“You want to see her?”
“Yes.” My vocal cords created a sound like sandpaper. “Please.”
I watched the waitress go to the door, following behind the man who had dropped a coin in the jukebox earlier. Anna got up and motioned me to follow them. My legs obeyed although I didn’t know who was giving the orders.
When I heard the door close behind us, the lights in the diner went out. Life unfolded in slow motion. I felt as if up were down and left were right and the world around me was becoming hazier by the second. Suddenly I was in the deserted parking lot. I turned around and watched the waitress lock the diner door. She flipped the
OPEN
sign to
CLOSED
.
There was a baby car seat sitting on the table in a booth by the window. Anna motioned through the closed door and the waitress turned the seat around.
There was Mia in her red coat and boots, clothes that had disappeared out of her closet. She held a bottle in hand, feeding in short, intense bursts, pausing every once in a while, allowing the collapsed nipple to fill with air.
Electric sparks traveled through me. I stared at Mia through the
window until our faces melted into one. I looked at my reflection and hoped to see Joan of Arc given the gift of courage, yet in the window was a wild-eyed woman with matted hair and a tearstained face.
If hell truly was a place of endless torture and pain, of fire and brimstone, my idea of it was far simpler: hell was here in front of this diner with my daughter behind glass, my drugged and frozen brain in panic, a mental fog of conflicting instructions. It was also heaven somehow, electrifying. She was alive and she looked well, even healthy.
“Don’t leave her in there,” I cried out and made toward the door.
“Don’t touch that door,” Anna said and pointed the gun through the window at Mia.
The diner lights faded in and out. I wondered what kind of drug she had put in my coffee and if it was lethal. And if I was strong enough to shatter the glass with my bare hands.
As if she’d read my mind she said, “Don’t get any ideas. I’ll shoot before you even know the gun went off. Your baby will be fine, but you look a bit green in the face. Better get in the car before you pass out.”
“Can I touch her?” I was close to passing out and all I wanted was one touch to take with me.
“Don’t be silly. All you’re gonna do is make her cry.”
“What do you want if you don’t want any money?” I asked.
“I need you to make good on a promise,” she said. “Get in the car.”
I didn’t allow myself to feel anything but detachment, for I knew if I pushed my mind any further, I’d never find my way back. The last sound was that of spitting gravel when Anna sent the car bolting into the darkness.
I
felt foggy. It was like I was there, but not quite. Then the scene outside the diner popped back into my head. I opened my eyes and to my left was Anna with one hand on the steering wheel, the other in her front pocket. I could think of only one reason why I shouldn’t reach over and turn the wheel toward a pole, and that was the slight possibility that she was going to come to her senses.
“Why’d you leave her with that woman? Please explain to me what’s going on.” It was dark and I didn’t recognize my surroundings. My speech was slow, but clear. “You brought me here just so I’d look at her through glass while she’s with some waitress in a diner?”
“Tell me about it. Nothing went according to plan. David messed up and I had to take you to the diner with me. But don’t worry, Diane will take care of the baby until her new mommy picks her up. I told you she was spoken for. And that brings me to the last part of this deal between us. Your promise.”
What do you say when you stare crazy straight in the face?
You go along with it and wait for your moment. I took long and deep breaths, realizing that the drugs were wearing off quickly.
The car pulled sharply to the left. I recognized the silhouette of the ticket booth; we were back by the side of the cornfield. Anna stopped the car and killed the engine.
“You’re going to help me bury him,” she said and pulled a lever under the steering wheel.
The trunk popped open with a loud
thud
.
“Let’s get to it,” she said, and tossed a pair of stiff working gloves at me. “Six feet long and as deep as we can dig in one hour,” she added and thrust a shovel into the wet ground.
We started digging in unison.
—
One hour later we were exhausted. The soil was soft, yet heavy. As we rested and wiggled our fingers, I felt dead inside. Lieberman could have been a time capsule for all I cared.
