by Jill Ciment
Sincerely,
Stanley Flom
Senior Partner
“Will you come with me?” Vida asked Virginia after reading her the letter over the phone. She sat in Jimmy’s private office at the gym.
“Maybe you should get a real lawyer, Vid. You’ll be under oath.”
“Virginia, I’m honestly sorry that her sister is dead.”
“What I meant to say is that the proceeding will be on public record and is open to anyone who wants to attend.”
“Who do you expect to come?”
“What if the tabloids get wind of this?”
“Can’t we ask that the proceeding be closed?”
“I don’t think that’s in the spirit of restorative justice.”
“ ‘Ziberax Lady Apologizes for the Plague.’ I’ll never get another part.”
“Vida, you’re a great actress. You can convince her that you’re telling the truth.”
“I didn’t realize we’d be in the library,” Kat said to Stanley as he opened the mahogany doors. She’d never before seen where Edith had worked. Victorian glass-fronted bookshelves lined all four walls. Leather-bound tomes in muted colors were bricked ceiling high. The only way to reach the top volumes was a library ladder on tracks. How many times had Edith climbed those rungs? She felt as if she were entering the interior of her sister’s soul.
“We don’t really use the library anymore,” he said, pulling out a chair for her at one end of a long conference table. “Everything’s digital nowadays.”
“Will Vida be under oath?” asked Kat.
“It’s a legal proceeding, no different than if we held it in open court.”
“What if she still contends she never heard Edith’s messages?”
“We’ll bring in your fiancé and niece to contest her version of events.”
Back in Stanley’s office, Frank and Ashley waited on the matching armchairs.
A few minutes later, before Kat had time to collect herself, Vida came through the heavy doors and walked to the conference table’s opposite shore, accompanied by her counsel, a plump woman about Vida’s age with a Botox-frozen expression. Vida hadn’t lost weight, exactly, but she looked tinier to Kat, as if her skin had shrunk from the winter damp and now fit her like a tight leather glove. She must have been to hell and back too, thought Kat.
Stanley’s assistant, a bow-tied young man, positioned a video camera and switched it on.
“I didn’t agree to be filmed,” Vida objected.
The bow-tied assistant shut the camera off and replaced it with an audio device, as thin as a playing card, while Janice appeared with a tray of coffee and some delicious-smelling pastries.
Only Vida’s lawyer helped herself to a croissant.
After Janice left, Stanley asked everyone to state names and addresses for the record and then had Vida stand and raise her right hand.
“Ms. Cebu,” he said when the oath was over, “my client is waiting for her apology.”
“May I move closer? I don’t want to have to shout.”
“Do you have any objection, Katherine?”
“No.”
Yet when Vida sat directly across from her, Kat instinctively moved her chair back an inch or two. She waited as Vida prepared to speak. Vida appeared to be measuring her breathing, a method she must have learned for the stage.
“Katherine, Edith’s death was a terrible tragedy. I think about her every day. I wish I could turn back the clock and listen to her warnings in time to save her, but I can’t. You’ve lost your sister, your twin. I accept all blame for any part I had in her death. I’m sorry I never had the chance to call her back. I’m sorry I didn’t know about the mold’s toxicity. I’m sorry, so deeply sorry for your loss.”
“Why didn’t you call her back?”
“I never had the chance, Kat. There was an intruder in my home.”
“She left more than one message.”
“The police arrived before I had a chance to play them.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“My client would like to call her first witness,” interjected Stanley.
“What witnesses?” asked Vida.
Frank came in looking especially handsome in his new dark gray suit and sat beside Kat. He didn’t console her with a gentle touch: he’d been instructed not to. He unbuttoned his jacket and folded his hands on the conference table, like the obedient schoolboy he must have been. After he was sworn in, he could no longer resist the sugary display, though he took his time selecting a pastry.
Stanley asked, “What is your relationship to Ms. Cebu?”
“She was my boss. Last year she bought the apartment building I took care of for nearly forty years.”
“On August eleventh, did you have a conversation with Ms. Cebu about a foul odor in her basement?”
“She said I should check the cellar for leaks because something smelled nasty down there.”
“Did you then check the basement for leaks?”
“It was too late. The building got condemned.”
Stanley thanked Frank for his testimony, and then asked Vida and her counsel if they had any questions for the witness.
“Yes,” Vida’s counsel said, brushing a flaky crumb off her sleeve. “At any time during the aforementioned date, did you witness, with your own eyes and ears, my client listening to Edith Glasser’s phone messages?”
“She’s an actress, course she listens to her phone messages.”
“I’m not asking you to speculate. Were you inside Ms. Cebu’s apartment on that date?”
“No.”
“Thank you, no more questions.”
“I have a witness who was inside the apartment,” said Kat.
Yesterday she’d given Ashley money to buy something pretty but appropriate to wear to court this morning. Opening the library doors, Ashley appeared in her new red satin dress. She clacked loudly across the floor in her matching red platform heels. The little dress was so tight that Kat could almost see Ashley’s heart beating.
