyelids twinkled when she winked at me. Without thinking, I flung myself at her feet and yanked her cobwebby white drawers down right in front of everyone at the Moulin Rouge and buried my face between her legs, wallowing and kissing with such a powerful, hungry passion that I had never in real, waking life experienced.
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.
I used to dream she was lying beside me in bed at night, brow to brow, bosom to bosom, lips barely a breath apart, sharing secrets and kisses sweeter than vanilla and strawberry taffy. I was wild to touch her the way I touched myself beneath the covers; just the fantasy left me flushing and feverish. After the circus came to town I dreamed of her in pink tights, dressed in silver spangles, with feathers in her hair, swinging on a trapeze or balanced on the back of a prancing horse. And when I read in the newspaper about a bal-de-masque up on The Hill where all the guests had come costumed as characters from Mother Goose Rhymes for weeks afterward Lulie appeared as Little Bo Peep in my dreams.
If anyone had asked me when I was seventeen, I would have said the most wonderful day of my life was when Johnny Hiram, who was sweet on Lulie, walked into Negus’ Confectionery and saw Lulie and me sitting at one of the little round white tables draped with pink and white gingham, giggling with our heads close together over a big bowl of vanilla and strawberry ice cream drenched in chocolate sauce. He completely lost his temper because she was spending time with me instead of him and shoved the bowl into the lap of my new powder-blue skirt with the elegant knife pleats—the one I had impetuously ordered without consulting Father; I was that desperate to impress Lulie. Johnny’s face turned red as the cherries on top of our ice cream and he called me a “stupid, fat heifer!”
Lulie leapt up and slapped Johnny so hard I’m surprised his head didn’t spin, then flew to my side, flung herself down on her knees before me, and, with tears of outrage glistening like a crystal veil over the brilliant sapphires of her eyes, swiped futilely at my skirt. But the flimsy napkin was no match against the melting mound that was already chilling my hot thighs.
Lulie took my hand and said, “Come home with me, Lizzie.” And I did. I would have risen from my deathbed and followed her to the ends of the earth if she had asked me to!
Her parents were away, traveling in Europe, so we had the rare privilege of her mother’s opulent rose marble bath. It was big enough for four, perhaps even more; had I been more worldly back then my fertile imagination would have surely conjured up images of delightfully decadent Roman orgies with slick and slippery naked beauties filling that rosy tub. While her maid—a real French maid from Paris, not a dirt-common, ignorant Irish Maggie!—divested me of my clothes, Lulie nonchalantly stripped off hers, leaving them where they fell for the maid to pick up later, and stepped into the tub to show me “the best part”: how the water flowed out of the mouths of golden fishes set at various heights into the wall. It was one of the first shower baths in Fall River.
While I stood there stark naked, trying to cover my flabby breasts with one hand and my coarse frizzy red bush with the other, Lulie, imperious as an alabaster princess, sent my clothes away with her maid. To be laundered “as good as new or Johnny Hiram will pay for new!” she promised with a furious toss of her curls. “I don’t know what got into that boy, unless it was the Devil, doing such a thing to you!”
I nodded dumbly. I couldn’t summon words to answer; all I could think about was the wonderful and terrifying fact that I was standing there in the midst of that beautiful pink and gold bathroom stark naked in front of Lulie Stillwell and that she was naked too. It was like a dream come true; I was so excited I could hardly breathe. I was sweating profusely, like an overworked plow horse, my armpits were drenched, and I imagined the sweat rushing down my back like a raging rank waterfall, and there was a silky hot slickness between my tightly clenched thighs. I was sure my unfortunate habit of flushing made me look like a fat tomato that had suddenly sprouted a stout body and four thick, sturdy limbs. And I was afraid Lulie would hear my knees knocking.
Lulie looked like a delicate ebony-haired water nymph standing there against the rose marble and gilt fish with water pouring over her shoulder and rushing down, like a waterfall, between her little pink and white breasts. I wanted to suckle those pink tips like a greedy infant; I knew they would taste as sweet as little cakes.
Flaming-faced, I stood and stared, like a person struck dumb or hypnotized, at the beads of water spangling the lush bush of black hair between her white thighs like little crystals.
