Sweet Madness

by Trisha Leaver

“Mine are fine,” Lizzie said, as she tossed a scrap of paper to the table and slumped down into the chair. “The lye was on your list.”

  I picked up the crumpled piece of paper, glancing at the handwriting. Every morning, Mrs. Borden left me a list of chores, the ones she wanted done first underlined three times. On the bottom would be the items she needed from downtown. A cheap cut of meat from the butcher, gray cotton for mending, lye so that I could do the wash . . . I had been surprised not to see the list on the counter waiting for me as I prepared breakfast this morning; I’d figured she hadn’t finished it yet.

  “This is the list your mother leaves for me each evening.”

  “Stepmother,” Lizzie corrected. “And I thought I’d save you some time and take care of the errands myself. I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I got up and took your list, thought I would help you today.”

  I shook my head and leaned back in my chair, quickly glancing down the hall towards the front parlor. If Mr. Borden knew Lizzie had gone to the market for me, he’d dock my wages. Wages I needed to secure mine and Liam’s future. Money needed to buy Cara’s passage to America.

  “Your father—”

  “Don’t you worry about him,” Lizzie cut me off. “He doesn’t know, and even if he did, I’d make sure it was me he scolded, not you.”

  My stomach rolled with that thought. Lizzie was right. Mr. Borden wouldn’t simply dock my wages; he’d find a way to penalize Lizzie as well, take what little solace she had and withhold it to teach her a lesson. I’d seen firsthand how cruel her father could be, how far he would go to make sure Lizzie stayed within the mold he set for her. And it wasn’t good.

  It wasn’t more than six months ago that Lizzie had tried to take on a new charity, something to do with the temperance movement, combating the ill effects of whiskey, and her desire to minister to the morally inept.

  I had laughed at first, thinking she could start in Liam’s flat. I never actually offered that up, though. Knowing Lizzie and her outspoken nature, she’d take me up on the offer and march her pious friends down to Liam’s dingy, cramped home, only to be horrified at what no doubt would be Seamus’s crude response. Instead, I had wished her luck and hidden my small bottle of whiskey under my thin mattress, just in case she thought to save me.

  She had talked incessantly about her righteous cause with Alice for weeks, until Mr. Borden caught wind of her plans. Apparently, he’d heard about a boy in that group, a young man no more than twenty-three who paid more attention to Lizzie than the others. The same one who had suggested her group start their mission with a visit to a pub on Corky Row. There was no way Mr. Borden was going to let either of his daughters be seen with a man at night, never mind outside a pub, and certainly not near Corky Row.

  The two of them screamed until the wee hours of the morning, Lizzie countering her father’s accusations with more than plenty of her own. But when all was said and done, when the screams faded to hushed whispers and eventually to sobs, Mr. Borden had won. Lizzie was left planning Sunday school lessons while the saving of Fall River’s drunken souls became someone else’s mission.

  But that was the way it always worked in the Borden house. Any hint of life, any sign of happiness, was quickly quashed by Mr. Borden out of fear it was the devil’s handiwork. Quiet, obedient, and utterly boring . . . that was the way Mr. Borden preferred his house. The way he preferred his women.

  Chapter 6

  “Bridget? Are you listening to me? I said I went to the market for you.” Lizzie waved a hand in front of my face as she repeated herself.

  “Please, don’t cross your father again,” I pleaded. I didn’t want her to sink into one of her moods where cold silence permeated every corner of this house. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Hush up about my father, Bridget. I said you had nothing to worry about when it came to him.”

  That wasn’t true, and she knew it. Everyone had something to worry about when it came to Andrew Borden. If you owed him money, he’d find you. If you were a tenant with questionable associates, he’d evict you on the spot. And if you had no debt with him, he’d eventually make sure you did. Yes, Lizzie thought she could handle her father, but there was a look of dark intent in his eyes when he talked to her that made me think she was very, very wrong.

  I stared down at the package Lizzie had brought back from the store, curious as to why she stopped there. Why, if she was so intent on helping me, had she only gone to the pharmacy and ignored everything else on my list? There were at least ten items written down, and yet she’d come home with only one.

