Remember Mia (20 page)

“But back to the facts of the case—it gets even better. Supposedly, according to a source close to the case, there
are a couple of witnesses who allegedly saw her on the day the baby disappeared.”

Cate:
“Emphasis on
allegedly
. That’s unconfirmed right now, Liza, which is my point exactly. Are you, and the media as a whole, going too far putting this on the air with an array of unconfirmed allegations?”

Liza:
“Let me finish first. According to my sources, she was seen discarding a baby seat on a heap of garbage on her street. How do you explain that away, Mrs. Defense Attorney?”

Cate:
“I see no need to explain unconfirmed witness reports, so-called witness reports, I might add. And I don’t think that—”

Liza:
“There’s a witness who saw her handing a suitcase to a homeless woman around the time the baby disappeared. A suitcase large enough to contain a small body. Really, what else do we need to know? The evidence keeps mounting against her. What was in that suitcase? Don’t we all want to know? And most of all, where is that monster of a mom? I tell you where she is. In a cozy psychiatric ward. How do you explain that, Cate?”

Cate:
“Let’s talk about that for a moment. She allegedly suffers from amnesia. She’s been in a horrible accident, she has the injuries to prove it. She doesn’t remember where her daughter is, she’s in a psychiatric ward, in treatment, and we—”

Liza:
“In hiding is where she is. Because decent mothers and concerned citizens are lining up in front of the city courthouse
and demanding justice. How come she’s not in jail? This is outrageous!”

Cate:
“I was going to say, I don’t think we need to rush to judgment here. One could argue that while you are crucifying her, she is trying to figure out what happened to her precious little girl.”

Liza:
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Cate, that’s not all. A neighbor of hers has spoken out as to her odd behavior. Not wanting anyone in her house, hearing the baby cry all hours of the day and night, even leaving her in the car unattended. Does that sound like a caring mother to you? It will all come out at trial. I’m not sure how a defense lawyer can explain all of that away.”

Cate:
“But, Liza, babies cry! And they do so all hours of the day and night. And she lived alone, her husband worked out of town. I’d be careful who I let in my house, too. Haven’t we all been less than perfect as mothers? All I’m trying to say is that the media plays a huge role in the public’s opinion of a defendant, and she is innocent until proven guilty.”

Liza:
“Even if you don’t believe a word I just told you, be honest with yourself, the time frame is all we need. She waited too long to report the disappearance, actually didn’t report it at all until she was found and questioned. Something’s just not right. That’s common sense, not an assumption.”

Cate:
“But is it right to dub the mother ‘Amnesia Mom’ in the press? How will she get a fair trial?”

Liza:
“That’s what she claims, right? She claims to have amnesia and therefore it is an accurate description of her, don’t you think? When it comes down to it, Cate, I only say what ninety percent of the people are thinking. And as to the fair trial, a venue change is common practice. I, personally, can’t wait for her to go to trial. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a guilty plea before the case was even heard.”

Cate:
“I don’t know about that. I hope not, I hope people use their own judgment or rather withhold judgment until there’s definite proof of guilt. I hope the jury is unbiased and of her peers, as the law requires.

“Thanks for being on our show, Liza. Razor-tongued, as always. We have to go to commercial. After the break we’ll switch to the local news. Be right back.”

The video halts, freezing the host’s face in a grimace. There’s more video links but I click on the browser’s image tab. Photos of me, of Mia. Images of news stations. I recognize North Dandry. I’m everywhere, in every living room, Laundromat, gym, and radio station. At every doctor’s office, every car showroom. Farther down, images of women I’ve never seen, empty eyes staring straight into the camera. Mug shots, orange tops. Some hold up a small board with letters. Name, number, police department.

“Amnesia Mom,” I say and fight back the tears. I’ve been reduced to a mother without a memory, a caretaker guilty of harming her daughter. “I had no idea.”

