Remember Mia

by Alexandra Burt

  Oliver is nowhere to be found, and Marge is out hunting and gathering and expanding her frame. I realize that I have no one. No friends. I might as well say it like it is—I’ve never really had friends. All the relationships I’ve had were thin and inadequate, almost nonexistent. A faint recollection of memories shared at some point in the distant past, yet no lasting connections, no scrapbooks, no matching jewelry or framed photographs. Not one person I can call and talk to. And even if I had a number to call, what would I say?

  Hi, this is Estelle, remember me? I just wanted to catch up, so how have you been? I’m in a psychiatric institution because I seem to have misplaced my infant daughter, some people even believe I had something to do with her disappearance. I just need to sort a few things out and so your name came to mind and I just thought I’d call . . .”

  I can’t get Anthony off my mind. His impending visit, Dr. Ari’s comment Tomorrow, I’ll let you know the time, makes my heart throb in my ears. I mention my unease to Dr. Ari, I even request anxiety medication, but he denies me chemically induced peace like he denies cutting me slack during our sessions. In here you deal with things, that’s all there is to it.

  For the rest of the day I concentrate on the familiar sterile and hurried efficiency of Creedmoor, but I find it almost impossible to deal with the constant intrusion of the eerie background music reminding me of what and where I am. The sirens don’t sound too often because this isn’t an emergency room and patients don’t generally arrive by ambulance, but are brought in by family members or social workers. Today, though, the siren sound is higher pitched than usual and I know an ambulance is approaching and the pitch will lower once it retreats. There are the rubber soles squeaking on linoleum, the occasional loudspeaker messages that no one understands, wheels of carts and beds, and even occasional moaning. Sometimes screaming. Never silence. Even my olfactory bulb is being bombarded with the scent of latex and bleach and cooking odors wafting through the hallways from the kitchen.

  Then I try to shut out the noise and I manage for the most part by focusing on the scuff marks on the shiny floor and the scraped walls. Just when I think I’ve managed to stay in control, the sound of IV stand wheels meddles with my attempts and I wonder where one really finds silence at all. An underground mine, maybe, a soundproof chamber? A monastery where monks adhere to the self-imposed vow of silence? My thoughts go topsy-turvy and my mind is about to explode like an overheated lightbulb.

  As I walk the hallways, I keep an eye on the floor, tan with tiny specks of gray, white dots here and there if I look really close. I ignore the conversations of nurses passing me, the orderlies with their clipboards and jingling keys, the loudspeaker with its commands: Doctor scratch scratch, please scratch, at the lobby, scratch. I hear nurses chat from behind a glass wall down the hallway, farther down the hallway there’s laughter, cabinets closing, a phone ringing. The world around me is like shards stuck in my brain and my coping ability, already far from being stellar, keeps declining, clogging up the few thoughts I can keep on an even keel. I wonder if there’s a pool in this place, somewhere in the basement, some ancient remnant of water therapy for the insane, so I can immerse myself in water so deep the sound waves are dampened, all signals weakened so the world diminishes altogether.

  At midnight I carry an empty water bottle in my hand as an excuse for leaving my room. Water coolers are on each floor and in the stairwells, and no one will question me because no one drinks the tap water at Creedmoor, the rusty waterline stains in toilets speak to the water quality and are a clear warning to avoid its consumption.

  The west wing is abandoned and most of the doors, rooms, and offices are locked. This part of Creedmoor is not in use, the funds for the renovation probably somewhere in the deep pockets of a wealthy donor, as Creedmoor’s days are numbered.

  I hear footsteps, too slow for a nurse or an orderly, maybe the security guard checking whatever he checks in this unoccupied part of the building, and I hide in an alcove.

  When the footsteps fade into the distance, I continue my walk. I read the door signs as I pass each room and finally I find what I consider the next best thing to an Olympic-sized pool and I enter the room to my right. I shut the heavy door behind me and remain still in the darkness until my eyes adjust. The room is chilly. I put my hands in my pockets, embracing the acorn Oliver gave me, carved by a tool whose name I have forgotten.

