My nightmare loops over and over, with only small elements changing. Sometimes my mom’s there; other times I’m left alone in the kitchen with the big, wide sky yawning over me.
It’s fine, I tell myself.We’re better off without each other.Over and over, hoping it starts to feel real. But my life has become a cemetery of painful absences. It feels so ridiculous to count Orfeo amongst them, but nothing about the way he made me feel was ever balanced or rational.
I don’t want to think of the Italian vampire every time I reach for a box of spaghetti or try on one of my dresses. I don’t want to look through my balcony doors and imagine him smoking a cigarette in his slow, purposeful way.
Much like my mother, Orfeo’sright thereand yet totally inaccessible. January melts into February, and I stem my feelings the way I always have—by acting like they don’t exist.
My mom’s personal effects don’t reveal much about who this “he” could be, and since I can’t reach through the chaos of my mind to get to her in the Dream Place, I’m forced to think outside the box.
I don’t know why I’ve never googled her before. I guess it felt too…too cheap, maybe? And when she was alive, there seemed to be nothing my motherwouldn’ttell me. How many times had I asked her not to introduce me to a boyfriend or steal my jeans or crawl into my bed after a night out playing pool and smoking cigarettes?
I type in her birth name—Theresina Moro—and the first link is to her obituary, which feels like a fresh hole punched through my heart. I force myself to keep going, but the links that follow are to old advertisements for her palm reading business and pictures pulled from her Facebook page.
It’s not until the fifth search page that I find an old news article:
Missing Brooklyn Teen Found Safe in Central Jersey; Newborn Baby Is Hers, Family Claims
I stare at the headline. My pulse thuds in my throat. The computer mouse grows clammy in my hand. All around me, the library is cloaked in total silence.
Finally, I click. The link takes me to an archived news page from February, twenty-six years ago.
Missing Brooklyn teenager Theresina Moro has been found after almost exactly 365 days of searching. The teen was spotted wandering the side of I-95 last Friday. Eyewitnesses reported that the young woman was first seen walking the median without proper footwear and with a swaddled infant in her arms as temperatures dropped to single digits. A local woman pulled over when she noticed the teen, later contacting authorities when she noticed the teenager’s ankle tattoo matched a photo on missing posters.
When the woman approached Moro, she alleges the teen smiled and simply asked for the time despite having what appeared to be a number of open and bleeding wounds on her wrists, ankles, and forehead.
Moro’s unexpected return comes after many desperate pleas from the girl’s family. Missing person signs can be found on almost every telephone pole from Brooklyn to Princeton. Theresina’s mother tells us they never gave up hope.
The young woman was reported missing by her mother and grandmother after failing to return home from a double shift at Famiglia Three Pizza in the Flatbush neighborhoodof Brooklyn. Moro’s mother reported that her daughter had begun dating someone but had refused to share details with her family. Concerned, Moro’s mother had asked her friends to keep an eye on her.
The now eighteen-year-old girl and infant were taken into custody Friday night before being promptly reunited with her family.
I exit out of the page, pushing back from the library desk and not giving a damn about how much noise I’m making. I grab my bag, rushing across the atrium and down the marble steps that wind into the archives, my footfall echoing around me.
The air down here is cold and humid, sharp with the smell of chemicals and disuse. I rush to the bathroom and lock the door behind me, my skin goose pimpled and slick with sweat. I slide down to the floor and focus all my energy on the sensation in my chest.
Please work, I think, begging the gods.Please. Please.
I focus on the kitchen table as it appears in my dreams. The sink behind Mom, the strange orange light, the way the light falls through the lace curtains and through her bottle blonde waves. I focus on the women, spiraling around the room. The cookies on the plate between us. The glass rosary beads draped over her hands. The faint smell of death.
Please work.Please.
The tingling begins. In my hands and feet, then it grows, reaching higher and higher.
Please.
The shortbread cookies. The stars over our heads that struck with that deep, wild fear.
Please.
I feel myself pulling away, drifting upward, stretching and lifting…
“Mom!”I collapse onto the table. I’m here, both in body and spirit. I gasp for air, trying to regain control of my breathing. I push myself up to look at her.
She looks the same as she has since the first time I met her here, in the Dream Place. “It worked.”
“Of course it did.” A smile flickers on her lips. “You look sick, sweetie.”
“Mom, what the fuck happened to you? You went missing? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
