Her eyes told me I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.
“Why do you put up with it then?”
She considered my question for a second then wrote Because I deserve it.
Liberty had classes during the week, but Saturday was visiting day. Though I had several visitors that Saturday, the rule was that you could only see one person at a time.
The first person was Simon Green. I asked him how Mr. Kipling was faring, to which he replied, “He’s stable.” Apparently, Mr. Kipling was still on a ventilator and unavailable for consultation. “Unfortunately,” Simon Green added.
And it was unfortunate. Though I was worried for Mr. Kipling, I was equally worried for myself and my family.
“Per your instructions, I made all the calls, Anya,” Simon Green said. “Everything is arranged. Ms. Goodfellow agreed to stay. Ms. Barber will take your sister to and from school. Your brother, for the moment, is not taking the job at the Pool. I also spoke to your grandmother …” Simon Green’s voice trailed off. “Her mind seems to be …”
“Going,” I finished.
“You’re the one running the show, aren’t you?” Simon Green asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “And that’s why I never would have poisoned Gable Arsley. I couldn’t afford to take such a risk.”
“Let’s talk about Mr. Arsley for a moment,” Simon Green said. “Do you have any theories as to how the poison got in the chocolate?”
“Yes. Jacks Pirozhki delivered the box to my house. I believe the chocolate was intended for my immediate family. Gable got in the way.”
“I know Jacks Pirozhki. He’s a nobody, a nonentity in the Balanchine organization. He’s considered good-natured and essentially benign,” Simon Green replied. “Why would he want to poison you and your siblings?”
I told him how Pirozhki had been hanging around my brother for weeks and how he had been the one to set up Leo with the job at the Pool. “Maybe he thought murdering the children of Leonyd Balanchine would be some sort of symbolic gesture? Raise his profile among Daddy’s enemies.”
Simon Green considered this, then shook his head. “Doubtful. But his behavior’s still very suspicious and I’ll definitely have a word with Mr. Pirozhki. Would you like to hear the case the State has against you?”
Here were the main points:
1. I had given Gable Arsley not one, but two bars of poisoned chocolate.
2. I had committed a prior act of violence against him (the lasagna incident).
3. I had been heard making threats against him.
4. I had a motive (I was a woman angry for being either dumped or assaulted, depending on whose story you believed).
5. I had asked my brother to destroy evidence.
“Where did they get that last part?” I asked.
“When the cops arrived at your apartment, Leo was moving the chocolate out of your grandmother’s closet. Your brother never admitted anything but his behavior seemed suspicious. Of course, they confiscated the whole lot.”
“The only reason I asked him to move the chocolate was because I didn’t want Nana to get in trouble for possession!” I said.
“She won’t,” Simon Green promised. “They’re pinning the possession charge on you as well. But don’t worry about that, no one goes to jail or juvenile hall for possession of chocolate.”
“Anya, something about this smells off to me. And despite my poor performance in court on Thursday, I will get to the bottom of it,” Simon Green assured me. “You will be exonerated and back at home with Galina, Natty, and Leo.”
“How did you come to work for Mr. Kipling?” I asked.
“I owe him my life, Anya,” Simon Green said. “I would tell you the story but I wouldn’t want to betray Mr. Kipling’s confidence.”
I could respect that. I took a moment to consider Simon Green. He had very long legs and arms and in his suit he looked almost like a daddy longlegs spider. His skin was very pale, as if he spent his days not just indoors, but underground. His eyes were more green than blue, and they seemed thoughtful. No, intelligent. I allowed myself to feel ever so slightly encouraged that this person was on my side.
“How old are you anyway?” I asked.
“Twenty-seven,” he said. “But I graduated top of my class at law school and I’m a quick learner. However, Mr. Kipling’s business is complex, to say the least, and I apologize for not knowing more about your situation. I only became his associate last spring.”
“Yes, I think he may have mentioned that he was taking someone on,” I said.
“Mr. Kipling is very protective of you, and he was planning to introduce us after I had worked for him a year. We’d both hoped that I might replace him someday, but neither of us had any inkling it would happen so soon.”
“Poor Mr. Kipling.”
Simon Green looked down at his hands. “Though I don’t wish to make excuses for myself, I think some of my incompetence in court can be attributed to my shock at the sudden turn in Mr. Kipling’s health. I do apologize again. How are they treating you?”
I told him I’d rather not discuss it.
“I want you to know that my first priority is getting you out of here.” Simon Green shook his head. “If I’d done a better job, they never would have sent you here to begin with.”
“Thank you, Mr. Green,” I said.
“Please. Call me Simon.” I still preferred Mr. Green.
We shook hands. His grip was neither too strong nor too weak, and his palms were dry. Not to mention, the man knew how to apologize properly. “You have visitors besides me. I should let you get to them,” Simon Green said.
My other visitors that afternoon were Scarlet and Leo, but I almost wished that neither had come. Having visitors was exhausting. They both wanted to be reassured that I was fine, and I wasn’t up to the task. Scarlet told me that Natty had wanted to come, but Scarlet had discouraged her. “Win, too,” she added. Her instincts had been right on both counts. “Your picture’s all over the news,” she informed me.
