“You must be doing a lot of gardening,” I said. “Just vegetables or flowers or both?” I looked at the floating tea bag inside my mug and reached for the sugar.
“A little bit of everything,” Anna said and pushed the sugar bowl toward me. Her hand, free from the mud and dirt, seemed malformed, its movement suggestive of arthritic joints. The edges of the inside of her palms were pulled together by scars, affecting muscles and tendons, restricting the movement of her fingers.
“I didn’t mean to bother you, I saw the house for sale as I was driving by, and I want to use some insurance money from my house in Poughkeepsie to buy a home here in Dover.” I kept on going as if in a trance, trying to erase baby spoons and foul smells from my memory. I needed to focus and concentrate. “It’s not a lot of money and I still have to buy furniture and appliances. Everything I owned”—I paused to make it more dramatic—“burned up in a fire. I have nothing left.” I lowered my head, partly to play the role of a victim, partly because I didn’t think I looked sincere telling the tale.
Anna didn’t answer. I looked up to see the impact. Her eyes darkened and my words rested between us like the sugar cubes in the chipped bowl. She stirred her tea, her hands clasping the spoon, her index finger pointing aimlessly about.
I was good. I was surprised how good I was. I never thought that I’d be able to con my way into her house and then dupe my way into her kitchen. It was easy, surprisingly easy. I wanted her to gently descend into the past and reappear with a story. The story of the 1982 fire and her brother, David Lieberman. And then we’d talk about him being a kidnapper.
“A fire? Your house burned down?” Her voice cracked and her body shifted in the chair. Her spoon dropped with a
clang
back into her mug. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did anybody get hurt?” Her eyes were big, her pupils dark. She hid her hands underneath the table.
“No, it was just an electrical fire, some faulty wiring. I wasn’t home when it happened.”
My next question would be
So, you live here alone?
Then
Do you have family?
Then I’d say
A brother? Tell me about him
, then
I need to tell you something, I want you to hear me out. It’s about your brother . . .
Suddenly she cocked her head and got up, as if she’d heard something, as if a sound, undetected by me, was tearing at her. I
heard a gentle whimper trail toward me. Almost like a baby’s whimper the moment right before they wake up.
I’d seen, no, I had imagined Anna handling baby spoons, then I’d smelled diapers. There were bags of fertilizer and clearly she was a gardener; I had smelled odors that weren’t there. Now I actually heard a baby whimper. I was afraid of what I was going to imagine next. I felt hot; sweat started to form on my forehead. In a matter of seconds my body was covered in it, forming freely like condensation.
“I think I better leave,” I said and got up, knees shaking. “I’ll have someone show me the house. You’ve been very kind, thank you for the tea.” I grabbed my purse tighter.
She got up and walked me to the front door.
I reached for the doorknob.
“Wait!” Her voice made me turn around and stop in my tracks. “My name is Anna Lieberman. I didn’t get your name?”
She knew nothing about me—so what did it matter?
“Estelle. Estelle Paradise.”
I turned back toward the door, reaching for the knob again. She stepped past me and stood between me and it, a barricade.
“You’re not looking for a house, Estelle Paradise. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?” Her eyes were piercing, demanding an answer.
I tried to think of something to say, explain myself, but my mind was blank.
“I’m looking for your brother, David.”
“You’re looking for my brother?” Her eyes flickered as if she was checking her brain for the puzzle pieces she needed to fit together to make sense of everything. I almost felt sorry for her. “Why would you come here asking me about a house and why would you talk about fires when you’re really looking for my brother?” Her voice was soft, almost gentle now. “What is it you want?”
“I’m not here to cause you any trouble, I promise. I have questions.”
She wore a puzzled expression, one I was unable to interpret. Confusion? Fear even?
Anna repeated, “What is it you want?”
Where to start.
My baby’s gone, your brother took her. I found Tinker Bell in his apartment and strange newspaper articles.
“I think your brother took my daughter.”
“My brother took your daughter?” She looked around as if to make sure no one was watching us.
I kept looking at her, undeterred. “I need to talk to him. Tell me where he is,” I said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“This is not about you. Where is your brother?”
She was silent for a long time. “David, David, David,” she finally said, shaking her head from side to side.
I raised my brows, clutching my purse. “He took my daughter. I have proof. I need—”
Anna shook her head again and gestured with her hand.
Stop making things up
, she seemed to say. “What is he to you? How do you know him?”
“We live in the same house. Do you know where he is?”
“I can’t help you, you need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving until you tell me where he is.”
She put her hands on my shoulders, turned my body away from her, and started pushing me toward the front door. I turned back, pushed her hands off me, and looked her straight in the eyes.
“He took my daughter. Please tell me where he is.”
“If you don’t leave right now, I—”
“Just answer my questions and I’ll leave. Please! He can give her back . . . and I won’t tell the police.”
