Chapter 8

The moment I saw the big white house on French Street nestled amongst the maple trees I knew it had been waiting for me all my life; that was why it was vacant at such an opportune time. This was my house! My home! The one I had always dreamed of! This was where I belonged! Welcome home, Lizzie! the maple trees whispered like a bevy of ardent beaus as a caressing breeze gently stirred their leaves. Maplecroft—the name sprang unbidden to my lips the moment I set my foot upon the first gray granite step. I knew then that as soon as it was mine I would send a stonemason to chisel that name into the top riser, facing boldly out onto French Street in big capital letters: MAPLECROFT! When the moment came, I didn’t even haggle over the cost; I paid it without comment: $11,000; I would have paid ten times that if they had asked me to.

We put the house at 92 Second Street up for sale, determined never to set foot in it again, and had a hired girl come in to box up everything that had belonged to Abby and send it on to “that slattern Sarah,” as a remembrance of her sister.

The ink was barely dry upon the deed before I set to work decorating the palace of my dreams. There was nothing cramped or dark about my Maplecroft; it was all spaciousness and light, fourteen big rooms, with high ceilings and an abundance of windows to welcome in the light. I ordered stained glass for some of them and the light poured in, blissfully clothing me in all the jewel-vibrant colors I had longed for all my life.

I swore that this would never be a house of dark, ugly secrets, shameful, sinister shadows, and lies; beneath this roof I would never be anything but my true, honest self. This above all: to thine own self be true, I ordered carved above the fireplace in the room I chose for my winter bedroom—yes, it was the height of ostentatiousness, I know, but I had two bedrooms: one for summer, and one for winter, on opposite sides of the house.

It was luxury every inch, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in Maplecroft, even in the servants’ quarters, kitchen, pantry, and laundry the floors were golden oak with dark-walnut wainscoting for contrast.

Throughout the house there were parquet floors, crown moldings, and high white linen ceilings, either painted, embossed, or creamy clean; some I even had adorned with gold maple leaves. The woodwork, golden oak, maple, mahogany, rosewood, and rich deep-red cherry wood, was beautiful, smooth as satin or ornately carved, and the walls were all papered in silk. What fun I had choosing the patterns! I chose ice-blue silk with an elegant gold lattice pattern framing bountiful clusters of purple and green grapes and bouquets of white roses for my winter bedroom, and rich chocolate silk with bold gold stripes alternating with rows of bright pink flowers for my summer bedroom.

There was a grand piano in the parlor although I didn’t play, heavy rose silk drapes lined in ice-blue silk, rose and gold brocade upholstered sofas and chairs, matching cushions on the window seats, and, eventually, a large, gilt-framed portrait of me, gowned in ice-blue satin, sapphires, and pearls, with a white lace shawl draped loosely about my shoulders and a deep-pink rose in one hand as I leaned pensively against the pedestal of a Grecian statue of lovers embracing.

The artist had flattered me and minimized my shoulders, waist, hips, and heavy jaw, making me more beautiful than I ever had been or ever would be in real life. But I was grateful that he, with his artist’s eye, could also see the Lizzie of my dreams, or Lizbeth as I had secretly called myself ever since my architect had so christened me. And, for one brief moment, it made me feel a little less alone. Long after I knew it was a dream that could never come true, I used to stand before that portrait and imagine myself making a grand entrance down the sweeping, elegant cherry wood staircase embellished with carved and gilded maple leaves to greet a parlor full of guests, all eager and happy to see me, the men vying to kiss my hand and the women to embrace me.

But Maplecroft, at least, was no longer a dream—it was solid and real, the embodiment of all my dreams. There were Italianate arches, pillars, and Turkish and Aubusson carpets, and a billiard room even though I didn’t play, but I fancied it the epitome of elegance to have such a room and imagined it filled with handsome gentlemen enjoying fine cigars and sipping brandy from fine etched-crystal glasses as they stood around the green felt–topped table.

My library, one of the largest rooms in the house, and yet also the coziest, had every wall lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves that it gave me immense delight to fill with leather-bound volumes. I had never owned so many books in my life—Father thought it a waste of money since one generally read each volume only one time—and spent many happy hours pasting my specially designed monogrammed bookplate inside the cover of each one.

There were four bathrooms with toilets like thrones, Queen Victoria herself I’m sure never sat upon a finer, and the sides of the gleaming pearl-white porcelain claw-footed bathtubs were painted with exquisite floral motifs to match the rugs, curtains, and wallpaper. And there were colorful cakes of perfumed soap in floral-painted and gilt-edged white porcelain dishes in each one. The soaps in my summer bathroom were pink and molded in the shape of roses in memory of that lovely, long-ago day I had shared with Lulie. The soaps in my winter bathroom were white or ice blue.

There were six large fireplaces each with an elaborate mahogany mantel carved with fruit, flowers, foliage, or animals, and a bit of posy I had chosen because of its personal significance to me. A pair of iron bulldogs sat faithfully flanking each hearth, and painted metal peacocks fanned out tails inlaid with glass mosaics as fire screens.

For the mantel in my library, which opened directly into my summer bedroom, so my beloved books would always be close at hand on the many nights when sleep eluded me, I chose a verse particularly dear to my heart, one my Englishman, the architect who had built such sweet, wonderful dreams in my heart that fate, Father, and my own timidity and doubt had demolished, had recited to me that magical day at Glastonbury:

The green leaf of loyalty’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.

It spoke to me in a secret way none but my own lonely and tormented heart could ever understand. Father’s will and soft Abby’s sudden hardness as a result of David Anthony’s damning revelations had destroyed whatever loyalty and sense of duty I had left for my family. I was the white rose withering in the house at 92 Second Street, but their blood that I had spilled had saved and revived me and allowed me to go on and flourish in my own little kingdom—Maplecroft! —My Ain Countrie!

