Remember Mia Read online

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  The next day, at the beginning of our second session, Dr. Ari asks me about the most peaceful place I can imagine. “Like a refuge, a hiding place, where you feel safe.”

  “I’m not sure . . .” I say and look at him, puzzled.

  “Have you ever paid attention to your breathing when you feel relaxed?”

  His question seems silly to me. “Can’t say I have,” I answer and wonder if imagining myself on a beach is what he’s looking for.

  “In the middle of a very stressful situation we usually wish for a safe place,” he says. “Have you ever wished to be somewhere else during such a moment?”

  Every day I want to be somewhere else, I think but don’t say anything.

  “Imagine a safe place. Give it a try.”

  I know what he wants to hear and immediately I come up with several options; “A beach, a park bench, beside a waterfall, something like that?”

  “No good,” he says and bounces a pen on his desk. “Those are no good.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “You asked. That’s what I came up with. Why’s it no good?”

  “Stereotypes, nothing but stereotypes. Like wanting to travel around the world. Who wants to travel and never belong? Always on the move. That’s just something people say. No one really means that. I want you to think about this.” He pauses and throws the pen on the desk. “You’ve never been to a safe place, you say?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  His eyes light up. “How about getting there? Think of a mode of transportation that takes you to a safe and peaceful place. You don’t need to know the specific place, let’s imagine your journey there. Nothing you anticipated, something that just happened, a voyage of sorts. Let me give you an example.” He takes off his glasses and leans back in his chair. “Long time ago, in a country far from here, as a young boy, I used to spend the weekends at my grandmother’s house. I remember her bed being high above the ground, I seemed to sleep almost in the clouds. Of course, I was young and short and Daadi’s bed was just high, but it seemed that way to me then. I had a lot of nightmares as a young boy, but whenever I slept at Daadi’s house, I didn’t wake up at night, there were no monsters. Her bed was magic, in a kid sort of way, but magic nevertheless.”

  “I thought you said a mode of transportation. I don’t get it.”

  “It transported me to my good dreams. I don’t remember the dreams anymore, but I had a lot of them in her bed. It seemed nothing on earth could touch me there, nothing could hold me back. And every morning I woke up to the smell of nashta. And she was singing while preparing it.” His eyes turn glassy, as if he’s far away. But just as quickly he snaps out of it, furrows his brows, and his eyes now demand my own little memory of childhood peace.

  “Your peaceful place is your grandmother’s bed, I get it. Unfortunately I can’t compete with that,” I say. “No grandma and no nashta in my past.” I think about his story and try to remember all the places I’d been as a child. But all I remember is getting sick in cars, on boats, even in buses.

  “I love to ride elevators.” I’m surprised when I hear the words coming out of my mouth. I realize it’s actually true, there’s something about the humming, the feeling in my stomach, the door opening and closing, and then I am where I wanted to be. Just by the push of a button.

  Dr. Ari’s eyebrows relax; he looks pleased.

  “An elevator it is. Describe your favorite elevator. Then enter.”

  I close my eyes. “Two shiny panels meet in the middle, silver panels. The doors slide open and I get in.”

  Dr. Ari’s voice is soothing. “It’s comfortable and spacious. The lights are low, it’s almost dark. You can go anywhere you want to go. No one controls the elevator but you. Walk in, turn around, and face the panel by the side of the door. The panel is rectangular. The buttons are round, lit, and embedded in the panel. They start at number ten and go all the way to number one.”

  I imagine the panel. I push a button. The doors close silently. I’m safe and contained in this dark box. As the elevator descends, I have a moving sensation in my stomach, then the forces balance themselves, and right before the elevator stops, the force lessens and, again, I experience a floating feeling.

  “Perfect,” Dr. Ari says and smiles. “I want this elevator to be a place of peace and control. Anytime you feel anxious, I want you to step in and go to a lower floor. The farther down you go, the more relaxed you’ll become.”

  “And what’s it for? The exercise, I mean?”

