Читать книгу The Murderer's Maid - Erika Mailman - Страница 16

CHAPTER 9

Lizzie

MAY 21, 1872

The new home on Second Street was a bit of a disappointment but at least it got the family away from Uncle Hiram, that rude and distasteful man. It was also farther from the fishy smells of Crab Pond and the loud, machinic bravado of the mills and the train, all just a few blocks away when they lived on Ferry Street.

Their moving day had been relatively easy, although Mother had fretted about furniture being chipped during the cart ride over. The new home was a little strange; everyone had to walk through Emma’s bedroom to get to their own. Lizzie’s room was very small, but she knew Emma deserved the larger chamber.

After only one night on Second Street, Emma had asked Lizzie to help her move her bed so it blocked the door into their parents’ room. “Abby and Father can use the back stairs,” Emma had said.

“But that’s for the maid.”

Emma had shrugged. “He chose to buy a house without a central hallway. He can use the servant’s stairs, and she, too.”

As she had at Ferry Street, Lizzie loved poking around in Emma’s room, touching the ephemera left to her by their true mother: a cake of perfumed soap, a brooch Lizzie wanted desperately, but there was only one so it must go to the eldest. Emma cherished the Frozen Charlotte doll, undressable, molded in one immobile bisque unit with garish face painted on. Lizzie frequently asked if she might have it, since, at twenty years old, Emma was long past the age of playing with dolls, but she wouldn’t even let Lizzie hold it, concerned she would break it. The doll reclined permanently in a cigar box, with a scrap of calico as her blanket.

Whenever Emma was away for any secure amount of time, Lizzie would take a quiet tour of her treasures as if the room were a forbidden museum open only to very particular collectors. She perused, she touched, she placed things back exactly as they had been, so the curator would not notice upon her return. She spent the most time with Margaret, Emma’s name for the doll, but mostly, she was drawn to look at the photograph of her late mother, which was sequestered in Emma’s bottom drawer. It was a framed image of her in a paisley gown and a severe hairdressing, holding infant Emma firm on her lap with a dark-gloved hand. Emma, in her off-shoulder dress with lace-daggered hem, had been scared of the photographer.

Lizzie traced the loop of the necklace around her sister’s neck. Where had that ever ended up? She set the photograph up on the dresser top, and carefully balanced Margaret before it on her thick, flat feet, so she too could study the mother and daughter portrait.

Her father had often commented that Lizzie had her mother’s eyes, which were large and looked rather fierce. In looking at the photograph, though, Lizzie could see that her mother was more handsome than her.

Lizzie took the doll in her hand and sat upon Emma’s bed. They’d been in the new house only a month, and Lizzie liked exploring. The attic in particular was a vast and shadowy place.

“Emma’s room is so much larger than mine,” she said. “I have just this little closet, here. See?” she told the doll.

“She is the eldest,” said Margaret loyally.

“But must she have everything? Why did not Mother give me such a doll as you?”

“Emma already told you. You weren’t old enough for a bisque doll before she died. You had a soft rag doll, and where is she now?”

Lizzie gripped Margaret hard in her fist. She moved her thumb so it pressed against her mouth and nose, cutting off her breathing. She let the doll struggle for a bit before releasing her.

“You played too roughly with her,” Margaret continued. “So you have not a thing to remember your mother with, you bad girl.”

Although it was just a conversation she was having with herself, Lizzie found herself filled with longing and rage. Her mother was a black spot in her life around which everything else seemed to revolve. She couldn’t remember the face that must’ve loomed over her cradle, the deft hands that took care of her diapers and soothed her. Maybe her mother sang her to sleep. Lizzie’s small body must’ve slumped wearily against this woman’s larger one, but she couldn’t remember a moment of it.

As her mother lay dying, she had made Emma promise to take care of Lizzie. And so Emma was her lamp in the dark, and the other woman, whom she called Mother, was like a candle, far less important and prey to the wind’s power.

It was horrible not knowing the very special thing that everyone else knew about. It made Lizzie an outsider. Even Abby, who had taken her mother’s place, had been acquainted with her.

Lizzie spat on Margaret’s face and then used her sleeve to dry her off. Spittle lingered in the caverns of the doll’s eyes. She rose from the bed, readying to put Margaret back until their next secretive encounter. But her innate clumsiness made her lose her footing, and the doll sailed from her hand, crashing against the dresser front with a plink and then onto the carpeted floor with a thud.

