Remember Mia Read online

  “Got some change?” The woman pulled a banana from underneath her raincoat garbage bag.

  “No, no, I don’t, I don’t have my wallet on me, but I need to know if you saw anyone leave the building down there”—I pointed down the street, toward 517—“kind of where that red couch is. With a baby. Did you see anyone with a baby?”

  “I see a lot.” She made a sucking noise through her teeth and unpeeled the overripe fruit. Then she looked me up and down. “A baby, you say? Your baby?”

  “Yes, she’s seven months old, someone took her. Did you see anything?”

  “Your baby’s gone?” she asked and her toothless gums pinched off a piece of the banana. “Should’ve kept her close.” She smacked her lips, taking another bite. “I have a son,” she continued. “You wanna see him? He’s always with me.” She scanned the sidewalk as if to make sure there weren’t any onlookers. The dog gladly took what was left of her banana and began to lick the peel.

  “Your son?” I asked.

  “My son.”

  “I don’t . . . just . . . I really just need to know if you saw anything.”

  She reached under her raincoat bag, dug deep within the layers, and pulled out a bundle of dirty rags. She unfolded the fabric, one corner at a time, as if the bundle contained a precious gem. When she lifted the last corner, she smiled a toothless smile. There was a large brown mass nestled between the folds. I swallowed hard. A stench of decay drifted my way.

  “I wish I had a home for him,” the woman said and stroked a mummified squirrel with her blackened fingertips. “He’s in bad shape and these rags ain’t no place to keep a child. You have something I can put him in?”

  She held up the bundle. An incision ran the length of the squirrel’s stomach. I shuddered and turned my head. I fought to stay in control of my stomach but the battle was all but lost.

  I walked less than half a block down North Dandry, toward Liberty Street. I turned into an alley to the right, at the back of a deli facing Linden Street, and I vomited. I continued to heave, unable to get the hollow cavity of the squirrel’s shell out of my head.

  I finally looked around: An array of fruit crates filled with wilted lettuces and shriveled cucumbers on top of dented cans of chickpeas. The stench was horrific. A decaying and almost liquefied head of lettuce sat on top of a food crate filled with cadaverous tomatoes, rusted cans of corn, flattened milk cartons, and a mesh bag of shriveled oranges covered in a bluish-green mold.

  Walking back toward 517, I again passed the homeless woman. The dog looked up at me, but this time wagged its tail. The woman’s eyes were closed, her head resting on her chest. I walked past her, down North Dandry. I opened the trunk of my car, sat the car seat on the ground, and grabbed the old suitcase. Even as I sat the suitcase down next to her, she remained silent and motionless.

  —

  Back at home, I sat on the couch for what felt like hours. It was so quiet, I was keenly aware of my own heartbeat. I tried to occupy my mind with questions like where to look, where I had already looked, where to search next. I pushed fears for Mia’s well-being and life aside, as if not entertaining them made them less possible. And then it struck me, a newly formed logic, a possibility I hadn’t thought of yet.

  This is crazy, all of this is crazy. I wasn’t any different from the old homeless woman on the corner passing off a hollowed-out squirrel as her son. No one came and took Mia. No one took her clothes and her bottles and her formula. No one walked through walls with her diapers, no one got past the locks and bolts and bars. There was only one logical explanation for this entire scenario: There was no baby. There never had been a baby. Mia was but a figment of my imagination. How else could I explain that everything belonging to my phantom baby was gone? I needed proof, proof that she had really existed. I needed to convince myself that I hadn’t completely lost touch with reality.

  I got up and went to the bedroom. I took off my shirt and my bra. I stood with my back to the long dressing mirror. I remained still, preparing for a moment of truth. Certainly there would be marks on my body if I had given birth. There should be excess weight around the midsection, soft, flabby skin not quite back to its original state. There should be stretch marks, a linea nigra, and darkened nipples.