But Lulie just smiled, seemingly oblivious to my lust. After all, she’d been in her skin her whole life and by seventeen she knew she was beautiful and was accustomed to accepting admiration as her due. But she wasn’t blind; she never had any trouble seeing the blackboard even in the back row. Surely she could see how red my face was! She had set me on fire! I couldn’t understand it! Was she stone-blind to my embarrassment or merely a model of impeccable breeding? She was in her element, and I was a fish out of water, gasping and dying, in secret ecstasy, on a perilous rocky shore. And then Lulie laughed and reached out for my hand and pulled me into the tub, and into her arms, so close that our bellies brushed and red mingled with black down below. I’ll never forget the way Lulie giggled and smiled! There was no music sweeter than her laughter to my ears!
In that instant, I forgot my shame, and everything else, except that we were together, touching, naked as pagans in that sumptuous pink bath, with golden fishes spewing warm water decadently down on us, while our bodies glided slickly against each other and we took turns bathing each other with a cake of pink perfumed soap imported from Paris molded in the shape of a perfect prizewinning rose. Before I went home, I would slip that soap into my pocket, to take home as a memento of the day my dreams came true and I shared a bath with Lulie Stillwell. I used to take it out and bury my nose in the heart of that pink rose with the bath-blunted petals and dream that I was blissfully burying my face between Lulie’s legs, nuzzling her own pink petals, making her melt.
Afterward, our bodies still flushed pink from the hot bath we had shared, we waged a playful battle, arming ourselves with fat white powder puffs that we repeatedly plunged into the pretty porcelain bowls on Mrs. Stillwell’s dressing table whenever the need arose. They were painted all around with swirls of gilt ribbon and pink roses and lavender blossoms to identify the fragrance of the powder within, nothing at all like the common tins sold at Sargent’s. We ran about the room, screeching and whooping like naked savages, climbing like nimble mountain goats over the wide quilted pink satin expanse of the bed, playfully pummeling each other with the fragrant puffs, coughing and giggling in the dense white clouds of scent that swirled around us like the sweetest snow and settled on our heads like the white powdered wigs of eighteenth-century courtiers.
When I paused to cough and sneeze and swipe the powder from my lashes, Lulie lunged and tackled me and we fell as one onto the big bed, screaming with laughter.
Did I only imagine it, or as we writhed in a welter of naked limbs and tickling fingers amidst heavenly clouds of perfumed powder did she playfully rub her pussy against mine as her fingers glided swiftly over my breasts, tickling them like the keys of the piano Lulie played so exquisitely? I like to believe the billowing powder was a Heaven-sent disguise to hide a desire we both secretly harbored but were too ashamed and afraid to admit even to each other.
We created such a ruckus that Mrs. Morner, the Swedish housekeeper, came rushing upstairs to see what all the commotion was about. She staggered in the doorway with her hand pressed against her heart and stared aghast as Lulie, the “darling child” she had known from birth, triumphantly straddled me on the bed in a cloud of perfumed powder, plying her puff like a demented confectioner over my florid breasts while I giggled and writhed beneath her, my tickling fingers groping blindly over her bosom, lingering for a sweet fleeting instant on her nipples, like little hard pink candies, and tried to rub against her in such a way that, if I needed to, I could afterward insist was unintentional. But inside I was secretly fighting with all my might the almost overpowering urge to masterfully grab her wrists and roll on top of her and grind my loins against hers.
Mrs. Morner fell back against the door and gave a scandalized screech, then proceeded to deliver a sharp tongue-lashing denouncing our “lewd horseplay.”
“Shame on the both of you, running about naked as heathens! You’re supposed to be decent, God-fearing young ladies!” she cried, and ordered us back to Lulie’s room to “put some clothes on!”
Sheepishly, daring sly, sideways glances at each other and sputtering and stifling our giggles as best we could, we wrapped ourselves in Mrs. Stillwell’s big plush pink towels—thankfully she was a woman with ample hips and breasts; otherwise they would have been too scanty to cover me—and filed dutifully past Mrs. Morner with our eyes downcast and down the sapphire, amethyst, and gold floral carpeted corridor to Lulie’s blue watered-silk bedroom where pink net water lilies, their petals sewn with shimmering tiny pink beads, bloomed upon the bedspread.
