Dear Reader

“I remember your mom always had milk and cookies ready after school. I was so jealous of that.”

“Oh yeah?” I mumbled on automatic as Carolann’s voice drifted away settling somewhere in the background. My thoughts were far from milk and cookies, but rather on the floor underneath the table. 

“My glasses, my glasses.” Clear as day I heard my brother’s cry after a fight with our father. I never left my room that day, so I didn’t know what had happened exactly, but I remember those words. “You broke my glasses.” Had there been a physical altercation? A push, a shove? I don’t know. In my mind’s eye I saw him under the table looking for or picking up the broken pieces of his eyeglasses.

We were not children of physical abuse, don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader. But perhaps that day someone had gone too far, overreacted, reached the end of their rope? I don’t know. Being in that house, in that room, brought it back and I heard his voice again. 

“Remember the wallpaper you had in the kitchen? Red and white flowers, so outrageously loud. Those were the days, huh?” Carolann was looking around the modern kitchen obviously redone from top to bottom. 

I had forgotten all about those bold colors as I looked around and saw my mother at the stove flipping the burgers. I sat on top of the broken dishwasher with my legs dangling off the side watching my mother cook. She tried so hard to be the perfect wife and mother with dinner on the table at 5:45 every night. The weekly menu was decided in advance for those stoic meals where no one laughed or felt at ease while my father said the food was cold or the silverware dirty. We ate quickly and retreated into our separate quarters afterward.

“Yes, I remember that wallpaper. We had red cabinets to match. How crazy is that?” I went along with Carolann’s stroll down memory lane, her recollections obviously happier than mine. She did not live in that house, rather a mere visitor, a guest with whom we were at our best behavior. Because, Dear Reader, it was all about keeping up appearances. 

I ran my hand over the spot on the wall where the phone had hung. The long cord had allowed me to stretch it down the hallway and under my bedroom door. Every night at 6:30 I sat with back to the door whispering to Carolann about the cute boys in our classes. My best friend Carolann, still a good friend, but distant now as all of my friends had become over the years. For I had learned to keep people at arm’s length. It was the only way to survive, a trick in my magician’s bag. 

“Let’s go see your room,” Carolann walked down that hallway where the phone cord had stretched and entered what had become a den by the new owners. A cozy room, the two windows in the corner decorated with pretty curtains, a glimpse of the yard peeking through. Those windows held the secret of midnight escapes with Jack Daniels and the boys who accompanied that bottle. A shy girl who found her validation in all the wrong ways.

My stomach clenched. I should not have come to this house; there were no good memories to revisit.

Carolann was staring at me, looking concerned. “You ok?” 

“Yeah, sure. Just thinking about work tomorrow. I can’t stay too long.” Another trick pulled out of my hat. Can’t stay too long. When things got uncomfortable, then poof, disappear. Now you see it, now you don’t. An illusion, like the house itself, of the happy family residing there.

“No worries. We have to go see the basement, though, don’t we? You guys had the coolest bar down there.”

“We did. We had some fun parties. Remember my sweet sixteen? We had a simple sleepover not like the events that girls plan today.” We opened the basement door and started the descent. 

My mind’s eye saw the old piano in the corner where my brother sat and played, trying to teach me some songs picking at the keys here and there. An old drum set had been there as well, moved to my father’s basement after the divorce. New Year’s Eve my brother wore a pointy hat playing the drums at his party of one, noisemaker in his mouth blowing out the occasional toot with the ribbon unfurling and curling back in.

Blinking away the tears, I saw the colorful playroom that the new owners had created. An oasis for their children, miniature tables and chairs, chalkboards and toy boxes replacing the ghosts crying alone in that room. Friendless on New Year’s Eve as he had started showing symptoms. 

Dear Reader, wondering why I would return to that house? Particularly after letting you in on the acknowledgement of his symptoms. Do you wonder what symptoms I refer to? Perhaps he was losing his vision? I did mention that he wore glasses. Or perhaps a hearing loss to prevent him from hearing the music he enjoyed on both piano and drums? Oh, if only that simple. Upsetting, yes. But simple.

We went back upstairs continuing our meandering around the Open House, only Carolann and myself knowing it was the house that I grew up in. The house of outer happiness and inner angst. The house where my brother got sick, and I lost my way.

