Hindsight

CW: Physical violence, gore or abuse; Mental health

“I’m so glad that you’re finally visiting, sweetheart! I know you’ve always had issues with Natasha.”

“My reason for staying away has nothing to do with your wife, Dad.”

“I understand. You must have so many terrible memories—”

“No, Dad. That’s the point. That’s why I’m here. I don’t have any memories.”

He looked surprised. “You don’t remember living here?”

“Barely,” she said. “Remember? After I was sent to the foster home, you never came to get me!”

“Barbi, I’m sorry. It was for your own good. I was trying to protect you. Things were complicated back then with your mother’s trial and everything being in the newspapers. I felt the truth was more than a child should have to handle.”

She felt her face grow hot. “I was eight years old, Dad! I didn’t remain eight! I’m a grown woman now. When did you think I might be mature enough to understand? You lied! You told me Mom didn’t want me to visit her in prison. Instead, I found out five years ago she died in the mental hospital where you had her committed! There were DECADES when I could have talked to her, but you lied! You stole that from me. I had to find out myself what really happened to her, reading court records! All those years I spent thinking she didn’t love me—“

“Barbi—” he began.

“My name is Barbara, Dad. Call me Barbara.”

“Listen, Barbara. Maybe in trying to protect you, I went too far. I hurt you and I’m very sorry. I’m glad your psychologist suggested that you come here and confront your demons. You need closure. We have the entire weekend alone together to talk about what happened. Your little brothers being murdered and all. I promise you I’ll tell you the truth about everything. Here, have another cup of coffee.”

Barbara looked down at her half-empty coffee mug. She thought she remembered the Formica-topped table but not the burnt-orange vinyl fabric on the chairs. What color had they been when this was Mama’s kitchen, and not Natasha’s? Barbara couldn’t remember. Most likely, her stepmother had reupholstered them to her tastes.

Her father refilled Barbara’s mug. “Your mother was a sick woman, but we didn’t know how bad she was until it was too late. She suffered from something they call Munchhausen by Proxy Syndrome. Have you heard of it? It’s where mothers, trying to get attention or pity, hurt their own children. Do you remember how often you were sick when you were little? Your mother did that to you, and she did worse things to your little brothers!”

“I know,” said Barbara, flatly. “I read your testimony.”

Her father looked hurt. “Honey, I had to testify. Timmy and Kirby died because your mother poisoned them! I saw her put the powder in the pie that morning, but at the time I had no idea what it was! I assumed it was cinnamon or something like that. And the only reason you survived—”

“Is because I don’t like rhubarb. Yes, I know.”

Barbara took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Look, Dad, I’m tired. I had a long flight and a long drive, and I’d like to go to sleep.”

“Of course,” he said. “We’ll talk in the morning. Natasha has prepared a bed for you in the den.”

Barbara said goodnight and took the stairs to the basement den, where her father had placed her suitcase on the freshly made sofa bed. The slight mildew scent of the room stirred vague memories of dancing to Herman’s Hermits with her girlfriends. Of a ping-pong table and a dart board. Of posters of Davy Jones and the Monkees on the walls. She changed into her nightgown and sat for a few moments before she noticed his note on the coffee table. There’s a box of your things in the storeroom. Love, Dad.

The storeroom? Where was that? She got up and walked to the door of the large closet that had been her father’s darkroom. She opened the door and flipped on the light switch. The red lightbulb that used to cast a creepy glow had been replaced with a regular one, but the workbench that once held shallow pans of mysterious developing solutions was still there, and the little clothesline where Daddy used to hang wet photos to dry still stretched across the space. Brown glass bottles of chemicals they had been taught to fear still lined a shelf on the wall. On the floor next to the bench was a cardboard box marked “Barbi.”

She carried it to her bed and spent about half an hour looking at things that meant nothing to her. Report cards where she had excelled in English and art and failed at math and science. A Brownie sash—had she ever even been in the Brownies? Birthday cards signed Grandma and Grandpa; some black and white photos of what appeared to be a camping trip; and photos of kids in Halloween costumes—probably Timmy and Kirby, but it was hard to tell under their burnt-cork hobo make-up.

That she didn’t recognize her brothers, five and seven years old, caused her immense pain. She had known them their entire short lives, but she could not conjure them, even though she had seen the crime photos in the court file and those images had been burned into her memory. Seeing the photos didn’t bring back their voices, their sweetness, their giggling silliness.

She wanted to throw the entire box of memorabilia on the floor but stopped herself. She'd promised Dr. Barnett that she would pay special attention to her emotional reactions, so that they could discuss them during future counseling sessions. She pulled a little notebook from her purse and jotted answers to the questions her psychologist had prepared for her.

How do you feel about being in your childhood home again?

It feels completely foreign to me. As if everything has been washed or painted over to remove any trace of my mother.

Were your fears about meeting with your stepmother justified?

Thank God, she isn’t here! Natasha is visiting relatives for a week. I still believe that my dislike for her is not because she took my mother’s place in my father’s life or that my child-self felt he loved her more than he loved me. She was never nice to me, even when she was just our next-door neighbor. She didn’t like children. I didn’t trust her.

