It’s a Small World After All

Daedalia: Chapter 22

Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.

Previously…

In her journals, Kelly described the aftermath of Marabelle’s abduction as sleepless isolation, guilt, and rage, while Lefty grew cold and distrustful after learning Kelly had been messaging Barkowski online. Marabelle’s trauma surfaced in small ways, and Kelly began to fear both her work and her own capacity for harm, swearing she would stop being Daedalia and try to become a real mother.

The trip to visit my grandparents in North Carolina, after everything I had been through, felt enchanted. Sitting on their back porch, I saw fireflies for the first time and heard cicadas. Lefty and I played Parcheesi with my grandpa and I ate two bowls of my grandma’s blackberry cobbler. There was a neighbor boy I played with for hours who had bright red hair and a lazy Southern drawl that made me laugh when he said things like “warter.” Let’s get some warter, I’m thirsty.

I don’t remember thinking about Kelly while we were away and I didn’t even feel bad until we got home. She had decorated the whole living room with streamers and balloons like it was a birthday party. There were bowls of chips and candy on the table and an enormous box, gift-wrapped, that turned out to be a bicycle. She had baked a cake too, and though it was lopsided, it was exquisitely decorated with a Transformer that looked like it must have taken her all day to create.

She hugged me for a long time and I hugged her back but she smelled terrible, like she hadn’t bathed in a couple of days. Her hair was greasy and hadn’t been brushed and she had dark circles under her eyes.

Lefty was concerned. I remember the way he looked around the room, and at her, when she was hugging me and saying over and over again how much she had missed us. Later, when I was in my room playing, I could hear them talking. They weren’t shouting, so I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but from the rhythm and flow of their voices, it was clear there was an argument. I wished I was back in North Carolina.

The next morning, I woke up early and went into the living room to turn on the TV. Out the window, I could see the door to the shed was open. I called out for my parents, but there was no answer. I went into their bedroom but they weren’t there. I put on my flip-flops by the door and went outside. I crossed the courtyard and went down the path to the shed where the door was ajar. I stepped to the threshold and looked inside.

Lefty was standing in front of a medium-sized canvas on one of Kelly’s easels. I couldn’t see what was on it because his body blocked my view. Kelly was curled up on the floor in the corner of the room. She was covered in an old quilt and all I could see was the nest of her hair and one of her hands, dirty with ink and paint, poking out from beneath.

I called out to Lefty but he didn’t seem to hear me.

I remember this terrible, uneasy feeling that is hard to describe. It was a physical sensation that made my stomach turn over, like when you take the express elevator to the top floor of a skyscraper.

I called out to Lefty again. He startled from his trance and yelled, “No. Get out of here, Marabelle. Now.”

I jumped at the sound of his voice. He never yelled at me, so this was scary. I turned and ran back to the house without ever seeing what was on the canvas. A few minutes later he found me in my bedroom, hiding in the back of my closet.

“Come here, sweetheart. It’s okay. Daddy’s sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Is Mommy okay?” I asked.

“She’s fine, she’s just tired. She was up late working last night.”

“Why did you scream at me?”

“I didn’t want you to see that picture. Some things are only for grown-ups. I didn’t want it to upset you.”

I don’t remember any more discussion after that. If there was, I didn’t sway him, probably because I didn’t really want to know what was on the canvas.

Later that day, when I went out to the shed to see her, the canvas was gone. She seemed better, less frayed around the edges, and that feeling I had walking into the shed earlier that morning didn’t come back.

“Are you okay, Mommy?” I asked.

“Yes, pumpkin, I’m great. Just a little tired. I didn’t sleep so well. Come here.”

I sat in her lap. Her hair was damp and smelled like shampoo. Her hands were scrubbed clean. I let her hold me for a while. I could feel her trying so hard and I didn’t want to disappoint her. I wanted to match her intensity but I never could. Mostly I just felt uncomfortable.

I felt this way long before I was taken and it only intensified after. It wasn’t Kelly’s fault she couldn’t make me feel safe. I’m not sure she ever felt safe or comfortable in her body unless she was working.

As I read back what I’ve written about my childhood, I realize I’m not being entirely fair. It’s true that the memories that stick in our reptile brains are typically the bad ones, the cautionary tales, so I’ve made an effort to go back and look through Lefty’s photo albums to try to remember the events of my childhood with more accuracy.

There were moments, pockets where we felt like a family and did family things. We went to Disneyland a couple of weeks later because Lefty had business in L.A. We stayed in a suite at the Disneyland Hotel with a view of Sleeping Beauty Castle, had pancakes with Mickey and Goofy, and spent the day riding rides. It was Kelly’s first time at Disney too and she loved it as much as I did.

Even though I was an inch shy of the minimum height to ride, she helped me get on Space Mountain and we rode it three times in a row. Lefty chickened out after the first time and feigned a sore neck. We teased him mercilessly for the rest of the trip. At the teacup ride or in the queue for “It’s a Small World,” Kelly would say, “Are you sure your neck’s gonna be okay with this one, Grandpa?”