  My sanity depended on what I was going to see in the mirror. I took in a deep breath and turned around. The woman in the mirror was lean, on the verge of being bony. Her cheekbones were pronounced, her skin seemed paper-thin. Her breasts were of normal size. There were no stretch marks, no darkened line down her belly, or enlarged nipples. I followed the contours of my stomach, hesitated at the waistband. I closed my eyes and pulled the elastic down. There it was. Raised and pink. A horizontal surgical scar from a cesarean section. I traced the cord of scar tissue, the palpable bumps, the ridge of sutures, with my fingers.

  It was real. I wasn’t crazy after all. I couldn’t believe that I’d ever doubted Mia existed, and the fact that I stood in front of a mirror checking my body for signs of recent childbearing now seemed ridiculous.

  I had expected a thin body, but I was merely skin and bones. What happened? What the hell had happened to me? When did I go from a once-attractive woman to this? A few more weeks and I’d be nothing but skeletal remains.

  I wasn’t so much surprised by the realization that I hadn’t imagined Mia, no, the real surprise was that this bony and emaciated woman, this lunatic in the mirror, was in one piece.

  What held her together, I had no idea.

  PART 3

  It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  CHAPTER 15

  Dawn has not yet given way to the morning light when an orderly escorts us to a white van. I sit in the back, Dr. Ari takes a seat to my left, behind the driver’s seat. His briefcase rests between us, his right arm on top as if he’s guarding a secret between its leather skin and silk fabric lining. We depart down the serpentine driveway and the weeping willows’ branches waft in the breeze like the coattails of an eerie congregation.

  The orderly, whom I’ve seen occasionally during mealtimes, wears a leather jacket over his scrubs. His name is Oliver. His fingertips are callused, and veins like blue rivers travel up and then disappear into the sleeves of his jacket. When the time is right, I will inquire about the rugged condition of his hands, but for now, I watch him operating the radio.

  Dr. Ari wears a suit and a trench coat. This is the first time I’ve seen him not shrouded in a white coat. The radio volume is low yet I recognize Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved.”

  The morning’s French toast is churning in my stomach, but I vow to keep in control of my body. Thirty minutes into the ride the queasiness stops but a dull pressure has settled between my eyes, leaving fuzzy outlines of passing cars like laser tracers in the dark.

  “What happened to your hair?” Dr. Ari asks.

  I lean to the left but can’t see myself in the rearview mirror. “I cut it last night.”

  I try to sound indifferent about my hair but I’m not, I actually hate what I’ve done to it. Wanting my outside to reflect the change I’ve been going through on the inside, I attempted to change something about me, something visible, something everybody would notice.

  Knowing that today’s trip was imminent, I wondered where to turn for higher support and I ran across a website of Catholic saints. Both my parents were Catholics, and even though they weren’t practicing, my birth certificate proclaims the same denomination. Saint Anthony, a Franciscan monk with tonsured hair, the patron saint of lost articles and missing persons, cut his hair as a symbol of his renunciation of the world. I felt compelled, for a second, to shave my entire head, but then decided to shorten my hair to symbolize a new beginning. It seemed like some sort of clemency, a freeing mys
elf from past sins, but by now I’m questioning my judgment. Did I think I was offering Saint Anthony a sacrifice to appease him for this day, a day that seems frightening and promising at the same time?

  “Does your hair have anything to do with our trip today?” Dr. Ari seems impartial regarding my new look but asks nevertheless.

  “I was ready for a change, I guess. That’s all.” There’s this sadness again, it sits somewhere between my heart and my stomach, a feeling I’ve never been able to describe appropriately. It’s more like the sensation of craving cold water as if to calm some sort of deeply seated thirst within me. Starting at the right temple, I run my fingers through my hair. It used to reach way past my shoulders; now it barely covers where my earlobe would have been, exposing the scar and my missing ear.

  I study Oliver’s profile. He seems nonchalant about this trip, but I imagine him relieved at a day off from having to administer Valium and fasten straitjackets.

  “What do you think, Oliver?” I look at him and I know he is supposed to ignore my attempts to converse with him.

  “Change is good,” Oliver says and winks at me, causing Dr. Ari to clear his throat.

  Dr. Ari doesn’t mention the fact that my mangled ear is now clearly visible but I’m sure he will eventually. Impulsive as it was, I wanted the world to see that, regardless of what I’ve done, something was done to me.