What memories have come back to you?

Barbara turned back to the pitiful cardboard box. The only thing in the box that she remembered was a pair of glasses—oh, those awful glasses! Pink plastic “cat’s eye” frames with rhinestones set at the corners. She wrote: I had to wear glasses. Horrible glasses. They were very ugly. Kids called me “four eyes” and “geek” because my lenses were so thick. I hated them. I always felt ugly wearing them. I want to smash them.

Barbara sighed, put her notebook down, and placed the box on the floor. She turned out the bedside lamp and climbed under the blankets.

Barbara woke up a while later, needing to pee. She felt for the lamp switch, but when she turned on the lamp, the bulb made a snapping sound, emitted a flash of light, then left her in darkness. “Crap!” she muttered.

She patted around the coffee table for her glasses, but couldn’t find them. “Crap!” she said, again. She must have accidentally knocked them off the table. She got down on her hands and knees to feel for them, then probed the crevices around the couch cushions. Her hand brushed across the cardboard box. What the heck. She found and put on the hideous pink frames. They were a bit tight across the temples, but they would have to do.

Barbara stood up and negotiated her way around the coffee table in the dark, trying not to stub a toe or knock anything else over. She held her hands out before her face as she made her way to the wall at the base of the stairs where the switch for the overhead light was.

Suddenly, sounds seemed different to her. The clock on the wall was ticking loudly. She hadn’t noticed that before. And she heard a man and a woman, arguing in the kitchen above her. Barbara reached the wall switch and turned it on. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light.

The room seemed different. Around the ceiling, Christmas tree lights were strung. She hadn’t noticed them before. She also didn’t remember seeing that lamp when she went to bed. It was bulbous-shaped, made of thick aqua-colored glass with a gold barrel shade. She remembered that she and her brothers called it the “I Dream of Genie” lamp. Funny she hadn’t noticed it, or maybe it was because these once-familiar objects were doing the work that Dr. Bennett hoped they would. Maybe her memories were coming back! Barbara glanced once again at the strings of Christmas tree lights. She remembered her parents arguing about them. Mama wanted Daddy to put them away until next year, but he thought that was a waste of time.

The sound of arguing above her seemed even louder now. It was her father’s voice, but she wasn’t sure she recognized the other. Had Natasha returned? Barbara went to the top of the stairs and put her ear against the closed door.

“No, you can’t have a divorce! I won’t make it easy for you! You have responsibilities and I won’t allow you to shirk them!” said the woman.

Was her father’s second marriage on the rocks? Is that why Natasha wasn’t here?

“Admit it! We’re both miserable! At least allow me some happiness!” said her father. “Take the kids and go back to your mother!”

This made no sense to Barbara. It couldn’t be Natasha. Natasha didn’t have children. Barbara pushed the door open a few inches.

What she saw shocked her. It was two or three in the morning, she was sure, but in the kitchen, bright sunlight streamed through the windows! In this kitchen, the dinette chairs were turquoise Naugahyde, the wallpaper featured clocks, and her mother, wearing a June-Cleaver-type apron, stood in the middle of the room, brushing flour from her hands. Her father stood in the kitchen doorway, frowning.

“In your dreams, Charles! You and that Russian home wrecker aren’t going to take my home from me! No court in the universe is going to award you the house and leave three children homeless!”

Barbara stepped into the kitchen. Her parents seemed unaware of her presence, so much that her father practically walked through her as he stormed past her and down the basement steps.

Her mother wiped her eyes with her apron, opened the oven door and placed the rhubarb pie inside.

“Mama?” said Barbara. But the apparition before her did not respond.

Barbara turned and hurried back to the basement. The door of the darkroom was open. Her father was inside.

“You wanted to divorce my mother?” Barbara demanded. “You wanted to abandon us for our next-door neighbor?”

But of course, he didn’t answer. She heard him muttering to himself, and bottles clinking together in the darkroom. Barbara fled upstairs again.

Her mother was no longer in the kitchen. Barbara heard voices in another room and cartoons on the TV. Mighty Mouse was singing, “Here I come to save the day!” Children giggling. Was she one of them?

Barbara nearly followed the sounds into the other room, but she heard her father’s footsteps coming back up from the basement. Scowling, he entered the kitchen and looked around. While Barbara watched him, he put on the big hot pad mittens that looked like lobsters and opened the oven. He placed the pie on the kitchen table and poured something from one of his bottles of developing chemicals into the holes in the lattice crust. Then he put the pie back in the oven.

Shocked, Barbara fell against the kitchen counter. She took off her pink glasses and found herself in her father’s kitchen, in the dark, in the middle of the night.

Daddy had murdered her two little brothers! In a way, it was a relief to finally be able to stitch her torn-apart childhood together, but she didn’t know what to do with the information for a few moments. Then she visited the bathroom and returned to the basement where she slept soundly on the uncomfortable couch.

In the morning, she would get up early and make Daddy a pie.