Chapter 12
I can hardly bear to write the next chapter. Some wounds go so deep not even twenty years can heal or even cauterize them.
The first time I saw Nance O’Neil was on Valentine’s Day 1904 at the Colonial Theatre. I had arrived late in Boston and, to my supreme annoyance, missed half the play. As the usher escorted me to my box, I was so spellbound by the sight of her that I quite forgot to sit down until the lights went up and the applause broke my trance. I simply could not take my eyes off her! I could hardly bear to blink for the moment it might deprive me of the sight of her. I almost forgot to breathe!
There she was—a slim gilt figure, like a beacon of softly glowing golden flame, living, breathing, sparkling champagne that went straight to my head! So tall for a woman, almost six feet, yet thoroughly feminine, she was at once sensual and vulnerable in a flowing midnight-blue velvet dressing gown, the collar furred with ermine that at times drooped to reveal the curve of a bare shoulder and breast, with a girdle woven of gold and jewels snugly hugging the hourglass of her waist, hair like waving fields of golden wheat flowing down to her waist in the most beguiling disarray, as though she had indeed just risen—naked, as a thrilling flash of white thigh revealed through the folds of her robe when she moved—from the rumpled bed that stood at the far corner of the stage in the shadowy background. She was like no one I had ever seen before—virgin and harlot, siren and sweetheart, vampire and angel all in one body I would give ten years of my life to hold and caress.
Entranced, as if she were a mesmerist’s gold watch swinging to and fro before my eyes, I followed her as she moved sightlessly across the stage as the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth. Center stage, seeing without seeing, she turned to face the audience and sank slowly to her knees—there was that lightning-fast flash of white thigh and trim, slim limbs again; surely no other actress who ever portrayed Lady Macbeth had ever been so sensual and bold!—scrubbing frantically at her lily-white hands with soap and water that only she, in her slumbering madness, could see. The great ruby on the ring finger of her left hand shimmered like a teardrop of fresh-spilt blood and drew my eyes like a firefly.
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One; two; why, then ’tis time to do’t: Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeared? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Her luscious lips trembled in a way that portended tears and the desperation in her voice rose with every angst-sodden syllable, chilling and scalding my soul at the same time and raising every hair on the nape of my neck. I felt the gooseflesh rise and prickle all over me and my nipples spring painfully erect, hard and adamant as accusing, pointing pink fingertips straining against the gold-and-champagne-beaded bodice of my apricot satin evening gown. I wanted my fur to warm me, but it had slipped from my shoulders and fallen, unnoticed, to the floor, and I couldn’t bear to tear my eyes from the stage long enough to retrieve it.
“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” Those words almost felled me like a blow from a hatchet. In my memory’s eye, vivid and clear as if it were only yesterday, I saw Father napping on the sofa as I brought the blade down, for the first time, and then again and again and again. Even after a dozen years I could still feel his blood upon my skin, warm and red as rubies, soaking in, scorching my soul, staining it forever with my rash and impetuous sin. I could still taste it, salty and metallic upon my tongue, and the smell still filled my nostrils. I felt nauseous and a red starry mist drifted across my eyes, momentarily obscuring the dazzling blue and gold vision upon the stage.
Like a modern-day Lady Macbeth, my hands could never be washed clean; in my own sight or society’s, my soul was caked and sticky with blood, I was marked with guilt like Cain, and there were moments when I feared that madness was close enough to reach out and touch me. Whenever people saw or spoke of me blood filled their minds. It had become a part of me. Blood is the life, both the Good Book and Mr. Stoker’s fiendish count Dracula said, and I more than any other saw the truth in it. Blood was my life; it defined who I was—the self- or hatchet-made heiress. To buy my freedom, my worldly freedom, I had bathed my soul in blood that could never be washed away.
“What, will these hands never be clean? Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
With every word she spoke to my soul, she reached across the footlights and darkened void where the audience sat enraptured to my box and touched me, reaching right through skin and bone, as no one else ever had, not even Orrin. Though Shakespeare, not Nance O’Neil, had written the words that came out of her mouth, like a spirit speaking through a medium it was the way she spoke them, the anguish and torment and pain with which she imbued them, that told me that she knew, she understood. My body was made of glass and she was looking through it clear to my soul! There would be no keeping any secrets from her. I would always be naked with Nance no matter how many layers of clothes I wore or locked doors I hid behind. It both thrilled and terrified me to be so helpless and bare.
I was back the next night to see her in Judith of Bethulia, as the beautiful but chaste widow who, to save her people, under siege by the Assyrians and nearing starvation and surrender, dons her finest raiment and goes to the enemy camp and offers herself as a sensual sacrifice to the lust of General Holofernes. But the cunning beauty outwits him, and as he lies deep in a drunken slumber she cuts off the tyrant’s head. The Assyrians, left without a leader, scatter to the winds and Bethulia is saved and Judith celebrated as their savior.
Even though she could not know it, through the parts she played Nance O’Neil spoke to me. In every role she played I seemed to find something of myself. Like Judith, I also had spilled a tyrant’s blood for the greater good.
I was there every night as the woman the papers hailed as “the most emotional actress of our age” worked through her repertoire. I saw her in Camille, Trilby, Sappho, Leah the Forsaken, Hedda Gabler, The Passion Flower, Lysistrata, The Magdalene, and Elizabeth, Queen of England. I applauded so hard I split my gloves every time and went back to the Bellevue Hotel with sore and smarting palms, yet feeling there was one alone out there in the world who could understand me better than any other even though we had never exchanged a single word or even a polite nod in passing and were in truth strangers.
After that first night, I was never late again. I was early, the very first in line; I was so anxious all day that some mishap might occur to make me late and I couldn’t bear to take that chance. I must have loitered about for an hour or more outside the theater before each performance, gazing at her pictures, trying to decide if her eyes were truly mint green with a smattering of little chocolate kisses, ice blue with drifts of hazel, or the delicate gray of a dove’s feathers lightly brushed with copper, and if the hue of her hair was more like honey or wheat. I anonymously sent her two dozen long-stemmed red roses and every night as she made her final bow I saw them handed to her, cradled in her arms, adoringly against her beautiful breasts, like blood on snow.
My eyes adored her! And so apparently did every other pair of functioning eyes in Boston. The headlines proclaimed BOSTON IS NANCE O’NEIL MAD! Photographs and exquisite hand-tinted postcards of her in costume for her most famous roles or elegant gowns from her own wardrobe were sold in shops and I became an avid collector, giddy each time I discovered a new image not already pasted in my album.
Her beautiful face graced candy boxes, and in magazines she was seen advertising Lady Elegant Bridal Pink Powder and Egyptian Dreams Perfume; these I tore out too and even bought the products just to feel closer to her, that the powder and perfume that touched my skin were the same as graced hers.
Copies of her hats and dresses appeared in shop windows and I was amongst the many who, in our enthusiasm and adoration, forgot the fact that we lacked Miss O’Neil’s tall, willowy-slim physique and such fashions would not flatter us in the least, and flocked undeterred to buy them. It was not an uncommon sight in those days to see two, four, or even five, or maybe more, women of various ages and shapes promenading in the park or sitting in church on Sunday with the same hat on their heads or dress on their backs, forming a discordant chorus of would-be Nance O’Neils. Some were not content just to have her hats and coveted what was under them and the city’s wigmakers did a thriving trade in Nance O’Neil wigs; many a poor lass in need of money I’m sure had her head shorn down to stubble to supply the demand for those golden waves. When a necklace Nance wore in Elizabeth, Queen of England was auctioned at a charity benefit I was ready to beggar myself to win it. Even if the stones were paste and the metal was base that turned my skin green I was wild to possess it because it was a true relic of her—the one I worshiped from afar with all my body, soul, and heart!—not just an imitation of something she had worn.