“I’m so sorry, Stella. So sorry.” His eyes darken, tear up. Then they turn into slits. “She’s nothing but a ratings whore, everyone knows that.” Anthony slides the phone back in his pocket. “I’m sorry, I should have taken the phone from you. Every psychologist and psychiatrist is weighing in, everybody has something to say,
and suddenly everybody is a subject matter expert. Reporters have called my house for weeks. No one is interested in the facts. These people are relentless and most of what they’re saying has nothing to do with the actual truth. People know that, Stella.” He pauses. Then he says, “They asked me if I thought you did this.”

I want to ask
Do you think I did this?
but I know better. It takes me a moment to make sense of it.
Of course not
, he’d answer, smoothly. So smooth that I’d know he had thought about it before, rehearsed his answer.

Anthony keeps his eyes on me, then he shivers as if shaking off a thought that’s making him uncomfortable.

“Before she died, Nell told me you left and she never heard from you again . . .”

“I’ve never forgotten how she wore Mom’s brooch and her dress to the funeral. Who does that? Who wears her dead sister’s clothes on the day of her funeral?”

Anthony shakes his head. “I remember the brooch. But it was Nell’s brooch, I think. Mom had borrowed it and never returned it. I don’t remember all the details, but the dress, I don’t know, Stella. Nell was three inches taller than Mom and twenty pounds heavier. I don’t think she would’ve fit in Mom’s dress.”

I feel anger inside of me. “That’s what I remember. Are you telling me I made it all up?”

“I’m not saying you made it up. That’s how you remember it.”

“You left me, Anthony. There’s nothing more to it.”

“I couldn’t be responsible for you . . . I was eighteen. I was a kid. I couldn’t have raised you. I love you, Stella, but I had to leave.”

“It was just so hard. I had
nothing
left. I was alone. I—”

“
We
had nothing, Stella.
We
had nothing. It was unfortunate, but what was I supposed to do? It happened to both of us . . . the accident, Mom, Dad, our sister. It happened to both of us, not just you. It was what it was. It wasn’t going to be easy.”

“I needed you, Anthony.”

“I know you did and I should’ve been there. I was a kid. I wish I could do it all over again.”

I don’t know what to think. Did I expect too much, or did he give too little? I don’t know anything anymore. I’ve believed so many things for so long. Believing something else now is hard. Maybe he’s right. Maybe going down all these roads, of what could have been, is a lost cause. A treacherous path. We get the life we get and that’s all.

“I brought you something,” he says and reaches inside his coat and retrieves a shabby-looking book with worn edges. I immediately recall a book I used to read obsessively as a child, asking Anthony the meaning of words I didn’t know. I finally realized that the words meant nothing and were just made up for a fantasy world on a nonexistent continent. I can’t remember the title or the cover of the book, only that it was about a girl pickpocket, a thief.

“Do you remember this?”

It’s not the book I long for, but a paperback, familiar, like a toy from my childhood, yet I can’t make a connection. Looking at the book feels like seeing a person you know but cannot place. I read the title:
The 365 Funniest Jokes Ever
. I turn the book over and I flip through its pages. There are jokes, riddles, and a collection of funny stories. I see cartoons of elephants sitting on small chairs, men dressed up as women in wigs and aprons, puppies pulling diapers off babies, and the outline of a cat busting through a brick wall. Funny, childlike, silly pictures.

“I bought this book for you when you were about nine. You were always so sad and I wanted to cheer you up. I knew every single joke in this book . . . every single one. Just couldn’t make you laugh. Not even the funniest jokes.”

I feel as if I’ve let him down, back then and now.

“I read you one joke a day for an entire year. While I was rolling on the floor, laughing, you never even cracked a smile. Don’t you remember?”

I just shake my head. I was nine; I should remember something. I just stare at him and my eyes fill with tears.

“Knock, knock.” Anthony’s voice is soft now.

When I don’t say anything, he repeats it. “Knock, knock,” he says, looking at me with anticipation.

“Anthony . . .”

“Knock, knock.”

“Anthony, stop . . .”

“Knock, knock.”

“Anthony, it wasn’t funny then, it’s not funny now.”