I had thistle blossoms and leaves carved in a border slightly suggestive of a heart embracing the words.

And in my bedroom, within sight of my bed, where I could lie warm as toast beneath my eiderdown quilt and drowsily watch the dance of the flames, I had carved a verse embodying the wistful, hopeful dream I still believed in those blissfully, blind days might still come true, and, God willing, soon:

And old time friends, and twilight plays
And starry nights, and sunny days,
Come trooping up the misty ways,
When my fire burns low.

Emma had the room across the hall. As stark as a nun’s cell, it was the bleakest room in the house, just plain white walls and a bare wooden floor, a bed with a small table beside it, her Bible and a lamp reposing on top, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and a chair by the fire, all of the plainest design, like something a Quaker would have ordered; there was not even a fern or a china shepherdess or even a bright rug to add a touch of warmth and cheer. The pitcher and basin on the washstand didn’t even have flowers painted on them; they were plain white! Though in the years to come Emma would develop a mania for religious pictures, books, and bric-a-brac, mostly of distinctly Catholic taste, eventually crowding her room with a whole host of saints, angels, Madonnas, and baby Jesuses, with a splendid gilt-framed reproduction of da Vinci’s Last Supper hanging right over her bed, until it bore more than a passing resemblance to a dusty and disorderly gift shop I had seen in Rome nestled right in the shadow of the Vatican. There came to be so many little tables covered with china figures and framed pictures, postcards, and prayer cards that the maid could hardly turn around when she came in to clean and hardly dared breathe lest she inadvertently break something with an accidental brush of her elbow or hip or the gentle whisk of her feather duster. It was worse than the Quaker-plain furniture and white walls had been and I hated to even glance inside the room if the door happened to be open when I was walking down the hall. More often than not, whenever I did Emma would glance up from where she was kneeling in prayer at the foot of her bed or sitting with her head bowed over her Bible or some other religious text and give me a long look that implied this was exactly what I should be doing. I couldn’t stand it! It never failed to make me shudder! I felt like ordering a placard carved with the words Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! to hang above the doorway as a warning to any potential visitors, though the Reverend Jubb and his sister were the only ones who ever came to visit Emma; all her former friends proved to be fair-weather and drifted away the moment I was acquitted.

I knew we would never agree—Emma was intent on turning her lone room in our great, grand house into a convent cell, while I had sold my soul for the gay life and luxuries galore. Now that we could afford all of life’s finer things my sister perversely wanted no part of them. It was a perfect example of the old adage: after you get what you want, you don’t want it. It was most exasperating! In truth, it made me sick. I felt betrayed by my own sister.

“You’re behaving just like Father,” I stamped my foot and shouted at her more than once. “You’re rich enough to have anything and you want nothing!”

But we both knew the sad truth. Emma only continued to live with me so people wouldn’t talk. I suppose I should have been grateful for that, only . . . people did talk, and plenty! But Emma said if we went our separate ways everyone would take her leaving me as a silent admission of my guilt, they would say that my very own sister believed I had gotten away with murder, so it was better that we stay together. Together . . . yet apart. Though we lived under the same roof, sometimes a whole string of days would pass without our even seeing each other. We kept to ourselves and only presented a united front before witnesses; then we stepped into our roles like consummate actresses. Our devotion was truly remarkable; no acquitted murderess could ever have wished for a more loyal and ardent champion than I had in my sister, Emma.

But it was all for show, those all-important, sacrosanct appearances we must always, at all costs, keep up. It was as though the death of Abby, her sworn enemy, had freed Emma from the promise she had, at only thirteen years old, made to our dead mother to “always look after Baby Lizzie.” The moment I was acquitted, Emma ceased mothering me, and left me to fend for myself, except for those all-important appearances and those, thankfully few, awkward moments when she felt beholden to try to be my conscience. She just suddenly seemed to lose interest and let the cloak of duty fall from her shoulders. Only when it was gone did I begin to miss what I had for all those years resented. Now there was no one to hold me back and try to fetter me with prattle about morals and etiquette, I was truly free to do exactly as I pleased. And yet somehow the joy was somewhat dimmed, though I would spend the rest of my life lying to myself and pretending that it wasn’t.

I was so full of hope back then, when I set out to furnish Maplecroft, it was like I had been reborn, filthy rich and free! No one could stop me or say to me nay! I was determined to deluge myself with all the luxury and decadence and creature comforts I had ever craved but been denied by my father’s penny-pinching tyranny. Now I would have nothing but the finest frivolities, not just humdrum boring necessities. I ordered crystal chandeliers, quality reproductions of paintings and statues I had admired on my Grand Tour, I splurged on Tiffany lamps, and mother-of-pearl sconces shaped like scallop shells with pearl and crystal prisms dangling beneath, fine crystal, china, monogrammed silverware, and linens for my table, and not one but two of the heaviest and fanciest silver tea services money could buy from Tiffany’s, with my monogram prominently worked into the design of course.

And I developed a sudden, inexplicable mania for collecting souvenir spoons made to commemorate special occasions and historical events, like the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, and the Salem Witch Trials, whimsical figures like Mother Goose, or famous folk like George and Martha Washington and William Shakespeare, and I had at least one for every state and every country. I really can’t explain it; I just woke up one morning and impulsively started collecting them and never stopped.

I ordered every room to be always filled with vases of flowers that were to be replenished with new ones the moment any of the blooms started to wilt.