  My throat constricts as if someone has wrapped a scarf around my neck, slowly tightening it. There’s no furniture; the walls and the floor are tiled, nothing but a small cell with a bed anchored to the floor. There are two wrist restraints and two ankle restraints attached to the floor anchors. There are no hard edges or corners.

  I feel loopy, almost high. The bed is as narrow as a twin but it is sturdy, and as I sit on its edge, it does not squeak. We are in a seclusion room, its energy heavy and unyielding. The only light spilling through the skylight is the moon.

  I lie down as if in a coffin, tucking my arms beside my body, not wanting to take up any more room in this world than I have to. The mockery of this moment, this bed, this building, my life, the extent to which one has to go to find silence to hear the one voice that is true, which is bound to speak the truth if I drown out everything else, the one voice that I demand to hear.

  I don’t trust my storytelling. I feel as if I have created a clearer and more believable version of myself and that most of what I have recalled so far are just thoughts removed from reality and maybe, just maybe, that’s what my madness is—the blurring of the lines, not knowing where one thing begins and another ends.

  Tears stream into my ears, down my neck, and I wipe my eyes with the back of my hands. For one split second the moon fits perfectly into the skylight above me, fills it to the brim, its infallible contour contained in a square shape. I want to melt into the bed below me and the moon above at the same time. I imagine Mia and wonder if I’m to blame for her lifeless body resting somewhere we will never know. Maybe the less I resist the truth the more bearable it will be.

  I cry knowing the walls are soundproof and for this one moment, in this room of madness, this place of the demented, I want to find the strength to see this through. How easily I could have taken the tool in the cafeteria, small as it was, its blade capable of doing the job if pointed in the right spot at the right angle. And I wonder what keeps me alive. It dawns on me that self-preservation trumps a death wish every time, and part of my self-preservation is the fact that I have the fury of an animal deprived of its young inside me.

  I hold the wooden acorn in my hand and remember Oliver telling me there was something I was to figure out for myself. I behold the acorn in my palm, cup my fingers so it won’t roll off and tumble to the ground. Suddenly I feel protective of it, I inspect it, run my fingertip gently along its shiny brown cap and its long, recurving scales that tightly overlap. The body is egg-shaped, smooth, yet I can see tiny cracks along its base.

  I ever so gently twist the acorn cap while holding on to the base. It moves and I softly lift the lid off by its stem. I flip the acorn over and onto my palm tumbles an acorn. The real thing hidden inside a wooden vessel. I hold the cap to my nose and inhale. Its scent is soft yet has the sharpness of an herbal undertone. That’s what I smelled, that day at the park, after I watched Oliver chipping away at something on the bench. The scent of his hands after he handed me the wipe to cool my forehead.

  As I summon my story over the next few weeks, I hope that its edges will sharpen and the shadows will disappear. The truth? Maybe this is what the truth smells like. Sweet and rich, like unsalted butter. Pure and unaltered. Maybe my memory isn’t just a story, maybe I’m onto the truth after all.

  CHAPTER 19

  At four o’clock I wait on a bench by the fountain. Every time I hear footsteps coming down the path and the gravel crunches, my heart skips. I wish I had made him wait for me instead because every car door sounds like a
gunshot, making my heart speed up.

  I wish I had a picture of Mia. I have nothing, no photo albums, no foot- or handprint, no first outfit, not a single witness to her existence. The only remnants of her life are sealed away in plastic evidence bags, leakproof, tear-and-puncture resistant with an adhesive closure and a chain-of-custody label.

  “Stella.”

  A voice behind me, like a feather stroking my arm. It almost takes me down.

  I turn around and there he is; taller than I remember him. It seems like a thief came and took him, then returned him, changed in so many ways. He’s grown now, slightly haggard and gaunt, almost past his prime, even at such a young age. He’s no longer the kid he was when I last saw him. I had missed him becoming a man, missed his first love, his college years, his first job. He’s in his thirties and extremely thin.

