Remember Mia (2 page)

Why was I in Dover?
Where is my daughter and why is no one talking about her?

As I lie in the hospital bed, I am aware of time passing, a fleeting glimpse of light outside, day turning into night, and back into day. I long for . . . a tidbit of my childhood, a morsel of memory, of how my mother cared for me when I was sick, in bed with the flu or some childhood disease, like measles or chicken pox. But then I recall having been a robust child, a child who was hardy and resistant to viruses, to strep throats and pink eyes.

I don’t know what to tell Jack once he shows up. He will question me. Jack will ask me about the day Mia disappeared. About the morning I found her crib empty. Amnesia is just another shortcoming on a long list of my other countless inadequacies. Shortfall after shortfall.

I must be insane, for the only explanation I can come up with is of my daughter and my ear, together in the same place. And above them, floating suspended like a mobile, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Bright as bright can be, surrounded by darkness. A chaotic universe illuminated by heavenly bodies.

I rest my hands on my lap. My body stills, comes to a halt. I was in an accident. I was shot or tried to harm myself. My ear is gone. There’s a hole that’s draining fluids.

I don’t care about any of that. Mia’s gone. I can’t even bear the thought of her. I want the pain to stop yet her image remains. I raise my finger to push the red PCA button, longing for the lulled state the medicine provides. I hesitate, then I put the box down. I have to think, start somewhere. The empty crib. The dots. I have to connect the dots.

E
very single night I relived my daughter’s birth: her first gasp triggered by the cold birthing room, that gasp turning into a deep breath, then a desperate cry escaping her lips, her attempt at negotiating the inevitable transition between my womb and the outside world.

And every morning I realized that her actual cries reached deep into my dreams, and I woke up feeling like a million tiny bombs were exploding inside my head. Then my muscle memory kicked in.
Wake up, get up, feed her, change her, bathe her, rock her, hold her. Feeding and changing and bathing and rocking and holding.

I had stopped keeping track of time, the date, or even the days of the week. I was unaware of whatever events might be gripping the rest of the world and I hadn’t picked up a book or a magazine in months. My life was reduced to a process of consolidating motor tasks into memory, looplike days and repetitive responsibilities performed without any conscious effort.

As I rose from the couch, the world spun and then stilled. I
listened for the echoes of Mia’s colicky morning cries, by then six months after her birth, hundredfold replicas of her initial primal emergence that visited me in my dreams. Lately her cries had been reaching me time-delayed, distorted almost, as if communicating a certain distance between us.

That morning, I listened, yet the house remained silent.

Barefoot down the hallway I went and paused by her door, still ajar. The watchband had left an imprint as if I had been tied up all night. It was just before nine and I’d been asleep for an unprecedented six hours. Usually by this time, Mia was attempting to pull herself up by the bars of the crib, her eyes rimmed with tears and rage.

A fleeting sense of normalcy enveloped me, a make-believe image of a round-cheeked child pressed against the mattress manifested itself, an elfin body heavy with peaceful sleep.

Mia’s door was cracked just as I had left it hours ago. Opening it wide enough to pass through, I entered the room. Something jabbed at me, made my heart stumble.

The Tinker Bell mobile overhead, unbalanced and lopsided, somehow imperfect and disturbed. The room, barely lit by the sunlight spilling through the window, soundless. Her crib in front of the window, empty and silent. Abandoned. Not so much as an imprint of her body on the sheets.

My molars pulsated as I inspected the windows and rattled the cast-iron bars. I searched the entire apartment, rechecked every window twice. Not a trace of her.

I ran to the front door. The locks were intact, the metal still scratched, the paint still chipped, signs of my clumsy attempt to install a dead bolt. All locks were engaged and everything was where and how it was supposed to be. Except Mia.

There was no proof that anyone had been here—no footprints on the floor, no items left behind—nothing was disturbed, yet this
peculiar energy hovered around me. The apartment seemed physically untouched, but felt ransacked at the same time.

I realized the contradiction of the moment: Mia was gone, yet there was no evidence, no clue, that someone had taken her. No shards on the floor, no gaping doors, no curtains blowing in the breeze of a window left ajar. No haphazardly bunched-up sheet, no pacifier, no toy discarded on the floor.

9-1-1.

I ran to the kitchen, yanked the receiver off the wall mount, and stopped dead in my tracks. The dish rack was empty. No bottle, no collar, no nipple. No formula can, no measuring cup.

I rushed to the trash. Surely her soiled diapers must still be in there. The can was empty, even the plastic liner was gone.