It was only when it was almost too late that I found the courage to approach her. When she bid farewell to Boston with an encore performance of Elizabeth, Queen of England, I boldly bribed my way backstage, into her dressing room, after the show to present my roses in person. I knew it was now or never and I would forever despise myself as a coward if I didn’t.
Her maid was just finishing fastening the back of a shimmering olive-green dress overlaid with sparkling black net and lace adorned with teal, purple, and orange beaded lotus flower appliqués while Miss O’Neil stood before a full-length mirror fussing with the emerald and diamond tiara—a gift from the Khedive of Cairo, it had been in all the newspapers—perched atop the high-piled gleaming masses of her golden hair.
The moment our eyes met . . . it was electricity and ecstasy, a quivering, rapturous frisson rippling through our bodies head to toe.
Blushing berry ripe, I clumsily blurted out a compliment about the women she brought to life upon the stage. Nance came to me and took both of my trembling hands in hers and stared deep into my eyes before she led me to sink down upon a red velvet sofa beside her.
“I know who you are,” she leaned in close and whispered in a soft, husky voice, breathy and sensual.
I started to draw back in alarm, but she would not let me.
“No, no.” She held tight to my hands. “Don’t be alarmed! I wish only to say that your story has touched me. And with the words you have just spoken to me. . . .” Her eyes lit up like stars! “You have divined my secret! I find the character of unloved, shunned, and misunderstood women—women like you if I may so presume, my dear Miss Borden, who have been crucified by conventional traditions—fascinating; it strikes a chord deep within the soul of me and provokes and stirs me more than any happily ever after storybook heroine ever could! Give me a role like that over a musical or a comedy no matter how sparkling or witty any day, for there, in a forsaken and mistreated woman’s life, is true tragedy and drama! Far too often, I find, women live out their destinies in the small places to which they have been driven and thrust, forced, into, and there is a storm that broods inside them that far too often hardly ever bursts because womankind is constrained to corset her soul, and her emotions, like her waist, and keep her emotions in check because the powers that be—men and society!—think it undignified to express them. Tradition has made women cowardly! But when, on rare occasion, that storm does break . . .” She squeezed my hands and her eyes were like mysterious, exotic opals, dancing, playing a coy, flirtatious game, and shifting shades with the wooing light. “Better to be an outlaw than not to be free! We are rebels because those who govern or claim to love us, to be acting for our own good, all too often betray us! The unloved and misunderstood woman is usually thus, the victim of someone, some man, too stupid to know the difference between Heaven and earth!”
She was the most passionate person I had ever met!
“How right you are!” I breathed, and squeezed her hands right back. She might have been painting a portrait of me with her words! No one had ever gleaned the tragedy of my life so completely and precisely! She had indeed seen straight into my soul!
From then on there was no more Miss O’Neil or Miss Borden. We would be only Nance and Lizbeth, close as a pair of those tragic twins one sees in freak shows and dime museums, joined perpetually at the hip.
She was everything I ever wanted and ever wanted to be; I spent my whole youth dreaming of being just like her—beautiful, celebrated, and adored! Worshipfully I knelt at her feet and fastened the emerald and diamond bracelets around her slender wrists, feeling the pulse throb against my fingertips. When she stood to leave, I draped a white fur cape about her shoulders, then, carrying the bouquet of roses—My roses! She said she would have no others!—reverently in my arms, like the Christ child, I trailed after her, following blindly even if she would lead me to the very ends of the earth.
Smiling and waving, vague and vacantly, haughty as the great queen she had just portrayed onstage, to the left and to the right, she sailed majestically past all the stage-door johnnies offering her diamond bracelets, lobster dinners, and proposals of marriage, bypassing all the gleaming chauffeured cars and carriages, including one where a group of college boys in their fraternity colors had taken the place of the horses, just to have the honor of pulling “the marvelous Miss O’Neil” back to her hotel.
“I’m all yours tonight, Lizbeth,” Nance whispered sensually into my ear, making me shiver and my whole body quiver; then she asked me to lead the way to my carriage.
“This is the happiest night of my life!” I breathed.
“I aim to make it so, dear Lizbeth,” Nance answered.
And she did! She took a beautiful silver flask with her initials flashing in diamonds from her garter, raised it to her lips, and drained it, then with a carefree laugh and a cry of “Catch!” tossed it out the carriage window, into the white-gloved hands of one of her tuxedoed and top-hatted admirers, laughing delightedly and blowing him a kiss when he called back that he would treasure it all the days of his life and that it would be buried with him, right over his heart when he died. And then she turned and reached for me—me! It was me she wanted! Not any of them!
“ ‘That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold,’ ” she whispered huskily against my quivering, shivering flesh, quoting Lady Macbeth just for me as her hand cupped my breast. “ ‘What hath quench’d them hath given me fire!’ ” And then she kissed me and I tasted the burn of whiskey on her lips.
As Nance would say, “Leave the audience wanting more and then don’t give it to them,” so I let the curtain fall, Dear Reader, upon that blissful night of wonder when I held a star in my arms.
As there is often dust lurking beneath a carpet, all too frequently—and quickly!—tinsel turns to ashes. The audience sees only the splendor, the costumes, smiles, and gaiety; they never smell the sweat in the actor’s armpits or see the ugly bunions and painful, seeping blisters disfiguring the dancer’s feet that look so lovely in their satin slippers as they glide, and prance, and leap across the stage. All too soon, the stardust cleared from my eyes, and Truth pulled my golden goddess down from her pillar but never quite succeeded in completely destroying my fascination with her, only tarnishing it somewhat. She was such a beautiful dream, I held on as long as I could. I simply could not bear to let her go, and vanish, upon my awakening to reality’s jarring slap. And Nance had her own reasons for entwining her arms and clinging tight to me. So we sustained the beautiful, mutually agreeable illusion as long as we could.
She was born plain Gertrude Lamson, a strict Baptist minister’s tall, gangly corn-fed daughter. At sixteen, when she declared her intention of going on the stage, her father, determined to publicly shame this intent to sin out of her and see her settled down and married to a respectable dairy farmer, denounced her from the pulpit before his entire congregation. As they all sank to their knees, praying fervently for her wayward Satan-tempted soul, Gertrude Lamson shed her name and life as she knew it like a snake does its skin and became Nance O’Neil as she walked, tall and proud, down the aisle and out of her father’s church, never deigning to turn an eye left or right or backward, looking only forward, determinedly, to her own future. She was like a pioneer woman setting out to forge a new life for herself out of the wilderness, and all the dangers she might encounter be damned!
She made her way to San Francisco, hitching rides in wagons laden with hay, pigs, or watermelons, and with traveling peddlers in flashy checkered suits who could not wait to get their hands inside her bodice and drawers. As soon as she arrived in this great big city that would have made most little country girls quail and quake with fear, Nance inquired of a newsboy which was the best and biggest paper. Soon she had wiled and beguiled her way into the affections, and the bed, of a famous drama critic. He was only too happy to write her a letter of introduction to talent agent McKee Rankin, a man with a shrewd instinct for discovering and developing new talent.