I perched nervously on the edge of a quilted blue satin armchair by the pink marble fireplace, the towel clenched tightly over my breasts, frowning at the way the fat under my arms spilled over and feeling suddenly awkwardly self-conscious of my nakedness as I watched Lulie dress.
Lulie was slender and delicate boned even without her corset, and not even her dressing gowns would fit me, so I had no choice but to stay as I was until her maid returned with my clothes. When Lulie stepped into her frilly white lace and ribbon trimmed batiste drawers I noticed the white powder still clinging, like powdered sugar, to her licorice-black bush. When she lifted her leg I caught a glimpse of deep pink and a wave of hot desire threatened to knock me off my seat. I wanted her to stay as she was, naked with me, to frolic and play some more, but I knew instinctively that the moment had passed and it would only be embarrassing and awkward if I tried to bring it back. So I turned my flaming face to the window and made some dull-witted remarks about the weather and how beautiful the garden was and when Lulie asked me to lace her stays my hands trembled like an old woman’s.
Then came the disastrous day when we went horseback riding.
I was so excited when she invited me that I told the teacher I had my monthly illness and didn’t feel well and rushed home to beg Father to buy me a riding habit; I had been too ashamed to tell Lulie that I didn’t have one and barely knew how to ride. I dreamed of something dashing and romantic like Nell Gwyn or some other heroine of history would have worn, gilt-braided burnt-orange, cinnamon, crimson, or bottle-green velvet, and I simply must have a wide-brimmed hat with a fluffy cloud-white ostrich plume held in place by a magnificent jeweled brooch as big as a lady’s clenched fist. And leather gloves and a riding crop and boots of course! I forgot all about the reality my mirror would show me—a plump, frizzy red-haired, florid and freckle faced and heavy-jawed, broad-shouldered, stout-waisted girl of seventeen—and imagined myself as one of the beautiful, elegant, poised, wasp-waisted ladies pictured in the pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book perched sidesaddle atop high-stepping steeds as they regally waved to one another, the long skirts of their riding habits cascading like waterfalls over the lean, muscled flanks of their mounts.
Father scoffed at my pretensions, my “silly notions” that he blamed on my reading matter: “Velvet riding habits and feathered hats, I never heard such folderol in my life!” Plain black or brown broadcloth, he said, was what respectable women wore when they went riding. “Only those spoiled and silly ninnies up on The Hill who don’t know the value of a dollar wear anything else,” he continued, and went on to declare that their fathers were all “jackasses who don’t have the sense to rein their daughters in. It’s their backs that need a riding crop, not the horses they ride!”
Abby—still trying to be my friend—tried to soften the blow by buying a reddish-brown broadcloth that would “work wonderfully” with my hair, and making me a new shirtwaist of white eyelet with thin bands of bright orange satin ribbon and wide white ruffles at the collar and cuffs and trimming my otherwise boring brown hat with a lovely swathe of rust-colored veiling and a dainty spray of colorful silk flowers she had been saving for something special “just like this—my Lizzie’s first riding habit,” she beamed as she drew me close and kissed my cheek.
We only had three days and Abby stayed up late and worked long hours every day at the sewing machine and doing the more delicate work like finishing the buttonholes by hand so that everything would be ready in time for our Saturday ride. But when Saturday finally came and I stood before the mirror I burst into tears and almost howled the house down. I lashed out at my reflection with my newly purchased riding crop and boots, then flung myself sobbing onto my bed, kicking the mattress and pummeling it with my fists, because I was so ugly. The tailored riding habit made me look even more broad shouldered and mannish and did nothing for my stocky figure and florid complexion. I looked nothing like the smiling sidesaddle beauties in the ladies’ magazines! Lulie was sure to think I was ugly and wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore, and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t even want to be seen with me! Not even the loan of Abby’s mother-of-pearl peony wedding brooch could ease my torment.
