Remember Mia (30 page)

Two high-pitched voices erupt and two of the boys argue over a tub of paint. One of the boys, his apron has become loose, guides the other boy back to his chair by firmly placing a hand on his back. The boy starts crying and the girl with the ponytail says something to him. I wonder if I’d get away with taking a seat in the far corner of the room when I hear Dr. Wallace tell the children that I’m a police officer. I never told her I was—she must have inferred it when she saw me with Detective Wilczek earlier.
I’m with Detective Wilczek
, I told her.

The children turn and stare at me. The crying boy is inconsolable, and when he realizes that everybody’s attention has drifted away from him, he dips his entire hand in the tub with the red finger paint. He is immediately annoyed by his sticky hands and tries to get the paint off by violently shaking his fingers. Then he turns to his left and wipes his hands on the shirt of the boy sitting next to him.

The three blond girls start screaming and attempt to save their pictures from paint spatters by snatching them off the table.

Dr. Wallace’s “Everybody listen up” goes unnoticed. Now the other boys also dip their hands into the paint tubs. The doctor’s face is visibly tense and she pulls the entire turntable toward her in order to claim the paint. The children are now amused and smear paint over each other’s shirts. Someone is laughing uncontrollably, then numerous loud bursts erupt, then turn into giggles.

Dr. Wallace is frantically screwing the lids back on the tubs. “Everybody listen. We are going to wipe our hands and settle down.”
She looks at me and gestures me into the room. “Give me a hand, will you?” she says and stuffs a handful of wet wipes into my hands. “I’ll handle the boys,” she adds and directs them to individual chairs along the wall.

I distribute the wipes and the girls are busy wiping and chatting. I hand the girl with the ponytail and the bangs a wet wipe last. She looks at me, puzzled, and doesn’t move. I lean down and gently start wiping the paint globs off her fingertips. She wiggles her hands out of mine and checks for stickiness by rubbing her hands together.

Suddenly her eyes fill with tears. Her painting is covered in paint splashes, torn at the edges. The picture is of a stick figure in a yellow dress with large green dots for the eyes. I stare at the crown of red hair.

“That’s my picture.” She points at the scribbles. “But now it’s all ruined,” she adds, her lips pouting. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, swiping her bangs to the side.

“Maybe we can fix it,” I say. I want to save this picture for her, want to make everything all right. I want to tell her that we can cut out Mommy and glue her to a clean sheet of paper. That sometimes you can start all over and nothing is ruined after all.

When she makes eye contact with me, her eyes swallow my words. Those are Jack’s eyes, one raised eyebrow, scrutinizing the world. I fold a wet wipe and encase her hand. Her thumb emerges, clean and shiny. The very tip is covered in round white bumps as if ice is trapped under her skin.

My stomach drops and my hands start shaking. I gently take both of her wrists in my hands. I flip over her hands and wipe one finger at a time with a broad sweep. Countless white lines emerge, covering her fingertips like icicles, remnants of a night a long time ago, a turtle lamp, and a mother who was fallible. I hold on to her hands, want to erase everything that’s not right, and I hope her trust won’t evaporate.

“All clean,” she says and hides her hands behind her back. “What about my picture?”

“The picture,” I say and manage a crooked smile, “how about we draw a new one?”

—

Wilczek appears some time later. Maybe an hour, maybe longer. His eyes are vacant and his jaws are tightly clasped.

I patiently wait for him to go on.

“When she realized she was being followed, she tried to get away, but in the end she couldn’t,” he says and punches keys on his phone. Finally he gives up. “I called for backup but she had wrapped herself around a pole on Woodside Avenue before they even showed up.”

My hands are shaking. “Mia has scars on her hands and she looks like Jack.”

“God,” he says. Just
God
. Nothing else. His jawline relaxes yet his emotions are confined within a narrow range.

His phone rings. Before I can say anything else, he answers and walks away, leaving behind a trail of cigarette smoke.

“Wait,” I call after him.

He turns around, pressing the phone against his chest.

