Remember Mia

by Alexandra Burt

  During the second week Dr. Ari talks a lot about how memory serves us. “Memory is nothing more than a concept that explains the process of remembering. Imagine you are trying to locate a parked car in a crowded parking lot. You were present at the act of parking the car, yet you’re unable to recall its exact location. Your subconscious mind knows its precise position and RMT will allow you to go back to the moment you parked the car.”

  More than anything, I’ve been surprised the DA allowed this experiment. But neither the state of New York, the DA, or the Medical Board of Psychiatry has anything to lose. It seems like they’ve agreed to ignore scientific integrity and allow junk science to give it a whirl. I am well aware that Dr. Ari is operating on the fringes of science, and my constant jokes about RMT standing for “Rogue Medical Tests” have made him smile but haven’t cracked his shell of professionalism.

  The next day, a Tuesday, when I reach his office, the door is ajar. I enter unprompted and uninvited. I’m immediately aware of his disapproving demeanor. The digital recorder, usually on top of his desk, is still tucked away in a drawer. His white coat is still unbuttoned. I have walked in without his permission, and I have not only breached regulations, but also etiquette and, more important, his rules.

  I did so because I am afraid. Last Friday, after I described to him the day my daughter Mia disappeared, he alluded to a new direction in our approach to my therapy. His eyes seemed restless that day, and I have a feeling that today we’ll dig deeper, we’ll do more than just gently brush away the sand from a shard of an ancient vase. Today we might lift the entire vase out of its sandy grave and, like archaeologists, we will proceed with caution, so as not to break the object into a million pieces.

  I sit across from Dr. Ari, who, as a matter of retaliation, ignores me for quite some time. He is not the kind of man who expects an apology and so I don’t apologize for my impulsive entry. Eventually we exchange a few banalities and he distractedly flips the pages of my journal. He seems to be rushing along today, his whole demeanor reeks of urgency, and I have a feeling something that I’m not prepared for is about to happen. The official charge by the DA’s office is less than two months away and he probably does not want me to be a nut he failed to crack. I wonder what he has left, what else he has tucked away in his pocket. Is there a magic trick that will clear the clouds in my head?

  His voice jerks me out of my thoughts. “Do you remember the conversations we had regarding forgetting and the reasons why we forget?”

  During my research hours I read up on memory and how our brain copes with the loss of it. I actually find the entire memory business fascinating, but I’m also trying to show off, want him to know that I’m committed, even after our sessions end.

  “I recall the decay theory and the interference theory. Memory retrieval—let’s assume that the memories made it all the way into long-term memory—fails because the memories have decayed over time or have been subjected to interference.”

  “Very good. Your memory loss is quite peculiar. There’s no physical evidence of brain damage and therefore I cannot say with certainty why you don’t remember. The moment we retrieve your memories, we will know the reason why. Not before then. There is no magic pill I can give you, no blood test or MRI that will tell us what causes you not to recollect the past. I hope you know that.”

  I nod but I know he’s not telling the entire truth. There’re sedative-hypnotic drugs to help uncover the past stuck in my head but he wants the truth to come out organically, unrestricted, because who’d be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, the truth from drug-induced visions?

  “But there’s something we can do,” he says. Then he throws a huge brick my way. “It’s time for a field trip to 517 North Dandry.”

  I catch the brick and cradle it. It’s made of a brown stone; it is a piece of North Dandry, where Mia disappeared. I try to embrace it and make it my own, but it topples me. My heart rate picks up and my head starts pounding. My thoughts race, culminating in one predominant message: I can’t go back there. I try to remind myself of how inevitable this pain is. I force my breathing to slow, the image of the elevator an ever-present symbol of composure.

  Dr. Ari is watching me like a hawk.

  “You seem to be feeling better. Why don’t we—”

  “I can’t do this.” I fear my voice will start trembling, but I manage to keep it stable.

  “Revisiting the place where it all happened will allow you to re-create lost memories,” he says. “There’s no need to get upset. Just let me explain what we’re going to do.”