I ripped open the fridge. All the prefilled formula bottles I had prepared the night before were missing.

Back in her room, the shelves of the changing table, usually stacked with diapers and blankets, were empty. The closet door was wide open, not a hanger dangling, not a shoe left on the closet floor.

I pulled the dresser drawers open. All her clothes were gone. Every single drawer of the dresser bare. Not a button or a tag tucked in a corner. The basket on top of the dresser, where I kept the diapers and the ointment, was empty. Nothing but empty pieces of furniture.

I checked every inch of her room, every drawer, every corner of her closet. My heart dropped into my intestines. Not only was Mia gone, but so was every trace of her.

—

The 70th Precinct on Lawrence Avenue in Brooklyn was a five-minute walk from North Dandry. As I passed through the building’s glass doors, the front desk clerk lifted his index finger, indicating he was talking on the phone, and then pointed at the earpiece.

A janitor pushed a neon yellow bucket and a scraggly mop across the floor. He wore blue overalls and clear booties over his white sneakers. I watched him as he wheeled the bucket across the floor, mopping in circular motions, dipping the mop in the wringer and squeezing out the water.

I studied my reflection in the glass door and saw a woman rocking back and forth with the movement of the mop, cotton strings slithering over the linoleum floor,
wipe, dip, wring, wipe, dip, wring
.

Footsteps jerked me back into reality. Behind me, simultaneously a door opened and a phone rang. A detective in slacks and a light blue shirt, his tie tucked into his waistband, walked up to the counter. He held a short, skinny man by his tattooed upper arm. The man was almost catatonic. The detective gave him a shove to move him along, making the man’s chest hit the edge of the counter. He had a crooked smile on his face and seemed indifferent, as if he had been through this too many times to care.

“Get an officer to take him to booking,” the detective said to the clerk. “I don’t want to see his face again until he’s sobered up.”

“I need to speak to someone.” My voice was loud, so loud it made the clerk look up from the phone. “Please, I need help.”

“Just a minute,” the detective said. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.” He was too far away for me to make out his name on the tag clipped to his shirt pocket. He seemed young, maybe too young. Will he understand me, is he a father, has he worked with missing children? I wonder if I should ask for a more experienced detective.

“I need to talk to someone,” I repeated, even louder than before.

He stepped closer, reluctantly. “How can I help you?”

Words sped through my mind, then images of locks emerged, doors secured with bolts, hasps, and locksets.

HELP
, I screamed in my mind. I opened my mouth but no words emerged. I swallowed hard, the gulp in my throat echoing through the silent precinct hallways. I wanted to confess to
whatever it was I had done,
must have done
, for no one disappears through locked doors or walls.

Nausea overcame me. I welcomed the strangled retching, wanted to let go of the words, the confession. I refused to fight the heaviness in my throat. Saliva collected in my mouth and instinctively I pinched my nose to keep the vomit from ejecting through my nostrils.

He stepped backward, as if I were a contagious leper. “There’s a bathroom right over there.” The detective pointed toward a door less than ten feet away.

I convulsed with spasms and on all fours I knelt in the stall. Ripples shook my body, my cold skin was covered in a layer of sweat. Eventually I managed to get to my feet, and as I studied my reflection in the mirror, I rummaged through my mind for an explanation, never lifting my gaze off the stranger that stared back at me. I felt fury for the woman in the mirror, a woman with unwashed hair, her eyes sunken in and sad, the woman who had replaced the real me.

Back in the hallway, the detective was waiting for me. “Ma’am?” He seemed impatient, as if dealing with someone who had no real police business after all.

I didn’t know what to tell the detective anymore. Had someone walked through brick walls, had some ill-fated Houdini act occurred while I was sleeping? When a magician pulls an endless scarf out of a hat, everybody knows it’s a simple trick, but this was real. And I didn’t know if I was a victim or if I was guilty. A crime has been committed. But what kind of crime?

I don’t know where my daughter is.

An all-encompassing statement, implicating everything possible but not implying anything specific. No fault, no crime, no blame. Just a fact.

I don’t know where my daughter is.

I couldn’t fathom a single logical way of explaining how Mia had disappeared.

Say it
, I kept telling myself,
say it. JUST SAY IT.
I pushed myself to speak but the woman I had become didn’t comply. There was nothing anyone could do for her.

No one can help me. No one can help me. No one can help me.

Like an oath, I repeated it three times, hoping the reiteration would conjure up some sort of sense and logic.

As I looked past the detective, down the hallway, the tattooed man from earlier darted for the front door. The detective’s eyes followed him and then he ran after him. The tattooed man, unsteady on his feet, had reached the glass door by the time the detective got ahold of him.