  “When humans get stressed or experience fear, our bodies exhibit a very primal response. You’ve probably heard of the fight-or-flight response. When facing a threat, our bodies respond with very distinct signs; a change in blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, temperature, muscle tension, just to name a few.”

  “Right,” I say and imagine saber-toothed tigers pursuing a zebra.

  “Our body is basically getting ready to fight or run away,” Dr. Ari continues. “I want you to face your fears, force your body into a ‘relaxation response.’ Once you manage to relax, over time, you will develop a heightened state of awareness. That’s what we’re after, being aware.”

  “Sounds easy enough,” I say.

  “Not quite. Combating primal responses requires practice. A trained nurse will instruct you later on today.”

  The more I think about this concept, the less I can imagine any possible scenario that is positive for the zebra. “That means while I’m trying to remember, I won’t be afraid and I won’t run. I’ll tell my body to relax and be alert.” Fighting makes no sense when confronted with a saber-toothed tiger and I don’t think a zebra can outrun a tiger. Staying put seems like certain death to me.

  “That’s the plan. You won’t avoid, and you won’t struggle against it.”

  “It being . . . ?”

  “The past.”

  “Right,” I say but I can’t help thinking of a tiger sinking its teeth into my neck.

  —

  On the morning of our third session a damp blanket of fog has spread over the East River and the familiar smokestacks in the distance are all but disappearing behind its dense layer.

  First I hear Dr. Ari’s voice coming from afar, and then I comprehend the words. “Tell me about Mia.” His voice is low, yet urgent.

  I wanted truth serums and potent pills forcing my memories to the surface. I expected to be hypnotized, I imagined a chemical manipulation of my brain. But after two sessions with Dr. Ari I’ve figured out that I am all there is. Just me, my clouded mind, and Dr. Ari goading me on.

  “Tell you about Mia?” I repeat his question to buy some time. I focus on the vague and ghostly smokestacks outside the window, looming a safe distance from this office within the thick cloud of water droplets. I wish the layers of skin that he is trying to peel away were just as safe from him as that old decrepit factory in the distance.

  I don’t know what happened to my daughter, Mia. I opened drawers, old shoe boxes, and unlocked doors that led to storage spaces under stairs. I climbed into Dumpsters, looked under beds. I searched for her. A daughter is not something one misplaces like a set of keys or a take-out menu. What I know for sure is that one morning I woke up and she had vanished as if she had been swallowed by a hole in the universe. Not so much as an impression of her tiny body left on the sheet-covered mattress. Someone took her without picking the locks or prying the hinges off the doorjambs. She’s left a silence behind, a silence so loud it keeps me awake at night.

  On a good day, after I’ve been able to sleep three continuous hours, I imagine her with a nice couple in Arizona, tucked away in loving arms. When I imagine this scene long enough, it feels almost real. On a bad day I see her mutilated and lifeless under a mountain of dirt and pine-needled soil, next to acorn caps and deer droppings somewhere in the woods of upstate New York. The worst days are th
e ones when I can feel a sticky substance between my fingers and I wonder if I’m the one to blame.

  But good days and bad days are not conducive to the truth. What I need is a clear day. A day so clear and pristine, so sparkling and new, that I dare to explore what happened to Mia.

  For now, I have to take solace in imagining the abandoned factory with the crooked stack. I envision homeless people sleeping on top of cardboard there, junkies passed out in dark corners under colorful graffiti—their very own billboards on the edge of human society. Old, battered shoes, their counterparts lost forever, with all the missing socks we never seem to find. I can hear feet kicking cheap plastic gin bottles. They take off into the dark like shooting stars, hit the walls, and bounce back just to end up again in the middle of the long dark halls with their windows nailed shut decades ago. After self-inflicted prodding, digging, turning over stones that resisted turning like boulders in front of caves, somewhere between mandatory journaling and lights-out, I am ready. I will hunt her last images; I will try to catch the coattails of the truth and hang on to them, even if they pull me straight into hell.

