Hindsight

“I’m so glad that you’re finally visiting here, Honey. I know you have 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. Because I don’t have any memories of this place.”

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

“Of course not,” she said. “Remember? I was sent to a foster home, and you never came to get me!”

“Barbi, I’m sorry. It was for your own good. Things were so complicated back then, with your mother’s trial and everything being in the newspapers. I was trying to protect you.”

She felt her face grow hot. “It happened when I was nine years old, Dad! I didn’t remain nine! I’m a grown woman now. How come you didn’t bother to tell me that my mother died in a mental hospital? There were YEARS when I could have talked to her, but you told me she was in prison and never wanted to speak to 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, and now she's dead—"

“Barbi--” he began.

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

“Listen, Barbara. I’m glad your psychologist has 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 sat at the kitchen table. She thought she remembered the dinette set, but not burnt-orange vinyl fabric on the chairs. Most likely, her stepmother had reupholstered the, Changed them to her tastes. What color had they been when this was Mom’s kitchen, and not Natasha’s? Barbara couldn’t remember.

Her father refilled her coffee mug. “You know at least part of the story. Your mother was a very sick woman, but we didn’t know how sick 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 actually watched 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 had once held shallow pans of mysterious developing solutions was still there, and the little clothes line 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, six and eight years old, caused her immense pain. She had known them their entire short lives but she could not conjure their faces, 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 faces, their giggling silliness.

She wanted to throw the entire box of memorabilia on the floor, but stopped herself. She had 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 notes 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 fathers’ 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.

Barbara turned back to the pitiful cardboard box. The only thing in the box that she did remember was a pair of glasses—oh, those awful glasses! Pink plastic “cat’s eye” frames with rhinestones set at the corners.

She continued writing.

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 always felt ugly wearing them. I want to smash them.

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

Barbara woke 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 and a flash of light, and 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 got down on her hands and knees and felt around the table for the missing lenses, and thrust her hand into the crevices around the couch cushions. Her hand brushed across the cardboard box. What the heck. She found and put on the hideous 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 over. She held her hands out before her face as she tried to make 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 muffled voices above her. A man and a woman, arguing. Natasha? Had she returned? 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, too. Around the ceiling, Christmas tree lights were strung. She hadn’t noticed them before! And she hadn’t noticed that lamp. It was bulbous-shaped, made of thick aqua-colored glass with a gold barrel shade. She remembered calling it the “I Dream of Genie” lamp. Funny she hadn’t noticed it before, or maybe it was because these once-familiar objects were doing the work that Dr. Bennet hoped they would. They were bringing her memories back. Barbara glanced once again at the strings of Christmas tree lights. She remembered her parents arguing about them. Her mother wanted him to put them away until the next year, her dad thought that was a waste of time.

The sound of arguing above her seemed even louder now. It was definitely her father’s voice, but she wasn’t sure she recognized the other. It had been years since she’d seen Natasha. 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 surprised 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, brushed flour from her hands.

“Charles, you have three children. No court in the universe is going to award you the house and leave your children homeless. You and that Russian home wrecker are not going to take my home from me! Forget it!”

Barbara stepped into the kitchen. Her parents seemed to be 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 made her way back to the basement. The door of the darkroom was open. Her father was inside.

“You wanted to divorce our mother?” Barbara demanded. “You wanted to leave her and 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.

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

She nearly followed the sounds into the other room, but behind her, she heard her father’s angry steps reentering the kitchen.

He looked around before putting on the big hot pad mittens that looked like lobsters, and opened the oven. He took out the pie, and she watched as he poured something from one of his bottles of developing chemicals into the holes in the lattice crust. Poison.

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

She visited the first-floor bathroom before going back to bed. She slept soundly on the uncomfortable couch.

In the morning, she got up early and made a rhubarb pie for her father.