  We drive silently for a long while. Dr. Ari hasn’t elaborated on specific goals for the day but I hope I can bring a story back to him, lay it at his feet like a slaughtered goat, an offering to the gods of lost memories. At the same time I wonder what Dr. Ari’s bag of tricks holds. I keep peering at his briefcase—he seems to be guarding it rather obsessively—and I imagine surgical blades, bone saws, and rubber mallets. I picture Dr. Ari stranded on an island, allowed three items of his choice. I pick for him: a lint remover, a digital recorder, and the Quran. Oliver is harder to pinpoint—a radio perhaps, a dog, and a pack of smokes?

  As we get closer to North Dandry, I feel the sensation of a soft and smooth stroller handle between my fingers and I remember how moms used to give me dirty looks as I pushed a crying infant along. By the time we’d passed Drummer’s Cove, Mia had always calmed down, the rhythm of the drums, the noisy summer celebrations, and the dancers lulling her to sleep.

  Prospect Park appears on the left and North Dandry is just a few blocks to our right. Oliver parks, turns off the engine, and exits the van. I watch a dog walker struggling with three greyhounds. The leashes are tangled, the dogs’ tails tucked beneath their streamlined bodies, pointing at their deep chests. As the dog walker asserts control over the pack, I hear a clicking sound. Dr. Ari has opened his bag of tricks. He’s holding a plastic evidence bag with a blue adhesive closure strip. He breaks the seal and hands me Mia’s blanket. The experiment has begun.

  Scientific facts tumble around in my mind. Scent, the most powerful trigger of all, activates the olfactory bulb, which is connected to the brain’s limbic system, therefore calling up memories almost instantaneously. When we experience a scent for the first time, we link it to an event, a person, or a moment. The smell of chlorine is forever embedded in our brain as the memory of swimming on summer days or a specific moment like the panic we feel after falling into the pool. Scent is the kind of magic that brings forth a rush of vivid memories, time travel at its finest. I wonder if I’ll be able to string my memories like beads on a thread and wear them around my neck, and will greyhounds forever prompt me to recall the beginning of this very experiment?

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I withdraw from the present, remove myself from the sound of running car engines, car alarms, voices, and I let go.

  I hear the rustling and crackling of a plastic bag. Allowing the scent of Mia’s blanket to take over my brain, I feel a switch inside of me, a switch I can describe only as a powerful tilt toward another point in time. I take in a mixture of baby powder, fastening tape, moisturizer, synthetic diaper, and fragrance. The odor is faint, yet produces powerful physical and emotional reactions. Whatever I’ve been keeping at bay unleashes itself like a herd of wild mustangs charging through an open gate. A memory reaches my brain as a scent, yet it’s so much more than that. It’s the all-encompassing sensation of my daughter Mia. Random scenes rush at me.

  A newborn’s face rests on my chest. Covered in blood and glop, her skull bruised, her skin a bluish tint. My brain stumbles. Her frailness surprises me, her alertness keeps me at bay. I am unworthy of her, as if I had no right to bring her into this world.

  Nighttime feedings, one after the other. The crying, its urgency yanks at me, tugs at me like a rubber band stretched to its limit. Her wails tighten the rubber band, jerking at it to the point of rupture.

  Madness located in my jaw. I pull the pacifier out of her mouth, replace it with a bottle before the crying starts. Like a dog’s jaw I sink my teeth into the plastic and hold on with hundreds of pounds of pressure. Her pacifier handles are rimmed with the marks of my teeth.

  Madness beneath her fontanel, the soft spot between the bony plates of her skull. A wicked invitation. I wonder how deep my thumb will go and how hard I’d have to push before the crying stops.

  Short spans of sanity among the madness, capable of drowning the cries: the running shower, the vacuum, the radio. All three at once are rapture, the holy trinity.

  Wanting to hold her and cradle her and look into her eyes, cooing her name and smiling—all those feelings and gestures had become alien to me. I was committed: I changed diapers, I bathed her, I fed her. But nothing came easy. Not my love for her, not my being everything to her. Her neediness thrashed inside of me like a creature, tearing at me from the inside out.

