Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  ‘Estelle, I was just about to send for you.’ He pauses and checks his appearance in the mirror. ‘Your brother Anthony asked for permission to come and see you.’

  Later, in my room, I think of my brother, Anthony Paradise. I don’t know what to do with this, don’t know where to put all those feelings. I remember the day he had left. It was November and he wore a big coat and the air smelled sweet. We stood in front of Aunt Nell’s house, waiting for the taxi to take him to the airport. The wind moved everything about, his hair, the trees, the leaves, in control over everything. We hugged and he got in the taxi. It was a day of goodbyes, feeling left behind.

  I remember his olive complexion and his green eyes. Last I heard he’d gone to a Military Academy, a choice I have always been puzzled by. He graduated top of his class and there were scholarships and so many opportunities, but he chose a Military Academy instead of one of the Ivy League schools that were so keen on recruiting him. After I moved in with Aunt Nell I asked about him constantly, but she was always short on words, and I’m no longer sure what I heard from Nell or what I made up myself.

  It’s hard to curb my anxiety and I want to talk to somebody, not so much about Anthony, I just don’t want to be alone. But 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 impressions, 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, tomorrow, I’ll let you know the time, makes a thumping sound. It takes me a while to realize that the sound is my heart throbbing 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, that’s all there is to it.

  For the rest of the day I concentrate on the familiar sterile and hurried efficiency of Creedmoor, an efficiency that is coupled with an energy of competence and organization.

  On hard days like today, the day before Anthony is supposed to arrive, I find it almost impossible to deal with the constant intrusion. It makes me feel as if there’s an eerie background music reminding us what and where we are. The ambulance sounds are not heard too often as this isn’t an emergency room and patients don’t arrive by ambulance, but by family members or social workers dropping them off.

  Today, the sound is high-pitched and I know the ambulance is approaching and I also know that the pitch will lower once they retreat. There are the rubber soles squeaking on linoleum, the occasional loudspeaker messages that no one understands, wheels of carts and beds, even an occasional moaning. Sometimes screaming. Never silence.

  Even my olfactory bulb is being bombarded. There’s the scent of latex and bleach, cooking odors wafting through the hallways from the kitchen.

  I try to shut out this world and I manage for the most part to focus 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 meddle 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 I feel as if my mind is about to explode like an overheated light bulb. Walking the halls, I keep an eye on the floor, tan with tiny specks of gray, white dots here and there if I look real close, the conversations of nurses passing me, the orderlies with their clipboards and jingling keys, the intercom with its clandestine commands, Doctor scratch scratch, please scratch, at the lobby, scratch, my thinking abilities keep declining and they are already far from being stellar, clogging up the few thoughts I can keep on an even keel. The world around me is like shards stuck in my brain, making me tense, even angry.

  I stay in bed for the rest of the day, upset stomach I tell the nurse when she questions me, and at midnight, I leave my room and look down the desolate hallway. I hear nurses chat from behind the glass, far down the hallway, there’s laughter, cabinets closing, a phone ringing. The scent of coffee, unbearable almost, my stomach churning.

  I wonder if there’s a pool in this place, somewhere in the basement, some ancient remnant of water therapy for the insane. I long for the faint scent of chlorine, so I may follow it, and immerse myself, so deep the sound waves are damped, all signals weakened so the world diminishes altogether.

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

  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 at Creedmoor, after midnight, in the unoccupied part of the building.

  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.

  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 only light spilling through the skylight is the moon. The room is chilly and I put my hands in my pockets and feel 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.

  I lie down as if in a coffin. The mockery of this moment, this bed, this building, my life, the place one has to go to find silence to hear the one voice that is true, the part of us which speaks the truth if you drown out everything else. The one voice that I demand to speak up. My thoughts are 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 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 perfect contour contained in a square shape.

  I open my eyes and look at the moon above. There’s no sound but the ones I’m making. I want to melt into the bed below me and the moon above at the same time. I imagine Mia and wonder if someone is holding her at this very moment, or if her lifeless body rests somewhere I will never know. Maybe the less I resist the truth the more bearable it will be. My guilt is one of those things that doesn’t stand up to questioning.