“I heard,” I replied.
“You’re famous,” she said.
“Infamous more like.”
“Poor darling.” Scarlet leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, and a guard yelled, “No kissing!”
Scarlet giggled. “Maybe they think I’m your girlfriend. Your lawyer’s kind of cute, by the way,” she said. She had apparently met him in the waiting area.
“You think everyone’s cute,” I said. I didn’t care that my lawyer was cute; I only cared that he would be effective.
After my visitors had left, Mrs. Cobrawick approached me. She was much more dressed up than she had been yesterday. She was wearing a tight beige dress and pearls and makeup and her hair was pulled into a style I think is called a French twist. “As a rule, the girls are only allowed two visitors, but I made a special exception for you,” Mrs. Cobrawick said.
I told her that I hadn’t known that and I assured her it wouldn’t happen again.
“No need, Anya. A simple thank-you would suffice,” Mrs. Cobrawick replied.
“Thank you,” I said. However, I was not in the least comfortable with being indebted to this woman in any way.
“I saw your brother here earlier. I had heard he was simple but he seemed perfectly normal to me,” Mrs. Cobrawick commented.
I didn’t wish to discuss Leo with this woman. “He does well,” I said.
“I can see this subject makes you uncomfortable, but I am your friend and you should feel at liberty to discuss this or any other matter with me. How did you find orientation?”
Was orientation her word for what had happened to me on Thursday? “I found it pretty medieval,” I said.
“Medieval?” She laughed. “You’re a strange one, aren’t you?”
I said nothing.
A woman with a camera walked by and asked, “Photograph for our donor newsletter, Mrs. Cobrawick?”
“Oh, my! Well, I suppose one can never escape the demands of the public.?
?? Mrs. Cobrawick put her arm around me. The flash went off. I hoped I looked halfway decent, though I doubted it. I knew how these things worked. The picture would be sold, and I suspected it would only be a matter of days, if not hours, before this image ended up on the news right alongside my school photo.
“How much do you think you’ll get for it?” I asked.
Mrs. Cobrawick fidgeted with her string of pearls. “Get for what?”
I knew I should probably stop, but I continued. “The picture,” I said. “Of me.”
Mrs. Cobrawick looked at me with slit eyes. “You’re a very cynical young lady, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I probably am.”
“Cynical and disrespectful. Perhaps those are things we can begin to work on while you’re here. Guard!”
A male guard appeared. “Yes, ma’am.”
“This is Miss Balanchine,” Mrs. Cobrawick said. “She has led a very privileged lifestyle and I think she could benefit from spending some time in the Cellar.”
Mrs. Cobrawick walked away, leaving the guard to deal with me. “You must have really pissed her off,” he said once she was out of earshot.
I was led down several flights of stairs into the basement of the building. It smelled putrid, a winning combination of excrement and mold. Though I could not see anyone, I heard moans and scratching, punctuated by an occasional scream. The guard left me in a tiny, dirt-covered room with no light and little air. There wasn’t even space to stand. You could only sit up or lie down, like in a dog kennel.
“How long will I be in here?” I asked.
“Varies,” said the guard as he closed the door and locked me in. “Usually until Mrs. Cobrawick thinks you learned your lesson. I hate this job. Try not to lose your mind, girl.”
Those were the last words spoken to me for a very long time.
The guard had given me good advice, which turned out to be nearly impossible to follow.
In the absence of visual information, your mind invents all manner of intrigue. I felt rats running across my legs and cockroaches on my forearms and I thought I smelled blood and I lost feeling in my legs and my back hurt and I was just plain scared.
How had I even ended up here?
I had nightmares too awful to describe. Natty getting shot in the head in Central Park. Leo slamming his head over and over again on the steps at Little Egypt. And me, always behind bars, unable to act.
Once, I woke up because I heard someone screaming. It only took me a minute or so to figure out that it was me.
Although I doubt this had been Mrs. Cobrawick’s point, I did learn something about insanity while I was down there. People go crazy, not because they are crazy, but because it’s the best available option at the time. In a way, it would have been easier to lose my mind because then I wouldn’t have had to be there anymore.
I lost track of time.
I prayed.
I lost track of time.
Everything smelled like urine.
I suppose it was mine, but I tried not to think about that.
The only human contact I had was when a stale dinner roll and a metal cup with water would be slipped through the panel in the door. I didn’t know at what intervals the rolls were coming.
Four rolls passed.
Then five.
On the sixth roll, a different guard opened the door. “You’re free to go,” she said.
I didn’t move, unsure if the guard was a hallucination.
She shined a flashlight at my face and the light hurt my eyes. “I said, you’re free to go.”
I tried to push my way out, but I found that I couldn’t move my legs. The guard pulled me out by my arms, and my legs woke up a little.
“Just need to sit down,” I croaked. My voice didn’t sound like me. My throat was so dry it was hard to speak.
“Come on, honey,” the guard said. “You’ll be okay. I’m taking you to clean yourself up and then you can leave.”