“There was only one reason why I sent him after you,” Anna said after she caught her breath, “but he started waving that gun before it was time. Plus he wasn’t made for this business. He dropped the blanket in the attic, he almost messed up when the cops came to my house. If they’d checked the car, they’d have found clothes and formula. He always forgot to take his meds, and when he didn’t, he was losing it by the minute. You can’t reason and you can’t do business with someone like that.”
“But he was your brother.”
“Half brother at best. We grew up in the same house, is all.”
Anna pointed to the ground, the hole barely two feet deep but long enough for a body. She lit the way with a flashlight and I did everything she told me to do. I dragged the tarp with Lieberman’s body to the hole. I rolled him in, filled the hole, and covered it with dirt, compacted the soil by stomping on it. It took me about ten minutes to bury him and get the ground even. When I was
finished, the palms of my hands and the webbing between my thumbs and index fingers were burning.
“Now I need you to write a note.” She paused for a second and pursed her lips. “Damn him, the paper is probably in his pocket.”
“I don’t think I can write anything,” I said and held my hands up, palms facing Anna. “I can’t even bend my fingers.”
She stuck her hand in her purse, rummaged, and then pulled out the receipt from the diner.
“You’ll manage.” Anna pointed to the trunk of her car and shined the light on it. “Word for word. Write: ‘Everybody, I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry for what . . .’” She paused when she realized I wasn’t moving. “‘I have done. I killed her. I’m a monster.’ Then sign your name.”
I shook my head. The pen dropped to the ground.
“I’m not going to write that. You’re even crazier than your brother.” My mind was moving at warp speed. All I had to figure out was her currency, something that made her tick more than selling Mia to a stranger. “Anna, I’m begging you. I will pay you twice as much. My money is as good as anyone else’s.”
“I don’t need your money, I need the baby. You can’t run a business without the merchandise, right?”
“I will pay you more than anyone else, I promise you. I will pay whatever you ask for.”
“I don’t need
your
money. I need a solid reputation for delivering.” Anna looked at her watch, then continued. “When they find you, which could be days or even weeks from now, they will find a woman and a confession that she has killed her baby. Having the confession means they won’t be looking for the baby or me or David, for that matter. They’ll assume the baby is in a shallow grave in the woods. Or a Dumpster somewhere.”
Anna put the receipt on the hood of the car. “You said you’d do anything for her, remember?” Anna cocked her head; her smile would’ve seemed warm to someone who didn’t know the extent of
her madness. “If you do this for me, I’ll do something for you,” she said with a tempting voice as if she were a child proposing a marble exchange.
“There’s nothing I want you to do for me but give me back my child.”
“You don’t understand anything, do you?” Anna shook her head. “You’ll be dead, either way. Nothing’s going to change that.”
I stepped back, which only caused her to raise the gun again.
“I’ll be long gone and no one will come looking for us. In return I’m willing to guarantee your daughter”—Anna paused and then straightened her arm with the gun, pointing it between my eyes—“a good family. A backyard to play in and a private school, the whole nine yards.”
If Lieberman is the Prince of Darkness, Anna is the Prince’s Darkness. “I’m begging you. I will pay you whatever—”
“I promise you no one will break her. Children can be broken easily, you know. And what kind of mother can bear the thought of that, right? What’s it going to be? Heaven or hell, both are available. It’s your choice, Mommy.”
Even if I overpowered her and took the gun, would it really matter? Mia could be, for all I knew, across state lines by now, Canada even, or on her way to Mexico. Even if I got away I’d still spend the rest of my life looking for her.
“Your choice. Do we have a deal?”
I shook my head and whispered, “Please don’t do this.”
“You’ll die one way or another. Do something good for her for a change.”
Shaking her head, Anna continued, “A nice home or she’ll spend her childhood sitting on some sicko’s lap? What’s it going to be?”
I kept myself perfectly still.
My life for hers.