  My eyes focus on what’s outside the window. We both have been waiting for this moment. He wants to solve the mystery not even New York’s finest have been able to crack. His legendary status for restoring the forgetful is at stake. As for myself, if I can’t come up with a logical explanation, I will face life in prison. I am lucky in a way, if there is something resembling luck in my position; New York abolished the death penalty years ago. I can always plead insanity, for what mother in her right mind kills her infant daughter? And if I didn’t kill her, what woman in her right mind does not know where her daughter is? Either way, my end of the stick is shitty.

  “Tell you about Mia?” I can hear my own voice as if it were prerecorded. It sounds nothing like me. “Where do you want me to start?”

  Dr. Ari’s Adam’s apple is bobbing as he swallows. He pushes the chair from his desk and rolls back a couple of feet. He glances at the digital recorder to make sure it is on.

  “Start wherever you want.”

  “I remember . . .” I hear my own voice trembling. I feel shaky, my stomach muscles are tight. I am trying to sit straight, keep my composure. I choose my words wisely, for they have the power to set my world on fire.

  I’m trying to make a connection; I’m reaching for a marker, longing to connect the dots. I look down and avoid his eyes. I fold my hands in my lap. I’m surprised by the way this memory has returned to me.

  “Go on,” he says.

  CHAPTER 12

  During the day thousands of coal black crows spread out over the Creedmoor estate, but in the afternoons they flock together in smaller groups to gather in their communal roost once dusk nears. All day long their calls create a tremendous noise level but then they settle down and remain quiet during the night. I watch them work in pairs, construct nests with dead branches, pick at their own feet when frustrated, play with acorn caps and sticks. The view of the building from above, a bird expanding its wings like a giant chief crow, might be the reason they gather here.

  I discover a nest in the tree in front of my window. By the time I spot it, it’s fully constructed—I make out twigs, feathers, leaves, and mud—and I watch the pigeonlike bird lay her first egg. She leaves the nest immediately after and I worry about the egg and what will become of it. The next day she lays another one, just to abandon both of them. My anxiety heightens with every passing hour, but on the third day she returns and starts incubating the eggs, and from that point on she hardly leaves the nest.

  Creedmoor is a dinosaur in its own right. It was built in the 1920s; its cutting-edge psychiatric technology mocks the history trapped in its walls after decades of chemically induced seizures and lobotomies. Even electroshock therapy is back in the medical community’s good graces, renamed electroconvulsive therapy and performed under anesthesia without adversely influencing treatment effectiveness.

  Creedmoor’s legacy of long-forgotten architecture claims to have sheltered the likes of Sylvia Plath, Edie Sedgwick, and Ed Gein. Ed Gein gained notoriety in the ’50s after authorities discovered he had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and constructed keepsakes from their body parts.

  The Kirkbride-style building is a leftover from the early twentieth century, a relic building style considered an ideal sanctuary for the mentally insane. Kirkbride buildings segregate the patients according to gender and severity of symptoms, male patients in one wing, female patients in the other, each wing subdivided with more severe cases on the lower floors while the better-behaved patients are confined to the upper floors.

  Not everyone considers Creedmoor the relic it is. I hear investors once had big plans for the building. A conversion into condominiums was imminent, but the project was shut down since the layout was not suited for individual residences. Its corridors were too long, and its rooms too small.

  My room, at least for the time being, is my own; I don’t have a roommate. My bed frame is made of strong metal pipes, and the linens are soft, worn bare from years of laundering in scalding water.

  The breakfast bell sounds at seven on weekdays, on Saturday and Sundays at eight, and the patients descend to the cafeteria at the end of the hallway on the main level. We all have preassigned tables. The table next to mine is the gathering place for a flock of anorexic women. Their condition is obvious: instead of eating, they merely rearrange their food, pick over their plates like seagulls over a garbage heap. Their fingers seem dipped in blue ink and their hair is thin and downy like an infant’s, while enamel erosion has claimed their teeth.