We stood in silence for a while, then I heard her voice, childlike.
“Why don’t you just go to the police then and tell them?” She stepped closer. I felt her hot breath on my face. She ushered me out the front door. “If you come back, I’ll call the police myself,” she said and slammed the door shut.
I fought the urge to knock again. I got in my car and sat without moving. The air in the car was sticky and stale, and I rolled down the window. There was a scent of ozone in the air as though a storm was approaching.
I glanced at an open window by the side of the house and watched Anna’s silhouette holding an object in her arms. It was small and seemed to shift back and forth. Her silhouette bent over, one arm extended, grabbing something, and whatever it was she held in her arms, it stirred. It moved away from her body and then it broke out into a wail. A wail with a familiar urgency and intensity. The crying stopped as suddenly as it had started.
My hands started shaking with renewed vigor. Another cry sped toward me, making me gasp for air. There was a part of my mind that responded to its familiar frequency, some sort of acoustic cue of recognition, etched deeply into my brain. The baby spoon, the garbage smelling like soiled diapers, the whimper, no longer even close to being a figment of my imagination. My mind burst into a riot of images and questions, none of which I could understand or answer. A tremor took over my body and I felt as if millions of flames were igniting all over my skin. I closed my eyes and allowed the adrenaline to flood my body. This was real, this was a primal response to the wavelength of a baby’s cry. Mia’s cry.
Lightning exploded. Like two sides of a coin, thunder followed and a booming sound fell from the sky. Then the skies unleashed steady droplets of rain. The drips turned into large drops, then a million spatters covered the pavement. The air was fecund with the scent of soil and earth, and within seconds water ran down Anna’s driveway and joined the runoff, disappearing into the storm drains of Waterway Circle.
Through the rain I watched a truck pull into Anna’s driveway. The man who got out of the truck was the same man who had taken my child, and he was no more than one hundred feet away from me. David Lieberman opened the trunk, took out a bulky bag of what seemed like clothes or blankets. He walked toward the house and opened the front door, stomped his feet twice on the doormat, turned and scanned the skies, then stepped over the threshold.
All I could think of was to put my foot on the gas and drive, my brain paralyzed by the metronome-like
flip-flop
of the windshield wipers marking every inch of distance I was putting between my daughter and me.
A
s I slowed the car and turned into a dirt road by a tree line, I passed one of the barns I had seen on my way into town. The unpaved path, rendered awash with mud, seemed as if it could easily bury car tires, and the standing puddles grew larger by the minute. I opened the car door and made my way toward the barn.
Inside, the heavy doors swung shut behind me. I heard the
pitter-patter
of the raindrops surrounding me like calming white noise. The inside greeted me with a scent of hay, manure, and the lingering perspiration of horses. The interior was even more dilapidated than I expected; the wood was cracked and gray, enduring the elements, bearing storms and scorching sun. One strong puff of wind, one more breeze catching the rafters just right, and it would be gone.
I had imagined this moment so many times, the moment I was going to find my daughter, yet I felt empty inside. I’d thought when the time came, I’d scream bloody murder, call 9-1-1. But none of that happened. My back propped up against a post, I sat on the
ground, and I pulled my knees to my chest. I remembered the first night Mia had slept between Jack and me. The full moon had spilled through the windows, casting an eerie silver-blue hue on the entire room. Mia looked as if she were made of ice. Images popped in my head like jumpy disjointed pictures from an old reel-to-reel family movie. The hospital, Mia being born. Not sleeping, being hyperalert for days on end, being too tired to function and too tired to go to sleep. How I operated on autopilot, never really told Jack, never told the doctors or nurses, never told anyone. How I waited for it to pass, yet that moment never came. The storm had raged inside this little creature that I loved with all my might and nothing could turn the storm into something gentler. My milk not immediately coming in adding to the guilt I felt of not being able to provide for her. The intrusive thoughts that had begun to seep into my mind were elusive at first, then they had taken shape.
I reached inside my purse and cradled the gun in my hand. Something snuck into my mind and tore at me, this one image, this one thought, this one realization. Within all this darkness, I leaned toward this feeling of primitive attachment: When Mia was born and they put her into my arms, her eyes were covered in medical ointment. They were sleek, roaming, and unable to focus. As she slept, her little fist held on to the tip of my finger, her hand too small to grab it in its entirety. Her need to attach herself to me was ancient, primal, her thin and translucent skin stretching over her skull, her weightless hair, her purple nails, like a message from the universe.
With the gun in my right hand, I forced myself to imagine the future, and I completed the story. I saw flashes of a girl, her life, a succession of milestones—crawling, walking, running—flashes that were branded into my mind.
Mia dancing, twirling, reaching for a hand to keep her from falling.
Reaching for me. Bows in her hair.
Bandannas tied around her head like good luck charms.