My mind and my body detached from each other. I broke away from myself, floated away.
Some sicko’s lap.
What one does out of love is untouchable. It looks to mend, to make things right.
I bent over and forced my swollen fingers to pick up the pen.
Anna stepped closer, she was mere inches away from me. “A decent life for your child or a childhood in a basement.”
I willed my fingers around the pen, slid them down to the ink tip.
“White baby girls are in high demand, you know. Saudis go crazy over their skin and blond hair. Or I find her nice parents and she’ll take ballet lessons and go to summer camp.”
Everybody
, I wrote
.
I can’t go on like this
, I wrote.
I am sorry for what I have done
, I wrote and that part wasn’t even a lie.
I killed my baby
, I wrote.
I’m a monster.
—
The ravine was about one hundred yards ahead of me. Mia was with the woman who had served me drugged coffee and pecan pie. Tomorrow morning, people would crowd the diner for breakfast, eggs and bacon would sizzle on the grill, coffee brewing, biscuits rising. And tomorrow they’d find me dead in the ravine with a handwritten confession saying I had killed my daughter—a devilish yet plausible plan.
“There’s something I want you to give to her.”
I asked her if I could reach into my purse. Tinker Bell’s eyes big and blue, as resigned as I was.
Anna put the figure in her pocket. “This is what I want you to do,” she said. “You step on the gas while you hold the gun. Right before you reach the ravine, you pull the trigger. Either in your mouth or against your temple, I don’t care. I’ll keep my promise if you keep yours.”
Anna threw the gun on the passenger seat, reached over me, and put the car in drive.
“Step on it,” Anna’s voice said but it seemed like it took me minutes to process her words.
And then I did as I was told. I stepped on the gas and the car started moving. The tires dragged across the gravel, slowly accelerating. I grabbed the gun with my right hand and held it against my temple.
Fifty yards, at the most. I reached for the seat belt, tempted to unbuckle it, to get out of the car.
Some sicko’s lap,
she’d said. I had no argument left, no offer, nothing but my life for Mia’s future.
Thirty yards. The Range Rover accelerated, moved faster, much faster.
Ten yards. My entire world was covered in a sticky substance that reeked of metal.
One yard. I pulled the trigger. There were sparks and a loud pop. The back draft was horrendous. It made my hand jerk backward and I was worried if I had really shot myself, but then my ear tingled and my head snapped back. I felt as if someone had injected pepper in my veins. My body lifted off the seat and I felt weightless, like riding a Ferris wheel. It seemed like forever until my stomach dropped and the car landed. Surrounded by the sickening crunch of metal collapsing, I heard glass shattering. My body jerked in all directions. I stopped worrying and then everything went silent and dark.
And, like a death row inmate’s last meal, I asked for one last wish. The choices were endless: time travel, a reverse button, the power to become invisible, resurrecting the dead, undoing the chaotic knots of my tangled life. I must make my selection wisely. I must be precise, consider all possibilities, and leave no room for error or misinterpretation.
We were a team, my wish and I. We were immune to the distractions of screaming metal and shattering glass and death. Our creation, my last wish, was a thing of beauty, composed beyond time. It took shape, primal and powerful; Mia, I wish that we’ll meet again in another place and time, and when we do, may my body be molded perfectly so you can curl against me.
W
hen Dr. Ari and I enter the 70th Precinct on Lawrence Avenue, I recall the janitor, the urge I had felt to walk out and leave the building. I understand now that I saw the world through a lens, a lens of a brain crammed with hormones and doubts, thoughts jam-packed with contortions, deformation, distortion, and falsifications. The police would have found the dumbwaiter, would have questioned David Lieberman, everything could have been so much easier. Another notch in my belt of shortcomings.
As we pass through the glass doors and wait by the front counter, I can see our reflections in the glass. I’m disheveled and worn; Dr. Ari is pressed, lint-free, and cheerful. One impeccably dressed man, probably passing as a lawyer, and a woman with a strange haircut and a missing ear.
