by A. H. Kim
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“A friend told me about it. It’s still in development. It’s crowd-sourced like Wikipedia. You can get almost all of the recent cases because people are uploading those real-time, but it’s hit-and-miss with the older stuff.”
“Is that legal?”
“More legal than PACER. The government isn’t supposed to charge money for public documents, but they get away with it because they’re the government.”
I close my eyes to relieve the nagging nausea, but I can still hear the clicking of Tracy’s mouse. I’m momentarily transported back to the dorm, watching Sam playing some depraved postapocalyptic shooter game on the Xbox 360, his hands working the controller so vigorously it seems almost sexual.
“Bingo,” Tracy says, “the fuckers spelled it with a z.” Tracy stops clicking, takes off her glasses and leans in closer to the screen.
“Oh shit,” she mutters.
Reading over Tracy’s shoulder, I see the federal government’s preliminary witness list for Beth’s case. The prosecution’s proposed witnesses included God Hälsa executives, medical and scientific experts, and over a dozen aggrieved customers, but there, in the middle of the list, one name stands out.
Dr. Eva Lindstrom-Larsen.
“You don’t think Beth’s own sister would’ve testified against her, do you?” Tracy says.
“I don’t know that she would’ve had much choice,” I say. “When the feds come calling, you can’t turn them away. Not unless you have a privilege.”
Tracy rubs her eyes in tiredness. It’s been a long day.
“Too bad she isn’t an accountant,” Tracy jokes before turning off her computer.
lise
From the deposition of Lise Danielsson in United States of America et al. v. God Hälsa AB, Andreas Magnusson and Elizabeth Lindstrom
Q: Earlier in your deposition, you admitted to having an affair with Mr. Min.
A: It wasn’t an affair.
Q: Excuse me?
A: I said, it wasn’t an affair.
Q: But you admitted to sleeping...
A: Beth told me an affair is when you’re doing it in secret. Sam and I weren’t keeping it a secret from Beth.
Q: Ms. Lindstrom knew you were sleeping with her husband?
A: Yeah, sure. She pretty much suggested it.
Q: Ms. Lindstrom suggested you should sleep with her husband?
COUNSEL FOR MS. DANIELSSON: Objection, what relevance does this line of questioning have with respect to the allegations against Ms. Lindstrom?
COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: Ms. Lindstrom is accused of engaging in activities that put young women at risk of severe bodily harm. This line of questioning goes to demonstrate her complete lack of regard for young women’s emotional and physical well-being.
COUNSEL FOR MS. DANIELSSON: That’s a stretch, Counsel, and you know it.
COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: Your objection’s been noted for the record.
[Questioning resumes.]
Q: You said you weren’t keeping your relationship with Mr. Min a secret from Ms. Lindstrom. Was it widely known that you were engaging in sexual relations with Mr. Min?
A: Of course not. Beth told me it’s not the kind of thing most people would understand.
Q: So, besides your employer, Ms. Lindstrom, did anyone know about your relationship with Mr. Min?
A: Yes.
Q: Who?
A: [Unintelligible.]
Q: I’m sorry, Ms. Danielsson, but could you please speak more loudly?
A: I said, Eva.
Q: Dr. Eva Lindstrom-Larsen? Ms. Lindstrom’s sister?
A: Yes.
Q: And did Dr. Lindstrom-Larsen condone this behavior?
A: What does that mean?
Q: Did Ms. Lindstrom’s sister think it’s acceptable for a grown man to be having an affair with a sixteen-year-old girl?
A: I told you—it wasn’t an affair.
Q: Let me put it a different way. Did Dr. Lindstrom-Larsen ever express concern that a sixteen-year-old girl would be engaging in sexual relations with a grown man?
A: Well, Eva didn’t find out about it until I was older. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. But yeah, Eva was really upset.
Q: What did Dr. Lindstrom-Larsen do when she found out?
A: She got really angry with Beth. Said all this stuff about Beth’s past that I didn’t understand. And then here’s the weird part—Eva asked me to forgive her.