“Oh, no! Dear Margaret, what have I done?” cried Lizzie, crawling to the pale white limbs separated from the torso. Margaret had lost both arms and one leg.

Breathing heavily, Lizzie positioned the limbs where the breaks were, trying to see if she might use glue to mend them, but Emma would see the hairline cracks. Lizzie would never hear the end of it; Emma enshrined that doll. In a panic, she gathered up the pieces and hurtled down the stairs.

The only thing she could think of was to get rid of the doll. Emma would miss it in the dresser drawer, but maybe not for a long while, and Lizzie could lie and say she knew nothing of its whereabouts. That was better than the doll being found with the spider lines of repair.

She went out the front door and clung to the side of the house, making her way to the barn. It was a crisp fall day, and pears were hanging pendant on the trees in the orchard. After she got rid of Margaret, she would come and eat some.

She opened the rough wood door to the privy and held her breath as she stepped inside. She dropped the smaller body parts first and watched them disappear into the murk.

She kissed Margaret on the lips. “I’m sorry I’m such a bad girl,” she said, and then held the doll over the reeking pit. “She should’ve given me my own,” she muttered and dropped her.

It was months before Emma missed the doll. On a December morning, racing downstairs into the sitting room, she confronted Lizzie, who denied any knowledge of the doll’s location. Mr. Borden, overhearing, asked if Emma had seen the doll since the move from Ferry Street.

“I did, of course, Father,” said Emma aloofly. “She is very valuable to me, and I would never have left her behind.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest you left her behind,” he said. “Only that she may be misplaced.”

“Lizzie has her.”

“I do not!”

“You stole the most important thing that I have from our mother! You wretched, cruel girl!”

“I don’t have it. I promise, Emma!”

Abby placed an arm around Lizzie’s shoulder, which was promptly shrugged off. “I’m sure the doll is somewhere,” she said. “We’re all confused after the move. I haven’t been able to find several of my own pieces of jewelry.”

“Check Lizzie’s dresser! Oh, you don’t need to; I already did, looking for Margaret! She must have all the things she’s stolen cached somewhere.”

“This is a serious thing of which to accuse your sister,” said Abby.

“She’s been a thief since she was born,” spat Emma. “But I didn’t think she’d dare to take something so treasured.”

“Emma!” said Abby in a cross tone.

“Don’t you take up her part!” shouted Emma. “You’re not my mother; you’re not anyone’s mother!”

“Emma, go upstairs! I won’t have this,” said Mr. Borden.

Emma shot one murderous look at her sister, another to Abby.

“You’re too old to play with dolls,” said Emma. “Why couldn’t you just leave her alone? She’s all I have to remember Mother.”

“I didn’t play with her,” said Lizzie.

Emma was right, though; at twelve Lizzie should not have been making voices for a doll. In four more years, her dresses would be made to reach the floor like a woman’s, and she’d start wearing her hair up.

“You’re a liar and a thief,” said Emma as she stormed out.

“I don’t believe you did it,” said Abby quietly with a kind smile.

Lizzie hung her head. It just proved what Emma had always said, that Abby didn’t know them, wasn’t truly part of the family. Abby couldn’t tell a lie from a truth, but Emma could, because Emma had taken on their true mother’s role.

Lizzie wanted badly to go upstairs and fling herself onto her bed, but in this new home’s terrible layout, she couldn’t do so without going through Emma’s room first.

She didn’t want to go to the kitchen, where the maid Oona gave only narrow sympathy for her boredom, and it was too cold to go outside. She was trapped in this small house. Even her father radiated fury as he sat down with his newspaper, rustling it loudly as if at her.

She moved toward the parlor, but at the doorway Abby called her back. “I just dusted in there.”

Wordlessly, she ascended the staircase. She walked quietly so Emma wouldn’t hear. Halfway up, she sat on the stairs, listening to the sobbing coming from Emma’s room, and the tart words down below.

“She will never accept me,” said Abby.

“She doesn’t need to,” he said. “You’re my wife.”

Lizzie sat back against the wall, waiting for the house to catch up to her mood. She stared idly across at the floor of the guest room, reserved for visitors who only rarely came, or for sewing. Why was she not given this chamber?

She was never treated well. Certainly not as she deserved.

It was an odd vantage point, at eye level with the floor like a mouse. She felt an odd propulsion to seep through the banister railings, formless as smoke, and crawl under the bed.