Remember Mia

by Alexandra Burt

  “Not remembering doesn’t mean your childhood was bad, but not having bad memories doesn’t mean that it was good, either.” He seems proud of the comment but confusion must be written all over my face. He crosses his legs and shifts in his chair as if to get comfortable, ready for an extended monologue. “The first years are all about attachment. The kind of adult you are is the most reliable indicator of a positive or negative childhood, more reliable than any memory or the lack thereof.” Dr. Ari looks at me as if this is supposed to explain something.

  I am perplexed. “Judging by my sitting here, that means what?”

  “Thinking about your mother, what is the most—”

  “Let’s get real, let’s just call it what it is. I’m trying to remember if I had anything to do with the disappearance of my daughter. And I’m being kind by choosing those words, I could ask the real question, the one everybody’s wanting an answer to.” I can feel myself getting upset, my heart is beating hard against my chest and I feel the urge to get up and move around.

  “So you don’t want to talk about your mother?”

  “No, no, you’re getting it all wrong. I can’t remember my mother, her scent, the touch of her hand, her presence. I remember she was always busy, slightly distant maybe, but what does that mean?”

  “Like I said, it means nothing at this point,” he says.

  “What if I . . .” I stop, I don’t know where to go from here.

  “Being distant is not hereditary, it’s not a genetic mutation, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Dr. Ari says.

  “Maybe not in a hereditary way but how about a pattern? Is that possible?”

  “We can’t draw any conclusions from that. Let me give you an example: The child of a drug addict will deal with the addiction somehow and one way of coping is keeping the drugs a secret. Which leads to keeping more secrets. Think of the behavior of children more like an attempt to cope with their parents’ shortcomings.”

  “It’s a shame my mother is not around to answer any questions.” I try not to sound sarcastic but I can’t help it.

  “In my line of work we usually don’t confront parents until it is too late. Makes for a one-sided conversation, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s why so many people see shrinks.”

  Dr. Ari squeezes his lips shut until they disappear and his mouth looks like a slash made by a knife. He begins to tap his leg, then scoots to the front of his chair and leans forward.

  “Don’t think of me as a shrink. Think of me as, as . . .” He is scanning his mind for the right word, and then his face lights up. “Your midwife, in a way. Think of me as your midwife. I’m here to assist you with birthing the past. Neither compassion nor friendship will help you complete the process. In the days to come you’ll ignore me, beg me to make it stop, most certainly you will hate me at some point. Eventually, when you cradle the truth in your arms, you’ll realize that I was on your side all along.”

  You’re on my side then? I want to ask him, but I don’t. As I think about his words, I realize that the only thing I can ask is for someone to be on my side. That very moment, I decide to trust him and that I will allow him to take me places I would rather not go if I want to find my daughter. Or find out what happened to her. Or find out what I have done to her.

  “Tell me about the funeral,” Dr. Ari says.

  I’m a miner, I descend deeper into the mine shaft and all I have to do is bring gemstones up into the light. If memories are gems, I will continue on, leaving it to Dr. Ari to separate fool’s gold from whatever is precious.

  The funeral. What a spectacle that was.

  —

  Standing beside a dark hole in the ground, staring straight ahead, someone shoved a lump of clay into my hand. Three coffins had been propped up—a small one in between two larger ones—and after the undertakers lowered the coffins, one by one, they pulled away the ropes with an indifferent flick of their wrists. The priest was young and his attempt at growing a mustache had resulted in nothing but a few sorry whiskers. His skin was poreless, as if he had been dipped in wax.

  Suddenly I remembered Joan Hardaway, a girl who lived on our street and went to school with me. At school, we had heard she was a “cutter” but we didn’t grasp what that really meant. All we knew was that she liked to hurt herself. Joan Hardaway was a doughy girl with a flaky scalp and yellow teeth. I saw her legs once, after PE when we changed clothes. Her thighs were covered in red spiderwebs, deliberate etchings like images drawn in the sand, illegible, but spelling out some sort of pain. I remember thinking how odd it was to create more pain in order to forget pain. It seemed illogical then.