“Just try, Stella. Just once.”

I just close my eyes and try to imagine something else. But it’s not working. I give up because I know he won’t. “Who’s there?” I say.

“Boo.”

“Boo who?”

“Oh, boo hoo. Don’t cry. It’s just a joke.”

I smile.
Boo hoo, don’t cry, it’s just a joke.

“It finally worked.” He pauses. “Don’t cry, Stella, everything will be all right.”

“Right,” I say but I know nothing will be all right. Anthony has a wife, a dog, a life. This here is my life. Amnesia Mom. A news cycle amusement. Mothers all over the country are outraged. That’s all I am in everybody’s eyes. Guilty.

—

That night, as I flip through the pages of the book, I notice a hint of almond hiding in its pages, and like a rush of water, I remember a moment long past. Legs pulled up, I melted into the leather tufted wing chair in my father’s study. I was never sure if Dad knew I was in his study or not; he just continued to brood over contracts, building codes, or historic preservation guidelines. I was reading my favorite book,
The King’s Thief
, a fantasy novel about a truth-speaking thief and a king’s jester so powerful he was able to turn
upstanding people into liars. There were corrupt servants, a wicked lord, and guards set on suppressing an uprising. The plot, even though I must have read the book a dozen times, is now elusive. But I remember the map. With almost photographic detail I recall the woodcut-style village cabins, the river merely a black line separating the crowded settlement from the lord’s vast estate. A mountain chain behind the castle, separating the flatlands from the rolling hills of the lord’s hunting grounds. The village was surrounded by a hedge, adjacent to a pine forest. If you looked really close you could see the wolves lurking under the shrubs and twisted plants below the piney trees. The compass, instead of the four cardinal directions, was made up of the four elements.

Then my head starts spinning and my tongue feels as if it is too big for my mouth. A memory visits me, a map I bought at the newsstand. I close my eyes and hang on, stay in the moment.

Images pile up like heaps of leaves.
Newspapers, magazines. Cigarettes, candy, flowers. A soda dispenser. Chinking coins as a man with a turban dropped the change in an ashtray atop the
New York Times
.

The next day, during our session, I curl up on the couch in Dr. Ari’s office, a pillow propped under my arm. The file in front of us has no more secrets to give away—it is on me now to solve the rest of the puzzle.

“I remembered something last night,” I say.

Dr. Ari sits quietly, his fingers interlaced, elbows propped up on his desk.

“Is there a map?” I ask and point at the folder in front of him.

Dr. Ari pulls out a thick piece of paper, folded numerous times, its edges bent and worn like a favorite childhood book. He shoves it over the desk’s glass surface toward me and pushes the button of the digital recorder.

It’s time to enter the elevator, to descend. I go down to the first floor, and feel an immense sense of calm. I take the map off the
desk and hold it. I rub it between my thumb and index finger, feeling the folds of the thick paper, an origami riddle of creases and pleats that automatically unfold but are awkward to close. I descend farther.

I hear a loud popping sound ringing in my ears. It turns into a sharp pitch, and then my ears ring. I’ve heard this sound before. Something inside of me shifts; I smell gasoline, metal, and gunpowder.

I open my eyes and I look at Dr. Ari. Everything around me starts to buzz and then the world grows muffled as if I’m underwater. Dr. Ari’s lips move but I cannot make out any words. The world around me switches to black-and-white and the silent movie is complete.

Roads, traffic lights. Rain, darkness. Upstate New York. A dot on a map. Dover.

D
over, New York. Nine thousand people on less than sixty square miles. No major highways, just two thoroughfares. Numerous hamlets and rural communities too small to be considered villages were scattered and their inhabitants rooted within its soil like the knobbed and rugged oaks, leaning with the wind. No one lived out here unless they were born here or wanted to disappear. As I drove down Route 434 toward Anna Lieberman’s house, I passed miles of dense trees that changed abruptly into open fields dotted with barns. The once-red boxes sagged toward the ground, stood abandoned, bleached and gray, ready to be taken over by nature.