The clerk looks at us and motions us up to the counter. “How can I help you?”
“Detective Wilczek, please.”
The clerk picks up the phone and we sit down. After a couple
of minutes a detective in slacks and a light blue shirt, his tie tucked into his waistband, walks up to us. The gun in his holster seems too small for his body. His name tag reads
DETECTIVE ROBERT WILCZEK
.
First the name rings a bell, and then the face. I remember him from the hospital. He was one of the detectives who questioned me. His face is slack, disinterested, assuming we’ve come to report a minor incident, a stolen purse maybe, or domestic abuse.
He looks us up and down. “I’m Detective Wilczek.” Then he straightens his tie. Suddenly he perks up. “I remember you.”
“I remember you, too.”
Mrs. Paradise, children don’t just disappear out of locked apartments.
“What can I do for you?”
I had lost my child, then I found her, then I left her, and when I went back to get her, she was gone. For a while, I couldn’t remember, but now I do. And I know who took her. But not where she is now.
“I know what happened to my daughter,” I say. “I’m here to report a crime.”
He looks at me, then at Dr. Ari, who is determined to allow me to do the talking. He will speak only when I’m not capable of relaying the story. That’s how he was when we met and he hasn’t faltered since.
“My name is Dr. Ari. I’m psychiatrist in chief at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Clinic. Mrs. Estelle Paradise has been a patient at Creedmoor for the past months.”
“I remember, I remember.” The detective’s eyes light up and he clears his throat. “Let’s find a place to talk.” Detective Wilczek motions to the clerk behind the counter and asks her to call Detective Riverton and meet us in Room 1.
We walk down the corridor, its blue linoleum polished to perfection. We follow the detective, like ducklings their mother. The interrogation room consists of a table and three chairs, nothing
else. The walls are made of plastic panels, the floor covered in industrial carpet.
Dr. Ari and Detective Wilczek leave the room. I can hear them talking in the hallway, but I’m unable to make out any specific words.
After a minute or two Dr. Ari pokes his head in. He promises to send someone from Creedmoor to pick me up once the interview concludes. I’m tempted to ask him to send Oliver, but I don’t want to press my luck.
Then it’s just the two of us. We sit down, Detective Wilczek across from me, and I know this conversation is being videotaped and watched in another room, or at least recorded. Detective Wilczek can’t be much more than thirty even though I remember him looking older, yet his dark hair is thinning and I can see his shiny scalp through his buzz cut. There’s a white line on his ring finger where a wedding band used to be. His front left tooth is chipped.
I try to avoid my reflection in the mirror. I’m sure it’s a two-way mirror and I’m not ready to face more than one person at a time, not even through a wall. The only one who has heard my story is Dr. Ari and I feel as if I’m going to say the wrong thing again. I didn’t commit any crime I’m aware of, maybe not reporting the abduction, but that’s as far as my legal involvement goes. As a mother, I am guilty of countless crimes.
When I tell him about Creedmoor and Dr. Ari, Detective Wilczek interrupts me, midsentence. “I can’t get over the fact that you recovered your memory. When does that ever happen?”
I sense some excitement in his voice. I look down at my purse. “I’ve been undergoing psychotherapy and memory recall therapy.”
“I usually deal with people who intentionally don’t remember. You need to tell me more about that. I remember you had a head injury. So what caused your amnesia?”
A female detective walks in then and puts a file in front of him and I wonder if there’ll ever be a day when my whole life won’t be contained between the covers of a cardboard folder. She
introduces herself as Detective Riverton. She’s about fifty, but has the lean body of a young woman.
Three hours later I’ve told them the entire story. For years I’ve judged myself by the way people looked at me. I’m back at my parents’ funeral, people looking at me bewildered, unsure if they should stroke my hair or ignore me altogether. Wilczek and Riverton have seen a lot; I can only imagine how many dead bodies they’ve come across, how many images are etched into their brains, never to be erased, how many nights they’ve sat in their cars, in front of their houses, wives and husbands waiting, kids asleep, unable to switch off their minds.