  Aware of Dr. Ari’s questioning eyes I realize that I haven’t spoken in a while. The memory of the funeral evokes nausea, just as strongly today as it did fifteen years ago. I must stay focused; I must speak slowly and deliberately, must tell him what happened.

  “I threw the lump of clay and it thumped off my sister’s coffin and rolled into a flower arrangement.” I tell Dr. Ari how I turned into a bystander because being in the picture seemed too painful, as if observing myself reduced the pain somehow, and vividly, I see Anthony and me, standing there, holding hands. By the time they lowered the coffins into the ground, I started crying. I tried to pull away from Anthony but he held on to me, squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.

  “No. No. Wait,” I screamed, followed by a universal gasp among the real bystanders. Women started sobbing in the cluster of mourners, handkerchiefs pressed against their mouths, their eyes wide, and embarrassment in their muffled voices.

  “Stella, please, don’t.” Anthony’s voice was pleading. “Stop pulling so hard. Stop pulling my—”

  My sobs became louder, the tears made it impossible to see anything, but I knew everybody was looking at me, staring at the little girl who was losing it. I managed to pull my hand out of Anthony’s grip and stepped forward.

  I had no plans to jump in, I didn’t prepare for a leap. I lost my footing when the ground caved in right at the edge, by the mat of artificial grass. I fell and landed, like a shovelful of newly dug earth, on one of the larger coffins. I rolled over and looked up, my shoulder throbbing. The scent of gardenias was overwhelming, the wreaths were sharp, making my skin itch. Dozens of eyes stared down at me, towering, countless hands extending, waiting for my hand to reach out and grasp theirs. I sat on top of the coffin, not sure if it was my mom’s or dad’s, those eyes staring down at me. I looked past them, up into the sky. Anthony finally lowered himself into the hole and held me up for hands to pull me out.

  Hours later everybody had gathered at our home, a house with a cold and ashy fireplace that felt unsympathetic. I sat in an armchair turned to face the front door, and the first thing anyone saw when they walked in was a girl with a sullen face and a full plate in her lap. I had filled it with meatballs, potato salad, finger sandwiches, and stuffed mushrooms. Aunt Nell gave me a look, and I stacked some more sandwiches on top. I sat, plate on my lap, not bothering with a fork or napkin, not planning to eat any of the food at all. I eyed the people spilling through the door. My silent guarding of the door didn’t go over well; adults didn’t know whether to stroke my hair or hand me a fork. No one greeted me as they entered the house but one middle-aged lady with noticeable upper-lip hair, who I had never met before, kept eyeing me.

  “Hello, Sally,” she said, and offered her hand. How I wished to be a Sally somewhere, I thought, but didn’t correct her nor did I shake her hand. Her dark reddish roots made it seem as if she were bleeding from the part in her hair.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she added.

  “Thank you, Shirley,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  She looked at me, puzzled, and walked off to talk to Aunt Nell.

  The entire time I sat by the door, “Shirley” kept eyeing me suspiciously. I sat for a long time and watched the stream of mourners rever
se itself until finally the house was empty.

  Then I grabbed Anthony’s hand and pulled him into the study. The walls were covered in black-and-white photographs of buildings, a majority of them industrial. The first one, right by the door, was the Lipstick Building, at 53rd and Third, shaped as if oval hatboxes had been stacked on top of one another. There were also photographs of churches. I recognized the Riverside Church. Bryant Park Hotel. There was Grand Central Terminal, my favorite. Photographs lined the walls like family pictures. My father’s interactions with the world were made of stone and steel, slabs and cement.