Chipped nail polish and crooked tiaras.
Birthday cakes.
Playground games and friends and sand castles.
Good-night stories.
While I sat there, staring at the icy metal of the muzzle, seconds before I’d allow a bullet to rip a hole through my brain, in that very moment, I felt as if some higher power was watching over me, sitting on the dirt floor of the barn next to me.
Rain ran down my back when another lightning burst followed by thunder shook the barn, sending a spark of light through the holes and gaps of the rafters and the worn-out wood. For a second a bright flicker descended onto the ground, dirt particles floating about like magic fairy dust.
I remembered my mother’s voice, soft and soothing, telling me that thunder is the sound that lightning makes, how one thing occurs and another follows. I knew it was not too late. Mia was a drop of ink in a glass of water; I was forever changed by her existence and she was right down the road. I left the barn doors gaping open behind me, got in the car, and drove back to Dover to claim my daughter.
—
When I reached Waterway Circle, the wipers squeaked their way across the windshield, a motion allowing, even if only for a second, an unobstructed view of the world. Suddenly everything was clear. There was no more room for interpretation, just my heart beating in cadence with my daughter’s heart in the house in front of me.
The rust red Chevy Caprice still sat under the carport, Lieberman’s truck was still parked in front of the house. I got out of the car, walked to the front door, and knocked. There was no answer.
“Anna, I need to talk to you.” I knocked again. “Anna, please, open the door.”
I knocked again. Nothing.
I stepped away from the house to get a good look at the nursery window and saw that the shades were drawn. Suddenly I heard the front door screech and Anna stood in the doorway.
“Yes?” she asked, her right hand resting casually on the doorframe. Anna now wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and had her hair in a high ponytail. She also wore makeup.
“Anna, I heard her cry. I know you have my baby. I know all about—”
“I think you’ve got the wrong house.” She hesitated for a second, then furrowed her brows. “Are you okay? Are you in some kind of trouble?” Anna looked over my shoulder, scanning the street. “You’re soaking wet.”
“No, no, no, no, no. Please don’t play games with me. I know what I heard, and I smelled diapers, I saw the baby spoon.” I reached inside my purse and grabbed my phone. “I’m calling the police.”
A shadow appeared next to Anna: David Lieberman, the Prince of Darkness. And together they stood on the front porch, like Grant Wood’s image of
American Gothic
, only more sinister and without the pitchfork.
“Is there a problem?” David Lieberman spoke softly, as if not to upset me any further.
“Where’s my daughter?”
They both stepped farther out on the porch. I took a step back.
“I told her she’s at the wrong house. Maybe a mix-up or something? She’s insisting on a baby being here,” Anna said, her voice slow and soothing.
“A baby?” Lieberman put his arm around Anna’s shoulder. “Like my wife told you, maybe you got the wrong address?”
“Tell him, Anna, tell him I was here. And I know you have a baby upstairs, my daughter, Mia. I heard her cry. Tell him I was here earlier, tell him, Anna.”
She remained perfectly still. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life. You’re not making any sense.”
“We sat in your kitchen, you made tea, and the cups were white, with yellow flowers, you—”
“I’ve never seen you in my life.”
My voice turned into a pleading stream. “You made tea for me, and you told me about the house next door. We talked about the neighborhood.” I stopped just long enough to catch my breath. “You plant vegetables in your garden. And flowers. You have my daughter. He”—I pointed at David Lieberman—“lived upstairs from me in Brooklyn and he took her from me. He climbed down into my kitchen, he took her, and I want her back.”
David Lieberman’s face was blank. “Lady, there’s no baby, there are no teacups with yellow flowers, no diapers, none of that. I don’t know what to tell you but you’re freaking my wife out and I need you to leave.” His voice rang false, high-pitched, almost forced in its controlled state.
“I was here earlier. Please, Anna”—I pointed at the chime dangling off the rafters—“all this was here earlier. The chime, the chair on the porch, the house next door for sale, everything.”
“You don’t take no for an answer, do you? I’m telling you you’re at the wrong house and I need you to stop screaming on my porch and leave. We don’t know you.”
I stuck out my neck, trying to look past them into the house. They mistook my movement as threatening and David Lieberman stepped forward, grabbing Anna’s hand. They were closing ranks.
“Don’t come any closer. Get off my porch.”
I took a step back, decided to play my last trump card. “I’m going to call the police. They’ll sort it all out.” I held up my cell phone. “I’m not bluffing. I’m calling the police.” I pushed a random button and the phone came on just long enough to see the charge indicator blinking. Then it turned off.
“Go ahead—call the police.”
“My phone is dead,” I said, barely able to control the tremor in my voice.
Lieberman reached in his pants pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and waved it in front of me. “You should always charge your phone. In case of an emergency, you know.” Lieberman smiled.