As I told Riverton my story, I tried to decode her, interpret her body language. Did she furrow her brow, did she nod in understanding? She doesn’t wear a wedding band, but she may be a mother. A mother who also struggles and empathizes with my story or she might judge me more harshly than any man ever could.
The rest of the night unfolds in stretches of waiting and then more questions, and ultimately I am escorted outside, where there is a van to transport me back to Creedmoor “for the time being.” Detective Wilczek tells me he will drop by and have me sign the statements “once everything checks out.”
Back at Creedmoor I fall into a deep sleep. Wistful dreams and occasional moments of waking—yet I’m at peace with the chaos of my thoughts. I spend the following days in my room. Between meals and discussions with Dr. Ari about my future, I fill up an entire composition book. I don’t leave a single line blank, for its completeness gives me the illusion of also being complete myself. That’s the theory anyway. I don’t want to spend another minute wondering what I might not remember in the future. I feel as if I’ve been floating in open water and I’ve come upon an island that is able to sustain me and I don’t ever want to be caught off guard again.
Two days later I get my release papers.
“We checked out your story,” Wilczek says.
“Upon entering, the officers . . .” His muffled voice echoes in my head, as if he’s speaking down a well. I allow his words to unfold in front of me like a movie: Entering Anna’s house, the officers walk with a mission, threadbare carpet underneath their feet. Their eyes glance over the shiny travel catalogs in the living room. They hurry down the hallway, enter the room in which I saw Anna from the street, holding my daughter.
“There were lots of baby clothes and toys,” Wilczek says and now he no longer looks me in the eyes, but reads off his notes as if he can’t remember the details. “The clothes range from newborn to school-age children. We found photos, ledgers with names and dollar amounts, dates, and even contact information. We’re checking into missing children’s cases all over the state. There’s a couple of promising leads but nothing I can elaborate on at this point. It’ll probably take months to sort it all out.”
If I’m not the only one whose child they’ve taken, then there are other mothers out there . . .
I can’t even allow myself to complete the thought. My own loss is all I can handle, I’m not equipped to take on someone else’s burden.
Entering the kitchen, the officers found the yellow floral china I described and the baby spoon. They didn’t find any dirty diapers underneath the plastic pots and empty seed packages in the garbage bin.
“There were empty diaper boxes and wipe wrappers. Nothing contained any DNA. The garbage had been collected that day and taken to the landfill.”
Officers found the cornfield yet the decrepit barn has not been located. He calls that fact “rather insignificant.”
I wonder what “rather insignificant” means. Maybe it’s just proof that crazy people get away with holes as long as they are irrelevant and inconsequential to the story itself.
The encounter in front of Anna’s house also checks out; no
official report was filed but two Dover police officers confirm an insignificant altercation between three parties on Waterway Circle.
“The diner’s had many owners over the years, this year was a seasonal operation. It closed down right after Halloween once the corn maze was shut down. It’s the only one in the entire county so there’s quite a bit of traffic. An elderly couple leased the diner but hired seasonal waitstaff on a part-time basis and there’s no paperwork, no contracts, nothing. And if that wasn’t disappointing enough, they hired a professional cleaning company. The entire building has been bleached and wiped clean, no DNA, not even a partial print.
“Forensics dug up Lieberman’s body. He died of a gunshot wound to the back. That’s preliminary but quite obvious.”
I buried a body. I dug a hole and buried the body of the man who abducted my child. I’m not haunted by any of this.
“There’s an APB out on Anna Lieberman, but so far we haven’t been able to locate her. I don’t see how she can get your daughter out of the country—she has no birth certificate, no passport, nothing. Sooner or later her cover will blow. The moment she seeks medical help, tries to enroll her in day care or school, it’ll arouse suspicion. Even a traffic violation or her name showing up on a lease will trigger the system. It’s only a matter of time. She can hide, but only for so long.”
