There was a baby car seat sitting on the table in a booth by the window. Anna motioned through the closed door and the waitress turned the seat around.
There was Mia in her red coat and boots, clothes that had disappeared out of her closet. She held a bottle in hand, feeding in short, intense bursts, pausing every once in a while, allowing the collapsed nipple to fill with air.
Electric sparks traveled through me. I stared at Mia through the window until our faces melted into one. I looked at my reflection and hoped to see Joan of Arc given the gift of courage, yet in the window was a wild-eyed woman with matted hair and a tearstained face.
If hell truly was a place of endless torture and pain, of fire and brimstone, my idea of it was far simpler: hell was here in front of this diner with my daughter behind glass, my drugged and frozen brain in panic, a mental fog of conflicting instructions. It was also heaven somehow, electrifying. She was alive and she looked well, even healthy.
“Don’t leave her in there,” I cried out and made toward the door.
“Don’t touch that door,” Anna said and pointed the gun through the window at Mia.
The diner lights faded in and out. I wondered what kind of drug she had put in my coffee and if it was lethal. And if I was strong enough to shatter the glass with my bare hands.
As if she’d read my mind she said, “Don’t get any ideas. I’ll shoot before you even know the gun went off. Your baby will be fine, but you look a bit green in the face. Better get in the car before you pass out.”
“Can I touch her?” I was close to passing out and all I wanted was one touch to take with me.
“Don’t be silly. All you’re gonna do is make her cry.”
“What do you want if you don’t want any money?” I asked.
“I need you to make good on a promise,” she said. “Get in the car.”
I didn’t allow myself to feel anything but detachment, for I knew if I pushed my mind any further, I’d never find my way back. The last sound was that of spitting gravel when Anna sent the car bolting into the darkness.
CHAPTER 24
I felt foggy. It was like I was there, but not quite. Then the scene outside the diner popped back into my head. I opened my eyes and to my left was Anna with one hand on the steering wheel, the other in her front pocket. I could think of only one reason why I shouldn’t reach over and turn the wheel toward a pole, and that was the slight possibility that she was going to come to her senses.
“Why’d you leave her with that woman? Please explain to me what’s going on.” It was dark and I didn’t recognize my surroundings. My speech was slow, but clear. “You brought me here just so I’d look at her through glass while she’s with some waitress in a diner?”
“Tell me about it. Nothing went according to plan. David messed up and I had to take you to the diner with me. But don’t worry, Diane will take care of the baby until her new mommy picks her up. I told you she was spoken for. And that brings me to the last part of this deal between us. Your promise.”
What do you say when you stare crazy straight in the face? You go along with it and wait for your moment. I took long and deep breaths, realizing that the drugs were wearing off quickly.
The car pulled sharply to the left. I recognized the silhouette of the ticket booth; we were back by the side of the cornfield. Anna stopped the car and killed the engine.
“You’re going to help me bury him,” she said and pulled a lever under the steering wheel.
The trunk popped open with a loud thud.
“Let’s get to it,” she said, and tossed a pair of stiff working gloves at me. “Six feet long and as deep as we can dig in one hour,” she added and thrust a shovel into the wet ground.
We started digging in unison.
—
One hour later we were exhausted. The soil was soft, yet heavy. As we rested and wiggled our fingers, I felt dead inside. Lieberman could have been a time capsule for all I cared.
“There was only one reason why I sent him after you,” Anna said after she caught her breath, “but he started waving that gun before it was time. Plus he wasn’t made for this business. He dropped the blanket in the attic, he almost messed up when the cops came to my house. If they’d checked the car, they’d have found clothes and formula. He always forgot to take his meds, and when he didn’t, he was losing it by the minute. You can’t reason and you can’t do business with someone like that.”
“But he was your brother.”
“Half brother at best. We grew up in the same house, is all.”
Anna pointed to the ground, the hole barely two feet deep but long enough for a body. She lit the way with a flashlight and I did everything she told me to do. I dragged the tarp with Lieberman’s body to the hole. I rolled him in, filled the hole, and covered it with dirt, compacted the soil by stomping on it. It took me about ten minutes to bury him and get the ground even. When I was finished, the palms of my hands and the webbing between my thumbs and index fingers were burning.
“Now I need you to write a note.” She paused for a second and pursed her lips. “Damn him, the paper is probably in his pocket.”
“I don’t think I can write anything,” I said and held my hands up, palms facing Anna. “I can’t even bend my fingers.”
She stuck her hand in her purse, rummaged, and then pulled out the receipt from the diner.
“You’ll manage.” Anna pointed to the trunk of her car and shined the light on it. “Word for word. Write: ‘Everybody, I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry for what . . .’” She paused when she realized I wasn’t moving. “‘I have done. I killed her. I’m a monster.’ Then sign your name.”
I shook my head. The pen dropped to the ground.
“I’m not going to write that. You’re even crazier than your brother.” My mind was moving at warp speed. All I had to figure out was her currency, something that made her tick more than selling Mia to a stranger. “Anna, I’m begging you. I will pay you twice as much. My money is as good as anyone else’s.”