  The shades had been pulled and the big cedar chest in the corner released a spicy odor, strong and fragrant. Dad kept his historical map collection in that chest. Over the years the maps’ wet-rag-in-the-kitchen-sink aroma had changed to the same aromatic odor of the chest. There was also a faint smell of smoke in the air. I had seen Aunt Nell smoke on the front stoop or in the backyard but maybe she had started plopping herself down in my father’s chair, propping up her feet, having a cigarette. I had a vision of her, wearing my mother’s dress, walking through the house, smoking, and making endless plans we knew nothing about.

  Anthony closed the door behind us. The moist spring air played gently with the thin, parchmentlike blueprints and floor plans on my father’s mahogany desk. Anthony looked at me and then lowered his head. I detected shame in his posture.

  I looked at his face, a face that had changed dramatically over the past week, as if adulthood had come to him overnight. His facial hair so out of place, his body large and more muscular than I’d remembered. He seemed grown up, capable, and I felt small next to him.

  “We don’t need Aunt Nell, we can take care of ourselves. You’re almost eighteen and they’ll let you take care of me.”

  “Stella, I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. We can. Aunt Nell is nothing to us, I can hardly stand to look at her, and I wish she’d pack up and leave. The sooner the better.”

  “I can’t take care of you, I can’t. It’s not that I don’t wa-wa-want to. I ju-just, I . . .” He started to stutter, something he hadn’t done in years. But he regained his composure, as if he decided that this childish affliction was uncalled for. His eyes were red and he paced the study, looking for words and a way out. “I’m going to a military academy. I’ll be leaving in two months.” His words hung between us and sucked the air out of the room. The world was motionless, even the curtains had stopped wafting in the breeze.

  My throat was sore, and every time I swallowed I was back in the dream where a blackbird had slipped down my esophagus in slow motion. Just as the pain of the beak ripping holes and tearing flesh lingered, so did the cruelness of his words. My heart pounded as if the blackbird was trapped in my chest, its wings expanding with every minute. I caught a glimpse of why Joan cut herself to get away from pain. If you replace one hurt with another, it seems as if you’re in control somehow.

  “It won’t be as bad as you think,” Anthony said, and I felt myself shifting, departing from my body.

  The echo of Nell’s heeled shoes tapping over the wooden floors came down the hallway toward the study, but then it quieted and I was no longer sure if someone was coming toward us or moving away. Either way, I felt nothing from that point on.

  —

  Dr. Ari pushes a box of Kleenex my way. I’m not sobbing, there’s just a trail of tears running down my cheeks, my neck, in my mouth, and under my shirt. They taste like the tears I had cried the day of the funeral and I wonder if tears of joy taste any different. The memory of my parents’ funeral is strong, yet I don’t know why it still has such a fierce hold on me.

  I keep my posture upright, attempting to make my pain inconspicuous. I’m not fooling Dr. Ari, the ever-present hawk, spotting pain like prey, descending, striking.

  “I’m so very sorry this happened to you,” Dr. Ari says.

  “I felt safe in my sadness and I told myself it couldn’t get worse. My parents were dead, my brother was leaving, and Aunt Nell was picking at what was left of our family and our house, like a vulture pecking away at spilled guts on a road. I had basically reached the lowest point possible. But I was wrong. So wrong.”

  I look down at my hands, expecting to see that lump of clay. But my hands are empty. We have barely peeled away the outer layer and we both know there are many more layers left to tear away, wounds to be opened deeper until white bone shines through. I am done; I am not going to volunteer any more information.

  I hear a voice. It is my own voice, betraying myself.

  “Look at me. Just look at me, sitting here, trying to remember something that . . .” I’m searching for words, probing my mind, struggling to interpret the turn my life has taken. “What now? I don’t know where to go from here.” Maybe I was just a kid who lost her parents and felt alone. Maybe my childhood was tragic, but my despair had started before the funeral, way before everything, maybe even from the moment I was born.

  “Dr. Ari, are some people born sad? I don’t mean introverted and withdrawn, but depressed? Did I emerge from my mother’s womb with a predisposition to . . . whatever it is . . . sadness? Is that possible?”