“Leave?” I asked. I had to lean on the guard. “You mean, I can leave the Cellar?”
“No, I mean leave Liberty,” she said. “You’ve been exonerated.”
IX.
i discover an influential friend & then, a foe
MY CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE for how long I’d been in the Cellar would have been a week though I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear it had been a month or even longer.
In reality, it had only been seventy-two hours.
Turned out that a lot had been happening in that time.
The climb up from the basement was far more exhausting than the climb down had been. It seemed strange that being confined to sitting and lying positions could be so physically debilitating, and I felt a newfound empathy for Nana.
The guard, who told me her name was Quistina, led me to a private shower. “You need to clean yourself up now,” she said. “There are people waiting to speak to you.”
I nodded. I still felt so unlike myself that I couldn’t even be bothered to ask who was waiting for me or how all this had come about.
“Is there a time limit on the shower?” I asked.
“No,” said Quistina. “Take as long as you need.”
On the way into the shower, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked feral. My hair was matted and filled with knots. My eyes were bloodshot and the dark circles under them were more like bruises. There were actual bruises and marks up and down my arms and legs. (Not to mention that tattoo on my ankle.) My nails were ragged and bloody—I hadn’t even been aware that I had been digging at the ground, but that was the only explanation. I was coated in dirt. Once I was actually in the shower, I became aware of how truly terrible I smelled, too.
As it wasn’t on my dime, I took a very long shower. Possibly the longest shower of my life.
When I got out, my school uniform was on the bathroom counter. Someone had laundered it and even shined my shoes.
Upon putting on my clothing, I realized that I must have lost some weight. The skirt that had fit perfectly a few days earlier was now a couple of inches too big in the waist and rested on my hips.
“Mrs. Cobrawick would like to see you before you go,” Quistina said.
“Oh.” I was not eager to encounter that woman again. “Quistina,” I asked, “would you happen to know why I’m being released?”
She shook her head. “I don’t really know the specifics or if I’m even supposed to talk about it with you.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Although,” she whispered, “on the news, they said people all over town were ending up in the hospital with chocolate poisoning, so …”
“Jesus,” I said, and then I crossed myself. This news meant that the Fretoxin contamination had been in the supply. It hadn’t just been Gable. He’d likely been the first because my family got our chocolate before everyone else. The question wasn’t whether I had poisoned Gable but who had tainted the entire shipment of Balanchine Special. These kinds of cases could take years to solve.
I’d been using Mrs. Cobrawick’s private bathroom and according to Quistina, she was waiting for me in her sitting room, which was down the hall.
Mrs. Cobrawick was wearing a formal black dress as if she were in mourning. She was perched on the edge of an appropriately severe black parsons chair. The only sound in the room was the tapping of her nails against the glass coffee table.
“Mrs. Cobrawick?”
“Come in, Anya,” she said in a tone that was markedly different from the one she’d last used with me. “Have a seat.”
I told her that I’d rather stand. I was exhausted but relieved to be ambulant again. Besides, I didn’t exactly relish a lengthy visit with Mrs. Cobrawick and standing would discourage such a possibility.
“You look tired, dear. And it’s polite to sit,” Mrs. Cobrawick said.
“I’ve spent the last three days sitting, ma’am,” I said.
“Is that meant to be some sort of dig?” Mrs. Cobrawick asked.
“No,” I replied. “It’s a statement of fact.”
Mrs. Cobrawick smiled at me. She had a very broad smile—all her teeth showed and her lips disappeared. “I see how you’re going to play this now,” she said.
“Play this?” I asked.
“You think you’ve been treated badly here,” Mrs. Cobrawick said.
Hadn’t I? I thought.
“But I simply wanted to help you, Anya. It looked as if you might be here a very long time—there was so very much evidence against you—and I find that it makes everyone’s time easier if I’m stern with the new arrivals up front. It’s my unofficial policy, really. That way, the girls will know what’s expected of them. Especially those who’ve had as privileged a background as you’ve had—”
I couldn’t listen to this any longer. “You keep mentioning my privileged background,” I said. “But you don’t know me, Mrs. Cobrawick. Maybe you think you know things about me. What you’ve read in the newspapers about my family and such, but you really don’t know the first thing.”
“But—” she said.
“You know, some of the girls here are innocent. Or even if they’re not innocent, whatever they’ve done is in their past and they’re just trying to do their best to move on. So, maybe you could treat people based on your own experiences with them. Maybe that might make a good unofficial policy.” I turned to leave.
“Anya,” she called. “Anya Balanchine!”
I didn’t turn back around but I heard her coming after me. A couple of seconds later, I felt her clawlike hand on my arm.
“What?”
Mrs. Cobrawick clutched my hand. “Please don’t tell your friends at the DA’s office that you were treated badly here. I don’t need any trouble. I was … I was foolish not to consider how well connected your family still is.”
“I don’t have any friends at the DA’s office,” I said. “Even if I did, getting you in trouble is pretty much at the bottom of my list of things to take care of. What I’d most like is to never see you or this place again in my life.”
“What about Charles Delacroix?”
Win’s father? “I’ve never met him,” I said.