School, day care. “That could be years from now,” I say and shake my head. “What do I do in the meantime? Where do I look?”
“I’m not sure if looking for her is the answer. Anna counted on everyone to believe the suicide and the confession story. The fact that you survived makes it almost impossible for her to find, please excuse my choice of words, a taker for your daughter. It’ll be easier looking for both of them together than separate. I know it’s hard but you have to wait this out.”
Hundreds of missing children every day. Their photos in store
windows and on milk cartoons. I’ve scanned the posters before, appalled by the years that have passed since they’ve been last seen. Teenagers usually, disappeared, never to be seen again. Some thought to have run away. Running away is not a crime. Are they even looking?
Don’t fight it
, I tell myself,
there’s no end to this
.
It’s a bottomless pit, my daughter just one of many.
“I want to apologize to you but I know there’s nothing I can say to make this better, so I’m not even going to try.”
Sorry.
The cheapest of all words. It’s as if he’s trying to cut open the lion and retrieve its victim, expecting life to go on. It doesn’t work that way.
“Let us do the looking. All you have to do is be patient,” he adds.
“Right,” I say and put on my gloves.
—
Patience. It’s starting to wear thin and I haven’t even left Creedmoor yet. For every minute Mia’s out of my reach, I gain something else. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s growing. Resolve maybe? Courage? Hope? Maybe I needed to lose one thing to gain another, for there’s a limited number of items I can carry in my hands. If I let go of the pain, I pick up hope. Is that how it works?
The next day, as Creedmoor sits silently overlooking the East River, I say goodbye to Oliver. It’s not a traditional farewell—no embrace, no small talk—just me touching his hand ever so slightly as I walk past him, more of a clandestine ritual on my part. For anyone watching this exchange, it’d appear to be a coincidence. The acorn he gave me is in my pocket.
Marge cries as I hug her good-bye. Her body is large and soft, and I feel as if I’m melting into her. We promise to keep in touch but we both know that’s not going to happen.
I walk down the pebble walkway on the north side of Creedmoor.
I count five floors down and three up to locate my former room. I find the nest I used to watch through my window. What once was a well-built structure of tightly woven sticks and twigs is now flattened, dilapidated, and abandoned. No worrisome parents nearby to watch the fledglings on their clumsy flying attempts. Life goes on in so many ways.
Dr. Ari sees me in his office one last time. I attempt to take it all in: the diplomas on the walls, the scent of shoe polish, the view of the smokestacks in the distance.
“I wanted to wish you good luck,” he says later as he escorts me outside. “And that I hope for a happy ending to the story.”
“There’s nothing else I can do but wait for Anna to make a mistake. Luck can’t be all I’ve got left,” I say and my eyes tear up. I blink them away.
“I’m a great believer in luck,” he says and closes my file for the last time.
“Speaking of happy endings, you never told me about the woman with the egg.”
Dr. Ari furrows his brow, then his eyes light up. “I forgot I told you about that.”
“So, what was it if it wasn’t the egg?”
“She’s passed since and I guess it’s okay if I share her story with you. It was the spoon she ate the egg with.”
“The spoon?”
“She ate off a silver spoon. The silver reacted with the sulfur in the egg, created a tarnish on the spoon. The spoon had a foul taste and reminded her of a rather violent experience in her life. The memory emerged and rather than deal with it, she shut down.”
“So that’s the story of the egg woman.”
“That’s it,” Dr. Ari says.
“Will I ever see you again?” I say after a long silence.
“You have no need for a man like me in your life.”
As he extends his hand, I grab it and pull him into an embrace. He’s stiff in my arms, but only for a second. Then he softens.
I watch him through the rearview mirror of the cab one last time, straightening his tie and removing invisible specks of lint from his suit.