“Unfortunately it took the lab this long to decipher the note. This could have been a lot easier.” He hands it to me. “Would you read it to me?”
I extend my hand and hold the paper between my thumb and my index finger. The eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper is a copy of a torn handwritten note with a reddish tint. I skim over it. The letters seem oddly disjointed, I can’t tell where one word ends and another one starts. There are no more than twenty words on the page.
“Read it out loud.” Dr. Ari’s voice is reaching me from afar.
I recognize the handwriting as my own; rushed, hurried, yet mine. I read it in silence. The words wash over me, topple me like waves disintegrating a frail sand castle on a beach. And then I make a mistake. I don’t enter the elevator, my place of calm reprieve, instead I go to Stone Harbor, the beach where my family used to spend summers when I was a child.
There were giant rocks above the tide line, butter yellow and blue-green, pink as salmon and mother-of-pearl. The tide caressed the sand, then my toes, just to roll out again into the vast sea. Spitting waves, salty air, and chapped lips. Pink and purple spiny sea urchins, tangled algae around my ankles. Barnacles and seaweed in the dead sand, so serene against the violent waves.
Little water and lots of sand or you destabilize the walls and they will buckle under the weight, just like a landslide
, my dad told me as I scooped the fine grains into a pile. I used the perfect proportions of water and sand but I stood no chance. I made a fist and felt the coarse texture of the grains as I watched a wave demolishing my castle.
“Read it out loud to me,” Dr. Ari insists and leans back in his chair.
“‘Everyone, I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I killed my baby. I’m a monster.’”
My mind is hazy and that’s where I keep those words, in my mind. Then there’s a hard painful lump in the back of my throat and then the tears begin to form. Time stands still and I can’t remember any moment of all my life but I see my own bloody hands, my daughter’s tearstained cheeks. The story I’ve been telling was nothing but a sand castle and it was just swept away by an ocean wave. I feel myself breaking. Like a vase falling onto a tile floor, my mind shatters into pieces. I know there is no hope in trying to put anything back together, so I don’t even try. I just sit and stare at my hands. I’ve reached my limit and now I’m just done.
A powerful current strikes a nerve in my head and I hear screaming. The voice is mine, yet it seems so distant. I don’t recognize any of the words. And then I crack wide open.
When I wake up, I’m in a daze. Not like waking up from a deep sleep, but having been chemically pacified and strapped down. The nurse sitting next to me gets up and wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm. This isn’t supposed to end this way.
I killed my baby. I’m sorry.
How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another!
Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland
“C
all the police,” I demand two days later when we resume our sessions. “I’ll plead guilty. Let’s just end it now.”
Dr. Ari and I have been going at this for almost an hour. I’ve come to accept the truth yet he seems to circle around it without confronting it straight on.
“One thing at a time. Let’s—”
“I wrote a note saying I killed my daughter. All this here, what we’re doing every day, is just a farce. Call the police.”
“But her body, where is her body? What happened and how and when? There are too many questions that haven’t been answered yet. I won’t allow you to give up.” He raises his hands. “This back-and-forth isn’t helping. Let’s stay focused and talk about the note for now.”
“It’s not a note, it’s a confession.”
“Do you remember writing it?”
“Do I remember writing it?” This is getting funnier by the minute. “I’m done with this. I want you to call the police so I can turn myself in. It is what it is and you need to accept it, it’s over.”
“Do you remember writing it?” he repeats.
“No, I don’t remember writing it but it’s my handwriting. It looks rushed in a way, but I wrote it.”
“I want to show you something.”
“There’s more? God help me, what’s next? A map with a cross where I buried her? Maybe I carved my initials into her skin?”
Dr. Ari hands me a piece of paper. “There’s something I’ve neglected to tell you.”
There’s no such thing as Dr. Ari neglecting to do anything. Everything he does, he does for a purpose. I grab the piece of paper.
“It’s the same note—I don’t understand.”
“Flip it over,” he says.
On the back of the paper there isn’t any writing, just random bloody smudges.
“Is this a joke?” I ask.
“Look closer.”
I squint my eyes. There’s the faintest outline of printed words. “I can’t make out the words, but there are some numbers. A phone number maybe? I don’t get it.” I flip the note over and over again. “I really don’t get it.”
“It’s a receipt from Diane’s Diner, a place off 434. A receipt for two cups of coffee and two pieces of pecan pie.”
“I had coffee and pie and then jotted down a confession.” I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s quite a story.”
“Thanks to Google I’m a step ahead. I took the liberty to print out a picture of the place.” Dr. Ari opens the manila folder and pulls out a photograph.
I try to make sense of the receipt, but it doesn’t add up. I don’t like pecan pie, the nuts stick to my teeth and the hint of maple is just not my thing.
“I don’t even like pecan pie,” I say.
Enter the elevator.