Dover’s Main Street was like so many Main Streets in upstate New York. The roads, lacking white center lines, followed along the hilly terrain, flanked by small wooden houses, roads worn, not so much by traffic, but by time. Concrete cracks wove their way along the roads like snail trails. Some of the cracks were filled in with black tar, some left to deepen and lengthen. The narrow sidewalks, distorted by tree roots, were broken up by T-shaped power-poles
with their power lines draped from one pole to the next. The poles were ghostly onlookers of a parade canceled decades ago. The houses were covered by drooping roofs and surrounded by chain-link fences keeping old, arthritic dogs at bay.

Anna Lieberman’s last known address was off Route 22. Anna and David were originally from Dover, yet the farmhouse they’d grown up in and that burned down back in 1982 was located so close to Oniontown that they might as well have been from there. Oniontown is a Hudson Valley hamlet of Dover, not actually a town, but a collection of run-down trailers and dilapidated farms.

When I arrived at Anna’s, the sound of an ax splitting wood echoed down the street. A garbage truck’s diesel engine revved on and off. I passed 126 Waterway Circle slowly, taking in the house and the yard. Anna’s backyard was fenced in by seven-foot-tall sun-bleached poles.

The first word that came to mind was
warped
. The first of six houses off a cul-de-sac, 126 Waterway Circle appeared unkempt but not uninhabited. The entire neighborhood was dangling lightly off the ledge of being deemed ramshackle. There was a crooked
FOR SALE
sign posted in front of the neighboring house to the left of Anna’s.

I parked the car on the main road instead of in front of the house, got out, passed her home, and continued down the warped sidewalk. I strained to read the sign in the front yard of 128 and I took out my cell phone. I had only 5 percent of battery life left and I wasn’t going to use it on a call pretending I was interested in a house. I slid the phone back in my purse.

I turned and went up Anna’s pebble walkway, a scraggly, fuzzy mess of stones and weeds cushioning my every step. An old Chevy Caprice with mismatched hubcaps sat under a carport partially covered by a blue tarp. The fence paint was chipped, the posts’ concrete anchors gaped open, releasing the posts from their duty of keeping the fence in an upright position. Some fence sections were
standing upright, some leaning, and one was flat on the ground. The overgrown yard was covered in knee-high weeds. Whatever shrubs and bushes there were appeared wilted, their dead leaves cracked and bare roots exposed to the elements.

On the front porch wind chimes dangled from the rafters above abandoned chairs. The chimes clinked a wretched song of despair while the strings holding the metal pipes in place were about to give in to gravity. Some of the missing pipe parts had been replaced by forks, their tines bent about randomly. The drooping black roof was patched with brown shingles.

The porch slumped worse than the roof. Two crates formed a makeshift table, with two folding chairs placed on either side of them. The chairs looked as if they had been stolen from a reception; their chipped gold paint alluding to a wedding ceremony long past.

I took a few deep breaths but couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. My purse was heavy, weighed down by the loaded gun, more a good luck charm than anything else. I had never fired a gun before and the one in Jack’s closet was the first I had ever held in my hand. It was a Taurus 905, a 9 mm, whatever that meant. The gun in my purse was unnerving me, adding to my tension, and the facts I had gathered about its operation started to merge into a ball of yarn; secure engagement, ready to fire disengagement, drop the hammer manually, pull the trigger while lowering the hammer with the thumb. I had spent an entire afternoon online looking up the mechanics and how to fire it, but I had a feeling that if it came down to it, handling it would leave me dumbfounded.

A hollow sound answered when my knuckles rapped the paint-chipped door. I waited what seemed like minutes. Then, like a scene from a Dutch painting, a petite woman stood in the doorframe, in her hands a basket filled with vegetables: carrots with wilted leaves, white bulbous turnips turned purple. There was another green leafy vegetable I couldn’t identify, maybe water spinach or Swiss chard.