Q: Dr. Lindstrom-Larsen asked you to forgive her?
A: Yeah, Eva begged me to forgive her. She said it was all her fault.
hannah
twelve
The hallways of Drinker, Barker and Horne are quiet. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, which is technically a workday, but you wouldn’t know it by looking around the empty offices. It’s practically a ghost town. I usually like to work over the holidays. It’s nice to have the office to myself and not be constantly pestered by first-year associates who make twice as much money as me but have a tenth as much legal knowledge. It’s nice to slip off my shoes while sitting at my desk without having to worry that Old Man Barker will creep up behind me and reminisce about the “little ladies” who walked barefoot on his back during his business trips to Bangkok. It’s nice to come into the city and do something productive rather than sit in my quiet condo and stare at the walls.
This year feels different. After spending so much time with Sam and the girls, I realize what it feels like to be part of a family, and I miss it. I miss it viscerally. Sam invited me to join them for Thanksgiving, but after the weeklong Lindstrom family reunion, my two-week stay in Princeton to help the girls adjust to life without Mommy, and my trips to visit Beth in prison and watch Claire in her school performance, I’ve blown through most of my allotment of vacation days. I need to work over Thanksgiving if I want to spend Christmas and New Year’s with the family.
I walk up and down the hallways at work to see if anyone needs help. The few secretaries sitting in their cubicles are playing Solitaire on their computers and don’t even bother to look up from their screens. The handful of associates who haven’t made their minimum billable hours for the year sit morosely in their offices, hoping to eke out enough work to merit a decent year-end bonus. The only partner who seems to have come in today is the brilliant but eccentric head of the firm’s tax practice, who always likes to use holidays to catch up on his backlog of USTC Advance Sheets. Back at the library, I pull my cell phone out of my purse and click the FaceTime icon. There’s only one number in the cache.
“Hello? Hello?” a child’s voice says. Claire’s face fills the small screen. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Claire. It’s Auntie Hannah.”
“Oh, hi, Auntie Hannah,” Claire says. “Where are you?”
“I’m at work. Remember I told you I had to work this weekend?”
“Oh yeah,” Claire says. Her eyes dart to the side, distracted by something going on outside of my screen view. “I remember. Is it really busy there?”
“No, actually, it’s not busy at all.” I want to explain the concept of vacation days to Claire, for her to understand that my absence from the family Thanksgiving celebration has everything to do with needing to earn a living and nothing to do with my desire to spend time with her and Ally. Before I can say another word, though, Claire erupts in a fit of giggles.
“Stop it, stop it, I’m on base,” she screams. “I told you I’m on base.”
The screen image jostles about as Claire struggles to hold on to the phone while getting mercilessly tickled by her older cousins. Claire seems to have accidentally pressed the reverse image button, so I can see what’s going on all around her at Le Refuge. Martin and Karen sit on the couch engaged in what appears to be serious conversation. Eva’s husband, Alex, lounges in a nearb
y chair and peruses a glossy home design magazine. Eva stands by the wet bar wearing Beth’s luxurious gray cashmere robe, tipping back the last drops from a large wineglass.
“Sam, where’s my refill?” Eva yells.
Sam emerges from the wine cellar with a magnum bottle.
“Hey, everyone,” Sam calls out, “look what I found! Château Margaux ’99. The last of the case we brought back from France. Remember that trip, Martin? What was the name of the guy who came with us?”
“I can’t remember,” Martin says. “He was the senior senator from Nebraska or Iowa or one of those flyover states. Complete waste of money bringing him on that trip—he got voted out of office the next year.”
“Claire?” I say into the phone, but Claire is giggling so hard she doesn’t hear me. She drops the phone to the ground. I stand by for a full minute, staring at the image of the pure white flokati rug on my screen, waiting for someone to pick up. No one ever does.