Here is a young friend of mine who wants to go on the stage, his note read. Kindly discourage her.
But the moment Mr. Rankin laid eyes on Nance he knew he was looking at a diamond in the rough. A star! Relentlessly, like a slave driver cracking the whip, day and night he honed and polished her. Heartless as Simon Legree when, exhausted, she fell down at his feet and cried that she was too tired to go on a moment longer, he simply jerked her back up and put her through her paces again and again until he was satisfied; he would accept nothing short of perfection from her. “Mark my word,” he always said to Nance, even when she lay at his feet and cried and cried, “you’ll thank me for this someday!”
She made her debut at the Alcazar Theatre in a bit part as a nun, standing out only because she was the tallest one, but when she took the lead in du Maurier’s Trilby, playing the artist’s model who falls under the spell of Svengali, daringly displaying her bare feet, and the rest of her body wrapped in the scantiest and sheerest draperies the law would allow on the “respectable” stage, a star was born. Everyone fell in love with Nance O’Neil.
From that point there was no stopping Nance. Soon she was touring all over the United States, practically living on a train, saying good night in one city and waking up in another. Then across the sea she went, to play before the crowned heads of Europe, touring like a whirlwind through England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, India, Africa, and Egypt, and being wooed with jewels by princes, dukes, khedives, maharajahs, and sultans. One even pried the priceless blue diamond eye out of a sacred golden idol as a gift for her. The newspapers published pictures of Nance wearing it on her forehead or in her hair when they reported her dusky regal swain was devoured by wild dogs while out hunting as a divine punishment no doubt for the act of sacrilege he had committed out of his profane love for her.
Critics and crowds alike adored her, universally praising the passion, subtlety, naturalism, raw, naked emotion, and earthy sensuality she brought to each part she played. Lillian Russell, Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Constance Collier, and Ellen Terry were all compared to her and found wanting. And I daresay if Nance had applied herself to musicals and comedies with the same determination as she did to dramatic roles, she would have left Lotta Crabtree and Eva Tanguay coughing and gasping in her dust too, like crippled invalids in comparison, but tragedy was Nance’s métier, or her meat and potatoes, as she liked to say.
Offstage, she was earthy, not ethereal; flawed; and far from perfect. Her life was complete chaos, motion and mayhem, and she lived it like a whirling dervish with never a dull or still moment. But that was how Nance liked it. She never thought of the future, of hard times and old age, and lived only for the instant. She was a notorious spendthrift; it was as though money burned her like red-hot coals and she must fling it from her as fast as possible. She ran up debts she could never hope to repay and was always trying to keep one step ahead of the process servers and debt collectors. Anyone who would extend her credit or loan her money was her new best friend. In spite of her habit of not paying, jewelers, furriers, couturiers, milliners, glovers, shoemakers, and perfumers continued to court and oblige her; just to have her photograph in popular periodicals and picture postcards wearing their creations meant money in the bank to them. And Nance was always glad to give them a signed photograph of herself wearing their wares to display in their shop windows.
Morally she was equally bankrupt. Nance was deep in the thrall of a lovely green liqueur she called “the green fairy” and simply could not do without it, nor did she want to, and she constantly smoked strange, exotic cigarettes that made her alternately languid and giddy. She was vain and self-centered and had no concept of fidelity. “People are people; we love who we love!” she would declare grandly before tumbling into bed with whoever took her fancy, was readily available when she was in an amorous disposition, could do something for her career, gave her money, or, like a magician, could make her financial and legal woes vanish for the time being. Male or female, it didn’t matter, Nance was far too broad minded for “a little thing like that” to matter. And after her passion was spent, she always proved that the meaning of loyalty was equally elusive to her; once Nance was sated, the need past, the bankroll depleted, or the requisite favor granted, the moment she didn’t need her paramour anymore, the affair was over. Her lovers learned all too quickly it did no good to cling; it only annoyed her and turned her sweet memories of them to bitter, as Nance was all too ready to warn them.
Whenever anyone tried to take her to task for her heartless heedlessness, Nance would simply shrug her lovely shoulders and quote Shakespeare: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves. Though that hardly excused her conduct and only confirmed that she knew exactly what she was doing and didn’t care if she rode roughshod over the whole world’s hearts. She would happily have trampled every heart in Christendom if it suited her, just to get her way. It was all about Nance. She was the only one who mattered.
Cataloging her flaws like this, so clear eyed and dispassionate in my old age and hindsight, I cannot help but wonder how I could have loved her so much, but I cannot deny that I did with a passion that still burns like a fever.
As her star rose, Nance also acquired a menagerie, including a baby alligator; an African honking gander; a pink pig she had saved from slaughter because its color exquisitely matched the chiffon gown she was wearing the day she passed it squealing in its pen “as though the poor thing was pleading with the executioner for its life!”; two Great Danes; a matching pair of Russian wolfhounds; a dozen assorted pug dogs, each named after the state in which she had acquired it, and several Pekingese and Pomeranians; a quartet of constantly squawking and talking parrots, including a particularly salty-tongued gray called “Jolly Jack” after the sailor who had been Nance’s lover for a night and given him to her at their dawn parting; an exotic toucan with a vibrant striped beak; a pink cockatoo, as well as a white one with a golden crest; five Angora cats; a tiger cub from a smitten maharajah; an ever-increasing family of floppy-eared rabbits; a raccoon; an orange baboon; a chimpanzee; a pair of capuchin monkeys that mated incessantly and an equally amorous set of marmosets; a performing seal that liked to “sing” in the bathtub; an armadillo from an ardent admirer down in Texas who had also named one of his oil wells after Nance; a tortoise whose shell had been encrusted with precious gems by a love-struck millionaire; a snake Nance delighted to wear in lieu of a feather boa; and a large, lazy green lizard that looked rather like a dinosaur and delighted in eating strawberries by the score; all of them sporting diamond collars and gold tags with her initials set in diamonds. A buck-toothed Japanese in silken robes, whom I was never quite sure was male or female, took care of them all.
Nance also added a husband who doubled as her press agent to her entourage, even though his dalliances with stage-smitten young girls got him into no end of trouble. A former carnival barker and medicine show man whose English accent was as false as the noble pedigree he proclaimed to all who would listen, Alfred Hickham had a hungry wolf’s eye for nubile beauty, the naïve possessors of which he lured into his den to play Little Red Riding Hood. He promised that through the private acting lessons he was offering them, for only a nominal fee, in the privacy of his hotel room because their talent deserved special, personal attention they could not get in a classroom full of dull and mediocre pupils, and under his superior and experienced tutelage, he could transform them into “a glittering star to rival my own wife’s dazzling luminosity.” It was both sad and surprising how many gullible girls believed him.
Nance always paid off the authorities and angry parents to keep Alfred out of jail or from being tarred and feathered and run out of town by a lynch mob, shrugging her shoulders and saying good-naturedly that Alfie would have done the same for her. And everyone knew she had her own peccadilloes—she liked girls as much as he did. It was not at all an uncommon event for her to usurp one of his prettiest and most promising pupils to serve as her understudy, personal maid, or traveling companion, until boredom set in, of course; then Nance threw the poor girl back to Alfie if he would have her.