I recognized her immediately. Anna Lieberman’s strawberry hair was tied in a knot at the nape of her neck. Some had escaped and made her look disheveled. She looked wholesome holding the fruit-and-vegetable basket, capable of extracting life from the earth’s soil. Her hands were covered in mud, her nails rimmed with dirt. I looked up from the basket and met her eyes.

“Yes?” she asked as she considered me. She was visibly out of breath.

“I don’t mean to intrude, I . . . I don’t know, I have a question.” I swallowed hard and forced my face into a smile. “I . . . I’m sorry to disturb you. You look like you were in the middle of something. I . . .”

She smoothed a strand of hair behind her ears. She then paused as if she had decided there was no use. Her smile exposed white crooked teeth. She put the basket of vegetables on a table in the foyer. The table held a sizable stack of catalogs, the top one a glossy cover of a Greek island, judging by the white houses with blue roofs and the azure ocean in the far background. Threadbare industrial carpet, frayed at the edges, extended over the threshold. She was barefoot.

“I was out back and I wasn’t sure if I heard someone knock. How can I help you?” She looked me up and down.

“I wanted to ask you about the house. The one over there.” I took a step back and pointed at the little white house next door with the
FOR SALE
sign in the yard.

She looked puzzled, as if she was unaware it was for sale or surprised that someone wanted to buy it.

“I don’t know much about it. Maybe you should call the number on the sign and ask to see it?” She ended the sentence as if it was a question.

“How about the neighborhood, the schools? Is it pretty safe? How about break-ins? Real estate agents never tell you the truth.” I added the last sentence to let her know that I valued her opinion.

“I wouldn’t know about schools around here. I don’t have much contact with the neighbors and I don’t read the local papers.” She kept holding her soiled hands up like a surgeon ready to make the first cut. “I need to wash my hands. Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you so much. Buying a house is a major investment. I just want to make sure I pick the right one.”

She stepped back and I entered Anna Lieberman’s house. The threadbare carpet turned out to be a square piece of leftover outdoor carpeting. The rest of the floor was covered in hardwood planks, creaking underfoot.

The house was old and worn, drafty even on this mild autumn day. Straight ahead was the living room, and another hallway to the left. The kitchen, to the right of the living room, led straight into the backyard. The house smelled of mold and musty carpets, traces of furniture polish and Lysol. There was a frayed couch with lifeless throw pillows and a crooked coffee table. Countless travel magazines with glossy covers lay strewn across the coffee table and the couch. Some cover pages were torn, others had rings from sweating glasses, leaving the pages warped. The rugs crunched like straw underneath my feet. The furniture was mismatched. It was the home of a woman who had furnished a house with hand-me-downs and donations, warped and worn, one owner short of ending up in a dump or a landfill. Yet it was as clean as one could clean an old house. The colors were muted, washed out, except for the shiny travel magazines.

Anna Lieberman led me through the hallway and into the kitchen, where she pointed to a chair by a table. She rapidly pumped the soap dispenser while the water was trickling. The soap was unable to cut through the mud, so she washed her hands twice but still didn’t seem satisfied. As she applied the third round of soap, she asked, “I was just about to put on a kettle. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I don’t want to impose, really,” I said. “You’re very kind.” I
put my hands in my lap and interlaced my fingers to keep them from shaking.

“Tea it is.” She opened a cabinet door and pulled out two chipped mugs. She switched on the stove and took two tea bags out of a canister on the counter. She dropped the bags into the mugs and sat across from me on the other side of the kitchen table. Anna Lieberman’s demeanor seemed open and friendly, and I felt a sudden tinge of remorse for misleading her.

“I grew up around here and I’m looking to buy a house in the area,” I said. My inventiveness surprised me. One believable lie after the other slipped off my lips. “Actually, I’m from Poughkeepsie,” I added as I cupped the empty mug, trying again to hide my shaking hands. I had seen a sign by the road and remembered the name of a town just west of Dover. “I really like it here.” My mind was racing. I didn’t want the conversation to stall, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The silence stretched, became obvious.