And upon my walls, each in a gilded frame, chaste, benevolent, and serenely smiling Madonnas hung beside plump nude courtesans lolling wantonly on rumpled beds, French ballet girls, Turkish harem girls, and geishas from Japan, mermaids, nymphs and goddesses of ancient myths naked but for their long, flowing hair and diaphanous draperies, royal mistresses and queens, including Nell Gwyn, Madame Pompadour, the scandalous du Barry, Marie Antoinette, and Empress Josephine, heroines of history and legend, including a proud and mighty bare-breasted Boudicca in a metal corselet and helmet hefting a sword high, Lady Godiva wearing only her long auburn hair, and Cleopatra with a poisonous asp sinking its fatal fangs into her bare, perfect breast.

My neighbors said I had more naked women on my walls than a bordello, but it was art and perfectly respectable. Each piece was purchased pedigreed, and at great expense, from a well-known and prestigious gallery in Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington, or San Francisco; some even came from London. If I hadn’t been Lizzie Borden, no one would have said a word. They also deemed the numerous small tabletop reproductions of classical statues scattered throughout the house unseemly because they were all nudes, some even depicting lovers passionately entwined. One girl I hired for the day to hem the drapes in my summer bedroom spread it all over town that I had a little pert-breasted pink marble slave girl, stark naked and in shackles, on the table beside my bed standing on the gilded pedestal of a rose-silk-shaded lamp and that she looked “shiny from rubbing.” But I didn’t care; people were always gossiping about something!

And I had a telephone and electricity, the best plumbing money could buy, hot and cold running water, and every modern, newfangled convenience I could find to buy. All the salesmen had to say was “new” and “modern” and I was sold! I would never go back to the primitive way of life I had known at the house on 92 Second Street!

I gave my wardrobe a complete overhaul too. I ignored the mirror and my dressmaker’s and Emma’s advice and bought to suit my tastes, not my figure, and clothed myself in a veritable rainbow, a whole wonderful spectrum of pinks, purples, oranges, greens, blues, yellows, and reds; solids, stripes, plaids, paisleys, prints, and polka dots. I indulged my love of lace and fancy trimmings like silk fringe, frogs, and braid, tinsel and beads, buttons both bold and dainty, silver or gold, shiny and new or antiqued, some even set with precious stones, and, of course, long rows of dainty pearls snaking from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine. I bought great behemoth hats heaped high with wax fruit or vegetables, feathers, or even entire stuffed birds, some sitting on nests replete with speckled eggs, and silk and velvet flowers, ruffles, and ribbons, many with brims wide as serving platters with lace or net veils to draw like a curtain over my face so I could enjoy some occasional sweet moments of anonymity in public, especially when I visited cities where I was known only because my picture had been in the newspapers—thank Heaven some of the artists, seeking to sell more papers, had flattered me and depicted me as a willowy wasp-waisted damsel in distress utterly unlike my actual short, stout, jowly-jawed self. I bought elegant high-heeled shoes and exquisite high-buttoned boots, gloves, shawls, and parasols, fur coats, wraps, muffs, and velvet coats with embroidered lapels and silk frogs and tassels.

When I woke up one morning and decided that my jewelry box was as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard I impulsively marched into Gifford’s and proceeded to fill it with sapphire, ruby, emerald, and diamond rings, set in gold and in platinum, simple band styles and ornate clusters, a lady’s gold watch, a set of tortoiseshell and gold combs for my hair, four cameo brooches, and a heart-shaped pendant paved with ruby and diamond chips that I liked so well I ordered a second one made with diamonds and sapphires, and then, as soon as I got home, I phoned back and commissioned a third one with emeralds. And I went back the next day having suddenly conceived a passion for opals. It felt so good just to be able to buy whatever I wanted, heedless of need, motivated only by desire and, yes, greed, without having to answer to anyone for my frivolous and selfish impulses.

I tried to pretend I didn’t care how broad and mannish my shoulders looked beneath all the ruffles and frills, and great big bows and flounces, or how my jowls dripped like puddles of melting pink wax over the lace edges of the high collars that were meant to make a lady’s throat look like a white marble pillar. I looked dumpy and lumpy, but I stood far back from the mirror and scrunched up my eyes and squinted until I thought I truly saw Lizbeth of Maplecroft, elegant, gracious, and lithe in her new finery.

And beneath the lavish fabric confections of my dresses, in joyful defiance of Father now moldering in his grave, I indulged my every frivolous and extravagant whim upon the garments that no one but a maid, laundress, and perhaps a husband or lover would ever see. Good-bye, plain, prim white cottons, cheap calico, and flannel! Henceforth, even in the coldest winter, I would cover my bosom and nether regions only with silk—white, champagne, baby-blush pink, ice blue, the most delicate lilac, mint green, butter yellow, and pale peach, and, upon occasion, when I was feeling especially daring, black silk trimmed with French lace threaded with red satin ribbons! Cotton and wool, I vowed, would never sheathe my limbs again, only the finest silk stockings—black, white, pink, and flesh colored. Every undergarment was trimmed with lace and ribbons; some even had exquisite little rosettes and seed pearls or meticulously stitched pleats and tucks. I ordered corsets in apricot, apple green, blush, and ice-blue satin, and ruffled taffeta petticoats that rustled every time I moved, and later, when narrow skirts came into fashion, sleek silk ones inset with lace.