I study the photo of Diane’s Diner. Diane’s is a one-story brick
building with a neon sign in the window, a jukebox visible through the front door. I hear a melody from deep within. Strained tunes. Refrains. It tugs at me, gently at first, then it pulls me toward the building’s front door. Images rush at me, like a crowd of children waiting to be acknowledged, one by one. Infantile, incomplete. But then they mature, fill out.
A fork scratching against a white china plate.
Pecans shaped like miniature brains.
“A song,” I say, “I remember a song.”
I need to go back, back to when I saw the flash, when the gun went off. I remember the sound of the gunshot.
Deeper. Go deeper.
Loose rubble under my knees. Raspy breathing. Legs like lead, heavy. My pounding heart, throbbing pain.
Deeper.
Plastic. Blue. Indigo. Or periwinkle. Persian? Royal blue? Navy blue. A tarp. A navy blue tarp.
I sit up straight and uncross my arms.
Deeper.
I consider making the buttons on the elevator disappear. Whatever I find at this diner, maybe I won’t want to return to reality.
—
Lieberman stood in front of me, legs parted, his heels digging into the gravel. He pointed the gun at me.
First a flash, then an explosion ripped through my eardrums. My ears went deaf then there was a loud ringing tone. I waited for the pain, the burn, yet nothing happened.
Lieberman’s body jolted toward me as if someone had shoved him in my direction. He fell on the ground, face-first. He lay motionless, as if struck by lightning. I watched a dark spot on his back expanding into a large crimson sphere.
I stared into the direction of the sound, the same direction of
the flash. A shadow emerged from behind the car. The figure took shape, like a specter gaining strength and coming into focus. A woman. Gun in hand.
“Good-for-nothing bastard,” Anna Lieberman said. “Never does what he’s told.” She stared at his bloody back as if it meant nothing, then disappeared into the dark of the night. I was left to watch Lieberman’s body. The crimson that had covered his back had pooled by his side.
I didn’t have the strength to get up but I managed to shift my weight away from my knees. Seconds later the Caprice’s headlights moved toward me. Anna stopped next to Lieberman’s lifeless body.
“Can you get up?” Anna asked and got out of her car.
I shook my head. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“Try.” She grabbed my elbow and pulled me on my feet, reaching around me, cutting the plastic zip ties. She pulled a blue tarp from the trunk. Anna shrouded her brother’s body with the tarp, tucked it underneath him on the side, and then rolled him on top of it like a nurse changing the sheets of an immobile patient.
I followed her commands. We pulled Lieberman about fifty feet until we ended up by the entrance of the corn maze. We dragged him inside the booth, dropped the front panel, and closed the side door.
In the car she sat only inches away from the steering wheel. She squinted her eyes as she drove through the night, southbound on 434. Finally she made a turn into a Chevron station and parked by the side door.
GET KEY FROM MANAGEMENT
, a sign said.
“Listen closely, Estelle Paradise. We don’t need anyone else to get involved, okay? Do I have your word?”
I nodded. I felt hope. For the first time in days I felt something resembling hope.
“I’ll get the key.” She got out of the car and locked the doors. “Wait right here.”
There’d be concessions, there’d be promises not to call the police. I’d assure her I’d never ever tell anyone. David Lieberman was dead and I’d promise to take these days of horror to my grave. I was prepared to give her everything I owned, I’d promise her anything, I’d do anything for Mia. Anything.
Anna returned with a key. “Go clean yourself up,” she said and handed me a plastic bag. “There’s some wipes in here. Put on the clean clothes and don’t leave your bloody clothes in the bathroom. Throw them in the Dumpster over there,” she said and nodded toward the side of the building. “They didn’t have any shoes, so clean yours the best you can. Hurry up, we don’t have all night.”
Getting out of the car I could barely straighten my legs and all but hobbled to the restroom. I unlocked the door. Inside, I turned on the water and washed the filth off my hands.
I sat my muddy shoes in the sink and watched the dirt trail down the drain. I put on the gray hoodie and the white T-shirt, and a few minutes later I walked out with the bag of bloody clothes in hand. As instructed, I tossed the bag in the green Dumpster by the side of the building.
We left the gas station parking lot and less than five minutes later Anna pulled by the side of a building with large letters on a neon sign illuminated in a timed sequence.
DIANE’S DINER.
Anna motioned me to get out of the car. “No funny business. Not a word, or you’ll regret it.” She stood merely inches from my face, reached behind her, and pulled the gun from her waistband and pushed its barrel into my stomach. “I think we just established that I don’t warn people before I shoot.”
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“To eat,” she said and pointed at the front door of the diner.
“I knew you’d do the right thing,” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said and pulled a rubber band out of her
pocket. She gathered her hair, smoothing the sides with the palms of her hand.
I had hope. I still had hope.
—
Diane’s Diner was all stainless steel and red-and-white-checkered vinyl booths. There was a wall-mounted all-day breakfast menu above the counter and specials written on a chalkboard. The diner was empty but for a man in a blue uniform reading the jukebox selection.