  The place where it all happened. Hearing it out loud makes it real. What he means to say is that we’re going back to the scene of the crime.

  “Memory retrieval is much more likely when we test in the same physical context in which the memory we’re trying to uncover originally occurred. The application to re-create the past when it comes to trauma-related amnesia is frowned upon, yet the concept itself is nothing new. We will make an attempt to re-create the same emotion you felt when the memory was born.”

  Memories are born. Do they die, too?

  “You call it ‘retrieval,’ ‘physical context,’ and ‘re-creation,’” I say and gesture quotation marks every time I use one of the words with which he disguises what is really going on. “You want me to stand in her room, look at her crib?” I’m not sure if I can do what he’s asking me to do. The thought of going back to where Mia disappeared fills me with a terror that reaches around my heart, wrapping itself around it like a fist.

  I stare out the window at the scudding clouds and a concept pops into my head, an article I read in one of the medical journals scattered about the many waiting rooms at Creedmoor. Takotsubo. Stress-induced cardiomyopathy. Broken heart syndrome. Takotsubo are octopus traps that resemble the shape of the heart in an angiogram. I almost expect the sound of shattering glass and for my heart to explode into pieces.

  As if Dr. Ari can read my mind, he gets up, walks around his desk, and stands in front of me, half sitting, half leaning on his desk. He crosses his arms.

  “Those memories are potent and powerful, but your daughter’s life is at stake, Estelle. We need to try; you need to try.” His voice is urgent now and so are his eyes.

  I want to be cooperative and I want to find the truth, like him. But what I want most of all is to not have a breaking point. Like the fruit in my dreams I try not to break open.

  The crib.

  The locks.

  The empty closet.

  “How about guided visualization? Can’t I just pretend I’m there? Isn’t that the same? Maybe we can try that and then . . .”

  He shakes his head and I know I’ve lost the battle.

  “Remember I asked for your trust?”

  We are beyond guided visualization. We are beyond chatting and are all about doing. There’s nothing else to say. No sage will emerge and offer me an ancient remedy, no shaman will throw bones and predict the future, and no crystal ball will tell us the truth. Something inside me refuses to give in but I know I can’t deny the truth’s power, its thrall mysterious and potent. All I can do is tilt toward the truth and believe in its light. I’m willing to walk on a wire but at the same time I fear I’ll plunge into an abyss.

  “Do you believe in hell?” I ask.

  “Hell in a religious sense?”

  “No, hell on earth,” I say.

  He thinks about it for a while. His eyes wander, then he looks at me. “I’m Muslim,” he says. “We believe that hell is guarded by Maalik, the leader of the angels. He tells the wicked that they must remain in hell forever because they abhorred the truth when the truth was brought to them.”

  “Maalik.” I repeat the name, testing its power over me. Nothing. I feel cold inside.

  “According to my faith, once the truth is brought to you, don’t deny it. Then you have nothing to worry abo
ut,” he says.

  I’m not familiar with Islam or any other faith, I barely know how to pray the Rosary and I haven’t been to confession since my communion. Electroshock therapy seems like a walk in the park compared to the hell he has in store for me. His words echo, determined to reach me. Allow the truth to be brought to you and don’t deny it, is what he said. And I won’t have anything to worry about.

  “Going back is like paying with a pound of flesh then?” The pound-of-flesh reference strikes me as familiar, something more than just a reference to Shakespeare. My hand moves up to my ear, or rather where my ear used to be.

  “When?” I ask, and hope for weeks.

  “Soon. We still have a lot to talk about before we go but you’ll be ready. That’s a promise.”

  “I guess,” I say, and don’t mean it.

  He looks at his watch. “Tomorrow we’ll continue.”

  Continue. Go on. Marge had asked me the other day how I go on. I didn’t answer her for I don’t think I’m going on at all. I feel incomplete, as if someone’s made off with part of my body, leaving me an empty, tormented vessel. A vessel forever open topped, never again capable of holding it all in. Every hurt, every feeling magnified a thousand times. I have to find a way to go on, a way of living with this pain.