“She’s your witness?” gasped Vida’s counsel. “She’s a sociopathic liar. I brought her over from Russia to be part of my family and take care of my son. She drugged him with Ambien!”
“What does that have to do with my sister’s death?”
“She should be deported!”
“You’ll have a chance to question the witness when I’m finished,” Stanley admonished. He turned to Ashley and asked her to state her full name—Anna Alevtina Sokolov. Such a lengthy freight train of Slavic syllables. No wonder she’d changed it, Kat thought.
“How do you know Ms. Cebu?”
“House sitter.”
“Illegal squatter,” stage-whispered Vida.
“On August eleventh of last summer, did you reside at Sixty-Six Berry Street?”
“In crummy guest room.”
“On more than one occasion, did you witness Ms. Cebu listen to her phone messages?”
“You joke? She check phone machine like fat man check refrigerator.”
“And what did these phone messages say?”
“Something smell funny in basement. Help.”
Vida looked directly into Kat’s eyes, as if she were trying to exercise some kind of hypnotic power over her. “Katherine, please believe me. I never had a chance to hear Edith’s messages. I had just gotten back from a trip and found her in the closet. I only learned about the mushrooms when the police finally dragged her out.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You believe her?”
Stanley intervened to ask Vida’s counsel if she had any questions for the witness.
“You bet I do. What did you do to my son? He’s now scared of the dark, scared of strangers, scared of loud noises.”
“She’s not on trial,” Stanley said.
“She should be.”
Vida rose from her chair and set her hands flat on the table, whether for support or for emphasis Kat wasn’t sure.
&n
bsp; “Katherine, I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t know what else I can say but I’m sorry, so sorry that Edith died. If you want to sue me, so be it. I have nothing left. I lost everything too. Edith’s gone. I can’t go back in time and change that. You can’t blame me for an act of God. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me. I hope you find some peace.”
After Vida and her counsel left, Kat asked everyone if she could have a few minutes alone in the library. She was hoping Edith’s spirit would visit. What a quiet room to have spent forty years in. Maybe the quiet was Edith’s spirit. Are you here? Is the silence your answer?
Should I forgive her, Edie?
Ashley had almost fled the library when Virginia threatened to have her deported, but she stuck to her story and stayed loyal to Kat. Now she feared she was going to be shipped back to Omsk.
She sat beside Kat and Frank in a Brooklyn-bound taxi. When they stopped for a red light, she considered opening the passenger door and vanishing, but she couldn’t stand to be invisible ever again. She liked that Kat refused to believe she was fated for a crummy life making babies. She liked having a Polish cook and a cat. She loved her room; she’d never had one before.
The Syzmanskis and Gladys were waiting for them when Kat unlocked the front door.
“Did she apologize?”
“Did she confess?”
“Did you forgive her?”
Ashley went straight to her room, but when she shut the cat out, she heard its claws relentlessly scraping at the door, she should be deported, deported, deported. She must leave immediately, but instead she lay down on her bed in her new dress and pulled up the covers.
It wasn’t yet dark. The weak light stranded her few possessions in obscurity—the plastic laptop on the bureau, the penthouse’s napkin used as a doily. Through the house’s thin walls, she heard the din of camaraderie coming from the living room as everyone made a fuss over Kat and forgot about Ashley.
She didn’t want to become Anushka again. How could her eighteen-year-old life already be over?
Hurling off the covers, she rose, smoothed the wrinkles from her satin dress, mounted her platform heels, and clacked into the living room. “I be deported because I help you,” she told Kat.
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Impossible help me.”
“She’s right,” said Mr. Syzmanski. “I had a cousin who had lived in Jersey for forty years when he got deported. He had an American wife and kids, but they never officially got married because he also had a wife and kids back in Poland.”
“What does this have to do with Ashley?” asked his wife.
“They weren’t a legal family. You have to have a relative who’s a U.S. citizen.”
“I alone,” said Ashley, hunching on the sofa beside Kat.
“You’re not alone.”
She felt a gentle touch lift her chin until she was looking into Kat’s smiling face. Kat’s two front teeth were bigger and brighter than anything else Ashley had to guide her.
“You do have a family in this country. I’ll adopt you,” said Kat.
Clearing the dinner dishes, Ashley accidentally dropped a greasy spoon on her lap. She went straight to her room, peeled off her dress, inside out, like a latex glove, and then rushed to the bathroom to submerge it in soapy hot water. She held the stain under the steaming faucet even when her fingertips burned. Could Kat really adopt her?
After hanging the dress over the tub to dry, she returned to her room, leaving the door ajar for the cat, but when she woke just before dawn, the cat wasn’t there. Gyrating blue beams danced around her dark room. Naked, she rose from the warm covers and peered out the window. A squad car and a windowless van were parked not twenty feet away. Even before the loud knocking rattled the front door, she dropped to her knees and crawled to the bathroom on the house’s far side. Slipping on her still-damp dress, she was about to steal out the window when she heard Kat shout, “Who are you looking for?”
“This is not your business, ma’am, please step away from the door.”
