by A. H. Kim
Standing over her, wearing a robe and smoking a pipe, is Papa. Most people call him the Ambassador. He watches Mother wriggle and moan. It’s only when Mother lets out a sharp cry, her back arching like a cat’s, that Papa sets down his pipe and removes his robe. Naked, he flips Mother roughly onto her belly and enters her from behind. I can barely breathe as I watch them moving together in a reckless rhythm.
When the two of them collapse in a shuddering heap, I’m suddenly afraid of being seen. Quietly, I pull the door shut.
I stand outside the door. My heart’s beating fast. There’s a tingling feeling between my legs. Something I’ve never felt before. It’s strange but nice.
Really nice.
I race down the stairs back to the living room. Eva is sitting in the window seat and looking outside. By now, the drifting snowflakes have accumulated into a blanket of white.
“Eva,” I say breathlessly, “I went looking for Mother...”
“You know you’re not supposed to bother Mother while she’s working.”
“She was in the bedroom. And Papa was with her.”
Eva pauses, looks at my face.
“Hey, how about we go outside?” she says.
It’s dark outside. The pure white snowflakes are striking against the dark sky. Eva grabs her coat and slips on her boots, but I don’t bother. I follow her in my stocking feet.
“I love the first snowfall of the year, don’t you?” Eva says, falling back into the downy layer of snow. She starts making snow angels. I do the same.
“You won’t learn about this in school until next year,” Eva says, “when you’re in the fifth grade. But I think you’re ready to know.”
I keep quiet, signaling for Eva to keep talking.
“Do you know where babies come from?” she asks.
“Not really,” I whisper.
And so she explains. As Eva talks, my mind’s eye returns to the scene I just witnessed in my parents’ bedroom. I try to make sense of what I saw, what I felt, but I can’t. Suddenly, I want Eva to stop talking, but she keeps going on and on. I wish she’d just shut up.
“Silent night,” I start singing. “Holy night. All is calm, all is bright.”
“God, you’re such a baby,” Eva says, annoyed. She brushes the snow off herself and marches into the house. I stay outside and continue singing until my lips turn blue.
After dinner, Mother brings out the almond-flavored princess cake she always makes for my birthday. When I finish blowing out the candles, she gives me a large, beautifully wrapped present: a Småland dollhouse, complete with all the accessories. I see the pleasure in Mother’s face as I admire the finely detailed pieces. And in the corner of my eye, I see Eva standing in the shadows, her face dark with jealousy.
Four years later, Mother dies. Her untimely passing rips a hole in the fabric of our family. Each of us deals with the loss in our own way. Father drowns himself in drink. Martin looks for comfort in the beds of countless women. Eva does everything she can to keep up her perfect facade. Only I know that she’s an out-of-control bulimic.
And me? I put on a good face, but it’s not easy. We move from DC to New York, and I try hard to adjust to my new school. Martin has his own apartment and Eva’s in college, so it’s just me and Father left at home. With Father passed out drunk most of the time, I might as well be alone.
“Eva, can you come over this weekend?” I ask over the phone. “Maybe we could hang out, go to a movie or something.” Father and I have a nice apartment on Park Aveue, but Eva rarely leaves her dorm at Columbia to visit us.
“I’ve got to study all weekend,” Eva says.
“You’re always studying,” I reply.
“If I don’t keep a straight-A average, I could lose my scholarship. And I definitely won’t be able to get into medical school.”
“There’s more to life than grades.”
“That’s what the stupid girls in high school used to say to make themselves feel better.”
Eva’s comment stings, mostly because I know it’s true.
“And what did the fat girls say to make themselves feel better?” I say, trying to get even. “Or can you even understand one another with your fingers shoved down your throats?”
The silence on the line speaks volumes.
“Smart women can be anything they want,” Eva says. “But pretty women can only be two things—a wife or a whore.”
Eva pauses to let her words sink in.