“Tell me everything,” I say and step closer.

“I followed her and by the time we got to the first light I could tell she was panicking. She was looking left and right, then just stepped on the—”

“No, not that. Describe her to me.”

After a slight pause he says, “She didn’t take the time to strap herself in. The pole cut her car in half, the front was basically nonexistent. Her knees were touching her chest, the legs were mangled. Her forehead had a long horizontal gash. She must have died before she sustained the injury. The wound wasn’t bleeding.”

“But I have so many questions.” I don’t know what I would have
asked Anna Lieberman.
Why didn’t you just give her back? Why did you keep her? Did you take good care of her? Did my daughter call you Mommy? Does she know she was taken?
The questions humming around in my head are vast in numbers, yet Anna’s death has robbed me of any answers, any conclusion, any closure. Therefore any further thought about her is of little consequence.

“I guess I can’t have it all,” I say, my mind already occupied. There’s someone who owes me something.

I
enter the glass temple of the Donner Broadcasting building, a symbol of its economic power, defining the city of New York as much as the identity of the company itself.

As I sit on the black leather couch with shiny steel legs, I gaze through the horizontal stripes that interrupt the etched-glass doors. I tell her assistant that Amnesia Mom is waiting to speak to her.

When I enter her office, Liza Overton, her cell phone clutched between shoulder and ear, points at a chair in front of her desk. Her facial expression is that of a blank sheet of paper.

“We have to talk,” I say and lean back in the leather chair and cross my legs. “I need your help.”

“My help?” Now her face moves. Her eyes get smaller, her lips thinner. “What’s this all about?”

“You have a way of swaying the public, right?”

“I’d like to think so.”

“How about the police?”

“I’m not sure I understand. If you want a public apology from the police, you’re in the wrong place.”

“There’re two things I need from you. One, I want you to do a follow-up show tonight. Two, during that show I want you to put pressure on the cops to initiate an investigation. Call the police chief live on the air if you want.”

She throws her head back and laughs. Deeply, from the gut.

“Seriously?”

“I’ve found my daughter. And I need you to get the police to do a DNA test now. So I can get her back.”

“You’ve found her? Where?”

“First things first. Is that a yes?”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Imagine the ratings.”

She pushes a button on the phone and tells her assistant to hold all calls.

—

That same day, as I watch the evening news, I dial Jack’s number. We haven’t spoken in months but he picks up immediately.

“Are you at home?” I ask.

“Why?” His voice is harsh yet I detect trepidation behind his anger.

“I need you to turn the channel to
Current Crimes
.”

“What’s going on, Estelle? What the hell is going on?”

“Just do it,” I say.

The evening news host fades out and
Current Crimes
fades in.

“Breaking News Tonight.”
The voice of Liza Overton, her makeup immaculate, her hair stiff as always.

“Five years ago an infant disappeared from a brownstone in Brooklyn. The mother was the primary suspect in the case, and referred to as Amnesia Mom in the media. In a strange twist of
events the child turned out to have been abducted and has never been located. The mother was completely exonerated. Fast-forward, five years later, the child is still missing. And here’s the kicker. A cold case at this point, there’s reason to believe that the mother has found her daughter but authorities are being less than cooperative in reuniting them. Yes, you heard correctly. The mother has found the child after five years. Don’t go anywhere, when we return after the break, we’ll get you caught up with the latest developments in the case.”

Current Crimes
fades out, a commercial fades in. I switch to CNN and wait.

—

Jack’s flight from Boston to New York is delayed. He tells me not to wait for him and he’ll meet me at the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.

A social services agent, a rather large man with a shabby briefcase, oversees our first meeting. There’s no park, no playground, and no ducks. He calls it “the exchange,” and after he has me sign some paperwork, he tries unsuccessfully to snap his briefcase shut.

“You’ve been briefed?” he asks and for the first time makes eye contact.

“Yes,” I say and think about that little something called “anticipated relationship quality,” a term encasing everything that’s expected when children are reunited with parents after a long time.

