Remember Mia (13 page)

Hours later everybody had gathered at our home, a house with a cold and ashy fireplace that felt unsympathetic. I sat in an armchair turned to face the front door, and the first thing anyone saw when they walked in was a girl with a sullen face and a full plate in her lap. I had filled it with meatballs, potato salad, finger sandwiches, and stuffed mushrooms. Aunt Nell gave me a look, and I stacked some more sandwiches on top. I sat, plate on my lap, not bothering with a fork or napkin, not planning to eat any of the food at all. I eyed the people spilling through the door. My silent guarding of the door didn’t go over well; adults didn’t know whether to stroke my hair or hand me a fork. No one greeted me as they entered the house but one middle-aged lady with noticeable upper-lip hair, who I had never met before, kept eyeing me.

“Hello, Sally,” she said, and offered her hand. How I wished to be a Sally somewhere, I thought, but didn’t correct her nor did I shake her hand. Her dark reddish roots made it seem as if she were bleeding from the part in her hair.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she added.

“Thank you, Shirley,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

She looked at me, puzzled, and walked off to talk to Aunt Nell.

The entire time I sat by the door, “Shirley” kept eyeing me suspiciously. I sat for a long time and watched the stream of mourners reverse itself until finally the house was empty.

Then I grabbed Anthony’s hand and pulled him into the study. The walls were covered in black-and-white photographs of buildings, a majority of them industrial. The first one, right by the door, was the Lipstick Building, at 53rd and Third, shaped as if oval hatboxes had been stacked on top of one another. There were also photographs of churches. I recognized the Riverside Church. Bryant Park Hotel. There was Grand Central Terminal, my favorite. Photographs lined the walls like family pictures. My father’s interactions with the world were made of stone and steel, slabs and cement.

The shades had been pulled and the big cedar chest in the
corner released a spicy odor, strong and fragrant. Dad kept his historical map collection in that chest. Over the years the maps’ wet-rag-in-the-kitchen-sink aroma had changed to the same aromatic odor of the chest. There was also a faint smell of smoke in the air. I had seen Aunt Nell smoke on the front stoop or in the backyard but maybe she had started plopping herself down in my father’s chair, propping up her feet, having a cigarette. I had a vision of her, wearing my mother’s dress, walking through the house, smoking, and making endless plans we knew nothing about.

Anthony closed the door behind us. The moist spring air played gently with the thin, parchmentlike blueprints and floor plans on my father’s mahogany desk. Anthony looked at me and then lowered his head. I detected shame in his posture.

I looked at his face, a face that had changed dramatically over the past week, as if adulthood had come to him overnight. His facial hair so out of place, his body large and more muscular than I’d remembered. He seemed grown up, capable, and I felt small next to him.

“We don’t need Aunt Nell, we can take care of ourselves. You’re almost eighteen and they’ll let you take care of me.”

“Stella, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.
We
can. Aunt Nell is nothing to us, I can hardly stand to look at her, and I wish she’d pack up and leave. The sooner the better.”

“I can’t take care of you, I can’t. It’s not that I don’t wa-wa-want to. I ju-just, I . . .” He started to stutter, something he hadn’t done in years. But he regained his composure, as if he decided that this childish affliction was uncalled for. His eyes were red and he paced the study, looking for words and a way out. “I’m going to a military academy. I’ll be leaving in two months.” His words hung between us and sucked the air out of the room. The world was motionless, even the curtains had stopped wafting in the breeze.

My throat was sore, and every time I swallowed I was back in
the dream where a blackbird had slipped down my esophagus in slow motion. Just as the pain of the beak ripping holes and tearing flesh lingered, so did the cruelness of his words. My heart pounded as if the blackbird was trapped in my chest, its wings expanding with every minute. I caught a glimpse of why Joan cut herself to get away from pain. If you replace one hurt with another, it seems as if you’re in control somehow.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Anthony said, and I felt myself shifting, departing from my body.

The echo of Nell’s heeled shoes tapping over the wooden floors came down the hallway toward the study, but then it quieted and I was no longer sure if someone was coming toward us or moving away. Either way, I felt nothing from that point on.