“I’m going to be a doctor,” she says. “What do you think you’ll be, Beth?”
hannah
sixteen
Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, but spending it with my beloved nieces makes it even more special this year. Everything is warm and fragrant inside Le Refuge. The marble kitchen counters are covered with racks of freshly baked Christmas treats: rich butter cookies decorated with colorful sprinkles, broadly smiling gingerbread people and snowball-like Russian tea cakes. I look around the kitchen in quiet satisfaction. The pea gravel makes a familiar rumbling sound as Eva’s Volvo station wagon pulls up into the driveway of Le Refuge.
“Claire and Ally, your auntie Eva and the girls are here,” I call out. I dry my hands on the front of my apron and make my way to the foyer to wait for the guests to come in from the cold. “And Uncle Alex, too,” I say as an afterthought.
“Oh, Hannah, you look tired,” Eva murmurs as soon as she enters the house. “If you make an appointment with my office, I can laser off those dark patches.” Eva has never been the nicest person, but Sam insists the entire Lindstrom family gather at Le Refuge for Christmas, as if the sheer number of people will somehow prevent Claire and Ally from noticing their mother is missing.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I say, trying to sound as breezy as possible. “In fact, I’m loving being a second mommy to Claire and Ally.” As if on cue, Claire and Ally race into the great room, careening past me and Eva and screeching with enthusiasm upon seeing their cousins.
“Come see the dollhouse that Daddy got for us,” Claire says, “it’s up in my room!”
Eva’s daughters toss off their candy-colored down jackets and leave them scattered on the great room floor before running with Claire and Ally up to Claire’s bedroom. Their fluffy fleece boots leave large wet footprints on the floor. I take off my apron and blot up the largest puddles, and then I pick up the jackets, roll them up like down-filled sushi and tuck them into the individually labeled nooks in the adjacent mudroom.
“Alex, you’ve outdone yourself,” Eva comments as she walks through the great room. Alex appears in the main entryway, his short-cropped hair pomaded into a Kewpie doll–like peak. He’s wearing a silk ascot and crisp-pressed shirt underneath his cashmere shawl-collar sweater. Sam told me that Beth hired Alex to help design the perfect Scandinavian Christmas interior for Le Refuge. Beth and Alex spent hours poring over interior design magazines and Pinterest pages to create the understated but festive look.
The great room is dominated by four Christmas trees of varying sizes—one for each person in the family—from a special tree farm in Maine. A specially trained arborist carefully prunes each tree, almost like a bonsai, so that the individual branches are widely spaced and perfectly balanced. Guarding each tree is a large straw goat that Alex orders from Sweden each year. Alex once said the goats are handwoven by Swedish virgins, which I assumed was a joke. This year, when the enormous boxes arrived by FedEx, the invoice confirmed that the straw goats had indeed been crafted by a small cloister of nuns in a remote town in Sweden. The cost of shipping alone was more than my annual bonus.
Each tree has its own decorative theme. The largest Christmas tree is covered with wooden hearts painted glossy red. The next largest shimmers with shiny silver balls and crystal snowflakes. The third is festooned with porcelain candy canes and gingerbread men. And the smallest tree, which always reminds
me of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, features angels handwoven in straw by the same Swedish virgins who crafted the goats. Instead of electric lights, the four Christmas trees are lit with small white candles sitting in antique tin holders.
“I had to drive all over Pennsylvania Dutch country to find these,” Alex explained at the first Le Refuge Christmas. “No one makes them today because they violate fire regulations, so there’s a huge underground market for them.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked.
“Not with trees as fresh as these,” Alex sniffed.
Eva surveys each tree carefully, as if looking for a flaw. She picks at some melted wax on Ally’s tree. “These candles are almost burned-out,” she says. “Someone needs to replace them.”
Alex heads upstairs with their designer luggage, while Eva walks over to the wine pantry and pours two enormous goblets of red wine.
“How was your visit to Alderson?” Eva asks, handing a goblet to me.