Sidesaddle on an ebony steed from her father’s prizewinning pedigreed stable, Lulie looked every inch a princess in deep-blue velvet to match the precious gems of her eyes, with antiqued silver buttons set with sapphires, and there was an ostrich plume, just like the one I had dreamed of, curling back gracefully over the brim of her hat, like a fluffy white cloud. Her jacket, edged in silver braid, cinched tightly in at the smallest point of her perfect hourglass waist, then flowed out gracefully over her hips. Her hair was all in ringlets, and a brooch shaped like a bouquet with flowers formed of pearls and sapphires, adorned her throat, beneath which spilled a jabot of the finest milk-white lace.
I stood there feeling lumpy and miserable, and ugly as a fat brown toad, beside the unimpressive dun-colored mare Father had grudgingly hired from the livery stable for me. I wished the ground would open wide and swallow me before Lulie’s sapphire eyes flashed cold blue fire and imperiously banished ugly, unworthy me from her exalted and elegant presence. But to my immense relief, when she saw me Lulie just smiled, and I saw no condescension or pity in her ruby lips or sapphire eyes. I wanted to jump for joy and throw my arms around her and kiss her a hundred times.
As we rode away together I prayed for a sudden downpour that would drench us to the skin, sending us scurrying back to the perfumed bacchanal of the rose marble bath again.
When we stopped to rest, the beautiful dream became a terrible, ugly nightmare in real waking life and broad daylight. We stood together under a big shady tree, leaning against its massive trunk, laughing and hugging each other the way girlfriends do. I dreamed of laying her down on the warm emerald grass and lifting her sapphire skirts, the elegant French heels of her boots tangling in the snow-white ruffles of her drawers as I tugged them off. I impulsively put my hands around that tiny blue velvet waist and pulled her closer, reveling in the feel of her bosom brushing against mine, and then—I couldn’t help myself!—I kissed her, deep and lingeringly, the way I imagined it was done in all the novels that I had read, only in their pages it was men who always did the kissing.
But Lulie didn’t swoon and melt in my arms or cling to me like passionate ivy the way the heroines in romances always did. She shoved me away so hard I fell and barked both my palms against the tree’s ugly, gnarled roots. I will never forget the disgust burning in her blue eyes as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then her hand on the skirt of her riding habit. She glared down at me as though she hated me, and I felt loathsome and small, like something ugly and pathetic she wanted to step on.
“You’re a wicked, evil creature, Lizzie Borden, and I hate you!” she cried. Each word was like a hammer on my heart.
We rode back toward town in silence. I was so afraid Lulie would tell, that I would be ruined and everyone would laugh at me and I would replace that unfortunate boy who ate paste, though at eighteen he was surely old enough to know better, as the butt of all my classmates’ jokes. I couldn’t bear to see the shame and disgust in Father’s, Emma’s, and Abby’s eyes, and to hear their voices speaking of sin, shame and disgrace. I was afraid doctors would come, maybe even priests, and I would be sent away, to a madhouse or one of those quiet, secluded sanitariums in the country, and given some hellish treatment. Possibly they would cut open my head and try to remove the evil thoughts they would say the Devil had planted there like black roses and I would never be allowed in civilized company again for fear that I would be unable to control my unnatural urges and would disgrace myself again. I would be shunned like a leper. People would say I couldn’t be trusted around pretty girls. Maybe I would be locked in the attic the way they did madwomen in novels. I would spend the rest of my life in darkness and shackles, barely kept alive on stale crusts of bread and tepid water.
Terror stole my breath away; I couldn’t breathe! Then everything went black and I felt myself falling. My head struck a stone like the clapper of a bell and for an instant I was excruciatingly aware of the most terrible pain radiating from the back of my head all the way down to the bottom of my spine and a loud ringing in my ears. I awakened lying on my own bed with Father hovering anxiously over me and Emma fighting Abby to assist Dr. Bowen in undressing me until he finally shoved Emma out the door and sent her downstairs to the kitchen to boil some water just to get her out of the way. I was bruised and bleeding in several places and ached all over and kept drifting in and out of consciousness, yet my anguished brain kept keening, Lulie doesn’t love me!
