Remember Mia (27 page)

I’m afraid that eventually I’ll forget her scent, the feel of her hair against my check. The thought of her existence being completely erased from my mind one day makes me angry. It’s a finite kind of anger, the kind that can be endured for only so long until something’s got to give.

T
he Brooklyn Frame & Photo Gallery is only a few blocks from 58th Street. The gallery specializes in custom framing for art pieces and photographs. I love the thought of conserving moments in time. I show our customers catalogs with samples of matting. I dust the frames that cover the wall behind the counter. I proclaim the advantages of classic frames over antique or contemporary looks, I speak on naturally treated hardwoods, finished-corner artisan hardwoods, welded aluminum and steel, unique Plexiglas frames, finished-corner gold-leafed frames, and our large selection of modern and decorative moldings.

For the past five years I have framed other people’s memories. It consoles me on so many levels; I’m a bystander, yet I partake in the joy of others since I doubt I will ever again find joy for myself. It is a strange way to live, yet I can function within this limited level of participation, it having been familiar to me all my life.

On a bad day I want to tell them to preserve their memories
because they might be taken from them before they can even imagine a future, before they clip a pink bow in the blond hair of a girl with dark eyes and pale skin.

The look on the customers’ faces who pick up their framed photographs, those moments are like the parents of my future; they create the person I want to be one day. Other days, when I hear a crying infant or walk into a restroom where a mother just changed her baby, the smell of baby powder renders me helpless.

The NYPD stopped searching for Mia years ago. They know she is—or was, at one point—with Anna Lieberman. She could be anywhere and nowhere. Mia could be with Anna still, or sold to the highest bidder. Or maybe they live somewhere, in another country or another state. Maybe they went down to Mexico. Maybe Canada.

The other day, on my way to work, I passed a little girl in a school uniform, smiling and skipping along beside her mother. Suddenly fear rose inside me. I actually took a step after the little girl before I forced myself to cut off my thoughts.
Don’t be stupid
, I told myself,
that’s not Mia
. Except . . . my panic rears up again and again, panic that she might live somewhere close, yet I’ll never know.

For five years I’ve seen babies in strollers and toddlers in buggies and I think:
That’s what Mia would look like now.
Those fleeting images of her, images that cause me to stop, bend over, and collect my breath, find me in the most unpredictable places, in the most random forms. A strand of hair, a little finger pointing at something. A wailing baby, a crying toddler, a bawling kid in the park. I see Mia everywhere. Little girls who look like her cross the street beside me, they hold their mothers’ hands, they enter school buildings, and they hang off monkey bars in parks. Mia’s likeness holds another woman’s hand and it tears me up inside.

My therapist, Dr. Langston, who I see twice a week in the afternoons, has a skeleton model in the corner of her office. The
day we meet for the first time, I remark that she’s not an orthopedic doctor and that the skeleton seems misplaced to me.

“Bones are all we really know about humans. Pretty much everything else is just conjecture. Miracle recoveries, new diseases, the brain, we are basically clueless,” she says and squints at the skeleton. “I call him Musterion; it means ‘sacred secret’ in Greek. A reminder that we know nothing about the human condition.”

Her large office window faces the west and during our sessions the room floods with golden light. It makes me smile every time I walk in. I’ve been keeping a secret from her and today I decide to come clean.

“There was this woman and a little girl, on Delaware and 49th, the girl wore a black down jacket. Her ponytail had come loose under her hat, it sat crooked, and the woman made no attempt to straighten it. One of her pink gloves dangled on a string attached to her coat, her other hand held on to the woman’s hand, which I assumed to be her mother.

“I remember her stride, wide and bouncy, had caught my eye. But what alerted me was the red hair she pushed nervously under the hood of her duffel coat. The gesture seemed suspicious, hasty, meant to deceive. I trailed them but after a few minutes I felt heavy and stiff, unable to keep up. They finally slowed down and boarded the B11 bus.”

I remember I sat behind them, catching my breath. The bus windows were fogged with the heat and breaths of dozens of people. There was a man in a blue uniform, two teenage girls with purple hair and nose rings, shift workers with empty eyes and lunch boxes on their laps. The rest were old people in orthopedic shoes and drawstring pants on their way back to their senior living facility. The little girl’s head rested on the woman’s shoulder, then her forearm, eventually her lap.

