I’m halfway down the stairs when I see them, a news crew on the sidewalk before our home. They stand, shivering, with cameras and microphones; Tammy Palmer from the local news in a tan trench coat and knee-high boots on my front lawn. Her back is toward me, a man counting down on his fingers—three...two...—and as he points at Tammy I all but hear her broadcast begin. I’m standing here at the home of Mia Dennett....
This isn’t the first time they’ve been here. Their numbers have begun to dwindle now, their reporters moving onto other stories: same-sex marriage laws and the dismal state of the economy. But in the days after Mia’s return they were camped outside, desperate for a glimpse of the damaged woman, for any morsel of information to turn into a headline. They followed us around town in their cars until we all but locked Mia inside.
There have been mysterious cars parked outside, photographers for those trashy magazines peering out of car windows with their telephoto lenses, trying to turn Mia into a cash cow. I pull the drapes closed.
I spot Mia sitting at the kitchen table. I descend the stairs in silence, to watch my daughter in her own world before I intrude upon it. She’s dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a snug navy turtleneck that I bet makes her eyes look just amazing. Her hair is damp from an earlier shower, drying in waves down her back. I’m addled by the thick wool socks that blanket her feet, that and the mug of coffee her hands are united around.
She hears me approach and turns to look. Yes, I think to myself, the turtleneck makes her eyes look amazing.
“You’re drinking coffee,” I say, and it’s the vague expression on her face that makes me certain I’ve said the wrong thing.
“I don’t drink coffee?”
I’ve been treading carefully for over a week now, always trying to say the right thing, going over-the-top—ridiculously so—to make her feel at home. I’ve been on edge to compensate for James’s apathy and Mia’s disarray. And then, when least expected, a seemingly benign conversation, and I slip up.
Mia doesn’t drink coffee. She doesn’t drink much caffeine at all. It makes her nervous. But I watch her sip from the mug, completely stagnant and sluggish, and think—wish—that maybe a little caffeine will do the trick. Who is this limp woman before me, I wonder, recognizing the face but having no knowledge of the body language or tone of voice or the disturbing silence that encompasses her like a bubble.
There are a million things I want to ask her. But I don’t. I’ve vowed to just let her be. James has pried more than enough for the both of us. I’ll leave the questions to the professionals, Dr. Rhodes and Detective Hoffman, and to those who just never know when to quit—James. She’s my daughter, but she’s not my daughter. She’s Mia, but she’s not Mia. She looks like her, but she wears socks and drinks coffee and wakes up sobbing in the middle of the night. She’s quicker to respond if I call her Chloe than when I call her by her given name. She looks empty, appears asleep when she’s awake, lies awake when she should be asleep. She nearly flew three feet from her seat when I turned on the garbage disposal last night and then retreated to her room. We didn’t see her for hours and when I asked how she passed the time all she could say was I don’t know. The Mia I know can’t sit still for that long.
“It looks like a nice day,” I offer but she doesn’t respond. It does look like a nice day; it’s sunny. But the sun in January is deceiving and I’m certain the earth will warm to no more than twenty degrees.
“I want to show you something,” I say and I lead her from the kitchen to the adjoining dining room, where I’ve replaced a limited edition print with one of Mia’s works of art, back in November when I was certain she was dead. Mia’s painting is done in oil pastels, this picturesque Tuscan village she drew from a photograph after we visited the area years ago. She layered the oil pastels, creating a dramatic representation of the village, a moment in time trapped behind this sheet of glass. I watch Mia eye the piece and think to myself: If only everything could be preserved that way. “You made that,” I say.
She knows. This she remembers. She recalls the day she set herself down at the dining room table with the oil pastels and the photograph. She had begged her father to purchase the poster-board for her and he agreed, though he was certain her newfound love of art was only a passing phase. When she was finished we all oohed and ahhed and then it was tucked away somewhere with old Halloween costumes and roller skates only to be stumbled upon later on a scavenger hunt for photographs of Mia that the detective asked us to collect.
“Do you remember our trip to Tuscany?” I ask.
She steps forward to run her lovely fingers over the work of art. She stands inches above me, but in the dining room she is a child—a fledgling not yet sure how to stand on her own two feet.
“It rained,” Mia responds without removing her eyes from the drawing.