I wanted to die when, between them, Abby and Dr. Bowen wrestled my corset and chemise off, carelessly baring my pudgy pink breasts with nipples like hard tawny-peach buttons before Father’s eyes. No one even thought of asking him to leave the room! I tried, but they dismissed me as delirious. Father helped Abby hold my arms down when I tried to cover myself, wincing and weeping in humiliation and the pain that shot through my torso like lightning bolts when Dr. Bowen’s prodding revealed two, possibly three, broken ribs. When the doctor pulled off my drawers and rolled me over and exposed my bare bottom, jabbed with his index finger, and, in answer to my pain-filled scream, opined that I had fractured my tailbone I knew there was no escaping shame; in one form or another, it would be with me all my life. And I would always be afraid. The only consolation was that at least this was a private disgrace, in my bedroom, surrounded by family, away from the bullies and merciless queens of the schoolyard, and the blue blaze of hate emanating from beautiful Lulie’s eyes.
I never went back to school. For a few weeks the teachers sent my homework, but I didn’t feel like doing it, so after a while they didn’t bother anymore. By the time I had fully recovered there were only two months left till graduation. I was smart enough, I could have caught up, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. I just couldn’t bear to face Lulie, to see her glance spitefully at me with that blue blaze of hate in her eyes, then lean over, cup her hand to her mouth, and whisper mean-spirited remarks about me into a friend’s ear. Word would rapidly spread and soon they would all be laughing at me, all those uppity girls from up on The Hill. So I dropped out. Father bought me my class ring anyway; he said I deserved it after what I had been through.
A few weeks after she wore a white chiffon dress to the graduation ceremony, Lulie Stillwell put on another white dress and married Johnny Hiram. He was the rich, tall, dark, and handsome boy in the faux medieval mansion next door, perfectly cast to play Prince Charming to Lulie’s Snow White and live happily ever after with her in a house grand as a castle that was a wedding gift from her father furnished floor to ceiling, with Johnny’s father’s money paying for all the beautiful things they would buy on their six-month European honeymoon.
Everyone said she was the most beautiful bride Fall River had ever seen in white Duchesse satin, priceless pearls, and yards of heirloom lace, lace and pearl and diamond encrusted cathedral-length train and veil, with an exquisite coronet woven of silk orange blossoms, diamonds, and pearls crowning the midnight glory of her hair. I still have a picture of her in that beautiful dress I cut out of The Fall River Globe; I never did find the courage to go to Gay’s Photography Studio and inquire about purchasing a print. I was afraid they would have to ask Lulie’s permission first and, of course, she would say No.
There were a full dozen bridesmaids, all girls from The Hill, in shimmering shell-pink satin overlaid with chiffon, and broad-brimmed hats laden with roses, ruffles, and ribbons, each with a single strand of delicate blush-pink pearls around her throat and a pink shell cameo framed in gold and pearls at her breast as a gift from the bride. It wasn’t fair! I should have been one of them! Lulie should have kissed me and pinned a cameo on my breast that lovely wedding morning; I deserved it more than any of the girls she had chosen. I loved her more than any of them did, including the groom!
A few weeks later I would happen across Flossie Grew suffering a nosebleed outside Gifford’s Jewelry & Fine Gifts, and when I stopped to assist her I also helped myself to the cameo on the silk-braid-bordered lapel of her fashionable moss-green linen suit. It wasn’t really stealing; I was only taking back what rightfully belonged to me.
For years to come, I would lie back on my bed, Lulie’s wedding picture propped up on the table beside me where I could see Fall River’s most beautiful bride, and hold that precious pink cameo cupped tenderly in my palm, while I touched myself and dreamed of Lulie smiling at me, radiant with love, not burning with contempt—that was the way it should have been! I already knew the ghost of the carefree, bewitching black-haired girl who had straddled me, giggling, rubbing, and tickling, amidst clouds of rose-and-lavender-perfumed powder—like the phantom petals of bridal flowers showering down on us or a wedding veil to cloak our naked lust in the respectable garb of girlish horseplay—would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I sent Lulie a porcelain candy dish with a pattern of blue lovebirds as a wedding gift, but she never acknowledged it. Everyone else got a thank-you note, written on the new Mrs. Hiram’s gilt-bordered and monogrammed cream stationery, but not me. I was so upset I wanted to jab her eyes out with one of the plethora of sterling silver pickle forks she was rumored to have received from her poorer friends and relations. I wanted to hurt her as much as she had hurt me. How dare she ignore me when all I had done was love her? Was that really such a crime?