—

Dr. Ari pushes a box of Kleenex my way. I’m not sobbing, there’s just a trail of tears running down my cheeks, my neck, in my mouth, and under my shirt. They taste like the tears I had cried the day of the funeral and I wonder if tears of joy taste any different. The memory of my parents’ funeral is strong, yet I don’t know why it still has such a fierce hold on me.

I keep my posture upright, attempting to make my pain inconspicuous. I’m not fooling Dr. Ari, the ever-present hawk, spotting pain like prey, descending, striking.

“I’m so very sorry this happened to you,” Dr. Ari says.

“I felt safe in my sadness and I told myself it couldn’t get worse. My parents were dead, my brother was leaving, and Aunt Nell was picking at what was left of our family and our house, like a vulture pecking away at spilled guts on a road. I had basically reached the lowest point possible. But I was wrong. So wrong.”

I look down at my hands, expecting to see that lump of clay. But my hands are empty. We have barely peeled away the outer layer and we both know there are many more layers left to tear
away, wounds to be opened deeper until white bone shines through. I am done; I am not going to volunteer any more information.

I hear a voice. It is my own voice, betraying myself.

“Look at me. Just look at me, sitting here, trying to remember something that . . .” I’m searching for words, probing my mind, struggling to interpret the turn my life has taken. “What now? I don’t know where to go from here.” Maybe I was just a kid who lost her parents and felt alone. Maybe my childhood was tragic, but my despair had started before the funeral, way before everything, maybe even from the moment I was born.

“Dr. Ari, are some people born sad? I don’t mean introverted and withdrawn, but depressed? Did I emerge from my mother’s womb with a predisposition to . . . whatever it is . . . sadness? Is that possible?”

“There is a genetic vulnerability caused by neurotransmitters and biochemical agents, but there are also developmental events, like the death of your parents. Grief is a very strong childhood stressor.”

For the first time I see myself through the eyes of people at the funeral. I was what? Eccentric? It’s like looking in a fun house mirror only I’m
not
distorted, I am
that
way, a gloomy girl, sitting at the door, staring at people—that’s me.

“To be honest, my glass has always been half empty. Not only as an adult, but as a child.

“I don’t remember any specific moment I felt happiness. I don’t remember being just over the moon, elated, whatever you want to call it. Happiness is almost something that I can’t feel, like I’m not made to pick up on it or something.” I point at the digital recorder in front of him. “Like this recorder. It can only record audio, it can’t pick up on anything else. You can’t record the temperature of the room, you don’t know what the weather was like when you listen to the recording later on.”

“I beg to differ.”

“About what?” I ask.

“That there were no moments of happiness in your life. Maybe you don’t remember every single one, but . . .” He pauses and then his face lights up. “When I was a child, my grandmother taught me to play
petteia
, a board game. A simplified chess game, if you will. But you win by majority, not with a certain piece or final move.”

“Your grandmother teaching you a board game is happiness?”

“It was not so much the game itself but the fact that she tried to teach me some sort of lesson. I remember that you had to somehow surround your opponent’s stones in order to win.”

“So she taught you some kind of war strategy, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I never saw it as a war strategy, just the fact that patience is always rewarded. But mostly I remember the clicking of the stones on the board. The scent of the tea, the jingling of her jewelry. Her patience while talking me through the moves, explaining the strategy. And she always allowed me to redo a move if it proved crucial. She was a kind and wise woman.”

“Do you still know how to play the game?”

“Barely. I don’t think I ever really mastered it.”

“So . . . the lesson here is?”

“There are moments of joy in everybody’s life. Happiness, like sadness, comes wrapped in many layers.”

“Just like memories.”

“Just like memories,” he says.

“I just have to find those moments.” I pause for a while and consider the ratio of sadness and happiness in my life. “Sad moments are right on top, but the happy ones seem to hide.”