Every night when I went, alas alone, to bed, I was clad in a nightgown, matching robe, and high-heeled chamber slippers fit for a French courtesan or a lavishly embroidered silk kimono worthy of the most desirable geisha. I didn’t care what the servants, or anyone else, thought, though in my heart of hearts it made me terribly sad to know I was going to bed dressed like a woman ready to receive her lover and yet I had none. Someday, I hoped and prayed, though for a lover more than a husband, I admit. After Father, I feared giving any man the power to dominate, rule, and control me ever again. My freedom had been so hard, and violently, won, I was loath to ever again put it in jeopardy. Better to love immorally, I thought, than to be enslaved. And I already had even worse sins that I must someday answer to God for, so what was one more? Just another cherry on the cake. So I might as well enjoy myself and live life to the fullest while I was alive, since after I was dead I would surely be damned. I know that sounds blasé, but I had to live with myself and what I had done, and it was better to keep on dancing as long as possible than pay the fiddler and send him on his way and let fear-filled silence reign.

Quiet moments were always the worst. I kept hearing Father’s voice in my head calling me a “spendthrift” and saying, as he always had in life, that I could not have a penny without it burning a hole in my pocket. It was most distressing and I tried to drown him out with the rustle of greenbacks and the clink of coins. Oh, shut up, Father! I wanted to scream. Money is made for spending, not hoarding! I was having fun and even from beyond the grave he was trying to spoil it! He really was a mean old man! Sometimes I had to take the sleeping syrup Dr. Bowen prescribed just to quiet Father enough so I could sleep.

Now that the dream of Bridget had died, I disdained the idea of hiring another Irish Maggie to take her place and opted for a kindly and sensible Swedish housekeeper named Hannah instead, and two more Swedish girls, Elsa and Greta, to serve as maids, one for upstairs the other for down. They were all pleasant, moon-faced girls with stout, sturdy figures, none of whom tempted me to lascivious thoughts in the least. And to tend the grounds, I engaged a plainspoken but polite Yankee gardener—though with some degree of imagination, thank goodness, since I considered that essential. And, though it raised a great many eyebrows, I acquired a devilishly handsome French chauffeur, Monsieur Tetrault, liveried, of course, in gray broadcloth, gilt buttons, and black shiny boots and cap, with my monogram worked in dark blue upon his sleeves and chest so everyone would know he belonged to me. Admittedly he did stir my blood a bit, but alas, he was married. His wife was my cook, and a most excellent one too, so I was loath to risk offending her. Madame Tetrault was a marvel in the kitchen; she could do all the traditional, comforting American dishes as well as the most decadent gourmet delights from France and Italy, and desserts were her specialty—just thinking about her marvelous jelly roll makes my mouth water!

And for Monsieur to drive me about in I had two carriages. Black-lacquered with a gold maple leaf and my initials monogrammed in gilt upon each door, one was upholstered in ice-blue velvet and the other in midnight, drawn by an elegant high-stepping quartet of snow-white or coal-black horses. Later, when motorcars became all the fashion, a gleaming black Buick sedan and a sleek silver Packard replaced them. I had the only private gas pump in town, set prominently alongside the white-graveled driveway outside my glaze-windowed garage, which was heated and even equipped with hot and cold running water so Monsieur Tetrault could wash the grease off his hands after working on the cars. Of course everyone stuck their noses in the air and denounced it all as ostentatious and vulgar. But I didn’t care!

My neighbors on The Hill were, of course, quick to criticize everything I did. They were always declaring themselves scandalized and endlessly cataloging my social faux pas. One would have thought they had all gone senile the way they went over my excesses and perceived failings every time they met; no one’s memory is that short.

It seemed I could do nothing right. They disapproved of my ordering glazed glass and putting iron bars—“Like in a prison!” they gasped—on all the downstairs windows after one too many times I caught curious faces peeping in at me if I didn’t keep the curtains shut tight or found suspicious scuffs and scratches upon the outside sills suggesting someone had tried to jimmy the locks. It never occurred to them that I was only trying to protect myself and safeguard my privacy. They thought it meant I had something to hide, that I was doing things I didn’t want anyone to see. I suppose they thought I should live in a glass house and leave myself entirely open, vulnerable, and naked to their scrutiny, just to prove to everyone in Fall River that I had nothing to hide. But if I had done that I would have been branded a vulgar exhibitionist. I just couldn’t win.

When I grew weary of being stared at like an animal in a zoo, I had the veranda enclosed with ivy-covered lattices and climbing pink roses, so I could sit and enjoy myself in peace, sip my tea and eat cake at the little round wicker table, or sit on the porch swing and lose myself in a book or daydreams. I also had the back porch glassed in so I could sit there and watch the cardinals, orioles, woodpeckers, catbirds, and black-capped chickadees that were such a delight to me. I accounted each one of them a blessing, God’s little winged wonders, angels in animal form. Watching the squirrels frolic in the trees always lifted my spirits and made me smile, and I always kept a goodly supply of nuts on hand to scatter on the ground as a treat for them. I had pretty little painted wooden houses built for them and placed about the yard and in the trees, and I provided a big marble bath and ordered the gardener to keep it full and refresh the water every day, and I always made sure the dear creatures had plenty to eat. I even ordered a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi, like one I had glimpsed in a beautiful garden in Italy, in his monk’s robe and tonsure, holding out a great basin before him that I kept filled with bread and seeds, leading some of my neighbors to arch their brows and scathingly remark that they were afraid I had “gone Catholic” like the “good-for-nothing” Maggies and Paddies they employed as servants.

The name I had given my house, and dared to have chiseled on the top step facing out onto the street—“like a tradesman’s storefront!” —sorely incensed my neighbors. They deemed such a vulgarity most unwelcome up on The Hill. No one named their house in Fall River, not even the castles they had imported piecemeal from Europe; if they had a name there they were shorn of it once they reached our shores. It was “not the done thing” and I was accused of “putting on airs.” And perhaps I was. I had lived by my father’s penurious dictates for thirty-two years and it felt so good to step out of his shadow and come into my own at long last and make up for lost time and chances in bold, magnificent ways and gaudy gestures. I never felt so free!