I focused on the floor and the tiny specks in the blue linoleum. I felt my knees weakening, I had to keep moving, keep the blood circulating through my body.

No one can help me.

I exited the precinct and kept on walking. I felt numb inside, anesthetized, yet somehow purged, ready to accept the facts. The numbness dissolved long enough to allow the gravity of what I must have done to sink in. As I passed a store window, out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman studying her hands as if she hadn’t seen them in a long time.

In that brief yet gruesome moment of clarity I realized those hands might just be the hands of a monster.

“I
came straight from the airport. I can’t even wrap my mind around this. What the hell happened?”

He whispers, yet his words pierce through me. His comment feels familiar. Not the words, but the feeling it evokes. I’ve been belittled so many times. So many faux pas committed by me—little ones first, then major ones.

My hands shake, then my whole body trembles. Whether with fear or anger, I don’t know. I fix my gaze on Jack’s anxious face and search his features for some sort of empathy, but he’s all business; his suit, his posture, his demeanor.

“Someone took her, Jack.”

“What do you mean ‘someone took her’? Where were you?” He slides his briefcase across the nightstand, sending a plastic cup tumbling over the edge and to the ground. “What the hell is going on?”

“Jack, I—”

“I leave for a couple of weeks and you get in an accident in . . . Dover? What did you do there? That’s hours from here!”

He swipes his hand through the air as if to dismiss me when
I open my mouth. “Who loses a baby, Estelle? Who? Tell me who loses a baby?”

I press my lips together. I don’t dare make eye contact with him.

“Why did you take her to Dover?”

The beeping and buzzing of machines behind me is the only sound in the room.

“I didn’t, Jack, that’s the thing. I don’t know why I was even there.”

“I was questioned by the police—no wait,
questioned
isn’t the right word . . .” His face twitches, then he steps closer. He lifts his index finger as if to scold me like a child. “I was
interrogated
. I was detained at the airport, taken to the police station, and interrogated like a common criminal. Just what did you tell them?”

“I didn’t tell them anything. Just that you were out of town and—”

“And what?”

“Nothing else. What do you mean? I have nothing to tell them.”

“They sure had a lot of questions. I was treated like a suspect.”

“They always suspect the parents first, you know that.”

“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. Once my boss gets wind of this . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence. “Where is she? Tell me where she is.”

“She’s missing, Jack!” I’m alarmed by the distance in his eyes. I want to cry but that would only make him angrier. All this time with Jack has paid off—I’ve learned to hold back my tears.

“I know she’s missing, they’re searching for her. I want to know how it happened. Tell me everything. I talked to the police and the doctors, but I want to hear it from you.”

I start with how I found the empty crib. How it was a Sunday and none of the workers were in the house. How I called Lieberman but he was out of town, just like every weekend. How nothing made sense. How I went to the police. He doesn’t say,
It’s going to be okay
or
We’ll sort it out
. He just says, “Go on.”

When I’m done, he shakes his head. “I should’ve never left town.
Never. You fooled me. You told me you were okay and I believed you. Did you leave her somewhere? Tell me where you left her.”

Jack’s got it all figured out, like always. In his world you ask questions and get answers, but this isn’t a courtroom and I couldn’t tell him what had happened if I wanted to.

“Jack—”

“You promised me,
promised me
, you were okay, and now look what you’ve done.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it. My daughter is gone.
Gone
. Did that sink in yet?”

“I don’t know, Jack,
I don’t know
.”

“You don’t know where you left her?”

“No, I didn’t leave her
anywhere
. I don’t know where she is.”

“Did you leave her with a sitter? Did you leave her at an overnight day care? Maybe—”

“No, no, there was no sitter. No day care.”

“I should’ve known something was going to happen. I never should’ve . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

Remember, a change of scenery would do me good, you said. It would be like starting over, you said. I believed you, Jack. I thought I could leave the other woman, the one who had taken over my life, I could leave her behind. But she followed me.

“None of this makes any sense.” Suddenly his face relaxes. “You’ve been acting strangely ever since you had Mia. Either I worked too much or I slept too late. Nothing was ever right. I’m starting to think this was your plan all along.”

“My plan? What plan?”

“Yeah, you land a lawyer, get married, have a baby, divorce him, and get alimony and child support.
That
plan.”

“You’re the jackpot and I’m the gold digger? We’re broke, remember? You took this job in Chicago because we are broke.”