The years passed. I became an old maid. I lost hope and gave up on love. I convinced myself it was only the stuff of stories or a rare and glorious miracle, a gift from God given only to the most beautiful and undeserving, pretty girls with vivacious personalities that sparkled like champagne and indulgent, selfless fathers who wanted them to be happy and were willing to let them go instead of keeping them chained and bound to be the comfort of their parents’ old age. And then, like a miracle, the answer to my prayers, Bridget Sullivan had come dancing into my life with her twinkling green eyes, musical Irish brogue, and ready smile. Even an ocean apart I could still hear her singing:
Oh, dem golden slippers,
Oh, dem golden slippers
Golden slippers I’se going to wear
Because they look so neat.
Oh, dem golden slippers,
Oh, dem golden slippers,
Golden slippers I’se going to wear
To walk the golden street.
The evening breeze blew me out of my reverie, back to the hedonistic Riviera and out of the past, and I snatched my hands away from the statues, startled to see how far they had strayed down the marble bodies. My face flaming, I glanced guiltily around, hoping no one had seen me standing there between those marble nudes with my head thrown back, and my eyes closed, caressing them as I remembered Lulie. Anyone would think me pathetic or mad, perhaps both. I shivered and wished I had brought my sealskin cape. Not only my chilled flesh but also my modesty craved it—my nipples were standing up, unmistakably, achingly prominent, beneath my satin bodice, begging for a lover’s attention like a dog for a bone.
Suddenly a shoulder brushed brusquely against my own and a tall young man in evening clothes walked past me. He stopped at the railing and took something from his pocket. It was a pistol! As he raised it and pressed the barrel to his temple I ran and caught hold of his arm. I was too naïve to realize that this was a common ploy certain men used to prey upon gullible women, to extract funds and favors from them. I honestly thought I was saving a human life.
He had lost all his money at the roulette wheel, he said; he had nothing left to live for. I was startled to suddenly find him in my arms, weeping on my shoulder, and to feel his warm, salty tears dripping down between my breasts. And then he kissed me, bruising hard and urgently upon my mouth at the same time as his hands found my breasts and began squeezing and kneading them. It was nothing like the books I had read had led me to believe it would be, and not at all like the tender, treasured kiss from my architect. It was at once brutal and exciting and for the life of me I couldn’t make up my mind whether to order him to stop or sigh breathlessly and whisper, Darling, never stop!
Suddenly my back was against a cold white wall, and his lips, hot and hungry, were on mine, and his questing tongue was endeavoring to part them as his hands gathered up my skirts and roved beneath where no one except me had ever dared touch before. His passion frightened me even as it stirred and thrilled me, but Fear was the victor, and I pushed him from me and fled.
My heart was beating like a voodoo drum. My stays were so tight, I felt certain I would faint. But I didn’t. The panic passed, but not so quickly the pangs of passion. As soon as I was safe back inside the casino, I castigated myself for being such a coward. I wanted to turn and go back, to give in, surrender and melt beneath those hot lips and ardent hands. But it was too late. By the time I had tiptoed tremulously to the threshold leading out onto the terrace and peeped out he was already gone. And so was my purse, but I didn’t notice that until after we were safely back at the hotel. I told Anna that in all the excitement I must have laid it down somewhere and it was likely long gone by now. Fortunately, Anna, giddy from the golden wine, was feeling generous and gave me $100 she had won at roulette and told me to dry my eyes and not worry a moment more about it.
The next night, our last before leaving, we were back at the casino despite my protests that once was enough. I submitted to the coiffeur’s finicky attentions one more time and was painted and laced back into the breathless, bone-crushing embrace of the corset and too-tight peacock satin gown. Though Carrie and Anna sniffed derisively about appearing in public two nights in a row in the same gown, I would not wear my peach taffeta, the only other ball gown I owned; I would not have another man’s hand touch where my beloved’s had rested against my waist when we waltzed. I would not let the slick men lounging like lizards around the casino sully my sweet and tender memories, or my dress, with their selfish, self-interested caresses.
