Lizzie Borden Read Free

Beatrice in Europe, a brief meeting, but sometimes lasting friendships are forged in just that manner. Swiftly, surely, and forever. Their letters began tentatively and soon grew intimate.
    They discussed matters of life Lizzie could never discuss with another human being on earth. Lizzie told Beatrice all about her family, her hardened and embittered father, her fat slug of a step-mother who was all but useless, and her jealous, suspicious sister Emma, who had nothing better to do than poke her nose into things that were not her concern.
    Lizzie and Beatrice met on the ferry from Britain to France. Beatrice was fashionably dressed, all in peach, from her hat to her shoes. Lizzie felt dowdy in her traveling blacks, and watched this lovely young woman take in the sights, enjoy a cup of tea and be on an excursion by herself while totally self-possessed. Lizzie envied that quality.
    And apparently, her envious stares did not go unnoticed.
    Lizzie sat at the end of a row of chairs with her traveling companions, their suitcases and packages littering the floor at their feet. Lizzie rubbed her temples, tired already of Sandra, Rebecca and Winnie. They moved and acted like the consummate American, the weird and ugly tourist to be taken for all his money and treated with no respect. They embarrassed Lizzie.
    She hoped a headache wasn’t coming on. She didn’t want these three women to spoil her one and likely only opportunity for some real travel in her life.
    And then she felt a presence at her side, a peachy presence, and Lizzie looked up into the world’s deepest brown eyes, and the woman asked Lizzie to join her for a refreshment in the salon.
    Lizzie had flushed a deep crimson, she still felt the blush when she remembered. The woman must have seen or sensed her staring. She looked at the litter of bags at her feet as if it didn’t belong to her and her group and accepted the invitation. Even as she did so, she wondered at herself. She felt so terribly inadequate and was quite puzzled that a woman such as this would spend a moment of her time with an American such as was traveling in that foursome.
    “My name is Beatrice Windon,” the woman said, pronouncing it Be-AT-tress.
    “I’m Lizzie Borden,” Lizzie managed to say, as they were settling themselves at a table.
    “Oh. American.”
    “Yes.”
    “Traveling with that group of women?”
    “Yes. We’re a kind of a church group.”
    “Wonderful. You’ll see many cathedrals and things on the continent.”
    “I’m sure.”
    Lizzie ordered a cup of tea from the steward and Beatrice ordered a fruit juice and they waited in uncomfortable silence until the drinks were placed before them. “British?” Lizzie finally asked, although it was a stupid question and she well knew the answer.
    “Oh yes. I’m on my way to Paris to do some business for my father. He’s fallen ill, and is unable to travel.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Yes. It happened quite suddenly, but he’s now out of danger. So until he is able to resume, I shall run his little errands for him.”
    “So exciting, to just dash off to Paris.”
    “It was at first, but it becomes tedious, nonetheless.” Beatrice sipped her tea. “Where in America are you from?”
    “Fall River. In Massachusetts. It’s a little tiny town, in quite a little state on the eastern coast.”
    “And what do you do there?”
    “Do?” Lizzie couldn’t imagine how she would answer such a question. She had never been asked a thing like that before.
    “Yes. Are you married? Have you children? Do you teach, perhaps?”
    “No, no, no.” Lizzie’s familiar discomfort rose to the surface. She didn’t do anything. She was not well educated nor well- equipped to do anything. Everybody she knew did something, but Lizzie did nothing. Everybody thought she should be married. Everybody but she, Papa, of course, and Emma. “I live at home. I look after my father.”
    “Well, that’s something we have in common, isn’t it? Is he