“Would you like to see the yard?” The realtor led us out the back door where I saw the little girl sitting under the apple tree with a book, lost in the story. Year after year as the tree and the girl grew older and the stories more complex she sat under that tree. Turning to the sunny side of the yard I saw the hose filling the plastic pool, brother and sister in bathing suits spraying each other laughing. Yes, a good memory. I exhaled thankful to have found one, relieved it wasn’t all bad. My mother sat in her lounge chair, her sun hat and glasses protecting her, keeping her young and beautiful. Another turn to the side I saw the picnic table where we had birthday parties, played Chinese checkers, and ate grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream. More good memories. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea coming back. 

Maybe, Dear Reader, I needed to remember it wasn’t all a nightmare. Or maybe those memories were from before the nightmare started. Perhaps the nightmare was there brewing all along and we didn’t notice, didn’t want to notice.

“There’s two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. And plenty of storage.” The realtor was pleased with that information, telling us as if she had something to do with it. My blood, sweat and tears had helped put in that second bathroom to improve the value of the house before my mother sold it. I could have told the realtor a thing or two about the two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs, but I held my tongue. We showed up anonymously for fun, a joke really. Some joke, I thought, as I climbed the staircase to hell.

Now, Dear Reader, this is where I am going to need you the most. Because this is where it is going to get real.

Like the rest of the house the second story had been fully updated. I felt the large room with high ceilings close in on me, the slanted walls from the past coming back, boxing me in. The light gray walls turned dark blue bringing shadows into the corners. Sweat formed on my forehead as if the new central air wasn’t on, and the sweltering summer heat was trapped upstairs like a furnace. I stood in the middle of my brother’s room, Carolann’s chattering with the realtor growing dim, distant, secondary to the loud pounding of my heart, blood pulsing in my ears.

Laughter. Coming from this room, bouncing off the walls, traveling down the stairs or perhaps just falling through the floorboards to the little girl’s room below. She huddled in her bed pulling the blanket over her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Nothing was funny. No one was upstairs with him. 

I wonder, Dear Reader, if anyone asked him what was so funny? I was too scared. My parents? Did they? I never looked at it through their perspective. 

There were obsessions. There were paranoid thoughts. These were things I did not, could not understand. Was I being shielded by my parents or just pushed aside as secondary left to cope alone? Was it assumed that I was okay, or did they not have the capacity for the well child after being depleted by the sick child?

Remember, Dear Reader, that was years ago. Mental illness was not understood and certainly not spoken of. 

When his symptoms advanced from bad to worse and the hospitalizations became longer, I was instructed to say he went away to school. What school? I tried to memorize the facts and stats. Name of school, location, major, roommates. I couldn’t. I withdrew instead, stayed in my room where no one asked me endless questions, no one wondered, no one made me panic.

What was his diagnosis, Dear Reader? It’s been over forty years and I have never uttered it once. The word puts a lump in my throat, brings tears to my eyes. It’s a long word, Dear Reader, an ugly word to look at, to write, to spell, to say. When I met the man who I would marry I knew I had to tell him. Agonizing over it, I wrote him a letter, with instructions to take it into the other room, read it and return it to me without discussion at that moment. The day he followed those instructions was the day I said yes to his proposal. The only person I ever told. I must have felt safe.

Perhaps it’s an easy word for you, Dear Reader. You might have friends and family with the same diagnosis, and you will think of me as weak, a coward, unsupportive of a sick family member. You would not be alone in that thinking. I wonder if he is my test, my personal test. When I reach the pearly gates, I will be asked if I was a good person. Thinking of my brother who I shunned I answer, “No. I am not.” Access denied, I would be turned away. For I was not sympathetic but rather resentful that he took my parents’ attention, turned the home into a place of tears and fears and never-ending guilt. Guilt that he was sick, and I was well. Perhaps those years of self-destructive behavior can be explained away, perhaps I didn’t feel deserving of the good life.

Dear Reader, have you put together that word? The word stars with an S and is followed by harsh sounds including a Z and PH, ending in NIC. I cannot make it clearer to you, I cannot spell it out. I cannot see it in black and white. It simply hurts too much.

Did Carolann really not know? How many times did she come over to play? We jumped rope, played jacks on the wooden floor with cracks in it. She ate with us, slept over, and came to my parties. Maybe she knew and kept quiet. Maybe we fooled her into thinking we were that perfect family. Maybe she was just young and didn’t notice. Or maybe she loved us and accepted us the way we were.

The realtor’s voice droned on as the sweat rolled down my back. I bolted down the stairs and out the front door. It was a mistake to come back. Do I need therapy to resolve these issues? Maybe. But my way is to push it down, repress and ignore, more tricks up my sleeve. I waited in my car for Carolann to exit that house so I could drive away.