And when I decided, mirrors and the truths they showed be damned, it was time for Lizbeth to step out of my dreams and into real life and changed my own name accordingly, my calling cards, engraved with my new name, Lizbeth A. Borden of Maplecroft, wreathed with hand-painted violets, became at once collector’s items and objects of curiosity, ridicule, and disdain. Ladies—real ladies—did not change their given names, only their surnames when they married. No one could understand why I did it, and I didn’t even try to explain. I wanted to come out of the dark cocoon I had inhabited for so long. I was tired of being a plain, drab little moth; I wanted to spread my wings and soar sky high and be a bold, splendid, beautiful butterfly. I wanted to be elegant, refined, cultured Lizbeth, who I had always been in my secret soul, the woman my architect had seen lurking inside me, not dull, boring, inept, inelegant Lizzie, whose very name sounded like a coarse, common, clumsy, ignorant slut of a barmaid. He had called me “Lizbeth,” and that was who I wanted, more than anything else, to be, and I knew that it was now or never. And, to be honest, after the notoriety of the murders and the trial, I just wanted to be someone else, to be reborn fresh and new, to have a fresh coat of paint and new decorations just like I gave my Maplecroft.

 

I waited in vain for the invitations to dinner parties, balls, sewing circles, book club meetings, card parties, Sunday concerts in the park, the theater, picnics, clambakes, oyster suppers, and weekend house parties to come pouring in. And I hadn’t heard a word from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Fruit and Flower Mission, or the Christian Endeavor Society since they had sent cards and flowers to me in jail, nor had I been asked to resume my duties as a Sunday school teacher.

Maybe they thought I was still in mourning and not ready to socialize yet? So after the decorators had finished their work, I took the reins into my own hands and sent invitations with beautiful gold script embossed upon creamy parchment cards with gilt maple leaf borders to all my female neighbors and friends and acquaintances in Fall River, including every member of the clubs and societies I had belonged to. I invited all the Sunday school teachers and every woman who sung in the choir at Central Congregational Church and even the ladies of the book club to which Emma had belonged but which I had left because their selections habitually lacked excitement and imagination. They had all sent me flowers and cards expressing their good wishes when I was in prison, so it never crossed my mind that they would forsake me now. I thought I was about to pick up the thread of my old life even as I spread my wings and soared on to bigger and better things. After all my nest, my home, my haven, was in Fall River and, in spite of all my lofty ambitions, I never wanted to change that.

To welcome them to Maplecroft, I had Madame Tetrault bake a big five-layer maple cake with waves of creamy frosting decorated with pretty little candies shaped like maple leaves that melted deliciously in the mouth to let the tongue savor the sweet maple flavor. And I instructed Elsa, the downstairs maid, in her black dress and starched snow-white frilled cap and matching ruffled white apron, to pass around amongst my guests with a silver tray, shaped like a maple leaf, with yet more of these special candies arranged elegantly upon it. Then I would make my grand entrance and graciously receive their kind words and embraces.

I had a new dress made just for this occasion, maple-colored silk, trimmed with beautiful frothy cocoa-colored heirloom lace and dark-chocolate satin ribbon edged in gold. I even commissioned little gold maple leaf earrings and a maple leaf brooch set with champagne-colored diamonds to wear with it and bought a rope of pearls in a lovely, soft golden color and a fringed silk shawl worked with a pattern of vines and leaves in various shades of browns, amber, orange, and gold to complete the ensemble.

I couldn’t bear to sit upstairs fidgeting and watching the clock, so I went downstairs. I could always rush back up before Elsa opened the front door, so I could still make my grand entrance. But the change of scenery didn’t calm me a jot. I anxiously watched the clock, my fear mounting as every second ticked by, gone forever. I couldn’t sit still more than two minutes; I kept darting up from my chair and running to the window and back again, and then I found myself walking the floor, pacing back and forth until I feared I would wear out that stretch of carpet. But I never saw a soul coming through the front gate.

I wondered if the clock could be wrong. I waited an hour. And then two. But no one ever came. No one even sent a servant to my door with a polite excuse about illness. Even Emma was conspicuously absent, keeping to her room; she found my wanting to socialize when I should have still been in deep mourning “morally reprehensible” and “almost criminal.”

Almost, I answered her in tart, angry silence. I suppose the only thing that could possibly be more criminal is the double murder I was acquitted of!

I finally sat down upon the sofa in front of the tea table and ate each one of those little maple candies myself; even when I felt full and sick, I kept on eating, trying to fill up the emptiness inside me even though I knew it had nothing at all to do with my stomach. And then I started on the cake. That beautiful cake and all my elegant plans, the care I had taken and lavished upon each and every last little detail—it had all been such a waste! I sat there, alone in my splendid parlor, and ate every morsel of that beautiful cake and was sick all night, a miserable green-faced and bloated-bellied queen sitting on her gleaming white porcelain throne. It served me right for being such a wretched glutton; I should have sent it back to the kitchen for the servants to enjoy, but that never occurred to me.

When I sat there glumly staring at the last crumbs on my gilt-bordered yellow rose–patterned plate letting the tears run down my face, Emma appeared like a menacing black crow in the doorway.

“More tears are shed over answered prayers, Liz-zie,” she said, drawing out each syllable of the name I had shed like a snake’s skin—Emma would never call me “Lizbeth”—“than unanswered ones. God sometimes punishes those He only seems to favor by giving them exactly what they want.”