Anna jerked ever so slightly when the kettle whistled. She poured boiling water into the mugs, turning it the color of cognac. A fruity aroma drifted toward my nostrils. When the wooden knob of a drawer didn’t budge, she wiggled it left and right and then fiercely yanked at it. The drawer opened and she reached for a spoon while turning toward me.

“Poughkeepsie?” she said and nodded. “That’s not far from here.” She eyed the spoon in her hand, a spoon that seemed small, almost elfin, as if made for a child. New and polished, shiny with a lavender rubber tip, ill-suited somehow.

“About twenty miles west,” I said and tried to ignore the image that burst into my mind of yet another spoon. A spoon—wasn’t it mere days ago that I had held one just like this in my hand?—Mia’s spoon, its lavender rubber tip turning white when food was too hot.

I looked toward the back door, then back at her hand again. Anna now held a regular teaspoon that didn’t resemble the one from earlier at all.

Anna returned the kettle to the stove, and while she searched the cabinet for sugar, I took a closer look around the kitchen. The counters were worn and showed deep scratches and knife marks. The table and chairs were old and chipped from use. The buffet—the glass in the doors was missing—had been repainted. The paint, a buttery yellow with a green tinge to it, had been applied in a thick coat and the wood seams appeared caulked with paint. The linoleum floor tiles had risen around the edges and emitted a crunching sound. The fridge and the stove were ancient.

The kitchen counters were cluttered with empty flowerpots, bags of seeds, cookie jars overfilled with odds and ends. Torn pages with colorful pictures of beaches and resorts covered the counters, flowerpots and soil atop, as if I had interrupted her while she was planting, repotting, and pruning right here in the kitchen.

“You have children?” she asked and ran her finger around the top of the mug.

The question caught me by surprise. As she inspected her hands for cleanliness, I took in her shabby floral blouse and the skirt. The colors were faded, yet the blouse was clean and pressed.

“One. I have just one. A daughter.” How peculiar it felt to speak of Mia as if she were safe at home with her father or a sitter. What was I even doing here? I asked myself. What did I expect to find? Lieberman wasn’t here, his sister seemed to be some meek woman in an old run-down and drafty house, tending to a garden out back. Even more peculiar was the fact that I had no idea how to even steer her in the direction of her brother and my missing child.

As I watched, Anna pulled the tea bag from the steaming mug, never flinching as she squeezed every last bit of hot liquid out of it. She got up and stepped on the foot pedal raising the garbage can lid, dropping the tea bag into the can.

A foul, irritating odor hit my nostrils. The stench was stomach churning, sinister and heavy, permeating my every pore, yet it was sweet, with an undertone of clean in a putrid kind of way, a lemony
scent maybe, but not quite as fresh, more chemical, like a potpourri. Like . . . a familiar odor, conjuring images of diapers piling up in the nursery, prompting Jack to shake his head in disapproval.

“Fertilizer,” Anna said as she stepped off the foot pedal, closed the lid, and placed a hand on top of it, as if trying to contain the odor. “Smacks you right in the face, doesn’t it?”

“Smells like dirty diapers,” I replied. I had seen a baby spoon, now I smelled diapers? My anxiety was catching up with me and soon perspiration would begin to soak through my clothes.

“You wanted to know more about the area . . .” Her voice trailed off. She paused every so often and cocked her head as if she were trying to capture a melody coming from the far distance. “Let’s see, there is a small park at the end of . . .” I let her go on and on, and smiled every time she looked up at me.

She was no longer the plain girl with the frizzy hair I had seen in the 1982 newspaper article. Sitting across from her, the differences from the older pictures of her became obvious; her face had lengthened; the bone structure was more refined, almost angelic.

I needed to know where her brother was, needed to know if he was capable of what I believed him capable of, and I wanted to hear the story of the fire, the story about her family, her brother’s story, something, really anything that would explain what he had done. Was this another one of my thoughts going astray, a thought that started out as
I wish I could talk to his sister
and then ended with me in her kitchen drinking tea?