* * *
It was nice of Tracy to invite me over for Thanksgiving. Tracy shares a brownstone in Brooklyn with an ever-changing number of housemates all under the age of thirty. The apartment is filled with pieces of furniture that look like they were abandoned on a street corner somewhere, but Tracy’s stylistic influence is apparent in the brightly painted ceramics and ethnic textiles that somehow tie everything together into a bohemian-chic space.
The Thanksgiving meal is similarly eclectic. Tofu turkey and quinoa stuffing are joined by a HoneyBaked spiral-cut ham, a family-size aluminum tray of Stouffer’s mac and cheese, and several boxes of take-out pizza. The white cast-iron claw-foot tub is filled with plastic bags of ice and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I set my two freshly baked pumpkin pies onto the Mexican-oilcloth-covered sideboard, next to the clear plastic containers of store-bought cookies.
“Everyone, this is Hannah, my boss” is how Tracy introduces me. Although she says it with genuine warmth and kindness, it makes me feel awkward, as if she had been forced to invite me over, as if her year-end review and bonus depended upon it. Tracy’s introduction also draws attention to the substantial age difference between me and everyone else at the party. I could be some of these kids’ mother, and not even a teenage mother at that.
I circumnavigate the buffet table and spoon a morsel of everything on my Chinet paper plate, taking care not to offend anyone by not trying their dish. Entering the living room to find a place to sit, I notice the floral-patterned papasan in the corner is empty. I sit down and nibble at my food. There’s a group of millennials nearby, sitting cross-legged on the worn Oriental carpet around a faded and chipped Thomas the Tank Engine play table repurposed as a coffee table. It’s hard to tell if the table is meant to be ironic or simply economic.
“It’s bullshit,” proclaims a mixed-race young man. He’s got disturbingly large ear gauges that make me wince just looking at them. “I mean, all she did was cop a few prescription pads at work. It was her shit-for-brains boyfriend who wrote all the fake scrips.”
“It’s a complete travesty of justice,” a pretty girl seated next to him concurs. By her body language, I suspect she’s either the young man’s lover or desperately wants to be. “It’s like going to prison for stealing fucking Post-its. I take Post-its from the supply room at work all the time. That doesn’t make me a criminal, does it? Right, am I right?”
Everyone nods. She’s right.
“I totally agree,” another young woman chimes in. She has short-cropped fuchsia hair and piercings through her left eyebrow and nasal septum. “But I have to admit I find this whole ‘going to prison’ thing sort of fascinating.” She uses her fingers to make air quotes even though there’s no need for them. “Ever since I heard about your mother going to prison, I’ve been binge-watching Orange Is the New Black. And Wentworth. And Prison Break.” Everyone nods again. There’s been a lot of binge-watching going on.
“I doubt that real prison is like those shows,” the wannabe girlfriend says. “Like, I’m sure the guards would never let all that girl-on-girl action take place under their noses.”
Fuchsia Girl looks disappointed. My heart starts racing. I’m tempted to join in their conversation and share some of Beth’s stories about life at Alderson. I imagine the look of shock on their faces when Ms. Prim-and-Proper Librarian Lady reveals she has a relative in federal prison. Fuchsia Girl’s eyes will pop when I tell her that “gay for the stay” is a real thing. I won’t even use air quotes. The wannabe girlfriend will watch her handsome companion jealously as he turns his attentions to me and asks questions about his poor mother’s heartbreaking situation that only someone “who’s been there” can answer. I imagine myself sitting on the papasan surrounded by the circle of engrossed listeners, the Hans Christian Andersen of prison tales, with Chained Heat taking the place of “The Little Match Girl.” But before I can gather up the courage to utter a word, the young man speaks up.
“I’m tired of talking about my mom and her fucked-up life. Can you believe that crazy game last night?” The group quickly shifts conversation topics, and I have no idea what game he’s talking about. Quietly, I negotiate my way back around Thomas the Tank Engine to return to the buffet table, hoping there’s still some tofu turkey left.
After what seems an appropriate period of time, I track down Tracy to say my farewells. She’s standing barefoot in the hall, a Solo cup in one hand and a joint in the other, surrounded by a group of mostly bearded guys in plaid. It looks like a lumberjack convention.
