Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“I heard nothing.”

“... trying to attract your attention.”

“I have to do my windows,” Maggie said.

“Come in here,” Lizzie whispered sharply. “ I won’t talk to you through the door this way!”

“I have to do my windows,” Maggie said again, and turned away from the door. Lizzie stood watching her through the screen as she walked toward the barn, took the pin from the hasp and opened the door. She was inside the barn for just a moment; when she came out again, she was carrying the long handle for her brush. She closed the door again, put the pin back into the hasp and then came back to where she’d set down her pail and brush. Lizzie stood watching her until she disappeared from her angle of vision, moving past the corner of the house to the other side of the yard.

She stood motionless inside the screen door.

She was suddenly trembling.

And confused again.

She felt an overwhelming need to tell Maggie about what she’d tried to do yesterday, what she would have done if only she’d been successful in her attempt to buy the poison. But at the same time, given her very real decision, acknowledging that she would have made a covenant with death, might still do so if she could not shake free of this persistent depression, why then was she so eager to divulge this to Maggie? Did she expect sympathy? Penitence? What? And why, simultaneously, was she so troubled by the young man’s reappearance last night, for certainly it was he, there was no doubt about that in her mind. If indeed she wished to die, had in fact made every effort to purchase the poison that would have accomplished the deed in a convulsive instant — or so she believed — then why should it matter what Maggie thought, what Maggie did or felt, how Maggie responded to the terrible knowledge that her mistress wanted to kill herself?

We cannot afford the luxury of allowing any female employee to believe mistakenly that she — because of some indiscretion — is the true mistress of the house.

Alison’s words, the oracle of Cannes dispensing wisdom in the privacy of an indiscreet bedroom, the sheets damp with their spent passion, the sunlight streaming through the arched window to touch their naked bodies. But where was Mistress Puss on that cold and rainy day last March — It’s always raining when children make their most important discoveries, isn’t it? — her sister away, her stepmother and father away, the house as empty and as still as it was now, where was she then when in her loneliness and need Lizzie had ventured like a child to touch a hand slippery with suds, her heart leaping when Maggie at the sink did not recoil, and discovered in her a longing as deep as her own? Never, but never, let a female employee tempt your fingers or your lips. You shall be eternally sorry if you do, I promise you.

Ah, yes, Alison’s promises, swiftly forgotten. And her own as well, equally fragile, the pillbox she’d bought for her in the Burlington Arcade, Thine Forever, though eternity had lasted far too short a while, the summer contract broken on that dank and dismal day when she’d unbuttoned Maggie’s chemise to reveal her breasts (You have no idea how I’ve been tempted by the sight of voluptuous young Moira in her bath, those frisky Irish breasts spattered with freckles) the nipples stiffening to her touch, her mouth hungrily receptive.

An indiscretion, to be sure. Even now, she wondered whether she had been propelled less by passion than by a need to strike back at Alison, to prove to the woman who had abandoned her that she herself — now that the green leaf of loyalty had fallen and the white rose withered — was entirely capable of watering their love with the blood of usurping tyranny and allowing her insistent need to grow green again in her own country.

All this, you taught me, she remembered thinking on that day while lovelessly they embraced in the room upstairs, the rain lashing the windows. All that I am, you made me, she thought, and knew this to be untrue even as the words found slippery purchase in her mind: she could not blame Alison for what she was; perhaps she could not even blame her for the discovery of herself. The woman shivering beneath her on that stormy day, unskilled, virginal, a servant in every sense, could have been any woman, might indeed have been had Lizzie found the courage to satisfy her need beyond the four walls of this confining house. In helpless rage, lovelessly, she had ravaged her, suffocating on her peasant aroma, clinging to her when her release — less tumultuous than what she had known with Alison — shuddered through her body to reaffirm her female essence.

Her heart was pounding.

On the south side of the house, she heard the Kelly girl calling, “Bridget! Yoo-hoo!” and she went swiftly through the dining room and into the sitting room where she looked through the window, standing back a bit, not wanting to be seen, not wanting Maggie to think she was spying on her. Maggie put down the brush and pail and walked to the fence where the Kelly girl was waiting for her. She watched as they talked, servant to servant. The Kelly girl giggled. Lizzie watched. She could not go out to her; she could only wait.

She went into the front parlor, found the envelopes her stepmother had left, found as well the handwritten list of addresses, and directed them for her, leaving them in a neat little pile on the table. She went back into the sitting room. She sat in her father’s chair, picked up an old magazine, and leafed through it. She looked through the newspaper. The clock ticked loudly. The sitting-room windows were closed, Maggie had undoubtedly let them down before going outside for her water; the house was suffocatingly hot with all the windows closed. Maggie was tossing water up onto the closed windows now. She did not want her to think she was watching her every move. She rose abruptly and went out into the kitchen to test her flats again. They were still not ready; on a day like today, she would do better to set them out on the sidewalk.

On the counter under the windows, she noticed a scrap of paper with an upturned water glass holding it down like a paperweight. She lifted the glass, looked at the paper. It was a note from Dr. Bowen’s daughter, directed to Emma, expressing sorrow at having missed her before she’d left for Fairhaven, but promising to call again when next she passed through. She put the note under the glass again, trying to recall when Emma would be home? She could not remember. Maggie was outside the dining room now, splashing water onto the windows. She went into the dining room and rapped on one of the closed windows. Maggie looked in at her. She raised the window.

“Come in here!” she whispered.

Maggie said nothing.

“Do as I say!”

Maggie glanced over her shoulder toward the back yard. She nodded, almost to herself, and put down the water pail. In a moment the screen door opened and clattered shut again. She did not come completely into the dining room. She stood in the open door connecting with the kitchen.

“Did you hook the screen door?” Lizzie said.

“Yes.”

“Who is he?” she said.

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“Your beau.”

“I have no beau.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“He’s... no one.”

“He’s someone.”

“I scarcely know him.” Maggie shrugged. “He comes by sometimes. He talks to me.”

“About what?”

“Things.”

“What things?”

“Idle chatter,” Maggie said, and shrugged again.

“Tell me what he says.”

“He... he’s asked to call on me.”