Free Save Johanna! by Francine Pascal Page B

stick out inches from her bony arms. She’s lost weight in prison, and her normally pale complexion is grayish enough to look slightly dirty. Her hair is shorter than it was at the trial, thin and dull brown, chopped off just below her ears with, to my surprise, bangs. I know she didn’t have them the last time I saw her, yet she seems to care so little about her appearance that I can’t imagine her doing anything even vaguely stylish. Actually they’re an improvement, but I would never dare to tell her.
    She barely looks at me but takes the seat opposite.
    “Hi,” I say, trimming my smile to fit the occasion. “I’m Johanna Morgan.”
    “Go on.”
    Tough lady, but I try once more for some rapport. “Would you prefer I called you Alice?”
    “Swat’s good enough. You know, you only got about twenty minutes.”
    “I thought possibly I could come back for the afternoon visiting.”
    “No way.”
    “I was able to get permission from the warden.”
    “I don’t give a shit about the warden. Finish this morning or forget the whole fucking thing.” She shakes her head, and her hair flips back. Now I see why she cut bangs. They hide a forehead lumpy with acne. A pathetic attempt, but at least a modicum of vanity still exists.
    The friendly approach is pointless so I move directly on to my business. “Whatever you say. How did you first get involved with Avrum Maheely?”
    “Through a friend. I don’t know. I don’t remember anymore.”
    “What were you doing at the time?”
    “Working.”
    She’s purposely being uncooperative, but I expect that; still, I strain to keep my tone pleasant.
    “What kind of job did you have?”
    She takes almost a full moment to study me and then, making it sound more like a challenge than an answer, “I was a nurse.”
    I try to cover my surprise, but I’m not quick enough.
    “Why not?” Again the challenge.
    “No reason.” But there is. She seems so unkind and coarse to minister to the sick. “I just didn’t know. It never came out at the trial, and besides, nursing is such a definite, disciplined profession, and I always think of the people around Avrum as less . . . I don’t know, anchored.”
    “You think we’re all stupid like Imogene?”
    “Is she stupid?”
    “You got to be kidding.”
    “I haven’t spoken to her yet, and she had very little to say at the trial. All I remember about her is that she was extremely beautiful.”
    “A cunt, that’s all.”
    Her vulgarity makes me wince, especially because of Leo and Nancy, but when I sneak a glance at them, they’re listening without expression. Swat enjoys my discomfort so I try to give it back to her. “Was Avrum in love with Imogene?”
    “You mean did he fuck her? Yeah, he fucked her plenty. Is that love?”
    “You tell me.”
    I hit a soft spot. Aggravated, she mutters, “asshole.” She gets very busy studying her chewed-down nails and is, I think, deciding whether to get up and leave. I’m counting on her dislike of me to keep her here. I think she has more to say than she put in the letter, and this is her opportunity. I’m right. She decides to hang in.
    “People like you can’t begin to understand a man like Avrum,” she says. “You think so tight and middle-class. Did he love her? Like that would have some importance.”
    “Doesn’t it?”
    “Not the conventional limited kind of love you’re talking about.”
    “If I’m so middle-class and conventional, what’s a nurse?”
    “That was Alice Rheinlander, a long time ago before I met Avrum.”
    “I’d like to know more about Alice Rheinlander.”
    “Look it up.”
    “I did, but there wasn’t too much. You’re the oldest of eight brothers and sisters, parents were working-class people of Polish extraction from the north end of Chicago, good church-going Catholics until father drops out of the picture when you’re about fourteen. That’s all I could come up with and no mention of you studying nursing.”
    “Or that the old