  Anthony opens his arms and we embrace. He’s clean-shaven and smells of cigarette smoke. The weeks at Creedmoor have conditioned me to infer, to allow my emotions to draw pictures, and a kaleidoscope of memories, with bits of mirrors creating colorful patterns, rush at me. Vivid, with clear edges, almost a color print photograph, a Polish bakery where we used to buy Krówki, a toffeelike candy bar, emerges. And a flash of Duke, the neighbor’s dog we played with, a Doberman mix who walked with a limp and had one ear sticking up. I push the images aside. A feeling of emptiness overtakes me, a sadness that sits in my gut, a feeling of disgust like I’ve swallowed a fly.

  We sit on the bench. There’s a ring on his left hand, a gold band so thin it almost disappears.

  “So, how have you been getting on?” His voice is deeper than I remember.

  Fifteen years later and he wants to know how I have been getting on.

  “Stella.”

  There, my name again.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says and cradles my hand in his.

  Immediately I turn into the girl I was fifteen years ago. We’ve been apart but regardless of where we go and how old we are, we will always be who we were to begin with: brother and sister. I don’t remember much of the house I grew up in anymore, but I recall Nell’s house, dark and gloomy, my apartment in Queens, shabby furniture and loud neighbors, all my possessions stashed away in one closet, leaking pipes, all those places I lived had never been home.

  How have I been getting on, he asked. I’m torn between letting him know how lame his question is and owing him an explanation. I don’t know what to tell him. Words don’t have the adequate power to convey the mass and weight of this moment. The tears I try to keep at bay burn my throat like acid. I raise my hands, palms up. Look around you, Anthony. How does it look? How does it look like I’ve been getting on?

  His eyes shift away from me. “I’m sorry,” he says again. He looks from the lawn chairs filled with patients to the large building behind us.

  “I don’t know what to say, Stella. This is all a big mess.” He pauses, then again, “Big.”

  I don’t know if he’s referring to the building or my life. Or both or none of those things. Big clouds up in the sky, big lumps in our throats.

  “I couldn’t believe when I heard—”

  “You’ve changed,” I interrupt him. I look him up and down. He is wearing slacks, a button-down shirt, and a coat. “You’re all grown now.”

  He tells me about West Point and serving in the army for the past ten years, and that he works for the FBI now. “But it’s not as glamorous as people think. Lots of overtime and not enough sleep. Nothing like on TV.”

  “This place is nothing like TV, either. Not half as much fun as the Cuckoo’s Nest, that’s for sure.”

  He tells me about Abby, the woman he married two years ago. How he met her dropping off his dry cleaning. “I asked her out and here we are,” he says and pulls out his cell phone. He taps and swipes and then hands me his phone.

  A picture of Anthony in a blue uniform. Identification badges, bars on the sleeves, insignia on the shoulder loops, a black beret. I swipe the screen. Anthony in a navy suit and a pretty woman with long brown hair in a white sheath dress, flowers in her hair, on a beach somewhere.

  “That’s Abby. We got married on a beach in Hawaii when I was stationed there.”

  I swipe the screen again. Anthony and Abby in a sideways embrace against the backdrop of a mountain ridge. Abby is almost Anthony’s height and very athletic. Next to them sits a black dog.

  “That’s Patton. We got him from the pound. Part shepherd, part Lab. He was hit by a car and had a broken pelvis and was about to be euthanized. We had to have his leg amputated a week after we got him but he has no clue he’s got three legs.”

  I keep swiping through Patton at the dog park, Patton with a cone at the vet, Patton on the couch, sleeping on his back, three legs up in the air.

  My brother got up one morning, put on a navy suit, and married a woman named Abby. He loves hiking and he adopted a dog with a shattered pelvis hours before he was to be euthanized. He named him Patton after an army general and war hero. And he has a sister who is in a mental institution, unable to remember what happened to her daughter.

  “You’re a lucky man,” I say.