  There’s a knowledge that has manifested itself without my consent, and that knowledge is hard to swallow. I seem to have acquired it like a wooden nickel, by sleight of hand from some evil trickery. I will never be able to call it the past and bathe in some sunny, brighter future—the past is all there is for me, it’s what my life’s made out of. Just that, and nothing else.

  I remember I used to sing to Mia. I would clear my throat and she’d focus on my eyes, and then smile. The first note always made her cock her head.

  Sleep, baby, sleep.

  She’d babble along as if attempting to sing with me.

  Your father tends the sheep.

  There was a frown, a wrinkled forehead.

  Your mother shakes the dreamland tree.

  Her eyes never left my face, she’d blink, ever so fleeting.

  And from it fall sweet dreams for thee.

  The singsong tone and exaggerated pitch prompted her to screech.

  Sleep, baby, sleep. Sleep, baby, sleep.

  When I get up to leave his office that day, I realize that the birthing pain will never cease. Like a shore pounded by waves, the force is perpetual and our cord will never be severed. North Dandry is the scariest place I can imagine but there’s no alternative. And so I resign myself for the time being.

  And just as I walk out I hear his voice.

  “Tomorrow you’ll tell me about your family.”

  The weight of my family’s history is not a matter of heaviness; it is almost weightless, like a ghost.

  Tell me about your family. Such a simple request, yet such a complicated web.

  CHAPTER 13

  Someone had shoved a lump of clay into my hand. Even now, so many years later, as I sit in Dr. Ari’s office, that lump has remained with me. I fight the urge to look down at my hand. I have forgotten about it at times, but have been reminded frequently, like a pebble in a shoe, its presence rendering me unable to move. I’m struck by the intensity of my feelings, even after all these years.

  My mother had delivered a healthy baby girl: Marcia Paradise. I was eleven; my brother, Anthony, almost eighteen. It was a weekday, and we had stayed home from school. Mom and Dad had finally called and said they were on their way home. The previous night I had gone through my bookshelf and closet and selected toys and books for my new sister.

  The doorbell rang, but instead of my parents, two police officers and a lady in a beige coat stood on our front stoop. They were matter-of-fact: my parents had been in an accident on their way home from the hospital—“pileup,” the officer said, and I didn’t know what that meant but didn’t dare ask—and did Anthony want to call anybody?

  Within hours Aunt Nell, our only relative and Mom’s sister, arrived from New Jersey and made the living room couch her home. Her crimson-rimmed eyes were puffy and she had a habit of shredding boxes of Kleenexes that piled up on the coffee table. Nell and my mom, born ten years apart, had the same chestnut hair and nearly identical profiles. Nell’s hair was shorter and she seemed like a less refined and polished version of Mom.

  I remained quiet, didn’t ask any questions, I still wasn’t sure what had actually happened. The next morning I opened the newspaper and stared at the picture of the accident. There was an aerial photo taken by a news helicopter, cars piled up like an accordion—hood-bumper-hood-bumper—like endless roadkill on a gray strip artificially painted onto an otherwise green landscape. The roads seemed like a concrete maze of asphalt and steel bridges, some looping above, some ducking under. It was hard to believe that somewhere in there were my parents and my baby sister.

  I went into my father’s study and retrieved the round magnifying glass he used when studying his antique map collection. My hand shook as it hovered over the newspaper. The harder I tried to make out our white Suburban, the more the pixels began to dance in front of my eyes. It was impossible to see what was left of my family and I wondered if anyone took a photograph of the baby. I waited, for days I waited, expecting someone to pick apart the cars and uncover my parents.

  “It’s just the three of us now,” Nell said the day before the funeral, “and we have to talk about what we’re going to do.” She sipped her coffee, frowned, and added two more cubes of sugar. “A lot of things are going to change but I want you to know that”—she cleared her throat and eyed the coffee in her cup—“the sooner we make those hard decisions, the better.”