They didn’t argue or have intense whispered conversations. My mother didn’t once pick up a pen unless it was to circle the next thing on the map we were going to visit. No one asked me how I was doing or if I needed anything. I didn’t have to talk to the lady in the office with all the bookshelves about my feelings.

For the last two days of that trip, it was just me and my mother because Lefty had meetings. The sharp focus my mother had always given to her work, she gave to me and I bathed in her attention. She was less of a mother and more of a friend with endless resources who wouldn’t deny me anything.

If I expressed the smallest interest in a toy in one of the hundreds of gift shops, strategically placed throughout the park, she got it for me. Halfway through the second day we had to return to the hotel because we couldn’t carry all the things she had bought for me. Rather than return to the park, we went down to the hotel swimming pool, which was basically a mini waterpark, and she swam and splashed and got sunburned right beside me for the remainder of the afternoon.

She got on a first-name basis with one of the poolside waiters and he continued to refill our commemorative Goofy cups with mock piña coladas until we both got brain freezes. It was as if she had taken Lefty’s personality on loan in his absence and was going to ride it until the wheels came off.

I remember we held hands everywhere we walked, and if we were waiting in line somewhere, her hands were on my shoulders or cradling my face, her lips pressed to the top of my head. I don’t remember ever flinching or pushing her away. I soaked up her affection in the way a desert marigold drinks the rain.

The memory I’ve replayed during the worst times of my life, when I’ve felt completely alone and anxious, is one from that evening. It’s a mystery why we record some memories in high fidelity, but I believe it has something to do with the degree to which our bodies are affected in these moments.

I was so sunburned that my face and shoulders were glowing, radiating heat, like embers in a furnace. But the strange thing about being that sunburned is that everything that touches your skin must be interpreted. It’s as though the wires of perception for pleasure and pain are intertwined.

We stood together in a cold shower, both of us cringing and squealing at the tiny needles of water. Afterwards, we couldn’t bear the agony of toweling off so we lay on the soft white sheets of the enormous bed beneath the ceiling fan to air dry. She slathered gobs of cold aloe vera gel on my shoulders and the delicate touch of her fingertips raised goosebumps down my back.

We ordered room service. To be different I ordered something exotic called a Monte Cristo, which turned out to be a deep-fried ham and cheese sandwich. She thought it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted and ordered two more. We dipped them in syrup and ate until we were so full we couldn’t move. She put what remained back on the silver tray and we left it in the hallway.

In the bed we watched 101 Dalmatians and she promised to get me a puppy when we returned home. I was so tired I don’t remember the movie ending. All I remember is the sensation of her fingers idly combing through my damp hair, the flickering light from the television playing on the wall, and the feeling of not wanting to be anywhere else. Not wanting anything else. And most of all, not being afraid.

The next morning, I awoke to find the person who had made me feel that way was gone. Kelly was on the phone for a long time talking with my father. Something was wrong. I pretended to play with my new toys, but really I was listening for clues in her one-word responses and vague questions.

Before she hung up the phone, I remember her saying, “Oh my God. What did I do?” All the blood had drained from her face, her mouth was slack, and she stared at a point on the wall for a long time after the call ended. I kept asking her what was wrong, but she didn’t respond, except to turn on the television and hand me the remote.

We didn’t go back to the park that day. Instead, we got on an airplane and flew back to Santa Fe. The person who had splashed in the pool with me had vanished as quickly as she had appeared, and I would only ever catch fleeting glimpses of her for what remained of my childhood.

In the days that followed, from the snippets of conversation I could make out between her and Lefty, I learned that Fiodor was dead. I never let on that I knew this nor did I ask any questions about him. The ropes of guilt, sadness, and relief braided into a knot in my gut. I withdrew more and more. I’m not sure either of my parents really noticed. Maybe they did because they continued to take me to the therapist with her shelves full of books, but we never spoke about Fiodor.

When I began doing research for this book a couple of years ago, I learned that my captor was found dead in his cell early on the morning of July 16, 2005, the same morning I was sleeping blissfully next to my mother in the Disneyland Hotel. The police report said he died from a massive heart attack. He was only 36 years old and had no preexisting heart condition. Apparently no one questioned his death. There was no grieving mother or father to challenge the autopsy report.

Two decades later, there was little evidence that Fiodor Barkowski had ever existed beyond some archived web pages from a Daedalia fan site I managed to find in the Wayback Machine. He wrote about her with such reverie, passion, and sensitivity. He seemed like a kind person, earnest even, and I wondered if I had met him as an adult, if he hadn’t kidnapped me as a child, would I have liked him?

I tried to recall the physical dimensions of him as I read his words, but he was nothing but a collection of disjointed parts in my memory. There are no photographs that portray the man who wrote those beautiful words about Daedalia or the man who caused me nightmares for over a decade. There’s only a mug shot taken the day he was arrested. In the two-by-three frame, he appears trapped like a wild animal in a snare, the whites of his eyes enormous, his expression a combination of terror and bewilderment.

At Kelly’s insistence, Lefty burned the canvas I hadn’t been allowed to see that morning in the studio. I’ve asked him many times in the last few years to describe the painting to me, but he’s never been willing to talk about it.

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