  “Why do you only have lye?” I asked, already guessing at the answer. Something must have gone wrong. I’d seen it happen before . . . back home. I’d watched Cara go in to help Mama with supper, then forget what she was doing and use the dull edge of a spoon to try and peel a potato. Lizzie had that same lost look in her eyes, that same fear and confusion that, to this day, still plagued my dreams.

  “Lizzie, what happened?”

  She didn’t answer, rather shook her head, her eyes darting between the list her stepmother had left for me and the package of lye still wrapped and sitting on the table.

  “Tell me, please,” I begged.

  “Do they ever ask you about me?” Her eyes were soft, almost fearful, like a child’s. “Do you ever hear them talking ill of me?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. The truth was yes, and not merely the shopkeepers and their employees but Liam and his friends as well. Everybody in Fall River had a bit of gossip to prattle on about whenever it came to the Bordens. They all knew them, or at least of them. They knew Andrew Borden had two unwed daughters—one who had been caught shoplifting items from the grocer in plain sight, the same one who openly challenged her father in public.

  “They were talking about me, Bridget,” Lizzie continued when I stayed silent. “The owner of the store and the two boys he hired to stock the shelves. They knew I was there. They didn’t even have the decency to stop, simply lowered their voices and kept right on talking.”

  She paused for a moment, her eyes darkening as she lost herself in the memory. “I heard every horrid word that came out of their mouths. Do you know what they said? Do you have any idea what they actually think of me?”

  I nodded. I’d heard it all before. She was a thief. The previous maid had quit because Lizzie took an unseemly interest in her. She was prone to fits of fugue. Once I’d even overheard the unthinkable—that Lizzie was taking up in bed with her own father and her stepmother knew, but simply looked the other way. It wasn’t only Lizzie that they prattled on about, but the entire household: Mr. Borden, Emma, and Mrs. Borden alike. The gossip changed daily, but it never got better. Never stopped.

  I looked at Lizzie, really looked at her for the first time in months. She’d lost weight these past few weeks, and the smile I rarely saw had completely disappeared. I hadn’t heard her laugh or sing, and she was spending less and less time with her friend, Alice. Even the children at Sunday school no longer brought her joy. She’d complain about the lessons and the strict order she was expected to maintain. Tired and seeming wearier than her thirty-two years, Lizzie looked defeated.

  As much as I tried not to, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was my baby sister staring back at me some twenty years into the future. Cara was still a child—barely twelve—and didn’t have the presence of mind to understand what most people said either way. But staring at Lizzie, at the woman everybody deemed odd and unpredictable, I feared this was the life Cara would have. The life I’d condemned her to.

  “I wish you hadn’t gone, Lizzie. Those people—”

  She cut me off with a quick pound of her fist to the table. I startled back, frightened at how quickly she’d gone from hurt to angry. “Answer my question, Bridget. Are they always talking about us that way? About me? Do you talk about me that way?”

  “Never.” And that was the truth. Not in the letters I wrote home to Mum, not even to Liam or Minnie. I’d go on about
how I had to tromp down three flights of stairs to use the cellar privy, and how Emma seemed to avoid this house at all costs, but not once had I ever said anything questionable about Lizzie. I couldn’t. As much as it bothered me to admit it, I considered her a friend.

  “I would never speak ill of you or Mr. Borden. Not of Mrs. Borden or Emma either.” I paused for a moment, realizing that what she wanted . . . what she needed, was a strong dose of reassurance. “I would never speak poorly of you, Lizzie. I consider you a friend, like a sister.”

  Lizzie looked up, a calmness passing over her face. She seemed relieved, as if for a moment she had doubted me. “Thank you. I think the same of you, Bridget. You know that, right?”

  Smiling, I patted her hand. “I do.” As volatile as Lizzie could be sometimes, she was equally as loyal. She was telling the truth, something so many folks in Fall River seemed to find unnecessary.