“The door you’re pounding on is mine, so it is my business.”
“We are looking for Anna Alevtina Sokolov.”
“I want to see a warrant.”
Silence prevailed while Kat read the warrant.
“There is no one by that name living here.”
Ashley was halfway out the window when she spotted a bearish man wearing a vest that said ICE POLICE. His flashlight beam caught her just as she leapt.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Stop!”
She started to run in her bare feet, but the ground was mined with broken glass. Her right heel got punctured. The policeman caught her. Not only did he handcuff her, he shackled a chain around her waist.
“Are the chains really necessary?” asked Kat.
“Until she’s cleared by Homeland Security, yes,” said the officer.
“You think she’s hiding explosives under that dress?” asked Frank. He, Gladys, the Syzmanskis, and the cat now crowded the stoop.
“She’s shivering, for pity’s sake,” said Kat. “Frank, go get her coat and boots.”
Just before Ashley was shoved through the van doors, Frank ran over with her coat and boots. While he helped her into her boots, Kat draped the coat over her shivering shoulders.
“Where are you taking her?”
“What is your relationship to this girl?”
“I’m in the process of adopting her.”
“The Elizabeth Detention Center.”
“We’ll get you out, Ashley, don’t worry,” promised Kat as the van’s rear door shut. There were no windows. The darkness was absolute. The crypt began rolling. About fifteen minutes later, it stopped and the engine was cut. She heard shouting. Someone or something was thrown against the van’s side. A police siren wailed. When the rear door finally opened, six Mexicans were pushed inside.
In the dark, Ashley listened for clues as to where she was going—a bridge’s clang and clank, bullying horns, a swishing echo, an eardrum pop, a distant jet. About an hour later, the van stopped again, and the doors opened to reveal a brightly lit, windowless, three-square-block, one-story brick warehouse, bigger than any gulag she’d ever seen. The humped roof was crowned with razor wire.
Inside looked like a dog pound—cement floor, rows of wire cages. A female ICE officer led Ashley to a crowded cell in the women’s section.
There was nowhere to sit down. She lost track of time. The fluorescents hissed and sparked. Her freed wrists still chafed from the cuffs. She hitched up her red dress and peed in a drain, then sat on the cold floor and employed her bitten fingernails to excise the glass shard from her throbbing right heel.
She was fingerprinted, photographed, showered, deloused, issued an orange jumpsuit, and then led into a dark dormitory stacked with sleeping, moaning, crying, praying women.
She found an empty cot, the bottom in a stack of three. The mattress gave like a hammock. The pillow’s batting smelled of foreign breath. The blanket was thinner than her old beach towel.
A voice whispered to her in Spanish.
“Russian,” Ashley said.
“Where are you from?” someone called to her in a Siberian accent.
“Omsk.”
“No, I mean which detention center are you from? My sister was supposed to be transferred here from LaSalle. We got separated but we’re supposed to be deported together. ICE has to find three hundred and fifty Russians before the plane can leave.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Six months.”
Wearing only a thin robe and slush-sodden slippers, Kat stood on the curb shouting at the receding van, “I’ll get you out, Ashley! Hang in there!”
“She can’t hear you,” said Frank. “Come inside, Kat, you’ll catch pneumonia.” She allowed herself to be led back into the warm house.
“Blackie and I will pray for her,” said Gladys, picking up the cat.
“The kid must
be so scared,” said Mrs. Syzmanski.
“I should have listened to her. I knew I should have moved her to a hotel last night,” said Kat.
It wasn’t yet dawn. Everyone went back to their room. Kat left an urgent message on Stanley’s office voicemail to call her back no matter the hour. “Should I try his house?” she asked Frank.
“Let the guy sleep. There’s nothing anyone can do until morning.”
She joined him under the covers and nestled against his warmth, but she spared him her cold feet.
“She didn’t have to help me this afternoon, Frank. She could have refused to testify after Vida’s lawyer threatened her with deportation, but she bravely told the truth. She knew what that woman was capable of. She’d already thrown Ashley out on the streets once before. She’s eighteen years old, for god’s sake. What kind of human being is so vengeful that she would have a teenager arrested in the middle of the night and deported?”
Frank had fallen asleep, his arm heavy on her shoulder. She tried to lull herself to sleep too, but her thoughts wandered back to the quiet library after everyone had left this afternoon. While she had been struggling with mercy and forgiveness, Vida’s lawyer had already called immigration. How else could they have gotten here so fast? Vida must have known. Maybe it was Vida who called? How could she have asked to be forgiven and then gone ahead and done this?
Kat had so many questions. She reached for her new smartphone on the nightstand. It was hardly the wise advice giver of yesteryear, but it was all she had.
“What can I help you with?” asked the phone.
“How do I adopt a foreign national?” she whispered into the tiny microphone so as not to wake Frank.
“Let me check that,” said the phone. “Would you like me to search the web for ‘How do I adopt a foreign national’?”
“Yes.”
Every link showed a young couple embracing an infant.
“How old is too old to adopt?”
“The cutoff age is fifty,” answered the phone.