  “There is a genetic vulnerability caused by neurotransmitters and biochemical agents, but there are also developmental events, like the death of your parents. Grief is a very strong childhood stressor.”

  For the first time I see myself through the eyes of people at the funeral. I was what? Eccentric? It’s like looking in a fun house mirror only I’m not distorted, I am that way, a gloomy girl, sitting at the door, staring at people—that’s me.

  “To be honest, my glass has always been half empty. Not only as an adult, but as a child.

  “I don’t remember any specific moment I felt happiness. I don’t remember being just over the moon, elated, whatever you want to call it. Happiness is almost something that I can’t feel, like I’m not made to pick up on it or something.” I point at the digital recorder in front of him. “Like this recorder. It can only record audio, it can’t pick up on anything else. You can’t record the temperature of the room, you don’t know what the weather was like when you listen to the recording later on.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “About what?” I ask.

  “That there were no moments of happiness in your life. Maybe you don’t remember every single one, but . . .” He pauses and then his face lights up. “When I was a child, my grandmother taught me to play petteia, a board game. A simplified chess game, if you will. But you win by majority, not with a certain piece or final move.”

  “Your grandmother teaching you a board game is happiness?”

  “It was not so much the game itself but the fact that she tried to teach me some sort of lesson. I remember that you had to somehow surround your opponent’s stones in order to win.”

  “So she taught you some kind of war strategy, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I never saw it as a war strategy, just the fact that patience is always rewarded. But mostly I remember the clicking of the stones on the board. The scent of the tea, the jingling of her jewelry. Her patience while talking me through the moves, explaining the strategy. And she always allowed me to redo a move if it proved crucial. She was a kind and wise woman.”

  “Do you still know how to play the game?”

  “Barely. I don’t think I ever really mastered it.”

  “So . . . the lesson here is?”

  “There are moments of joy in everybody’s life. Happiness, like sadness, comes wrapped in many layers.”

  “Just like memories.”

  “Just like memories,” he says.

  “I just have to find those moments.” I pause for a while and consider the ratio of sadness and happiness in my life. “Sad moments are right on top, but the happy ones seem to hide.”

  I turn my head toward the wall to my
right. A file cabinet takes up the entire wall, small drawers strategically concealing its utilitarian purpose. Smooth-sliding pullout drawers filled with obsolete paper files. Dr. Ari’s awards hover in symmetry, under Plexiglas, anchored with invisible wall attachments. He does not believe in signs of weakness in his constructed world, therefore even the frames must pretend they don’t need a nail to stay put.

  “Anthony probably doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  Dr. Ari raises his eyebrows, then flips over my file, as if handling the folder gives him an illusion of manipulating my known past with his hands.

  “That’s a conversation we’ll have soon.” Dr. Ari pulls out his pocket watch as if he doesn’t trust the timekeeping abilities of the plastic clock on his desk. “For tomorrow I want you to think of the concept of happiness.”

  “Can one think of happiness?” I ask.

  “A memory is a place you visit, not where you live. Happiness therefore is not a permanent state of being, but more a moment in time. Think of a moment for me?”

  Later that night, as I write in my journal, I reflect on Dr. Ari’s story of his grandmother. I try to recall happy surroundings and details, more than the feeling of happiness. I try to think of past happy moments as having fallen to pieces and recovering them is just a matter of putting them back together. Then an image pops into my head. The image of a building and its still beauty in stark contrast with the busy atmosphere. In that memory, my father wears a dark blue suit and an overcoat. I wear a dress and black lacquered shoes that pinch my toes. We are in Grand Central Terminal for my tenth birthday and my father has promised me a “well-guarded secret.”

  “When we leave the terminal,” he says, “you’ll be one of a chosen few who know about this secret.” His voice sounds conspiratorial; all that is missing is a black cloak and a magic wand.