“I’m just trying to understand what happened. I’ve done nothing
but support you. What happened to you, Estelle? Did you wake up one day and just say to yourself,
Fuck Jack, fuck Mia, fuck everything
? Just like that? I’ve done everything you wanted me to do, given you everything you’ve ever wanted. Now it’s time to do something for me.”

I just look at him.

“Tell me the truth. We can still fix this.”

“I was in an accident. I have amnesia. I don’t know what happened.” My voice is monotone, like a robot repeating a prerecorded statement.

“Let’s assume you really don’t remember, let’s entertain that for a minute, but explain to me how you don’t call me. Explain that to me. I’m her father—how do you not call me? Was this another one of your crazy moments?”

“My crazy moments?”

“One of those moments when you go off the deep end. When you can’t hold the baby, when you can’t stop crying, when you follow me to my office, when you go through my stuff, when you can’t pick up the phone, can’t dial 9-1-1! One of those moments. Do I need to go on?”

Everything in his world is either black or white. The scary thing is that I have to agree with him, I’m not good for anything. I tried to be a good mother, I tried to do what mothers do. I wish I could make him understand how hard I tried.

“Everything okay in here?” We turn toward the door, where a nurse stands, holding an empty tray.

“Sorry,” Jack says and I nod in agreement. “We’ll keep it down. Everything’s all right.”

Jack doesn’t like to be told how loud he can speak. He lowers his voice but the look in his eyes makes up for the contained rage.

“There’s a cop sitting outside. Do you get how serious this is?”

I nod.

“Any idea why he’s here?” He doesn’t wait for my answer and lowers his voice to a whisper. “It’s not for your protection.”

“What are you saying?” I ask and can’t keep my voice from shaking.

“You need a criminal defense lawyer.”

I cringe at the word
criminal
.

“Jack, I’m not a criminal. I don’t remember what happened. I’m beside myself!” Is it possible for a nonexistent ear to throb? I know my outbursts only reiterate the fact that, in his eyes, I’ve lost my mind. I know I must look like a deer right before the bumper makes contact.

“I woke up and she was gone. Everything was gone. That’s
all
I remember.”

“Something must have happened. Did she cry and you got upset? Did you do something to her?”

I try to sit up but the pain in my ribs is excruciating.

“Look at me.” Jack steps closer and he grabs my chin, turning my head toward him. “Look me in the eyes and tell me what happened.”

“Do you think I’d hurt our daughter?”

The candor of my question startles him. His eyes widen, but immediately he catches himself and lowers his voice back down to a whisper. “I’m not saying you hurt her. All I’m saying is that I blame you for what happened.” Jack opens his briefcase. “One more thing,” he adds.

There is always one more thing with Jack.

“I’m not sure if you’re getting this, but there’s a possibility you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars or strapped to a gurney if you don’t remember what happened. Now is the time to grasp the severity of your situation.” He pinches his lips into a straight line and adds, “I’ve talked to the doctors at length, and if I can convince the DA, I’ll get you into a clinic with a doctor who specializes in memory recovery.”

I stare at him, and then I lower my eyes.

“Where’s this clinic?” I ask.

“Here in New York. The doctor, some foreigner from the
Middle East, specializes in trauma-related memory loss.” His shoulders relax but even his expensive suit can’t hide the fact that suddenly he looks like a deflated balloon. “I need you to sign a voluntary admission to a psychiatric facility for an unspecified length of time.”

I attempt to organize my thoughts into separate, manageable portions. It barely seems possible.
Memory recovery.
I imagine wires hooked up to my brain, truth serums, and my retina relaying images to computer screens.
A psychiatric facility. Unspecified amount of time.
I’m agreeing to go to a loony bin and I won’t be able to check out.

“I don’t belong in a psych ward. I’m not crazy.”

Jack cocks his head and raises his brows as if he has caught a kid in a lie.

“In your eyes I’m just this lunatic, right? Why don’t you just say it? You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“Not crazy in a certifiable sense, not crazy as in failing a psych exam, but I believe that you need help and that this clinic might just be your only chance. And most of all, it’s Mia’s only chance.” His voice is soft now, almost seductive. “I don’t think you have any other choice. This is it.”

I force my legs off the side of the bed. My rubbery socks search for the sticky linoleum floor. I feel suspended, unable to find the ground. The second the pen rests at the end of my name, I feel an overwhelming urge to take it in my fist and scratch out my signature until the paper is torn to shreds.

Jack grabs the pen and pulls it from between my fingers and checks his watch.

“That doctor will help me remember and we’ll find Mia. We’ll find out what happened, right, Jack?”

He closes his briefcase and leaves the room before I can even get my feet on the ground.