“Are you leaving so soon?” Tracy asks. She passes the joint to the Paul Bunyan next to her and escorts me down the hallway so we can talk quietly.
“Yeah, I’ve gotta catch the train back to Hoboken,” I reply, stepping over a Chinet plate heaped with chicken bones and pizza crusts. It takes all of my self-control not to pick up the dirty paper plates and beer cans littering Tracy’s apartment, but the festivities are still going strong, and no one likes a party pooper.
“Have you heard from Beth lately?” Tracy asks. “What did she say about us finding Eva’s name on the witness list?” The front door bursts open, and I shiver as a group of last-minute guests enters.
“Actually, I haven’t told Beth about that yet.”
Tracy squints at me. I can’t tell if she’s surprised or disappointed, maybe both.
“Beth says her emails and letters are all being monitored,” I explain. “She doesn’t want the feds to know she’s got me digging around for Lise’s accomplice.”
“Why not? I mean, what would the feds care about it?”
“I don’t know, but Beth made it clear she doesn’t want me putting that kind of stuff down in writing. She said she’s paranoid about getting herself or the family in more trouble.”
Tracy wrinkles her brow.
“To be continued, then?” I say. I pull on my knit cap and give Tracy a quick hug.
“To be continued,” Tracy concurs.
I thank Tracy one more time for the nice Thanksgiving and then reach into my purse to find my set of keys, which I weave in between my fingers. They say Brooklyn is safe, but you can never be too careful.
When I get to the station, it’s surprisingly crowded as I wait for the PATH train to take me home. The sound of distant trains echoes in the white-tiled space. I sit down on the concrete bench and pull out my cell phone to kill time. My mood brightens upon seeing the red dot on the CorrLinks icon indicating I’ve got an email from Beth.
Dear Hannah,
Happy Thanksgiving. Sam told me that you had to work this week and couldn’t join the family at Le Refuge, but I hope you are enjoying a delicious holiday meal with your friends. I myself just polished off an embarrassingly huge plate of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry dressing, green bean casserole and two kinds of pie—pumpkin and apple—before falling into a three-hour food coma. I’m going to have to take spinning and Zumba tomorrow to work it all off.
>
We’ve got the rest of the weekend free so I don’t have to work and can just snuggle in bed and read the pile of magazines on my nightstand. Thank you for the subscriptions to the New Yorker and Bon Appetit and for your latest weekly letter with the photos of the girls from Halloween. The other ladies in my unit are pea green with envy—the poor things don’t get much support from the outside—but I’ve gradually won them over by sharing my embarrassment of riches. People and Us and the latest James Patterson thrillers are in particularly high demand.
I would write more, but my bunkie just came to remind me that the game is about to start. If I don’t get to the TV room soon, all the good seats will be filled by Cowboys fans. Everyone here already knows what a Giants fanatic I am, so I’m sure someone will save me a seat, but I don’t want to cause a prison riot...!
You know, it’s funny: while I wouldn’t wish this experience on my very worst enemy, I must say that this Thanksgiving has made me feel grateful for all that I have, including you.
Love, Beth
P.S. I know you’re busy, but when can you come visit again? I’m dying to hear what you’ve found out about my “special assignment”!
I stare at the screen, thinking how to respond. My mind is a blank, so I click off the cell phone and decide to reply later. When I look up, the platform is empty. The train must have come and gone while I was reading.
beth
thirteen
It’s late November, and the West Virginia days are growing short. I hate this time of year. I can already feel the cloud of depression starting to descend. To make matters worse, I haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep ever since I stepped foot in Alderson. I just can’t seem to quiet my brain. What I wouldn’t give for one of my old Ativan and Ambien cocktails.
I recently started getting up before sunrise and going to work before everyone else. That way, I can finish work early and enjoy the rest of my day. It’s against BOP regulations, but I get away with it. I’ve always had a knack for getting what I want.