By the time I met Nance, the novelty of marriage to a faux English aristocrat had faded and she didn’t care what Alfred did or who he did it with, only that a husband was a useful thing to have around at times, like a baby alligator in a diamond collar, and he was overall an amusing fellow and, even more important, an excellent press agent, and a capable but bland, lackluster leading man who knew his place onstage and kept to it and never presumed upon her spotlight.
Unfortunately, Alfred was as fiscally irresponsible as Nance; neither of them was capable of managing the company’s, or their private, finances, and money flowed through their fingers like water. Several times the costumes and props of her company had been attached in lawsuits. Once she even showed up in court wearing the very fur coat she was being sued over nonpayment for. But Nance didn’t care; she was wild, irresponsible, and thoughtless, the freest of the free spirits. She took the Bard’s immortal line all the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players quite literally. She lived by it and was always on. There was never a moment of quiet with Nance unless she was unconscious. And yet, despite her flamboyance and her reputation for releasing raw, unbridled emotions upon the stage that breathed new life back into all the old but perennially popular roles, in real life there was a curious almost soulless quality about her, as though she were merely an empty vessel for others to fill, a medium that the spirits spoke through. You never really knew if it was the real Nance O’Neil speaking or if someone else, a playwright or press agent, had written the lines.
I think a reporter from The Boston Herald described her best. The morning after our first night together, while I still lay cocooned in Nance’s champagne-colored satin sheets, tensely enduring the orange baboon’s insistence on searching my head for fleas, Nance donned a demure dress of flowing white chiffon, loosely did up her hair, sent for the Angora kittens, kissed me “adieu for now,” and went out into the sitting room to assume her carefully calculated pose for the man The Boston Herald was sending to write a feature.
At once pensive and playful, maternal and virginal, she arranged herself upon the floor, playing with the kittens, with the sunbeams pouring in through the windows, catching her just right, and shining a spotlight, like a halo, onto her golden hair. When the reporter walked in and saw her thus, he was completely enchanted.
In her sun-flooded apartments, he wrote, her masses of glorious golden hair were caught loosely up on the top of her shapely head, and held in place by a huge Spanish comb. Nance O’Neil is not always tragic, nor even serious minded. She impresses one from the start as a girl, a very young girl. She is as unaffected by her great success as a child. It may be truthfully said that she is even more interesting personally than she is as an actress—and that is saying a great deal. She is subject to melancholy and decidedly moody in temperament. There is a constant intermingling of sunshine and shadow in her nature. And it is this that makes her so entirely fascinating.
When she came back to me, she laughed about it as she nestled on the bed beside me, snuggling deep into my arms.
“Don’t ever believe anything an actress ever says, darling; we never open our mouths to speak or even to kiss except to further our careers. All the kisses and pretty speeches are to that end and no other. The stage is the only lover we can ever be true to.”
I laughed with her at what I thought was a clever quip, a featherlight flippancy of her profession. I should have seen the warning in those words. I should have heeded it. In all the time I knew her, it was the most honest thing she ever said.
She was a rare charmer and very skillful at manipulating her image, as well as other people. But none of that mattered at the time, though in hindsight it should have. But I was head over heels in love and willing to overlook any and all of Nance’s foibles and flaws; she was only human after all. I chose to be blind and believe our souls had been wandering in the wilderness all these years, crying out for each other, until, at long last, fate brought us together and that she would never discard me as coldly and cavalierly as she did all her other conquests. I was different; I was her soul mate.
Before the next leg of her tour, we detoured, for a much needed respite. I took Nance to Maplecroft. It was Heaven having her there with me despite Emma’s sour-faced frowns and private protests that Nance was using me and making a fool of me and I was too blind to see it. Emma’s small Fall River mind equated all actresses, even a star like Nance O’Neil, the greatest tragedienne of the modern stage, with common whores. She considered Nance’s presence in our household not only a scandal we could never hope to live down but also a personal insult against all decent, God-fearing women. Father, Emma said, would turn in his grave, like a chicken roasting on a spit, if he knew we were hosting a troupe of actors in our house. We quarreled every time Emma could get me alone. She said I was dazzled by the footlights and glamour and bewitched by the world of make-believe and happy endings. She was right, she summed everything up so precisely, if not at all nicely, but I didn’t care. I was in love.
“If I am dreaming let me dream some more!” I said dismissively, and blocked my ears to the outraged torrent spewing from my sister’s mouth.
I remember the first morning when Nance floated downstairs straight into my arms, just like a dream, in a flowing gown of soft pink mousseline with wisps of her flaxen hair, caught up in a loose topknot, caressing her cameo-perfect porcelain-pale face, idly swinging a straw bonnet, trimmed with silk flowers, by its broad pink satin streamers. She looked like she belonged at Maplecroft. I have a picture of her in that dress, holding that bonnet behind her back, staring coyly out at the camera, at once angelic and fey. It stands in a silver frame beside my bed and, even now, I lay flowers, as an offering, a tribute, before it each and every day. Sometimes I even light a candle. The heart wants what it wants; I still love her. But I was just a new sensation, a novelty, the latest in a long line of diversions, to Nance. I am too wise a fool to pretend it was ever anything more no matter how much I like to imagine otherwise. Like Mr. Carroll’s muse Alice, Nance took me to Wonderland: Still she haunts me, phantomwise, . . . moving under skies / Never seen by waking eyes.
I spared no expense to entertain her and her troupe. Every night the house blazed with golden light, and glorious music, played by a full orchestra, wafted out into the darkness. There were hothouse palms in gilded pots and silver trays of sweet and savory delights. Lobster tails and oysters, steaks, and cakes galore. Tiered silver trays towered over the tables displaying the most tempting array of pastries. Champagne and Nance’s magical elixir of the green fairy flowed like water, and if any of my fair-weather friends from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union had dared say one word about it I would have snapped my fingers in their face.
Nance wore a clinging mint-green silk gown embroidered in silver and gold with a wreath of blue-green satin roses around her naked shoulders, and she sparkled with emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds everywhere she could think to put them.
And I wore the most fantastic creation of chartreuse and amber, cut daringly low and baring my shoulders in a fashion that was far too young for me. But that was how Nance made me feel—young and alive! When I was with her I was in the springtime of my life and not the autumn. My freshly hennaed hair was piled perilously high in a root-straining pompadour garnished with gold tinsel fringe and amber and chartreuse satin roses and I was weighed down with jewels.
I was a woman of forty-five making a fool and a spectacle of myself, but I was so in love I didn’t even care if the whole world was laughing at me. I was so gloriously happy I could even laugh at myself.
We danced in each other’s arms; none of the theatrical folk thought there was anything unusual about it, and even Nance’s husband smiled indulgently and saluted me as we waltzed past. I took puffs from her strange cigarettes and heady, intoxicating sips from her glass that made my head spin beautifully. The green fairy seemed to make the whole world shine; everything and everyone was beautiful and brilliant that night, and I couldn’t stop smiling and bestowing a thousand compliments left and right. I just had to stop everyone and tell them how wonderful they were and to thank them for coming to grace my home with their glorious presence.