And then she turned on her heel and in a loud, sickening swish of black silk skirts and crepe mourning veils left me alone to contemplate a blessing that suddenly seemed like a curse, like some cruel masquerader who had ripped the mask off to reveal a strange unknown and unexpected face sneering and jeering at me.

As if that were not bad enough, at that very moment one of those infernal hack drivers drove up with a near-bursting load of out-of-towners he had met at the train station and brandished his whip at Maplecroft and bellowed: “THERE IT IS, FOLKS—THE HOME OF THE NOTORIOUS LIZZIE BORDEN, WHERE SHE LIVES NOW!”

That Sunday I nervously put on a fussy pink and peach gown covered collar to hem with appliquéd flowers and a matching hat and pinned a pink cameo onto my high white lace collar and picked up a lacy, beribboned parasol and bravely strode down the aisle of the Central Congregational Church to my pew.

It was the first time I had been to church since my acquittal. I had wanted to let things quiet down and return to normal. As soon as my flower-covered rump touched the polished walnut every single person sitting near me, before, behind, and alongside me stood up and moved away to find themselves another seat. And the Reverend Buck, who had been so kind to me, sitting and praying with me for hours in my jail cell, sending me edifying books to read, and loudly proclaiming my calmness as “the calmness of innocence” every time I was publicly accused of coldness and indifference, wouldn’t even look at me. I tried time and again to catch his eye, but he was blind to me.

At last, I stood up and, head held high, retreated back up the aisle. I never set foot in that church again or any other in Fall River. I knew I would not be welcome. From that day forward I would spend my Sundays reading my Bible and singing hymns alone at Maplecroft. Madame Tetrault was kind enough to teach me to play the piano in the parlor well enough so that I could accompany myself, and, later, I would have a fine phonograph and a collection of records so I could hear beautiful voices raised to the glory of God.

I knew then, without a doubt, that Fall River society had slammed its doors on me. This stinging rebuff made in the house of the Lord where all were supposed to be merciful, kind, and charitable was the final proof. No one wanted to know “the self- or hatchet-made heiress,” as they called me. I was an oddity, an aberration, an embarrassment, and no doubt many wished I would pack my bags and leave Fall River forever.

Perhaps that’s why, mulish and stubborn, just like Father in his most hard-fisted penny-pinching moments, I dug in my heels and swore I would make my home in Fall River until the day I died. When a reporter from The New York Sun stopped me on the street and asked me about it I held my head high and, with cordial frankness, replied, “A great many persons have talked to me as if they thought I would go and live somewhere else when my trial was over. I don’t know what possesses them. This is my home and I am going to stay here. I never thought of doing anything else.”

Though I had often hungered for a bigger, richer, more exciting slice of the world’s pie, I was too proud and stubborn to let them drive me out and chase me away like a whipped and whimpering dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Even though in truth I might have been able to reinvent myself and lead a far happier life elsewhere I was too proud to make the attempt. I had my pride—my stubborn, arrogant, hurt, and angry pride! And I would never let them see me cry or know just how much they had hurt me!

Every day, I would sit behind my glazed and barred windows, or on my ivy-shrouded veranda, and try to lose myself in a book or hug Laddie, my Boston terrier pup, or with Daisy, my white Persian cat, purring softly on my lap while I stroked her silky fur, and try to pretend I didn’t care as I listened to the hack drivers regale their passengers with the blood-soaked saga of Lizzie Borden, never sparing them a single gory detail about the murders. Sometimes the hackneys even drove them out to see the house at 92 Second Street and the graves in Oak Grove Cemetery where Father and Abby reposed without their heads.

They never went away. I’m afraid that when the day dawns that finds me lying on my deathbed the last thing I will hear is a cabdriver crying out my name like some annoying carnival barker who never shuts up for long. Whenever a cabby caught a glimpse of me, sitting peacefully on my own front porch not bothering a soul, or going in or out of the house, minding my own business, he would stab his whip in my direction and shout, “THERE SHE IS!” His passengers would always ooh and ahh or slump back in a swoon against the leather seats as though they had just had the thrill or the scare of their lives. And there was always someone who would attempt to boldly stare me down as they declared, “She LOOKS as if she DID IT!”

Some even brought cameras and posed in front of the house; for a time there was even a photographer who made a good income carting his camera out to cater to the tourists’ desire for such a ghoulish souvenir. “There we are in front of the Lizzie Borden house!” I could just hear them exclaiming over the picture once it was pasted in their album. As much as I embraced modernity, I more than anyone regretted it when cameras became more portable and commonplace, so that any fool with enough money to squander or spare could afford one.

I grew so weary of it all! I think the last time I really laughed about my notoriety was right after the trial when someone started a rumor that every unmarried man on my jury had proposed to me and I was delightedly dallying over deciding which one I would marry. I remember I was having breakfast in bed one morning, my shoulders surrounded by billowing layers of lavender chiffon ruffles and my hair up in curl rags, when I saw the headline screaming LIZZIE BORDEN TO WED ONE OF THE JURY THAT ACQUITTED HER! above a portrait of the twelve men looking so solemn and serious and an article discussing the personalities and prospects of the unattached gentlemen and speculating on which one I would choose to be my husband. I laughed myself silly. Tears rolled down my face and I almost wet the bed.

But my amusement didn’t last long. Too many outlandish and intrusive headlines soon curdled my sense of humor and left me with a sick headache and sour stomach and I no longer had the heart to laugh at any of it. It grew so I couldn’t abide to even look at a newspaper for fear that I would find my picture or name in it.