“Did you think it was your daughter and the woman who kidnapped her?”

“There was a general resemblance to Anna Lieberman as I remember her, but the woman was taller, older, maybe even the girl’s grandmother.”

I tell Dr. Langston that when the bus reached Sunset Park, the woman gently stroked the girl’s cheek. She made eye contact with the girl and placed her hand in front of her right eye and pulled away as if pulling on a string. The girl responded by raising her index finger. Sign language, I thought, and realized what had compelled me to follow them in the first place was the fact that they seemed disconnected from each other. The woman gently slipped the pink glove over her hand and smiled at the girl. The girl bared her miniature teeth back at her. I watched them as they leisurely strolled off to the subway.

“Did you continue to follow them?”

“No, I didn’t, but I wondered what I would do if it was her. The pills I take make me tired and I’m out of shape and what if I had to run after someone?”

Dr. Langston looks at me, puzzled. “You’re not thinking about stopping your meds, are you?”

“No, I’m not. But on my way home the other day I stopped to buy a pair of running shoes. And I’ve been running ever since.”

Seated on the edge of her chair, Dr. Langston listens to every word I say.

“I feel I have to do something more. I check online, I follow the news, I . . . maybe . . . maybe I will recognize someone, or make out a voice I’ve heard before. There’s still the waitress that the police never found. And I know Anna is still out there. I just can’t sit still anymore.”

“You run to find clues as to where your daughter is?” Her eyebrows raise and form half-moons of apprehension over her eyes.

“I know it’s not very logical and that’s why . . . that’s why I’ve been thinking about becoming a crime analyst,” I say.

Dr. Langston forgets to blink, then she clears her throat. “A crime analyst?”

“Yes. I’m thinking about it.” It had never crossed my mind, but there it is, floating in the air, from hasty comment to a possibility to do something, to a resolve of some sort.

“Maybe we should talk about this before you—”

“I don’t think you understand,” I interrupt her. “I’ve been calling the detective for years, the one who worked the case. They don’t have a single lead. Nothing. How do you not have a single lead?”

“From what I understand—”

“It drives me crazy that she’s somewhere, right now as we sit here, she’s doing
something
. Right now, as we speak, she is living somewhere, wearing a dress, having her hair in a ponytail, speaking, playing. I refuse to believe that she’s lost. It’s not like a stranger grabbed her off the street, we know who she’s with. I understand that all the other leads, the diner, the waitress at the diner, turned up nothing. I get that. I may not be able to find my daughter, but Anna, Anna I can find. A needle in a haystack maybe, but hell, there’s a haystack and there’s a needle in it. All I’ve to do is take each single blade of hay and remove it. And I’ll be left with the needle.”

“I just want to make sure that you don’t—”

“Become obsessed? You worry that I’ll become obsessed with finding my daughter? Listen, Dr. Langston, this is not a healthy life, I know that. But I’m not concerned and neither should you be.”

“As your therapist your mental health
is
my primary concern.”

“Then tell me what to do, tell me what you would do? Sit around and wait? One more summer, one more Christmas? Another four years?” I laugh out loud, from the gut. Crisp, with a hint of evil.

Dr. Langston remains silent as a broad bar of sunlight bathes her in an angelic glow. She presses down the button of her ceramic pencil. The porcelain shell looks expensive, a Mother’s Day
present maybe—I’ve seen photos of her children on her desk—a token of appreciation from people who love her. She aligns the pen with the yellow notepad paper.

When she doesn’t answer, I nod with unwavering intensity.

“I’m not managing my grief well, am I?”

“Managing is the important part.”

I’ve read the terminology. Mia is considered “long-term missing.” All subject-matter experts from a wide array of disciplines have considered all possible strategies. Nothing else can be done. We’ve reached the end of the line and I’m the only one standing.