  “What happened to your dress?” I asked, eyeing the mess on her skirt from the knees down. It was times like this that Lizzie seemed different, almost vulnerable. Like all of her hardness and sturdy nature was nothing but a prideful act.

  Lizzie shrugged. “I wasn’t going to stand around and pretend as if I couldn’t hear them. I told them what I thought of their sinful ways and left. I cut through the back alleys to get home quicker.”

  That was Lizzie, outspoken and not so mindful of her place. “What exactly did you say to them?”

  “That their prattle was the work of the devil, and that I’d be damned right alongside them if I ever let you purchase items from their store again.”

  I sighed, curious as to which store I was banned from now. Errands that should take me no more than an hour now took the better part of the morning as I weaved my way past pharmacies, grocers, and fishmongers that Lizzie had had words with. “Which pharmacy, Lizzie?"

  “Gallagher’s, but I can tell you they won’t be getting any more of our business again.”

  That pharmacy was a fair distance from here, but one I frequented often. I wished Lizzie would keep her outbursts contained to merchants I had no need of. If she could do that, then I’d be fine with her speaking her mind.

  I set a fresh cup of tea in front of her and sat back down. “Want to tell me what they were saying?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” she said, waving me off. And to this day, I have no idea what those boys said to make Lizzie crumble.

  Chapter 7

  Lizzie was quieter than usual the rest of the day. She kept to herself, insisting on taking her noontime meal in her room. The only time I saw her leave the house was to feed her pigeons, and even then she looked somber. I didn’t push her, knew better than to try to drag out the truth before she was ready. If she wanted to talk, she’d let me know. If not, then eventually she’d shove whatever was eating at her to the back of her mind and pretend it had never happened.

  Part of me felt guilty for letting her wallow alone, but the other part was grateful because for once, I didn’t have the weight of someone else pressing down on me. While she kept to herself, I didn’t have to cater to her whims or spend countless hours listening to the stories she told about her father and stepmother, stories that would keep me questioning my decision to work here at all.

  The sun was setting fast as I finished scrubbing the dishes from supper. I had intended to get to them earlier, but the pump in the sink room was stuck again and I was unable to draw water from the cellar. Instead, I had to trek back out to the barn, fill two buckets from the faucet there, and then haul them back into the house.

  A creak on the cellar stairwell drew my attention. I looked up and found myself face to face with Abigail Borden. She’d been down there using the one indoor privy the house had. She didn’t even meet my eyes as she made her way into the parlor, only the whisper of her skirts breaking the silence as she passed.

  Mrs. Borden was a quiet woman, unnaturally so. So quiet that she preferred to write down my list of chores every evening instead of speaking with me directly. I’d asked Lizzie about her a few weeks after I started. I was concerned that perhaps I had done something to bring on her disfavor. Lizzie had laughed and told me the house was better off with her stepmother mute.

  Mrs. Borden’s heavy treads stopped abruptly, and I quietly stepped out of the sink room, curious as to what had caught her attention. My stomach dropped when I saw Mrs. Borden, and I took a step in her direction, pausing at the door connecting the kitchen to the sitting room. She was scanning the surfaces in the sitting room, first the tabletops and then the mantel. Either she was looking to see that I was attending to my dusting properly or she was looking for Mr. Borden’s key. Both were plausible, yet something in the way she held herself told me it was the latter.

  “Can I help you with something, Mrs. Borden?” I asked.

  Her face grew more flustered as she paused in her searching. “Has Lizzie been in here today?”

  Her question caught me by surprise. The sitting room was at the front of the house, directly behind the front stairs. It was nearly impossible to get from room to room without passing through it, and Lizzie passed through countless times each day to get to the kitchen, the cellar privy, even the barn. Of course she’d been in there. At one point in the day, we all had.

  “Yes ma’am,” I answered as I quickly glanced over the mantel for Mr. Borden’s key. It was gone, but I wasn’t surprised. He was home, up in the small office off his and Mrs. Borden’s bedroom probably poring over documents at his desk. He likely had his key with him, would use it to lock himself and his wife inside that room when they retired to bed, as he always did.