“I don’t need your money, I need the baby. You can’t run a business without the merchandise, right?”
“I will pay you more than anyone else, I promise you. I will pay whatever you ask for.”
“I don’t need your money. I need a solid reputation for delivering.” Anna looked at her watch, then continued. “When they find you, which could be days or even weeks from now, they will find a woman and a confession that she has killed her baby. Having the confession means they won’t be looking for the baby or me or David, for that matter. They’ll assume the baby is in a shallow grave in the woods. Or a Dumpster somewhere.”
Anna put the receipt on the hood of the car. “You said you’d do anything for her, remember?” Anna cocked her head; her smile would’ve seemed warm to someone who didn’t know the extent of her madness. “If you do this for me, I’ll do something for you,” she said with a tempting voice as if she were a child proposing a marble exchange.
“There’s nothing I want you to do for me but give me back my child.”
“You don’t understand anything, do you?” Anna shook her head. “You’ll be dead, either way. Nothing’s going to change that.”
I stepped back, which only caused her to raise the gun again.
“I’ll be long gone and no one will come looking for us. In return I’m willing to guarantee your daughter”—Anna paused and then straightened her arm with the gun, pointing it between my eyes—“a good family. A backyard to play in and a private school, the whole nine yards.”
If Lieberman is the Prince of Darkness, Anna is the Prince’s Darkness. “I’m begging you. I will pay you whatever—”
“I promise you no one will break her. Children can be broken easily, you know. And what kind of mother can bear the thought of that, right? What’s it going to be? Heaven or hell, both are available.
It’s your choice, Mommy.”
Even if I overpowered her and took the gun, would it really matter? Mia could be, for all I knew, across state lines by now, Canada even, or on her way to Mexico. Even if I got away I’d still spend the rest of my life looking for her.
“Your choice. Do we have a deal?”
I shook my head and whispered, “Please don’t do this.”
“You’ll die one way or another. Do something good for her for a change.”
Shaking her head, Anna continued, “A nice home or she’ll spend her childhood sitting on some sicko’s lap? What’s it going to be?”
I kept myself perfectly still. My life for hers. My mind and my body detached from each other. I broke away from myself, floated away. Some sicko’s lap. What one does out of love is untouchable. It looks to mend, to make things right.
I bent over and forced my swollen fingers to pick up the pen.
Anna stepped closer, she was mere inches away from me. “A decent life for your child or a childhood in a basement.”
I willed my fingers around the pen, slid them down to the ink tip.
“White baby girls are in high demand, you know. Saudis go crazy over their skin and blond hair. Or I find her nice parents and she’ll take ballet lessons and go to summer camp.”
Everybody, I wrote.
I can’t go on like this, I wrote.
I am sorry for what I have done, I wrote and that part wasn’t even a lie.
I killed my baby, I wrote.
I’m a monster.
—
The ravine was about one hundred yards ahead of me. Mia was with the woman who had served me drugged coffee and pecan pie. Tomorrow morning, people would crowd the diner for breakfast, eggs and bacon would sizzle on the grill, coffee brewing, biscuits rising. And tomorrow they’d find me dead in the ravine with a handwritten confession saying I had killed my daughter—a devilish yet plausible plan.
“There’s something I want you to give to her.”
I asked her if I could reach into my purse. Tinker Bell’s eyes big and blue, as resigned as I was.
Anna put the figure in her pocket. “This is what I want you to do,” she said. “You step on the gas while you hold the gun. Right before you reach the ravine, you pull the trigger. Either in your mouth or against your temple, I don’t care. I’ll keep my promise if you keep yours.”
Anna threw the gun on the passenger seat, reached over me, and put the car in drive.
“Step on it,” Anna’s voice said but it seemed like it took me minutes to process her words.
And then I did as I was told. I stepped on the gas and the car started moving. The tires dragged across the gravel, slowly accelerating. I grabbed the gun with my right hand and held it against my temple.
Fifty yards, at the most. I reached for the seat belt, tempted to unbuckle it, to get out of the car. Some sicko’s lap, she’d said. I had no argument left, no offer, nothing but my life for Mia’s future.
Thirty yards. The Range Rover accelerated, moved faster, much faster.
Ten yards. My entire world was covered in a sticky substance that reeked of metal.
One yard. I pulled the trigger. There were sparks and a loud pop. The back draft was horrendous. It made my hand jerk backward and I was worried if I had really shot myself, but then my ear tingled and my head snapped back. I felt as if someone had injected pepper in my veins. My body lifted off the seat and I felt weightless, like riding a Ferris wheel. It seemed like forever until my stomach dropped and the car landed. Surrounded by the sickening crunch of metal collapsing, I heard glass shattering. My body jerked in all directions. I stopped worrying and then everything went silent and dark.
And, like a death row inmate’s last meal, I asked for one last wish. The choices were endless: time travel, a reverse button, the power to become invisible, resurrecting the dead, undoing the chaotic knots of my tangled life. I must make my selection wisely. I must be precise, consider all possibilities, and leave no room for error or misinterpretation.