I boldly ventured out onto the terrace again, both hoping and dreading that I would meet that young man and he would take me in his arms again and this time not let me go until he was ready to. I shouldn’t have, yet I felt drawn, pulled as if I were one half of two magnets facing each other. I wanted to be held and touched again. I wanted to be stirred. There was an indescribable ache within me that I wanted to appease, even though it scared me, because this was my body alone being assailed by these aching yearnings; it had nothing at all to do with my head or my heart.
Then there he was—locked in a smoldering embrace with a brassy-haired buxom beauty in gold brocade blazing from the diadem on her head to the hem of her gown with a fortune in diamonds. A pistol lay forgotten at their feet. A diamond bracelet that must have slipped from her wrist dangled from his pocket. Startled by my abrupt intrusion, they broke apart. She at least had the good breeding to blush, but he gave me a scornful look, a lifted eyebrow accompanied by a smirk that seemed to say you had your chance as he bent to retrieve his weapon. He put it in his pocket, then took his companion’s arm and led her back inside the casino. From the doorway I watched her give him money to place a bet. I turned my back then and wandered, alone, back onto the terrace, burning with a fever that I alone couldn’t quench.
It was a loss, and yet it wasn’t. His ardent mouth and roving hands had finesse, yes, he knew exactly what to do because he had done it so many times before, but there was no magic, no true feeling or connection of the soul; it was nothing at all like that day at Glastonbury under the thorn tree. He did not touch my heart, only my body. I was lonely and couldn’t be with the one I loved, and that—my wretched longing loneliness—I think had more to do with these sudden wanton spasms of lust than anything else. I wanted love, I just never knew how much until I left Fall River, and I must find a way to quench, or kill, these improper passions before I did something to disgrace myself, something unforgivable, with no hope of redemption.
Suddenly there was a rumble of thunder and a zigzag of silver lightning lit up the darkened sky. I nearly jumped out of my skin, then laughed at my own foolishness. The rain started to fall, at first a stray plop and then a steady drip-drip; then the sky ripped open like a piece of cheap midnight-blue calico filled with a million silvery needles. This rain was hard and violent, stabbing into my skin until I thought it would surely bruise me. But I didn’t care. I threw back my head and opened my arms to it, flinging them wide, not caring that my corset pinched and my breasts jutted and strained alarmingly against my bodice, like a glass of milk about to overflow. I wantonly, brazenly opened myself to it and let it soak me to the skin and lick the paint from my face. I wanted to be washed clean, to feel fresh and new. I abandoned myself to the rain as if it were my lover, surrendered, and let it cool, wash away, and drown my fevered passion.
As a cold wind blew the rain sideways the strand of blue-green glass beads twined like a sleeping snake in my hair broke and, blown by the wind, went skittering and clattering all over the terrace. The fan of peacock plumes fell from my hair as it came tumbling down and I laughed as I watched it fly away like a tropical bird fleeing a hurricane.
My gown was ruined; it, like my hair, hung down straight, heavy with the weight of water, plastered to my body like a second skin. The skirt slapped and wrapped itself around my limbs so that I staggered like one intoxicated and nearly fell more than once as I made my way back into the bright lights of the casino, dragging my long, sopping-wet train along behind me like a mermaid with a crippled tail. I knew my companions would be horrified at the sight and sad, soggy state of me, but it was worth it, and the price of the Paris gown. I had needed this rain in a way that I could never hope to explain.
But I paid another price for “my foolishness,” “my wanton frolic in the rain.” I came down with a dreadful cold that I had great difficulty shaking off despite the plethora of pills and potions Miss Mowbry forced down my throat. But sunny Italy was a balm, a godsend, like a tonic for the soul to me. I sat in the sun, despite the risk of freckles, and let it bake the illness out of me.
