Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  During our time at the coffee shop Jack struggles to wrap his mind around the details of Mia’s disappearance. He makes me recount every minute detail and obsesses over where he was and what he did while it all played out.

  ‘I feel responsible,’ he says, sometimes raising his voice, causing people to turn around and look at us. ‘I feel it was my fault. I hired this lunatic, I took the job in Chicago, and I told you to move into the brownstone.’

  My sense of guilt for not having protected my child pales in comparison to Jack’s loss of potency. There’s nothing he can do and he’s not equipped to deal with it. And he’s going on and on about what he would give if he could go back and take a different path, but he knows it’s impossible. How the guilt eats at him every moment of every day, when he is going to sleep, when he wakes up, during lunch, in the shower, at the gym, watching the news, how it pops to the foreground of his mind and demands to be prioritized, an infinite punishment. How he is tired of thinking about it, how no amount of analysis is going to turn back the clock.

  And during those moments, during those fleeting minutes of remorse, for a split second, I feel something for him that resembles compassion. And I hold his hand, yet I struggle to find a single word of consolation for him. Since the day he dropped me off at Creedmoor I haven’t been able to cry in front of him. I don’t know if I’m gaining strength or losing my soul, but it’s easier that way and so I don’t analyze it.

  As a prosecutor Jack doesn’t invest in the notion that even behind a most wicked and incomprehensible deed is a human being. His world is not so sunny, doesn’t allow for any such concessions, his world has very few rainbows and frolicking puppies. He is quick to see the bad and even quicker to judge, and that’s just how Jack is. And Jack judges himself. For Jack’s a logical man.

  While I can ‘claim’ – what a choice of words – while I can claim to have suffered from a medical condition, he was inept in his task to protect his family. This lasts for mere minutes, then Jack stiffens himself and clears his throat. Composed, he enters some sort of a twisted stage, holding the curtain for all the others to enter; Lieberman, Anna, the police. An array of guilty parties jointly responsible.

  Sometimes I don’t know what to say and so I just sit there and stare down my empty coffee cup. Jack’s not the man he used to be. He seems to depend on me for support and on a certain level I feel annoyed by his emotions. I need him to be strong − not for me, for himself − because I was able to cope, have been coping, but I just can’t add any more weight to my Jenga stack of agony.

  We talk about the Utah child abduction case, a teenager who vanished on some island in the Caribbean, all parents shaken to the core, ready to break, forever searching, some up to this day, for answers.

  All he wants to do is talk, talk, talk. And I let him go on and on and on, listening for what seems like days on end, sometimes tuning him out for long stretches at a time, hours even, his voice without inflection or variation, monotonous and low. Eventually his voice gets hoarse and we sit among the scent of coffee, the sound of the beans dropping into the grinder, the grinding noise eventually drowning him out completely, for just a few merciful seconds. Finally his voice turns into a raspy whisper and we both go home.

  I allow months of these meetings to pass and watch layer after layer of guilt pile on top of him like shovels of soil on a coffin. I tell him to do something constructive with the monsters trapped in his head − those are his words, monsters trapped in his head − but Jack is Jack and that’s all there is to it. I call it a legacy, his legacy.

  ‘You could start a foundation in Mia’s name. You could speak in front of people, to groups of parents, we could assist in searches for missing children. We could … Jack, there’s so much you can do. I think it’d be good for you.’

  ‘You know I’m not comfortable around people. That whole speaking thing is just nerve-racking for me. Trust me, if I could I would, but … once the brownstone sells I’ll put up a reward. That’s helpful, right?’

  Then I start getting angry at him. Angry at his inability to fight the monsters. Angry at the fact that money is what he’s throwing at this. Angry that he expected me to grow beyond my limitations, told me to just ‘snap out of it,’ yet he’s unwilling to do the same.

  Eventually everything about Jack strikes me as silly. Those fanged rippers, those elusive little shits he can’t get under control when the real monster lived in the same house with me while he was working on foreign exchanges and equity deals. Fuck you, Jack. Fuck. You.

  ‘I can go for days feeling normal,’ he says, ‘and then I think of nothing else and I feel like I’m going crazy.’

  One day, at the coffee shop, I feel his judging eyes on me while I search through missing children’s databases on my laptop. Like a hawk watching a sparrow, he scrutinizes me as I keep track of body parts washing up on shorelines. He frowns when I hand him a list of private detectives, and then he looks away.

  Eventually the monsters have mercy on Jack. He seems to gain his strength back, his step is quicker, less restrained, the bags under his eyes have faded. He even has a slight tan as if he’s spent the weekend in the sun. And I watch him, after the obligatory display of grief, mentally severing himself from the uncomfortable fact that this crisis will never come to an end. We’ve held on until there is nothing to hold on to anymore. And then he asks me to sign the divorce papers.

  Jack will go on with his life, someplace else, with hardly a backwards glance, no call, no text, no email. He hates complicated relationships and I have no doubt that his emotions, yet again, run on steel rails. He is now a DA last time I heard, in Boston, I think, I don’t remember.

  And then there is the media. Any infamous reputation is directly related to the amount of details the media can dig up about your life, neighbors they can interview, and relatives that speak out on 20/20. I have none of that to offer. At the most there’ll eventually be a Cold Case Files edition or a Dateline legal show. After I declined all interviews, there was nothing else to be had.