  And then I cry. 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 today in the cafeteria, small as it was, its blade would have done the job if pointed in the right spot at the right angle. Like breathing is my
need to find the truth, involuntary. Like trying to kill myself by holding my breath under water, with the feedback loops that kick in involuntarily.

  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 on my side.

  Eventually the well of tears runs dry, then I run out of tissue. When it’s time to go back to my room, I stuff the tear-soaked tissue in my pockets. It feels like wet shredded newspaper, and then I hold the wooden acorn in my hand.

  And I remember Oliver telling me that there was something I was to figure out myself about the acorn.

  I hold it in the palm of my hand. I cup my fingers so it won’t roll off and tumble to the ground. Suddenly I feel very protective of it. I inspect it, run my fingertip 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. The scent is soft and warm, yet I detect the sharpness of an herbal undertone. Like unsalted butter. It’s what I smelled, that day at the park, after I watched Oliver sitting on the bench, chipping away at something. The scent of his hands after he handed me the wipe to cool my forehead.

  Truth. Maybe that’s what the truth smells like. Hidden, yet present. All you have to do is not give up.

  Chapter 19

  At four o’clock I wait on a bench by the fountain. Every time someone comes down the path, the gravel crunches and 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 want to give Anthony a picture of Mia but I have nothing of her in here, no photo albums, no foot or handprint, her first outfit, not a single witness to her existence. The only remnants of her life are sealed away in plastic evidence bags, leak-proof, tear-and-puncture-resistant with an adhesive closure and a chain-of-custody label.

  And then I hear Anthony behind me, like a feather stroking my arm: ‘Stella.’ His voice almost takes me down. I manage to 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 is grown now; he looks 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.

  He opens his arms. We embrace. He is clean-shaven and smells of cigarette smoke. The weeks at Creedmoor have conditioned me, 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. There are no Easter egg hunts, no tree houses, no family traditions on holidays. Yet vivid, with clear edges, almost a color print photograph, a Polish bakery emerges, where we used to buy Krowki, a toffee-like candy bar. And a flash of Duke, the neighbor’s dog we used to play with, a Doberman mix with one ear sticking up who walked with a limp. I push the images aside.

  We sit on the bench. There’s a ring on his left hand, a gold band so thin it almost disappears. There are small scars across his knuckles, pale, like permanent icicles etched into his skin.

  ‘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 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 the two of us meeting again after so many years.

  I try to keep the tears at bay which 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. 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 neither 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 in front of a court house.

  ‘That’s Abby. We eloped. Her family wasn’t happy about it but it’s what we wanted.’

  I swipe the screen again.

  Anthony and Abby in a sideways embrace with the backdrop of a mountain ridge. Abby is almost Anthony’s height and looks 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. They amputated his leg a week after we got him but we’re not sure he knows he’s got only 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 eloped with a woman named Abby. He loves hiking. He adopted a dog with a shattered pelvis hours before he was scheduled for euthanization. He named him Patton after a general and war hero. And he has a sister who is in a mental institution, unable to remember 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 have stayed in touch. I don’t know why we didn’t.’ His voice sounds strained, as if the implications of us having lost each other so many years ago weigh him down.

  ‘We talked for a while, I remember that,’ I say and turn my head as if to distract my mind, allowing me to move on. ‘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 from Nell?’ he asks. ‘She must be, what … almost sixty by now.’

  ‘Nell? I don’t think she knows I’m here.’

  Anthony looks at me, his eyes wide.
r />   ‘What?’ I say and shake my head. ‘You’ve been talking to her?’

  ‘Stella,’ he cocks his head to the left like he did when we were children. Right before he said something he wasn’t sure should be said out loud. ‘I’m sure she knows you’re here.’

  ‘She does?’

  ‘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.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ Anthony says.

  I close the photo app and swipe my finger across the screen. When he reaches for the phone, I turn away from him.

  ‘Don’t,’ he says but then lowers his hands as if there’s no use.

  I find the browser app and type in my name. My vision is blurred, the screen is small and so I click on the first video link.

  All I see is a blank screen with an hourglass. Then an image of an airbrushed woman with too much 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 one of those TV legal hosts, a former defense attorney turned prosecutor, turned victim’s rights advocate, turned vengeful and eternally furious television journalist.

  Cate: ‘Welcome! 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 Current Crimes from 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 comments that is over the top? 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?’