The signora at the pensione where we stayed in Naples was a great, round, motherly woman and she instantly conceived a great liking for me. She plied me with food—plates heaped high with pasta covered with hearty, robust sauces, which I, at her encouragement, devoured with gusto. I fell in love with the food—the pastas swimming in rich sauces, breads, cakes, and, most of all, Capezzoli di Venere, the exquisite bonbons called “Nipples of Venus.” Roman chestnuts enrobed in white chocolate and brandied sugar with a daub of dark chocolate sitting atop the dome just like a woman’s nipple, they tasted simply divine, and I could never get enough of them. I felt so daring and decadent when I cast off my shoes and stockings and all the manifold layers of my increasingly tight, stifling, binding, and confining clothes and lay back on the chaise longue in my room, naked as God made me, and languorously suckled and licked those divine candies. Sometimes I rose and went to stand rebelliously naked, sweaty and pink, with my hair all a-frizz, and my face and fingertips all stained with chocolate, before the looking glass and called myself a “greedy pig” before I threw a shawl over my reflection in disgust, then went right back to my chaise and chocolates, already knowing that as soon as they were gone I would throw on a robe and send the signora’s boy out for more.
I was getting fat; there was no pretending otherwise. I cared and yet I didn’t. Eating brought me a kind of comfort, and I began to eat more and more, to try to fill up the emptiness inside me. Even when I was no longer hungry I kept on eating, hoping I would eventually be full, even though I knew in my heart that it was not food I was craving. No mere food, no matter how enticing and delicious, could slake the hunger in my soul, but I kept on hoping, and eating.
The signora smilingly helped me let out the seams of all my dresses. She kissed away my tears when she took the measure of my waist and assured me that real men liked a woman with meat on her bones who knew how to appreciate good food.
“A woman with a lusty appetite is worth her weight in gold,” she said with a bawdy, knowing chuckle, “because a wise man knows she will bring her appetite with her to bed.”
I saw the ruins at Pompeii by moonlight alone but for a hired guide who was as annoying as a fly; he just kept buzzing around me talking all the while. I was tempted to dismiss him so I would be free to contemplate all the beauty spread out before me in blessed silence; besides, he only made me feel lonelier, and angry at him for not being the one I wanted most of all. I dreamed of my architect, of having him there, to kiss in the moonlight, and enthrall me with his tales of history. I yearned to have him hold my hand and guide me through Italy, explaining everything we saw, like why that tower in Pisa leaned, opening my eyes to all its wonders. I wanted him, not a guide or a book, to tell me.
In Rome, while the others were busy buying dresses, I visited churches, cathedrals, palaces, art galleries, and museums and went to the opera almost every night. Even though I could not understand the words, the passion of the singers and the beauty of their voices—lilting, soaring, cascading!—never failed to move me to tears. I’m sure I must have spent $100 throwing roses at the feet of tenors. But I didn’t care. I was enraptured by the art, especially Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. I could have gazed for hours upon the various Madonnas, cherubs, saints, and angels; even the devils fascinated me. I purchased a number of photographs and engravings to take home with me, but they were all in black and white when I longed most for color—rich, vivid, vibrant, living color! I loved the Sistine Chapel; I craned my neck and stared up at the ceiling until my neck ached, not daring to do what I really wanted to do and lie down upon the floor and gaze up at it to my lonely heart’s content. And I toured St. Peter’s twice, again alone; I did not care for the brash, noisy, but well-meaning chatter of the guides, they only made my heart ache worse.
In Venice I drifted for hours, listless and glassy-eyed, lost in daydreams and lusty longings, in a gondola, barely conscious of the Italian songs the gondoliers sang to me in their decadent dark baritone or sensual tenor voices, blind and impervious to the gorgeous scenery going by that I, most likely, would never see again.
Then it was back to Liverpool in bustle and haste with our ever-growing mountain of luggage to catch the next sailing of the SS Scythia.
There was a letter waiting for me—a letter that made my heart sing! He could not be there to bid me bon voyage on my homeward-bound journey, but he was still thinking of me fondly. Fondly! Thinking of me! I almost died of delight!
I stood at the railing as the ship pulled out to sea; this time it was not raining, and the sun was shining down on me like a golden blessing straight from God. When England was but a mere speck too small for me to see I went back to the cabin I shared with Anna and lay down on my bed and read his letter again and again until I had committed every precious, wonderful word to memory. And then I wept, but I was smiling through my tears, like sunshine through rain. A woman’s heart and hopes are contradictory things; no wonder so many men take such a dim view of feminine constancy and think us fickle and contrary. “La donna è mobile” indeed!