  I went from the hospital to Creedmoor and even though pictures of Mia as an infant were subject to intense media coverage, photos of me are scarce to say the least. By the time I rent the studio apartment, phone calls from reporters prompt me to change my number for the first time. There are calls regarding book deals and movie opportunities. I hang up the phone and again change my number. Then it quiets down. After all, there is no trial, no ‘gavel to gavel’ coverage dedicated to bringing legal proceedings to the public. There is only so much media fodder and then the primary elections come up, and eventually other headlines take priority.

  Anthony now works for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Anchorage, Alaska, and heads an Evidence Response Team. The Anchorage Division also runs a ‘Kidnapping and Missing Persons’ office at the same Alaska office. Anthony’s called me almost every week since the day we reunited in Creedmoor on a park bench. I visited him and his wife a year ago. She had just given birth to a baby boy and I could only make excuses for so long. The baby’s name is William Hadley Paradise and he was two months old when I met him. I never held him, and Anthony didn’t ask me to.

  During one of his calls he suggests I add Mia’s case to the nationwide Crime Stoppers website where people can phone in tips, anonymous if they so desire.

  ‘Exposure is what you need. Add a reward to it and your chances increase.’

  Jack offers a $20,000 reward for tips leading to the whereabouts of Anna Lieberman and the recovery of Mia Connor. The statistics are promising; the website has yielded hundreds of thousands of arrests, almost a million cases cleared, and over a hundred million dollars paid out in rewards. The $20,000 highlights the dark side of the operation; the number of incoming tips is enormous and while some are obviously phoned in as a joke, others take up valuable resources. The supposed ‘sightings’ of Anna Lieberman are a sculptor in Santa Fe, a Siamese cat breeder in Las Vegas, and a Middle School teacher in Oklahoma. There’s no attempt
to enroll Mia in school, no attempt to access medical coverage, no passport application. It’s as if Anna’s found the perfect hiding place for her.

  Anthony rarely speaks of our childhood. It’s as if our foundation is shaky and he decides to remain safe. Our conversations revolve around what he calls Mia’s recovery. I try not to think about the fact that Mia knows another woman as her mother and with every passing day I become more disillusioned that a recovery is even possible. I’ll never get back what I’ve lost. There’s this hole I feel inside of me that isn’t of this world. A sadness that’s stuck to me like an old faithful dog, stirring when I stir, opening its eyes when I open mine. Never far away, always loyal, steadfast. To be counted on.

  What am I to do? Post fliers all over New York City? What’s the point of that? A website makes more sense and so I hire a designer, but after a month I realize that for every kind word there are ten comments about my incompetence, my lack of ‘mother DNA,’ and those are the kind ones. Some people actually long to kill me. They don’t know they’d be doing me a favor.

  Regardless of how many nights I stare at the ceiling as I lay in the darkness, I always come to the same conclusion. ‘I can’t live like this.’

  And eventually I realize I’m the only one looking. And not only am I looking but I plan on being the proverbial mother lifting a car off my trapped child. I am capable of such feat. The police continue to talk about patience and the fact that Anna can’t completely fade into the background forever but I request my own copy of the documents, of all the files. I read through them, study them, and make mental notes of anything that could possibly shed light on Anna’s whereabouts. And when I am through, I start all over again.

  After I leave Creedmoor I call Detective Wilczek daily and he tells me finding Anna will be ‘a matter of time.’ A month later I call him weekly, and words like ‘hiding,’ ‘unsuspecting,’ and ‘ingenuity’ snake their way into our conversations.

  ‘But we’re on it. We’re not giving up. We’ll have to wait for her to make a mistake, and she will, they all do.’

  Six months later he tells me he’ll call me when something new comes up. On the one-year anniversary he refers to Anna’s trail as having ‘gone cold.’ In a matter of months they’ll refer to Mia as a ‘cold case.’

  Two months after the divorce is final, I return to North Dandry. I’m curious if the place still holds bondage over me. The renovations have been completed, the building has been sold. Hence the $20,000 reward Jack put up.

  As I get out of the taxi, I deliberately avoid looking at the building. I pay the cab driver and I finally look up, standing perfectly still. I expect a violent reaction – blacking out, fainting, or even vomiting – yet none of that happens, just its windows’ dopey eyes looking down on me. The building lies dormant and spiritless, almost sad. Even the building looks as if it’s moved on.

  Daily I wonder how Mia looks – she is almost four – and I know she’s changed and has become unrecognizable to me, and the fact that I wouldn’t recognize my own child if I saw her makes me sick to my stomach.

  And so I create her likeness, fill out every inch of her body, stretch her limbs, and elongate her face to fit me just right. I believe she has my fine, wavy hair, Jack’s brown eyes, and my love for citrus fruits. Mia’s image – the one I have created – lurks everywhere, ready to manifest itself at any given time; in the park, at a store, in the subway, on TV. Blond hair, pale skin, dark eyes. Pink lips, curved like Jack’s, full like mine. I reconstruct her features and fill in the blanks as I see fit. Eventually I’ll forget her scent, the feel of her hair against my cheek. Her existence will one day be erased from my mind. And it makes me angry.

  The 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.

  Five years have passed and framing other people’s memories consoles me on 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, a level 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 even imagine a future, before they clip a pink bow in 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 baby 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, smiling and skipping along beside her mother in a school uniform. 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 would never know.

  For years I’d seen babies in strollers and toddlers in buggies and thought: ‘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 finally 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 hung on to the woman’s hand who I assumed to be her mother.

  ‘I remember the woman’s stride, wide and bouncy, had caught my eyes. 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 the dozens of people on the bus. There was a man in a blue uniform, two teenage girls with purple hair and nose rings, a few shift w
orkers 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 one another. 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 seat 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.’