 

To the children of Fall River, I became a source of fearful curiosity, like a witch in a storybook, the butt of countless childhood pranks and dares to knock upon my door or climb my garden fence. They pelted my windows and walls with raw eggs and gravel. More than once some brave little soul made it all the way up to the front door to insert a pin into the doorbell so that it rang shrilly until the pin was extracted. It quickly became the headache-inducing custom for children walking along the sidewalk to break into a run while screaming at the top of their lungs and flailing their arms wildly whenever they passed Maplecroft. But some, instead of screaming as they rushed past, would march by brave as little soldiers, or even stop to skip rope on the sidewalk, while chanting loudly the popular singsong rhyme:

“Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”

Sometimes they added a second verse:

“Andrew Borden now is dead,
Lizzie hit him on the head,
Up in Heaven he will sing,
On the gallows she will swing.”

The bravest ones, the ones who ventured onto my property and didn’t run away shrieking before I could speak to them, I rewarded; I gave them candy and cookies and cups of hot cocoa and slices of cake or Madame Tetrault’s marvelous jelly roll, that scrumptious, sumptuous miracle of moist golden cake filled with rich cream and raspberry jelly.

And some of the poorer ones, who showed promise and a love of learning, I gave gifts of books and paid for them to have a college education just as I would have done for my own sons and daughters if I had been so blessed.

I loved children; the older I got the more I regretted that circumstances, and my too deeply entrenched private fears, never permitted me to marry and have a family, and it hurt my heart to know that so many of them feared me, even though I understood and never blamed them for it. But understanding isn’t a balm for pain. Those who dared approach me I always befriended. I bought them birthday and Christmas presents and never failed to send them amusing cards to let them know that I was thinking of them. And there was one dear, sweet slow-witted boy, the son of poor Irish Catholic mill workers, whose parents only sent him to school to have someone watch him during the day because they both had to work. I bought him picture books and colored pencils and drawing paper to keep him entertained while his classmates were at their lessons, and I always made sure he was decently dressed and had shoes on his feet so the other boys and girls wouldn’t make fun of him for being dirt poor. He always came to stay an hour or two after school with me, we had tea together on the veranda, or in the parlor when the weather was cold, and on the days when there was no school I found little chores for him to do around Maplecroft that I always paid him for. He was the sweetest of them all, a pure soul who never saw any evil in me; he hugged me until I thought my back would break and called me his “auntie Lizbeth.” It broke my heart when he drowned one summer trying to keep up with the other boys. I paid for his funeral.

 

When the constant curiosity, the shunning and hostile silence, the knowing that I could not even visit a shop with my veil down without being gaped and gawked at and gossiped about and reading all about it in the newspapers the next day with all manner of embellishments, became so unbearable I thought I couldn’t stand it a moment longer, I would order my trunks packed and leave for a while. I loved to lose myself in the bustle of a big city and become just another face in the crowd, to be able to sit in a public square or park and feed the pigeons in peace with my veil up and no one pointing or staring at me.

I would go to Boston or New York, Chicago, Washington, or even San Francisco, or New Orleans, book myself a suite in the city’s most prestigious hotel, and spend my days shopping and visiting museums and strolling idly in public gardens, and every evening at the theater, opera, or dining in fine restaurants and my nights basking in silk-sheeted luxury. And not always alone. That lovely illusion was one more thing money could buy.

In Washington one spring, in a pink silken suite at the Cochran Hotel, while the cherry blossoms fell outside, a beautiful young woman who bore a striking resemblance to Lulie Stillwell at seventeen made all my secret, forbidden fantasies come true, for a fee of course. I gave her a gold and diamond pendant shaped like a heart and a sable wrap for her snow-white shoulders as a token of my gratitude in addition to her hourly wage and a week’s worth of private steak and lobster suppers. Every year after that I longed to be in Washington, back in the pink suite at the Cochran Hotel, when the cherry blossoms were falling, and sometimes I was; after all, price was no object. The only thing missing was my one true love to share it with. Even in ecstasy, I could never forget that this companionship came at a price that I paid; it was never a gift given freely to me out of love, respect, kindness, or even pity.

Sometimes I thought I had made a friend. But their interest was always motivated by macabre curiosity, every last one of them wanted to be the one who would pry the truth out of Lizzie Borden, and when I refused to oblige them they dropped me. After all, they didn’t really need me anymore. They had what they wanted; they could continue to dine out on the story of how they had once known the notorious Lizzie Borden for the rest of their lives. I had been reduced to a dinner table anecdote and newspaper item instead of a human being with a beating heart and feelings that could be hurt. If I was in the news again, because I had been seen about somewhere or the anniversary of the murders was near, their reminiscences were enough to get their names in the paper, columns of print they could clip and paste into their scrapbooks.

Sometimes they wanted money. Sometimes I obliged, if I liked them and thought their need was genuine, but most of the time I refused; I really wasn’t the spendthrift fool Father always took me for.

My life was not entirely a selfish one, I gave much to charity, though always in secret; I didn’t want people to think I was trying to buy their good opinion. I loved animals; I firmly believed that they alone amongst God’s creatures were the only ones capable of unconditional love, in that way these dumb animals were so much smarter than humans, so I gave thousands of dollars away every year to various societies for the protection and prevention of cruelty to dogs, cats, and horses.