We were a team, my wish and I. We were immune to the distractions of screaming metal and shattering glass and death. Our creation, my last wish, was a thing of beauty, composed beyond time. It took shape, primal and powerful; Mia, I wish that we’ll meet again in another place and time, and when we do, may my body be molded perfectly so you can curl against me.
CHAPTER 25
When Dr. Ari and I enter the 70th Precinct on Lawrence Avenue, I recall the janitor, the urge I had felt to walk out and leave the building. I understand now that I saw the world through a lens, a lens of a brain crammed with hormones and doubts, thoughts jam-packed with contortions, deformation, distortion, and falsifications. The police would have found the dumbwaiter, would have questioned David Lieberman, everything could have been so much easier. Another notch in my belt of shortcomings.
As we pass through the glass doors and wait by the front counter, I can see our reflections in the glass. I’m disheveled and worn; Dr. Ari is pressed, lint-free, and cheerful. One impeccably dressed man, probably passing as a lawyer, and a woman with a strange haircut and a missing ear.
The clerk looks at us and motions us up to the counter. “How can I help you?”
“Detective Wilczek, please.”
The clerk picks up the phone and we sit down. After a couple of minutes a detective in slacks and a light blue shirt, his tie tucked into his waistband, walks up to us. The gun in his holster seems too small for his body. His name tag reads DETECTIVE ROBERT WILCZEK.
First the name rings a bell, and then the face. I remember him from the hospital. He was one of the detectives who questioned me. His face is slack, disinterested, assuming we’ve come to report a minor incident, a stolen purse maybe, or domestic abuse.
He looks us up and down. “I’m Detective Wilczek.” Then he straightens his tie. Suddenly he perks up. “I remember you.”
“I remember you, too.”
Mrs. Paradise, children don’t just disappear out of locked apartments.
“What can I do for you?”
I had lost my child, then I found her, then I left her, and when I went back to get her, she was gone. For a while, I couldn’t remember, but now I do. And I know who took her. But not where she is now.
“I know what happened to my daughter,” I say. “I’m here to report a crime.”
He looks at me, then at Dr. Ari, who is determined to allow me to do the talking. He will speak only when I’m not capable of relaying the story. That’s how he was when we met and he hasn’t faltered since.
“My name is Dr. Ari. I’m psychiatrist in chief at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Clinic. Mrs. Estelle Paradise has been a patient at Creedmoor for the past months.”
“I remember, I remember.” The detective’s eyes light up and he clears his throat. “Let’s find a place to talk.” Detective Wilczek motions to the clerk behind the counter and asks her to call Detective Riverton and meet us in Room 1.
We walk down the corridor, its blue linoleum polished to perfection. We follow the detective, like ducklings their mother. The interrogation room consists of a table and three chairs, nothing else. The walls are made of plastic panels, the floor covered in industrial carpet.
Dr. Ari and Detective Wilczek leave the room. I can hear them talking in the hallway, but I’m unable to make out any specific words.
After a minute or two Dr. Ari pokes his head in. He promises to send someone from Creedmoor to pick me up once the interview concludes. I’m tempted to ask him to send Oliver, but I don’t want to press my luck.
Then it’s just the two of us. We sit down, Detective Wilczek across from me, and I know this conversation is being videotaped and watched in another room, or at least recorded. Detective Wilczek can’t be much more than thirty even though I remember him looking older, yet his dark hair is thinning and I can see his shiny s
calp through his buzz cut. There’s a white line on his ring finger where a wedding band used to be. His front left tooth is chipped.
I try to avoid my reflection in the mirror. I’m sure it’s a two-way mirror and I’m not ready to face more than one person at a time, not even through a wall. The only one who has heard my story is Dr. Ari and I feel as if I’m going to say the wrong thing again. I didn’t commit any crime I’m aware of, maybe not reporting the abduction, but that’s as far as my legal involvement goes. As a mother, I am guilty of countless crimes.
When I tell him about Creedmoor and Dr. Ari, Detective Wilczek interrupts me, midsentence. “I can’t get over the fact that you recovered your memory. When does that ever happen?”
I sense some excitement in his voice. I look down at my purse. “I’ve been undergoing psychotherapy and memory recall therapy.”
“I usually deal with people who intentionally don’t remember. You need to tell me more about that. I remember you had a head injury. So what caused your amnesia?”
A female detective walks in then and puts a file in front of him and I wonder if there’ll ever be a day when my whole life won’t be contained between the covers of a cardboard folder. She introduces herself as Detective Riverton. She’s about fifty, but has the lean body of a young woman.
Three hours later I’ve told them the entire story. For years I’ve judged myself by the way people looked at me. I’m back at my parents’ funeral, people looking at me bewildered, unsure if they should stroke my hair or ignore me altogether. Wilczek and Riverton have seen a lot; I can only imagine how many dead bodies they’ve come across, how many images are etched into their brains, never to be erased, how many nights they’ve sat in their cars, in front of their houses, wives and husbands waiting, kids asleep, unable to switch off their minds.
Remember Mia Page 26