  I stared at the rings her cup had left on the poplar table, hoping they’d come out with the Old English oil Mom kept under the sink.

  “Anthony and I talked earlier and we thought it’d be best if you’d come to Jersey with me, Stella.”

  “To live?” I asked.

  “Right,” said Aunt Nell.

  “For how long?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Aunt Nell said. “After we go to Jersey, you won’t be coming back.”

  I looked around. “What about the house? All our stuff?”

  “Selling the house is the best thing to do.” Aunt Nell pushed her cup toward the middle of the table, making the rings worse. “We’ll sell it with everything in it.”

  I thought of the friends I didn’t have and the park that was too far to walk to by myself. I suddenly felt a panic I couldn’t describe.

  Aunt Nell emitted a constant odor of stale smoke and I’d seen her by the open kitchen window with a pack of Virginia Slims in her hand. Every night I went to bed imagining her falling asleep with a slim white cigarette in the living room, burning down the entire house.

  “Waisenkind,” I said and traced the coffee rings on the table with my eyes.

  “What?”

  “Waisenkind. It’s a German word, it means ‘orphan.’ We read about it in school. Children packed their suitcases the night before they were shipped off to the concentration camps. That’s what they wrote on the suitcases. With chalk. Waisenkind. An orphaned child. I want to pack my suitcase.”

  “That’s macabre and you’ll do no such thing.” Nell shook her head in disgust.

  “But what can I take with me?”

  “We’ll manage.” Aunt Nell smiled and nodded the way grown-ups do when they don’t mean what they say.

  I looked around the house. The surfaces were dusty, as if the cold ashes from the fireplace had coated the house in soot. I wanted to take the layer and wrap it around me, the first layer to hide my sadness, the subsequent layers to form a coat that would protect me, so no one could touch me on the inside. Just pretend, I said to myself, pretend you’re okay.

  Aunt Nell got up and put the cup in the sink. The rings on the
table had widened and had soaked into the wood. I doubted they would ever come out.

  That night I climbed into the attic and pulled the biggest suitcase I could find from a shelf of dusty boxes. I packed my father’s maps, my mother’s photographs, a white baby outfit and a pair of baby shoes, the newspaper with the article of the car pileup, and Anthony’s science fair award.

  Days later, when I opened the suitcase in New Jersey, it was full of clothes. When I asked Nell what she had done with the items, she just shook her head.

  “Hanging on to the past is just not very helpful in this situation. We have to make the best of it.”

  When I started to cry, she said, “This is as hard on me as it is on you. Please don’t make a scene.”

  No one had actually uttered the phrase yet, not Nell, not Anthony, had spoken the words Your parents are dead. Somehow my mind accepted their deaths but I could never shake the feeling that I had abandoned them prematurely.

  —

  “Every morning I would wake up wondering if it was all a dream. It wasn’t like I tried to convince myself they were still alive, it was more me getting used to them being gone, over and over again, and every morning, during the first few seconds after I opened my eyes, it felt as if they were still alive.” Every morning they died all over again, every morning I started out with hope and, within seconds, hope died. Every day, all over again.

  I pause and look around Dr. Ari’s office, a large rectangular space. A door behind his desk leads to what I assume is his private bathroom. I’m aware that I picked the beginning of the story, but why the clay in my hand and the funeral? I hadn’t thought of my parents in years, the last time probably in high school, about the time I stopped searching for my mother’s face in a crowd, when my heart no longer skipped a beat when I saw a white Suburban.

  “Dr. Ari, why am I talking about this? There’re no family secrets hidden away in the attic, no bodies buried in the backyard. Why are people always mesmerized with their childhoods?” I keep pulling on my shirt sleeves, they almost reach my fingertips. “I don’t have a single recollection of my childhood before the age of ten. Am I supposed to remember anything that far back? It seems like there is this point, there’s nothing before and everything after. I’m not sure I’m making sense, I guess what I’m trying to understand is if there’s a reason why I don’t remember my early childhood.”