I turn my head toward the wall to my right. A file cabinet takes up the entire wall, small drawers strategically concealing its utilitarian purpose. Smooth-sliding pullout drawers filled with obsolete paper files. Dr. Ari’s awards hover in symmetry, under Plexiglas, anchored with invisible wall attachments. He does not believe in
signs of weakness in his constructed world, therefore even the frames must pretend they don’t need a nail to stay put.

“Anthony probably doesn’t even know I’m here.”

Dr. Ari raises his eyebrows, then flips over my file, as if handling the folder gives him an illusion of manipulating my known past with his hands.

“That’s a conversation we’ll have soon.” Dr. Ari pulls out his pocket watch as if he doesn’t trust the timekeeping abilities of the plastic clock on his desk. “For tomorrow I want you to think of the concept of happiness.”

“Can one think of happiness?” I ask.

“A memory is a place you visit, not where you live. Happiness therefore is not a permanent state of being, but more a moment in time. Think of a moment for me?”

Later that night, as I write in my journal, I reflect on Dr. Ari’s story of his grandmother. I try to recall happy surroundings and details, more than the feeling of happiness. I try to think of past happy moments as having fallen to pieces and recovering them is just a matter of putting them back together. Then an image pops into my head. The image of a building and its still beauty in stark contrast with the busy atmosphere. In that memory, my father wears a dark blue suit and an overcoat. I wear a dress and black lacquered shoes that pinch my toes. We are in Grand Central Terminal for my tenth birthday and my father has promised me a “well-guarded secret.”

“When we leave the terminal,” he says, “you’ll be one of a chosen few who know about this secret.” His voice sounds conspiratorial; all that is missing is a black cloak and a magic wand.

“You’re not serious, are you, Dad? You’re kidding, right?”

“Estelle, I’m very serious. Do you know who Adolf Hitler was?”

“Of course I know. The dictator of Nazi Germany. I hope this isn’t a history lesson.”

“No, it’s not. It’s your birthday after all,” he says and chuckles.

“What does Hitler have to do with this secret?”

He lowers his voice, bends down, and whispers in my ear: “What if I told you that he sent spies to sabotage the secret.”

“And did they?”

“No. The FBI arrested them.”

“The FBI is involved?” This is so much better than anything else I could have imagined.

We reach the Main Concourse and Dad grabs my hand. I look at him and then follow the direction of his eyes upward. We are standing under some sort of astronomical mural. The background is blue, the constellations golden. It covers the ceiling of the entire Main Concourse. I’m getting dizzy looking up. I lower my head and hold on to his hand.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“That, my love, is a design by a French painter. How many stars do you think are there?”

I’m feeling queasy. I decide not to look back up and I just guess what I conceive to be a fairly accurate number. “Five hundred.”

“Two thousand five hundred stars. It’s supposed to be the Mediterranean sky. The larger stars are the constellations.”

“What’s so special about it and why did the spies try to sabotage it?”

“Oh no, this isn’t the secret the spies tried to sabotage. We’ll get to that later. I just wanted to show you this because the painter made a mistake without knowing.”

“A mistake?” I scan the mural.

“Yes, he used an old antique manuscript. Took them a long time to figure out the reason why he made the mistake. See, they ended up being backward. Back then the cartographers displayed the zodiacs as they appeared from the outside looking in.”

“Do you have that manuscript at home?”

He laughs and says, “That would be like having the
Mona Lisa
hanging in our living room. But I have a replica. I’ll show it to you when we get home. Let’s go.”

He tightens his grip around my hand as we walk to the back of the terminal. We reach an old service elevator. He pushes a button and the door opens immediately as if it had been waiting for us. We get in and the elevator descends, screeching and shaking. I love the moment right before the elevator stops and my body feels weightless, as if the entire world pauses for a second.

When we get out, we are in a utilitarian part of the building. The room is huge, its ceiling higher than I expected a ceiling to be underground. One side of the room is covered with boxy metal containers with controls and the other holds old machines that look like colossal clock gears. The floor grates are large and vibrate through my shoes. I feel hot air blowing through the grates, and I hear giant fans underneath me.

“Here we are!” My dad is elated. I feel like I’m letting him down, as if I’m supposed to know the significance of this room. “M42,” he adds.