Sometimes those I encountered baited their hooks with the promise of love. Sometimes I succumbed even though I saw through their tricks. I was lonely, longing for a human touch, a warm body next to mine in bed, the feel of naked limbs entwined and lips covering mine. There was always the hope that they might, during the time they spent with me in luxurious hotel suites where discretion was included in the price truly come to care for me as something more than just a carnal conquest or a story to tell, a name to drop, to thrill and impress their friends. Sometimes I refused and turned a cold shoulder to their hot advances; just the thought of the disappointment to come left me feeling sad and so unbearably weary. Knowing it was all pretense didn’t ease the hurt any. I tried so hard to harden my heart, to turn it to stone, and just be a body enjoying another body, like a wild animal in heat, a purely carnal creature, but I could never quiet the longing screaming out, LOVE ME! from the depths of my soul. I wanted to be loved, by a man or a woman. By that point it didn’t really matter which; it was love, real love, the kind that is true and lasts forever like in songs and storybooks that I was after.

Most of the time I kept to myself; I went about alone with my veil down, bothering no one and hoping no one would bother me. I had my pets, my books, the freedom and funds to travel and shop, to buy whatever I pleased, Maplecroft, my beautiful house waiting for me to come home to, my sparkling jewels, my ravishing gowns and the exquisite lace-and-ribbon-trimmed lingerie I wore beneath, banquets for the stomach and soul: evenings of gourmet feasts, grand opera, and the theater; I tried so hard to convince myself that it was enough, that luxury could fill, and fulfill, my lonely heart. I spent a lifetime lying to myself, trying to convince myself to believe the lies I told myself.

I loved to lose myself in the make-believe world of the theater, the magic the actors and actresses spun with words, gestures, and costumes. I liked the tragedies best, tales of love doomed and thwarted—Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth of England, the Virgin Queen who never married or bore a child. I thrilled to Trilby and Svengali, and, my favorite, Marguerite Gautier, La Dame aux Camélias, the consumptive courtesan, and her noble, self-sacrificing love for young Armand Duval, whose love she selflessly and nobly renounced for his greater good, so that the sins of her past would not shame him and tarnish his bright future. I watched them all countless times.

I spent a few weeks every summer at one of the fashionable resort hotels. Palatial white hotels like wedding cakes, with tiers and balconies, rising several stories, and emerald lawns spreading out as far as the eye could see, whitewashed summer palaces where I could wear ruffled white dresses and big shady hats and sit out on the veranda every day, sipping lemonade or iced tea, idly plying a palmetto fan, and dreaming while I watched the other guests play croquette and lawn tennis or return singing from clambakes and boating parties that I never dared join in. I wanted to belong, but I couldn’t—not as anything more than a novelty of gruesome notoriety. I was too proud and stubborn to register under a false name. I knew I would look a fool when the truth came out, as it always did; someone always recognized me. I wanted to be loved for myself, and I knew with complete and utter certainty that any love that began with a lie, no matter how well-meaning, was doomed. I could never emerge from underneath the dark cloud that always hovered over me. Whenever I walked into a room it stilled all the people, long enough for a tingling shiver to run the length of their spines and for the hair on the back of their necks to stand on end, and then the whispering started. There was no escaping it.

Inevitably, I returned to Maplecroft, my magnificent empty-halled mausoleum-palace devoid of fawning and adoring courtiers, where my eyes, and those of servants who cleaned and dusted, were the only ones that gazed upon its manifold comforts and luxuries. I would sit alone dressed like a queen feasting on silver trays of petit fours, chocolate éclairs, and slices of Madame Tetrault’s marvelous jelly roll making promises I knew I would never keep to start dieting the very next day, or the day afterward at most, but my dressmaker’s measurements proved that I was never capable of keeping that promise.

Little did I know when I bought it that Maplecroft would become a prison, a sanitarium, and a living tomb for me as well as the palace of all my desires and dreams. That here, behind glazed and barred windows, triple-locked doors, iron fences, and locked gates, I would hide from the world whenever the curious pressed too close, the newspapers pried too deep, and those I dared let get close to me hurt, disillusioned, and disappointed me as they were always destined to do.

 

The year after my trial Mr. Edwin H. Porter, the charming reporter The Fall River Globe had sent to interview me in my jail cell, published a book called The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders. I felt dismayed and so betrayed. I ordered my business agent, Mr. Charles Cook, who dealt with all those tedious, mundane day-to-day matters attached to all the real estate, rental properties, and investments Emma and I had inherited from Father, to buy up every copy he could find. I didn’t care what it cost, I told him. “Pretend you are the Grand Inquisitor, sir, and hunt them down like witches! I want them burned!”

Late one night, after the servants and Emma were all asleep, so no one could see me cry, I burned every last one of them in the library fireplace. I never even cracked the spine to read one word. I didn’t care what Mr. Porter had written, whether he had been scrupulously honest and fair to me or wildly embellished the whole sorry, sordid saga. I only cared that he had written it. It smarted like a slap. My heart felt like he had taken a whip to it even though it had no cause; he was a hardened newspaperman just doing his job. I was just another story, albeit the biggest of his career. If he hadn’t written a book someone else would, it was to be expected, but that didn’t mean I had to accept or like it. Whoever the author was, I would have done the exact same thing—made a bonfire of the books.

All I wanted to do was forget. And I wanted everyone else to forget too and just leave me in peace to live my life the way I saw fit. I didn’t go prying into their business and private lives! Why couldn’t they accord me the same respect? But I had traded the prison of my father’s house for actual prison bars, only to find when I was vindicated and freed from those that I had become a prisoner of my own notoriety and a higher judge had decreed that it should be a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Ostensibly, I was free to come and go and do as I pleased, but I would never be truly free.

Then, like a mournful black ghost who could read my mind, Emma appeared in the doorway, her dark hair streaked with broad bands of gray and a black shawl draped over her prim and proper white nightgown.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Lizzie,” she said as she stood behind me, resting a comfortless claw-like hand on my shoulder, and together, in silence, we watched Mr. Porter’s books burn.