“Fine,” I say. “Beth seems well. And Alderson isn’t nearly as bad as you might think.”
“I have no interest in ever visiting,” Eva says.
“How about you, Eva?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood. “How are your girls liking school?”
“Stevie just finished her first semester at Madeira and loves it.” Eva beams. “She adores the equestrian program, of course. Can you believe I ran into my French teacher from my high school days? She used to teach at NCS but moved to Madeira after I graduated. She recognized me right away and said I looked like I could be in high school myself.”
Eva suddenly stops talking.
“Did I say something funny?” she asks.
“Oh no, not at all,” I say. My darn poker face. Our awkward conversation is interrupted when Eva’s youngest daughter bursts in crying.
“What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“No one’s playing with me,” she wails.
I slide off the couch and get down to her level.
“Where are the other girls?” I ask.
“They’re all in Auntie Beth’s room with Claire and Ally.”
“What are they doing in Auntie Beth’s room?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she cries.
“Auntie Hannah and I will come upstairs,” Eva sighs, “if you’ll just stop your incessant whining.” When we enter Claire’s bedroom, the dollhouse pieces are strewn all over the floor as if a tiny tornado just blew through.
“Oh my God, Småland,” Eva says. She picks up the miniature Christmas stocking and holds it with reverence.
“How do you know Småland?” I say. I’d never heard the name before reading it on the ridiculously unhelpful instructions that accompanied the dollhouse.
“When I was young, my parents took Martin and me into Stockholm at Christmastime to see the windows of the fancy NK department store. This was before Beth was even born. One of the windows was of a little girl’s room decorated in beautiful cream-and-pink-striped silk, and in the center of the room was a Småland dollhouse with a big Christmas bow on top. I always woke on Christmas morning hoping to find a Småland dollhouse under the tree.” While Eva is talking, we pick up the dollhouse accessories—a rust-orange beanbag chair, a crusty loaf of bread—and place them carefully in their designated spots.
“It wasn’t until years later,” Eva continues, “when we moved to the Swedish Embassy in DC, that we finally got one. Of course, by then, I was too old to play with dollhouses.”
Our conversation is interrupted by distant shrieks from Beth’s bedroom. We make our way down the hallway, Eva opens the door, and the scent of tuberose hits me like a tidal wave, reminding me of the last time Beth was here. It’s hard to believe her scent lingers on nearly four months later. The four girls are lying on their stomachs on Beth’s bed, looking at one of Beth’s Shutterfly photo albums and laughing hysterically. Piles of other albums are strewn all over the ground and on the bed.
“What’s so funny?” Eva asks.
The girls look up and start laughing even harder.
“Is this you, Auntie Eva?” Claire asks, pointing to the page.
Eva leans over to see what the girls are looking at, and her face turns a strange color. She grabs the album and screams, “You girls know better than to come in here. This bedroom is off-limits. And look what a mess you made.” The girls seem unfazed, as if used to Eva’s outbursts. They jump up and rush out, giggling the whole way, leaving me and Eva alone in Beth’s room.
Eva’s face starts to return to its normal color as she picks up the albums from the bed and floor and places them haphazardly on the bookshelf. I follow silently behind her, rearranging the albums in their proper order.
I know the photo that the girls were laughing at, the one that made Eva so upset. It was taken during Eva’s freshman year in college. She’s sitting at her dorm room desk, her mousy brown hair cut into an unflattering bowl with bangs. Her thick-lensed glasses distort her eyes, and she appears considerably heavier—perhaps forty pounds heavier—than her current slim self. In the background, her roommates are casually laughing. Sam told me Beth spent weeks pulling together old photographs to compile the album for Eva’s fortieth birthday present, but Eva never even acknowledged it.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly children can create a mess. As Eva heads back downstairs, I linger awhile longer to return Beth’s room to its pristine state. I line up the photo albums on the shelf, plump the goose-down pillows and smooth out the duvet.