As the evening wore on, Nance and I stole away to my summer bedroom. I was wild to be alone with her. Every time I looked at her I wanted to tear off her clothes and mine. On the pink-and-chocolate-striped sofa, Nance sat back, lost in ecstasy, the liqueur in her crystal glass glowing like the most perfect peridot or that subtle hint of green at the heart of a white rose, as I knelt reverently at her feet, lifted her skirts, and licked her sex, lapping it up like a cunning, greedy cat left alone in the kitchen where a bowl of rich cream had been left sitting out on the counter. I couldn’t get enough of her! She felt like liquid silk and I was starved for her!
That was when Emma walked in like a black storm cloud to rain on our picnic.
That was the end. That one wild, rash, uninhibited “lewd and unnatural and unforgivable” act cost me my sister. Emma hurriedly packed her clothes—every garment she owned fit into a single carpet bag—and walked out without a backward glance. She left all her religious ephemera behind for me, saying tartly that I had greater need of the Lord’s grace and forgiveness than she.
I ran down the stairs after her, weeping and shouting at her—“Emma, PLEASE!”—heedless of what my guests might think, trying desperately to make her understand, but she wouldn’t stop walking or even turn around and look at me.
“I fear for your soul, Lizzie!” Those were the last words my sister ever spoke to me, shouted back over her shoulder, as she slammed the front door.
I never saw her again. We never exchanged another word, not even by letter; those I wrote to her were returned unopened. She went to live briefly with the Reverend Jubb and his sister, and then with Orrin’s mother, Caroline Mason Gardner, in Swansea.
Caroline doted on Emma, they were not that far apart in age, and the two of them became best friends. She even insisted that my sister accompany her on a holiday trip to sunny Catalina Island one year. Orrin, back from Tennessee to visit his mother, was with them. I heard he also became “quite fond” of Emma. Caroline sent me many postcards, enthusing about the fragrant fruit trees, bright, sunny beaches, Sugar Loaf Bay, and the fascinating fishes spied through glass-bottomed boats while sailing over the sunlit blue waters, but not one word from, or about, Orrin or Emma. Did that silence, I have often since wondered, say more than words? They had such a good time in Catalina that the following year the three of them went to New Orleans, and there were more postcards about Mardi Gras and alligator parks.
I’ve often wondered, despite the seventeen-year age difference, did Orrin, unable to have me, transfer his affections to Emma? I knew my sister was far too timid to defy social convention and marry a man almost two decades her junior, but that doesn’t answer the question: Did they fall in love?
Over the years that followed, I heard many bedeviling rumors that kept me awake at night. But I never discovered the truth, if there ever was any truth behind those rumors. I never delved into the matter or asked any questions of Caroline or any mutual acquaintances who would have been in a position to know. I was too afraid of what might be the answers. The truth is, I didn’t want to know.
Three years later, Emma abruptly left Caroline’s home and moved to Newmarket, New Hampshire, where, calling herself “Miss Gardner,” she led a reclusive existence in a cheap rented room on a farmstead belonging to a pair of spinsters, the Connor sisters, leaving only at dusk to take a long, solitary walk in the gloaming. She attended church services every Sunday with her veil down and rebuffed all attempts at friendship. Sugar cubes, which she had long been addicted to sucking on—they were cheaper than candy—and a rocking chair were the only luxuries she permitted herself. She kept her money in the bank and wore her plain black dresses and sturdy leather shoes until they fell apart and were past mending before she would deign to purchase new. Word later came back to me—as any unpleasant news had a way of doing—that whenever people asked about her family, Emma said she had had a sister once, but that she was dead.
I suppose it had to end sometime, but I wish it had not been like that.
But at the time of our parting, I was too enraptured with Nance to try to win Emma back, and later . . . after Nance . . . I was too embarrassed. Emma would have only said, I told you so, and even if she only actually spoke those words once, she would say them again every time she looked at the disgusting, unnatural thing I had become in her eyes. And by then there were also those rumors about Orrin and Emma standing between us. So I just let it go. For better or worse, I let things be.
“Never mind,” Nance purred huskily into my ear as she led me back to my bedroom, soothing me with sips from her glass, urging me to let the green fairy take all the shameful, painful feelings and inhibitions away and leave only the body behind and all its wild naked animal urges. Her hand was at my breast, and then between my legs, making me forget . . . at least for a time. “Never mind, Lizbeth; you still have me. . . .” she purred.
But in the end, I lost Nance too. Nothing worked out the way I thought it would!
Our idyll continued. There was still time before Nance must resume her tour and she begged me to come with her to Tyngsboro; she longed to show me her farm. After Emma’s abrupt departure, I just wanted to run away, to forget and escape, from all the gossip in Fall River about our abrupt parting after so many years and lose myself in the world of waking dreams I dwelled in whenever I was with Nance. So I went most willingly to her farm. I would have followed her anywhere, I think.
She was so proud of that quaint brown and white—or “chocolate and ivory,” as Nance picturesquely described it—Tudor-style gingerbread house sitting ensconced in the heart of a lovely garden. She called it “Brindley Farm.” She was always buying cows, donkeys, goats, pigs, and sheep whose sweet, docile dispositions or attractive appearances caught her eye and having them shipped back to the farm. She chose the chickens for their plumage too, declaring that the speckled hens’ eggs tasted the best and she absolutely abhorred the plain, boring white ones.
Every morning, sitting up in bed, with diamonds sparkling like stars on her ears and around her wrists, she would blissfully breakfast on scrambled eggs and champagne and sigh about how many times she had to absolutely “stifle, like a murderer pressing a pillow over a victim’s face, with all my might, the urge to abandon the stage for the simple life, domesticity, sweet tranquility, the homely virtues, the fireside, and little children calling me Mother.”
She played this scene several times to great effect for the so-called “gentlemen of the press” who applauded her selfless self-sacrifice, nobly devoting her life to bringing pleasure to thousands of theatergoers while steadfastly denying herself the dearest, sweetest, most natural instincts of a woman’s homebound heart.
“It is one of the vain regrets of my life!” she would heartrendingly sigh. “But I have schooled myself to say to all who talk to me of a home life, though that is ever a sore and tender spot with me, that I have no thoughts of settling down at all—the stage is my life, and I have ground my very soul under heel to succeed there!”
I remember a magazine feature, “A Day at Nance O’Neil’s Farm,” in which she posed for a series of photographs gathering eggs; herding the sheep; sitting by the pond playing with fluffy yellow ducklings; milking a cow; bathing a billy goat in her own bathtub with her lily-of-the-valley-scented soap; standing proudly, like a domestic goddess, beside the kitchen stove holding a large potato speared awkwardly upon a fork and smilingly declaring in the caption below that she was about to bake it for her husband’s supper before plunging it into a pot of boiling water; gingerly holding a broom as though she hadn’t the faintest clue what to do with it; sitting with a lapful of knitting needles and a mound of hopelessly tangled wool; and relaxing by the fire at day’s end dozing dreamily with her head resting on Alfred’s knee as he, per their nightly custom, read to her from one of the great classics of literature—actually a sporting magazine concealed inside a copy of David Copperfield. Life for Nance was indeed a stage, and she was always on it, playing a part; I sometimes wondered if she had any idea who she truly was.
It all reminded me of Marie Antoinette’s pretend farm I had read about where servants bathed and perfumed the animals before they were led into the royal presence. Nance even had two cows named Blanche and Brunette that she liked to take for walks as though they were dogs while she smiled and waved hello to the locals, or “quaint peasants,” as she called her neighbors. And she liked to dress up like Little Bo Peep, replete with sunbonnet and ringlets and ruffled pantalets, in a Mother Goose pantomime to herd the sheep, all of them curiously clean for farm animals and wearing blue or pink satin bows to denote their sex.