  He smiles and I realize he must have had braces as an adult. I listen to him tell me about his wife, his job, not getting enough sleep, and going to dog parks. There’s still an ordinary world out there, something easily forgotten in a place like Creedmoor.

  “We should’ve stayed in touch. I don’t know why we didn’t.” His voice sounds strained, as if the implications weigh him down.

  “You called me in the beginning, I remember that,” I say and turn my head as if to distract my mind, a physical attempt at moving on. “I guess we just lived our lives and before we knew it years had passed. And I moved a lot, it’s just something that happened.”

  Anthony takes in a deep breath, holds it for a long time. “You’ve heard about Nell?” he asks. “She had a brain aneurysm, what . . . almost two years ago.”

  “No, I didn’t know.” I can’t categorize what I’m feeling when I hear Nell’s dead. I don’t think I feel any particular way about it. “How did you even find out I was here?”

  Anthony looks at me, his eyes wide.

  “What?” I say and shake my head. “Who told you?”

  “Stella”—he cocks his head to the left like he did when we were children, right before he used to say something he wasn’t sure should be said out loud—“people know you’re here.”

  “People?”

  “Do you have Internet in here?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I reply and catch myself scanning my surroundings as if we’ve decided to climb over the fence and make away. “But it’s mostly blocked. No news.” That’s an understatement; all we really get to do is play solitaire. I swipe my finger over the screen. When I find the browser app, I type in my name.

  “No, no, no,” he says and reaches for his phone.

  When I turn my back to him, he lowers his hands as if there’s no use. The first link is a video. All I see is a blank screen with an hourglass. Then a cheery voice sounds.

  Cate: “This is Cate Trent from WGBK in New York. Welcome to our viewers and welcome to today’s guest. In our studio we have Liza Overton, host of Current Crimes.

  “Liza, welcome. I’d like to start out with a quote from your show last night: ‘It’s not like the baby vanished. Come on, people, use your common sense. We have another baby killer on our hands.’ Is this another one of your over-the-top comments? Isn’t it too early to call this woman a killer? Are you trying to influence the opinion of your viewers for the sake of higher ratings?”

  The image of an airbrushed woman with lip gloss and hair that doesn’t move fills the screen. The picture stutters for a second, then continues. I recognize her immediately but cannot remember her name. She is a TV legal host, a former defense attorney turned prosecutor, turned victims’ rights advocate, turned
vengeful and eternally furious television journalist.

  I look at Anthony. He looks away and the video continues.

  Liza: “Thanks for having me, Cate, glad to be on your show. First of all, no one believes the kidnapper story. Legal experts agree that the circumstances are suspicious, to put it mildly. There are more questions than answers about what happened to the infant. She wasn’t reported missing until the mother was found severely injured in a car upstate, roughly three hours from her home in Brooklyn, NY. What mother does not alert the authorities when her child goes missing? Let me answer that for you; a guilty one.”

  Infant. Mother. Severely injured. Upstate. Missing. Guilty.

  Cate: “Authorities say that little evidence has turned up, and according to the police chief there are no indications that the parents had problems with custodial issues, they’ve been cooperative but the mother needs to answer some questions, and there are questions galore, I have to agree. Liza, give us your take on the fact that the mother didn’t report the disappearance.”

  Liza: “Well, first of all, the more time goes by, the harder it is to remain positive. But the actions of the mother bother me. And no, eventually reporting the crime is not the same as screaming bloody murder when your kid’s gone. But come on, Cate, let’s get real. I’ll break it down for you and your viewers.”

  Cate: “Go ahead, Liza, break it down for us.”

  Liza: “Let me tell you about mounting evidence that will lead to the killer—that’s what this case is about. Evidence. Mom doesn’t report her daughter missing. That in itself is suspicious, but there’s more. Supposedly she doesn’t show up for her daughter’s doctor’s appointment. Why not? I ask. I believe by the time the appointment came around, the deed had been done. Then there’s the convenience store incident. According to my source she goes to a local convenience store and attempts to buy water—”