By the time I get back to the great room, Eva’s already opened another bottle of wine and poured herself a glass. She turns on the plasma TV and starts scrolling through the channels until she gets to the Food Network. It’s yet another episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. As Guy Fieri shovels an obscenely huge burger into his mouth and compliments the juxtaposition of the fatty meat with the acidic bite of the kimchi pickles, Eva puts the TV on Mute.
“I can’t stand that guy’s voice,” she mutters.
A commercial comes on for Tide detergent. It shows an angelic little girl walking along a sunny beach boardwalk and spilling a chocolate ice-cream cone on her pretty cotton dress. The girl erupts in tears, and her impossibly young mother comforts her. The scene cuts away to the young mother rubbing the stain with a touch of Tide, with the final scene showing the little girl blowing out her birthday candles wearing that same pretty cotton dress while her mother looks proudly on. She seems to be just as proud of her laundry skills as she is of her precious daughter.
I feel a lump in my throat.
“It breaks my heart to think of Beth being apart from Claire and Ally for so many years,” I say. “Claire’s just in kindergarten, and Ally’s not even in preschool. Even if Beth gets time off for good behavior, Claire will be in middle school by the time she’s released.”
“Yeah, well,” Eva says, “I guess that’s the price you pay when you’re a murderer.”
My heart stops for a moment. Did Eva really just call her own sister a murderer?
“What do you mean?” I ask. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
The instant the words come out of my mouth, I want to take them back. The cold look on Eva’s face reminds me of something Sam once said to me in private: “Eva seems normal on the outside, but she’s got some seriously fucked-up issues with Beth.”
“Of course I believe it,” Eva says. “Don’t tell me you don’t. Beth might have been able to con your poor brother into believing her ‘I only pled guilty to reduce my prison time’ excuse, but I can’t believe someone as smart as you would buy it. Pictures don’t lie.”
I don’t need to ask what pictures she’s talking about. For a while, they were featured on every newspaper, magazine cover and cable news show in the country. They showed dozens of teenage girls suffering from anorexia after becoming addicted to Metamin-G. When news broke ab
out the girl in California who died of Metamin-G–related anorexia, the accompanying pictures were even worse. You couldn’t go a day without being bombarded by images of her wholesome friends crying at her high school memorial service, her grief-stricken parents holding on to one another at her gravesite, the girl’s skeletal body in its final days.
Both Beth and God Hälsa’s CEO were pilloried for allegedly promoting Metamin-G for such off-label uses as weight loss, academic performance enhancement and treatment of social anxiety. God Hälsa’s once-premium stock price plummeted as the company was accused of putting personal and corporate greed before the well-being of young women prone to depression and anorexia. It was a media feeding frenzy, and Beth’s telegenic face was the bait. The federal whistle-blower lawsuit against God Hälsa was not only the talk of legal and financial circles; it became top news everywhere. People and Us even did photo features on Beth’s designer outfits at various court appearances. Paparazzi started stalking her like she was a Hollywood celebrity.
“Yes, I’ve seen the photographs,” I say, “but you can’t blame that poor girl’s death on Beth. I mean, all drugs have side effects. When you read the litany of potential side effects for any drug, it’s like a parade of horribles—dry mouth, erratic heartbeat, erections that last for hours. I haven’t seen any credible evidence that Beth intended for those girls to get sick or die. I think the federal prosecutors were just playing hardball so they could get God Hälsa to settle and prove to the public that they were being tough on white-collar criminals, and Beth was unlucky enough to get caught in the cross fire.”
I’m slightly breathless by the time I finish my defense of Beth. I don’t know what came over me. Neither apparently does Eva, who casts a cold stare in my direction.
“I guess I underestimated you, Hannah,” Eva finally says.
And then she unmutes the volume.
lise
From the deposition of Lise Danielsson in United States of America et al. v. God Hälsa AB, Andreas Magnusson and Elizabeth Lindstrom