Like carefree young girls in bare feet and dresses of cheerful calico—Nance in green and yellow and me in blue and red—with our hair down in pigtails, the ends tied with ribbons to match our dresses, we wandered hand in hand all over the farm. One wonderful drowsy afternoon we made the most passionate love in a haystack. Afterward, Nance told me that the farm was haunted, that on nights when the moon was bright a pair of lovers from a bygone century roamed about and relived their own forbidden passion.
Back in the days when the Puritans still held sway, the farm had been an inn. The innkeeper had had a beautiful daughter, with long golden hair and a sweet, docile disposition. One day, while gathering mushrooms in the forest nearby, she had met a gypsy girl, part of a roving band that camped on the outskirts of town. The two had fallen instantly in love. And though the innkeeper’s daughter struggled with what she perceived as a great and terrible sin and fears for the fate of her immortal soul, she could not renounce her love. They continued to meet, whenever they could, in the woods, but as the weather grew colder they grew bolder and moved their secret trysts inside the barn. One night they were discovered in a naked embrace in the hayloft. The gypsy girl was accused of using witchcraft to seduce the innkeeper’s daughter and taken out and hanged from a tree on the grounds. Her beloved died shortly afterward, of a broken heart, the legend said. Some versions of the story claimed she had hanged herself from the same tree or drowned herself in the pond.
“And to think I shall lose this place,” Nance sighed as she lay in my arms, her head on my shoulder, drowsy with love, “if I cannot raise seventy-five hundred dollars.”
“We shall have to see what we can do to prevent that,” I answered, thoroughly under her spell, so caught up in her web I would have promised her the moon on a velvet pillow or the stars for a necklace if she had hinted that such was her desire.
One late Sunday afternoon, our last at the farm before the tour resumed, Nance and I were lazing away the day in the library. She was restless and got up from beside me and went and plucked a book from a shelf and carried it to the desk. I thought nothing of it and went on reading my own volume until she leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed my cheek and presented the book to me with a flourish.
It was a beautiful book with a deep-mustard-yellow cloth cover embellished with wreaths of golden flowers and a sky-blue satin marker sewn into the binding. It was a collection of poems by her friend, and sometime lover, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who had turned his epic poem about Judith of Bethulia into a play to create a worthy showcase for Nance’s “immense and awe inspiring talent.”
She had taken the trouble to copy one of the poems out onto the flyleaf just for me. It was called “Flower and Thorn.”
Take them and keep them,
Silvery thorn and flower,
Plucked just at random
In the rosy weather—
Snowdrops and pansies,
Sprigs of wayside heather,
And five-leafed wild rose
Dead within the hour.
Take them and keep them:
Who can tell? Some day, dear,
(Though they be withered,
Flower and thorn and blossom,)
Held for an instant
Up against thy bosom,
They might make December
Seem to thee like May, dear!
For My Lizbeth
With Love from
Your Daphne
Daphne—that was my secret name for her. I alone called her that. The idea had come to me one day when I saw her swimming naked in the pond, her body white, her hair like liquid gold floating out about her bare shoulders, among the pink and white water lilies. Daphne, for the chaste and beautiful water nymph of ancient lore, upon whom the gods took pity and transformed into a laurel tree the moment the lascivious Apollo’s eager arms closed around her—thereby preserving her chastity and saving her from rape. There she would stand by the river, stiff, proud, stately, and unyielding forever as a warning to presumptuous lovers who would force their lust, and their will, upon another.
Why couldn’t I see beyond the sentiment, that this pretty gift of poetry contained an implicit warning? My Daphne was telling me that if I tried to hold on to her I would be left with nothing. But I couldn’t think then; she was in my arms again, nuzzling and nestling, and telling me how happy she was that I had decided to go to Chicago with her.
In hindsight I suppose Nance was very happy to have me there. A lawsuit was looming and costumes and scenery she needed had been seized by an irate theater manager after Nance defaulted on a loan. Nance insisted it was all “mean-spirited meanness” and she couldn’t remember any such loan; the money was a gift, she insisted. She was determined to challenge the charges in court, and I followed her bravely into the arena, despite the clamor of photographers and newspapermen. I put on a dress of pearl-gray and pale-mauve satin trimmed with dotted black net, ropes of pearls, my silver fox fur, with a mammoth corsage of orchids, and an enormous veiled hat the size of a serving platter erupting with a riot of silk orchids and sleek pink, purple, and magenta feathers, and sat beside Nance, holding her hand and nodding encouragingly throughout the ordeal. And when she lost the case and burst into tears because she had spent the last $25 she had in the world on the orchid corsage she was wearing and her own lawyer was going to sue her because she couldn’t pay his fee, I consoled her by writing a check, to discharge her legal obligations and secure the release of her costumes and props. The smile she gave me in return was like the sunlight breaking through the rain and vivid blue skies chasing away the grim black thunderclouds.
After Chicago a train whisked us away to New York. We dined every night at Delmonico’s. I remember sitting there simmering with jealously over a lobster dinner while Nance danced, flirted, and laughed with her admirers. I clenched my fists so tight my white kid gloves split. My face, captured in the mirrors lining the silk-papered walls, was as red as the velvet gown Nance had chosen for me. I sat there and watched her waltz obliviously right past me in the arms of a handsome, silver-haired financier, anxiously fingering the gold scorpion brooch, Nance’s own, that she had herself pinned on to my bodice as we dressed for the evening as a gift to thank me for chasing her financial woes away and to remember her by forever. As if I could ever forget her!
She reveled in the attention of her admirers, male and female; she simply could not get enough of their adoration, gifts, and flattery. Though she kissed me every chance she got and called me her “angel” and her “lady bountiful,” I was no longer enough. She had even started to plead exhaustion and headaches to keep me from her bed.
At first, I believed her, until, restless, and unable to sleep without her beside me, I rose and peeped out into the corridor and saw Nance’s door open and a black-haired girl with caramel skin in a beaded topaz satin gown softly slipping out with the dawn, satin high heels twinkling with faux diamonds in her hand as she tiptoed in her silk stockings down the rose-carpeted corridor to her own room. I recognized her as Alfred’s latest protégé and the newest member of the troupe, a Brazilian beauty named Ricca who was obviously taking her role as Nance’s understudy quite literally into bed and directly under the great star herself.
Yet I couldn’t leave Nance or even openly reproach her. I feigned blind ignorance and never said a word about Ricca and just went on smiling, showering Nance with affection, gifts, and money and playing the charade of love, hoping she would eventually tire of her new dalliance and come back to me. More fool I not to realize that there would always be a new diversion to delight Nance. If she didn’t find them, they would find her. Variety was the spice of Nance’s life; she lived for novelty and could not abide stagnation and boredom.
But the curtain always has to fall. The night finally came when it was no longer possible for me to pretend anymore and she turned all my gold and silver tinsel dreams to cold gray, dead ashes. I was dancing in her arms, in my bloodred velvet gown, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, gold scorpion at my breast, when Nance coyly alluded to the greatest gift of all, one that only I could give her. Then, when the hint eluded me, she came brazenly out with it and asked the impossible of me.
“Give me your life, dearest Lizbeth,” she begged, her voice sultry and hot against my ear, her tongue flicking out, to tease the lobe, just like a snake’s forked tongue.