  My only company during meals is a middle-aged woman, Marge Ruiz. Marge is placid and looks twenty years younger than she is. Her story is similar to mine, I guess one can say; we’re both guilty of not speaking up when we were supposed to. Almost as if missing a deadline has sent both of us to the loony bin. Marge decided to keep the death of her mother a secret until the smell alerted the neighbors. She never told her husband or her children about her mother’s demise; she continued to visit her corpse for months, bringing fresh eggs, milk, and bread.

  Marge’s family comes to see her every weekend. They invade the visitors’ garden, lounge in lawn chairs on the covered terrace. Marge has five children and twice as many grandchildren. Her family’s consolation prize for Marge is a weekly white paper box filled with sugar-topped croissants—cuernos de azúcar.

  While Marge is surrounded by her family, I spend my time on a lawn chair under a big oak tree in the garden behind the main building. I practice the elevator technique obsessively and eventually I feel myself calming down the moment I imagine elevator doors opening.

  I carry my journal with me; I write down every word and every image that pops into my head. Images that defy interpretation I attempt to draw. After a few days pass, I neither recognize the drawings nor am I sure that I even drew them.

  Dr. Ari had handed me the journal during our first session. “As many details as possible,” he had said, “even if it seems trivial. It may turn out to be significant in the long run. Write down thoughts, images, even your dreams. The patterns and recurring themes speak volumes about what’s attempting to resurface. Everything is important. Everything.”

  I draw random squares in my journal. Four corners, then I go over the outline again and again until the lines fill the entire square. Those are the black boxes that contain the past. By writing and drawing in my journal, I try to force my hands to materialize a thought, to force that black box open. I descend into a state of relaxation and I allow my thoughts to wander, without borders and restraints. I see images, yet I don’t know their meaning. The sun, moon, and stars are ever-present heavenly bodies; they never change.

  Sometimes, when I sit under the oak in the visitors’ garden, I catch a glimpse, a flash of an image. I know it’s there, right below the surface. The image floats by me like a cloud, a duplicat
e of a thought I once had—I’m not sure what else to call it—during which I catch the distorted image of some sort of replica, a copy of a copy, if you will, and I try to latch on to it like a fish to hooked bait. A theme emerges. Fruit. An abundance of fruit. Baskets overflowing—fruit, ripe and fragrant, bursting open. I want to be the fruit, want to will the fruit to deny its breaking point. Their insides luscious, their skins bouncing back as I poke at them. Eventually they burst open and I try to force the fruit—with some sort of mind control—to withstand.

  Dr. Ari enjoys when I speak of these visions, he leans in closer, pays attention to my every word. He’s of Pakistani descent and somewhat of a legend at Creedmoor. Countless framed official documents grace his office walls: undergraduate degree, medical school, residency, and finally Creedmoor’s president and psychiatrist in chief. I wonder if he has a wife, a family. There are no photographs, no children’s arts-and-crafts projects on his desk. No hint of his private life.

  I like to think of him as a magician unearthing skeletons and bringing them back to life. He smiled when I told him and said, “Thank you. It’s not quite as glamorous as excavating vessels from antiquity, but I envy your point of view. Most skeletons refuse to be uncovered. Makes for hard work.”

  He told me he specializes in RMT, recovered memory therapy. That RMT sometimes, “depending on the case,” includes psychotherapy methods like hypnosis, even sedative-hypnotic drugs, age regression, and guided visualization. And that RMT is not considered formal psychotherapy, nor is it used in mainstream psychiatry.

  I assume that he stumbled upon the crime-solving part by accident. Marge, also a patient of his, “may or may not have killed her mother,” according to Oliver, one of the orderlies. Maybe my case will be another cornerstone of Dr. Ari’s already-legendary status.

  “We can only operate with the data we are consciously aware of. Everything’s there, just covered in a layer of dust. Gaining access to what lies beneath is what it’s all about.”