“Is this a joke to you? Is this a game you’re playing?” I took a step forward and picked up the chair on the porch. “I will scream so loud the entire neighborhood will hear me.”
Their faces remained blank—not so much as discomfort in their demeanor. Anna turned and disappeared into the house.
“Go ahead,” Lieberman said and put his hands in his pants pocket. “For someone who goes around knocking on doors and accusing people you’re not very convincing. I’m just trying to help you,” he said and shook his head.
“Someone help me,” I screamed as loud as I could. “They have my baby. They took my daughter from me. Help.” I lifted the chair up in the air and pointed its legs toward the window next to the front door.
Lieberman looked at me in disbelief. He stepped forward and grabbed my left wrist and shook it until the chair landed on the porch. I jerked away from him but he held on to my fingers and bent them backward, making me wince.
“HELP. I NEED HELP.”
Lieberman grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the front door. I managed to leave bloody streaks down his forearm when a flashing light made both of us turn around.
A police cruiser came to an abrupt stop and two uniformed officers walked toward us. One of them spoke into the radio attached to his shoulder. Lieberman let go of my wrist.
“What’s going on here?” asked the older and heavier of the two officers. “Tell me what’s going on here.”
“You need to search the house. They have my baby,” I said and ignored his hands gesturing me to step back farther.
“I need you to calm down and follow my instructions. Please step off the porch. I need to see some identification.”
“You asked what was going on. I’m trying to tell you—”
“Identification?”
I pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet and I handed it to him. He glanced back and forth between me and the picture.
“Now tell me what’s going on.”
“I need you to search the house. They have my daughter. I was here earlier and now they pretend they don’t know me.”
“I need you to explain the situation to me, I don’t need you telling me what to do.”
“My baby is in there, I need you to—”
“Please, I can’t just conduct a search of a private property, it doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work then? How can I get you to search the house?”
“Who called 9-1-1?”
“One of the neighbors must have heard me scream and—”
“I did, I called.” Anna stepped back onto the porch and folded her arms in front of her body. Her voice was shaky. “This woman knocked on our door. She’s not making any sense and I need her to leave.”
“Sir?” The police officer looked at Lieberman. “What’s going on there?” he said and pointed at Lieberman’s arm. “Your arm’s bleeding. Are you hurt?” The second officer gestured for me to follow him and led me to the front lawn, away from the house. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“He’s my neighbor,” I said, pointing at Lieberman. “I found a figurine from my daughter’s room, and he took my daughter. She’s in this house.” I pointed at 126. “I heard her cry through the window and I—”
“I’m having trouble comprehending your story.”
“No, no, no, you don’t understand.” I took a deep breath in,
hoping it would allow me to sound more coherent. “Look,” I said and reached into my purse for the Tinker Bell figurine.
He stepped back and put his hand on the holster of his gun. “Do not reach inside your purse again. Take your hand out and calm down so we can make sense of this.”
I jerked my hand back.
The first cop glanced left to the
FOR SALE
sign in the yard of the house next door. He turned toward David Lieberman. “Is this your residence, sir?”
“That’s correct. I live here with my wife.”
“Come back over here, Mrs. Paradise. But keep your hands to yourself and follow my instructions.” The junior cop and I joined them on the front porch. “You live on”—he studied my driver’s license again—“517 North Dandry, in New York City. This gentleman”—he pointed at David Lieberman—“lives at 126 Waterway, Dover. Hours away from your address.”
“He’s my neighbor, he lives above me. There’s a dumbwaiter and I found—”
“Just answer my question. How is he your neighbor if you live hours apart?”
“He’s my upstairs neighbor at 517 North Dandry. Why won’t you believe anything I’m telling you?”
“Ma’am, let me assure you, I’m not making any assumptions. It’s just that you’re not making any sense. We received a call about a trespassing violation. You trespassed onto their property and—”
“Why don’t you ask them for identification? This is David and Anna Lieberman; they are brother and sister, not husband and wife.”
“I don’t need to identify myself,” Lieberman interjected. “I can’t help crazy people coming to my door. I have rights, you know.” Lieberman threw the officer an “I told you she was crazy” look.
“This back-and-forth is not helping any. Please step over here
with me, and you, sir, ma’am, please stay on the front porch until I’m done questioning the lady.”
We moved down the driveway. I realized that my clothes and hair were soaking wet and that, with every step, my feet made a squishing sound. I was afraid he’d ask me to hand him my purse, where he’d find the gun. If he did, I’d be handcuffed and in the back of the cruiser before I could explain anything else.
“Okay, Mrs. Paradise, one thing at a time,” the first cop said and took out a small green notepad. “You are reporting that they have your baby and that he’s your neighbor. Is he the father of the baby? I’m not sure I’m following you.” He closed his notebook. “What I can tell you is that I have no legal cause to search their house. You’re hours away from where you live and I can’t make sense of your story.”