“We don’t know if she was abused or even adequately taken care of. She’s come to know someone else as her mother, other people as her family. She has no idea who you are.”

Makes two of us
, I think, but don’t say it out loud. My biggest fears are that she won’t want to be with me. That she’ll hate me when she finds out the truth. And she will never love me.

“After an evaluation, the judge will grant custody. The final
transfer won’t occur until a judge agrees. The legal term is ‘safeguard for the child’s welfare.’”

He turns and opens a heavy metal door. For a second the social worker looks like he wants to shake my hand.

I walk through the door and wait for Mia, and it finally sinks in. No more tracking body parts and children in landfills. No more checking online databases, no more jerking when the phone rings. I’ve read somewhere that the pain from the loss or death of a child never heals, not until you are reunited, whenever that may be. I’m one of the lucky ones and today is the day.

I sit and fold my hands in my lap. When I hear the door open, I look up.

And then my heart explodes.

KIDNAPPING COLD CASE SOLVED: MIA CONNOR REUNITES WITH PARENTS

Brooklyn, NY—
Mia Connor, separated from her family when she was kidnapped five years ago, was reunited with her parents, Estelle Paradise and Jack Connor.

Her mother, Estelle Paradise, was a suspect when she was unable to account for her whereabouts the days after the disappearance of 7-month-old Mia from her crib in Brooklyn.

David Lieberman, a man who lived in the same building, and his sister, Anna Lieberman, were responsible for the kidnapping. The case never picked up speed in the weeks and months after the abduction and went officially cold a couple of years after.

Mrs. Paradise has declined numerous book and movie deals over the years. Liza Overton, host of
Current Crimes
and one of her harshest critics after the abduction,
went on TV and broke the story that Estelle Paradise had found her daughter. When all news outlets were flooded with the news, police expedited the DNA test. Mother and daughter were reunited days after the story broke.

“We are happy to report that the family has been reunited,” said Joanna Walls, spokesperson for the NYPD. “This is nothing short of a miracle and we couldn’t be happier for them.”

—

My mother was a woman rarely seen without her camera. I remember her propped up in bed, among an array of pillows, her camera resting beside her. In her hand a book, a study in light, or angle, or perspective, one of those.

In that memory I climb into my mother’s bed and angrily shove a worn and yellowed copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
at her.

Mom.

She smiles at my accusatory tone and, thinking I want her to read to me, she speaks without looking up.
Not now
, she says, and wraps one arm around me.
How about you read to me?

I finished it. Did you remember to buy me the other book?

I forgot. I’m sorry.

Do you remember the title?

Through the Looking-Glass
, right? Same author?

I don’t answer, my punishment for her forgetfulness.

What’s a looking glass?
I ask.

Kind of like a mirror,
she says
, it allows you to see yourself the way other people see you.

Isn’t that a mirror?

She doesn’t answer and continues flipping the pages of her book. How I hate her books and her camera and her way of being preoccupied with everything but me. What good is a book
without words anyway, I wonder, and what good is she anyway, she never talks to me.

She closes the book, puts her other arm around me, and then strokes my hair with her hand. That’s how we sit, for a long time. Sometimes I fall asleep, but always she’s there when I wake up. Holding me
still.

Eternal gratitude to my agent, Laura Longrigg, who gave me a chance when no one else would; my editor, Michelle Vega, who understood my story and, in a very gentle way, helped make it what it is today; and to everybody else who works behind the curtain; talent scouts, production editors, copyeditors; you all rock.

Equal thanks go out to all my fellow writers and early readers who accompanied me on my journey: too many to name and the only appropriate words to express my appreciation: Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

At its heart this book is about mothers and therefore it is only fair that I thank my mother, who shared her beloved books and short life with me; and to my daughter, whose light shines brighter than the brightest star. One day, so I imagine, the two of you shall meet, and I will stand by and watch you be in awe of one another.

Last, but not least, thanks to my husband. You gave me the proverbial room of my own and the money so I could write this book. You are my
rock.