The Good Girl. Mary Kubica

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СКАЧАТЬ her breath in violently, and claims, “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault,” and it takes every bit of willpower I have not to rush from my seat and embrace my child. I want to tell her that no, it’s not. It’s not her fault. I can see the way it grieves her, the way her facial features tense up, her flattened hands turn to fists. “I did this,” she says.

      “This is not your fault, Mia,” Dr. Rhodes states. Her voice is pensive, soothing. I grip the arms of the chair in which I sit and force myself to remain calm. “It’s not your fault,” she repeats, and later, after the session is through, she explains to me in private that victims almost always blame themselves. She says that often this is the case with rape victims, the reason that nearly fifty percent of rapes go unreported because the victim feels certain it was her fault. If only she had never gone to such and such a bar; if only she had never talked to such and such a stranger; if only she hadn’t worn such suggestive attire. Mia, she explains, is experiencing a natural phenomenon that psychologists and sociologists have been studying for years: self-blame. “Self-blame can, of course, be destructive,” she says to me later as Mia waits in the waiting room for me to catch up, “when taken to the extreme, but it can also prevent victims from becoming vulnerable in the future.” As if this is supposed to make me feel relieved.

      “Mia, what else do you see?” the doctor inquires when Mia has settled.

      She’s taciturn, initially. The doctor asks again, “Mia, what else do you see?”

      This time Mia responds, “A house.”

      “Tell me about the house.”

      “It’s small.”

      “What else?”

      “A deck. A small deck with steps that lead down into the woods. It’s a log cabin—dark wood. You can barely see it for all the trees. It’s old. Everything about it is old—the furniture, the appliances.”

      “Tell me about the furniture.”

      “It sags. The couch is plaid. Blue-and-white plaid. Nothing about the house is comfortable. There’s an old wooden rocking chair, lamps that barely light the room. A tiny table with wobbly legs and a plaid vinyl tablecloth that you’d bring to a picnic. The hardwood floors creak. It’s cold. It smells.”

      “Like what?”

      “Mothballs.”

      Later that night, as we hover in the kitchen after dinner, James asks me what in the hell the smell of mothballs has to do with anything. I tell him that its progress, albeit slow progress. But it’s a start. Something that yesterday Mia couldn’t remember. I, too, had longed for something phenomenal: one session of hypnosis and Mia would be healed. Dr. Rhodes sensed my frustration when we were leaving her office and explained to me that we needed to be patient; these things take time and to rush Mia will do more harm than good. James doesn’t buy it; he’s certain it’s only a ploy for more money. I watch him yank a beer from the refrigerator and head into his office to work while I clean the dinner dishes, noticing, for the third time this week, that Mia’s plate has barely been touched. I stare at the spaghetti noodles hardening on the earthenware dishes and remember that spaghetti is Mia’s favorite meal.

      I start a list and begin to archive things one by one: the rough hands, for example, or the weather forecast. I spend the night on the internet rummaging around for useful information. The last time the temperatures in northern Minnesota were in the forties was in the last week of November, though the temperatures toyed around in the thirties and forties from Mia’s disappearance until after Thanksgiving day. After that they plunged into the twenties and below and likely won’t creep up to forty for some time. There was a half moon on September 30th, October 14th and another on the 29th; there was one on November 12th and another on the 28th, though Mia couldn’t be certain that the moon was exactly at half and so the dates are only suggestions. Moose are common in Minnesota, especially in the winter. Beethoven wrote Für Elise around 1810, though Elise was actually supposed to be Therese, a woman he was to marry in the same year.

      Before I go to bed, I pass by the room in which Mia sleeps. I silently open the door and stand there, watching her, the way she is draped across the bed, the blanket thrust from her body at some point in the night where it lies in a puddle on the floor. The moon welcomes itself into the bedroom through the slats on the plantation blinds, streaking Mia with traces of light, across her face, down a set of knit eggplant pajamas, the right leg of which is hiked up to the knee and tossed across an extra pillow. It’s the only time these days when Mia is at peace. I move across the room to cover her and feel my body lower to the edge of the bed. Her face is serene, her soul calm, and though she’s a woman, I still envision my blissful little girl long before she was taken away from me. Mia’s being here feels too good to be true. I would sit here all night if I could, to convince myself that it isn’t a dream, that when I wake in the morning, Mia—or Chloe—will still be here.

      As I climb into bed beside James’s blazing body, the bulk of the down comforter actually making him sweat, I wonder what good this information—the weather forecast and phases of the moon—actually does me, though I’ve stuck it in a folder beside the dozens of meanings for the name Chloe. Why, I don’t know for certain, but I tell myself that any details notable enough for Mia to recount under hypnosis are important to me, any scrap of information to explain to me what happened to my daughter inside the log walls of that rural, Minnesota cabin.

      Colin

       Before

      There’s trees and a lot of them. Pine, spruce, fir. They hold on tight to their green needles. Around them, the leaves of oaks and elms wither and fall to the ground. It’s Wednesday. Night has come and gone. We exit the highway and speed along a two-lane road. She holds on to the seat with every turn. I could slow down but I don’t because I just want to get there. There’s hardly anyone on the road. Every now and then we pass another car, some tourist going below the speed limit to enjoy the view. There’s no gas stations. No 7-Elevens. Just your run-of-the-mill ma-and-pa shop. The girl stares out the window as we pass. I’m sure she thinks we’re in Timbuktu. She doesn’t bother to ask. Maybe she knows. Maybe she doesn’t care.

      We continue north into the deepest, darkest corners of Minnesota. The traffic continues to thin beyond Two Harbors where the truck is nearly engulfed in needles and leaves. The road is full of potholes. They send us flying into the air and I curse every single one of them. Last thing we need is a flat tire.

      I’ve been here before. I used to know the guy who owns the place, a crappy little cabin in the middle of nowhere. It’s lost in the trees, the ground covered in a crunchy layer of dead leaves. The trees are little more than barren branches.

      I look at the cabin, and it’s just like I remember, just like when I was a kid. It’s a log home overlooking the lake. The lake looks cold. I’m sure it is. There’s plastic lawn chairs out on the deck and a tiny grill. The world is desolate, no one around for miles and miles.

      Exactly what we need.

      I glide the truck to a stop and we get out. Yanking a crowbar from the back, we make our way up a hill to the old home. The cabin looks abandoned, as I knew it would be, but I look for signs of life anyway: a car parked in back, dark shadows through the windows. There’s nothing.

      She stands motionless beside the truck. “Let’s go,” I say. Finally she climbs up the dozen or so steps to the deck. She stops to catch her breath. “Hurry up,” I say. For all I know, we’re being watched. I knock on the door first, just to make sure that we’re alone. And then I tell the girl to shut up and I listen. It’s silent.

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