  There was Jack. His face aglow, he held her instinctively, his love primal. His eyes adored her. A king protecting his kingdom, aware of the pressure, selfless and courageous. Our happiness depended on him. He accepted this fate; he matured in its light. He was rewarded by joyous crows and capers.

  As for me, I wasn’t worthy of this crown.

  —

  The visions release me like a giant’s hand returning me to the backseat of the van. Rain pounds the van roof like rapid machine-gun fire. When did the rain start? When did the skies darken and unleash their wrath on me? My face is wet and I’m shaking. I feel like an open wound.

  I grab the handkerchief Dr. Ari offers me and wipe my eyes. The rain stops as suddenly as it started. Dr. Ari, his digital recorder in his hand, the blanket in the other, studies my face. The close proximity of our bodies is awkward and uncomfortable.

  I look out the window and see Oliver sitting on a bench under a gazebo, close to the park entrance, wires from his pocket reach his ears. He pets an occasional dog, and his eyes follow a group of girls strolling by. I envy him; how easy it must be to guard instead of being guarded.

  He takes something out of his pocket, in the other hand he holds some sort of tool, and he carves and sculpts and chips away as if he’s creating some elaborate meerschaum pipe.

  I give the door a determined pull and watch it slide open on its suspended tracks. I exit the van.

  North Dandry is treelined and straight as a ruler. Brownstone row houses sit in harmony like books on a shelf, all old, all narrow. Their façades range from muted yellows to reds and grays. Farther down, as North Dandry turns into Fullerton, the houses switch from Gothic to Greek and Italian Revival. North Dandry’s brownstones blend into a cumulative front of arched windows, large chimneys, cast-iron stair rails and fences. A Norway maple rests silently in front of 517 in its own island of tightly packed soil surrounded by a wrought iron fence amidst an otherwise concrete landscape. I must be mistaken, I could have sworn the tree in front of North Dandry was a hemlock and not a maple.

  I look at Dr. Ari, waiting for him to give me instructions. Pulling a set of keys out of his coat pocket, he lowers his glasses onto the tip of his nose and fumbl
es for a specific key.

  His voice is as composed as ever. “The building is vacant,” he says and offers me a large gold key between his thumb and his index finger.

  Is his plan as easy as it is crazy; just go in and demand the building’s memories? What if it has a soul and is angry at me? Could it punish me for what’s happened here?

  “Unlock the door and enter the apartment. Walk through, touch anything you feel like touching.” He nods and steps aside. He lifts his right arm as if welcoming me into his home—my home. “Go ahead.”

  I take the key from him and walk up the steps to the front door. After I insert the key into the lock and turn it to the right, I push and the door opens.

  “Entering 517 North Dandry,” Dr. Ari says after he turns on the recorder.

  An intrusive odor greets me. The freshly painted hallways are harsh and white, almost blinding. My temples start pulsating the moment I set foot over the threshold. The door to my apartment is unlocked and standing in the hallway feels familiar yet strange at the same time, as if I’ve traveled through time. Is there going to be a magical scent, a sound, or a taste that’s supposed to offer an initial trail?

  I notice black powder marks on the doors and remnants of yellow tape. Even though the police have undoubtedly gone through the apartment, the place looks tidy. No hastily opened drawers, no cabinet doors ajar. The only sign of strangers having been here are the blinds stuck halfway, leaving the windows in slight disarray.

  As I enter Mia’s room, my heartbeat accelerates. I cannot dispute the eerie energy of the empty crib in front of the window. The room looks as if a layer of volcanic ash has descended upon it; the crib slats are covered in black powder, so are the dresser, the changing table, the closet door, and the windows. The crib mattress and the bumper have been removed. The Tinker Bell mobile above her crib dangles, crooked and abandoned.

  The night sky projection lamp is missing its dome, a sad turtle without its shell. Someone must have removed it to examine the inside of the lamp. I step closer and look inside: two windup cogs and a battery chamber. The lightbulb is missing. I run my finger along the rim of the opening, remembering how much Mia loved the stars traveling across the walls and the ceiling. A sticker on the rim: KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.