She was asking me to give her the once in a lifetime role all actresses dream of, the one she would be forever identified with; no matter how many other actresses attempted it in the decades that followed, it would always be her role. She wanted to portray me in a play. I would be given full credit as authoress even if I didn’t write a single word and left it all to an anonymous phantom pen Nance would hire, and we would appear together before the press and I would publicly declare that Nance was the only one I trusted to do full justice to the story of my life, that no other actress could breathe such life and heart into my personal tragedy.
I felt stung, used, and betrayed. For the first, and only, time I said No to Nance. And so she said good-bye to me, but not in actual words, at least not then. And I was still too much in love with her to see the truth behind her sad little smile as she laid her head upon my shoulder and let her tears soak through my lace collar as we finished what was to be our last dance.
“It was just an idea, that’s all; let’s forget the whole thing,” she whispered. Of course, she didn’t mean a word of it. Forget and forgive was a concept completely foreign to Nance.
But I was only too happy to agree and go on pretending.
When the music ended and we sat down, as a conciliatory gesture I drew my checkbook out of my purse.
“Now you need never worry about losing your farm,” I whispered as I handed her a check for $10,000.
I thought it was enough. But Nance didn’t even say thank you. She just folded the check in half and stuffed it down the front of her marigold velvet bodice for safekeeping, then sat forward and moodily pillowed her chin against her fist and wearily began reciting:
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Then she yawned right in my face and languidly lit another cigarette.
I knew then, with my sinking heart, terrified by the plunge it was so suddenly and abruptly taking, back into darkness and lonely oblivion, that she really was bored with me, and tired of me, and that Ricca and all the other casual dalliances were not just passing fancies, merely the continuation of a long-established pattern. And, even worse, Nance was disappointed in me, because I had finally said no, where before I had always said yes. That no was the death knell of our love, if it ever really was love, and about that I had my doubts even if I didn’t want to acknowledge them. I only knew I felt let down, like I had failed her, even though I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong; I just didn’t want my life story paraded before the footlights. I didn’t want to be a playwright or provide the fodder for any more headlines. It wasn’t a slight against Nance herself, or her talent. I just wanted the scandal to die and to be allowed to live out my life in peace, blessedly free of the macabre notoriety that had for so long surrounded me.
And if I had failed her, well . . . she had also failed me. She was the one acting like a fickle, petulant child casting aside a once-favored toy just because it was no longer new. The only thing I didn’t know was how to fix it without crumbling and caving in, saying Yes in spite of every screaming instinct I possessed, and forever hating myself for it.
If I gave in and gave her what she asked, I would only be buying more time with Nance, but history was bound to repeat itself eventually, boredom would again set in, and I would silently simmer with repressed resentment, I would get tired of saying Yes, and the death knell would sound again, and then it really would be final; there would be no last-minute reprieve for the condemned.
It really is better, a little voice in the back of my mind that I didn’t want to hear whispered, to just get it over with.
Sometimes it really is hard not to hate the truth. But I was desperate to hold on even though I knew it was like trying to pull a tiger back by its tail when it wants nothing more to do with you; it is bound to turn around and bite you. I just didn’t want to let go of the dream.
I knew something was different the moment my foot crossed the threshold into her splendid suite at the Bellevue Hotel. I knew she was leaving; I think I even knew that she was leaving me, not just New York, but I didn’t want to face the truth. I kept hoping the check that would allow her to keep her precious farm was recompense enough for denying her my life. I kept praying, PLEASE let everything be all right!
A flush of shame suffused my cheeks as I remembered the last time I had been in this suite. Pictures I would rather forget flashed like lightning through my mind. The drink of the green fairy. The bedroom. Naked skin. The sweaty tangle of satin sheets soon kicked to the floor.
I was willing to do anything to please Nance, to hold on to Nance, except the one thing she wanted most—to take my life and make it her own, to flash and flaunt my tragedy before the footlights, to make my ghostwritten play my all too public confession, brazenly delivered to all and any who could afford the price of a theater ticket.
Shame flooded me as the memories came rushing back like a series of rude slaps. Nance’s husband, Alfred, in his plush purple velvet dressing gown and matching slippers, a tassel bobbing on one toe as he swung his foot to the rhythm of the record playing on the phonograph, something whimsical and merry by Gilbert and Sullivan. The Mikado: “Three Little Maids from School Are We” played over and over endlessly. And was there, at some point, at least for a time, another body between Nance’s and mine in that big bed, one with smooth golden-caramel skin? My mind is all a cloudy muddle and in truth I do not want to remember.
I can only blame the green fairy. No, that is a lie! I can only blame myself! Maybe it wasn’t The Mikado after all; maybe it was The Pirates of Penzance? I hope so! Somehow that is easier to live with than “Three Little Maids.” Am I making any sense at all? My mind is so muddy not even a catfish could see in the sluggish, murky water that fills my head whenever I recall that night, my last night, with Nance.
Yes, I am nearly certain now that it was The Pirates of Penzance! I see myself clinging tight to Nance, bathing her bare skin with my tears, begging her not to leave me to pine, alone and desolate. And I hear her laughing, boldly declaring it better by far to live and die a pirate king, just like she always said that it was better to be an outlaw than to not be free. And Alfred, sitting with all the sangfroid of a modern major general, with a snifter of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, in a wing chair at the foot of the bed, swaying his foot to the music, the golden tassel on his slipper jouncing, jiggling like a worm on a fisherman’s hook, watching as Nance and I . . . Nance and I . . . the green fairy’s magical elixir . . . the giggling wanton naked loss of inhibition, wiggling and writhing, skin upon skin, hot flesh upon cool satin, the taste of her . . . the feel of her . . . like melted silk!
I shut my eyes against the shameful flood of images, like lurid photographs flickering past in a pornographer’s hands, just a quick peek, to titillate and entice a purchase, then opened them again on the sun-flooded scene of chaos that lay spread out before me like the debris a hurricane had left behind.
There were trunks, boxes, and valises strewn everywhere, their contents spilling out or stuffed haphazardly in. Dresses, undergarments, jewels, hairbrushes, shoes, stockings, hats, gloves, shawls, and parasols and all sorts of things were scattered everywhere, across the floor, draped over tables and chairs. A monkey and an angora cat were climbing the curtains; they had already succeeded in pulling down one and it lay pooled upon the floor providing a sumptuous feast for the baby goat that was the latest addition to Nance’s menagerie. The baboon was swinging from the crystal chandelier, the parrots were squawking and talking, Jolly Jack was alternately swearing and asking for a cracker, and all the dogs dashed about in circles barking. What the management would say when they beheld the damage Nance’s pets had wreaked upon their finest suite I could only imagine. I supposed I would have to write another check.
Talking ceaselessly of everything and nothing, Nance flitted about like a hummingbird from flower to flower, never lighting anywhere for more than a moment, issuing a volley of instructions to her black maid, Jemimah, and her new secretary, the effete Patrick in his skintight lemon-and-chocolate-checkered trousers and lavender waistcoat, with a green carnation in the buttonhole of his forest-green velvet coat marking him as a lingering devotee of the dead and disgraced Oscar Wilde. Her golden hair was caught up loosely in a disorderly topknot, and she was still in her petticoats. Jemimah dogged her steps, diligently trying to lace up her sea-green satin corset and imploring Miss Nance to be still, “just for a moment, honey!” But Nance must always be in motion; stillness was for corpses, she always used to say.