“Sometimes I get up in the morning and I feel that today is the day. Today is the day when the phone rings and there’s a lead. A picture. A trace of something.” I don’t tell her that just last week I went to Anna’s house and that it’s vacant again. I don’t mention the fact that I went back to the cornfield and that I poked the earth with a stick where I buried Lieberman. That I had coffee at the diner, which by now sees a pretty steady influx of customers.

I’ve done my homework. Dr. Langston is merely a companion on my journey, a spectator of my grief, if you will. Her main mission is to bear witness to my pain. According to her manual she is to emphasize the importance of ongoing support for individuals like me. She is to tell me that I must attend to my own physical and emotional needs. She is to help me prepare for the long term and the fact that my life must go on without my daughter.

She listens attentively and honors the few stories I have of Mia. There isn’t much to tell, really, she was born, inflicted by a colic when she was only a few weeks old, a colic that never passed, and then she was gone. No anecdotes of learning to crawl, first steps, or first words. It was all a struggle for both of us. When I run out of stories to tell, and we go in circles for a few sessions, she mentions the support group flyer she gave me a while back.

“Did you ever give the support group I told you about a chance?”

“Not yet,” I say and I have no intentions of going at all. The
thought of listening to other people’s pain is not my idea of finding Mia.

“It can be quite therapeutic and might help you make sense of your new world.”

“A world without my child doesn’t make sense at all,” I tell her.

“Give it a chance,” she says, and so I do.

I go that very same day. I give chances, it’s the only thing I have to give these days.

—

Only a handful of cars dot the church parking lot as I pass spindly trees amidst concrete islands and weeds poking through the asphalt. I count eight cars. I scan the flyer taped to the door.
Healing Hearts
, it says.
Weekly meetings. Grief Support after the Loss of a Child
. The group meets at six. At five there’s an AA meeting on the schedule. Tai chi for seniors starts promptly at eight.

Grief is universal
, the flyer says.
A place where people who have experienced a loss can tell their stories knowing they will be respected and held in confidence.

I enter the titanic room with intermittent columns holding up the ceiling. It is stuffy and reeks of mold, Freon, and stale coffee. I make my way to the back, where the fluorescent lights shine a merciless blaze on a group of people. I count seven. A man with a folder in his lap. Two couples, one middle-aged and one fairly young woman. I take one of the vacant chairs.

“Hi, my name is Eric,” the guy with the folder says and counts heads, then notes the number of people attending on a notepad.

“I’m a licensed grief counselor and the facilitator of this group. Most of us know each other but we have a new face here tonight.” Eric makes eye contact with me and strokes his soul patch. “Just so we’re on the same sheet of music, let me go over the principles again. Everyone here has experienced a loss of a loved one. We’re here to talk about that experience with people who are likely to
understand. There’ll be words of wisdom, words of support and sometimes”—Eric pauses and glances at a couple holding hands—“sometimes our words cause even more pain. Be patient with each other and remember, we’re not a social network, we’re not a therapy group. Everything we say is confidential.”

I look around. There’s a couple with identical T-shirts, the word
Hope
on their chests, the
o
being a butterfly. The woman’s pudgy fingers rest in the man’s hand, as if he is keeping her from darting for the door. Or off a bridge, I’m not sure. The man introduces himself as Dwight, his wife as Kathryn. “But she goes by Katy,” he adds. “We lost our daughter to cancer a year ago.”

The middle-aged woman in an outfit that I didn’t know still existed—pink stretch pants and a pink shirt with embroidered flowers—is on the verge of tears. “I’m Regina,” she says and dabs her eyes with a cloth handkerchief. “My son suffers from a mental disease. I haven’t seen him in five years.”

The other couple, Kristy and Dave, wear sweatpants, flannel shirts, and crosses around their necks. “Our son was killed in Afghanistan,” Kristy says, clutching the cross in her fist.

And then it’s my turn to introduce myself. I practiced at home, went over my words dozens of times, expecting the inescapable and obligatory introduction of my loss, and I faltered every time. I haven’t lost anyone. At least not yet. I believe Mia is alive but I don’t know where. I feel out of place, even more than I imagined when this moment played out in my mind.

“My name’s Estelle,” I say and take in a deep breath. I’m not sure what to say. My loss is unique, I’m in some elusive limbo state, not quite circle of life, yet all-encompassing.