  She nodded once, her hand tracing the exact spot where Mr. Borden laid his key each morning as he left to attend to his business. I don’t know why I did it, where the sudden urge to defend Lizzie from an accusation that hadn’t even been voiced came from, but I walked into the room and cleared my throat to catch Mrs. Borden’s attention.

  “Lizzie’s only been through here twice today, from my recollection, ma’am. Once to tend to the pigeons in the barn, and a short hour ago to take supper to her room.” I purposely left out her early morning trip to the market, quite sure that would work neither in Lizzie’s favor nor in mine. “I spoke with her both times.”

  “You speak with Lizzie often?” Her voice was low, and I had to strain to hear her. “What is it that the two of you could find in common to talk about?”

  I couldn’t help but notice the way her hands trembled as her fingers circled that same vacant spot on the mantel and the way her eyes darted around the room. She was nervous, and I would have given anything to know why.

  It was in that moment, in the seconds I spent staring at her face, her hands, her posture, that she cracked. Simply slumped down onto the sofa and exhaled a giant breath.

  “Mrs. Borden? Are you ill? Can I get you something?”

  “Perhaps a glass of water, please.”

  In all the time I’d worked there, this was the first occasion I’d ever heard Abigail Borden utter the word please. I ran to the kitchen and drew a cupful of water from the fresh bucket I’d just brought in, then swiftly carried it back to her, quite sure she was about to faint. I’d never seen her so pale, so thoroughly distraught.

  She was still sitting on the sofa, her eyes glazing over as she stared off into some unknown point in the distance. “Here you go, ma’am. Shall I fetch Dr. Bowen from across the street or perhaps Mr. Borden?”

  She barely acknowledged me as she took the glass from my hands and brought it to her lips. “No.” Pausing, Mrs. Borden did the strangest thing. She stared at the water for a moment, even went so far as to lift it to the last remaining light filtering in through the front window.

  “It’s clean, ma’am. I saw to that myself. The pump is stuck again so I had to fetch it from the barn, but it is clean.”

  Mrs. Borden looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. For once, she wasn’t wrinkling her nose at the dirty water in my pail, or the stains on my apron, or the one unru
ly strand of hair that wanted to fall out of my bun no matter how many pins I used.

  “How old are you, Bridget?” she finally asked.

  “Pardon?” My mind raced with her question. It was one I’d been asked to answer several times since I’d arrived in America and generally, lying about it came easy. But not today. Today Mrs. Borden’s piercing blue eyes were unsettling, the gentle tone in her voice unnerving me more with each passing moment.

  “Twenty-four, ma’am.” I silently cursed the small hitch in my voice as I spoke, desperately hoping she hadn’t noticed.

  “How old are you really?”

  Mrs. Borden froze for a moment, and her eyes flicked back towards the doorway. I watched her fingers work worried circles into the arm of the sofa and had to stop myself from reaching out to steady them . . . to steady her. She caught my curious stare and stopped on her own, her leg beneath her heavy skirts taking up the same nervous twitch. She laughed, a small chuckle that was anything but pleasant, then took a deep breath as if trying to calm whatever thoughts had consumed her.

  “You don’t have to tell me, Bridget, but I’d wager you aren’t a day older than seventeen.”

  I didn’t answer. I doubted she expected me to, but she was right. I’d turned seventeen this past February.

  When I’d first boarded the SS Republic in Queenstown, I lied to the men on the dock. I told them I was eighteen, then vowed never to look back as the ship cut through the waters like an iron giant. Age didn’t matter much to them. So long as you had the three pounds to buy passage and you weren’t showing any outward signs of illness, you were good. Nobody checked on this side either. They asked my name and age, then moved on to whatever poor soul was in line behind me.

  Mr. Borden had asked my age, though. It was one of the dozen questions he had scribbled down on his paper. I told him I was twenty-three, a full seven years older than my true age. He wrote down my reply and moved on, more concerned with why I’d left the Remingtons’ employment and whether I had a propensity for blathering about the goings-on of my employer’s house then with my true age.