Anna directed me to the first booth by the door.
“Diane’s famous for her pecan pies.”
I put my hands on the table and realized that my fingernails were still rimmed with mud. Then the jukebox came on, a guitar, then a voice. Raspy, shaky. Johnny Cash.
The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bars.
“Coffee and pecan pie?” Anna asked as if it was the most normal thing in the world. She didn’t wait for my answer and called the order to the waitress behind the counter, who in turn nodded and took two mugs off a large stack.
“I promise,” I said, “I promise I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Never will I—”
She looked at me, puzzled, then she laughed out loud. “I promise you that your baby will be okay. Is a promise like that something you need?”
I nodded, feeling hot tears working their way to the surface.
“Just imagine her, in a few years, she’ll have nice clothes, a room with a pink canopy bed, more toys than she’ll know what to do with. A mom, a dad, maybe a brother or a sister. Someone who cares for her, loves her. All of that. Is that something you want?”
I swallowed hard.
“That’s one side of the coin. Would you like to hear the other side?”
“I’ll do anything.”
“I hope so,” she said and reached behind her into her waistband, retrieving the gun. She stuck it into the front pocket of her hoodie.
“Now let me paint the other picture for you. A little girl living with her daddy. And I use the word
daddy
loosely here. He
loves
her, he cares for her. He buys her pretty things. Jewelry, lipstick, dresses, whatever she wants. But she has to do something for it. Every time she gets something she has to give him something in return. The little girl loves him and she wants her daddy happy. And she does what he asks her to do. Anything.”
For a few seconds my brain refused to make the connection, but then hope ruptured. My heartbeat echoed in my ears as her words came into focus.
A middle-aged waitress with wrinkled skin that seemed too large for her elfin frame put coffee and pie in front of us.
“Let’s eat and then I’ll explain how this is going to work.”
I crushed the pecans with my fork, stirring the pieces into the filling. I was parched. The first sip of coffee was tepid and unpleasant, some sort of bitterness lingered in the back of my throat. I downed the lukewarm coffee in three gulps, its aftertaste making me shudder. When I put down the empty cup, there was white chalky residue at the bottom. It was too late; I’d swallowed every last drop.
“You’re a smart girl, I think you understood what I just told you,” Anna said and mashed piecrust with her fork. She put another piece of pie in her mouth and swallowed. “Needless to say that the plan David and I had didn’t work out.”
I sat still, unable to move. “What plan?” I wrapped my hands around the empty cup. Did the walls just shift or did I imagine that?
“Everything was okay until you showed up. David is . . .” She paused and smiled. “Was a bit on the unstable side.”
I tightened my grip around the cup and pushed the plate with the pie away from me.
“Where was I? Oh yeah, my brother. David and I find unwanted babies and sell them to people who want them.
Unwanted
basically means we take babies that are no longer wanted, or neglected. Babies from moms who can’t take care of another baby, drug users, even had one from a homeless girl, believe it or not. No agencies, no lawyers, no fees, no court papers. Nothing, just a transfer of responsibilities. Basically we match families, if you will. People pay outrageous sums for a baby. The right gender, the right age.
“And then everything went out of control. David never had sound judgment, if you ask me. All he ever talked about is this island and that beach, this hotel and that trip. Kept bringing me those catalogs with glossy pictures, Paris here and Barbados there. Always talking about where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do. What a fool.”
Fear crept into every bone of my body.
“David told me about you and from what I heard you weren’t the mommy type. Letting her cry all the time. I told him a woman like you would never go for this—you’ve got money, a house, a husband—but he didn’t want to listen. I knew it was a bad idea but he was dead set on going through with it. Said your husband was some douche bag trying to flip houses.”
“How much money do you want?”
“Money? Who’s talking about money?” Anna laughed and then turned to the waitress behind the counter.
“May I have a refill and the check, please?” Anna turned back toward me. “I’m not asking you for any money. I’m willing to offer you something, though. And if you’re as good a mother as you claim to be, you’ll give it willingly.”
The waitress appeared, filled up Anna’s coffee cup. I watched her fill my cup, then she put the check on the table.
“Whenever you’re ready,” the waitress said and scooped up the pie plates.
“We’re ready,” Anna said and dropped a few bills on the table.
My vision jerked as if I had caught myself falling asleep. My body felt weighed down as if my blood had been replaced by lead.
“I’ll pay you whatever you want, Anna. I promise. My husband owns property, how much? Two hundred thousand? Whatever you ask for, I . . .” I thought I heard my words slur, but I couldn’t be sure. The world around had turned fuzzy.
“I’m sorry, she’s spoken for.”
It was getting harder and harder to keep it together, my eyelids were twitching and out of the corner of my eye I saw the waitress pass by our table when I had just seen her behind the counter a second earlier.
Spoken for.