“Nance!” Alfred bellowed as he strode into the room, trailing a cloud of cigar smoke behind him, fluttering a paper angrily in his hand. “Have a look at this, Nance!”
She paused only for an instant, so that I marveled that she could take in even the barest gist of what was written there.
“Violet gloves accented with gilt embroidery and garnets—what a frivolous expense!” she declared, tossing her head as she moved off again, causing a long hank of golden hair to tumble down her back and her maid to roll her eyes and heave an exasperated sigh as she fumbled about inside an open trunk for more hairpins. “If I were you, Albert, I would refuse to pay it!”
That was Nance’s way. And when Alfred bellowed back, “I intend to!” she nodded her approval.
When she saw me reflected in the mirror above the mantel where her raccoon was trying to fish the poor goldfish out of their bowl for breakfast she spun round to greet me. It was then that I saw a certain disturbing vacancy in her eyes. There was a twitch at her lips, causing them to hover momentarily somewhere between a frown and a smile, before the switch was thrown and she became The Nance O’Neil, the flamboyant and famous actress whose whole life was a stage.
“Lizbeth!” she extravagantly exclaimed, and theatrically flung wide her arms and came to embrace me as if she were crossing a stage and there was an audience watching and applauding her entrance. There was something distinctly artificial in the way she kissed me once upon each cheek, her lips, and her hands at my waist, barely touching the skin she had once so fervently caressed.
I had been right. Something was different. I knew it. I felt it. I could not deny it. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to fall down on my knees and beg and plead and do whatever I had to do to fix what was wrong, but I didn’t know how except by giving up, giving in, and giving her the story of my life, and that I could never do. I felt confusion and hurt flood every part of me. Words deserted me; if I ever had any gift for them it abandoned me, leaving me feeling stupid and small, as if my tongue were of no more use than a fat and lazy garden slug.
I didn’t hear her—I was too lost in my frantic, fearful emotions—but Nance sent the others out.
And there we stood, face-to-face, amidst the chaos of Nance’s belongings, for what we both now knew would be the final time.
“It’s over.” I felt the words being torn out of me, but I had to say them.
For one mad moment I thought that perhaps if I said them first they would not hurt so much. But they did; oh, they did! Tears overflowed my eyes and I felt them on my cheeks and I hated myself because I could not keep them back. I didn’t want Nance to see me weep. I wanted to be sophisticated and regal at the end of our affair, blasé and nonchalant in my defeat; I didn’t want anyone to see my humiliation and know how much it hurt me.
I thought of the things I had done with this woman only last night, and before an audience, and shame flooded in and drowned any desire I might have still felt. I felt dirty and vulgar. In the deep, dark recesses of my heart, locked away to try to keep me from feeling the pain again and again every day, I still loved Orrin Gardner and longed for his touch. I still awoke some nights after dreaming of him easing into me and our bodies becoming one. But then Nance had come, like a whirlwind, into my life, and now I had to reap the storm.
Nance, forgetting that her corset was only haphazardly tied, turned away to carelessly pull a dark-green afternoon dress embroidered with coral and gold roses over her head. She didn’t bother with the back; her maid and the others would return in a little while, after I was gone, and someone would attend to it—someone always did. Someone always took care of Nance O’Neil and cleaned up the chaos and disarray that were as natural to her as breathing.
“Long ago when I was just a silly green girl my first lover taught me an invaluable lesson, Lizbeth. As a parting gift I shall pass it on to you so that you may profit from it on future occasions.” Now she was speaking to me like a stranger despite the deep intimacy of the subject.
Always the actress, she spoke as if she were onstage; her carriage, her tone, her gestures, the way she held herself, suddenly became different, as if she were positioning herself, subtly shifting angles, considering the lighting and the audience’s view of her, calculating how to show herself to best advantage. She was playing a beautiful, sophisticated woman of the world who was about to confide, to a more drab and naïve old-maid acquaintance, a pertinent secret as the audience sat forward in their seats breathless with anticipation.
She put her hands lightly upon my shoulders and asked a question: “If you are afraid someone you love is going to leave you, what do you do?”
“Find a way to make them stay?” I whispered in a tear-choked, tremulous little voice, hating myself all the time for it, and her too, for making me play out this ludicrous and demeaning finale. I glanced down at my purse, dangling from my wrist, and thought of money and everything it could, and could not, buy.
Nance tilted her head and sagely posed another question: “And if you cannot?”
I shook my head as my detested tears rolled down my face.
Nance tilted my chin up and made me look at her.
“You leave first so you do not have to watch them walking away from you.” She smiled sadly. “You should have left me first, Lizbeth, instead of waiting for me to leave you. It was inevitable, you know, my dear. It is always better to be the one who walks away rather than the one who is walked away from. It’s all a question of timing.” She patted my hand and smiled at me. “And over the years, I’ve gotten rather good at it. My timing is impeccable—everyone says so!”
She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for a round of applause. But I would not give it to her, I would be damned first! Instead, I pulled my veil down over my hat brim to hide my red and blotchy wet face. I suddenly felt as if my reddened eyes and nose and the tracks of my tears were victories to add to her lengthy list of accolades, trophies she would prize forever.
“You’ve been pretending for so long you have forgotten what is real!” I said bitterly. “I was never real to you, not as a person. I was just a diversion, a novelty, a bottomless purse and a story you wanted me to give you so you could make it that once in a lifetime role every actress longs for! Tell me, Nance, was it thrilling to bed a supposed murderess? That’s one more thing you can boast about! Another story you can dine out on!” As my tears overwhelmed me, I rushed out the door, thankful only that I did not crash into the wall beside it; I was crying so hard I could hardly see.
I never looked back, so I don’t know how she received my words, or if they even made a dent, the faintest little pinprick in the hard, high-polished, glossy veneer of the actress Nance O’Neil. I only knew that she would go on. She never really loved me; I was never real to her, only a character, a role, one of those shunned and unloved women she excelled at portraying, that she hoped to add to her repertoire, to cement her everlasting fame as the actress who had brought the true story of her intimate friend Lizzie Borden to the stage. Nance might regret losing the part, but she would never regret losing me, no more or less than she did any other lover at the end of the affair.
Headlines—the bane of my existence, the hammer striking the killing blow to my heart, shattering it like scarlet glass—screamed at me from the breakfast tray I had forgotten to phone downstairs and cancel.
LIZZIE BORDEN TO BE A PLAYWRIGHT!
DECLARES NANCE O’NEIL
THE ONLY ACTRESS
WHO CAN DO JUSTICE TO
THE STORY OF HER LIFE!
It would surely be the role of a lifetime, more memorable even than Miss O’Neil’s passionate and intense portrayal of Lady Macbeth my nemesis, Mr. Edwin H. Porter, opined.
She had been so sure of me, that I would do anything she asked, she had given an exclusive story to Mr. Porter!
I picked up the phone on the table beside the bed in my own opulent suite at the Bellevue Hotel and asked to be connected with my bank. I canceled the check that I had given Nance. Then I packed my bags, summoned a porter, and ordered a carriage to take me to the station and went back to Fall River, and my maple-shrouded haven, to lick my wounds in splendid solitude. I knew then, I would be alone for the rest of my life.
I was done with love.