Rome. My Boston-made shoes got stuck in mosaic-stone sidewalks, made me stumble, look a fool. I bought new, Italian calf-leather boots, walked straight lines, walked as a lady should without raising eyebrows. I’d walk, ears full of that fast Italian, made me want to jump into that sing-song, be spoken from one mouth to the other.
Everything reminded me of how small Fall River was, how big I was finally becoming. Over there the Spanish steps, covered in blooming lavender and carpet-red-coloured azaleas, men and women climbing to the top, sun-kissed faces, kissed lips, two white and black goats pulling a small grey wooden cart of orange and green vegetables, my cousin and me standing at the base of a marble fountain, pointing to a deep, Roman-red building, whispering, ‘John Keats lived inside!’ aren’t I the cultured one.
Over there, men wearing rabbit-felt fedoras sat in circles drinking mud-heavy coffee. Over there, girls dressed in Virginlaced communion. Over there, three people reading. Over there, pigeons shaking out wings, pecking seed. How I wanted one to take home. Over there, over there, over there. Eyes widened with all the things I saw. I knew more about the world than Emma did and that made me happy. I sent her postcard after postcard so she wouldn’t feel like she was missing out, gave my love, gave her reason to miss me more.
I ate and drank what I wanted in Paris. Butter, duck fat, liver fat, triple-cream brie, deep cherry–red wines, pear, clementine and lavender jelly, crème cakes, caviar, escargot in sautéed pine nuts and garlic butter. I did what the French did, licked my fingers, didn’t care if people saw, what they thought. Father would’ve hated it, would’ve told me I was uncouth. I ate everything up, ate his money, was delightful everywhere I went. I learned how to wrap my tongue around accented vowels, spoke to this stranger and that. Nobody knew me, didn’t expect anything from me. I wanted to stay like that forever.
I the explorer. The strolling I did. One day I saw a woman throw herself into the Seine, swim like a swan under arched white-stone bridges, under Pont Saint-Michel. The noises she made, an opera. She smiled, floated along, disappeared. I clapped my hands, bravoed the way she had taken charge of herself. If only Emma had been able to see. How far a woman could travel if she really put her mind to it. And I put my mind to it.
My skirt stuck to my thighs, Holy! Blood leeches, and I began peeling the heavy fabric away, tried to cover the tiny bloodstains on it. From the sitting room, Dr Bowen opened one of the doors that led into the dining room and said, ‘We need sheets for the body.’ The way he said body made my teeth grind. I shifted in my seat, tried to sneak a look into the sitting room to check if Father was alright.
Mrs Churchill asked, ‘Bridget, where are the Bordens’ sheets?’
‘They’re in the cupboard in the guestroom. I’ll come with ya.’
‘You’ll need to take the back stairs,’ an officer told them. ‘Keep away from the sitting room, ladies.’
They nodded, left the room and feet sounded out small percussion rhythms as they walked up the back stairs across the carpet. Someone handed me a glass of water. I sipped. The clock on the mantel ticked ticked. I sipped again. Dr Bowen placed his hands on my forehead and asked me how I was feeling. I began an answer when two long screams sounded from the floor above. ‘What in God’s name?’ Dr Bowen said.
Two long screams again. ‘Somebody! Somebody help us!’ Bridget yelled. The screams, the screams.
TWO
EMMA
4 August 1892
I PRESSED AGAINST Helen’s windowpane, felt the morning sun; warm like Mother’s touch. How it prickled my skin. How it made me think of her, all these years without. She would come into my bedroom and raise the curtain. I wanted her to stay, wanted to be her, just so I could have her forever. But baby Alice would cry from another room and mother would leave me. Alone. Then years later baby Lizzie would cry and I began to understand that there was no such thing as forever.
The morning sun. A bird flew by the window and I put Mother thoughts away.
Everything in Helen’s house was quiet: not a clock, not a foot on floorboards, not a raised voice, not a slammed door, not a father, not Abby, not a sister. My cheeks rounded to the size of a hot-air balloon. I had not had a sister for two weeks, had not had to think about someone else’s needs, feelings, heart. In this house my mind had been all for myself.
I pressed harder into the windowpane, thought about how, after I finished here in Fairhaven, I would run away, travel distances of foreign blue-stoned streets, sketch them in my workbook, colour my fingers with pastel wax crayon. Afterwards I would cleanse my hands in deep seas and on the off chance that I might think of my family, send a postcard that would simply read: Adventure continues. I would make a point to send a postcard from the places Lizzie had never reached on her own European tour, remind Father that I had sacrificed a lot to keep Lizzie well behaved and that I was deserving.
And when I did eventually return to American soil, I would move away from Second Street and live hermitically, quietly. Live like Maria a’Becket, paint my own Northern Lights. There would be no more Lizzie, no more Father, no more Abby. Finally, at forty-two, there would be no more pretending.
The sun shifted and my shoulders widened. My body growing. Downstairs in the kitchen, Helen thumped a cast-iron kettle on the stove, made me jump.
Helen called out, ‘Emma, tea?’ She almost sang it.
I smiled. ‘Yes. Always yes.’
The difference between houses.
Before I travelled those sixteen giant miles to Helen’s house in Fairhaven, Lizzie had begged me to stay at Second Street, not to leave her.
‘No,’ I had said. Everything I dreamed of was wrapped in that small word: I was going to be taking a private art class, my clandestine rebellion against Father.
She had looked at me, glass eyes. ‘You’re making a terrible mistake going away.’ Lizzie, a locomotive, tried to push me into guilt. I raised my hand, had thought of slapping her, but instead I left my sister in her room calling out. I ignored her, let her cry.
Two days after I arrived in Fairhaven, Lizzie began sending letters:
Well, I’m not having a good time of it, I’ll tell you that much, Emma. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to listen to at the dining table. Father is an absolute bore. Have you ever noticed how his lips tighten when he says ‘today’?
I had not. At first Lizzie’s letters amused me. I read them out loud to Helen over dinner, and we roared laughter. Then Lizzie started writing about Abby:
I overheard Mrs Borden telling her ridiculous sister about how ‘secure’ she felt now that she was going to own all of Father’s properties when he dies and that he wasn’t going to leave us anything. Emma! What a scampy liar. Imagine the nerve. What are we going to do about it?
I could hear their voices in my head, old headache, heard them yelling across the parlour to each other, across the kitchen, the front stairs, through the walls of bedrooms. Sixteen miles away and I was still at home. I folded Lizzie into small pieces.
But the letters did not stop.
I’m having those strange dreams again, Emma. I thought they had really happened. You must come home.