Free Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom Page B

neck of his shirt and spread it out over his front. He cut the biscuits into deliberate squares with his knife and fork, then sipped his tea and took a bite of biscuit and gravy. Wonderful.
    “Father?”
    Andrew looked up at Emma. Her eyes were on her plate. Not a good sign.
    “Do you think we could put in with some remodeling this year?”
    “Remodeling? The house is comfortable. It has heat.”
    “I know. The wood furnace was a wise investment. No, I mean some other things that might make the house a little more comfortable. Like hot water in the kitchen. And perhaps a bath and W.C. upstairs.”
    Andrew’s temperature rose. “We’ve been over this before, Emma.”
    “I know. How well I know. I thought I would ask you one more time.” Emma set her fork down. “I thought that perhaps you had given it some consideration and come to a sane conclusion for once.”
    Abby gasped. Andrew felt his face getting hot. “You may be excused.”
    Emma threw her napkin on the table and stomped from the room. Andrew pinched and pulled the skin on his forehead.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Borden,” Abby said. “I don’t know why she does that at your breakfast.”
    “I don’t know either.” Andrew took a deep breath and looked squarely at his wife. “Are you inconvenienced? Would hot water from a faucet and a bath upstairs be terribly different?”
    “It would be nice, I grant you that, but. . .”
    “But?”
    “Well, I know how business is, Mr. Borden. Money is tight, as you say, and there are other things best done first.”
    “That’s right, Abby. If I thought for a moment that it would make a difference, a substantial difference, or even a modest difference, I would have the plumbing installed today. But we have lived thus for twenty-seven years, and I am quite accustomed.”
    “Emma sees the neighbors. . .”
    “Dash the neighbors! I know all about the neighbors. Emma and Lizzie care too much about appearances. They need to concentrate instead on what goes on in their minds, not what happens in their bathrooms.” He looked down at the gravy cooling on his plate. It had lost all its appeal.
    “I must go collect rents. My tenants expect me before noon. Good day.”
    He set his napkin beside his plate, donned his suit coat, his overcoat and his tall black hat, picked up his umbrella, although the day looked perfectly clear, and walked out into a perfect spring morning.
    He turned and looked at his house. It was not the pretentious home that his daughters would prefer. It was not built in the prestigious neighborhood on the Hill. It was a small house, an unusually narrow house, no more than twenty or so feet wide as it fronted on Second Avenue. And it was indeed an odd shape, as he noticed again, what with the maid’s bedroom added as a third story only on the very back of the house. When he bought the house, it had been a two-family house. They had put in a couple of doorways in order to connect some of the rooms and that had been the end of it. As a result, the layout was unusual, with the rooms being strung along like beads: having access to one meant going through the others. His and Abby’s room was only accessible from the back stairs off the kitchen, as was the maid’s tiny cubicle Andrew had built on a third level, just above their room. The girls’ rooms and the guest room were gotten to from the front stairs off the sitting room and parlor.
    Yes, it was an odd little house, pinched a bit, he supposed, but it was serviceable, and he was in no mood to move to a new house at this stage in his life. Nor was he about to have the house torn up so pipes could be wandering about.
    And so dismissing his decision as being right, Andrew sniffed the air. He smelled the campfire scent of the cook-stoves busy heating kitchens in the neighborhood. He smelled loamy earth awakening from the winter. He smelled the horses on the streets, their leathers freshly waxed and proud. The world seemed new, and Andrew felt like